Pinball

“and once again the world was spinning in greased grooves” -from Steinbecks ‘Cannery Row’

There’s a groove, we’ve all experienced the comfort of being in it and the discomfort when we slip out of it. When we’re in it we slide with mysterious magic, things just click. When we’re not in it the magic seems to come to a grinding halt dragged down by the friction of life events.

There’s an infinite number of belief systems for finding and staying in the groove, but even the best of them can fail us without warning. There are thousands of precepts about how to avoid dis-grooving, but no real warning signs when you’re about to slide out of the magic’s working groove and slip into that ugly damn, nothings working one. You can go to bed in the magic groove and just wake up finding it gone, and the why of it leads to endless self inquiry without any definitive answers. So life becomes a tedious preoccupation with grooves.

I’ve been in and out of so many grooves I’ve got a callus on my ass. Yesterday I fell out of my Sufi groove. If I had a Sufi master he or she would say that I had turned my gaze away from the Divine. If it had been my Buddhist groove, a guru would say that I’d had a laps in mindfulness.

So I’ve decided to go groove less and simply bounce off of life events like a pinball. With each pull and release of the hammer I’ll just ricochet off the bumpers, fly up and under ramps setting off buzzers bells and flashing lights. Eventually losing momentum and falling back into the mystical slot of reload, waiting for the hammer to relaunch me into another random adventure.

In reflection, I think that’s actually what I’ve been doing all along except now it will be with consensual intent.