To address the concept of freedom, one asks oneself what is the attitude one adopts to question “the concept of freedom.”

Tonight, the one who addresses the question is the one who writes the words, thinking in broader scopes outside of one’s inner circle yet operating within one’s circle of influence.

One is.

Yet, one is not.

There is no “one” that exists outside of space and time, separate from the universe.

One chooses, therefore, to write upon subjects of personal interest to answer the question, “Who am I in this moment that constitutes who I was and who I was not a moment before?”

What are decisions I make or made that move me out of one swimming lane and into another?

What are the masks, the walls, the false identities that divide the bigger concept of me seen by myself in a mirror and seen by those sets of states of energy that clearly are not me within the timeframe of seconds/months/decades?

To be sure, a breath from another person can be inhaled by me — to whom do the molecules “belong”?

Why would someone be nice to me for no other reason than to share a moment when two male whitetail deer should be walking closeby, eating apples under a line of apple trees near the creek the same as any other dusk in the past few weeks?

I am not a complex person.  I do not compose symphonies or design planetary socioeconomic systems from scratch.

I am a person who loves the person who has been a constant part of his life for 40 years but who loves a lot of other people, too.

I test social situations, then report what I observe.

I am what some people call devious.

I am helpful, courteous, kind, cheerful, thrifty and friendly but not always obedient, trustworthy, loyal, brave, clean and reverent.

I listen in order to learn.

If people don’t mind me being devious, then I don’t mind using our connections and our friendships for good stories.

There are many new characters to introduce to our main story and I have the better part of this week to get them written down, their lives painted on this canvas for posterity, giving them a place in our Martian colony, our Moon base and our Earth support network.

Some of them coincide with the lives of people I’ve met, some people more like acquaintances I’ve bumped into and other people I’ve gotten to know better than I know myself.

I remind myself in this blog entry that writing about people I know, putting their words and actions into my thoughts so I can imagine what they’ll do in imaginary situations is not the same as my living their lives, although it might be.

I have to see how much I can stretch my imagination and how much I choose to look at the limits I’ve placed on my thoughts and actions, deciding which limits were set arbitrarily at one point in my life and no longer apply.

Is it “art” above all else, including my subcultural expectations?

What am I doing here in this blog?

As a person fully aware of his surroundings, what am I willing to say is background noise and ignore?  What of the background noise is worth my attention?  What is in my face that is masking something more important?  What needs to be in my face that isn’t?

These questions set my thought patterns in motion for this week’s stories.

The answers may or may not involve me, but they will certainly involve the characters who appear in future blog entries.

Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we blast off toward new horizons!