The domino effect

“If every week I climb up the hill and light the beacon, then wait a while and watch for fires lighting in response, then eventually I’ll find a community. A network of people who link up not because they’re identical, but because they’re dominoes.”

That, my friends, is an excerpt from my none-too-literary morning journal. Listen, it’s usually very early and the caffeine has only halfway hit, and the dogs can’t decide to be in or out, but I stand by the sentiment even if the actual language could use a little tweaking.

The motivation to show up here regularly - instead of four times in a week and then nothing for three months - was the topic of that morning’s pages. My primary motivation is that I enjoy it and, to an extent, can’t not do it, but the consistency aspect…yeeeeeaaaaaah…I need to dig for that. So, having dug, and knowing what I want to find and even facilitate, I climb the hill.

I’ve had repeated, related images in my head (I can’t tell you how long my hands hovered over the keyboard while I deliberated over the use of ‘visions’ before opting instead for ‘images’) during meditations and deep contemplations. I like to use both practices to check in on Future Me because otherwise I have no forkin’ clue where I’m going. I recognise that makes me sound pretentious but I promise I’m not; I just do this stuff because it works for me and I don’t think that meditating on your future is pretentious per se; I think it’s beneficial and I’m going to talk about it while trying not to sound like a knobber.

There’s a version of me whom I see very clearly but she’s doing something a bit weird. You know that if I’m saying that, then it’s weird. It’s weird because what she’s doing, I don’t actually know how to do (yet) and I’m not entirely sure how I go about learning. Maybe I invent it. Maybe I adapt something similar that I do know. Maybe I learn and adapt something that already exists but in a very different context. I guess time may tell. I hope so because it’s cool.

Do not misunderstand, I know what the thing Future Me is doing is for, I’m just not sure about the method. I am pretty damn sure that I’m not ready to share about it yet, if ever.(#worstnetworkerever #didyouSEEmecrashandburnwithdoTerra #dodgedabullettho)

I can disclose that she’s I am on a hillside - a properly rocky one - and I’d get on that hillside, for sure. Do the thing. I’m just not yet feeling that I’d write about it. I think you kinda have to be there. IRL. Maybe on another hillside, ready to pass it on. Or maybe that’s just the first domino, and that person has their own Weird Thing and on it goes.

In another recurring, ahem, image, I am one tiny light in a constellation. You know those pictures from satellites of the earth at night, showing electric lights in their clusters around cities, towns, rivers and roads? Anywhere there may be people? Like that, but with magic, more connection and less pollution. A mesh of fairy lights spread across the planet.

Is the light in my single spot coming from me? The hill? Is it the beacon I’m climbing the hill to light? Is it created by whatever it is I’m doing on that rocky hillside and what’s with all the hills suddenly? Have you met my knees?

It feels important. It feels mycelial. It feels like yet another version of “as above, so below” or, as the mycorrhizal network was here before us, “as below, so above”. It feels imperative that I get on and learn how to do the thing. Not because I’m some sort of Chosen One with a Special Purpose (Steve Martin TM), but because that’s what we’re supposed to do: find our mycelial dominoes. Possibly by doing weird things.

Are you harbouring a weird thing? Just asking. Not essential. The other end of my domino is probably Star Trek or something. Mug collections. Hummus. We can bond like that too. One domino end ancient, one end modern.