Mirror, mirror . . .

In the mailbox on this full-moon day . . .

Following three days of intense fighting—casualties numbered more than 50,000—the Battle of Gettysburg ended on this day in 1863 with a victory for the Union forces and was seen as a turning point in the American Civil War.

Today in 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded the city of Quebec, the first permanent European base in Canada.

It's Tom Cruise's birthday. The now 61-year-old film actor was born on this date in 1962 Syracuse, New York.

Art holds up a mirror to hypocrisy, injustice, and abuse, and mobilizes people in ways that nothing else can. This has been especially true over the last 100 years. From Picasso'sGuernica and Duke Ellington's "Black, Brown and Beige" suite, to the AIDS Quilt, the Guerrilla Girls projects, and Hamilton, the list of impactful works is endless and ever-growing.

It's easy to misread the vision embraced by The Watercourse Way of Lao Tzu as inclusive of a permissive embrace of the bankrupt nonsense of contemporary political conservatism. Quite the contrary. Knee-jerk, reactionary, turn-back-the-clock, “No”-ism is wholly counter to the progressive, forever creative flow of The Way, always in the moment moving forward.

Not quite almost…

It's Sol's day in Oklieland as the heat-hammer eases slightly before returning for the season. In the mailbox this morning:

Today, July 2nd marks the day that the Second Continental Congress declared that the thirteen colonies were no longer subject to King George III. Congress subsequently revised the wording of the Declaration, removing Jefferson's vigorous denunciation of the British monarch for importing the slave trade, and finally approved it two days later.

John Adams wrote, in a letter to his wife, Abigail, “The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America.
He was almost right.

It was on this day in 1937, that Amelia Earhart was last heard from, somewhere over the Pacific.

It's the 146th anniversary of Hermann Hesse's birth. The German Nobel Prize winner, poet and author was born today in 1877 Calw, Germany. His many books include Siddhartha, Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game.

We are called to cognizant restraint, or “the withholding from becoming” that avoids the binding of being either by our tools or by necessity. Technogenic humans must learn to respect our embodiment, but not be imprisoned by it. And vice-versa. – Nathan Gardels

Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything came.

– John Berger in Maria Popova's Marginalian.

Random abyssal . . .

In the Satyr's day mailbox . . .

Exploring and sharing the flotsam and jetsam of the Mailbox on Watercourse way is my “random act of kindness,” upon which my day is built.

“When things get tense, when I start taking my work a bit too seriously, I remind myself that I’m only pretending to be a human being.” – Alan Arkin, who died yesterday in his home in San Marcos, California. He was 89.

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was first presented to a public audience today in 1858

Can you paint with all the colors of the wind? Standing in the way is the programmed binary compartmentalization rampant in the world – especially that constructed by white Western men. – Jioji Ravulo

Anxious and unhappy people are amenable to fear-appeals, which is why they are the favorite targets of marketers and conservative politicians. The most effective fear appeal is that which attempts to divide and separate us into our tribes and the fear of the “other.”

Despite consciousness being "everything" a person experiences, most scientists hold to the binary induced belief that it’s still a complete mystery how the brain produces it. What's the possibility the brain doesn't “produce” consciouness, but, rather, receives it, engages, participates, reciprocates, interacts with it?

Abyss

All my images have been stolen, and

A conversation with God lasts less than five seconds.

I stare into the silence with an expectation,

As if my projector was turned on, But there are no slides.

My friend Lester tells me this is a good place to be.

“The razor’s edge isn’t a tightrope,” my friend Lester says,

“It’s a chalk-line you’ve drawn on the floor,” he says.

He says most people never get this far.

Maybe that’s why “alone” is the only word I can find.

There is a kind of contentment, though, oddly enough.

Odd because it is not complete. I haven’t accepted it,

Or, better, I resist just enough to give rise to these lines

accompanied by the whurrr of that projector’s fan

and a bit of dust in my eyes.