Fishing outside Time

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Thu, 04.12.2008 06:29
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Wed, 03.12.2008 21:05
Yes, best of luck with your petition. Something like this was actually put into place on [...]

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Mon, 17.11.2008 13:50
Nathan, Thanks, I appreciate the support. I am encouraged at present by the reception [...]

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Mon, 17.11.2008 13:10
Reed, I think this is a wonderful idea, and I would support it if I lived in New [...]

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Monday, September 11. 2006

Time is not a measure unto itself, it is through Space and Motion that we quantify Time, and fishing gives us both Space and Motion (the expanse of river, the water flowing past our legs, the swishing of the line through the guides). So how is it that when I am most enjoying my fishing, I am outside of Time?

Joy perceived is not Joy, it is merely the intellectual apprehension of an emotion. If I ask myself whether I am happy, I am not happy, I am considering happiness. Like all the finer things in life, pure enjoyment is an experience complete in itself -- dissect the frog and you have its bloody elements, but no longer the frog.

Just so is a grand day of fishing. All of space is there, be it only a slough in Kansas -- and the wind in the cottonwoods, the gullup of the frogs, the path of a watersnake, cry life and motion -- but there is no time. If you are really THERE, all is NOW. A perception of incorporation within the living world, a witness to something greater than the moment, then suddenly a fear, an awe, a compelling notion of being watched -- and you snap back to the line trailing now downstream.

Don't try to reconstruct that moment or relive it. It was the manna for the day, it won't keep for tomorrow. But the stream is still there, the fish are still elusive possibilities, and, back in Time, you may have tomorrow.

Posted by Reed F. Curry at 17:21 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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Reed, you sound the Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi, e.g., the guy who brought transcendental meditation to the U.S., unless of couse it was George Harrison, sitar and all!

"If you think you are transcending, you're not because you're thinking about it............"

I could never get past that point, but what the hell, I didn't care because it led to better sex with my girlfriend back in 1973!

The zen of fishing....

Dave

#1 david votaw on 2006-09-17 14:41 (Reply)

Dave,

I'm not familiar with your yogi.

My expressions were not novel -- perhaps I should start using footnotes. The concept of encountering the transcendent in our temporal world is as old as man. The "still small voice" of the Old Testament, "The Consolation of Philosophy" by Boethius (524 A.D.), Baha'u'llah, Thoreau, Geo. MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, etc., all these and many more speak of meeting the Eternal in the moment, then losing it to the past and future (fictions that we find safe refuges).

I'm glad '73 was good for you.

Good fishing,
Reed

#1.1 Reed (Homepage) on 2006-09-17 17:31 (Reply)

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