The cycle, turning
Ending becomes beginning
That becomes ending
Ailhan Samedov’s “Son Nefes” undulates like my thoughts; I find I feel soulful and sore for the last day’s (and weeks of) efforts. Catching myself thinking it possible to bend the universe into more pleasing shapes, I remember at last that I am but one amongst now seven million and counting… hardly likely to find some transcendent solution that soothes all these mad conflicts. Are we, I wonder, truly doomed to forever prefer our nose rather than the horizon? For that matter, how do I know that I am looking at the horizon and not just as cross-eyed over the nasal lump as anyone? How does anyone really know?
I know this – there is power in the word, in the name, and, in the speaking of either, we give meaning to one another or we take it away; all the beans and ledgers and ink spent in the accounting, and to what end? How many beans, how many ledgers, how many oceans of ink to find the balance? Why do we so often care more for the thing that comes and heels and wriggles for a chance to kiss the ring than the one that defies and seeks only to be as it is or as it will? The leash so derisively rejected when it would upon OUR necks and yet – so eager to set it about the necks of others; perhaps to see it “there” is the only way we know it has not secretly found us? Could it be so sadly simple? All these wars and words over what and how to call a thing, a person, an act, an interest; so many coils of rope and none capable of catching what they represent, what they are – the name is not the person, the word is not the object, and the finger still points at the moon without being itself or the moon.
Sometimes, I think we scrabble in the dust like dogs over scraps and care not where the fangs land so long as meat finds the tongue; fear and desire and anger press and spur the mind, drive the body, and, animals that we are, we do what we do and are what we are and the whole damn thing spins like so much dust in a strong wind. But I am tired of being this silly speck, this mote, this microscopic spur, spinning at whim of air and momentum or inertia of those around me (when not for my own, internal storms).
Bleh…. All this randomness of mind; spitting metaphor and analogy like exhaust as the engine sputters and I kick the floorboard for forgetting to fill up… again.
I am tired of recurrence and the seeming amnesia we all suffer. Is 1996 so far behind me, behind all of us? And what of all the other times upon times upon times this topic rises? All the ghosts between the pages, of all the ages, rattling around in the papers of history and all our empty eyes that read and remember so much and yet, are as unable to see as ever… some things never change, I suppose.
I have often said that any “noble goal” is doomed the moment that an interest other than “it” finds its way to ascendancy in the mind of any participant within the group pushing for it; that, indeed, the only way to ensure against our human tendency to corrupt ANY noble goal utterly is to only engage if/when there is no benefit to ourselves to be found in it. Compassionate service… yes, I know… such a naive thought, eh? But I believe it. And it is why I disengage.
I’ll call it “tiredness” or, when less kind, any number of things; tossing my beans, swinging my ledger, and spilling my ink just as eagerly as anyone else. (See how this [doesn’t!] work?) In finding “my” interest, I lose the ability to support the greater interest and, thus, lose ability to truly help without fear of corrupting through confusing “my” interest with that greater interest.
I do know one thing, this won’t happen because of me nor will it fail to happen because of me. Whatever happens, this too eventually will change and, like any cycle, find its ending and beyond it, its next beginning. Ultimately, we are creatures of habit and repetition, our most sacred mudra.
Spin on, you crazy world; turn and turn and turn again, you wicked, winsome wheel. I’ll see you a… round.