Programming
We interrupt your regularly-scheduled programming to bring you this special message from our sponsors.
Just kidding.
Let’s not sully the good name of what passes from me to you here by appending the appellation of “programming” to it, or by implying it’s sponsored in the worldly sense of the word.
Sure, there’s a measure of forethought and conscious arrangement involved – I told you that I went a-wading and a-panning, and that, having struck proverbial gold, I would divvy the divitiae up real proper, laying it out in a lustrous and satisfying line for your inspection.
Videlicet, if it liketh thee:
Small Flowering, Vast Pleasance.
And though it wasn’t love of lucre that hitched me to this wagon and whipped me into motion, I suppose it is fair to say that this is all sponsored.
Videlicet, if it liketh thee:
Sponsor. 1650s, in a Christian context, “a godparent, one who binds himself or herself at a child’s baptism to guarantee a religious education.”
My Heavenly Father and I are bound like proverbial peas and carrots, and so I’m bound to heap your plate with the bounty, if you follow, as I do.
But programming.
Nah.
Though that’s surely what TV and its newer inflections and iterations are doing to you, quite literally, even by means of the medium itself – electromagnetic frequencies and their resonance with your own biological ones, with the accompanying ripple-effects into every aspect of your being, from the finer and more spiritual down to the coarser and more material, according to law; flicker-rates inducting you into semi-conscious states of trance, wherein your surface-mind slumbers and gives up its governance, leaving your innocent and impressionable deep mind open to hidden influence – to say nothing of the ever-more-explicitly corrosive surface-messages themselves, borne on waves of sound and light into your noumenal plane, salting its soil and poisoning its prospects for functional progeny...
You know?
Shaping and forming you, by the cybernetic numbers, into a product well-suited to your governors’ designs.
Nah.
To continue the thought…
...though that sort of programming of the human being is surely what the TV is doing, pardon my French, we don’t fuck around with that shit around here.
I can’t claim that what passes as my art, which I’m sharing with you here, has reached, or will ever reach, the same heights, but it’s made, and shared, in the spirit of all great and traditional conscious art, which is – to facilitate, if you’re willing, the education and transformation of your entire being, starting with the inner, into something finer, more beautiful, and ultimately more fully human.
You know?
I’ve talked about that sort of thing enough already – take a walk and a gander round these halls to get a clue, and a life.
Anyway, what I’m saying is, I’ll come back to my gold-nuggets soon enough, but a couple things happened, and occurred to me, the last couple of days that got me thinking, reflecting, and wanting to write and share some things.
So, I’ll interrupt the flow of associations that was already under way and share at least some of that here, starting with this.
And, you know what? I think it’ll be in the flow of things, after all, and more-than-apropos.
I wanted to say something about beauty, quickly and simply, if I can.
A certain small plot of land has come into my care, and a little house on it – nothing much, really.
Last year, I hardly got to live in it, since I had people (myself included) coming in and out of it constantly, renovating and remediating it. There’s a lot left to do and to be done, by me and by others, but at least it’s livable now, according to my standards, which brings me to what I wanted to say.
As I said, there is a lot left to do and to be done, and – true to form – I’ve already seen much of it come into being in my noumenal plane, while I had even, to some extent, sequenced and scheduled some of this work out on literal paper.
As things usually go in life, that hasn’t gone as planned; but I’m wise enough by now to know (and I continue to learn it in new and deeper ways all the time) that that’s according to plan, too, just not my own mind’s; and I both accept it and actively engage my various concrete and subtle organs of perception and sensation in figuring out, “OK, so what IS the plan? What am I really supposed to be doing and learning, then?”
I won’t go into all that now, but I would like to get meta-referential for a moment and say – what do you think all this writing I’m doing is?
Obedience is a virtue, especially to a righteous God-Father, and don’t let any rotten larval creeps gnawing at the foundations of your house while hidden under your floor-boards tell you otherwise.
Anyway.
So, further large-scale domestic remediation is on hold. Meantime, having taken up the authority of my vice-gerency – I’m well aware that this house and its little land is “mine” only for a blip in time’s long line – I’ve taken a different tack and turned my attention to smaller things.
It’s so interesting.
Why so much renovation and remediation?
When I first visited the house and “took it into my noumenal plane and weighed it,” a number of impressions washed over me. I’d summarize them as, “You know, this was a cute house, and someone clearly loved it for a long time, but at some point, after it had passed through the coarse and unsteady hands of one renter after another, it just… well, it gives the impression that it wasn’t loved, or attended to, or cared for.”
Anyway.
Interestingly, and I’ll tell you just why in a moment, it was the same outside, on the little plot of land itself, too.
That’s one big reason I decided to get the house – the land.
T’aint much, like I told you, but there’s something about it.
Again, you can see that for a good while someone cared deeply for it, investing time, thought, love, and labor to cultivate it into something truly beautiful.
There are big trees and small trees – evergreens of many kinds, decorative and fruit-bearing trees, and others I’m still identifying, -- flowering bushes, perennial flowers, as well as the remnants of paved trails and little gardens.
But as I said – the land, like the house, passed through one renter’s insensitive hands after another.
Just now, I think of Tolkien's description of Ithilien in Lord of the Rings:
“Here spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in the turf, birds were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now desolate, kept still a disheveled dryad loveliness.”
Thank God he said it, because otherwise we’d be here all day.
What I’m saying, and what I’ve said in characteristic fashion, jumping ahead of the steady flow of associations right to my point, is that, speaking of the outside of the house, the neglect at the hands of the insensitive renters was actually mostly a good thing.
Which brings me back to beauty, the reason I wanted to write today.
The last few days, as I worked in the yards, the thought came to me more than once, as I communed with and observed them while also taking in the work of others’ hands – my neighbors’ yards – comparing them, and playing out in my mind what must be my neighbors’ own line of thinking... something like:
“How disorderly. What a mess. So many weeds. Don’t you care? Why don’t you lay down new turf? Why do you spend so much time on your knees, digging up dandelions, carefully raking and rearranging cuttings and clippings, as if the land were something to be loved? How ugly.”
Because, I reflect on the yard of the house across from mine.
Same sort of house, part of the same wave of construction done shortly after I was born – a mirror-image of my own house, almost.
Only… all the trees have been cut down, and all that remains is… grass, which the polite and elderly, but all-too-conventional and all-too-fully-programmed, owner dutifully tends to, by the clock and by the books, by means of regular mowing and spraying of noxious herbicides.
Speaking of TV, I see his own glowing and flickering, day and night, through his ever-exposed window; I don’t think these things are unrelated, the TV and the nature of the yard and its care.
And I reflect on the yard of the house on the other side of my own house, beside my backyard.
I’m told, and was told by the neighborhood busy-body (now gone, who filled me in on 50 years of history in 15 minutes one day last year when I was cutting the grass by means of my manual scythe-dealie), that those neighbors’ names are well-known and well-respected in this town.
And you can see it in their yard, and their garage, and what’s in that garage, and what goes on outside it, and beside it in the yard.
Sometimes, when I start out on my bike rides, I pass the house and take it in at a glance, and the impression I get is: perfect.
Everything perfect – and, interestingly, not in a pompous way, like, “Let me wield my perfection and the wealth behind it as cudgel to beat you into your place – submission to my being-supremacy.”
No; in a sense, they’re programmed too, but in a different way – and I say this without hate, because it’s a lovely home and they’re lovely, kind people.
What I mean is… grass, perfectly pedicured, watered, herbicided, and green-hued. Stonework, perfect. Landscaping, perfect. Porch and its chairs, perfect. All in a sort of … nostalgic-sentimental, what-you-see-is-what-you-get American forthrightness.
From one perspective, I’d say it’s the best house in this part of the neighborhood.
But taking all those impressions in and keeping them in mind, then coming back to my own yardwork, with its accompanying communion, observation, and entertaining in thought of others’ lines of thinking about the nature of my yard and my work in it…
And coming back to the question of beauty…
My response, inwardly, to that day-dreamed, but no doubt intuitively dead-center hit of a, line of thought, was: “Of course I want my land to be beautiful. But what do you think beauty is? I think my sense of beauty is quite different from yours.”
Earlier, I said:
I wanted to say something about beauty, quickly and simply, if I can.
I guess this hasn’t been quick or simple, but again I will say: “I think my sense of beauty is quite different from yours.”
To start with, it has nothing to do with programming or convention – what somebody told me is right or good.
Let me ask you, since I won’t ask my elderly-gentleman-neighbor – what, exactly, is the point or value of having a little plot of land on which the only thing that grows is grass? Grass, I should add, that only grows the way it does because it’s doused regularly in poison that’s deadly to every thing else that might like to live and take root there?
I’ll answer that in a moment, but I think it’s obvious enough for me not to have to do that.
A more difficult question would be, what is the value of a yard like my other neighbor’s?
Here, we get a little more subjective, and I think the answer lies in whether or not we are, or want to be, satisfied with what the people around us tell us is the pinnacle of achievement in “the World,” as both achievement and the World are commonly understood.
In both cases, I think the answer comes down to… each ideal is a kind of programming.
Ipso fatso, to my own brain, which may or may not have been unduly influenced by TV, it’s to be rejected.
Beauty.
I’ll finish, wrapping this up with a tidy little bow, by saying this.
Of course, I have plans for what I’ll do with the land. And let me tell you, if it works out as I plan it, or even somewhat like I plan it, it’s really going to be something to behold, and to commune with.
Why just behold, when you can be part of it?
I said it was neglected as it passed through one renter’s hands after another. I think that’s the best thing that could have happened to it, given the probability of various possibilities.
No chemicals for years and years, if ever.
Every tree and other plant was left to its own nature and devices to grow as it wished.
Time, winds, and animals of many kinds brought seeds of all kinds to it, which took root and took up residence, wherever and however they listed.
Yes, most of these are what you’d call “weeds”; but if you really take time to get to know them, you’ll see they have a beauty, an intelligence, and a life and tenacity that some of the more… refined and conventional plants that people prefer do not. I’ve seen some beautiful purple and yellow flowers among these weeds in residence, and that alone makes them worth keeping.
I spend enough time walking in untouched woods that live, grow, and die according to their own law, and God’s, to know – underneath the chaotic and sometimes shabby disorder of it all, there’s a perfect harmony and exquisite beauty to it, such that as I hike and tramp through many trails, I step lightly, carefully, and with many apologies to the land and all the living things in it – I let them know I come as a friend, a guest, and a lover, meaning no harm.
As I commune with this little land more and more, I see more of those woods in it. Why, then, should I be so quick to cut down, dig up, and impose my will on it, especially when I haven’t first spent time in communion with it – silent, receptive, with an emphasis on learning what it’s like, what it likes, and what it wills and wishes for itself?
The other morning, after waking, I drew the livingroom curtains open and looked out at the yard. Just then, a little calico cat walked by as if she owned the place – clearly on a path and a mission that she knew all about.
It was news to me, let me tell you.
That same day, cutting grass again, I accidentally whacked a toad with a swing of my scythe – I think it was the same toad I’d seen a few days before (sheltered under the canopy of the giant leaves of a thriving vestigial garden-plant). I had apologized for disturbing him then, of course.
Unfortunately, I did him in with the scythe-swing, and unfortunately, I had to laugh anyway when I looked at his dead body, though I did send his spirit many apologies for the untimely reaping by an unconscious Cronos; there he lay, belly up, tongue out, in a way that I think you’d have laughed at, too, despite the regrettable circumstances.
Later, I saw another, smaller toad hopping about on business, spry as you like, and felt some relief: life does go on, at least on this little land.
I see all kinds of ants (especially on one hill that clearly houses a vast underground queendom) and other insects going about their business.
One robin wouldn’t stop shouting at me the other day; I’m guessing she didn’t approve of the day’s yardwork. Probably too close to her nest, too.
There’s a mourning dove that likes to lament from my roof. I met him in person just the other day, in fact – he waddled quickly by my fence, a bit startled by my unexpected approach. Seems like a good fellow, if a bit simple.
I’ve seen bright cardinals and iridescent grackles, heard cheerful black-capped chickadees, and have found evidence of other cats and even coyotes passing through, no doubt after having lingered first for some hunting.
When I reflect on beauty, I wonder and ask – what can possibly live in a yard that’s nothing but some grass exposed to the elements and the unrelenting sun, and drenched with deadly poison on top of that?
Meanwhile, here, amid the disheveled dryad loveliness, a rich and plenteous ecosystem has sprung up, a kingdom of many residents, of much and varied business.
My Lord has established and appointed me as a vice-gerent, and listen – I can’t speak for others placed in the same position, but as for me, I take that sort of thing seriously.
Many lives are in my hands; and are they of any less account than my own simply because they’re smaller?
Let me finish by putting it to you this way.
A really good governor – especially one who’s inherited a kingdom like this one, which all but runs on its own – hardly does anything at all, or at least appears not to.
All he does is accentuate, enrich, enhance, and harmoniously expand what’s already there. It’s not an act of imposition or domination, but of communion and cooperation.
In this sort of arrangement, the question naturally comes to mind, or should: who, then, is governed by whom?
8 June 2025
