Greener Grass on the Inside
After a few short and happy months in Vancouver I suddenly find myself far south of there though still on the western side of the same continent, still close to the sea and the setting Sun. I left again for many reasons: an opportunity presented itself to finish a work I’ve long intended complete; to give and receive some space; but mostly because I couldn’t bare to watch the trees dying while the skies were so perpetually befouled and most of the people were still so meanly oblivious. Much to their credit folks try to make the best of it everywhere, but to my eye a modern city and an ancient necropolis, were it populated with the walking dead, have too much in common. The rare sun- filled day with its heaven of deepest blue served more in juxtaposition with the horror of its habitual absence then through any sense of comfort or well being. The game is afoot and anything else seems a lie.
Where I am now, despite the cobblestones, the abundant sunlight and the green that leaps out to the eye, is more straightforward in its poverty, more honest in its desperation, wiser in its long history of subjugation. Soon the rainy season will come; even now I can see its beginnings up by the mountains. I enjoy torrential rains, cataclysmic thunderstorms: Nature al fresco, uninhibited, free. I’m told an entire season’s worth (here there are only two) of life’s passing and other accumulated detritus will be flushed down the mountains through the rivers and into the sea, hungrily awaited by its denizens who will then crowd the shore and beyond for a feast an entire season in the preparation. Of course, my eye inevitably turns to seeing this mirrored in the present state of humanity and the games it plays with itself, and its ludicrous and unwinnable (seemingly not a ‘real’ word, see below) war against Life. Parasitically inspired though the situation might be the conclusion itself is never in doubt.
“Unwinnable is a state in many text adventures, graphical adventure games and role-playing video games where it is impossible for the player to win the game (not due to a bug but by design), and where the only options are restarting the game, loading a previously saved game, wandering indefinitely, or a game over (negative game end, such as death). It is also known as a dead end situation. Usually, this is the result of the player’s previous choices, and not due to the game itself lacking a path to victory. The level does not end once a player fails an objective short of being killed, but it is impossible to progress to the next level no matter what the player does afterwards.” – Wikipedia.
Art imitating Life? I wonder. Truth at times seems like an endless unraveling of untruth. Reality, as I see it, is a kind of never-ending fractal equation blossoming endlessly in so called real-time, to music no less…but really, here, language, as in the written word, fails to encompass totality as it must. Awareness is the true medium of Art. Even the lack of it produces noteworthy stuff at times. Look at a tree, a cloud, a face. What was there before we learned to perceive as we do? What is there still that we have trained ourselves away from seeing? Separating this into that might make labeling and marketing easier but will not serve us long. Discernment however, minus the judging, is essential and quite scientific to boot. Rather than putting it all in jars and compartmentalizing everything we might explore what’s really there and be forever changed by what we find or fail to find, as the case might be. Whether it is life imitating art or the reverse is besides the point for they are one and the same. This becomes achingly clear when I look to my own life and circumstance.
Though well befitting the task at hand whereas my editorial-ship of The New Agora is concerned my Life demanded far more of me to grow. And, of course, I needed my ass kicked before I listened; it seems I even needed it a lot. I guess asked for would be more accurate, after all some of us are a truly stubborn lot, particularly whereas imagining better for ourselves is concerned. In a nutshell this is the chrysalis from which I feel humanity is poised to emerge.
Untold years of struggle through the concrete and tar of psychosocial and ‘spiritual’ engineering have brought us collectively to the perfect precipice of choice. We’ve cracked our shells, cells and hells only to look out at a gaping abysm, one that we’ve allowed consume our imaginations and hence our world(s) in their entirety. No wonder most crawl back into themselves in desperation, in outright terror of being disconnected from the hive consciousness, unplugged from the Matrix, disillusioned and seemingly powerless once away from the parasite’s projected predatorial mind. What a clever trick! Consumers they’ve taught us to believe we are, eating and using everything without cease unto death. Consumers. How appropriately named! And yet, I have a different idea. I can imagine more. Most of us can. Freed from habits and addictions, wants and needs, the human imagination flies and takes with it all of Creation. That is our canvas as we are the medium: the two are one. Imagine what mirificent works await us. Imagine yourself free.
Through Art we open the doors of possibility wide enough to invite entire worlds of metamorphosis. I was inspired to write the following a long while back during one of our first creative forays into the strange, abstract world of the world-wide-web; and offer it again in the spirit of heralding our successful journey of return to ourselves.
We are the children leading the Way
We are the legion of the damned
Come from the awe full depths of our own despair.
We have caused and created the hell from which we are come.
We laugh Light.
We no longer fear our true magnificence.
We claim the power of creation as the essence of who we all are
We are the children of the new dawn.
Freedom is our intent. Our Intent is unbending. We are All One Love.
We are playing a new game
With superpowers and death-defying hilarity!
Passionate Ecstasy. Glorious Harmony.
Endless Awesome Mystery.
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This world, these worlds within worlds that we are, that we share, this precious gift of priceless experience… the mystery of it leaves me speechless, the complexity of it fills me with awe, the simplicity of it with wonder. Our potential is only limited by our imagination, and since the imagination has no natural limits…well, I guess the rest is up to each and every one of us.
