Thursday, February 02, 2006

just like a little dog chasing my tail, in a circle, trying to find it... whatever it is
these words are inadequate, weightless. without substance, untethered from meaning.

but others' words...
"You think, perhaps, that your iron is wonderfully useful in pure form, but how would you like the world, if all your meadows, instead of grass, grew nothing but iron wire- if all you arable ground, instead of being made of sand or clay, were suddenly turned into flat surfaces of steel- if the whole earth, instead of its green and glowing sphere, rich with forest and flower, showed nothing but the image of the vast furnace of a ghastly engine- a globe of black, lifeless, excoriated metal? It would be that, probably it was once that; but assuredly it would be, were it not that all the substance of which it is made smokes and breathes the brilliancy of the atmophere; and as it beathes softening from its merciless hardness, it falls into fruitful and beneficent dust; gathering itself again into the earth from which we feed, and the stones which we build; into the rocks that frame the mountains, and the sands that bind the sea..."
-John Ruskin
from The Work of Iron, in Nature, Art, and Policy

the news, the chatter, the noise, the horizon seems to darken by the day. there is no peaceful way out of these days. it only escalates, the smoke rises.
perhaps ruskin was right, the world was once wrapped in a sheet of cold steel, but i cannot help but wonder if that is the route to which we are returning. i don't mean to be apocolyptic here, but the world outside our little southern city is a falling riot of madness, cruelty, ignorance and lies.
everyday we stand by, shaking our heads, there are no words. utter disbelief in the events , the rapid-fire of atrocities. it's all a show; reports of destruction, images of torture encased in slick commercials. indiscernable from other television drama.

johnny cash got me thinking, in the car the other night, about the value of physical life versus the value of a soul. the US definitely overvalues the body, the physical. i'm sure that it stems from a sentiment about the potential of the soul, and its unavailability once the body is dead. or maybe it's just some self-preservation mechanism we can thank Darwin's Survival of the Fittest theory for... we just naturally must live, seek out survival at any cost
but, then, i think freud had a point when he stated that there is a part of us that yearns for death

... he has the kind of great, big spirit that men used to come with. now they just have to make them up or buy them...
um-nadia to sirine in Crescent by diana abu-jaber

No comments: