Life vs. worthless fantasy

"I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood." (the artsy fellow from "Phantastes" by George McDonald)

The hero or anti-hero is a romantic who sets out to wander in a fantasy land on his 21st birthday. He sets out like any young punk, full of himself and ambitious to share his gifts with the world ... you know write a great novel, paint a great picture, save a few women. By the end of his journey he has finally learned that none of this was the way forward. "He that will be a hero, will barely be a man" so full of fanciful dreams of glory and fame there is no place to walk on the actual road touching his feet. I have been in that place. I have spent many afternoons with my head full of vain dreams of glory and fame. Far from actually thinking about the world that needs saving, my time is consumed by thoughts of me being the one to save it.

It has been only recently (within the last few years) that I am starting to understand the calling to be a doer of my work. To take what is within my path and carry it forward. To keep my hand to the plow and make sure the rows are straight. Not that this is always as obvious as I would like ... but I am attempting to live within my body and not just in my head.

Life must be lived to be meaningful. Thought and deed must go hand in hand. I have found that the artist and the intellectual and maybe the mystic, have a common struggle with these connections. Contemplating, thinking, feeling, are often a way of looking at life and it is hard to look and live at the same time.

There is a tendency to miss one for the other. We must always use our skills of thinking or feeling or contemplating to work with the stuff of reality. Otherwise we easily drift into worthless fantasy.

Old Poem

This one reminds me of chaotic jazz or "post-rock" in that it is mostly word noise that occasionally breaks into understandable melody only to fall away into noise again ... the noise makes the understandable bit more powerful and even the noise seems to carry with it real (though unpolished) possibility.

By flip up top of radar guns down,
fly up low and down.
meat cut and out of bourbon and flying solo,
fly and fall and flip and gallows swing,
if fifty by twenty-two were to fall again
we would love a break of two fit setters
find us a bird bright from burning sun
scorching birds and falling flies
flicking love again with an evil snail
slow moving and licking earth,
falling and falling down farther,
now in a hole
now a digger . .. will I arise,
for a ground opens up
swallows and falls and loves
cuts and draws and kills
when will this over it again I under it again.
and then my face will smile and crack with widening gaps,
finding another hole in my side
another missing part
I can't know anything and won't decide.
like a miserable bird on the wire,
falling and flying and losing my mind
mid down and fall sowing the seed of life.
over a multitude of yellow words I fade
and peal and no more decals
no more nose, no more eyes
empty hearts dripping solid liquid
hard blood and dust and flying squalls
no quail today, but there is plenty of foul.
what will you have. .. be it dirty chickens
or pigeons or rabbit, hare high and hare low.
ears hearing and dying for a taste,
tongue tasting and dying for a listen,
eyes longing to smell and nose wishing to see,
only the hands are happy with their seeing,
and smelling and hearing. hearing hands will find busy
works to live on
all alone in the dirty ground of nowhere.
falling in and flying out, when I will find a looking
where is my looking,
where is my looking.

Biology and Morality

There is the greatest need for a larger comprehensive view of reality. It seems that with the rise of scientific thought, perhaps especially when science turned toward history with Darwin and social evolution, has given way to accepting the way things happen in history and the way human beings are apt to behave as the main vehicle for deciding how they ought to behave.

I guess even the scientific method is being used to adduce morality and since we cannot properly observe mete-physical truth (meta being an important descriptor), we are left to simply catelogue all possible behaviors and their apparent health risks. What is more we do all this in relation to the individual, ignoring society, or in relation to the collective, ignoring the individual. But what if the whole idea is bunk ... what if scientists are simply asking questions they have no capacity to answer.

We must return and further the pre-Enlightment thought of the "Dark Ages" which sought to see reality in both its visible and invisible happenings. There really is such a thing as love however difficult it is to physically observe (sex can be an action informed by love, but until we understand the invisible, emotional, theological reality we will not properly act).

We cannot look to biology to find morality or we will find nothing ... or what has only started to breakdown into nothingness, the meaningless drive toward progress. Progress in what sense has always been the question. With heightened analysis of of biological health it has become a drive to produce longevity and pleasure ... but in all honestly both of those words need more definition than science can give.