The Active Mind is a Thing; Rewind Or Spanakopita

I have two concurrent ideas. Dualism in thought and opinion. These are values of mine. I have often argued to dismissive sorts that a person has every right to hold completely contradictory opinions.

It's really simple. Sometimes there are maybe two big ways of looking at most issues. Let's say a belief in God. Well then you either do or you don't. To me saying maybe is an admission of belief, ultimately. But so how do people justify their religious upbringings with their internal beliefs if the two happen to contradict. Easy; Just believe both.

But hey, enough about religion. In fact, I'm angry that a discussion of Gord arose at all. This is about Spanakopita and how I make decisions, sometimes. This is about life and all it's frivolities, like buzz-cuts and high fives and highways and water-soccer.

During one summer during College I was working an early morning job on campus, and having run out of coffee decided to stop by a bakery near my workshop. Being the only thing open and having not had any coffee that morning, I entered in a jumble breathlessly from the speedy bicycle commute. "Hey there, what can I get for you?" or some facsimile probably was said to me as I responded in a typical New England mumble, "Just a small black coffee please." The girl behind the counter likely much more tired than me since bakeries open at ungodly hours reached into the front case and asked, "Do you want to eat that here or to go?" Having suddenly realized her misunderstanding my judgment said to not correct her and just get that dang Spanakopita towards which she gestured. At work everyone commented that it looked delicious, and wondered where I got it. I never drank coffee that morning. The coffee was irrelevant. Apparently I was eating Spanakopita.

I somehow heard about Daoism when I was young. Probably in a William Gibson book, or some other type of avant-garde, Neo-punk futuristic Sci-fi that the 12 year old mind swallows whole. Actually, it was me, I was probably more like 10 or 11. Early readers are trouble. Anyway, I've had this echo in my head from some piece of literature about "intuiting the Dao," as in a sense that we all have the capability to so thoroughly navigate an understanding of the universe that things just work out right, or at least in a way in which we percieve them to be right.

It's kind of like a pseudo kung-fu philosophy. I never really studied any martial arts, and didn't pay particular attention in my Eastern Religions class, but I caught this idea of minimal effort and efficience of movement.

I'm remembering now the Dishwasher at my old Connecticut house. Unload the dishwasher. Unload the dishwasher. Sort of a mantra when I was younger. The younger of all siblings combined. One hand would have a dish in the cupboard, the other already clutching the next, still in the dishwasher. The goal was a sort of fluid tranquility applied to sorting and stacking dishes and silverware. Silverware is harder to be fluid with, that's the truth.

The drawers would occasionally get caught on my belt loops and follow me out of the room as ever utensil known to Victorian England and Scandinavia combined clattered to the floor like the orchestrations of a John Cage score.