RRC Archives

c wrote:
"feathers"

Feathers 5-5-02

Faith works midnights at Seven-Eleven
and costs everything but logic.
I would have followed you down
That dusty Demascus road
had I been footsure of every brick.
A million things could have changed my mind
before sitting in cold May forty five.
I found urban whitebud heaven
and tasted the fragrance of being alive.
If that sprig of remembrance could’ve saved her life
I would have sprinkled it round her head.
Seeing her hair strewn with petals would convince her
to erase what he did and forget what he said.
All her flat needed was the brilliance of spring
or Saul’s light which blinded me.
I found the moon washed electric tonight
And felt plainly, simply our father through the tree.

High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

-- RCAF Flight-Lieutenant John Gillespie Magee Jr.
(1922-1941).

herman hesse in [i]demian[/i] wrote:
still, demian's new concept seemed vaguely sinister and threatened to topple beliefs whose continued existence i felt i simply had to insist. no, one could not make light of everything, especially not the most sacred matters.

as usual he noticed my resistance even before i had said anything.

"i know," he said in a resigned tone of voice, "it's the same old story: don't take these stories seriously! but i have to tell you something: this is one of the very places that reveals the poverty of this religion most distinctly. the point is that this god of both old and new testaments is certainly an extraordinary figure but not what he purports to represent. he is all that is good, noble, fatherly, beautiful, elevated, sentimental - true! but the world consists of something else besides. and what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is suppressed and hushed up. in exactly the same way they praise god as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it's all based, describing it whenever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. i have no objection to worshipping this god jehovah, far from it. but i mean we out to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil. i feel that would be right. otherwise you must create for yourself a god that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn't close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place."

---

..only one thing was certain: the voice within me, the dream image. i felt the duty to follow this voice blindly wherever it might lead me. but it was difficult and each day i rebelled against it anew. perhaps i was mad, as i thought at moments; perhaps i was not like other men? but i was able to do the same things the others did: with a little effort and industry i could read plato, was able to solve problems in trigonometry or follow a chemical analysis. there was only one thing i could not do: wrest the dark secret goal from myself and keep it before me as other did who knew exactly what they wanted to be - professors, lawyers, doctors, artists, however long this would take them and whatever difficulties and advantages this decision would bear in its wake. this i could not do. perhaps i would become something similar, but how was i to know? perhaps i would have to continue my search for years on end and would not become anything, and would not reach a goal. perhaps i would reach this goal but it would turn out to be an evil, dangerous, horrible one?

i wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. why was that so very difficult?

---

each man has only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself. he might end up as poet or madman, as prophet or criminal - that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern. his task was to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's own inwardness. the new vision rose up before me, glimpsed a hudred times, possibly even expressed before but now experienced for the first time by me. i was an experiment on the part of nature, a gamble within the unknown, perhaps for a new purpose, perhaps for nothing, and my only task was to allow this game on the part of the primeval depths to take its course, to feel its will within me and make it wholly mine. that or nothing!

i had already felt much loneliness, now there was a deeper loneliness still which was inescapable.

---

"one never reaches home," she said. "but where paths that have affinity for each other intersect, he whole world looks like home, for a time."

Zspider wrote:Working your way through Hesse, eh, Paul? The literati generally consider him to be entry-level literature, but I think he's great. I read about a half-dozen of his novels a long time ago. Supposedly existentialism is the subtext of most of his novels. Existence precedes essence and all that.