hey nic,
nice write up.
technically, i am pretty much on the same page as you. i keep searching though, because there are just so many "spiritual" people out there, i would like to know what they are talking about. it's funny, but even as a JW for 20 years, i didn't experience anything that was supernatural, or any feelings of "spiritual" awe that could not be explained more parsimoniously as brain chemicals tricking my mind.
so, technically i am a reductionist and a materialist.
but i keep sort of searching anyways. almost for fun and kicks. you know, buddhist meditation, praying to satan (i figure if he is who the bible thumpers says he is, he would like to get in contact with me, lol [nothing yet]), going on haunted house tours. trying to think about "spirituality", although people say it is something you rather "feel". whatever, this little atheist just can't figure it out. i still can't find anything traditionally spiritual to latch onto, or any reason that i should, apart from what LT mentioned about mental health, which i find also extremely ironic, but not really quite an excellent enough reason, in my books. or maybe "crazy without god" IS my spirituality.
or, perhaps, i already worship the poetry.
i would like to have some magic in my life. believe it or not, i would actually *like* to be wrong about being an atheist. i have become sort of addicted to smashing personal paradigms, and atheism would be fun too. but it seems pretty smash proof. i would like to think there is some magic out there, but i am not going to let myself go there without some good reason either. just because, you know, there are such large numbers of "spiritual people" on this little ball of dirt, compared to the small number of ones who don't mind going it alone. bachelors from traditional "spirituality".
let's see, i keep talking in circles here. how about some of the things that make me feel a sense of the spiritual?
- building a little well constructed fire of driftwood by the ocean, while the sun sets, for a woman who let me kidnapp her. she pours the wine with a smile.
- a little morbier cheese and bread, and a little earthy saint chinain at my favorite little french restaurant, le pichet, as people walk by in the rain outside.
- Anywhere I Lay My Head, by Tom Waits
- drinking bourbon in a rickety little twin engine plane flying through the coulds above the mountains and writing poetry.
- laying there in bed after making love, smoking a cigarette, letting all the demons out with someone who really wants to meet them, and listening to ray lamontagne and realizing that the last time i had been that free and happy was in the summer i graduated from highschool.
- looking at hubble space photos while i go through the house and rip up all of my atlases.
and there are so many more, but i wouldn't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.
perhaps my spirituality is about the simple deliniation between embracing the trembling and lucid subjectivity of a moment, as opposed to the objectivity of where an experience fits in the universe outside of myself.
TS
