l i f e
locomotive god
contributions
christopher@30seconds.org
Applause...
Tear down the walls, eh. Kind of goes with my thoughts on being genuine. But then why do I love ambiguity so much? Is it because I'm being genuine, just in a way most of those around me can't understand? I'm revealing what I feel in veils containing the opacity of English stained glass. One can almost make out a figure behind there...yeah.
But I must pay attention to my heart. Beating hard within my chest. Pounding relentless, sometimes I damn it to hell and other times it lulls me to sleep like the tick of a fine watch. The heart is a powerful thing, and I'm not talking about shear muscle, will, or any of that mess. I mean the stuff on which my culture is based on. Now, my culture is Western. And I guess when I say that I mean my myth is Western. Culture is myth to me and the other way around. My roots are down there with Dante, Apulieus, Plato. With the Greeks, Romans, and Norse. With the tobacco farmers, tough men, gaudy places, and catfish hunters. So many Gods crammed into my head at such an early age whether I knew it or not. But whether I knew it or not I was developing appreciation for the heart. For the aesthetic. For that moment critical in all myth and culture and so, so terribly critical in all our hearts when we step back from the unexpectedly new, the surprise, the horrid, with a gasp of air pulled deep into our breast. From that moment on we are never the same again. Primordial moments are these.
They don't happen often, but often enough. Some say this is where soul is given voice and where psyche resides. In these moments.
I don't doubt. Take a look a children. They are happy rich, poor, cold, hungry, inventing games and song to chase away the monsters that live under the bed, in the closet. Those monters really live in the child's soul, but there is simply no repression-the child is afraid-and usually very vocal about it.
The song isn't the important part here, but rather what it represents...faith. The child believes the song will scare away monsters and so it does. At some point we (ourselves as children) stop believing in our own souls and begin to listen to others who are older, wiser, who tell us things can't be illogical, monsters don't, can't possibly exist.
And we do stop, but we are still very afraid. We repress our soul and with it our faith. With that loss crumbles our sercurity, and finally the trust we all had as children fades away and we are left to ask
"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
and by opposing end them?"
What remains when all perishes is the face of things as they are. When there is nowhere to turn, turn back to the face before you, face the world...
goodnight 1.8.98
