Crapulence

One of my new acquaintances sent me a list of things entitled “Did You Know These Things Had Names?” The message arrived just as I was taking over for our writing group leader who could not make it that day. For the record, I’m generally fourth in command in that group. There are three other people who are equally or more capable and willing, personality wise, and have more experience in leading writing groups than I do. So that day the three of them were out. Crapulence stood out to me as a good word for a prompt.

DEFINITION:  That utterly sick feeling you get after eating or drinking too much is called crapulence.

Here’s what I wrote:

To live is to be bruised. As Rumi, via Coleman Barks and John Moyne said, “Aren’t we all hazy with smoke?” This is the single-most effective, concise, succinct bit of wisdom ever generated. It’s a description of the human condition. Understanding this fact, in its depth and breadth, is the path to liberation from resentment, desire for revenge, and all the evil spirits that plague humanity. If you indulge in opulence and experience crapulence, you are unlikely to be able to see the fact that we are all hazy with smoke, as your vision will be cloudy, and you won’t be able to distinguish the cloud from the haze. At least not at first.

It is said that the Buddha had his phase of opulence, but he eventually grew dissatisfied with the result, crapulent, or perhaps not, before finding a path to the clear vision that must precede understanding, which must precede liberation from fear, doubt, and trouble of any kind.

Five Haikus

Where did Homo Saps come from?

An answer in five Haikus.

Heat dissipated

and crystals nucleated

the Rocks of Ages.

Rain scoured the rocks.

Small cracks multiplied

sand grains, freed to roam.

Lightening sparked union

of carbon, hydrogen, and

oxygen atoms.

Molecules arose,

mingled, merged, emerged as new

complex, craggy shapes.

Crags caught each other,

multiplying possible

outcomes. Here we are!

Note: This does not contradict the Bible, despite what some might think. Those are people who do not understand the difference between a mechanism (what I am describing here) and the cause, reason, or motivating force, which I can give no better answer to than anyone else. I am a deeply spiritual person, and it is aggravating when people accuse me of being an atheist. Consciousness preceded or coincided with matter. Like the bumper sticker says, “God Spoke, and Bang It Happened.”