Attempts
"Is it hopeless on this planet, or is it
just me?"
What
in God's name has happened in this world? What has gone so terribly
wrong?
Stephen
Lewis
The
word essay comes from the French essai, attempt....
Susan
Sontag
These little essays-- attempts--
are thought-creeks, probes, circlings, insinuations. They do
not consider spiders bad company.
What am I attempting? Oh, to influence
the course of human history. Toward what? Toward more happiness
for those who want it. Hey, why not? When people tell me they
are powerless to change anything, I am shocked at such arrogance.
Who are they to declare that the situation is hopeless? --I
think it was R.D.
Laing who posed that. Another unique student/teacher, storyteller,
Joseph
Chilton Pearce, said "Any and every view of the world
we take is both anthropomorphic and autobiographical."
Henry James offered "pay your tribute to the ideal."
Who Are You To Declare That
The Situation Is Hopeless?
Your World View Is Autobiographical.
Pay Your Tribute to The Ideal.
If you can't think of what to do,
here's some ideas: Devote your actions, your dances,
your loving, your dreaming, your meals, your jokes, your work,
your play. Devote your despair, which is a very powerful
state. Say aloud what you want, what kind of world you
prefer, very clearly and audibly, in banks, offices, consulting
rooms, waiting rooms, airports, hospitals, stores. Ask all the
unemployed Gods at the religious temp work office to help you.
Shout it articulately to those mountains over there and whisper
it into these ears of ants. Climb a scenic tree and invite a
better world from UP THERE-- OUT LOUD! Trees are great spirit-catchers/passers,
metacommunicators. When you open a book, speak to it! Tell it
how you want things to be. It doesn't matter whatsoever what
others think of you. Trying to measure results takes time away
from your devotions. Ilya Prigogene, Nobel Chemist, speaking
of disequilibrium states,
said "with linear equations you only have one solution.
In disequilibrium you have many solutions. You can have great
results even from small causes." Northrop Frye wrote in
that tremendous book, Fearful
Symmetry, "Satan in the Bible is called Diabolos
or the Accuser because he is forever reminding man of his [sic]
own insufficiency and causing him to despair of deliverance."
Essai!
Make your attempts.
