upon reading life of pi, the unbearable lightness of being, mrs. dalloway, & the hours in succession
(And upon being nomadic for eight weeks)
Oh, the indignity of many people lumped together!
The unbearable sameness of our bodies, our needs!
For the brunt of the clockwork of civil society lies on the postulate that we are all unique. Indeed, we are born with that conviction, but not before civilization arose; it could never have coexisted with the necessities of survival.
But now, in our "enlightened" age, that conviction is nurtured until the sight of our prostrate, sleeping forms must be closeted away in bedrooms, our defecation neatly channeled into invisble networks that wind through our houses, under our roads, and throughout our cities, and the resplendent functionality of our bodies, these vehicles of life and intelligence, is carefully clothed, hidden from sight.
In the end, our clothed bodies expire in our cloistered bedrooms in our houses and cities made of shit (thank you, Milan Kundera). Death is the ultimate reinforcer of our sameness - "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." We all return to the soil, to nurture it, to become it. And when the living have imbibed the essence of what we once were, we become, in what is perhaps nature's (or God's) most under-handed design, shit.
And yet we guard our sameness (that will eventually become shit) carefully, rigidly.
But life is merely the effort between birth and death, the opportunity to propogate and bring more creatures into this fierce cycle. However, we believe our own lives to be something quite extraordinary. We think to ourselves, Oh, to be alive this day! To love this person! To feel the warmth of the sun, the texture of grass under bare feet, the coolness of water from the maw of the earth! To be so exquisitely human!
It's the ultimate folly, to believe that no one has experienced it quite as you have, when so many uncounted billions have lived and died before you, and that you sooner than later will join that unfathomable number.
The greatest universal contradiction (tragedy) is the coexistence of the soul - all that is eternal and light - with that of our humbly transient and heavy bodies. The soul is the idea, the ideal, the radiance we see emitted from these organic masses, (the sailors that rise to the deck to greet your beloved) and these organic masses, our bodies, which eventually must dissolve into the ground, are the absolute denial.
Take courage.
Oh, the indignity of many people lumped together!
The unbearable sameness of our bodies, our needs!
For the brunt of the clockwork of civil society lies on the postulate that we are all unique. Indeed, we are born with that conviction, but not before civilization arose; it could never have coexisted with the necessities of survival.
But now, in our "enlightened" age, that conviction is nurtured until the sight of our prostrate, sleeping forms must be closeted away in bedrooms, our defecation neatly channeled into invisble networks that wind through our houses, under our roads, and throughout our cities, and the resplendent functionality of our bodies, these vehicles of life and intelligence, is carefully clothed, hidden from sight.
In the end, our clothed bodies expire in our cloistered bedrooms in our houses and cities made of shit (thank you, Milan Kundera). Death is the ultimate reinforcer of our sameness - "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust." We all return to the soil, to nurture it, to become it. And when the living have imbibed the essence of what we once were, we become, in what is perhaps nature's (or God's) most under-handed design, shit.
And yet we guard our sameness (that will eventually become shit) carefully, rigidly.
But life is merely the effort between birth and death, the opportunity to propogate and bring more creatures into this fierce cycle. However, we believe our own lives to be something quite extraordinary. We think to ourselves, Oh, to be alive this day! To love this person! To feel the warmth of the sun, the texture of grass under bare feet, the coolness of water from the maw of the earth! To be so exquisitely human!
It's the ultimate folly, to believe that no one has experienced it quite as you have, when so many uncounted billions have lived and died before you, and that you sooner than later will join that unfathomable number.
The greatest universal contradiction (tragedy) is the coexistence of the soul - all that is eternal and light - with that of our humbly transient and heavy bodies. The soul is the idea, the ideal, the radiance we see emitted from these organic masses, (the sailors that rise to the deck to greet your beloved) and these organic masses, our bodies, which eventually must dissolve into the ground, are the absolute denial.
Take courage.