Tuesday, November 27, 2007

To Himself

Everyhting's converging: the classes that consistently, with a powerful rising undercurrent, point to the answer: the meaning of life, the source of joy, the fountain of youth, the Elixir of Life, the Holy Grail. The fiction books plucked from bargain bins at random, from 1920s Germany, from 1970s India, from the timeless mush-world of Colombia, from France sometime after the advent of railroads, from non-fiction piles all also point at it. In different ways to be sure, but each adds their line, their note, their trill in the chorus of exaltation. The friendships are all embrouled in it: intellectuals falling into obsession about one concept or another, about one thinker or another, others finding the practice which enlightens in more mundane concerns, in shopping, in caring, in beers, in wiping old asses. I see it now in the importation of old sanskrit or pali terms: dharma, sunyata, dhukka, karuna, etc. They cluster and swirl together, a strange loop, an attractor, haording all these other ephemera to them. The girl is there too: images in my mind, places, feelings of approach, of sinking, of growing, of expangind. Yes, even the shaken legs, the shivering tears all point to it. A middle way. The stinking technocracies of planes, the false smiles of modern psychopomps, the half-sleep nights, the sense of dissolution of habitual patterns--but dissolution without destruction, without distraction. Awful chamber music points to it; grinding walls of noise point to it; piccolo solos weaving through Pan's layrinth point to it; the laughing immortals point to it; the terar-jerker stride pianos point to it. My conversatonal cup is overflowing at those on the same level as me; it is also beginning to erupt up and down. Counselling sessions are dharma; they point to it. Sobbing fits are dhukka--they point to it. Half-sleep, runination, systems breaking and regrouping all point to it. My lack of paragraph breaks points to it. Strangest of all, elemental winter weather points to it: the barren outsides and the fertile insides; but also the intimation that the inside will rot and grow diseased unless they are aired out.

Hold on to this moment. But never forget to add wings to the "soul"; never forget to plunge into reality and drown your over-dry head. Things will go down from this moment; the can't help but go down. The call-note of aporia can only be sustained for a short while.

Consider: "Honesty is the best policy. But sometimes policy is not the best policy."

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey,
I thought you might be interested in listening to an Iranian artist who, in my opinion, has taken a new aproach to classical poetry...he uses words from Hafiz, Saadi etc.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6rgt5hzMvCI&feature=related

5:16 AM  

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