Memories from the Future

A trip to the Gainesville's industrial park brought back memories from twelve years ago
when I worked in a Phoenix auto shop,
where fumes blew
the smell of gasoline and oil,

where rusted metal sat
along side the stacks of used rubber,

where monkeys wrenched, cursed prosaically,
and used swamp coolers during the 115 F summer days.

And Lauren Olamina would write on Saturday, August 17, 2024 to me without me knowing who she was:

"God is Power ---
Infinite,
Irresistible,
Inexorable,
Indifferent.
And yet, God is Pliable ---
Trickster,
Teacher,
Chaos,
Clay.
God exists to be shaped.
God is Change."

And it was years later when I read parts of EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING:

Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment.  Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism.  Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all.

And the other weekend, after Jake and I left Dos Mama's, I stopped at the gas station for cigarettes. This gentleman seemed to the type of person who lived outside the "safety walls" and who Lauren would have hyperempathy for. He rambled to me about how he's living in paradise.

Soon after I left the shop, I read Rene Decartes . . . and became fascinated with how he thought . . . and how he addressed God . . . and how he developed a methodology, as problematic as it was, for metaphysics and epistemology.
A few months after reading Decartes, I would visit James Turrell's installation piece "Knight Rise" at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art . . . 

a visit at sunset when the light descending into the room illuminated the room into a blissful state . . . and I remember feeling content and thankful.