The Omphalos Cafe after fifteen years…..

  “The great stone that nearly closed the cleft from which the gases came was, to the Greeks, the center of Greece, and therefore the omphalos, as they called it, the umbilicus or very navel of the world.”—Will Durant, The Life Of Greece

  “Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos.”—Stephen Dedalus, A.K.A. young James Joyce, Ulysses 

  “What?” is usually the first word out of a person’s mouth after they’ve wheedled the name of my blog out of me. Then: “how do you spell that?”

  “O-M-P-H-A-L-O-S.”

  And finally: “What’s it mean?”

  This is where I begin stumbling over myself in search of words, and when my listener’s eyes start glazing over. 

  Fifteen years ago when I began posting I was more forthcoming with the fact I wrote a blog. It wasn’t long before it dawned on me that no one really cares. I get it, as I got it years ago: an obscure amateurish blog celebrating the sanctity and wondrous mystery of Life is pretty pale stuff when measured against the carnage splattered across The Walking Dead or The Sopranos. 

  But don’t think this is a whine or lament, because it isn’t. 

  The celebration continues, and if anything I’ve come to learn obscurity is liberation!

  It is freedom to explore, rehearse, and improvise. It’s an emancipation from mindless trolls and unthinking conformist motivated criticism. It affords the opportunity to have fun, and most vitally, to play! 

  What was that Alan Watts quote? Let me see… (the sound of digital rummaging…)

  Oh, here it is… :

  “There is simply no problem of life; it is completely purposeless play—exuberance which is its own end.”— Alan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology

  “Exuberance” and “purposeless play…” their own ends…

  I love that….!