The Constellation of Ethel

The Constellation of Ethel, originally uploaded by skitbraviking.

I sit here watching the people walk by the window of The Grind, a coffee shop central to the Lincoln Square neighborhood in Chicago. People walk by, mostly white people, some definately more interesting than others. Some looking like football fans who conduct various forms of business for a living, while others have green hair or the happy face on a woman who's sharing a joke with a friend who's out of field of vision. For moments at a time I dip into a state of wonder, sort of afraid to take too deep a plunge. Mostly I wonder at the various things that make all of these varied people tick, how high do the numbers of traits and qualities go. Yet at the same time: all these various things keep people afloat on some complicated flow of eros. Afterall, the "pyshic-" in psychology is the soul.

After I ask myself this question, the vast sea of differences that make up the world becomes a vast chasm which nobody can ponder, an infinite abyss of time and space and within each person another abyss opens up and each person's abyss swells and reacts to all the abysses around them, creating a butterfly-effect when one person's soul shifts, altering the soul of another. This is of course imponderable in reality, a mere projection of my own theory sculpted from a few hackneyed metaphors. Yet, the experience of this thought resembles the mysteries of the stars, as the Greeks once pondered. This may be my religion or at least a religious perspective that I can take on. This is where all life takes on the mysteries that we need to buffer ourselves from the brute realities of death and taxes, the war, the murder and petty thievery. I now think I understand why people pray. Amen, God; if you're listening or not.