Contemplating Conciousness

Earlier this evening, I wondered a bit about the apparent magic that constitutes life and consciousness. It's not a new pondering for humans. My thoughts represent nothing particularly creative. I wondered if my body is merely the armor that surrounds and sustains a dream. We have science and religion, but I don't think that either of those areas of study really get to the heart of what it means to be alive. To experience this dream.

Is it a firing of electrons due to chemical reactions, or does it have a more supernatural origin. If life is a dream or imagination or work of art, what is behind any of these explanation of my individual experience of the world? I don't know.

I know that I feel grateful I can experience the unfolding of living and loss. I'm grateful I can bear witness to the ever present change that gives every appearance of progressing toward something that is greater than anything that has come before now. To understand both the sadness and the hope when familiar locations move through time and space and vanish as if they were never there in the first place.

USS Barry on the Anacostia - Aft Mast Removed

The slow transition of the Barry is an example of the relentless march of change. The hopes, dreams, work, angst, tears, joy, sunrises, sunsets, wind, calm, heat, cold, dark, and burning light that has passed over and through this great ship, this magnificent monument to the ingenuity and determination of humans is almost unfathomable. The ship gives the impression of solidity, but molecular science tells us that it's mostly empty space. With all that the ship has witnessed, she's slowing being undone by time and change.  Today, her aft mast had been removed in preparation for her last trip down the Potomac. The work was done by a crane that I last crossed paths with over ten years ago in another time, another place, another set of feelings. Venice, LA had been wrecked by Hurricane Katrina. Our group butted heads with the sheriff of  Plaquemines Parish. The crane moved the mangled shrimp boats out of the bayou and back to the river so folks could start rebuilding their lives. We worked and laughed and saw everyday the grim reminder of our powerlessness in the universe. We persisted, and things got a little better.

Today was the twelfth day of moving things out of my life that I no longer value in the same way that I once valued them.

Minimalism Day 12

Some clothes and some books that all meant something special to me at one time have suffered the same march of change that's happening to the USS Barry. These things have passed through me and with me in my travels in time and space. I carry the memories of the text in my dreams. The thoughts on the page continue to spark my imaginings of the future.

In the final accounting, I suspect that the best any of us can hope for is to bear witness to the wonder that is unfolding around us in every moment. These things were, at one time, a tangible part of that great unfolding, but for me those moments have passed.

Like the sailors who walked the decks of the Barry, time, tide, and formation have shifted. The young man in the gun came back and visited to see the place that had shaped his life a long time ago and a world away on the gunline off the coast of Vietnam or quarantine enforcement in the Caribbean Sea during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I'm not sure what change tomorrow may bring, but I hope to be ready for whatever the sunrise may reveal.