Hide Under My Mustache, Poor Horse: Nietzsche in Turin

'Hide under my mustache, poor horse!

Only I comprehend the state we're in!

Insensitivity of the world runs a course

And overtakes us here on this street of Turin!' 

And so this superman, with looping, aching arms,
Wrapped the nag’s neck in sympathetic choke.
Though equine embrace made no less calm,
Clasped hands, trembling tight, made a loving yoke

That laboured to shield the beast from his flog of dread.
Man and beast, there, held tight to no common vanity.
The Flogger of the man, in his lost mind, stayed dead.
Nature, in blind ambition, straight stripped his sanity.

So, like the clasp come undone from slippery skin
And takes leave of a wrist, snaking around,
Did the man let loose his fingered grasp and, in
Tragic heap, fell straight to the ground.

That good little lamb that frolics happily upon
The globe round top of the green grass lea
In stainless splendour, is in turn the same one
Who, with innocent eye, cannot spy the company

He keeps. Behind that eye the subtle worm
In insidious routes but no true endeavour,
Bores through the skull in parasitic turns.
And the innocent eye is shut forever.

We climb the hill, we crave to be on high.
But the taut tight rope over the abyss frays
And in eternal echoes we hear the sighs.
Angel arms slip from our necks and we fall away.

The Price for this is Right:It's Free

If you’ve never heard of Jaron Lanier, I would highly recommend a contemplative read.  He has some very interesting takes on the internet generally and social sites in particular.  We are all users of the internet generally and it should be as clear as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie peering at you in all their glossiness from a supermarket checkout line, we are all users of social sites particularly.

As it stands right now, anyone who is the least bit creative in the 21st century is standing on a knife edge, a sharp and decisive conundrum: How to make money?  I will not bombard with trite clichés like, ‘money makes the world go round,’ but let’s face a reality, it does in fact at least keep societies gears turning.  This, for me, is a bit of an irony.  For many years now I eschewed the very idea of material gain as so much wasted fuel and a real drain on integrity.  I say this especially as an artist.  But for the love of Vishnu, I wonder is it possible to make a little bit of the green stuff?  My worry now, however, much like Lanier’s, is how do we expect anyone to even eke out a living in this our gadget filled, electronic age?  As another writer has said, “the internet is both midwife and executioner.”  It has sprung a plethora of a well-spring of creativity but everyone expects to bathe for free.   The internet can give new birth to a creative idea but will die upon its arrival as a ‘product.’   I am just as guilty of this.  

Indulge me in a short story.

The other day I found that a favourite writer of mine had decided to sell an e-book.  He dealt with the inevitable minor controversy that it was not an e-book at all but in fact just an essay.  The price should have been an indication.  This 9,000 word small body of work cost a mere $1.99 on Amazon.  I like him, I like his ideas, and I liked the price, so I bought it (I also downloaded the necessary Kindle for PC’s.   For free, I hope!).  I figured at that price it was essentially the same as a potentially bad cup of coffee so I justified it rather handily.  I downloaded this writer’s essay and read it in a sitting.  It was interesting and thought-provoking.  Some of it I whole heartedly agreed with and much of it I did not.  The problem was that as I found myself wrestling with those ideas I disagreed with in my head, I found that much like an uninvited party guest, the thought that maybe I wasted my money kept popping in like a messy drunk.  But, why did I think this way?  

When I delved deeper I realized I was becoming accustomed to getting things for free.  I was ashamed.  I realized I could have waited until it made the rounds certainly as time wore down and his sales for it waned.  Yet I remembered I had skillfully talked myself into it by the paltry price of the download.  Is it wrong for this writer, a great thinker actually, to give himself away for nothing?  He does this already with a blog.  He has a right to make money, I believe.  If anything, I do hope this illustrates how at least publishing is shifting beneath our feet.  The man (me) who used to decry the need to make money is now fretting over how some businesses like publishers might make a profit!  Such is the strange dichotomies of the internet.

The other frightening thing is how it promotes mediocrity.  Much like an ‘American Idol’ kind of hyper-democracy pushing the banal, the internet can do the same in more convoluted ways.  I have seen great writers (and I mean very talented people) write for a magazine and placed on these very prominent magazines websites only to be buried within everything else in that magazine.  These writers can be hard to find.  But the minute a less than talented writer’s work finds its way as a link on a prominent blog, he makes it around the world as quick as sound travels.  This, as someone put it, may have a lot to do with “the ratio of signals to noise.”  It does, however, make me feel better as when I place a poem or some such piece of work on here.   

If someone simultaneously claims in a ‘comment’ they saw Britney Spears pumping gas, they get a thousand ‘likes’.  If it is a thousand, it is exactly one thousand more than I receive. Imagine if either of these had to be a money maker.  I would be broke.  A celebrity "sighter" would not.  Am I bitter?  No.  Am I lying?  Yes.

It just now seems that America has become a weird place. With an unemployment rate of over 9%, its inhabitants appear to be content to place things—sometimes someone else’s stuff—on social network sites in hopes of getting a “thumbs up.”  We want to have sensitive egos stroked over creating a society where everyone can share in a marketable way that (hopefully) everyone can flourish.  

Whether we like it or not, we still need cash to buy things.  You know this already.  I mean in the sense that Adam Smith explained it as a market that was circular.   I guess I have to do my part by not expecting everyone within the frame of this little unblinking window that now peers in front of me is for free.   Yet somehow, and for some clear reason I still fail to bring into view, I continue to place things on Facebook for free in a quixotic attempt at a little love.  Sad.

The Blurring of Technology as Appendage and Tool

Karl Marx once stated that the worry for the workers of the world was that they may alienate themselves from what they create.  The machines they used were in danger of becoming  "appengages" to the human being.  With an extensive use of the machines, the worker and his work stood on the precipice of losing any "individual character."  Is there any technology in this our modern age that we might come close to considering nearly literally being an "appendage" than a cellphone, or ipod, or whatever mode of adjunct to the body part may be your choice? Unlike, say, a loom, these things are always "on" us.   However, the very organ I might say these things are standing in for is arguably the very nerve center (literally and figuratively) so important to organic life and acquirement of knowledge: the human brain.

 I have surely mentioned more than once somewhere within a sea of blogs that I am concerned not so much with technology as a tool, but rather it's expediency as a tool.  On the face of it, this should sound like a positive.  I believe it can be one  (I chuckle at how often I hear people exclaim they cannot imagine life before cell phones but I rarely hear it lamented that they cannot imagine a time when they couldn't look up a useless information at the drop of a hat).   But I also chuckle at my local bar and a random bit of useless trivia is thrown out there as a challenge to the collective know-how.  This is usually in the form of some sports trivia of a sort.  Heads come up and away from beer rims like lions lapping up lake water only to hear or smell some tasty prey.  It’s then that cellphones collectively come out at the ready with all the aplomb of taking out a chewing gum packet and thumbs begin to genuflect wildly in contrast to faces frozen in stony stares at their little screens.  The race is on for the answer.  Is this a good thing?  Well, why not?  There should be nothing wrong for a ‘quest’ for knowledge and there should certainly be nothing that hinders the honest competition in acquiring that knowledge.  It may be all fine and well for getting lackadaisical men from pulling their heads from out of a beer mug, but is this what we want, for example, in our classrooms?  No doubt the acquirement of knowledge especially at the click of a button seems appealing but there are dangers beyond the seemingly educational allure.

The problem with this is it might foster the ‘habit’ of being able to find information without the time worn need to also distill, absorb, and remember the information.  If there’s a study that says otherwise, I don’t know of it.  However, in my own travels, I’ve found that students are infinitely cheery at answering a question right but sadly cannot expand or improve on what they’ve answered correctly.

As an example of this, imagine I'm having a discussion with a friend over some rich and tasty coffee. Somehow, and for some reason only known to him,  my friend is gripped with a desire to remember a quote by the the Rennaissance painter and sculptor, Michelangelo Buonarotti.  He says between sips: "I'm thinking of that wonderful quote by Michelangelo but I can't remember it for my life!  What was it?  I know he said it  around the time he was painting the Sistine Ceiling.  When was that?"

I'm glad to oblige.  I do this by firing up the phone, punching the mini keyboard with the words google, then I'm off on my own quest.  I get my info rather easily.  "He started it in 1508 but didnt finish for another four years," I say matter-of-factly.  This helps jog my friends memory.  He's on the trail thanks to my hint.  He says, "Yes!  Yes!  It was something to do with the nature of genius.  It was  said around that time.  This I remember!"  This is all I need, or, more to the point, all google will need.  I punch in Michelangelo, then 'quotes,' then simply the word 'genius.' After some of the least amount of research, I've found it!  "He said, 'Genius is eternal patience,'"  I might declare proudly.  My friend is content.  But what have I done?  Well, for one I have used the phone as appendage, as a stand in for my brain.  It may be argued that this is analogous, or merely a stand-in, for an anthology or thesaurus on art.  There's no doubt this analogy holds weight.  But, the expediency of the cellphone has become part of the usage of the thing.  It's become an essence.  If you own an anthology on art, it should be unlikely that you would carry it around on your person waiting for any questions to do with the Rennaissance, or the Baroque Period, or any other art movement.  You will hopefully read it and get to know it intimately so that the knowedge gained becomes just as intimate with you.

But the real problem here is that I have only become a distiller of information.  What if he then asks me my opinion on the more esoteric meaning of the chronological layout of the Sistine Ceiling?  What if he asks why he placed a Sybil here and a saint there?  What if he asks my opinion on his theory of form and function?  Is there enough room on my little screen?  Is there enough time before a second cup of coffee?  I might be embarrassed.  My only recourse to him may be a sheepish, "My little machine did all that."  Of course, this will depend on if I pretended all along I knew what I was talking about.  Admittedly, this little problem, though still associated with how I got the information, may have more to do with my attitude and my honesty about it.  But, if I did pretend I knew what I was talking about, it should then have been my responsibility to expand my knowledge beyond mere trivia.

This is why it seems more than ever, it is a teacher's duty to  demand that expansion.  Herein lies the danger of something like a Wikipedia.  When I was a student I well remember the ire of the teacher when she finally came to the conclusion that a student was merely regurgitating (without feeling or understanding, mind you!) some those 'notes' that were a mere distillation of a story to a book that was meant to be a companion to a work and not its replacement.  Might Wikipedia be the “Cliff notes” of the present?  In this case, an answer does not even have to be memorized!  One merely has to call it up on a laptop or phone and an answer is provided immediately.  The danger in English (and I might even argue math) is that the expediency is eroding the critical thought that goes with finding new information.  Ones work is done once something is cited. No need to keep it.  It was all in a moment.  What's next is next.    The other problem with such rapid information gathering is the thrill of the find seems to be lacking.  As a psychological motivation, with much digging comes more interest and hence, more passion into the quest for knowing.

I  remember well when young, and in hindsight as slightly older, the thrill of the search for knowledge. At the time, it seemed deeply frustrating but in lovely retrospect, I now see the importance of pushing myself to finding it was something so essential to the desire of attaining and finding  knowledge.  When one works for it, one holds it dearly.  As an analogy, imagine the polar bear in the zoo who is fed daily, something he never received in the wild.  Why then does he seem so depressed?  Quite simply, because, in the wide stretches of the years,  nature has placed in him the need, the very desire, to find his own food.  His very 'raison d'etre' was not eating alone.  It was finding it.  I sometimes wonder if we are putting on a brave face but we might be feeling just as dejected as the imprisoned but well-fed polar bear.

This also applies to college students who use websites as a way to facilely cut and paste information expected to pass as their own paper.  The laziness is near unforgivable but the ignorance of the severity of such a crime cannot be comprehended.

We must teach children that, despite the speed that new information can be called up, it is still just a tool for reference and the topic called up must still be thoroughly examined and, most importantly, must be compared to other information as a way of cross referencing facts and ideas for the best possible educational outcome.

Googling is fine for at the bar when you want to acquire the number of strikeouts Andy Petite has achieved on every odd number month of a lunar eclipse.  But for a student who wants to deeply understand Homer’s “The Iliad,” it should be a tool that requires further human thinking.  

VVG

One wonders if it were the flickering tail of the garret mouse--

That fluttered like the needle who could not find a point

Within the confused compass so jumpily out of joint--

Who sped around the dust and hues of your yellow house.

Or maybe it was the wafting smoke from a teeth-clenched pipe--

That rose like the charmer’s snake from his wicker basket

Or the smoky souls of recent ghosts from out of caskets--

That inspired the agitation of colour in swirls of strife.

Or was it a nameless deep down thing?  Sensation stirred

Upon the last vestige of soul for demand of expression

That scythed and sheaved through the fields of depression?

And above those black and circling swirl of birds

Tell in both sight and of sound even the struggle must die.

This with a fine tuned soul you could both see and hear

Despite the selfless desire to give a slice of an ear,

Amid the waving windy whispers of barley and rye.

For in your portrait, too, those colours of strife swirl round

A sure and steady head with blazing eyes and orange beard

That, like a burning sun, intensified what was feared.

And the same opaque but mutable waves can be found

Where the curling cypress stabs at a storming azure

Sky, a tempest that worked like Jupiter’s little spot,

A convulsive ocean more than merely a tiny dot.

To paint seemed not yet the port nor the final cure.

All is sturm and drang, sure felt within, seen without.

But the tempting need for tameness with a howling hush

Swept upon a surface with a flicker of a bristling brush,

Did simulate the swirling anguish yet brought it about.

Ghosts at the Door

At night I watch a line of ghosts walk past the door

In a steady stream of holographic gore.

The door is at a crack as a matter of course

And each glides by, a slivered sight where, perforce,

Each exsanguinous eye falls on me or else the floor.

They slide by in a row without howl, screech, or bark,

A chain of vapory light amidst the purpley dark.

I lay there prostrate on a cold dream-less bed

Where just a neck strains to lift a half- heavy head,

To spy this silent spectre gang sear cold on a mark

That is my already existing fathomless fear.

They burn in bloodless light with nothing but a mere

Glance that sets like an arrow at this timeless thing

Through the quiet screech of an infinite, noiseless din

Which, like each stare, is piercing and sharply clear.

Deaths foot it slowly and my ever smacking heart

Synchronizes to each silent step as they march,

And the tight and muted throbbing in my chest

Sounds the malingering dirge they feign to follow lest

No beating time create chaos and rend them apart.

Could all the ghosts of remembrance fill up a space?

Does time hold the memory for just such a place?

Yet it is time and a place that sets them one by one

Like dead ticks of the clock, like false beats of a drum,

As each eyes me, then the floor, then walks at a pace.

Sleek and shimmering, they seem all a silvery whole,

An amorphous humanity in an everlasting slow

But fleeting trek.  And I strain a brain to wonder why

I somehow sense a longing, a desire within each eye,

For each to find the flickering thought of what is a soul.

Elephant's and Chihuahua's: Speculation, Intuition, and the Ties that Bind

This is the deal. I was rollerblading in the house and I fell in the kitchen. I fell flat on my back and found myself incapable of getting myself back up. This no matter how hard I tried. I was, in a word, incapacitated.  Here’s the deal within a deal. I left my kitchen door open. It leads down the stairs and, ultimately, outside. I say ultimately but this really only takes on meaning if the door downstairs leading outside is open. I say ultimately only if these requirements are met. But it can lead outside assuming doors are open. If so, there is minor danger here for, if the downstairs door is open, a stray animal could easily make their way in to my kitchen from the outside in a streamlined manner (Yes, I do include the human animal).

If this sounds like an abstract worry, well, I am here to tell you today nebulous preoccupation became concrete reality. It did this in real time. You see, there is a dog, the neighbour’s dog, who loiters outside my home pretty regularly. I see him often. He sees me often. There is, if I'm being honest, felt tension. There has been for months. He is a Chihuahua. Yes. Do you now comprehend the preoccupation? My preoccupation? You now understand said tension, I should hope. I needed no other description other than his breed, I should think. I am glad we (you and I) understand each other this simply. I say simply as a matter of knowing confidently complexities can be reduced to simplicities. Sort of like when a very astute person can explain E=MC² to an unscientific mind in terms easily digestible. Actually, I don't even think I mean that. This is not the metaphor at all. It’s more like when two lovers understand each other with a simple glance. It is that shared understanding without explanation. Not that we are lovers. I just mean to use that as an analogy. We are like that. We are not that (You and I).

I know you know where this is going. Yes. The Chihuahua made his way upstairs. Yes. I have deemed him a gender. This is important. You’ll come to understand this in the most underwhelming way. At least, I mean the significance. He came waddling in through the threshold, the kitchen one, his four legs in a motion of blur making them one entity on top of that little body. He held his head high. I should have been more surprised than I was, but all I did was strain my neck and more so my eyeballs, to see him coming round the bend and I thought, not now, waddly, not right now. Yes, I used the adjective waddly.  He waddled. Some dogs do. This was not a first impression but the thought did come without forethought. I thought before how he waddled. I saw it during our encounters. I thought it many times. It stuck in my mind. I guess I just called it up, as it were, without thinking. It came in the heat of the situation. And I have quite the situation for you. You'll know what I mean. He ignored it. He ignored my angry plea. It's hard to tell if dogs like that actually think they’re as imperial as they act, because, god knows, he did appear imperial. Is it we just project it on them because of the behaviour we are familiar with but is something they are utterly unaware? I felt he thought he was imperial. I would say aloof.  I still can’t say he knew he was aloof. Can he be aloof without knowing it? Or knowing to put it in words? It is hard to say. Is he just working like a robot? Who knows? Despite this, there is some behavior that is not ambiguous. It may be debated whether intentional or not, but not ambiguous. It follows:

He walked over to me. He stopped at my head. I was in agony. He didn't care. Again, I'm assuming that. Again, maybe I'm projecting attitudes not there. All I have is behaviour. As to whether or not he cared stands in the same relationship as wondering whether or not he knew he was imperial. He may have only appeared to be indifferent to my pain. Never mind this. He stopped at my cranium. He looked to his left. Or my left. I was on the ground. My equilibrium was on the ground with me. It was incapacitated, like me. He looked to his side. He then looked down at me again but only for a second because, after looking that glance downward, directly after it without a seeming thoughtful intention, he proceeded humping my skull. He humped it. He humped it quickly. 

Now, you might not believe this but, I was less than shocked this was happening. I was more resigned than flabbergasted. It was all in an instant or it seemed like it much like his decision (or non-decision) to do it. I think now my mind could only be described as something like a Chihuahua humping. It worked ferociously but almost mechanically. That is to say, as if on autopilot. I remember thinking I should have been shocked but realizing, all too consciously, it not only was happening, but was perfectly possible. There was no surprise. It could all happen like this. All was needed was, doors needed to be open, Chihuahas needed to be loitering where they usually do, and I just needed to be debilitated on the floor.

The rest, no matter how queer or unbelievable, actually was believable. It felt too real. Also, too possible. But even this was not something going on in my brain. It was real. I thought of all this quickly. I mean to say, written down like this makes the thoughts appear labored but in fact they came in a flash. I was not really the author of them. It all just seemed to happen sans the benefit of reflection. It just flowed. Funny how the mind works like that. Quickly, I mean. He finished with me as rapidly as he started but before I could collect myself, I only managed to spy him slipping past the corner of the threshold from whence he came and was out the door again. Not so much as a by your leave. I could hear the little clips of dog talons tickle at each step until they ebbed out of earshot. Cheeky little bastard. He disappeared.

I got better. I gave up rollerblading in the house. I gave it up altogether. I slowed down. I haven’t been flat on my back again since then. Well, if we don’t count sleeping, but this too figures in things. I should say I hadn’t been supine in searing pain of my own making again. Not by the aid of rollerblades, anyway. But something strange happened to me, and I am certain it was a direct cause of that ‘mind fuck,’ that cranial copulation given me that little bastard Chihuaua. It stands to reason that it followed. It stands to reason in my mind, anyway. Ever since the shagging atop my head, an elephant has permeated my life. May be permeated is too strong a word.  I should say he shows up at weird times.

An example is, whenever I become hyper conscious of desiring to capture life in all its intuitive ‘elan vital,’ in its very movement without the inevitability of afterthought getting in the way, the elephant lumbers past causing my mind to reflect. He is always slow and lumbering. I love elephants but I get to wondering if the elephant is aware of this lumbering quality of his and, if so, does he do it on purpose? I like to think, no.  I don’t think he does and, in a moment of clarity, I realize I’m projecting again. Why should I think elephants or Chihuahuas have intentions toward me?  But, though I do think I’m right about this, I also hope I’m right as I don’t want the elephant doing that to me intentionally. I like liking him. I want to like him. I mean, I just really like elephants. He more than likely is not.  This is my objective feeling, anyway.  At least I think so.

Still, he’s now around often. Because of that strange shag given me by that dog---I’m almost sure of it---the elephant is now ubiquitous.  Again, maybe not quite ubiquitous.  Even if so, I must admit, like attempting to prove imperial intentions in a Chihuaha, this cause and effect is a hard thing to prove. This I must admit.  I admit maybe it just feels as if it could be the case but, like I say, it is only an assumption. I’m not so ignorant to know it can be assumed wrongly.  He is around. I should clarify the above. There is something in my psyche, though my psyche doesn’t know it, which seems pure, but only in the sense that my psyche does not know it. This is what makes it pure. I think when I become aware of the purity, it disappears and the wanting of it back again makes it burdensome. This is when the lovely elephant shows up. Once more, I don’t mind him. It’s just that, well, it is hard to explain. I’ll try to give an example.

One early morning I was awake and on my back (I told you I would be on my back again). I lay there on the couch in that sort of middle area between consciousness and non-consciousness. I should say more to the point that fuzziness of consciousness and the edge of not being conscious of the consciousness.  It’s all so damn paradoxical! Believe, me, I know! I lay there, eyes closed, hands clasped on chest like a corpse, when birds outside the window began to sing. There was something---I only say this now in hindsight---where I heard the birds sing but I felt I, the person inside my head, was not the one hearing it. It’s just, there was chirping and there was hearing.  In other words, (again, in hindsight) I just heard the birds without the necessity of being some sort of “I” aware of hearing it. I know who I am right now. But who was doing that listening? And besides, this purity, if it is such a thing, is weird precisely because it becomes a thing. The moment it became “something,” the elephant showed up. He was right there in the living room. Taking it all up, too.  I’m sure you can imagine.  Now here’s the thing (another thing). The moment he was there the bulk of him caused the chirping of the birds, the waves in which their sound traveled, to work around him. That’s just simple physics. The waves became slower. Well, may be in actual fact they traveled farther to get to my ear. I want to stop with this kind of talk as I don’t want to get in to the physics of it. I don’t know enough about it, if I’m being honest. I just know they have to travel around that great big hulk of a body. 

It seemed like it anyway. Yes. It felt like they took longer to get to my ear. And the waiting for the sound of the chirping in turn gave me little pockets of time to think. I suppose that in turn made me realize I was waiting for the chirping. It also made realize I liked it better when I didn’t wait for the chirping. So it gave me time to ponder my past state of mind, the one that didn’t even feel like a state at the time! Too much! It created a boat load of other thoughts, too, but I won’t go in to that. It seems we’d be circling down an eddy if I tried to reduce further and further.  Again, I don’t want to seem bitter. I don’t really think the elephant intentionally interrupted it. I think, in a way, it was my fault, in a sense. It seems to be when that desire got a hold of me to re-live that kind of purity, is when he showed up. I’ve said the same thing about the Chihuahua but, I guess this is another case of just witnessing cause and effect. I can only assume. But, truly, I didn’t mind when he showed up. I felt I’d learned something, though, if you were to ask me what it is right now, I might not be able to say. I did like looking at him.

Which reminds me, there was another time, quite different yet similar to the chirping incident, where the elephant showed up and I decided to drop what I was thinking and give him my attention. This is when I remembered that old Indian parable. You know the one? The one where the group of blind men goes up to an elephant and touches him and they all argue they’re touching a different thing. Apparently, it teaches us that a person can have different perceptions from another person. But, I personally don’t think this is all it teaches. I personally am pretty sure there’s something in there about an elephant being an elephant no matter what single perspective from one person. I might be wrong. That’s what I get, anyway. So, yes, while I had him there I decided to try it for myself. So that one day so much like the bird chirping incident, I waited till dark. I waited until night fell. It would be easier in the dark. I wanted to pretend I was blind. I did cover my eyes with an old scarf but I thought night time would help that along. So I did both. After blindfolding myself I walked up to the elephant very carefully and started stroking parts of the body. This is dangerous, to be sure. But, I did do it. I stroked his tail southward till I came to that little hairy tuft at the end. It was nice. I did the same to the trunk feeling the wrinkled ripples running horizontal across that heavy snout. I felt the side of his torso which was like some lumpy convex bulging submarine. I did it all. I did it all except the tusks. For some reason I held off from touching the tusks out of respect. It was fun. But, here’s the problem. I even hear you saying it. I just now described very well what I was touching. How was it anything like the parable if I can sit here now and tell you what I experienced?

Of course I could be just using my introspection but I remember at the time knowing it was an elephant. Blindfolding didn’t do the trick. Well, yes, like the blind men I also describe what I’m feeling, but I didn’t really learn anything. I think maybe I did a better job at describing but I think I just used more imagination than they did. That’s not a boast. Remember, I did steal their idea. I guess I just already knew the different parts of the elephant. All of him. All from tusk to toenail. I guess prior experience worked with me.  I suppose memory worked with me. Either way, I knew what I was touching. I’m sure of it.  I also got to thinking maybe it’s because I had no one to collaborate with in the exercise. After all, when you think about it, the parable has a bunch of blind men touching the elephant. They work in tandem. I had no one but myself to doubt.  I couldn’t possibly doubt myself. I mean, could I? I’ve seen an elephant before. I couldn’t possibly argue with myself. Imagine me telling me it might not be an elephant after all. There was no one here to tell me differently.  I guess what the blind men learn (by an outside source, mind you) is that they’re blind. I guess what I learned was that I kind of wished I was blind. It could have made it interesting. But, believe me, I don’t really want to be blind. So, as I was saying, the elephant was often there. He was there slowing things down and somewhat vexing me as he did slow things down but, at the same time, not minding it too much. I did learn things.

One last thing. Strangely, he was there in a dream, too. The elephant, I mean. Here’s the weird bit. So was that Chihuahua. This is where I should point out I was on my back again. Of course, in this way, in bed. Where else to dream? One night I dreamt I stood in my kitchen. I’m pretty sure I was content but, well, see, this is a problem already. This is, in a way, kind of like blindfolding myself and touching the elephant. Who do I consult in telling me I was content in the dream? I guess I consult myself right now. But, do I trust the “me” in the dream? Do I trust the “me” now? I guess I have no criteria but myself.  But, I will say, it seemed easier to say I was touching an elephant. No matter. I think I was content in my dream. I was in the kitchen (Jesus! Now who establishes that? We could go on and on!). Well, I’ll continue with it. I was in the kitchen probably looking out the window (at dragon’s flying over a lagoon of fire, or something) when in a sudden that Chihuahua was on my head again. The difference between this and the actual experience I described earlier was that I was standing up in the dream. That and, naturally, it was a dream. There was no aching either. But, there was annoyance. He worked away at the top of my head right there in my kitchen when the scene drastically changed in a flash to the hustle and bustle of a busy street. 

Yes, I was clothed. I almost feel that question upon me and I must answer it. Who wants a cliché when describing a dream?  All different kinds of people walked past me seemingly too busy to notice a Chihuahua humping the hell out of my skull. Everybody just walked by in a hurry, either singly, or in groups ignoring me. I just stood there taking it from this Chihuahua when all of a sudden another group walked toward me. They were all together and laughing and enjoying themselves. What I noticed within that group was an old lover of many years ago. It had been many years since we saw each other. I mean this truly. That thought was not part of the dream. In fact, I will admit, there have been times here and there throughout the years when I’ve closed my eyes and thought of her. There have even been times when I was in that state where the memories were like the chirping of birds. Anyway, in the dream I saw her and her laughing entourage moving my way. She might not have noticed me as she seemed preoccupied with her chums. This didn’t matter to me. I instantly became conscious of the wide waste of years since between us which caused in me a desire to give a good impression. This, especially as it had been so long. It was almost a matter of letting her know what I’d become. I was all right! I am different now. But these thoughts were overrun by the thought of my mussed hair.

The Chihuahua was making a hell of a state of it. I was worried she’d see me so disheveled and think the worst. She would see my hair and not just think the worst right then and there, but she would think the mussed hair was an indication of twenty years! I panicked that this could be the last time to make an impression and my hair was getting worked over like earth in a sandstorm. I tried desperately to fix it, matting it down, working on the part, but the more I did the more that Chihuahua worked at undoing it. The more he and I performed this ridiculous dance, the closer she got to us. The contentedness of the kitchen was now panic. I mean, I wanted to jump out of my skin. And the panic grew as she approached. However, when she was right up on me, the strangest thing happened. Just as she (or I) was within range that reliable old elephant passed between us, as slow and lumbering as he’s always been. He saved me from the embarrassment. He calmed my mind. But, it can never be this clean cut, can it? I’ll tell you it isn’t because I was also really saddened.  She and I did not get to see each other. It could have been the last time. I was torn between a terrible, deep and bottomless longing and the street level self-consciousness of superficial impressions.

Just as the scene went from kitchen to busy street, it in turn went from busy street to a vast and empty dessert. I was surrounded by sand all around. I was surrounded by nothing but sand. The Chihuahua was gone but I instinctively looked down and found myself staring in to a pool of water.  It was a little oasis in the middle of this entire nothingness. I saw my reflection in the pool of water. What I saw was myself with hair clean and tidy sort of like a child whose mother primps her boy on the day of his school picture. This made no impression on me. I looked upward again and saw the elephant in the distance. What I remember then at the moment of sighting him was a strange but intuitive thought that I knew he was an elephant. He was an elephant and nothing else, I told myself so. I remember thinking he is not the sky and he is not the sand, therefore he is an elephant. Just as quickly as I said this to myself he broke apart in to pieces. I was shocked and saddened. I was saddened that is, until I realized he was a cloud. It just dissipated in to other shapes.

I woke up not knowing what to think.  I thought to myself thoughts on the matter will come later. Well, I do remember immediately thinking one thing. It struck me that an elephant turning in to a cloud was not just the stuff of dreams. I mean, that could happen in the experiencing world, too. Just a weird thought on a weird subject. Though I often do think on the times the elephant showed up when he did, and I still often recall my mistaking him for a cloud, I really mull over my touching the elephant blindfolded. It all seemed so strange to come up with such an experiment on myself. I got to thinking how that was sort of like experimenting on your own thoughts. It’s like thinking while studying the thinking. It makes you just want to hear birds chirping. As it is, I now go about my daily life.  I often see that that Chihuahua and when I do, I think of all these things.

Self-Crowned King

I sat and shat and read my John Stuart 
Mill and read that he said that Monsieur 
Aurelius was a nice man in myriad ways 
Despite his attempt to keep Christians from 

Permeating his neighbourhoods. What may 
Seem now a crudeness was only a good man 
In the vital ways that transcend those 
Ethos usually ushered in by a new calendar. 

It makes sense to me while I sit and shit. 
Cold porcelain is never friendly to 
The back of warm thighs. But it may 
Aid in the ushering in of new thoughts. 

It has its utility in thoughts not to mention 
Those indispensable non-thoughts from the 
Other end. What is my utility now beyond 
The mere excretion which I only vaguely control? 

Would it be a mistake in category 
To say I have shit in my brains? The crudeness 
May be in the leaving it there. The usefulness 
Of it all may now be twofold; double 

Relief can work as one. I will lay the book at 
Bath's edge, thankful for it’s use, and proceed 
To relieve myself of wasteful thoughts. I will 
Be the throned philosopher-king as I sit and shit.