Part 2: Lost But Now I’m Found
“Life is a grotesque practical joke constantly pulling away chairs from under… [human] dignity and reason. Nothing is sane, reality is a hall of distorting mirrors reflecting the grimness of our own pretensions.” (Milton Schulman)
From the somber décor of gray monochrome, an intransigent stranger emerges almost inaudible. Without false modesty, she attempts to escape the game of the rules. Stipulating absolute conditions doesn’t interest her, she simply wants to be; she wishes to know herself, her limits, and what similarities the world around her shares. She pitilessly expels air in a vulgar attempt to communicate, to understand, but her words seem to fall into veritable voids (deaf ears).
She integrates and disintegrates concepts, she both sees likenesses and differences; she does not fear “chaos” nor “order” only mans ability to say one thing and mean another. I’m condemned to the harsh moments of reality. I cannot free myself from memory, and in the habiliments of black my eyes set sail to a not so distant possibility of the grave.
Dionysian and Apollonian intellectual aspects (as Nietzsche categorized) should balance out, there must be a moderation of all things in life, for life to sustain. Our all too passionate nature perhaps leads us to the inchoate quality of being, that binds us to contradicting impulses and constantly leaves us to recreate a construction of who we are in the eyes of other.
With fists of rage I slam the grounds of reality. With a hammer and anvil I seek to pound away the residual garbage that masks the love that I most dearly advocate.
My time is a slice of life cut off, separated from all of the others, and then captured on this piece of paper. To have a moment when everything else stops and takes heed to your words, your pain; is this captivating ideal not what each of us strives for? I mean, do most of us not toil through a lifetime of hardships, hoping solely for those precious few seconds when we finally can be heard?
Do we not all secretly long to be understood?-- and, do we not also long secretly to understand others? Don’t we want to be tolerated and accepted, included (rather than omitted), and contribute our small part to this world?
“Chaos is what his confession echo’s… against. Chaos and time and circumstances and the old news, the bad news that we still walk in circles, each of us trapped in his own little world. Behind bars. Locked in our cells.” (Edgar Wideman, Our Time)
Endowed by powerful insight, I now embark on the terrifying voyage of exploring my own inner depths of pain. Underneath the veneer of society I have lay dormant, a sleeping giant perhaps, waiting to emerge when the moment was right. May there be light in my virile inquiry, for my capacity for true Knowledge is grossly limited. This having been said, shall be proceed on am ambivalent struggle?
Who never ate his bread in sorrow
Who never spent the darksome hours weeping
And watching for tomorrow
He knows you not, you Heavenly powers.
-- Goethe The Sorrows of young Werther, 1774
The German Storm and Stress proto Romantic movement of the late 1700’s, emphasized strongly the importance of literal physical suffering but gave violent expression to difficult emotions extolling individuality and subjectivity over rationalism. Becoming distinctly aware of oneself and motives became paramount to life. A new esthetic imbued with extremes of emotion and greater human freedom from despotism became suddenly imperative. So I question back to you, my critics, who doesn’t feel?
Vedanta Hinduism says that we have 4 Puru artha (or goals) in life from which we each must choose: The dharma life emphasizes religious, social and moral righteousness in both spiritual and ritual courses of action; The artha choice has material ad financial prosperity as its focal point; fulcrum to the kama way of life is material pleasure; and finally the quasi-escapist route is the Moka to opt out of everyday being in a sort of spiritual liberation or renunciation as well as detachment from the joys of everyday being. A goal implies a want. Man is said to suffer because he wants and desires (tanha). The 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism teach a follower to seek and acquire: “an extinction of desire which leads to liberation”.
** Epicurus of Samus (341-270 BC) Greek Philosopher who founded the Epicurean school in Athens: sought happiness, the chief human good, which was attainable through freedom from anxiety and fear. He believed that any research that didn’t contribute to peace of mind was… futile!!**
According to Schopenhauer, if we know great suffering (I.e. pain) we can deny our Will. We can either lead ourselves to loss of will to life or, have a knowledge of the essential nature of life in the world through the observation and compassionate realization that others also suffer, just as we do. As mortals we can stay in the self-absorbed, childish and ultimately destructive tendencies to deny our pain scapegoat our accountabilities and sever ourselves from reality. To subjugate our emotions into insatiable hungers--un-fill-able needs and to become human sink-holes is SAD!
Addictions or frivolous pursuits inevitably construct relationship problems and leave us unaware of a greater reality around us. I think that addiction is the great implosion-- the collapse of society into itself. Overindulging and impulsive behaviors left unchecked… pleasing and entertaining oneself… whilst living at the dangerous base of Vesuvius, leads only to death. The experience of the fall of man… seems as a result of man’s freedom to decide his course of action. High-risk behavior is not an illness it’s a choice; just look what happened in ancient Pompeii.
Historically speaking, pain is constituted as not only necessary but also as a passageway to higher being. Dante says that in hell, we should: “Abandon all hope yea who enter here”. Thus he warns us that our expectations and desires will guide us astray… “At the midpoint on the journey of life, I found myself in a dark forest-- for a clear path was lost…”(Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto 1)
History warns against and condones selfishness; teaching us to learn from our experiences of suffering… “There is no greater sorrow than to remember a time of joy, when misery is at hand.” Expectations, expectations, expectations; they are everything in the mind of mankind! Suffer gracefully, friends…
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