Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 15 Number 1, April 2014
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THE WORK AHEAD
“[…] artistic content and spiritual communication are, after all, precisely the same thing.”
W. Benjamin in letter to G. Scholem, October 22, 1917.
that it all came from God through the creative word
he once saw
later it all came from the class struggle and dialectics
but auras were mixed in
then he made passages speak by strolling
and wondering
always an angel followed him
its back to the future
recording the debris
left behind
one fellow had trouble with his materialism
and the other with his mysticism
he defended himself to the one
saying, “you don’t get it, but you may be right”
to the other he said, “you may be right, but maybe
you didn’t get it”
mysticism without dirt becomes delusion
materialism without spirit becomes specious
he listened for resonances, thinking
eventually the answer has to become one
rehearsing what the angel taught
that the shards must be put back together
before the messiah can come
JIM
bringing back messages
from altered states
is a noble quest
perhaps, just as rituals
Dionysian and others
speak to us
of revels and the need
for what’s uncommon
break on through
(to the other side)
where death is always
dancing close by
but we need the shaman
to stay alive into old age
dying young and disappointed
is no achievement
break on through
(to this side)
where the mysteries
are more perplexing
because death is just as near
via boredom and belongings
whereas the beauty of embraces
shimmers more truly
when lived together
on this side
MISNAMING
the necessity of spirit
in naming
and misnaming
is often misunderstood
though arguably
naming is spirit
the American Studies
Association boycotts Israel
in what spirit?
when asked why not
Iran, the answer, we have to
begin somewhere
makes the point
discernment crumbles
from the top
reducing the spirit
of freedom
to absurdity
the same place
it flows
when too fluid
not that I don’t fumble
in my naming
of values, too
but I try only to boycott those
who would silence me
READING AN ESSAY
reading Geoffrey Hill’s “Our Word Is Our Bond” in his Collected
Critical Writings you’ll come across a quote by Benjamin Whichcote,
leader of the Cambridge Platonists, actually stating, “If it were not for Sin,
we should converse together as Angels do.”
except I read it as, “If it were not a Sin, we should converse together
as Angels do.” Which made so much sense to me, understanding
sin as mistake, as not on the mark, as missing the mark,
because it would indeed be a sin to converse as Angels do
apart from no one knowing how Angels do converse, the attempt
itself would prevent us from becoming more fully human;
aiming to become anything but human would give us a false target
and that makes me wonder why Whichcote would ever wish for it