Feeling at Home

We carry our homes within us which enable us to fly.  - John Cage

Where I live is inside myself.  My home is mine to keep exactly as it has always been -- or to change it.  The steps tell me how to clean and rearrange my home; when I am ready, my Higher Power removes stubborn defects I can do nothing about.  I alone can clutter up the space I live in with resentments, anger, self-pity -- and I alone can deal with that clutter.  I have the tools I need and helpers standing by.  I no longer have to be a victim, letting old ideas creep in and destructive thoughts pile up.  The OA program shows me how to keep my home in good order.

For today:  am I comfortable within my self?  Do I give myself the cleanliness, warmth and caring I need?

This is the reading for today. It resonates, as do most of the readings.  If I cannot be at home in my own skin, I have work to do.  And I have work to do.

I had to Google John Cage.  John Milton Cage (1912-1992) is an American composer and music theoretician.  The quote for today is from his Essay about Nothing, published in 1959, in a cadence like musical notation but in English deconstructed poetry form.  I think I remember this, kind of, from English at University.  Carlos Williams Carlos and something about a red wagon.

This lecture, however, is an answer -- of sorts -- kind of polemic, really (but through a composer's notation) of a number of questions which are apparently not important.  It is interesting to see visually, the text repeats and is broken.  You can see it here:  https://seansturm.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/john-cage-lecture-on-nothing.pdf

And the famous quote (reproduced above) is not the full sentence.  The full passage reads:

How different this form sense is from that which is bound up with memory:  themes and secondary themes; their struggle; their development; the climax; the recapitulation (which is the belief that one may own one's own home).  But actually, unlike the snail, we carry our homes within us, which enables us to fly or to stay -- to enjoy each.

How much richer it is in context.  And to see it as Cage meant it to be set on paper.  Always go to the source.  Always find your way home.

Blessed be.