Free Fall Philosophical

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

I like our Free Fall Fridays, 

definition: as invented by novelist W.O. Mitchel: We have a prompt, (topic) we write very fast, no stopping to edit—just go! Then we read go around the table reading aloud.

Hello Reader,

Got philosophy?

Maybe for post secondary students, when it comes to philosophy, December could be the best month for those boy-and-girl-over-coffee discussions of “the meaning of life.” (Because if you don’t know your class material by now, you never will, so you may as well relax) Now it’s December, so here are some philosophical writings from our Friday Free Fall. Today is all nonfiction.

Generally, after each prompt,  I write fiction, “because I always do nonfiction at home.”  Recently, for my FF nonfiction, I went through a phase of modelling long thoughtful descriptions off of Marilyn. 

Marilyn told us she told her mother I was doing so, telling her mum this disappointed her “because then I don’t hear Sean’s voice.” She was glad when I went back to being me. I think the pieces below, from 2018, are very much inspired by Marilyn’s style, but are also in my own voice.

Prompt- 

this Friday morning

This Friday morning could be the first Friday of the rest of your life. Or you might not make it through the week to next Friday. “Somewhere in my life,” said the author (Ian Brown) of the memoir (Sixty) about his sixtieth year, “I have lost two decades. But I don’t know which two.”

Ain’t it the truth… Or this Friday could be the only Friday in your life. Here. Now. Present in all its power and glory. The glory is there if you see it, the power is there if you seize it. Oh, there are so many way ways to escape your power, and only a few ways to grasp the nettle firmly.

Power up the TV—there’s an escape. Power up the radio—escape. Consume the medication, the cinnamon, embrace the wall of sound, rush to the social gossip platform… or stop still, and know… It’s a god-given Friday. That’s god with a small g, for you atheists. The very firmament and sky are a place of god, in me and through me and if I don’t like it, then I can rumble shut the water-tight doors of distraction. Shut out the perception. I can do so, I often do so, I like to do so—but it’s not as much fun.

This is a Friday, that’s my fun day, a day to skip and run day. A granny told me she hates it when society tries to tell her she’s not supposed to skip. So we skipped down the apartment hall together.

Like alliteration? Friday is for forging friendships in the fire and heat of life, Friday is for forgetting all the ferocious hated liars, and living now… now… now.

My old Greek friends said moderation in all things; so I only do Friday once a week. The Grecian wisdom ran “nothing in excess.” So yes.

Prompt- 

register

Sometimes, stuff doesn’t register. Sometimes, my ears even turn off—and isn’t that a strange sensation? You don’t need fiery letters in the sky when that happens to know that something is not to be faced, usually something that upsets my world-view. But face it I must, and re-arrange, and re integrate to a new improved world.

I suppose we can’t register everything. We just ain’t build for it. See landscape. Or see terrain. Be on the alert for a martial artist to suddenly strike, or… see the flowers and shades in the brickwork. See your own petty concerns, or see the faces and emotional concerns of others. Call me a writer, but my pet peeve is folks who go through the world oblivious. I just can’t live that way. 

There’s a John Prine song called my wife goes to mars where she doesn’t hear, doesn’t see, doesn’t think. Folks like that are another pet peeve of mine. Call me an artist, but why go through life if you aren’t going to be alive to to the life around you? In a world full of color, why see black and white? There is something special about learning photography, or painting, or poetry: Your world is never the same again. Of course, you can always choose to be oblivious.

Sometimes, I read my newspaper and what shall I be oblivious to today? War in the middle east? The ozone layer?

Prompt- 

tomorrow

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, comes along as regularly as the rising sun, like footsteps on our way to golden heaven.

The sun it rises gold, or through a cloud dimly, or beyond a curtain of rain. The point is that it rises, as surely as breath. This is our curse and our blessing. For we are all of us children of hope, even as cynical hopeless adults. We stop to view the rain on a spider’s web, we feel the quickening sense of loosening joints, we hope to have a nice dream, we enjoy a nice nap, or water trickling down our throat.

Then again, I remember someone saying with great sincerity, “I want to die!” She was deaf, blind, lonely and in her right mind. And once she had given me a very precious gift of holding me. This memory I carry in my body, as I can hope to hold others.

As the earth revolves I have hope to see things beyond myself. Robins in the spring. Maybe I will catch the last of the butterflies. I hobble over to the federal building for the protest, with the hope that welfare and social assistance will one day be vast enough that no one has to beg. I never give to beggars, not if it means I will wimp out from trudging down to the building to make my views known.

“I will never be poor again!” is the classic cry of someone who still has a tomorrow. And the self confidence to make plans. Others don’t feel normal or able to make plans. Fit of body, but knowing they will never be able to even hold down a job at Taco Bell. Why can normal people do what it takes, but I can’t? Why do normal people use birth control, and have normal boyfriends, but I can’t? Tomorrow is the faint hope of advancing towards normality. It can’t be just magic, being normal, there must be some way that I can learn what they have learned, what ever it is.

I don’t know, but there is always tomorrow.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

December

2018

Speaking of student philosophers: Strange how our university years, so important to us then, have faded by middle age…  A man who was honoured to be the student president twice, doesn’t have that fact on his bio; when a lady was written up about being a journalist, in a two page spread  in the campus alumni magazine, there was only a single sentence to say she was once the editor of the student newspaper.

“Is the home team still on fire, 

do they still win all the games, 

and by the way, 

did she mention my name”

Gordon Lightfoot

When I talk to students in secondary and post secondary, I always keep in mind how their team, and being involved on campus, is important to them.