Just Here To Move Some Shit Around

To all of my people in the States: happy hangovers, happy post-turkey gorging guilt, and a happy Black Friday to you.  Or if you happen to come from the thick-skinned bubble that surrounds the Bay Area: happy regrets about thinking Tofurkey was actually worth the trouble, and happy "Buy Nothing Day."

It seems likely to me (as likely as the next thing, and far more likely than many others) that our dear bodies are but a home for our true essences, and that these essences remain after the temporal body ceases to.  Whoa there!  What is this far-outedness, and why are you blogging about it, man?!  Well, allow me to explain.  Lately I have been living a life that requires the use of my body much more than usual, and so my thoughts have been naturally tending towards ruminating on this most useful vessel that I spend my days at the shipyard working with, and then these ruminations usually bring me to: "But what am I really?" 

Is the rough skin on my elbow (which in all truth is called the 'weenis'---look it up.  I know, wonderful right?  ["Hey, would you mind giving my weenis a little tug?  Please?"]  Sorry...) as much "me" as my heart, mind or face?  Is this body and the "I" that I associate with it truly all that I am?  And will death really just come along one day and snuff the whole thing out?  Poof!  The thought of there being nothing after death does not so much frighten me as it just rings with utter absurdity in my ears (and in my essence).  It feels quite clear to me that my body is a very helpful instrument that gives my essence, my spirit if you will, a chance at a physical experience.  It also seems likely that a great deal is lost when so much energy is pushed into such a confined space (id est: forgetting that we are greater than this one life in this one body).  Part of the importance of actually believing in the importance of the self, and the body as an integral part of that self, could likely be that if we embraced the notion that we were far more than just these bags of bones we would perhaps forget to feed ourselves or to participate in the game of helping to create other bodies for other spirits to tuck into, like hermit crabs.  Okay great, but where is this all going?  Bear with me, here is where it becomes applicable to the body that calls itself Sam Keck Scott working at a Maltese Shipyard.  Let's begin a new paragraph, shall we?

There have been many times in my life when I have been hugely impressed by my species and all of the things it has been able to create.  On many occasions I have walked through cities and with neck craned upwards have gawked at the massive buildings that people, plain old people, have shot into the sky.  Fiber optic cables stretching across the ocean floors.  Traffic lights, bridges, postal delivery, cell phones!  There is this whole massive infrastructure that is happening non-stop and it is keeping our human world spinning, and it works!  It somehow works.  My musings of late have made me recognize that while all of this is going on, this highly functioning system, and I am using it and completely reliant upon it, I in no way have contributed to it.  People have made all of this stuff, but I have never made anything.  So here we all are standing on Planet Earth with our spirits living within bodies, and why?  Well, to put it quite simply: so we can move shit around.  Our ecstatic spirits are all too familiar with endless, all-knowing expansiveness, but from time to time they like to make a little trip downwards, take up residence, and be able to move shit around for awhile.  It can be useful on occasion to actually leave a mark, to make something, to push something over, to explore the physical aspects of the universe.  And finally, where this actually applies to me, and my current experiences: New paragraph?  Nah.  I am finally contributing!  That is how it applies to me.  I wake up every morning, head to the shipyard, and spend my whole day purposefully and strategically moving shit around, and eventually through my and our crew's efforts there will be a beautiful ship named Mir that floats the world's seas.  An actual product that our efforts brought forth into the world; a giant, steel, fruit of our labors.  And by contributing I am only referring to one aspect of our physical potential, and that is the actual construction of things using our bodies.  I have been contributing in other ways my entire life, as our bodies also give us the capacity to share ideas in a three dimensional world, to shake our booties, to experience enjoyment, satisfaction, pain and fathomless love.  

When I imagine death I see the body lying still and with the release of life comes an elliptical burst of opalescent energy that charges outwards in all directions.  It goes everywhere, mingles with everything and knows all (better than Jesus!).  Eventually when all of that blissful energy decides it has some earthbound business to attend to, it begins scuttling about, looking for some human syngamy to give it that perfect new shell to go move some more shit around.  Or something like that...