[MD] The Landing

[John Carl]

When the ride is done, the ups and downs are finished, you arrive back to
where you started.  A crowd of people waiting their turn greet you as your
train comes into the station, many holding their hands out to be slapped.
 You look around and notice all the faces in the car are happy, smiling,
laughing.  Some have enjoyed their roller coaster experience and are happy
 because they had a good time.  Others didn't enjoy the ride very much but
are happy anyway because now it is over.  But everybody is happy, chatting
and talking animatedly as you file off the ride, through the exit and down
the ramp where there is a display of pictures taken during the ride.  The
riders nearly all line up to view the pictures of themselves and comment.
 The photos are numbered and if you want to buy a picture, you tell the
number to the person behind the glass, pay your money and get either a
poster or key chain fob with the picture on it.

A momento of a moment in time, frozen forever.

The End.

"The End" as a concept gives me a hard time.  Whenever I'm engaged in a task
or a story I enjoy, I don't want it to end.  The way this plays out in my
life is that I never finish anything important.

And yes, it is a bit of a problem.

It actualizes in reality like *this* - this drawn-out and belabored metaphor
just now creaking its way into the station, because its author is so used to
being late, procrastinating and generally not finishing, that the whole
thing just drags and becomes belabored.  And where does a metaphysical
roller coaster "end" anyway?  What is the place of completion in a line of
thought?

To me, the answer is as clear as the memory of those expectant faces on the
platform, and the happy grins of those laughing fellow passengers - it is
back to where it all starts: a community of like-minded people.  Even as it
took more than myself to launch my questioning voyage,  with cultural inputs
and linguistic tools taken for granted, it takes more than myself to affirm
a conclusion, a getting-off place, a static latching point.   I might
determine what is needed, but without agreement from my fellow passengers my
ideas and concepts are just ups and downs in a private world of no real
meaning or consequence.  As silly as a roller coaster in space.

Everybody knows this, but few teachings address the issues of individuality
and community.  Even fewer teachings address how to achieve what was once so
intuitive that explaining how to do it would be like explaining how to
breathe.  Never was it dreamed in the new age of intellectualism, how much
of the good life would be lost in the pursuit of a truth which doesn't care.


Down here where the milling people are, is the place the perspective of the
heights is needed.  This is where Quality must be made manifest somehow.
 Quality in Community.  This was where Royce points to in the end, and
Pirsig also, except Pirsig likes to procrastinate his ending also, praise
good, and thus a much more dynamic philosophy is brewing.

Where I intend to go now is developing the proposition that there is no
higher good or heaven on earth or paradise found than a Quality Community -
a context in which individual is fully known and fully loved.  Understanding
what is meant by "Quality Community" and how to create it using method,
analysis and intellect composed of dialectical and rhetorical means, is my
goal in life.

yay dialectical and rhetorical means.


I doubt it will ever be finished but at least I'm used to that by now.