Through a glass, darkly,
We too quickly understand;
Lightning blames the sand.
[For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. ~ 1 Corinthians, 13; 12]
****
Light at the Gates:
bring Beauty,
that it may feed
the flames of Desire.
*
Good Samhain⚡️
Go to come back.
Again and again,
through the Gates.
Pack light:
the weight of Conscience
is limitless.
Oh, snowflake, how unique your delicate heart
That glistens in communal blizzards
Of parched intellect
Whose crystalline shards
And feathered spaces
Shape imperfect synecdoches
And bring your frozen deserts
Into sharp relief against the dust
Of desiccated humours
And confusion of
Unfathomable hatred, until
All is powder; like and like
Steal nuance and lay waste
To inconvenient subtleties
On platforms, uniform, attend,
As granular as common sand
And no one is that special
In the end.
We are, each, the embodiment of the human condition. Peoples to a person, unique and the same, our imperatives and characteristics overlapping and bumping into each other, relative and subject to a million and one contexts. We hardly know ourselves, even as we presume to categorise others and seek to negate or reshape them to fit our fleeting comfort.
We cherry-pick ‘n mix micro and macro for argument’s sake and we treat them as isolated systems when it comes to, well, systems. We confuse and conflate effects and correlations, assigning their causes according to tribal instincts, narrow, prescriptive framing and emotional whim. And yet how easily we forget that one thing leads to another. And not just the things we chose to pay attention to.
How we fuss. We scrutinise the heart out of each other, fixing on binary reductions of acceptability or threat. We sacrifice nuance and complexity to distortion and banality. We muddle and manipulate moral equivalence and use whataboutery as the first line of defence and conflate the superficial or irrelevant with the most profound. We take simple things and turn them into complex nightmares and get indignant or complacent when extra care and attention is an obvious requirement. We tie ourselves in neurotic knots and project, as though anything and everything might bring the human world to its knees at any moment and then we saunter, blithely on, as though we were either helpless or invincible.
We’re still fighting for universal respect for and application of human rights; still protesting for socio-economic justice and basic civil equalities. We’re still ascribing sub-human status, according to paranoia and political fancy; still elevating dross to celebrity; still coveting what we think exists over our neighbour’s fence. We’re still monopolising and squandering the resources of our one, beautiful planet; still arguing about whose God is greatest… And over and over we produce ego-riven conflicts and make wars in the name of Peace. We are already on our knees.
We think we see things as they really are but, really, we’re only seeing things as we are, whether we are aware of little more than events and selected details or transfixed by the enormity of the bigger picture. We don’t know when to speak up and when to mind our own business. We don’t recognise what we should and need to control or what we are allowing to have control over us. We don’t discriminate appropriately or effectively; we can’t discern wish from truth nor potential from reality. Some of us think it simpler to just try to control everything and everyone while others simply don’t care and others still haven’t even noticed.
And how we faff. We constantly tinker around the edges of problems, addressing the latest symptoms and ignoring their quite evident causes. This doesn’t just allow old symptoms to fester and their causes to become downgraded, over time, to ‘unfortunate’ but it also adds a whole other level of new causes. We seem hell-bent on rose-tinted nostalgia but we refuse to actively retrace our steps. We would rather pretend that we are merely adapting to forces beyond our control than reaping the consequences of so much that should have been avoided.
We don’t really look at the roots and common threads of our problems; not deeply; not wholly. We glimpse with darting, panicked eyes, wring our hands and do what we can with the skim. Just getting through the day. Lurching with our fingers crossed. But the skim has to go somewhere: it becomes another blanket burden to Society, to add to the already suffocating layers and it creates further opportunities for ideological and financial exploitation. Every burden provides another’s comfort blanket. It isn’t ethical or sustainable.
We live under a constant process of inadequate triage. Tinkering and skimming are default management settings. Like bailing out a distressed boat that was never really seaworthy. There is viable land and most of us have spotted it but the crew prefer that we keep bailing, even as the holes increase and the weather worsens. The crew is drunk on the short-term, shortsighted power of profitable crises. The officers and their minions tell us that that land over there is hostile and to bail faster, lest we run aground the only boat available for that long-promised rising tide to lift.
Between us, we have managed to undermine the subtle and make a virtue out of the dross. We’ve managed to fragment history and turn it into a blueprint for all manner of psychopathic algorithms and effectively reduced Imagination, Reason and Empathy to a small, closed circuit.
We are gullible sponges and cynical repellents, by context, by turn, susceptible to wish and self-fulfilling prophecy. We are sands, easily shifted; blades of grass, bending upon a fixed point. And as entrenched as granite.
[November 8, 2015 (with slight editing)]
~*~
Fear creates a feast
to suit the taste
of each invited guest
that takes a seat
and makes request,
to fill the belly of a beast.
We are what we eat.
[February 2016]
Desire knows sacrifice
Victory understands
Thy Will be done
To thine own kingdom, come
⚡️
Blessings of Lughnasadh xXx
Life is too short
to get caught up
in dragging it out;
too short
to get caught
in its wake.
We’re all winging it.
Coursing through Life
Nature’s force
Busy being
Busy being
Nature’s force
Coursing through Life
Progress ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Let there be many windows in your soul
That all the glory of the universe
May beautify it. Not the narrow pane
Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays
That shine from countless sources. Tear away
The blinds of superstition; let the light
Pour through fair windows broad as truth itself
And high as God.
Why should the spirit peer
Through some priest-curtained orifice, and grope
Along dim corridors of doubt, when all
The splendour from unfathomed seas of space
Might bathe it with their golden waves of love?
Sweep up the debris of decaying faiths,
Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out beliefs,
And throw your soul wide open to the light
Of reason and of knowledge. Tune your ear
To all the wordless music of the stars,
And to the voice of nature, and your heart
Shall turn to truth and goodness, as the plant
Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands
Reach down to help you from their peace-crowned heights,
And all the forces of the firmament
Shall fortify your strength. Be not afraid
To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.
*
Merry Solstice xXx 🌻
Light isn’t all soft love and fluff.
It also pierces, sears and blinds,
To better find the darkest stuff,
The sharper to define.
When fear and hope and wrong and right
Turn inside out, it brokers bright
And what is stirred is why it fights
To air that which it brings to Light.
It shines with omnifarious gaze
That doesn’t favour where it bides
And draws reflection to its rays
From what begins inside.
Light isn’t only safe and kind.
Its ruthless microscopic eye
Is fixed to game the heart and mind
Of what it seeks to purify.
Shadow-shaker, mischief-maker:
Structured play, its grey delight.
Teaser, tempter, teacher, faker:
Doubt and faith give way to sight.
Silver linings; golden threads;
Black light; white night, sharp and hazy.
Tricksy slick to honest wed:
It’s madness but it isn’t crazy.
notion
motion why
emotion
think what
now make
how
got shape
[punctuate as you will]
juxtaposed 