by Douglas Macarthur-
"you are remembered for the rules you break."
from jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria-
Be kind, for everyone you meet, is fighting a great battle
'the bystander'
back in the days when cowboys would drive great trains of cattle through the plains, to plateaus and into the foothills of the mountains in the summer, then again, back down towards the low lands for the winter, they would take great care and it was considered quite a sensitive endeavor. should the cattleman become careless, and allow a minor distraction to impede his concentration at any time throughout the journey that surely could take many weeks to several months, there was strong possibility of stampede. in normal conditions, this is not a serious happening. proper grazing grounds go on for miles and usually a herd will, sooner or later, tucker itself out. however, when the bulk of this journey was spent maneuvering complicated cliffs and valleys in the mountains, and then the long, wide open stretches of grass and wildflowers in the plateaus that suddenly and breathlessly give way to steep cliffs and dangerous trails, any over ambitious wrangler could easily lose an entire herd, in the breadth of an instant. i feel we all face this, all the time. for instance, in literature, should the reader be careless with the right piece of heavy reading, he might find a relatively placid looking bunch of ideas shifting, quite unexpectedly, into a full blown running of the bulls, threatening to trample his once solid perspective, like fragile blades of grass and tender purple wildflowers, underfoot. or the writer, who fails to notice a wolf, the predator of creativity, complacency, cozying up to herd. before he knows it form, character development, set and setting, all fly off a five hundred foot cliff, ejaculating into the crisp mountain air, in a onslaught of masturbatory ideas and language, the weaker, slower ideas crushed underneath in the name of an orgiastic out burst of nihilistic philosophies and indulgent diatribes.
but there is another perspective in all this: what of the bystander?
and no, he is not innocent. guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, this is the man history forgot when whats his name lost so many cattle on that fateful day in whenever, off a cliff approximately this many miles away from no where. well, the bystander was there. walking. perhaps thinking, maybe even humming a tune. happy or sad. how did he get there? hard to say exactly, but chance says, he was there at one time or another. one can also be sure that the sum of his decisions he made in his life ultimately led him there. so he is not, in fact, innocent. but, as his hairs stood on end, an ominous and mysterious thunder approached on that very clear blue day, and a column of dust rose before him, shattering whatever piece he was pondering, it seemed he had, at the very least, one last decision to make.
how many of us, are better off?
i think the bystander is most people. or maybe we are the cattle, moved this way or that according to the whims and supposed 'expertise' of the wranglers and meat barons; the predators and the will of what it is natural, the seasons, the weather. paid vacation. decent health coverage. revolution.
maybe, there is no cliff.
~end~
From T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party:
"We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger."
-----The Song of the Wandering Angus
by William Butler Yeats------
I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head
And cut and peeled a hazel wand
And hooked a berry to a thread
And when white moths were on the wing
And moth-like stars were flickering out
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout
When I had laid it on the floor
I turned to blow the fire aflame
But something rustled on the floor
And some one called me by my name
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands
And walk among long dappled grass
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun
----from the Dutch priest and writer Henri Nouwen-----
"Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity."
