What The Thief Left Behind

(a meditation on Thinking Without Thinking)

Yesterday I posted this to another site:

I dreamed a friend was calling me urgently, in trouble but the connection was bad. Over and over he called and I asked where he was, what was wrong. Finally I understood. He was warning me about someone across the street. I got up and walked out into the cool, full moon’s light to my unlocked car. I picked up spilled change and re-stuffed my glove compartment wondering what if they had stolen my jazz or opera CDs.

Some comments were made and I added:

But I’m not worried about the robbery part. I’m concerned about how the experience may have effected the thief. What if Frank Morgan or Pavarotti had been part of that experience?

Sitting in the garden last night I wondered if I was guilty of a class or cultural or educational arrogance by insinuating there was a type of salvation to be found in certain types of music or the “Mozart for Kids” effect or some such righteous affirmation.

Rauscher et al. show that the enhancing effect of the music condition is only temporary: no student had effects extending beyond the 15-minute period in which they were tested. The study makes no statement of an increase in IQ in general, but in participants’ spatial intelligence scores.

via Mozart effect – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Evaluations:

All that was stolen was change, quarters to be exact. Pennies and nickles were spilled/discarded on the floor and console.

Left behind were CDs, a cell phone car charger, a flashlight, a notepad with pen and a tire guage.

It’s senseless to ascribe de facto possibilities since potentials are infinite. I doubt that the thief needed quarters to get out of a hospital parking lot or put air in a low tire.  I doubt that the iPod that was once stolen from me was ever used to download Jesus sermons resulting in a Damascus Road experience.

It is equally doubtful that locking my car would have lessened the crime committed against us all. The intention was there. The inscape of that person determined the manifestation of the event, the instress.

I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

What hours, O what black hours we have spent

This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!

And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say

Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament

Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent

To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree

Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;

Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see

The lost are like this, and their scourge to be

As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.

via I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day – Poets.org