fact | The Direction of Intention

Just Another Week [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on September 13, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Winner of the most astute quote of the week: “It seems like we’re totally living in insanity,” he said, “every moment of every day.” ~ Erwin McClone, from the NY Times newsletter 9.12.25

But that’s not the winning quote. The Times reported that McClone also said that the killing (of Charlie Kirk) seemed to arise from an animus that was increasingly disconnected from facts, accountability and reason.

We are living inside the sickness of an administration that is increasingly disconnected from facts, accountability and reason. And, it’s not as if they started from a stable grounding in facts, a willingness to accept responsibility for their actions or a solid relationship with reason.

This week we experienced yet another shooting at a school. What else? The Supreme Court okayed racial profiling. The president declared war on Chicago. Despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, he vehemently denies any connection to the Epstein Files and wants us to move on. He asks us – in all seriousness – to disconnect from the obvious facts, release him (and others) from accountability for their actions, and to unplug from our reason: to believe what he says and not what we see. We saw him, without evidence of any kind, incite violence against the democrats, blaming them for the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Animus. Increasingly disconnected from facts, accountability and reason.

Just another week inside the sickness.

read Kerri’s blogpost about AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: accountability, animus, artistry, Charlie Kirk, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, disconnect, Epstein files, fact, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, NY Times, reason, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Re-Right The Un-Real [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on July 30, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

She teased herself, saying, “Look how many posts I’ve written lately using the word “Real” in the title!” There were 3 in the past few weeks.

“Of course you have.” I said, “We’re living in a time that reality is just damn hard to believe.” For instance, our current president has his very own Wikipedia page listing the numerous accusations of sexual assault against him, dating back to the 1970’s. It’s a lengthy list. One of the women on the list was thirteen years old when she claims he raped her at one of Epstein’s parties. Of course, this page, these accusations, have been available for all to read for years. How unreal is it that he is being protected by the Department of Justice, the Supreme Court, those who call themselves Christian – all the while the red-red-party loudly proclaims moral authority and trumpets their mission of “protecting” our sons, daughters and wives against the evil Woke?

Un-real.

It is one of the reasons why we planted the sweet potato vine. First, I was awed by its color and luminescence. Seriously, I’ve never seen a plant glow or grow like this vine. Each day I step out back and stare at it, saying, “Unreal.” It’s more beautiful than I can believe. In an upside-down era it re-rights the world. It is real.

Recently, as if it intended to delight me to my core, a single caladium leaf emerged from the field of sweet-potato-vine-vibrant-green. “Look! An outlier!” I called to Kerri.

“Just like us,” she said, admiring the misfit. We poked around the plant to make sure this lone caladium leaf was really emerging from within the sweet potato vine. It really is. It, too, is real.

Real (adjective): 1. actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed.

What’s real? Our current president is an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon, a serial liar with a wiki-rap-sheet of sexual assault accusations that takes more than a single sitting to read. Those are facts, not imagined or supposed. Even so, his sycophants are doing back flips to keep we-the-people from seeing what is really in the Epstein files. They claim – as they have for over a decade – that what’s real is fake and what is fake is real. Apologists for the unforgivable. Apparently, accountability is nowhere in their party, nowhere in their plan, nowhere in their president, thus we are hit each day with a tsunami of conspiracy, chaos and blame, a festival of the fact-free, the supposed fantastic, the un-real.

Is it any wonder that each day we shake our heads and huff, “Really?” And then we head outside to check in with our sweet potato vine and outlier caladium leaf in an attempt to re-right our topsy-turvey world, affirming for ourselves what is actually real – and what is blatantly not.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE CALADIUM LEAF

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Seeing | Tagged: accountability, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Epstein files, fact, felon, fiction, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, outlier, rapist, real, reality, serial liar, story, studio melange, sycophants, the melange, upside down, wikipedia, woke | 1 Comment »

A Second Glance [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 22, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Look carefully and you will see the shadow that the dandelion cast upon the white petal.

Can you see the veining of the leaves? The watercourse way? The ridges in the petals serve the same life-giving purpose although by a subtly different, visibly beautiful design. Can you see it?

There is a small spot of purple. Can you find it? It pulls the eye. It provides the tension necessary for focus, inspiring movement of the eye.

Is the ant adventuring across the dandelion apparent at first glance? Like the spot of purple, it is there though probably not apparent at first glance.

At first glance. To the casual eye. On the face of it.

And then there is the purpose beyond the pretty. Do you see it? The petals of white, the yellow pistil attract pollinators in an attempt to perpetuate their species. The ant does not adventure for fun but for food.

Do you see the dried leaves supporting the green and white, the yellow and purple? Once green themselves, drinking the sun, they now provide sustenance to the next generation, warmth to the root.

It was the shadow of the dandelion cast that caught her attention.

It takes time to see the purpose beyond the pretty. It takes a longer second glance. Seeing – and understanding – interdependence takes more than a first glance. It requires some learning. Observation. Study.

My father used to tell me that I’d educated myself into stupidity. I did not take it personally as I knew that he was captive to the fox. He knew, as do I, that the fox is dedicated to the superficial. He was schooled by the fox to believe that looking beyond the superficial, a thing called “learning”, was a worthless thing. The fox preaches simple idiotic solutions. Build a wall. Deport without due process.

Critical thinkers and active questioners are less likely to eat the smorgasbord of drivel and easy conspiracy served up as sustenance by the fox. The fox relies on the superficial. The fox defends against a second glance. The fox talks fast, a carnival barker, enticing people into the tent with freak-show promises, bearded ladies and conjoined twins, performances guaranteed to shock the most hardy of viewer.

Every carnival barker knows that a longer second glance would shed some light on the subject. It would reveal the make-up, the spirit gummed whiskers, the hollow dumbbells of the strongman. A little study would reveal the purpose: outrage in exchange for your nickel.

The only way to keep the viewer in the tent is to escalate the outrage. Keep them solidly in their reptile brain. The only rule? Never ever provide a second glance. Prevent at all cost a deeper look. Stigmatize learning. Undermine fact. Distract. Gaslight. Blame. Assault education. Oh, and never ever pass up a chance to charge another nickel.

Look carefully and you will see the shadow…

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE SHADOW

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Education, Seeing | Tagged: a second glance, artistry, complex, critical thinking, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, education, fact, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, learning, observation, outrage, shadow, simple, story, studio melange, study, the melange | 3 Comments »

The Baseline [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on April 26, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

It is the challenge of our times: discerning what is real and what is not. We lack a baseline for truth.

Photographs used to be proof. Video and audio clips were once incontestable. No more.

We live in bubbles of outrage fueled by easy misinformation. Journalism has morphed into entertainment that amps-up the outrage. Fuels the division. Manufactured division is probably our baseline. Our shared truth.

As MM recently wrote, attributing some of our lack of discernment to, “a toxic level of the willing suspension of disbelief required for the mass consumption of “reality television”. After all, reality tv has nothing to do with reality. The act of pointing a camera at something changes the basic nature of the event into a performance. We behave differently on camera than we do off-camera. Reality television is not real just as “truth social” has nothing to do with truth. We are drowning in misnomers. We are lost in our branding.

MAGA world likes to point at 47 and call him a businessman. That, of course, is a role he played on television. In reality, off-camera, he’s driven his companies into bankruptcy six times. There’s an entire industry of media apologists and spin doctors dedicated to painting lipstick on this pig, committed to torturing cowboy-sense out of his dangerous nonsense, his incessant lies, his grift.

In the absence of discernment, conspiracy theories grow like so much mold. Many in this nation without question (or the capacity to question) swallow swill and call it sugar. Heavily addicted to outrage, fed a steady diet of an anger-drug by our media, we are rendered incapable of shared truth and impervious to common (shared) sense. And, sadly, fact-checking seems to take too much effort.

We eschew discernment.

We are in desperate need of Occam’s razor: “a guiding principle in logic and philosophy that suggests when faced with multiple explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest one is usually the best. It emphasizes the importance of minimizing unnecessary assumptions or complexities when seeking an explanation.”

The simplest explanation: “from 1981 to 2021, $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.” The minimum wage hasn’t risen since 2009. Manufactured division, divided as we are in our media-fueled bubbles of outrage, keeps us easily distracted from our actual antagonists.

Perpetually seeing red prohibits us from seeing the rest of the color-sense-spectrum, prohibits us from discernment rooted in a baseline of shared truth. It’s a fact: 90% of us grow poorer and poorer as the 1% openly trashes our democracy to give themselves a tax cut and a guaranteed cheap labor force. Is it no wonder that we are outraged?

Outrage should be our baseline. Just not focused at each other.

read Kerri’s blogpost about REALITY

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: artistry, baseline, branding, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discernment, division, fact, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, misnomer, Occam's Razor, reality, reality tv, story, studio melange, the melange, truth | Leave a comment »

Face It [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on March 7, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore.” ~ Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

Given the collapsing farm markets with the annihilation of USAID, tariffs imposed on our allies, with Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security in the DOGE crosshairs, the dedication of tax dollars to prop up crypto-currency, the Department of Education on the chopping block…the folks in my bubble ask this question each and every day: “How bad does it have to get before they realize they’ve been had?”

I, myself, have often asked this question. Today, on our trail, as we watched the sun struggle to burn through the clouds, I came to a blindingly obvious realization: consistently discarding reality is the single requirement necessary to support the despot-wannabe. Consider all that had to be ignored: rapist, felon, insurrectionist, an estimated 461,000 excess deaths from a bumbling response to the pandemic, pathological liar, twice impeached, rated among the worst presidents in our history…This is a short list of a very long, long catalogue of reality-to-disregard. In other words, the red-hats will never realize that they’ve been had because they would rather swallow a fire hose of “alternative facts” than plug into substantive reality.

I understand the desire, the hope that our family members and fox-hypnotized community members will reclaim their capacity to discern fact from fantasy but I am now convinced that we should stop waiting or hoping or investing any energy in trying to reach them. We need to stop ignoring the reality that they have no interest in fact or data or verifiable truth. They simply do not care. They simply do not want to care. To borrow a phrase from Stephen Colbert, they are so far down the “stupid hole” that no amount of rope will reach them.

We should also stop waiting for members of the Republican party to honor their oath to the Constitution. They, too, are engaged in a fantasy world of “hear no evil, see no evil.” They are studied apologists for every outrage. If rape was not a bridge-too-far, if colluding with Russia is not a deal-breaker, if the tyrannical boast about “getting things done” without the participation of Congress doesn’t set off every constitutional alarm bell in their caucus, then there is no desecration that they will not swallow, excuse or justify.

A few nights ago, in commencing his tariffs on our allies, a move that will further wreck the farm economy and our alliances, the tawny tyrant tweeted for farmers to “Have fun.”

“Of course he wrote that,” I thought. Amidst all the fun that farmers are about to have, I am certain of one reality: when they lose their farms they’ll blame Biden or Obama or the woke or the Democrats or DEI for their pain because they’ll never turn away from the fox-cult and face the fact that they’ve been had.

“Been had” is an informal idiom that means to be tricked, cheated, or deceived by someone.

reality (noun): the world or the state of things as they actually exist.

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read Kerri’s blogpost about REALITY

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Filed under: KS Friday, Perspective | Tagged: alternative facts, artistry, authoritarian, been had, blame, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discernment, fact, fantasy, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, reality, story, studio melange, taking stock, tariffs, The Constitution of The United States, the melange, truth, USAID | 1 Comment »

Caterpillar Kindness [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on December 4, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

It seems an odd time of year to see caterpillars. I am not a caterpillar expert. I’m not even a caterpillar novice so my perception of caterpillar oddity is based on nothing. Were we at a party and the conversation swung to caterpillars, I’d express my baseless opinion with forceful conviction. “Isn’t it strange!” I’d proclaim, “Caterpillars on the trail in the fall! Who’s ever heard of such a thing!” My conviction would have the other party-goers nodding their heads in agreement. Conviction without substance would make me a man of my times.

Of course, confessing my caterpillar ignorance compelled me to consult with the great oracle Google. I do not want to be a man of my times. As it turns out, as nature would have it, as is easily found with a simple-one-second search, Woolly Bear Caterpillars are abundant in the fall. They will someday transmogrify into Isabella Tiger Moths. And, as folklore would have it, farmer’s lore, the severity of the upcoming winter might be predicted based on the color of its bands. Fuzzy black indicates a harsh winter. Abundant brown bands indicate a milder winter. This fully black fuzzy caterpillar has me dusting off my snow shovel.

There is, however, a caveat: the great oracle Google was careful to note that the caterpillar-color-winter-prediction-method is not scientifically accurate. It is not as reliable as The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. By-the-by, NOAA is on the cut-list of the incoming administration. Who needs science when there’s an unreliable old-farmer’s-tale-method of weather prediction!

Another Woolly Bear Caterpillar weather prediction myth is based on the direction it is traveling. If it is scootching along in a southerly direction, that indicates to old-farmer-information-less believers a severe winter. If it is wiggling its way north, then the winter is meant to be mild. I didn’t have my compass on the day that we saw this caterpillar crossing the path but I can assume by its full-black-fuzziness that it was sprinting to the south. Again, Google cautions that the caterpillar-direction-method-of-winter-severity is unreliable, not scientifically accurate.

This is the only part of this post that is verifiable: had we been on a path traveled by bicycles, Kerri would have lifted the Woolly Bear Caterpillar from the path and carried it out of harm’s way. She wants to do everything in her power to ensure that the little critter will meet its miraculous destiny and awake someday as an Isabella Tiger Moth. In this case, we watched it all the way until it reached the far side and disappeared into the fall grasses. I could tell that part of the story at a party and be absolutely certain that I was relaying accurate information. I have data. And experience. I’ve seen her caterpillar kindness with my own eyes.

read Kerri’s blogpost about CATERPILLARS

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Metaphor, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, caterpillar, data, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, experience, fact, fact check, Google, information, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lore, NOAA, story, studio melange, the melange, weather prediction | 3 Comments »

As Clear As The Pollen [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on September 18, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Although Dogga adamantly denies rooting around in the ragweed next to our neighbor’s fence, the evidence is as clear as the pollen on his face. Some things are just undeniable.

Of course, as we are experiencing, the overabundance of evidence, unassailable facts, do not stop deniers from denying, liars from lying. Crowd size comes to mind. Elections lost.

Against her better judgment Kerri responded to an acquaintance’s post. It was riddled with misinformation. She supplied a fact-check. “I can’t take it!” she sighed. And, as she experienced (again), present a denier with evidence and they will double-down. In this case, a tsunami of conspiracy theory rushed back her way. I counted layers of cultish nonsense.

“How is this possible?” she asked.

Cultish. Number one on the list of cultish characteristics is that the members exist in a bubble, cut off from verifiable reality. The cult serves as the only source of truth and community; an echo chamber of gibberish. Other cult characteristics include an Us-versus-Them mentality, gaslighting, apocalyptic thinking…thought control.

The cult provides a sense of belonging.

Facts and data are threatening to a cult. It threatens the fabricated-story inside the bubble. If the bubble pops then the members face untenable questions: To what do I actually belong? How could I not see it?

And so, as bubble-protection, every response to irrefutable facts must always be a conspiracy. It’s the pat answer for everything, the fortress for gobbledygook. Non-sense. Drivel. Bilge. No evidence required. Apocalyptic thinking is all that is necessary to keep the gaslight glowing and the fear-fury burning. The more outlandish the accusation – the more apocalyptic the hot air – the better. Erasing the boundaries of reason makes room for greater and greater rubbish.

Of course, I am not unique in making the observation that maga is a cult.

“What do we do?” Kerri asked, astounded at the rush of nonsense that came back her way when she contradicted the ridiculous with evidence and reason.

We vote. We get out the vote. We give up speaking sense or fact to hooey-worshippers. And then we prepare for another tsunami of lies and unnecessary violence unleashed when their sore-loser-leader cries “Foul” yet again. He’s already started. Just like the last time. And, just like last time, no amount of evidence will mollify the cult-faithful. No amount of fact or data will open their eyes. Nothing will penetrate their childlike devotion to their big daddy – yet another characteristic of a sad, dangerous cult. Who exactly is “the enemy within”?

The evidence is as clear as the pollen on Dogga’s face.

read Kerri’s blogpost about POLLEN NOSE

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, conspiracy theory, cult, data, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fact, gaslighting, information bubbles, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, MAGA, misinformation, reality, story, studio melange, the melange, thought control | 4 Comments »

The Essentials [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on June 24, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

The interviewer asked me to name three things I love and three things that piss me off. “Ah, here’s the trick question,” I thought. Tom Mck once told me that, when conducting interviews for teaching positions, he’d ask a trick question, “Tell me about your experiences with a bad student?” If the interviewee answered the question, he would not hire them. “There is no such thing as a bad student,” he said. I knew better than to answer the interviewer’s question but I did anyway: “I can’t see my dad anymore and sometimes that really pisses me off.” Of course, I did not get the job.

I read The Little Prince, first to myself and then aloud to Kerri. As I turned the last page I saw that she was silently crying. “I forgot how it ended,” she said. So had I. In the book, after the Little Prince is bitten by the yellow snake and dies, the narrator searches the sand but cannot find his body. The author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a year after he wrote the book, crashed his plane over the Mediterranean Sea. It was 1944. His plane was later found but not his body.

Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985. It is more relevant today than when it was written. He predicted our indifference to lies. It’s not that we cannot discern fact from fiction, it is that we do not care to. It’s much more entertaining to spew self-righteous bile and shared discord within the confines of the social-bubble. A free press, the mechanism meant to function as society’s lie-detector, has collapsed and become a terrific magnifier of falsehood. Entertainment. That which can be seen with the eyes but is nowhere detectable with the heart. Wild lies, outrageous claims and blame, blame, blame, blame, blame are much more captivating than essential truth. It’s about numbers: grotesque behavior attracts more audience than genuine discourse so completely dominates the info-stream.

The body politic fragments, like pieces of an airplane tumbling from the sky.

Lately, I hear often – and speak – this common refrain: “I just can’t understand how people don’t see it.”

“Oh, people do see it,” whispers The Little Prince, sweeping clean his volcano, adding, “With their eyes.”. He winks, “Closed hearts are not concerned with the essentials.”

The wind shifted so we sat outside and enjoyed the evening cool after a hot day. Just like my dad used to do. Now, when I close my eyes, I can see him. We made dinner with 20 and ate under the waning light in the sky. It was the solstice. The stars made their slow entrance. Gazing up, I wondered if perhaps Antoine de Saint-Exupery found a way to join The Little Prince on his planet so together they might attend to the vanity of the rose. I hope so. For a moment, we sat in silence and appreciated all that our open hearts could see.

read Kerri’s blogpost about SEEING CLEARLY

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Filed under: Awakening, Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor | Tagged: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, artistry, closed hearts, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, entertainment, essential truth, essentials, fact, fiction, free press, heart, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lies, Neil Postman, seeing, solstice, story, studio melange, The Little Prince, the melange, truth | 3 Comments »

Aim The Magic Lens [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on September 15, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“That men do not learn the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” ~Aldous Huxley

You may be as amazed as I to learn that Dogwood is not Doll’s Eye. They have a similar creepy Seussian stare but are not kin. In this brave new world, all we need do is aim Google Lens at the question, “What is that?” and, voila! An answer!

I delight that I am living in the time of easy access to information. I could not write as I do without instant access to synonym and antonym, the lighting fast check-of-fact or spelling, the interesting variations-on-a-theme that pop up the minute I jump down a thought-rabbit-hole. Technology has made it possible for me to be a writer. Were I confined to pen and paper my output would be minimal and certainly impossible to read.

Easy information means easy misinformation. It means easy mass-misinformation. If I were the wizard of the universe I’d provide everyone with a Google Lens for information. All we’d need do is aim our magic lens at a pundit, news-bit or politician and, voila!” Accurate or Absurd or somewhere in between! It would make it fairly impossible to toss a lie into the commons and get away with it.

It’s not that I am enamored of just-the-facts. I’m not. I write stories so I prize a good dose of imagination. But in our time, knowing the difference – or caring about the difference – between fact and fantasy – is tantamount.

One of the great challenges of our brave new world is the intentional passing of fantasy for fact. For instance, Florida. If you are a student of history you’ll recognize in Florida (and, now, sadly, other states) the resurrection of the Lost Cause narrative, a history bending education initiative driven hard by the Daughters of the Confederacy at the conclusion of the Civil War. White supremacy sweeping its dark-side under the rug. Lipstick on a history pig.

I’m capable of imagining that my magic Google Info-Lens would put a stop to the cycle of non-sense but it’s starting to dawn on me that Aldous Huxley had it right: at this moment in history, we have the capacity to check every story, to look up every assertion, to scrutinize every source. It may not be as lightning fast as my imagined Lens but it’s close. We simply choose not to use it. It’s so much easier to believe without question than it is to question a belief.

“Huxley feared the truth would be drown in a sea of irrelevance.” Well.

Today on the trail I learned in a nanosecond that a Dogwood is different from a Doll’s Eye. I know it is possible to assert that slavery was on-the-job-training but it takes a dedicated-head-in-the-sand – and a heart full of ugly intention- to drown the truth of history in a sea of utter non-sense.

No lessons learned. No questions asked. Oops. Here we go again.

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Filed under: Education, KS Friday, Perspective | Tagged: Aldous Huxley, Amusing Ourselves to Death, artistry, belief, Brave new world, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fact, fantasy, Google Lens, history, imagination, information, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, lie, Lost Cause narrative, misinformation, Neil Postman, nonsense, questioning, questioning a belief, questions, story, studio melange, the melange, truth, white supremacy | 3 Comments »

See A Gull [on KS Friday]

Posted on August 11, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

A Haiku

a scavenger bird.

opportunistic, seeker.

see! a gull am I!

The gulls congregate in the Kohls parking lot. We’re not sure why. It seems an unlikely spot for gulls to hang out. Hot pavement. No snacks. Cars coming and going. They camp en masse. Later in the day they exit in full voice and return to the marina. Make sense of that, I dare you!

Susan asked when caring-for-others left the building. I launched into a pedantic monologue that, even to me, sounded like the screech of a gull. Lots of noise, little helpful substance. Or, my diatribe mimicked the adults in a Charlie Brown special. Wah-wah, wah-wah. The sound of a preacher who thinks the path to deeper spirituality is through a map or a dry history lesson. A rule book. A witless shepherd caught lecturing the sheep. (baaaahhhhh)

I wondered what or who I might become if I dedicated myself to knowing nothing. What if I understood to my root that my opinion is just that…an opinion. Not a fact or a truth or blue-ribbon winner at the world-thought-fair. What if life needed no explanation?

What if there is no higher meaning to be found or greater mystery to be solved in the daily seagull pilgrimage to Kohls? What if, rather than seek a rationalization, I gave myself over to the wonder-of-it? What if Joseph Campbell had it right:

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive…”