Why do we ever tell ourselves that we see things clearly, or even, see things as they are? What kind of myth would we need to tell ourselves in order to believe that? What kind of story would we need to assume to allow ourselves that kind of sight. The sight of the fool, who believes he sees.
Aren't we all just tangled up in little spider webs we have spun; little silken webs of connection. We don't even see things at all, we just feel the tugs of the webs that we use to attach ourselves to the world around us, and the people that inhabit it. Close-to-invisible threads, that have us hooked and glued to the others in our emotional landscapes.
I watched little Sisyphus the spider, rebuild his web again, seemingly exactly like the last one. As fascinating and arbitrary as before. If for some reason, his web were destroyed every hour for the rest of his existence, I am certain he would do the same over and over and over again. And he would not think that the world were set against him, and he would not feel that the world was conspiring to make his life a misery.
I admire his lack of projection. There is no Murphy's Law. There is no luck, good or bad. The world is no more for us as it is against us. Even the negative stories, which can be much easier to pen than the happier ones, give us a feeling of being more than we are. I am no more than little Sisyphus. The world does not see me. The stars do not look down on me. There is no God in heaven shedding a tear at my nihilism.
Puppets and puppet masters, tangled in our strings, choking ourselves on our connectedness.
Monday, 12 May 2008
Sunday, 6 April 2008
The Lonely Nihilist
He jerked his arm up like a knee in response to a doctor's hammer
There he was with his arm outstretched,
the other arm counterbalancing his excitement, at his side.
His eyes were bulging out from behind their curtains,
his skin was verging on pale
with the adrenaline of speaking out in the midst of the vast congregate.
"can't you see: the emperor has no fucking clothes!?"
From his mouth, ushered forth words, like blessings and curses
arousing eachother in mid-flight
teasing eachother and feeding eachother
and as they struck and stuck to the ears of the flock
a wave of eyes eddied back to snare him
They all peeled around,
even the ones he could not see
the gazes from behind heads
and behind shoulders
anonymous in the crowd
made their burning presence felt.
One of the eyes suddenly became a mouth
and frothed forth
a bundle of shallow esoteric words
"Of course he has no fucking clothes!
Are you blind? Can't you see?
Either do we!!
Either do we!!
Look at us!
You fool!
and if you would stop being so fucking arrogant
with your hidden insights for a second
you'd see that you are fucking naked too!"
"How dare you spoil the parade!"
Humility swept over him like a rash
that no amount of hands could scratch
The mouth had disappeared back into the sea of eyes
The eyes had disappeared back into the sea of heads
But he felt more watched than ever
like a light were shining down on him
as if God had become real just for the purpose
of laughing at his ridiculous crime
his arrogant prophecy
he walked off, wishing his tail was more between his legs than it was
he was so very alone,
and there was no echo anymore making him feel any less lonely
he was just as redundant of meaning as everyone else
but he was the loser...he was alone.
he muttered into the distance
his silhouette decapitated with shame
and enforced humility
How dare you spoil the parade!
How dare you spoil the parade!
There he was with his arm outstretched,
the other arm counterbalancing his excitement, at his side.
His eyes were bulging out from behind their curtains,
his skin was verging on pale
with the adrenaline of speaking out in the midst of the vast congregate.
"can't you see: the emperor has no fucking clothes!?"
From his mouth, ushered forth words, like blessings and curses
arousing eachother in mid-flight
teasing eachother and feeding eachother
and as they struck and stuck to the ears of the flock
a wave of eyes eddied back to snare him
They all peeled around,
even the ones he could not see
the gazes from behind heads
and behind shoulders
anonymous in the crowd
made their burning presence felt.
One of the eyes suddenly became a mouth
and frothed forth
a bundle of shallow esoteric words
"Of course he has no fucking clothes!
Are you blind? Can't you see?
Either do we!!
Either do we!!
Look at us!
You fool!
and if you would stop being so fucking arrogant
with your hidden insights for a second
you'd see that you are fucking naked too!"
"How dare you spoil the parade!"
Humility swept over him like a rash
that no amount of hands could scratch
The mouth had disappeared back into the sea of eyes
The eyes had disappeared back into the sea of heads
But he felt more watched than ever
like a light were shining down on him
as if God had become real just for the purpose
of laughing at his ridiculous crime
his arrogant prophecy
he walked off, wishing his tail was more between his legs than it was
he was so very alone,
and there was no echo anymore making him feel any less lonely
he was just as redundant of meaning as everyone else
but he was the loser...he was alone.
he muttered into the distance
his silhouette decapitated with shame
and enforced humility
How dare you spoil the parade!
How dare you spoil the parade!
Wednesday, 2 April 2008
Jesus and the Secret Police
It wasn't just self-awareness. These thoughts, were the kind of half-born, half-aborted thoughts that dangled from my brain a lot of the time. These thoughts were the constant commentary of the internalised critical gaze. It is as if I have one of those imaginary friends from childhood, except that this imaginary friend is a wee bastard. He's the kind of friend you would ditch as soon as he wasn't looking, except, he was always looking. He was a half-breed. He was half clingy friend, and half secret police.
To be honest, it seemed as if I had normalised the presence of these ever watchful eyes, like the Christian normalises the ever-watchful eyes of the sweet Lord Jesus. It becomes so much part of your identity, that your behaviour is automatically policed and edited, lest you be caught with you pants down. On occasion you would have to be reminded that Jesus was watching, like some sort of divine Pinochet. It all came with the slogans and propaganda too.
"What would Jesus do?"
This would sometimes be interchanged with "your granny", as if your granny embodied the same behaviour-rectifying properties of the risen Lord. Either of these options would potentially leave one full of all sorts of shit.
In my policed-by-Jesus days, there was a superstitious belief that if you thought about something unholy or profane (most of these things deemed unholy were synonymous with natural functions or desires), a hidden porthole to the underworld would open up, and you would forever be ruled by the power of your evil desires vis-a-vis the anti-Christ with his hoard of demons.
And here I am wondering what life looks like outside of the ever-watchful gaze.
To be honest, it seemed as if I had normalised the presence of these ever watchful eyes, like the Christian normalises the ever-watchful eyes of the sweet Lord Jesus. It becomes so much part of your identity, that your behaviour is automatically policed and edited, lest you be caught with you pants down. On occasion you would have to be reminded that Jesus was watching, like some sort of divine Pinochet. It all came with the slogans and propaganda too.
"What would Jesus do?"
This would sometimes be interchanged with "your granny", as if your granny embodied the same behaviour-rectifying properties of the risen Lord. Either of these options would potentially leave one full of all sorts of shit.
In my policed-by-Jesus days, there was a superstitious belief that if you thought about something unholy or profane (most of these things deemed unholy were synonymous with natural functions or desires), a hidden porthole to the underworld would open up, and you would forever be ruled by the power of your evil desires vis-a-vis the anti-Christ with his hoard of demons.
And here I am wondering what life looks like outside of the ever-watchful gaze.
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Gods of the Mountains
What do you do when you feel that there is nothing you can do? What do you do, when you feel completely without foothold in the world, feeling helpless and entirely arbitrary in the lap of the gods? The gods of the mountains who send the storms, the floods, the droughts, the lava
Cause and effect. Conjure up a cause, no matter how convoluted: it is better to feel like you have some control after-all, rather than be an arbitrary play-thing of Mother Nature. We create our own list of sins and crimes, that we believe elicited the events, and for the child this could be mother's tears, or daddy's anger.
We convince ourselves of the direct connection between the crime and the reciprocal punishment; the cause and the effect. So convinced, that we believe this is Reality, that this is the Truth. But, there is a con in the act of being convinced; and we lose something in the exchange. The exchange of the messy, mysterious truth, for the simple, reassuring Truth.
Scapegoat, or self-sacrifice? We will either choose to blame ourselves for the uncontrollable familial events, or find someone else to blame, like the inadequate mother, or the critical father. Any story and ritual, just to feel like we have a modicum of control.
All these rituals are kept in tact by the superstition. The superstition is reinforced by a story. The story tells us, that we are not arbitrary, and that we mean something. In fact, the story tells us we mean everything. The story we tell, reminds us that we are at the centre of a universe that is spinning uncontrollably around us, that gravitates ominously around us. Geocentric self-importance. A Ptolemaic universe, where we are the earth, around which the bodies of the heavens revolve. We conjure up a story of connectedness that gives us a place and role, and a purpose. We convince ourselves. It is better after all, in the absence of understanding what the hell is going on, to be convinced of something. Isn't it!?
All that is left now, is maintenance, keep it going. Like a spinning plate on a stick, or a hypnotised hamster in an exercise wheel, entranced by the ritual; a priest hooked on the smell of the incense. We become addicted to our rituals. We depend on them for stability in our worlds. These stories and rituals of thought, feeling, and behaviour, can stay with us far into adulthood. In someways, there is an adulthood that can only truly exist once we have broken the tablets and the commandments. These are the very things that prevent us becoming the fullest version of ourselves, free from the puppet strings of co-dependency; free from the illusory cords of control.
For the co-dependent, it can seem that every word or deed has some sort of metaphysical consequence. A foot out of place, might upset the fabric of the universe, and all hell would break loose. So they learn to edit out any potentially offending behaviour, any word that may be misunderstood, behaviour that might be misinterpreted, or action that might be punishable or cause anger; policing themselves out of true being and freedom.
Guessing, like a detective on the trail of a murder that has yet to happen, developing a sense of what might happen, what people might be feeling, might be thinking. Reading the future in the tea-leaves of other's gestures, and expressions.
And so, if it is the priest who maintains the status quo, and if this is the case in our inner life, it is vital to invoke the prophet to upset the status quo of sacrifices, rituals and incantations. However, we are both the priest and the prophet, and we wrote the story that gives them both meaning.
The prophet comes to untie the invisible knots that we used to connect ourselves to the world around us. To loosen the ties that bind us, yet let us feel at least a little bit more in control. Controls, which we can be at the mercy of, like puppets on strings, yet, can also use to manipulate the world around us.
We must learn to let go.
This is of course terrifying. It is terrifying because you will no longer be in the centre of your system, and because you will be cut adrift, and because you will have to learn who you truly are while you are not busy being-for-others. We have to face up to the narcissistic nature of our thinking and feeling. We will no longer be able to blame everyone else for our feelings. We will no longer be able to play victim.
And so, we will face the greatest amount of inner resistance to this change, to the overthrow of the old system, the old regime, the old ways and laws. The ego will try to suppress the revolutionary movement; silencing it, giving it no room to express its desires for something else. The crackdown could lead to overwhelming inner conflict, or depressions.
There is no question, it is a long road, and psychically we may not survive the journey, but there is something that looks more like freedom at the end of it. For some, that freedom is far too terrifying, and so they will continue to police themselves, and continue to embrace the propaganda of the state. They will continue to pledge their allegiance, and maintain their devotion to the old gods of the mountains, at the expense of their own personal liberation.
Cause and effect. Conjure up a cause, no matter how convoluted: it is better to feel like you have some control after-all, rather than be an arbitrary play-thing of Mother Nature. We create our own list of sins and crimes, that we believe elicited the events, and for the child this could be mother's tears, or daddy's anger.
We convince ourselves of the direct connection between the crime and the reciprocal punishment; the cause and the effect. So convinced, that we believe this is Reality, that this is the Truth. But, there is a con in the act of being convinced; and we lose something in the exchange. The exchange of the messy, mysterious truth, for the simple, reassuring Truth.
Scapegoat, or self-sacrifice? We will either choose to blame ourselves for the uncontrollable familial events, or find someone else to blame, like the inadequate mother, or the critical father. Any story and ritual, just to feel like we have a modicum of control.
All these rituals are kept in tact by the superstition. The superstition is reinforced by a story. The story tells us, that we are not arbitrary, and that we mean something. In fact, the story tells us we mean everything. The story we tell, reminds us that we are at the centre of a universe that is spinning uncontrollably around us, that gravitates ominously around us. Geocentric self-importance. A Ptolemaic universe, where we are the earth, around which the bodies of the heavens revolve. We conjure up a story of connectedness that gives us a place and role, and a purpose. We convince ourselves. It is better after all, in the absence of understanding what the hell is going on, to be convinced of something. Isn't it!?
All that is left now, is maintenance, keep it going. Like a spinning plate on a stick, or a hypnotised hamster in an exercise wheel, entranced by the ritual; a priest hooked on the smell of the incense. We become addicted to our rituals. We depend on them for stability in our worlds. These stories and rituals of thought, feeling, and behaviour, can stay with us far into adulthood. In someways, there is an adulthood that can only truly exist once we have broken the tablets and the commandments. These are the very things that prevent us becoming the fullest version of ourselves, free from the puppet strings of co-dependency; free from the illusory cords of control.
For the co-dependent, it can seem that every word or deed has some sort of metaphysical consequence. A foot out of place, might upset the fabric of the universe, and all hell would break loose. So they learn to edit out any potentially offending behaviour, any word that may be misunderstood, behaviour that might be misinterpreted, or action that might be punishable or cause anger; policing themselves out of true being and freedom.
Guessing, like a detective on the trail of a murder that has yet to happen, developing a sense of what might happen, what people might be feeling, might be thinking. Reading the future in the tea-leaves of other's gestures, and expressions.
And so, if it is the priest who maintains the status quo, and if this is the case in our inner life, it is vital to invoke the prophet to upset the status quo of sacrifices, rituals and incantations. However, we are both the priest and the prophet, and we wrote the story that gives them both meaning.
The prophet comes to untie the invisible knots that we used to connect ourselves to the world around us. To loosen the ties that bind us, yet let us feel at least a little bit more in control. Controls, which we can be at the mercy of, like puppets on strings, yet, can also use to manipulate the world around us.
We must learn to let go.
This is of course terrifying. It is terrifying because you will no longer be in the centre of your system, and because you will be cut adrift, and because you will have to learn who you truly are while you are not busy being-for-others. We have to face up to the narcissistic nature of our thinking and feeling. We will no longer be able to blame everyone else for our feelings. We will no longer be able to play victim.
And so, we will face the greatest amount of inner resistance to this change, to the overthrow of the old system, the old regime, the old ways and laws. The ego will try to suppress the revolutionary movement; silencing it, giving it no room to express its desires for something else. The crackdown could lead to overwhelming inner conflict, or depressions.
There is no question, it is a long road, and psychically we may not survive the journey, but there is something that looks more like freedom at the end of it. For some, that freedom is far too terrifying, and so they will continue to police themselves, and continue to embrace the propaganda of the state. They will continue to pledge their allegiance, and maintain their devotion to the old gods of the mountains, at the expense of their own personal liberation.
Friday, 28 March 2008
Prayers from the Hinterland
...reaching toward…striving toward
...crawling-on-our-bellies-with-nails-dug-into-the-ground toward
...crawling-on-our-bellies-with-nails-dug-into-the-ground toward
We chase after the meaning of all of this like we chase after eternal life; the fruit from the tree that gives us knowledge, some divine secret that holds it all together, holds us together in our un-hinged-ness, but we are chasing after butterflies. The wings of these things are far too fragile, as if they were creatures made for another place, another far more tender world. We steal the breath out of the lungs of the thing we love, we cling to life and we lose it. The very act of love becomes a strangle hold. Like caging birds of paradise for the beauty of their colours, but their pearlescent plumage loses all its essence, its soul destroyed by captivity.
We touch the butterfly’s wings and it can never fly again.
We touch the butterfly’s wings and it can never fly again.
…and the truth shall set you free…the truth shall set you free...
Why do we cling so tightly? It is that deepest of human insecurities, that fears the loss of love, the loss of the good, deeply superstitious that life is set against us. It is as if we were knit together with a longing for a love that could not be satisfied in this harsh world, a love without fear, a love that does not ask us to edit ourselves into the fragile artificiality of deserving. Starving for a love that could hold us in the darkest night of the soul and ask for nothing in return, and that would keep on forgiving every insecure cruelty, time after time again. We are a starving people, we have a hunger that cannot be sated, and so when we see the flicker of its wings we chase it to its demise.
…here is the answer to the riddle…you must lose life in order to find it.
For most of us, to ask for anything more than a puncturing of the numbness, for all too short a moment, is to ask far too much. For us, to ask for life in all its fullness is a luxury beyond the knit of our lives. We make do with pick pocketing pennies from the pockets of life; crumbs off the table. We steal, for life does not surrender itself easily for us to sate ourselves.
These stolen morsels; they are not what we need. We need water, but we drink wine. We need love, but instead we fuck. We need to follow our desires, but instead we lose ourselves in wanting. These are the diuretics of the soul. We appease ourselves with pitifully poor substitutes; little titillations that make us feel, something like ‘alive’, for a brief fragile tragic moment. Hooked and empty, hooked and empty.
…all we like children have uttered vows…“I will never let this happen to me again”…
We long to re-enact a drama where we have power, where we have an ounce of control over our own destinies. We would do anything, pay for any delusion, and exchange anything for the fantasy of control. Just a little morsel of control over my own feelings, or the feelings of another. We let go of any desire to have real power over our worlds, but we appease ourselves with these little unrealities, these twisted little delusions.
We long to re-enact a drama where we have power, where we have an ounce of control over our own destinies. We would do anything, pay for any delusion, and exchange anything for the fantasy of control. Just a little morsel of control over my own feelings, or the feelings of another. We let go of any desire to have real power over our worlds, but we appease ourselves with these little unrealities, these twisted little delusions.
…suffer the little children, for they have suffered enough…
What is exchanged in these interactions is rarely what is literally exchanged. The currency changing hands is a sleight of hand that hides the more esoteric exchange. Monies become metaphors. With this currency we buy our delusions, secreted within the masquerade; we step on stage, we sell ourselves to have a taste of this control. This is the poison, this is the addiction.
Hooked on reliving the past, finding safety in the repetition; a paradoxical safety. Safety in the most dangerous of worlds; reliving and re-enacting the shortest of tragedies. Tragic stories; painful histories scraped into the walls of our heart. The prisoner within engraves a story on the walls, desperately hoping the words bleed through into the world of the appearances and apparitions. Bleeding like prayers.
Will the truth set you free, will the truth set us free, will the truth set me free? We are waiting for the miracle. The miracle of the one whose very touch resonates at the core; an intimacy that melts our defences, reminds us that we are loveable for no other reason than because we are.
We are longing, we are hungry; longing for the prophet to come. The prophet who sees through the walls of our identity, beyond what we allow the world to see. The one who sees the truth of the hidden self, behind who I say that I am. The hidden self with the secret name. A secret name hidden in a secret place that no one will utter. These are the names on the white stones, the names that do not bind us, or reduce us. These names speak of everything that we are, all the things we were but were afraid to live: a name like thunder that decimates the defences we try to hold up with feigned strength.
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