I’ve taken up drinking and smoking after a 10 year hiatus - and enjoy all the calamity which comes from such dubious entertainment, including the personal responsibility for both balance and imbalance from such behavior. A painting instructor once opined “ya’ gotta suck on a little blood” after i had extolled the great virtues of a vegetarian diet. Of course i was too young to fully appreciate such wisdom, and he himself later gave up tobacco and alcohol as all wise spirits will. The fact remains there is a great need for balance in our hell-bent-for-destruction world and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco seems the equivalent of the Democratic Party’s acquiescent if-you-can’t-beat-‘em-join-‘em strategy for staying employed by Wall St. Bruce Lee said the first stage of battle is to know your opponent, and Leonard Cohen sang “I fought the bottle, but I had to do it drunk.” Is it possible that from a political naivety, i’m missing the point for why the Democratic party has abandoned its roots and thrown in with the corporations. Is it possible that the leaders are simply employing a similar logic to my own - there is no purity only practical strategies for staying alive without being crushed¿ What i particularly enjoy about my bad habits are those moments when they are mastered and the utility of moderation has provided a simple pleasure that is the more satisfying for its forbidden nature. Is it possible that my vow of poverty is actually impeding my spiritual development, and Mr. M.T. Suit is actually the 2nd coming while my distorted view of purpose is clouding my vision of his worth¿ I don’t think so, “but what do I know” - Michel de Montaigne.
My physical balance is actually abysmal, given to vertigo close to precipitous drops like the Grand Canyon. It may be reaction formation that i dally with unsavory habits, ideas, in some cases - people; or it could be that the whole cannot be predicated on a single valence - yin and yang of existence so to speak. As i understand the cosmology of Balinese Hindu practice, there is a constant struggle between the sacred and evil with humanity’s behavior tipping the balance. I try to be mindful of this daily, but have found appearances can be deceiving - most especially my own delusions which i so desperately cling to. After some surgery to my core, it became necessary to relearn my physical balance which due to visual anomalies had never been that keen. Just like the sublime pleasure of waking after enjoying my poisons in proper proportions relocating the locus of physical balance can be a particularly rewarding experience requiring mindfulness not unlike the attentiveness required to listen to one’s thoughts without a moral checklist. It is those moments of quiet when i’m able to see the sky Pema Chodron refers to as self minus the clouds. What of the clouds - the harangue of society to conform, an unfair suspicion of others which experience confers and doesn’t seem to relinquish without a very determined higher purpose. How can we as people honor our higher objectives without trampling those same emerging desires in others however they are manifested¿ What does it mean to take a position, and to what extremes does one go to see that purpose realized¿
What distinguishes conformity from solidarity¿ All or nothing doesn’t seem to be a valid strategy for much of anything, yet the examples of its virtue are rife in our collective consciousness from “The African Queen” Shakespeare’s “St Crispin Day” soliloquy. I know i’m guilty as hell having burned so many bridges for often ill considered reasons. The more dangerous inclination is the righteousness of such gestures, for i can honestly say the instances where my motivation was entirely for the wellbeing of the other could be counted on a single hand. That is not an easy defect to own and it is clouded by unexamined, or at best, misunderstood motivation. What is the balance between self care and unqualified openness which i consider a fundamental keystone for human understanding - myself and others¿ Much is made of fear in the world we inhabit, as something to fight, something to own, something to use. Does it make sense to believe an emotion so deep in our collective heritage can be understood, when it can be provoked by something as faint as a whiff of perfume from a past love¿ Is it a rational emotion if it can be employed by unscrupulous leaders to divide and conquer from within as well as without¿ Is there any useful purpose to tame such a biological tool which certainly saved more than one early hunter from being stomped to death, or are our more noble objectives reached when fear is transmuted into action such as those seen in “African Queen” or Agincourt and the “St Crispin Day” speech¿ I don’t know; i ask because the days we are living are filled with great fear and great demand for change.
What is the balance between action and inaction¿ The tao says to heat things, become active - to cool things, become inactive. The question remains how to determine what should be heated and what should be cooled. Our leadership is entirely subsumed by greed. Venal considerations seem to animate thinking from the high to the low: if you have it, you want more, if you don’t have it, you want some; i don’t see any shift in the horizon. If anything the discussion of values has been so truncated that a person can bamboozle nearly half of an entire nation in the space of Twitter’s 140 character limit. There does not seem to be much deep thinking, and what there is of it is being seduced by the relentless application of resources which the uber rich seem to have been saving for just such an occasion; gazillions of dollars can clearly buy a lot of friends, professors, politicians, judges, lawyers, thugs, wannabes, etc., etc., etc. How does one balance the despair resulting from such odds¿ Even the audacity of hope has been bought and sold, so where do we go from here¿ I am always leery of the first person pronoun - we, for it construes perimeters of inclusion and exclusion i don’t have much truck with. My efforts toward solidarity have been reduced to these plaintiff wails only because doing nothing is not an option. Is it possible to balance my pathological independence with the very real need for concerted action against a handful of emotional ciphers driving starship earth like a bunch of drunken frat boys with their daddy’s car¿
My balance is based on the ease with which i face death. I make every effort to honor the uniqueness that each other human brings to the equation without sacrificing my purpose or good will in the process.
If a cheerful disposition is offensive or provocative to another, i find myself like snow melting away from that company, and it is my defect. People are sensitive and know when they are not being loved. Is unqualified love the secret to both personal integration as well as harmonious group dynamic? I believe hate is nearly useless for anything but corroding the person who chooses it as a companion. There is very little to balance between these two polar opposites, yet here we sit on a razor’s edge; one side is that beautiful morning waking refreshed with a faint memory of forbidden fruit, but otherwise physically strong and emotionally invigorated for having faced down the devil and won; the other side is the sick feeling of poison oozing from your pores while remorse throbs in your temples for having desecrated your temple. Could the answer to life be as simple as personal restraint¿ If that were true all the cowed spirits of the world would be much happier for their surrender. Can it be as William Blake described in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell - “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”¿ Then maybe surrendering to the superior forces of hate and greed running amok in our world might the answer. What i’m convinced of is this, without forsaking war and plumbing the depths of our own commitment to a meaningful life our species will be hewn in half by the razor’s edge before we gain our collective wisdom from our mindless excesses.
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imbalance - the sonnet
I’ve been convicted of being imbalanced;
my jury didn’t contain a single peer.
My crime - thinking without being well financed.
i was sentenced to a long walk on a short pier.
Of course, i tripped on my way off the plank
somersaulting into a belly flop.
That didn’t kill me, it was the shallow tank.
Unreported - useless as a psy-op.
Justice is blind - kill or die - we all go.
The inbetween of life is where to stay.
This moment was given you not to blow
on reciting what others say to pray.
How to get that done, i have got no clue
save not caring if you cheer or you boo.
jts 052417
http://stoneartist.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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