Sobriety

Drunk are the waves of the ocean that topple and fall on each other in revelry
Drunk is the wind as it blows its howling secrets on to the trees
Drunk is also the comet that traverses headlong through time periods unawares
And drunk is the shame that hides itself in new attires everyday

Drunk is the statue that strikes your head when you kneel before it
Drunk is your heritage that seeks its origin in an unknown destiny
Drunk is also your solitude that never parts your company
And drunk are all your truths that dress themselves up as lies

Are you not too drunk to even recognize your drunken brethren?

On our Zeitgeist

1. Any existence that does not come to terms with the spirit of its times - however monstrously chaotic this task might be with respect to our times - is nothing but idealism, however 'profound' it may otherwise think it is. It would be pure escapism -- 'all thought, no action'.

2. The peculiarity of our Zeitgeist is its unprecedented greed, its fleeting memory: it devours unabashedly anything that touches its base and strikes its chord, unless it does not confound that thing to hide in the pretext of its own shadows. So who is capable of satisfying this monster of greed? -- Only someone who refreshes every moment with cheerfulness by receiving his energy from an unknown future, and in doing so, submits to the hungry present. He interprets the lack of memory of the Zeitgeist as the eternal youth of the future.

Recipe for the re-born II

Autumn approaches when visions, sounds, language, human beings and culture itself lose their symbolic, metaphorical character and tends towards the literal. Although this is an asymptotic tending, never entirely synchronizing with itself, thus never accomplishing death. But can there be a re-birth, if death itself has not been fully achieved? Whence comes this "re-"? How can one will oneself to life, if there is no blindness? How can the will be blind?
Symbolism is the work of the culture in which one finds oneself. One takes and gives without worrying about the rules of economical exchange. Truth plays with blindness here. Frivolity and squandering are not forbidden.
But the asymptote can be diverted to carve out a new ascending path, by borrowing energy, in trickling units, from the depths of its past higher moments, which are now in a state of limbo, not lively but not dead either, and by refracting this energy into new shades and shadows. This is an economic exchange with strict rules of transaction, involving tabulation, interest and surveillance: the most difficult task for a human being! One has to drag one's broken legs across the desert to learn the art of forgetting! Nuances and subtlety are now in the greatest demand. But as the journey wears on one builds one's credit more and more, and there is a gradual loosening of the economical grip. Perhaps spring is on the horizon? Perhaps a new language, a new "sine", new symbols, new culture? And no one has to know about this secret path. The same settings that confronts one now in the boredom of one's limbo will be re-born later into a revitalized life, as if there were no previous descent. This "as if" of the new blindness!

This is the experiment

I have often observed, to my wonder and delight, that my handwriting changes in very subtle ways depending on the kind of pen I am using: Whether it is an inkpen or a ball point, or again whether it is a gel pen or a pencil even. Even within a certain class, say gel pens, my handwriting takes to some kinds and not so much to others. The r's and s's and f's get their own flair and pointed intentions with the right kind of pen.
So too with us. What we are is intricately bound up with whom we are around, where we are, what we give and what we receive. There, some style of ours is taken up and immortalized by someone, here an intention that we made is covered over and reinvoked at a different time, thereby lending this intention a new, hitherto unanticipated meaning, and some times a proposal of ours is rejected initally but sharpened into a more disciplined, self-conscious command by the other, and at other times what we offer is completely overlooked or rejected by the world. What we end up inscribing on the tablet of life seems to depend entirely on the surface of the tablet itself! This dark uncertainty that belongs inescapably to our lot seems to be a sort of weakness. Nietzsche implies so much when he writes of the German that he "cannot be judged by his actions and [that] as an individual he is still completely hidden even after he has acted." Our actions do not reveal who we are for these actions only manage us to recast us into a new light, which we ourselves were not privy to before. Like a fallen leaf we get whisked away, trampled over, flown across lands at the mercy of uncertain forces and winds, or we remain in some corner withering away and forgotten.
But this injustice that we suffer at the hands of life is also our path to glory and redemption. To be sure, one must limit oneself and possess oneself in a self-contained way. But this self-enclosure is only possible by an occasional will to stupidity, as Nietzsche might say. In the end, by wrapping ourselves with our own skin we deny ourselves the possibility of a new meaning, a re-birth, a future, however dangerous a game one is now playing in choosing to remain in this open uncertainty. It is in this future that our greatness and glory lie. Life's theatre of cruelty is not revealed in that one is fluttering at the mercy of natural forces one cannot gain control over, but in the challenge to repeatedly submit oneself to this flight and fluttering all the while preserving oneself in the act without losing balance. To speak through Nietzsche again: "How much truth can one endure? how much truth can one dare? This is the real measure of value. This is the test. This is the experiment."

The joyful signs!

After the victory is won, one always feels one has expended more energy than was actually required for the task. But strangely, this insight is unavailable when one is actually going through the process, as one always feels pressured to spend as much effort and energy as one did. (The growth of the child or any process of self-overcoming has this peculiar structure of strife and pain).
However, the seemingly excess energy that appears at the end of the process will not have gone to waste. It shows up as the profound joy and power of the conquerer!