Tuesday, July 17, 2018

magic - the essay / reality - a sonnet

mag·ic - ˈmajik/
noun: magic
1. the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces. 

You are poor, “they” are rich: ipso facto - magic; by this logic even your phone, your car, or your job could be considered magic. Just now, “they” took 10 minutes of my time, simply because the numbering format of the internet page from which i cut and pasted the definition of magic transferred to this essay; the computer would not release the format - that is unless you’re an expert in RTF; an apple genius, or wizard none of which i am. I was intrigued by the topic of magic, for when i researched the antonym for magic, there was but one - reality. This is to say, that all that is not reality is magic, or all that is not magic is reality - a pretty bold assertion, but sounds kind of dodgy to me. Today is my last wife’s birthday; that is kind of magical, most especially by her absence - what i believe is called white magic as opposed to black magic. The inference of meaning from black and white is even magical - but bullshit. I experience this dissonance much like a bell that will never be unrung; whether i will ever reach a point of evolution that when someone attempts to blacken my name i would consider it a compliment, i cannot say, but a man can hope. I don’t know what flavor of magic removed that particular wound of matrimony from my life, but it is appreciated. She very much believed in the power of magical thinking, enough so that i donated 14 years of my life to her service, for a smile; that’s pretty powerful magic - or powerful pretty magic, depending on your perspective. The reality is that i loved her, and she not i. She left five days after my emergency appendectomy; the night of her soon-to-be surprise departure she stood over a kettle of vegetable soup stirring and muttering to herself, “i love this man, i love this man .  . .” In retrospect she was doing the most loving thing she could conceive - infusing meals for my impending solitude with her incantations. The fact is, that cauldron of vegetables was all the love she had to give, but it was not all she could take - that would come later when she kidnapped my dog.

If you hear any bitterness in this recounting, i apologize - that is not my intent. The weighted valence you sense may be the result of my staple diet which consists mostly of reality sandwiches, that while exceedingly nutritious can be dicey to bite off. One of the problems with resorting to magic is that it undermines the actual workings of the world. For example, take the horseless carriage when Henry Ford magically made it affordable to most, not only was walking then curtailed, but the process of building those contraptions effectively enslaved an entire cohort of human beings to repetitive drudgery chained to an assembly line, that magically moved to them, thereby disallowing workers the simple pleasure of walking from task to task. That is the same sort of magic my last wife might employ, for she too was remarkably greedy - not unlike the wannabe fascist Henry Ford. My last wife was not an automotive fascist, she was a spiritual fascist preferring to surround herself with lackeys that could assuage feelings of remorse she may have felt for abandoning her convalescing husband a week out of surgery, or legitimize for her the act of stealing his dog. That is pretty powerful magic indeed. I wonder of she ever achieved her ambition of becoming a crone - if a vision from a camping trip in Colorado is sufficient to make it happen, then i guess i have my answer. It’s easy to poke fun at magic, but i’m not sure how real it is as a strategy for establishing a beachhead for logic in an illogical world. Yet by the definition of reality posted in the poetry section, logic is not intrinsic to reality, however whatever is “contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality” is adequate to confirm a state of delusion; ergo war is not delusional, though it’s sole role in humanity today is to maim and kill soldiers, and enrich profiteers - that’s pretty magical, for the profiteers. It was not enough to love my wife for her to stay, it may be i need to pay more attention to who loves me, than who it is i love - i don’t know. I do know that a firm grip on reality is inadequate to what’s necessary for our species to survive, and that is a little scary.

Nor do i believe my wife was deluded as she chanted “i love you” and planned her escape during our last night together, i feel she believed her truth at the time, however inconsistent was her subsequent behavior with my own humble understanding of love. The study of magic by psychologists is identified as metaphysics, as beyond the tangible. C.G. Jung, however was not averse to exploring this realm and even wrote an introduction to Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching. If foreknowledge provides the ability to influence future events, the I Ching would qualify as a book of magic. C.G. Jung was to be Freud’s intellectual heir until they had a falling out, how human can you get? So what good is any discipline: psychology, physics, astrophysics or metaphysics. Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays utilized his uncle’s concepts to become the father of all modern marketing techniques. Like christianity and war, knowledge does not necessarily evolve into service to mankind, just look at the scientists and engineers creating weapons of war, and single generational seeds for no other reason than profit. I can understand the want for magic; i felt it myself this morning searching for an escape from a numbering scheme not of my choosing, but it was not magic that intervened, it was persistence. Does that mean we cannot count on magic to rescue us from extinction¿ I don’t know; i do know that the Dalai Lama says that prayers are not enough, that we must make tangible our hopes for a better world - to take concrete steps toward alleviating the suffering of others, and as importantly alleviating our own suffering. Is that what my ex-wife did, take concrete steps to alleviate my suffering with a bucket of vegetables, and to then take concrete steps to end her own suffering by leaving? My sense is yes and no, the soup was good and did help, but i would imagine if i had to take a guess, whatever objections she had about me that drove her away still manifest to one degree or another in her life.

People generally object to violence as a solution to problems, especially where old people and infants are concerned. Yet we have never been further from worldwide peace during anytime in the human epoch. Does this mean that war is magic, or does it mean that the-powers-that-be have perfected Bernays’ marketing science such that if they can’t sell ice to the eskimos, they just melt the ice. I believe more in magic, than i do in reality mostly because i have great doubt about anything that is generally accepted as true, whereas magic reminds me of a time in my youth when i would conjure  all manners of incantation to help catch the fly ball, or connect with the pitch or get her attention even if i had no idea what to do with it once obtained. Is this to say magic ever helped me become a better ball player, i don’t know - that is the magic. Reality was the hard-bitten Kansas plumber who made his son catcher, and me benchwarmer - who never had a kind word to say and after the single hit i ever made in little league snatched it away telling me once i scored it was just “fielder’s choice.” My oldest brother was a champion: little league, swimming - he was even on the Dating Game, i was not - those and all the manifest differences in our two lives could be reality; lack of delusion; or as easily be magic for all the good those accomplishments or lack thereof have done. Is it even possible to state what reality is much less know what it is not¿ If there is such a thing as magic, which given that magic is all that reality is not makes that a very real possibility that can it be as easily manipulated as reality¿ My experience has taught me to not fuck with what i do not understand, but rather to try and understand what i cannot fuck with - put differently by the Dali Lama - “you have to know the rules, before you can break them.”

Reality has not helped all that much, especially given the “generally held to be true” clause that for me makes it immediately suspicious, but what has magic accomplished that a fifth of Jack Daniels and a couple bowls of hash couldn’t¿ Is there middle ground that might serve us in this our most desperate hour? Pema Chödrön - “Honesty without kindness, humor and compassion can be just mean,” however this quote as with all of Pema’s message is toward self. Magic thinking or real thinking we are stuck within the skins we were born to which means to me the limits of what i can know for certain, and even then there is a question whether the pain in your neck is from the asshole boss who just laid you off, or the memory of a shrill parent who just won’t quite die - our only salvation is to listen to either voice; to feel the pain to struggle to keep the heart open and soft. It is an irony that our culture has grown so reliant on understanding something like reality for our existential bearings when the question is no longer even germane once we perish, and i can understand why others might be uncomfortable with the uncertainty of magic, not all that different from the impermeable barrier of life and death, a barrier similar to the one we face every time we speak with conviction about another person’s reality - i cannot ever know what is true for you, and all you can gather from me is what i share, minus the filters of fear, arrogance, loneliness, conceit, etc. I don’t play with magic like i do with reality, for magic is a little like the dark stranger that takes a strategic position in a crowded place and says nothing - it is wiser to wait and watch whereas reality is more like the buffoon who confuses an expensive car with the ability to drive fast, or women on his arm for love and compassion but mostly fun to laugh at when the time comes for his fall, and he surely shall fall. What makes either case more interesting, magical menace or glittering gluttony, is when the unexpected occurs and compassion escapes from either into a world in much need of more - compassion. 

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reality - a sonnet

re·al·i·ty - rēˈalədē/
noun: reality
1. the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.

Reality says to water trees and why,
but today says cut ‘em all down as well.
which is which? Without trees, we gonna die.
Die we all do, but with trees, not in hell.

Friends will stay friends, that is until they’re not.
were they good friends when just a memory,
or better friends when smoking your last pot.
Friends, like birds do best when left to be free.

If we can’t know what happens after death,
how can we presume reality exists¿
what if our world’s what’s left of one’s last breath?
the mind insists, but what’s all, defies lists.

What’s said of dreams, kind of fits reality,
you can be in mine, but it gets gritty.


jts 07/16/2018
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved e


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