Elsewhere 3

Wind blows

Outside it’s warm
Inside it’s cold

There is no excuse for an uninformed electorate. We are all responsible for the direction the nation takes. Despite the dark horrors of our collective past, we absolutely must confront the future with unfettered focus, will, and a desire for genuine change. We need not repeat the past, but this requires deep and profound work: on ourselves and on our social institutions. Striving for money is not good enough. Avoiding society is not good enough. We are society.

Gods birth the world, and these worlds birth gods. They are one that the same, beauteous – righteous – captive

A metaverse

I rather enjoy upstate New York.
It’s nothing like downstate New York.
Downstate you open your mouth
And it tastes like a battery.
It tastes like you’re sucking on a battery.
It gets so you don’t notice it.
I love New York.
But I hate New York.
Nothing is simple.
I’m not a battery.

The human race is not one people. Neither are we even one species really, though it appears that way and it is politically and socially expedient to represent it as such. Difference is celebrated to a point, but ultimately “we must pull together.” That “pulling together” is called the “nation.” But must we? It is exceedingly naïve and flattering (thus widely accepted) to think we are in league with so many billions of others. And surely we are one mind, but subtly and only when we have worked toward that recognition. Knowing one language isn’t enough. Turning oneself off from the world outside one’s walls, one’s borders, one’s routine… is not enough. Also (and this is important) we are as a people a multitude of unique worlds, and even within families there is a great variety that escapes the conventional definitions of scholastic biology. And none of this means our principles of egalitarianism should falter or be set aside by some kind of draconian fascism or will toward self-determination at all costs. Rather, these extreme differences render such egalitarian principles all the more important, for we need one another to achieve even the simplest ends. This need is the source of the modern world’s great, deep, ruining angst and paranoia. Very few people today could survive alone without the trappings of the hive-like society that bore us. And so we crave an acceptance we will never receive from outside sources: a total desire to be cradled by billions. This can be replaced by an internal light and nothing else. No God can do this for you, and no political leader. You are totally alone.

And that makes you powerful.

The great sage does nothing. He sits facing forward, creating thus the whole world. He is engaged and not engaged. Language amuses him. All is easy because he desires nothing. And nothing obliges.

Equality is an impossible goal worth seeking always. Our striving for it is called “civilization.” Our failure: communism, fascism, socialism, democracy…

Did you know the Greeks had calculators?
They did.
I don’t mean modern Greeks.
Modern Greeks – that’s not a story.
Ancient Greeks did.
I know, pretty amazing.

We want so much to delight you
And to be free thus from hauling water
And carrying wood.
But there is so much competition
and so little attention left to snare.

None of this is true.
Words lie.
English is a language good for describing economies.
But love
Love eludes you.

Love eludes us.

Love eludes me,
and I am not a battery.

Read the Lyric from the Beginning