A Glimmer of Wisdom

from "Clea", book four of The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell

"Brother Ass, the so-called act of living is really an act of the imagination.  The world -- which we always visualise as 'the outside' World -- yields only to self-exploration!  Faced by this cruel, yet necessary paradox, the poet finds himself growing gills and a tail, the better to swim against the currents of unenlightenment.  What appears to be perhaps an arbitrary act of  violence is precisely the opposite, for by reversing process in this way, he unites the rushing, heedless stream of humanity to the still, tranquil, motionless, odourless, tasteless plenum from which its own motive essence is derived.  (Yes, but it hurts to realise!) If he were to abandon his role all hope of gaining a purchase on the slippery surface of reality would be lost, and everything in nature would disappear!  But this act, the poetic act, will cease to be necessary when everyone can perform it for himself.  What hinders them, you ask?  Well, we are all naturally afraid to surrender our own pitifully rationalised morality -- and the poetic jump I'm predicating lies on the other side of it.  It is only terrifying because we refuse to recognise in ourselves the horrible gargoyles which decorate the totem poles of our churches -- murderers, liars, adulterers, and so on.  (Once recognized, the papier-mache masks fade.) Whoever makes this enigmatic leap into the heraldic reality of the poetic life discovers that truth has its own built-in morality!  There is no need to wear a truss any longer.  Inside the penumbra of this sort of truth morality can be disregarded because it is a donnee, a part of the thing, and not simply a brake, an inhibition.  It is there to be lived out and not thought out!  Ah, Brother Ass, this will seem a far cry to the 'purely literary' preoccupations which beset you; yet unless you tackle this corner of the field with your sickle you will never reap the harvest in yourself, and so fulfil your true function here below.
     But how? you ask me plaintively.  And truly here you have me by the short hairs, for the thing operates differently with each one of us.  I am only suggesting that you have not become desperate enough, determined enough.  Somewhere at the heart of things you are still lazy of spirit.  But then, why struggle?  If it is to happen to you it will happen of its own accord.  You may be quite right to hang about like this, waiting.  I was too proud.  I felt I must take it by the horns, this vital question of my birthright.  For me it was grounded in an act of will.  So for people like me I would say: 'Force the lock, batter down the door.  Outface, defy, disprove the Oracle in order to become the poet, the darer!'
     But I am aware the test may come under any guise, perhaps even in the physical world by a blow between the eyes or a few lines scribbled in pencil on the back of an envelope left in a cafe.  The heraldic beauty can strike from any point, above or below: it is not particular.  But without it the enigma will remain.  You may travel round the world and colonise the ends of the earth with your lines and yet never hear the singing yourself."

Phil, 2007

beh

I feel like I'm taking the same pictures I was taking in my beginning photo class...

I know it's not true, but that's just how it feels...




"Whether I die today or tomorrow is of no importance to me, never has been, but that today even, after years of effort, I cannot say what I think and feel; that bothers me, that rankles." -H. Miller (of course, who else do I quote incessantly?)