HEY!
stop serving the inevitable (pie-bald scratching) cunt-mongering of 21st century ersatz mormonism. without which (of course) we'd be unable confine the complicated anti-grav hyper-studio/technicolor gunk-job of modern living [a 12-second advert for mass-suicide followed by a silent (but full) living room] into its rightful place - a piece a these (fr.) of wildean flippancy... which it doubtless is.
*alas! how we occupy so comfortably that space between abject terror and defeat - a split second's sweaty indecision careering us haplessly beyond the chance of "a better life with better people". why not venture to the other side, break-dancing lightly away from that which holds us so dear from year to year - mindless genetic tyranny?*
ok - i'm an idiot.
i'm actually an idiot.
but take for example a bottle. and remember its experience of the things it touches. the atoms lightly brushing others... the firm breeze of a swashing, malodorous promenade rolling it - plop - onto the sand. and so, there’s the sand and little twig beneath - the cigarette and secret shard of glass - a fallen brother in a shallow grave. or the warm grip of a hairy-handed sun-seeker and then his lips - brown with baked-on magnum and bitter-rough with sea salt. all these things the bottle experiences as it must by the laws that rule its day.
and then the human - the "us" - who, much the same, endures some knocks and salty lips from time to time. our atoms scrape blandly by and on we go. but here the artist exists at a distance from his creation - looking forward and back as he trudges (or, lets say - skips) through those swamps of inadvertent mediocrity. and here’s the choice - how he experiences what he feels. in occupying the gap between his atoms and those of those around him he confirms his consciousness. he can look forward - feel all those things the bottle felt and more - and he can look back to observe his atoms and his self. and when observing he can change a bit, take out this and that and slide something along, until the person who experienced the world before no longer does, and someone new stands in his place.
but why change?
you are what you consistently do.
the bottle is alone in its hum-drummery of helplessness. it accepts each undignified turn in life. the reason for this is simply that it doesn’t know how things aren’t. it knows, in some minute molecular way, how they are. the world takes its toll, as we have seen - pushing and dropping and brushing. but it can’t see how things have been or could be or won’t be or might be. it can’t plan or conspire or concert or hope.
and why would it need to?
but the human - we - has that quesionable ability. we can look forward at the world and back at our selves and change both. the self that approaches the physical world can be changed as easily, if not easier, than the physical world itself.
and the effect we have on the world - on other people, a burnt match, a dog on a frozen lake, god's written word - will change just as the people who enact the effect do. the tool is different and the process is different so the result is different.
in conclusion:
a good man smiles at a chipper young schoolgirl.
a bad man leches and strikes fear into her heart.
both men choose who they are and how they directly affect the world.
the self is a mental image to accept or reject.
so you needn't wake up tomorrow the same person you were today.