The most that anyone of us can seem to do is to fashion something –an object, or ourselves– and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force.
–Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey.
–Wendell Berry, Standing By Words
Remember my earlier promise? Remember my surrender?
You’ve forgotten? That’s good. That’s merciful.
All that is abominable I will not eat. Shit is abominable. I will not eat it.
Come with me: Ascend the ladder. Bring your shadows. Or we could stay right here and you could make magic sounds, make music, tell stories, entertain us while the fire rages across the fields, the fields grown fallow after the people baked all the rain in their ovens.
“The carrion artist: Works at random, sneers at the people, makes things opaque, brushes across the surface of the face of things, works without care, defrauds peoples, is a thief.” (Aztec statement on art and artists.)
They are prostrate now, and mute or inconsolable, the great ones. They are buried in the earth or their ashes have been scattered in the streams.
What cow was that –or perhaps it was a goat– that floated away from the pasture with a bellyful of stars?
To whom am I speaking?
To whom should I speak?
The righteous are no more, the old man told me. The land is given over to evil-doers. If you sit still and listen I’ll tell you exactly what you’ll hear: the world going about its monkey business. Where the hell did these fuckers learn to drive? Why must we entrust the telling of our stories to complete strangers?
Why?
Because we have forgotten all the stories.
I have.
That gentle thing you did with your hand, how was I to know it wasn’t supposed to be a blessing?
Still, I cannot help myself: I love this world.
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