From whiskey river:
Indeterminacy means, literally: not fixed, not settled, uncertain, indefinite. It means that you don’t know where you are. How can it be otherwise, say the Buddhist teachings, since you have no fixed or inherent identity and are ceaselessly in process? Life is filled with uncertainty. Chance events happen to all of us. Each of us must take responsibility and make decisions. None of us should be imposing our ego image on others.
There’s another way to live. Accept indeterminacy as a principle, and you see your life in a new light, as a series of seemingly unrelated jewel-like stories within a dazzling setting of change and transformation. Recognize that you don’t know where you stand, and you will begin to watch where you put your feet. That’s when the path appears.
(Kay Larson, on John Cage [source])
…and (from whiskey river’s commonplace book — not counting the lovely epigraph, which walks a line between mysterious and profound):
Nothing is too wonderful to be true.
— Michael FaradayThere is a hole in the universe.
It is not like a hole in a wall where a mouse slips through, solid and crisp and leading from somewhere to someplace. It is rather like a hole in the heart, an amorphous and edgeless void. It is a heartfelt absence, a blank space where something is missing, a large and obvious blind spot in our understanding of the universe.
That missing something, strange to say, is a grasp of nothing itself. Understanding nothing matters, because nothing is the all-important background upon which everything else happens.
(K. C. Cole [source])
…and:
To the Reader
As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
saffron,and as you read, many gods
lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian
are watching the generations of leaves,and as you read
the sea is turning its dark pages,
turning
its dark pages.
(Denise Levertov)
