Mental Time-Out

Too swamped at work and at home with pointless but necessary, urgent but unimportant, time- and energy-draining miscellania that needs to get done so I and my family can continue to exist to consume.

Back to regularly scheduled programming sometime tomorrow.

Cult of Personality

Are you familiar with the song “Cult of Personality” by the 80s funk-metal band Living Color? Hardly a day went by during the summer of 1989 where you didn’t here the tune a half-dozen times on the radio. They were big, had a couple of other hits and a few more albums before consigning themselves to those “Remember the 80s/90s” and “Whatever happened to …” shows on VH1.

Well, for some reason, the lyrics to that song popped into my head while I was taking a shower yesterday morning. I wonder why? All I did was watch a bunch of the morning news shows while chowing down on some cereal before me and the Little One went grocery shopping. Morning news, like CNN Headline News and the local TV channels.

Here are the lyrics, if you’re interested. Remind you of anyone?


Look into my eyes, what do you see?
Cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you want to be
I’m the cult of personality
Like Mussolini and Kennedy
I’m the cult of personality
Cult of personality
Cult of personality

Neon lights, a Nobel prize
The mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You don’t have to follow me
Only you can set me free

I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your t.v.
I’m the cult of personality
I exploit you, still you love me
I tell you one and one makes three
I’m the cult of personality
Like Joseph Stalin and Gandhi
I’m the cult of personality
Cult of personality
Cult of personality

Neon lights a Nobel prize
The mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You don’t have to follow me
Only you can set you free

You gave me fortune
You gave me fame
You me power in your god’s name
I’m every person you need to be
I’m the cult of personality
Look into my eyes, what do you see?
Cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you want to be
I’m the cult of personality
Like Mussolini and Kennedy
I’m the cult of personality
Cult of personality
Cult of personality

Time Is ...

Time is a child playing at checkers.

- Heraclitus, Fragment 52


This image never ceases to bring me joy. What is more divine than a child lost in itself, oblivious to the passage of time? It gives no thought to mortality, nor even for what the next day may bring. A child both willingly and unwillingly throws itself into the object of its passion at the time. Do you remember when a leaf absorbed your very being for minutes or hours? Do you recall staring at the clouds in the sky as the sun moved across the blue ocean? To be present in the present as the tale is told to us. Oh to be like little children again!

Can we even/ever recapture such existential ignorance again? Perhaps it is the sole source of bliss on our brief foray here on earth, between voids and heavens. But the child is not the object of Heraclitus' observation; no, time itself is. And who can claim to know what time is, except for this divine quality: it is no respecter of persons. I have the same amount of time as you, as a pauper and a prince of this world. There are the same number of hours in my days as those of our king. And time wanders on, meanders, strolls, really, taking its own time, if you allow a circuitous remark. Time has no consciousness, but rather a superconsciousness, an uber-consciousness, or perhaps more accurately, an anti-consciousness. Something we cannot fathom whilst we reside deep within it.

Throw out the clocks! Turn away from the grasping! To be present in the present means nothing more or less than being here, now.

Time is a child playing at checkers.