The things we do all teach us things.

Skritch! The sound of a match striking against a matchbox. Sometimes when you do this, the match sparks, but does not light. When we see this we think, "A spark is not enough, there must be a flame."

And so it is with all things we do.

I can't remember how many times it has be re-revealed to me; how doing simple, often menial tasks attentively teaches one the things one really needs to know. I stick my shovel into the earth, but the fibrous roots of the trees prevent it from getting a hold on anything. So I take my pitchfork and drive it between the fibers; I shift my weight backwards to put a hundred and ninety pounds of pressure on the handle and - SNAP! - a massive tine breaks clean off the fork.

Of course we may take any meaning - or rather, one of an innumerable set of meanings anyway - from the things the cosmos teaches us.

Life and death even at times: In my zeal for raising tomatoes I plant too many seeds. Then the seedlings don't have enough room in the bed. What do you do with the ones that grow malformed, the ones that must be moved but can't because their roots are tangled in with the other, stronger seedlings? Even if you spend weeks nurturing them, some of them will have to die. When you make a mound for cucumbers, you plant six seeds. You want three vines.

We often imagine that if we plan things right, we can be blameless.

I carry my laptop to and fro with me. When you buy a laptop, you never know how much each part actually costs; some are placed as 'freebies' in the cost of the laptop. This is because if you can sell $500 cost-value of equipment for $1000, the absolute value of the sale ($500) trumps the profit margin calculations. If I sell a million-dollar cost product for 1.1 million, my profit margin is 10%. But I still made $100,000. Even if I sell ten-thousand one-dollar items at ten dollars apiece - imagine, 900% profit margin -- ! It's not as much. When I go to the store apples are fifty cents. If I want a hundred apples, that's 50 bucks. If I want 2000 times that, I'll need to sell more than ten thousand things. Or I can sell the one.

The lesson is never what we expect, I think, because we forget that at all times there are two wills operating; us internally and the one that gives everything its order and meaning (or mystery.)

How you wrap your AC Adapter cord doesn't matter, right? I mean, why should it? Just throw it in the bag. But after four - or is it five? - power cables (which ranged from 30 dollars to 110 each) I can say that my disagreement has some evidence. When you bend the cord a thousand times, you can pinch the copper (or whatever metal) in particular places. When you look at the commercial product you see a clean, shiny exterior, but inside its still clips and twists and glue and bolts. Worst of all is when you know how to fix things but can't because their exterior is too well 'molded' and you can't see where the one little copper wire-end slipped from the clip holding it to the contact point. So you have to buy another unless you want to get out the saw.

Convenience is a hard lesson -- since we see 7-11 charging more for a 20-ounce soda than for a two liter. We're smarter than that, right?

I've been asked why I don't use Linux. I don't really have an answer, actually. It's funny though, how much it troubles people when you don't have an answer. It's not that I do it on purpose. It's that there isn't a real answer. I can explain what happened, but it's not a 'reason'. You see, everyone requires, these days, some kind of ideological stance to inform or at least 'revise' or 'interpret' your choices. I learned how to code. Part of learning to code was learning to code for a system kernel. This involved actually cutting open Linux and compiling my own kernel. It was difficult. But Linux is incredible. You can do anything, and then you can make a program in C that can do anything you can do just by executing a command or shell script. The only limit is your mind. Then I started work as a web guy. My specialty is code and most people who surf the web use Windows and Internet Explorer. I'm not really worthy to use Linux.

It's interesting how doing things cuts away our ideology, if only for a moment, since we either reveal that we hate the cosmos for not being how we want it, or we notice how it is and press against it firmly and calmly until it does what we require of it.

I think I'm always lost when I'm driving. I think its the key to the highest level of logistical thinking: you can't prevent yourself from being lost when in unfamiliar surroundings. So the key is to always be lost, even when you're found, and thus to never be lost at all. I've discovered that most roads connect to other roads which connect to others which get you where you wanted to be anyway. There's the sun at day and the moon at night - or your gut instinct anyway - and if you find a dead end you do what makes sense anyway, you turn around. Somehow I'm a great navigator, I think. Probably because I'm not afraid of being lost. But also maybe because that's stacked on top of a natural directional sense and a spacial mind. (Not 'special', silly. Though if only in the 'short bus' sense of the word. (I rode a short bus in high school...)) So if you ask me how to be a good navigator I'll tell you to stop being afraid of being lost. Why? Because I don't know how to teach directional or spacial sense, of course.

We are the world, they say, we are the ones we've been waiting for? No, they're wrong. Each one of us is the world and the world is each one of us. And the world is in God and God in the world. But none is reduced to the other and all distinctions remain.

I feel like in this world I don't know my hand from my foot, and that maybe I really don't - and that there is someone else out there who does and is connected to me. And so long as they are around I can continue being spacey and mathematical and poetic and yet still get up in the morning and remember to light a candle and put my clothes on before going outside. I used to do those things because I was afraid of embarrassment. Now I don't care, but I still remember to do them (most of the time.) I think God grants us this grace if we accept it, and maybe that's our connection to one another. I think there's someone out there - and maybe there's a timeshare program - who has this beautiful and meticulous mind and remembers these things sympathetically for me. I think maybe there's a choice we make somewhere, and a choice God makes, or perhaps as a person releases the things they held in fear which made them 'complete' they find someone else completing them better than they could imagine.

The truth is horrible, but only because of us. Where did we get the idea that we should be complete alone, like a god? Oh, oh, oh, I know the answer.

Alas for me these days, I say: For I cannot want what I want nor can I choose what I want. Some things, yes - I want to buy the Beach Boys compilation. Done! But the heart remembers. And the heart is simple, and if clean, like the lens of the Hubble. The light is blinding!

I see the spark, but is there a flame? Put your hand above the candle: are your hands cold? They're the hardest thing to warm up after being outside. But the candle warms them nicely. And when you are finished, a wisp of smoke follows your prayer as though the flame were a hot gate that when closed, seared the air around it leaving a puff of smoke.

Each time I light a candle I don't know if I want what I'm going to get. Not the flame, but what the flame requires of me.

But I keep striking the match to the box. Open, open, open!