Thursday, February 07, 2008
I can sing in solitude now. And I don't have to worry what it sounds like.
This is just how it is.
We are together. On the bright side, I am together. And I did not, nor thought much of it. Not thought of it at all.
And I don't know if I do anymore.
One year past with nothing to show for it. But what was going to be shown anyways? What did I ever think was ever going to be shown? God? The Devil? Was there ever anything in between?
Some sort of jealous void that wants infinity but can't even get immunity. Or even a little bit of peace.
I know that none of this makes any sense. Luckily it doesn't matter because it does make sense to me, and I'm throwing it out here into the world for no particular reason that I am willing to admit.
I haven't written a word in 9 months.
Not since I left the tracks of fate. Taking this detour. Another detour. Yet another detour, happening while I wait for life to take place. Determined by beggars and thieves.
Not that it has gotten me anywhere. Not that it hasn't gotten us anywhere. But that is to a cold cellar cell and a wait to find out if I have the strength still to believe in fate.
I'm going to start writing again.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
The merits of Inefficiency
Surely any self-respecting, unconscious conservative should read those words and move on.
Good riddance.
John Ralston Saul talks a lot about our obsession with efficiency. I think he has a point.
We have an obsession that things be done faster, cheaper, to perform better.
These are all worthy attributes. They are the engines of economic growth.
But are they, in themselves, a meaningful end? Or are they just a means to an end that needs to be first defined?
There's this article I read about two weeks ago. In the National Post. It was about this young writer, who's name I can't remember, and he's written some novel I also can't remember but I'm sure you could find it in the front display of chapters and coles.
We love young novelists.
Anyways, he said that he wrote about 2000 pages to come up with his novel. His novel was about 400 pages.
And it made me wonder, can beauty be efficient? Can creativity be efficient? And, of course, can writing be efficient?
This opens up a whole can of worms. Because I think it really puts to question the value that we place in our society on efficiency.
That which is most beautiful has many layers. It arises and exists in a web, textured, confusing, often with a structure so subtle that it might not even be detectable.
Efficiency, on the other hand, is all about being linear. Achieving an end as directly as possible. With time as the crucial component.
This writer, of whom I still can't remember the name of, he said something like 'you can take the most direct route, using a map, to get from here to there, or you can take the route intuited by your senses, and that route is maybe all over the place and full of dead-ends, but it may be also be full of a beauty you would otherwise never find.'
So yeah, if we were more inefficient we'd miss out on growth. And our corporations wouldn't make as much money and all those stock operators wouldn't get so rich.
But I wonder what else we'd find?
Thursday, February 01, 2007
It don't matter where you bury me.
I'm sitting around on a saturday night eating cheesburgers and getting ready to write. That's all and that's it.
But don't get me wrong, life isn't anything dull.
Earlier tonight I was looking at myself in 20 years and you know what, I liked allright what I saw. I might have shaved the beard and I do think cognac tastes like sewer water but all in all its all right.
I'm getting ready to write.
But not a post. For the first time in a month, my god has been a month, I'm going to write something longer than the length of my hand.
This is what I'm going to write.
I'm going to write about this fellow. This fellow who used to think he was really all that and knew it all and he didn't need no god telling him what to do.
A blasphemer. That's what he was.
He blasphemied most anything that you'd spell with a capital. Didn't buy any of it and said so. Was a real thorn in the side of tradition.
Well anyways, this fellow, its been some time now since he walked away, and now he's coming back.
And he's coming back crawling.
He still doesn't buy it, doesn't believe it any more then when he left, but now he knows he needs it. And he's begging it for mercy.
He no longer can handle the markless desert.
And having been there and seen it all and tried it out, he now realises that it doesn't so much matter whats real and what isn't as it does what works and what doesn't.
He learned what doesn't work, and so now he wants to come back.
That's it.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Bill Barker was a straight man without a side kick.
Billy would stand outside of a dozen and main, on twelfth that is, and he would tip his hat and give a good morning to everybody who went by. He'd look expectantly as the fellows passed, but it was never the case that he got any in return.
Poor guy just didn't know how to say it.
Billy would get quite dejected at times. You would notice his shoulder shrug and he would stare at the ground. He would stay this way for a moment or sometimes a day, but he would perk back up as soon as he heard laughing around the bend.
Billy had a house around the corner but he wasn't there much. He lived alone except for his sister who no one saw anyway. There was one day, about ten years back when Billy brought out Marie onto the corner with him. They tried, and Billy held that grim veneer. But before the sun even came up she was spooked and ran to the house crying, yelling bloody murder that Billy would ever do something so mean.
After that, Billy was all alone on the corner.
This went on for maybe twenty years. Maybe still does. A year ago I close down and moved myself to Tulsa. I don't know what became of Billy, but I doubt he ever did find a funny man.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
I think its safe to write again. No one is listening.
You have to be silent for a while to make everyone forget that you're there. And then, when the coast is clear and everyone has gone about their business again, then you can get out your new eyes and look around.
I can look around again. Nobody cares.
So I'll post what I want to post.
Last night I was in a classroom, sitting on a bare plastic chair, and listening to an old man I know speak to an audience of no more then six.
He is a great purveyor of worldly knowledge, able to tame the ebb and flow of current events into a coherent trajectory. I think its fair to call him a prophet for our modern times.
I would be excited to have sat before him, and listened to him speak. But he wasn't as I expected him, he was old and frail and in a wheelchair. His hair was much whiter then in any picture I had seen, and his skin was much more wrinkled. He was wheeled up to the podium, where he spoke in a barely audible voice.
It occured to me that he looked a little bit like myself.
But he did not speak as I expected, he launched into a rageful tirade, condemning the poor for their stupidity and sloth, proclaiming that we have always dominated, and will always be the masters of men. He spoke incoherently, his ideas confused and without structure. 'Who is this man?' I thought, and when I looked in his eyes I saw nothing but vacancy and I thought this is not the same man.
So it was far from the well reasoned ideas that I had been expecting. And I thought to myself, how sad, and who is really to say what a man's views really are, for they are only words that are said in that very moment, and past that they are really nothing at all but memories.
And still, even on hearing this ranting fool, his poorly crafted barbs exposed in their shocking nakedness, it still seemed hollow that there were only six others sitting to take it in.
When his time was up, he was dragged off the podium by his moderator, who attempted to hush him as he refused to stop his speech. 'The time is up,' she pleaded quietly, but he wanted none of it, and seemed oblivious to the reality that no one was really listening.
Finally he was taken from the podium, and quieted down to a degree. Questions were taken, to which the moderator answered herself.
'Is the time not really up?' I thought. I felt suddenly overwhelmed by impatience. I looked over at this bumbling old man, the shell of who I thought I knew, he was still muttering and cursing under his breath, and I realised how brief the flame of that sort of knowledge is, it is good only for the moment of which it is current, and after the moment is done you have to prove yourself again, or accept your banishment to the asylum of history.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Leadership
It's late. Maybe 11:30. I don't know. Nowadays I turn the clock away before I lay down.
It makes me anxious to look at the time.
This is not my bed. It's a top bunk. There are four mattresses in the room. I have a pair of ear plugs on the side of my bed because the guy below me snores like a snowblower.
Across the street in the pub they're booming out redemption songs. It's karaoke night and most of them have gone over there for a drink. In the hall there's the rest of them sitting around on low backed chairs, I could hear them before I put my plugs in, talking about righteousness and corruption and leadership. There must be 30 of us in all. I'm the only one holed up in his room.
I like it that way.
The world is full of extroverts. They grow like Epsilons. Or is that just because they are the only one's out? Don't matter. We're led by the Gamma's and that's what matters. Like it or not. The rest of us just have to scrounge the floor for table scraps.
Righteousness, corruption and leadership. Blah, blah, blah.
I feel alone when I make even a mention of truth and beauty.
I was the one born in the wrong time.
I don't really give a fuck about leading and pioneering and making the world a better place. The world is going to be what it is. Maybe it will be a little hotter in a while. A little poorer. A little less light. Or maybe it won't. I don't know, and I'd hate to take the lead only to find out it's in the wrong way.
What I do give a fuck about is truth. And beauty. And yeah, they aren't tangible. And no, you can't rally and picket for them in front of city hall. But they matter to me and that counts for everything.
The thing is, I don't know if you could even find either of them in the real world. The real world is just a bunch of compromise and half lies and two sided faces. Truth and beauty are religated for the netherworld of my head. They turn themselves up in a verse or a sentence or a few strokes of color. That's them. I don't think I've found them once in small talk. I don't know. Maybe I just don't hang out with the right people.
Maybe, but I could waste a lot of time finding out that I do, and that they just aren't there. So I'll sit here in my bed and write myself to sleep and hope that I get a touch of them before dawn.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
I went to go see the Al Gore movie yesterday.
Today I bought I bike.
But don't get me wrong. I'm no optimist.
I spent the morning trying out different sizes, handle bar styles, seat cushions. They had to fit it with a saddle sack holder, put on some different tires without treads, change the pedals. I went home while it waited in the queue.
I came back on the bus with my saddle by my side, but it didn't fit so well and they had to adjust it. I got a coupon for a coffee and was told to come back in an hour.
I had a latte.
The waitress behind the counter was telling the guy in the front that she might as well marry Jimmy. She was convinced that he was better then Jay. And it wasn't like there were any other prospects coming along.
In the corner booth there was a woman in a purple suit telling a young couple how to get their mortgage.
I was reading an article in FFWD on urban sprawl.
The guy in front pointed out to the waitress that she did work in a coffee shop after all.
Big help that's been, she said.
I need a cigarette he replied.
As for the bike, I'll ride it to work, probably more then I rode the one I had. I can't on Monday though. I have to pick S~ at the airport. On Tuesday I have an interview. I guess it will be Wednesday.
So I went to the Al Gore movie and I got a new bike. But I'm not all that optimistic. All the stuff in between gets in the way.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Ancient Footsteps
Out with the old! That is our mantra. Out with morality, with structure, consistency and consequence. We have vanquished them all, left them to rust away in a quaint little corner of the canon.
These virtues have become antiquities in the name of a new god. In the name of
Honesty. Nothing else is required, so long as we are honest to our own self.
Well I disagree. I damn honesty. I say that we've taken it too far.
Honesty is a virtue, not the virtue. It is not a deity to be worshipped and practiced without doubt.
Taken alone, honesty is a poor substitute for humanity.
The problem with honesty is this. At a personal level (and let me make it clear that I am speaking of purely of personal honesty) it is mostly meaningless. It is meaningless because it has no consistency. What is honest to us one minute is a damn lie the next.
Of course, that realization is the essence of humanity. To be inconsistent, confused, uncertain; that is human. But amidst such tumult, what is also human is to somehow still accept that life goes on, and that we must go on with it; that we must blaze a path, make decisions, and accept mistakes. Even bound by our flawed inconsistency, we must try our best to do what is right.
But if we worship only our own personal honesty, and give honor to each passing fancy that happens about our head, we will drown in inconsistency.
To say it another way, if we honor each moments whim, we profess a faith to a church that preaches that the past and future as having no meaning. But where there is no meaning, there can be no coherence. And coherence is the asphalt of any path.
Yet personal honesty is our new god. A god; meaning another way to stay unconscious, as opposed to facing up to what our reality is, what I believe is best summed up by Dostoevsky, when he referred to it quite elegantly as ‘our terrible beauty’. When we ignore the beauty of our responsibility in favor of a new faith, even one so seemingly virtuous as honesty, we drop from our heaven to a new god strumming his lullaby below.
No knight-errants here, not even a squire is in sight.
So how does it happen that we can we justify this new religion, this reckless faith to personal honesty?
The problem, of course, is we justify anything. This is just another truism of our human plight.
But if we are to be ‘honest’ in this justification, I think it is correct to at least observe this: that to follow our honesty blindly we must accept no claim to responsibility outside of our self. We must accept none for what our honesty might bring, and none for the other that it will undoubtedly touch. We must be purely cynical, and be content with that.
And hey, if we can do that... well, I guess the world is our oyster, at least until the chaos ensues. Because then we are both Hegel and the Saint, all as one. True to ourselves, we say what we feel in the moment, we act as we wish at the time, and we do so without a care for consistency, nor a worry for compassion.
And most importantly, we can sleep well, comforted that we are faithful to a new god, and that our rightful place in his heaven is secured, so long as we follow his commmandment and be honest to our self.
Well that all may be so. But as I briefly touched on, there is a problem with all this. If we bow to this new god of honesty, and give ourselves to its passing whim, then we will never have coherence in our lives. Because our coherence, or maybe you might prefer to call it our path, is not built upon honesty. Honesty is perhaps the map, but it is certainly not the guide.
Well that all may be dandy. But as I briefly touched on, there is a problem with all this, even beyond the obvious deterioration of society that we can already see the ripples of. As we bow to this new god of honesty, and submit ourselves to the passing whims that it throws upon us, we lose coherence to our lives. Because our personal coherence, it might better be called our path, is not built upon honesty.
Honesty is perhaps the map, but it is certainly not the guide.
Our guide is not so easily conceived. It is something timeless, something that is in us, but only because it is in everything. Bob Dylan said once that he could hear the ancient footsteps. Those footsteps are our guide. We must follow them, even if we realize that there's nothing really there. Real or imagined, they must guide our path. We have no choice, because they are our coherence. They hold us with integrity even as our honest reactions ebb and flow like tides.
I suspect that, on the other hand, a path faithful only to personal honesty will look somewhat akin to the path of an ant. Ants are seemingly busy going somewhere, just so long as you don't look too close. If you do, you realize they are only going back and forth and really going no where at all.
Look around. You don’t have to look down from far above to see all the ants that run around below.
As for myself, I will only say this: The rest of the world can bask in their honest piety. I'll pass this one by and stick to my own coherence.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Hirschfeld Nights
Sleeping, sleeping, but only sedated.
As I was lying there last night, held by the insomnia, it gives me some comfort to know that I could quit my job, if it came to it. I'd still be ok for a time. Maybe a long time, if I lived off of frozen vegetables and canned beans for protein.
Food doesn't taste that good right now anyways. I feel like I have to eat, not that I want to.
Last night I lay in bed for about an hour before I finally gave up and took a sleeping pill.
Why can't I fall asleep on my own anymore?
I guess though, that at least it seems to be getting better. At least last night I did actually lay there for almost an hour, unsedated, and I didn't once break out into a cold sweat of fear. Still couldn't sleep mind you, but at least I could relax.
At this point that is a major accomplishment.
Today, I feel okay. Better then yesterday maybe, definitely better then friday, definitely better then earlier in the week. At least I'm not terrified anymore. Like on friday. It's hard to believe that was only two nights ago. I was a mess. Terrified. And of what?
Being alone I think. Alone, awake and alive.
Please, please, oh please. No more dark sides.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Riding Mother Nature's Silver Seed to a New Home in the Sun
I am being haunted right now by a ghost. By ideas that have been instilled in me and that are now being threatened by, of all people, a monk. The ghost fights back, and he is wreaking the havoc of his insights on my mind.
I haven't read a word of Nietzsche for a very long time. I think its a phase you go through, like when you eat hamburger helper for a month straight just cuz you like it. Its been probably 4 years since I even picked up one of his books. Yet his ghost lingers.
What is important will perservere.
As an aside, is there anything more cliche then a young man making a poetic reference about Nietzsche? I should be slapped and fined for writing without a poetic license.
Still, even the cliches are sometimes are correct. There he is, staring me in the face.
'Is this really what you were brought up to believe?'
The last thing I read of Nietzsche was from a t-shirt.
On the front of the shirt it said 'God is dead' - Nietzsche, 1888.
On the back it said 'Nietzsche is dead' - God, 1901
Anyways, I thought it was pretty funny.
For better or worse, I learned from him. At times I think I learned too much. Here's a few paragraphs I wrote about five years ago. I stumbled on it yesterday.
He was considered a genius, at least by himself, and while much of his writing seems a tad indulgent to me and some of it is just straight off the wall and into the abyss, it isn't without its merit. There is this one idea in particular that pervades everything I have been reading, and I just haven't been able to let go of it. Tonight I finally get it. He's talking about the necessity of man to create. He sees the one who creates as being the crack through which the light is drawn.
I always thought that I understood what he was saying. Oh sure, its simple, straightforward, he thinks we should all be artists or builders or something of the sort. We need to create. But I was wrong. Tonight I think I figured it out, as I was wandering in my typical aimless stupor around and around the blocks circling my house. He was talking about meaning. We are all to be the creators of our own meaning.
I gained an ounce of solace in realizing that.
I think it's safe to say, in retrospect, that I gained more than an ounce.
It's a pretty simple idea really. I guess most anything of any importance is. But anyways, I latched onto it. It lifted me from the mundane dance of futility that, at the time, was bringing me down. Because what he is saying, in essence, is that we are our own creators.
Would could be more empowering? Because it makes it all ok. It makes it ok to be human, it makes it ok to make mistakes, and it makes it ok to try.
So that all brings us to the now. I am being asked to follow a path that I am told is the 'right one'.
And I hesitate. And shake. And sometimes I even tremble.
I am not all that sure about it.
Because there it is, the voice of Nietzsche, haunting my gut, telling me that there is no 'right one'. Telling me that we must all be creators. Telling me that if I give up my ability to create my own meaning, even if it may be in favour of the 'right one', then I give up that chance that we are all blessed with, to create the world in our own image.
Well, I don't know. I don't know much. But I do know that I'm not ready to give in to that just yet.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
My First Few Weeks in the Undertaking of the Profession of Knight-Errant
I have to say, its been a bit of a slog.
Immediately after making the toast of which I have already spoken (and which must really be read first to understand what I say here, and to understand as well the historical accounts that will undoubtably follow as I further my design to resurrect the profession of knight-errant), well, immediately after that, I made out into the countryside in search of a steed.
You see, a knight-errant must have a steed, if for no other reason then that you look rather stupid walking the interstate in armor on foot. Not to mention, in such degenerate times, there is more then a little chance you will be accosted by some ignorants who see not your noble profession but a fellow wrapped in aluminum foil (real armor is quite expensive I've found), and these types of ignorants can be less then kind. The deficiency of foil over hardened steel becomes quite apparent at such times.
So, if only for one's health, a steed is required.
But lord, let me tell you, it is no easy endeavour to find a steed. I have roamed around since the moon was full, looking far and wide for my proper form of transportation. But my god, what frustration! This land is littered with cattle, hogs, and horses, but it is almost entirely bereft of steeds. It is no wonder that the knight-errant has fallen to extinction.
And let me say this! I am not just a little suspicious of this strange extinction. In fact I have a feeling there is some design behind it. At the least, I have some very pointed questions I would like to ask those with such means as to whether there is some grand design that has conspired to bring it about. After all, what better way to rid the world of such a selfless profession then to erase from the earth its transportation.
Well, I write this from a small hotel outside of a town that for all I know has no name. I will continue on my journey from here; my quest for a steed shall not be soeasily deterred. In the mean time, I am given the chance to do some reading, and brush up on the historical accounts of knight-errantry, so that I might be best prepared when I find my ride. I am also reading Thoughts without a Thinker, which I would highly recommend.
But at the bottom is this: I pledge to you, upon my heart, that when I write next it will be upon a faithful steed. Assuming, of course, that wireless will reach that far. Adeiu!
Friday, April 28, 2006
In Remembrance of Jane Jacobs
In an interview a few years back Jane Jacobs was asked what it was that she would be remembered for in generations to come. She replied, to the great surprise of the interviewer, that it would not be for her work on urban development. Instead she said that if she were to be remembered, it would be for her insights into economies.
The interviewer didn't have much of a response to that. He probably had never read that aspect of her work.
Having read and listened to the tributes and accolades bestowed upon Jacobs this week, I can say that almost without exception they have focused on a single work, The Life and Death of Great American Cities, and on her contributions to urban planning and development. Make no mistake, this was terribly important work, and she should be commended for fighting the fallacies of the over-zealous and under-endowed who took it as their destiny to gut our inner-cities. But to focus singularly on her work as urbanologist is to miss the wealth of her other contributions, particularly her ideas about economies and how they develop. These ideas, I suspect, will prove in the long run to be of greater consequence.
In truth, the ideas about economies that Jacobs discovered are radically different from traditional economic thought. It is no surprise then that most who read them, drifting themselves with the tide of common convention, cannot hear the truth that the ideas hold. That is why much of her work is forgotten, brushed over with at best a sentence at the end of her eulogy.
There are a few, however, that recognize the importance of what she has given us. Donald Coxe, Chairman of Jones Heward Investment, paid tribute to Jacobs this week, calling her a remarkable woman, and making the same point that I make here, that her work on economies may one day prove to be even more influential that her work on urban development.
For the rest, who choose to ignore these pivotal ideas, it is best said that some insights are just too radical for the time in which they are conceived. Art, literature, and philosophy are all littered with the bones of the lately revered genius who, while alive, had to scrape away in anonymity. The world is never kind to the original thinker. And as for the idea itself, which always threatens the core of convention, and more pointedly the heart of those with a vested interest in the matter, well, it is at best ignored and at worst reviled, often heaped with scorn for a minor flaw that is besides the fundamental point.
In Jacobs’s case, her primary fault was that she never gave herself to the tedium of getting a degree. Given our preoccupation with letters behind the name, we are skeptical of how someone without a Harvard PhD might come up with a meaningful economic contribution, let alone a revolutionary theory that turns the subject quite onto its head. It is simply inconceivable to our culture that such independent learning is possible, as we are ingrained with the premise that academic credentials must precede anything of worth.
Jacobs had no degree. She had no formal training in economics. It is true that she probably could not have worked out the Black-Scholes present value of a synthetic derivative, which of course we all know is the mark of a great economist, as the success of Long Term Capital Management so aptly demonstrates.
What she did have was an incredible wisdom that could see through convention and stereotype, and through the novels of imagined theory that we pretend to be the canon of our reality. She could pierce through the gobbledygook of false premises and poorly achieved conclusions and see things as they actually work. She was an engineer in its truest sense.
By doing so, she provided us with a conception of an economy as it relates to nature, an economy not premised on the whims of paper currency traders and forever oscillating yields, but instead upon energy flows and the laws of nature that hold themselves no differently in the concrete jungle then they do in the rain forests of Brazil.
She understood that economies, like ecosystems, grow not from restriction, regulation or subsidies, but from freedom, and that it is freedom that is essential to allow for the adaptability and uncertainty that is at the heart of economic growth.
She perceived that the growth of an economy is driven not by exports, a traditional belief proven wrong so often that it must take real skill on the part of its commissars to keep up its adherence, but by the simple idea that economies develop by imitation, and by replacing the goods that they previously imported with goods that they make themselves.
Finally, she pointed out a premise that has been wrongly conceived in most all previous economic thought; that it is the city, not the nation-state, which is the essential building block of an economy. She is the first to conceive of the city as a discrete, interdependent organism, alive and growing, an eco-system within the biosphere that grows and dies by the same principles as nature itself.
Jane Jacobs has taken the first steps towards moving the science of economics away from its theoretical stasis and into the practical world where the human economy is not an aberration of nature, but a part of it. More generally, she has shown us the superiority of having two eyes and a good pair of ears over any number of plaques on the wall. No one with a Harvard degree could have come up with her theories. They are simply too elegant, too precise, to be anything but the work of an unbiased observer.
This week we mourn the death of Jane Jacobs, and for most that means the mourning of a tireless activist and the mother of modern urban planning. But we must also acknowledge a different woman, the writer of what will without doubt someday be seminal texts of economics. The Economy of Cities, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, The Nature of Economies, to name a few. That the title of the book Cities and the Wealth of Nations follows in name to the great book written by Adam Smith is fitting, for Jacob's book is the next real step towards an understanding of economics based upon how the world actually works.
I don't expect that this recognition of Jacobs, as mother of modern economic thought, will happen today or tomorrow or any time soon. True genius takes time to be digested, and the audience of our time is not yet ready for such upheaval. But the day will come. I would not be surprised at all if 100 years from now Jane Jacobs is spoken of in the same breath as Adam Smith, referred to as the brilliant economist whose ideas have rebuilt nations, along with a great contributor to urban planning and the savior of many an inner-city. When that day comes, the world will be a better place because of it.
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
To the Resurrection of the Knight-Errant
Well. Sitting here, delayed by rain, I am intent upon nothing but that my travels continue along their current path and are not want to be returned. In this mean time I have nothing to do but to put down a few thoughts. It is this which is laid before you.
But don't mistake, I do not write this purely of conditions. For truthfully, has there ever been anything in the realm of the atom that has inspired me to take to the pen with appetite?
No. Not once I think.
No, in fact, I doubt I would be writing at all had I not been tempted by a sudden urge to make well of an idea that has struck me so hard that I am currently quite incapacitated from the neck up. For this idea has instructed me to take upon a course, and it is that design which is explained in detail below.
So what idea could there be that would lead me to words after two months as a mute?
I suppose it might not be difficult to surmise that I am immersed in some sort of antiquated literature, as I have this strange plague to take upon the style of that which I read, and I imagine that's evident here.
It is true. I am reading Don Quixote. And it is indeed from this source that I come to my idea, which I believe is worth the world itself. And that is this: it has occured to me that the world is want for someone to take up the tradition.
What tradition is that you say?
Why, knight errantry of course!
But make no mistake, I do not read this most extraordinary piece so strictly; I see the spirit with which Mr. de Cervantes intends. And it is the spirit I speak of. Yes it is quite true that Quixote can be taken for a loon, and that his actions can be described as folly. But he also cannot, if one so chooses; and both are ripe to the mind who perceive it as such.
Besides, the spirit of the knight-errant calls for just such a loon, a loon of the strongest constitution, who will not break to this silly delusion to which we give the name reality. And as for the folly, well, it is exactly that which I hope to rekindle, for what greater need do we have, in this age of knowledgable ignorance, then for the folly of chivalry!
And thus, for the good of mankind, let us resurrect the profession of the knight-errant.
Oh yes, yes, I know you look on me with skeptical cynicism. Well that is the age. And it is true, there is of course the riches and fame and all of that which must come along with the tireless pursuit of knight-errantry. But they are but water to the meal, and only serve to better wash the deeds down. For I know full well, as did Quixote, and as must any knight-errant worth his salt, that all is being created out of the mind, so that it must be conceded that all riches are mere appearances and that fame is nothing but a boast.
No, the designs of said profession are far more substantial then such cotton candy. The well that the errant seeks is deeper to the core, to where the water may be known only as nectar by gods. For to the knight-errant it is the creation of the act which is the highest honour that may be received. It is this that the knight-errant treasures at the deepest of his heart, so that he would prefer it to any woman, or to any weight in gold.
That a history may be created, from which the future will take shape! Oh, what more glorious an honour could be bestowed on one. And what better image to shape this future then in the one of chivalry, taking the cue not from a heavenly dictate, nor from a lowly carnal seed, but from the heart of what makes man his most mighty, from the very mind of his own self! I should drop to my knees and kiss the kind fates to be so empowered!
So please, indulge enough to understand me, so that my plea is not on deaf ears. We will seek out our steeds and take the rein's to the only course that can be followed. And first, take this moment to toast with me, to the resurrection of the knight-errant, and the empowerment of every man!
Thursday, February 09, 2006
I was lying in bed mostly asleep (though who ever really knows). I woke up by a noise, something in the kitchen, and then another at my door. So get up and get out and open the door. That's always the way. And there at the door, on the other side, was this little ghost girl, dressed in white.
'You don't want to be here', she said to me.
That was all.
She ran off and out, out through the back and out the door, a door which was locked, not that it mattered much. I stood there stunned, too unsure of what to do except contemplate the debut and cringe at its encore.
The doorbell rang. I went to it, and opened the door (for some reason, I don't know why. Why do we ever do what we know we ought not to do? I guess you might ask as well, what choice do we have in the matter?).
Of course it was the ghost girl that I opened it to.
She ran at me, threatening but not in a threatening way, instead in a deliberate way, with her arms spread open without a face that I could seeand up to me she ran and into me she ran, and I don't mean into me but into me she ran and it was such a terrible sight if I could have only seen it.
Quite terrified. I am quite terrified still. That's not what I wanted to hear.
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