"Everything You Know is Wrong" - Firesign Theater

Let's get lost. It isn't hard to do, getting lost, there's so many contradictory impulses, competing realities, so many simulations (I read an interview with Jean Baudrillard first thing this morning - caution - when in doubt a French Intellectual is not your most reliable tour guide). It's hard to hang onto a clear understanding of the world. There I said it. It's one of my goals, to get to clarity (I've dubbed this space the "school of clarity" - it's me who is going to school - trying to absorb the lessons!), it's why I meditate, why I write, it may also be why I'm a runner, why I play guitar, why I eat and sleep, why I read voraciously; I'm looking for some "understanding" of myself and this raging ball of confusion, I'm searching for some glimpse of "enlightenment." There have been plenty of times where think I've been chasing shadows on the walls of my little cave. I look at my library of books, little coffins of information, and I ask, "how much have I forgotten?"

So, I'm lost, I admit it. Ever since our aborted trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, ever since my father died, a little hole has blown open in my understanding of the world. What I thought I knew, I know longer know. I don't know what I know. It isn't totally disagreeable, this lost-ness. I'm floating in that great "cloud of unknowing," just floating, grabbing onto nothing. From this vantage point, words like enlightenment, knowledge, clarity, are promissary notes from some phantom lender who no longer honors fancy-looking pieces of paper. I have no other currency at hand.