April 2, 2025: Moats, Goats, Bloats, and Floats

Brought to you by A Notioneer, Not a Seer, a division of Book-in-a-Drawer Publications, ©2025, all rights reserved. 

You dwell in whiten castles with deep and poisoned moats and cannot hear the curses that fill your children’s throats. Maya Angelou

Whatever gets your goat gets your attention. Whatever gets your attention gets your time. Whatever gets your time gets you. Whatever gets you becomes your master. Take care, lest a little thing horn in and get your goat. William Arthur Ward

After we have calmly stood by and allowed monopolies to grow fat, we should not be asked to make them bloated. John Griffin Carlisle

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics. Earl Warren

The castle of may be crumbling, but the moat—ahh, that moat—she’s magnificent!  The shift in focus from the castle to the moat is like the magician’s trick, but just not that entertaining.

It is one thing to watch one’s own back, but it’s a lot easier if we help watch each other’s. In so doing, we cannot succumb to group-think, the scourge of individualism and freedom as well as social connection and environmental stewardship.

There is nothing in life that doesn’t have at least one particle of goat. Everything is a reminder, yet much does not require memorization. Life is a reminder if we remember to listen and to see.

Whether food or drink, warmth or cool, love or not, open or closed spaces, or any human institution, to get bloated on one thing or the other is not healthy—it is a cancer that eats away at beautiful notions until those notions are ruined cornerstones. Moderation is not the answer either as it too can become bloated with righteousness.

Be especially cautious of bloated egos, for they are really weak egos that have been usurped by wanting—especially the want of importance. We are already mattered; there is little reason or emotion to chase that which we inherently have—except a manufactured need to gain worldly things as though that will outlast death, which cares not about our “sacrifices,” only our ability to become our butterfly, our angel.

I suspect it true that angels are light both in radiation and density.  Perhaps “spirit” has lighter “embodiments” than the heft most of us have. There certainly are G-forces on more than our physical body.  We have many “stone tablets” we tend to drag around in our human attempts to become better angels. We certainly attribute much freedom to the winged beings around us—oh to take flight.  Yet more often than not, our individual selves and our institutions are like our airplanes, we’ve got the aerodynamics, but we have created pterodactyls. Still, there is beauty in even that, though we can do better.

As a notioneer, I write these things from that seat.  What I know, I do not much practice well.  I’ve still not mastered how to float (or flow, or let go) as a regular means of movement.  But I sense there exists what I write about and what’s stopping me from change is familiarity with what has been.  One understands language well before one can speak. The same is true of behaviors—one understands well before one can do. At my age, it’s not much comfort, but the question is still “what’s happening?”—“not what’s happening to me?”

Here is an example of learning a new movement from one Gail Collins:

I grew up in one of the most socially conservative neighborhoods in Ohio, and my parents were traditional Catholics. But in her old age, my mother got her home health care from a guy who was gay, who was wonderful to her. Before she died, she rode a float in the Cincinnati Gay Pride Parade.

Old dogs, new tricks.  Like Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute mile in 1956, when previously it was thought humans could not do it (that record lasted 46 days), once we can actually see what can be done, the gates we built and closed, open up.

To be aware is a very different state of being than to beware.  We still lean towards fear rather than clarity, though most every state has both shortcomings and benefits.  We have an important menu available.  We do not have to keep eating and drinking the same stuff, nor are we required to sit at the same table.

More practice awaits.  I know I’m not alone, though mostly I practice alone, with some very important exceptions that help much more than my expressing the journey using the written word.