The original post of this prose poem formatted the paragraphs wrong messing up the flow of the prose. I’ve made a PDF version which presents the poem as intended enabling the correct cadence of reading, and, hopefully increases your enjoyment!
It takes time to distance
far and low never in a
recordable instance
vast vast depths and
unknown faces laughing at all
the deaths
like balloons full of air
bang bang bang blows
over there
space is deeper than we know
it may be our instruments
that only grow
spinning wildly after incoming
each one warps and shadows
always becoming
frozen in a jewel
cannot move in time with the
dancing duel
the horizon has breadth
that we see as being
between birth and death
a hope for posterity
tangible and fattened
full of rotting verity
being honest is unbecoming
of a idea that doesn’t exist
no matter all our fucking running
The mountains, the seas
the sun and the moon,
nothing changes so it seems,
except everything changes
now and forever, even
the air that I breathe.
From this vantage many view points,
I can live this day, day by day
until my mountains are struck,
torn down and ravaged my emotions run
out and out further until
I am new again.
The Lion has done his work, destruction
and endings and entrails lie everywhere,
all roots trace back into nothingness
of meaning and source, of endless life’s
lived in disinterest and dead senses,
doomed to repeat.
Still emergence and appearance even
silence is all, the widest and broadest
view no contrast is too thick or too thin,
and then out of the silence comes a song,
a playful melody from long before
sung by a dancing child, unencumbered and free.
The child plays and creates,
building castles made of sand,
dancing and falling the child builds anew
until memory comes full circle and I
know I’ve been here before,
dancing in the eternal return of the same.
An editor somewhere all the time:
…our standing has an enviable reputation for disinterest and impartiality in our reporting…
Whoever believes in that anymore, that one can be ‘disinterested’ when engaging in something, anything? Its almost as though we are talking about a cognisant corpse whose ‘blood runs cold’ while making judgements. The inner core temperature of humans is 98.F, not exactly cold. Yes its a metaphor but it also hides the unconscious thought that, being civilised we are all rational calculating machines in every situation. This is something we have learned over millennia of cultivation, self-cultivation. The true animal inside us now only exists in an archaic hall of mirrors cropping up in our dreams, or sometimes ‘real’ life. In our early evolutionary existence we had very different emotions than we have today, though they’re part of us, a phylogenetic inheritance that we can only deny and censor.
Isn’t it more like this:
Does nature not remain silent about almost everything, even about our bodies, banishing and enclosing us within a proud, illusory consciousness, far away from the twists and turns of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream and the complicated tremblings of the nerve-fibres? Nature has thrown away the key, and woe betide fateful curiosity should it ever succeed in peering through a crack in the chamber of consciousness, out and down into the depths, and thus gain an intimation of the fact that humanity, in the indifference of its ignorance, rests on the pitiless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous.
Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense’
These antique, archaic remnants are no less the foundation of all humanity, but are the foundations of all civilisations. The greedy acquisitions, the double-crossing, the murders and appropriations of land, resources, people, the air we breathe. Yes, even the air that we breathe, it is the one resource that we can’t quantify no matter our pride; or because of our pride, we can’t give any value to it because we just don’t see it as stuff. This self-interest is also at the heart of our morality, we are social creatures of reputation with nay a disinterested bone in our body.
The sword that benefits from the pen is mightier. And vice versa. For the most part, history is a result of the pen benefiting from the sword. So that’s another myth (sacred cow) demolished.
A proper understanding (feeling) of chronology, it’s literal position in comprehension, is necessary in understanding all history, including your own. Especially your own. For modern day idols, see sacred cows. Every culture has them, especially post-god-is-dead cultures. In the west our pampered post-culture has the sacred cow of ‘guilt-free democracy’. Basically freedom-without-responsibility. We vote for them but we’re not responsible for them.
The search for Being, history foretells this, has lead to colonialism, slavery and the own goal of climate change. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Unfortunately we are stuck with the complete misreading of the runes of history. The so-called ‘last man’, bloated with the facts of history (all practical understanding) though without interpretation, walks around as though blind. Thus, climate change is a clear example of this blindness through misunderstanding: a correct reading of history would enable the understanding of how our use of resources changes the chemistry of our environment. Denile of this is still very active. Follow the money, follow the psychology of ‘progress and technology’, even science.
It’s very Heraclitian: science and technology, both take and give, but not necessarily in equal volume. Imbalance is our natural condition, just scratch the surface.
What next? Has this question even been conceived yet?
1
Nietzsche: ‘I fear we shall never be rid of God as long as we believe in grammar.’
Extrapolate…
2
The language of love, of beauty, of perfection, the language of the one, of God. We tell ourselves little myths every time we speak.
3
No two things are the same, indeed there is no ‘thing’. No straight line, anywhere. Grammar mythologizes origins, it is guilty of our consciousness and the first tool of repression used against our genuine emotions.
4
The free spirit unlearns life as it has been told to him previously. It gets to the point when language is of no more use in describing what is real as it can only point to a mythical past. What then?
5
What then? Understand that you have an overriding will to power, not a will of the appetites, these must be overcome by the higher will, not cause and effect, but your own quantum of will, your own quantum of power. Enact.
6
Free will is a myth of grammar, as is determinism. Freedom is only relative to your power, your whole being is defined by your higher will to gather power. It is of secondary nature that you will to live.
7
From Plato onward we ‘have a woeful history: man looks for a principal, from a standpoint of which he will be able to condemn man – he invents a world in order to slander and throw mud at this world: …he snatches..at nothing and construes this nothing as “God”..
Nietzsche.
8
…’the history of philosophy (truth) is a secret raging against the prerequisites of life, against the feeling of the value of life, against the championship of life. The philosophers have never hesitated to affirm a world provided it contradicted this world and supplied them with a handle with which to calumniate this world. Up to the present it has been the great school of slander.’
Nietzsche.
9
So, to know thyself means to be able to unlearn your past life and, essentially, to understand that man, as you are, is to be surpassed by the higher man who beautifully combines his animal nature with his hard won intellect that enables him to create authentically in his own history.
10
We must extrapolate the latter point even more….
11
…Mankind has no action, no endeavour, big or small, that doesn’t come down to: good or bad. Any subject, any movement. Everything is a moral question, especially logic and reason.
12
Because morality underpins all our actions, history itself is a morality tale. The vast corpus of morality is the expression of nay saying. The higher man, the free spirit is an example of yea saying. Transcend good and evil.
13
The more you say ‘yes’ the freer you are. Bob Marley sang, “no chains around my feet but I’m not free”: this is applicable to all peoples everywhere. Your historical culture weighs you down.
14
It is the philosopher’s disposition that he has a categorical imperative and nothing more.
1
Philosopher, definition: Lover of wisdom = love = beauty = art = creativity = truth.
2
Humans keep repeating the wrong history. Our existence is of a life of error and, therein, lies the possibility of our creative goal, our step beyond nihilism.
3
The free spirit knows how to deal with the nihilist foundation of being: by having joy in the countless opportunities of becoming.
4
Practically, what does this mean? It means the free spirit conjures up the strength (physical strength in that what you do moves you) to be his own artist in life. Takes joy in his own creations, is his history.
5
Such a creative life cannot have ressentiment because a truthful existence is full of tragedy, fateful tragedy. One must laugh in the face of tragedy, take strength from tragedy in the joyful Dionysiac orgy of creating out of the chaos of nihilistic being.
6
Great individuals have been before maybe they will be again..dare I think other cultures too?
1
To be a nihilist who wants to give value to the world.
2
The philosopher must become a child
3
The ‘blonde beast’ is actually the lion tearing away history so the child can play.
4
You are finite but your potential is infinite. This is our fate.
5
An infinite becoming is yours, ‘What was scattered gathers. What was gathered blows apart.’ Everything you do, now that the lion has finished, can be a new becoming.
6
New values, new people, new you.
7
After all, where there’s life……
1
The concept of happiness causes more unhappiness than it’s teleological aim.
2
To physically exert oneself is, primarily, an emotional experience. The body is our truth.
3
Once you love your fate you can control your own will to power and become a free spirit in the eternal recurrence of the same.
Be history, become your authentic history.
4
Love your fate, reject determinism and say Yes to life.
5
Freedom is the acceptance of fate. Determinism, as defined in the scientific method, is not freedom.
6
Science treats the body abstractly, in isolation, as though the body is a doorstep and not the higher power that it actually is.
7
Laud the potent individual, look away from the leveling down of culture (the state is an example of this) to suit the masses.
8
The above is an attempt to transcend nihilism. We (individually) are more than the calculated parts of our body and environment.
What do I want? ……What do I want, really, really, want? ………. This must be one of the hardest questions one can ask themselves. If the question was less vague and more qualified where the various answers stood out before you and you were left with a reasonable choice then the question wouldn’t be so difficult. But we can all answer, to a certain degree, the questions with multiple choice answers.
When I was drunk, and I mean drunk all of the time, the answer to this question was quite easy: I wanted to be sober and with better sleep so as I could make the most of each day. I followed that with another answer: to be able to read and write more. I am now sober and have plenty of the day and am reading more and writing (not very well, I admit) more. Yet the question still nags at me. If I was writing better, even getting some recognition from it, would that answer the question? Possibly yes, but like the promised land, one doesn’t know until one gets there.
So, I’m stuck. What do I want?
Do I want to be happy? To be rich? To have lots of friends? To be free of pain, threats, anguish and anxiety? Do I want to be successful – whatever success is defined by?
Everyone wants the above. So that can’t be the answer to the question.
Maybe I should look at other people and ask the question of them, in my mind. I could use the people I met while I was in detox. Some people had families: I could imagine their answer to the question would be to get better and to be back with their family. What does this answer entail? It says that being in a loving family is what that person wants. So, as long as it doesn’t affect their being in a loving family, they could have any position in society and it wouldn’t be a priority. Eg: “Okay, I’m unemployed but I still have what I want because I have a loving partner and children.” Another person, who also has a loving wife, I met, was there for his bi-polar moods which he got because he took a substance to help him stop smoking. Clearly he wanted to stop smoking to such a degree that he risked his own life towards that aim. Now, he still has a loving wife but now he has an additional problem to add to his smoking. Other people had problems, not addiction problems, that wouldn’t go away (depression, bi-polar, traumatic events in their life) that they wanted to at least learn how to live with so they can have a certain “wellness” in their life. But, with this example we have someone who, like me before, wanted a particular issue dealt with which would still leave the question, What do I want? untouched.
So, what do I want?
At the moment I come to the conclusion that I must just keep on doing what I’m doing, like having regular hours, being active, reading and writing more, staying in touch with the few people I do have. Maybe it will come to me, maybe I have already answered the question.
Kevin Nebula 