Acceptance

The local electric utility sent its contractor over yesterday, without warning, to “trim” along the fence and power line. For some inexplicable reason they trimmed to the ground, tore up the backyard, took out a section of fence in Dogland and did not replace it, and left. 

Then AT&T came to install a fiber upgrade they said would disrupt service for no more than a few minutes. So naturally we’ve been without internet ever since, and I’m pecking out this post on the phone.

Also, a mysterious pain in my right hand again disrupted my slumber.

Good time for a carafe of Seattle’s Best, and Mark’s morning meditation (the one I’ve installed atop my digital diary as a daily reminder):

"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love… Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them." --Marcus Aurelius

Thanks, Emperor. Maybe things aren’t as bad as I thought.

But my reflections on RR’s pragmatic anti-authoritarianism have been squeezed, boiled down to just this: the chaos of our ludicrous fake-facts discourse and hyper-polarized politics just shows how unavailable anything resolutely authoritative is to us. 

Of course the facts are what they are, reality is what it is, but confirming the truth about facts and reality is a matter of messy “conversation”-not dispositive platonic imposition. 

Life is lived in lower-case, like it or not. I accept the lower-case universe. And I accept the moral of Carlyle’s quippy response to Fuller. Gad, we’d better.