Today, Hemojababala graced my young son and I with these remarkable gems--which we held in our hearts and hands, and which were like a fire that did not burn us, but warmed us to the point just-before-burning:
- Falling down is sometimes the best thing that can happen to you. It forces you to look up at the broad, blue (sometimes) sky above you. Alternately--if it happens to be raining--falling down enables you to remember that water is an important part of life.
- Mud is awesome. It's not dirt. Nor it is water. It uses both but becomes something new. This, Luke and Tyler (and all of humanity) is paramount because you, too, must be like mud. Mud sticks to stuff. It is thick. If you try and tell mud, Give up, why don't you! mud will only slurp back at you, No way, dude. I'm not going anywhere.
- Consider God's sense of humor: giraffes; kangaroos; the essential fact that all humans fart; the sound of flatulence itself--which is a daily reminder not to take oneself too seriously, even though many attempt to live in a way that denies the fact of their own flatulence.
- I wasn't always stone. Before I was stone, I do not know what I was. This is a good thing. It reminds me that even I--the Great and Ancient Hemojababala--do not know everything. (I know more than most anybody else who visits me, but I do not know everything.) You, too, must remember that you do not know everything. And you definnitely do not know nearly as much as me.
- Sometimes, when you feel as though everything is simply too hard: eat a lollipop. Consider the lollipop--it neither whines nor complains. Eat the lollipop, yes, but also BE the lollipop.
- Take Andre Gide's words to heart: "In order to discover new lands, one must lose sight of the shore for a very long time." (I gave him that line, and I hold no grudges (even though he didn't properly credit me.))
- Michelangelo once said: "I saw the angel in the marble and I carved him out until I set him free." (I also provided that line of wisdom when Old Mike visited me centuries ago; he was agitated, as I remember it, and I simply reminded him that the angel is already (and always) there: one must only carve, and carve, and carve it out until one sets it free: the creation is already accomplished, the carving remains.)
