Epistles

Presume not with mind alone to scan,
For the world is grasped with guided hand,
With action is the final layer unpeeled,
Thus, the glory of the world revealed.

Presume not the I of the self to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man,
By all is the mark of each subject sealed,
This, the glory of the self revealed.

Wear not then the veil of ascetic retreat
Obscuring the self and world that you seek,
Engage though action with all who surround,
Therein does the glory of the truth abound.

When your science teacher smashed a frozen rose with a hammer, did you warm the petals to bring them back to life?

No, i put my teacher's head in a deep freeze, and returned days later to see if the hammer had the same effect. It did. I was called up to see the head, who had himself almost succumbed to the same fate at the hands of another hammer. The head had that studied stern look about him, all the more intimidating because of the way he had been mounted, on a pole six feet high. However, my recalcitrance unsettled him. And so he referred me to the deputy head, who had been similarly seperated from his still pining torso, except that he wore a ten gallon hat that would have done justice to the hardest meanest gun slinger in the west. You know the type. The kind that only have to pitch their shadow into a mid-western saloon, for a silence to then descend, so that only the sound of the wind and the tumbleweed blowing on the plains would disturb the creaking of the floorboads beneath the quivering knees of the lilly livered jaundiced drunks that had assembled in the hope of being spotted by a casting director in search of a genuine cowboy who had sunk his spirit in bottle after bottle ... and all because of roses that not only had been returned by the objects of their unrequited love, but had been returned in pieces, having been frozen and then smashed to smithereens. I mean for gods sake. That's enough to turn anyone to drink.

Isn't it Ironic

Do you remember that song by Alanis Morissette? ''Isn’t it Ironic'', she whines. Isn’t it ironic when you have ten thousand spoons but all you need is a knife. No Alanis, no, that’s just plain stupid, or at best incompetent. Isn’t it ironic, she moans, when you’re stuck in a traffic jam and you're already late. No Alanis. That’s not ironic. That’s unlucky. Of course, if you were stuck in a traffic jam on your way to a town planning meeting to discuss the alarming increase in congestion on the roads .. that would be ironic.

Alanis is a Canadian and naturalized American. I don’t mean to generalize, but Americans don’t seem to get irony. By the way, I’ve just been guilty of something that, as a rule, I abhor; the habit that people have of saying “I don’t mean to be X”, and then proceed to be exactly that, X. As if somehow, saying “I don’t mean to be X” gives them the license to be X. Like, “I don’t mean to be pedantic, but do you realize that strictly speaking, your use of the term ‘ironic’ is not really warranted in the circumstances”. Anyway, where was I. Yes, Americans don’t really seem to get irony. Irony is somehow predicated on the incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs. And so a well developed sense of irony seems to go hand in hand with an ability to step outside of yourself and see yourself as others do. It’s something that doesn’t come naturally to the American psyche. After all, look at the way they dress.

But enough xenophobic nonsense. This piece was inspired by an irony so stark and grotesque that it deserves exhibiting in a freakshow of the politically deviant. I am of course talking about Tony Blair's new role as Middle East peace envoy. The White House have been the prime movers behind this extraordinary appointment. Well, we can certainly agree that the American political elite are mired in a sollipsistic failure to empathise, to see themselves as others see them. There are plenty of tragi-comic exhibits testifying to that.

That because this world is as it is, does not mean it need necessarily be.

He sipped some wine,
Closed his eyes,
Pursed his lips,
And pronounced on the flavours,
The soil and the vine.
Then soliciting praise
He declared to the host
“But then I am just a philistine”
To which fellow fallen jowls acquiesced:
“An untrained palate, and yet so refined!”

So the wine passed their preening lips
That pressed the flesh
That plumped up his ego,
So that he held forth
When the conversation turned
To matters of weight;
Of the hurricane’s havoc
In a southern US state.

But he supped only from the cup he’d been given;
Platitudes dribbled from his mouth:
“It’s a tragedy”,
“But then maybe fate decrees”,
“It was meant to be”.

“I see”, said I,
Your half closed eyes,
Your fatalistic call to inaction.
Your soporific words,
The paralysing metre
Of your Panglossian dirge
That leaves your conscience undisturbed.

But his calloused brain,
Abraded, blanched and coarse of grain,
Refused to comprehend,
That because this world is as it is
Does not mean it need necessarily be.

My duty to my self, My duty to you

Those qualities that distinguish me from you,
The I that is by definition all that is not you,
Exists because of you.

You who may be but a fleeting encounter,
Or a significant other.
You, who imprint your self upon the world,
As the world imprints itself upon you,
Each shaping the other.
The very same world that shapes
And is shaped by my self.
You, who realize my self
As I realize your self.

Is not then my duty to my self -
the imperative of self preservation -
On a continuum with my duty to you.

Fuzzy Time

The older I get, the fuzzier time becomes.
I think it’s a self defence mechanism.