Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

Hermeneutics is at the heart of who I am.
From the Greek word "Hermes," the messenger of the gods. 
The Roman name for whom is "Mercury."

As Hermes, the Master of Interpretation, Knowing what's what and what matters most,
Hearing, seeing, understanding, knowing, doing, being...

As Mercury, Trickster, play-on-word master, who cannot be pined down,locked up, explained, known, defined, made plain and real...

Bringing all of that together in "Hermeneutics."

My kind of gig.

Saying what cannot be said.
Laughing at the very idea.
Trying to keep a straight face
as though I know what I'm doing.
Seeing what I can get by with.
Seeing what I can see...
As though it is essential--
because it is!

–0–

It comes down to what we make of it.
To what we do with it.
To who we become because of it.

We are it.
It is us.
Where does that line lie?

And my death,
our death,
is a continuation of it.
It goes on.
And on, and on...

And so do we--
in an altered state of being,
but we are a form of energy,
a collection of various forms of energy,
psychic energy, 
karmic energy,
kinetic energy,
thermal energy,
electrical energy,
radiant energy...
and energy cannot be created or destroyed,
only transformed or converted.

What form shall our conversion take?
That is the mystery
we wait to experience,
and to spend any time pondering it
is to waste the time that is ours
in this incarnation.
Why do that?
Why not spend our time exploring,
examining,
investigating,
probing,
inquiring,
experimenting,
intuiting,
reflecting,
realizing,
and making the most of the time at hand?

What would "making the most
of the time at hand" mean for you?

–0–

How to see what we look at,
how to look at what we see...
The essence of hermeneutics,
the foundation of life and being,
realization, sanity, stability and wonder.

Lost in too much talking,
explaining,
instruction,
words and noise.

The days keep coming.
I try to minimize the impact
of one damn day after another
by staying out of the way,
making it find me.

I reduce my vulnerability
by limiting my exposure.
I don't ask for it.
Silence and solitude, kid.
Silence and solitude.

Silence and solitude
make the days work for their pleasure.
It helps to be unemployed.

Compassion also helps.
Compassion for the damn day.

A damn day's life can't be easy,
especially after all these years.
I don't care how much it might enjoy
delivering pain, anguish, sorrow and misery--
after a while that has to become burdensome.
The damn days have to long for a break
in the same wearisome routine.
They don't get a damn day off.

I take that into account
and imagine them needing a vacation,
wondering what they would do
with a week away from business as usual.

–0–

Our attitude can keep a bad stuation
from getting completely out of hand.

Maintaining manageability is a worthy goal
for each situation as it arises.

We do that by treating things with 
no greater degree of seriousness
than they deserve.

And we do that by refusing to have anything
at stake in any situation that might arise.

There is nothing to gain and nothing to lose here,
there, anywhere!

Become the seated Buddha under the Bodhi Tree.
Do what you can about what's what
and let it be.
Let the world turn.
Let come what may.

It is the Buddha's way.

Jesus would have been better off
if he had taken that approach 
with the money changers 
in the courtyard of the Temple.

Be as placid and serene
as the waters of Adam's millpond
at daybreak.
All the time.

What is keeping that from happening?
Any time?

If the Buddha could do it, 
why can't we?

–0–

I hand out business cards
with a photograph I've taken on one side

And these terms on the other side:

Balance. Harmony. 
Original Nature. 
Innate Virtues (What you love to do and enjoy doing most). 
Intrinsic Intuition. 
Integrity. 
Sincerity. 
Spontaneity. 
Vitality. 
Emptiness. 
Stillness. 
Silence. 
Imagination. 
Reflection. 
Realization. 
Compassion. 
Generosity.
Kindness. 
Flow. 
Looking/Listening.
Seeing/Hearing. 
Knowing. 
Trusting. 
Being. 
Doing.

With these instructions:

"Reflect on the image
and the connections you make with it 
and your life.

Reflect on these terms
and the connections you make with them
and your life."

Joseph Campbell said that
reflection leads to new realizations.

Realization leads to new ways of living.

New ways of living transform the world.

Transforming the world
is something religion talks about
and never does.

It is time to take up the work
of sitting in the right kind of emptiness,
stillness and silence
with reflection and realization
and see where it goes.

No?

Things play themselves out over time.
Everyone with a vested interest in the outcome
influences the result
but no one is in control,
and however things unfold
will leave a lot to be desired,
thus, there is no outcome actually,
just an eternal continuation 
of "circumstances begetting circumstances,"
as the old Taoists observed around 500 BCE.

Even the Bible understands the absence of control,
with its "Time and chance happen to us all,"
and its "It rains on the just and the unjust alike."

So we take our seat with the Buddha
and let the world turn.
Happy to not be in charge of keeping anyone happy,
because we would be listening to grievances all day.

–0–

My intuition seems to be a   
spontaneous response to my 
life-situation
that is reliably "there"
without me thinking it into action.

Before my intuition,
I am like the Moved
in response to the Mover.

And I'm wondering if perhaps
we projected God onto our intuition
in the long ago and far away
when we didn't have much more
than our intuition coming 
between us and a savage world
outside the cave.

The powers of our intuition
could easily be interpreted 
as the intervention of God.

And, like that, we develop
doctrine and dogma and beliefs
and heaven and hell and here we are.

And it is all intuition and imagination.

That has an intuitive feel to it for me.

–0–

Finding our way to the things 
that need to be done,
and doing them in the right way,
in the right place,
at the right time,
is all that is asked of us.

And we get plenty of practice in the art,
because it is asked of us
in each situation as it arises.

We can begin practicing recognizing
situations as they arise.

We spill the milk
and create a situation.

The dog needs to go out
and creates a situation.

How many situations come with each day?
Make a list.
Learn to spot them as they begin to develop.
Step into them looking for what needs to be done.
Where, 
When,
How.

And notice how you utalize
your original nature,
your inherent virtues/virtuosities
(What you do best and enjoy doing most)
and your intrinsic intuition
in meeting each situation
and doing there what needs to be done.

Practicing your awareness
is practicing your responsiveness.
And raising the level of your
response-ability
in each situation as it arises.

–0–

There are more things we can do nothing about 
than there are things we can do something about.
Guess which things we spend the most time thinking about.
Make sense of that for me
(Another thing nothing can be done about).

Making sense of things is way out of reach.
Making our peace with things we can't make sense of
should be doable, but.
I don't see much being done about that.

Making our peace with things
is fast approaching the status
of A Lost Art.

Coming to terms with things.
Allowing things to be as they are.
Being okay with things that are not okay...
Seems as though we could do that, but.

The Buddha would "pay it no mind."
Not thinking about things not worth thinking about
is a Buddha-thing.
"I'm not toting that load!"
Is one of the lost sayings of Buddha.

It is okay with him if we borrow it
whenever the occasion calls for it.

We take step closer to being the Buddha
every time we use it.

–0–

The right kind of conversation is therapeutic,
salvific, restorative, grounding, centering, 
revitalizing, awakening...
to such an extent,
that it is unfathomable that we devote
such little time and effort in the work
to develop our ability to converse with one another
from the heart about things that matter.

We talk about news, weather, sports, gossip, and drama.

When do we get to the things that matter most?

Why are our conversations too shallow to splash?

What do you have to say--
need to say--
that you never say to anyone?
Even your psychotherapist?

Think back to the piece I did here just yesterday
about imaginary conversations,
and make a date with yourself
to have an imaginary conversation with yourself
about things that matter.

To maintain your focus,
write it out as a dialogue
between "Me-1" and "Me-2,"
or come up with your own names
for the two of you.

And keep this going in a regular way
throughout what remains
of the time left for living.

P.S. It is what I do here everyday! 

–0–

I highly recommend imaginary conversations
with anyone you would like to talk to.
And the more surprising what you say
and what they say
the better.

Surprise gets us to the heart of the matter,
which is always our perception
of what's what.

If our perception isn't changing,
we aren't changing.
If we aren't changing,
we aren't seeing things as they are.
We are seeing things 
as we have always seen them to be.

This goes for our real life conversations
as well.

If we say the same things,
so that this conversation
is the same as last week's conversation,
we need to find new people to talk to--
and if we talk to them
the way we talk to the old people 
we always talk to,
we need to sit down
and have a heart-to-heart
with ourselves.

We are stuck,
and not budging
in the way we perceive the word
and what's worth talking about,
and what we have to say.

What is the newest thing we have said?
If we aren't calling into question 
the things we always say,
have always said,
we are wasting our time,
and may as well have died
all those years ago
right after the last new thing
we have realized came upon us,
or out of us.

(That's what conversation is for,
eliciting from ourselves things 
we have never thought of,
never said).

So sit down right now
with Jesus, say,
and ask him,
"Jesus, what were you thinking about?"
And see what he says.
And see how long the conversation runs
before it broaches something
you have never considered.

If you aren't saying/thinking new things,
you may as well be dead
for all the good to yourself and others
you are doing being alive!

–0–