I'm an atheist. I don't believe in reincarnation. Let's get that out there, first.
I'm a Buddhist, of course, but a pretty lousy one. I eat meat, swear, drink, and have sex when I can (all too rarely, of course). And I'm also a Buddhist who follows the interpretation that while the characteristics of ourselves may be repeated through lifetimes, our egos die with the body.
Anyway.
That being said, all my life I've had the most vivid images in my mind of experiences I've never had. Being chased by a lynch mob across a moonlit meadow in Mississippi around the turn of the last century. Standing on the deck of an East Indiaman as it comes into the port of Hong Kong at dusk. Watching the pillars of the king's palace being raised at Ctesiphon. And on the other side, standing in the front line of the phalanx, seeing elephants for the first time, charging out of the morning mists, but holding the line anyway out of pure shock.
These feel like memories to me. So, while I don't believe in reincarnation, I'm willing to entertain it as a hypothesis insofar as it manages to explain things (as with astrology, tarot, et al.). Which brings me to another hypothesis.
I have no such "memories" of the Twentieth Century at all between being lynched (yes, they caught me - but at least I'm pretty sure I died before the torture got too bad) and having the soles of my feet burned off in 1972 (I walked across a beach fire - toddlers are really, really dumb). Now, the Twentieth Century was arguably one of the most important in all of human history, so I might be excused for wondering what, assuming the transmigration of souls is a valid concept, I might actually have been doing.
I think I spent the intervening six or seven decades as a cat.
And I think that this is the source of all my problems.
This human thing is stupid. I mean, when people ask me what I want to do with my life, I have no real answer for them. There is nothing this civilization really has to offer me that's actually appealing to me. At best, there are lifestyles that might, mostly, be tolerable. What I really want to do is spend all day playing, napping, and being petted. (Alternatively, I think I may have also been a leopard at some point, because dozing in a tree under the African sun next to a deliquescing half-eaten carcass to nibble on also sounds pretty damn fine by me.) The feline life has its stresses, to be sure ("When is the food going to happen?" "Why is monkey freaking out?" "Aauughh!!! New place! New place!!!!" along with the inevitable conflicts with other animals and whatnot), but, by and large, it is a gentlemanly life, a life of leisure and sport.
So I'm having a hard time adapting again. The four-footed princes I once was have died and I am reborn as a two-legged peasant. A pretty damn privileged two-legged peasant by global standards, as well. But frankly, following such refinement, humanity can only be a disappointment.
Stupid Yama Kings. I'll get those jerks.
I'm a Buddhist, of course, but a pretty lousy one. I eat meat, swear, drink, and have sex when I can (all too rarely, of course). And I'm also a Buddhist who follows the interpretation that while the characteristics of ourselves may be repeated through lifetimes, our egos die with the body.
Anyway.
That being said, all my life I've had the most vivid images in my mind of experiences I've never had. Being chased by a lynch mob across a moonlit meadow in Mississippi around the turn of the last century. Standing on the deck of an East Indiaman as it comes into the port of Hong Kong at dusk. Watching the pillars of the king's palace being raised at Ctesiphon. And on the other side, standing in the front line of the phalanx, seeing elephants for the first time, charging out of the morning mists, but holding the line anyway out of pure shock.
These feel like memories to me. So, while I don't believe in reincarnation, I'm willing to entertain it as a hypothesis insofar as it manages to explain things (as with astrology, tarot, et al.). Which brings me to another hypothesis.
I have no such "memories" of the Twentieth Century at all between being lynched (yes, they caught me - but at least I'm pretty sure I died before the torture got too bad) and having the soles of my feet burned off in 1972 (I walked across a beach fire - toddlers are really, really dumb). Now, the Twentieth Century was arguably one of the most important in all of human history, so I might be excused for wondering what, assuming the transmigration of souls is a valid concept, I might actually have been doing.
I think I spent the intervening six or seven decades as a cat.
And I think that this is the source of all my problems.
This human thing is stupid. I mean, when people ask me what I want to do with my life, I have no real answer for them. There is nothing this civilization really has to offer me that's actually appealing to me. At best, there are lifestyles that might, mostly, be tolerable. What I really want to do is spend all day playing, napping, and being petted. (Alternatively, I think I may have also been a leopard at some point, because dozing in a tree under the African sun next to a deliquescing half-eaten carcass to nibble on also sounds pretty damn fine by me.) The feline life has its stresses, to be sure ("When is the food going to happen?" "Why is monkey freaking out?" "Aauughh!!! New place! New place!!!!" along with the inevitable conflicts with other animals and whatnot), but, by and large, it is a gentlemanly life, a life of leisure and sport.
So I'm having a hard time adapting again. The four-footed princes I once was have died and I am reborn as a two-legged peasant. A pretty damn privileged two-legged peasant by global standards, as well. But frankly, following such refinement, humanity can only be a disappointment.
Stupid Yama Kings. I'll get those jerks.
VIEW 25 of 61 COMMENTS
I just called in to say "Hello".
Hi.
It is just work. Some days I do wake up and go "holy shit! I'm in ant fucking arctica", but mostly I just do not take notice. I will say this though, since being here I now realize I will never paint my walls white again...
~cheers