Our plight is craving perfection
in an imperfect world:
imperfectly perceived,
imperfectly performed,
imperfectly programmed.
To have a mind that can imagine perfection,
but never attain it
creates a special hell vehicle.
I've seen in ordinary eyes a special twinkling glow. In rough and sinewy muscle I've seen a grace in throe. From rotund torsos, I have seen a lithesome prance or strut. I've seen a thing called character, in schnozzes that kink or jut. If beauty below the surface, it finds you splendor-blind. Then defect 's not in the object but in the viewer's mind.
Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.
Walt Whitman, “miracles”
The American contempt for statues and ceremonies, the boundless impatience for restraint…
Walt whitman, “Song of the Broad-axe”
I exist as I am, that is enough. If no other in the world would be aware I sit content. And if each and all be aware I sit content.
walt whitman, “Song of myself”
I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.
walt whitman, “song of myself”
If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred.
Walt whitman, “i sing the body electric”
NOTES: Numerous editions exist between the 1855 and 1892 (deathbed) edition. It’s available for free on Project Gutenberg at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322
A construction worker once told me -
for a building to last -
depends not so much on
its materials,
nor even on its foundations,
but rather on the building being
in balanced strain throughout.
A building stays up when its
parts press into each other firmly,
or pull at each other strongly,
but never too out of balance.
This web of unseen forces
allows the building stand solid
against any huffing, or puffing,
the world might throw its way.
A democratic society works the same.
It must have an establishment.
It must have a counterculture.
And these two elements must
constantly pull at each other
or mash into each other:
tension & compression,
compression & tension,
tug-of-war & sumo.
If one side is unopposed, or too weak,
the state will crumble into some kind of
authoritarianism by another name.
Destroy your enemies at your own peril.
What will be your master,
and what will be your slave?
Will you court disaster
to be perceived as brave?
Will you call your pastor
to hide that which you crave,
or be your own ringmaster
and own how you behave?
And will you choose virtue,
or live in fear of vice?
Will you choose to be true,
or default to being nice?
And when there's much ado
will you jet their paradise?
Or just defer your view,
as act some men and mice?
Bury the ordinary,
but make sure to
chop it out at the roots.
Nothing grows back more tenaciously
than the commonplace or the quotidian.
Sometimes what grows
back from those roots
looks entirely different,
but it's still mundane.
It has the same feel,
even when it has a
very different look.
Kill it.
Murder it.
Chop it up.
Bury it,
and let it die the death
of the forgotten.
Some speculate about
the edge of the universe,
and what exists beyond.
But that edge - if it exists -
is beyond another edge:
the farthest points
from which we can see light.
In a tower
on a mountain,
there's still an edge
of our eyesight --
like the others,
it's an edgeless edge,
signifying nothing
but our own limitations.
We are builders
of edgeless edges,
fashioning boundaries
that don't bound anything,
but by which we are bound.
crack the tablets: smash & shatter them until they flutter into dust, dust that's wisped into eddies and sparkles in the creek bed and is flushed out to sea and is but a glittery trace of what they once were.
ideas accelerate to the surface like air bubbles from whence they came, i cannot say they passed up from below the lit sea from the darkness maybe, like air bubbles, they follow a mostly straight path, but i cannot say for certain what happens below the light i catch only the vapor that drifts up out of the popping bubbles and it must be gathered quickly before it spreads on the wind, becoming lukewarm nothing... damn increasing entropy!
Nothing is straightforward,
or simple.
Everything is a messy mix
of shades
blended in swirling clouds—
chaos clouds.
Those who can redraw the world
with sharp, angular boundaries
are the masters of self-deception:
for all deception is self-deception.
the !n(tro)verted yogi 