Completeness of Incompleteness

My brother, a student of Hebrew, wrote to me on my birthday this year: And now you are Seventy-seven. Gematria tells us that 77 gives us the Hebrew word מַזָּל (mazal), meaning “luck,” “fortune,” or “constellation.” Or, the Hebrew word עֹז (oz), meaning “strength” or “might.” Mighty Lucky. Strong Fortune. And yes, that’s the mazal from Mazal Tov!

I’ve begun making a little brick terrace a step down the incline from another little brick terrace I completed two weeks ago. I find working on the puzzle of fitting bricks to the terrain and fitting the bricks to each other a deeply calming practice. I’m in no hurry, and not hurrying adds to my calm state, a kind of quiet bliss.

In this blissful state I often think about troubling things without becoming attached to outcome. In a more turbulent emotional state I am anxiously hopeful that many of the criminals in Congress will lose their races to good people who do not support war and genocide and the ruination of our democracy. In a calm meditative state, I view the election as a grand cosmic test of whether or not the majority of humans will choose kindness and generosity over greed and hatred. What will be will be.

Now and then I’ll take pictures of the terrace work to share with my friend Max who likes hearing about my creative endeavors, as I enjoy hearing about his creative undertakings. Along with my latest batch of pictures of the new terrace, I told him I found incompleteness beautiful and inspiring.

I feel similarly about the rough drafts of my stories, the unpolished sentences and paragraphs and pages full of energies that fuel my quest for completeness.

The words and bricks might fit together in myriad ways, yet this is how they are settling. What a delightful unfolding.

One of Picasso’s many famous paintings is entitled Harlequin, a portrait of his young son Paulo wearing a harlequin outfit and sitting in a chair, with parts of the painting not completed. Had Picasso “finished” this painting I doubt the result would have been particularly compelling or memorable, whereas the “incompleteness” of the painting messed with my mind in wonderful challenging ways and I’ll never forget that painting.

At this moment in human history, the economies of many nations in the world are on the brink of collapse, and several nations, including France, England, and Germany, are essentially bankrupt and slipping into social chaos. The American and Israeli war against Iran, coupled with America and Western Europe’s war against Russia via Ukraine, are two of the main causes for the acceleration of myriad factors contributing to this vast global disharmony.

When I’m in a worried anxious state, I fear terrible times lie ahead for all of us because we have entrusted our collective future to ignorant violent racist misogynists who lack the intelligence and creativity and morality to do what needs to be done to avert disaster.

In a calmer meditative state, allowing my creative impulses to place the bricks in the matrix of the evolving terrace, I understand everything happening to me and to you and to human society is a manifestation of our individual and collective karmas.

We are the owners of our own karma. Our happiness and unhappiness depend on our actions. And, according to Buddha, our thoughts are powerful forms of action.

fin

Through the Fire from Todd’s album Much Too Beautiful