'those active in the Occupy Wall Street Movement do have jobs: Our job is to transform the present order'
To dwell in the domain of the heart…is to choose to live in a dangerous terrain, for the choice will forever alter the world you (believed) you knew. The thoughts of the heart are dangerous items to carry in this age of the facile and fascist; it is the dangerous cargo that the national security state is searching for when applying body scans and pat down searches. The thoughts of the heart are at the top of the state's "no fly list."
Why does one choose to call the stultifying enclosure of a self-constructed prison of the mind…freedom…come to regard his jailers as his benefactors, and hate those who point out his predicament…insisting the clanging of his chains is music to his ears — the stirring melody of a patriotic hymn?
I am amazed at the talent on display by the oppressed of the corporate/military state: In particular, their impressive skills as contortion artists — who are able to lower a boot on their own necks, as, all the while, they march in lockstep to the dictates of their economic overlords — a damn impressive talent, and more than a little unnerving to witness.
Thus, the fallback taunt of the witless to those who question (or cannot adapt to) the current order, "get a job."
The global economy does not have an underemployment problem; we suffer an over-employment tragedy i.e. the precious moments of this finite life that are squandered laboring for a corrupt elite of pathological greedheads.
put out of work the capitalist criminals who have enslaved too many
In fact, those active in the Occupy Wall Street Movement do have jobs: Our job is to transform the present order — to put out of work the capitalist criminals who have enslaved too many, body and soul, for far too long. Our job is to eliminate their jobs.
Moreover, do not believe for a moment the corporate media/police state dismissal that Occupy Wall Street is so "last year." When, in fact, trusting in neoliberal propaganda is, oh so, last millennium. The resonance and reverberations of the global-wide uprising against neoliberal exploitation and injustice –which is woven into the molecular structure of the OWS movement — is far from done, because the global bankster/corporate plundering class are not done yet. By the very nature of building a prison or sweatshop, you have introduced the dream of freedom into the hearts of the enslaved.
As many readers are aware, vis a vis my recent essays, last month, I returned to the region of my birth to bear witness and bid farewell to my father as he departed this life for cosmic points unknown.
An experience whereby one is confronted by the demarcation point dividing life and death, or the transitory nature of time, brings what is essential into stark relief. Visits home, to the precincts of one's youth…exited, long ago…can buffet one with enveloping sorrow. When catching up with old friends, who never left the area, one becomes subject to the Mortality and Contretemps Report…a gawky girl you exchanged French kisses with, when you were thirteen, has succumbed to brain cancer…a seemingly level-headed, steady friend that you (thought) you knew…a scientist, a father, a man of humor and forbearance…committed suicide.
Fortuna's Wheel, it seems, is a chaos-proliferate fractal of perpetual hurt. The fate of others (and ourselves) is providentially unknowable. The present moment opens before us…so astounding to behold that we feel we can go on forever, held in beauty…emboldened by evanescent grace.
There is birdsong that enswathes the air of the graveyard…Joined with the chorus of the dead, it pierces the heart with more precision than prophesy. This song…of the living's eloquence and the deads’ abandon…carries us towards evening.
Its melody wends through Time, through Fate's indifferent landscape. No mathematician can map its course nor calculate by statistical prediction its destination.
What we know is this: We are riding this song together, and have done so through eternity…Marrow-fruited bone, drifting dust, and omnipresent birdsong — all of our forms and guises — propel us through the impossible…the Unfolding Fate of All Things.
toxic innocence
Self-knowledge begins when one is open to an acceptance of life's dark verities, as well as, to an awareness of one's deepest and darkest drives and desires, even awful, hateful thoughts and impulses. Otherwise, denial of these aspects of one’s nature creates what James Hillman termed — toxic innocence, whereby one's psyche is so driven to protect one's perceived innocence that it becomes overwhelmed by its hidden drives.
In short, an underpinning reason how distressingly large segments of the U.S. populace began to evince the mode of mind on display under fascist rule.
Conversely, to the mode of mind of a tyrant — one possessed of a compulsion for control of others, mind and body — one should become fond of exploring psychic landscapes, even those of hostile, fact-resistant, capitalist true believers, fundamentalist religious types, crackpot pragmatists, puritanical ninnies, insular liberals, Obama cultists, and self-referential tyrants and dogmatist tight-asses. There is a great deal one can learn about oneself when confronting strange, even hostile landscapes of the human soul; in particular…the assertions and actions of others that induce despair and reflexive rage within you.
Human engagement, like art, involves more process than principle. One must engage the process, evoke the ritual, show up at the ceremony, join the protest…to see what spirits have been summoned e.g., the unsettled ghosts of memory, the strutting spirits of the age, the admonishing/beckoning spirits of the deep.
It is not enough to deliver light; one, also, must listen to the soliloquies of restless shadows…just don't take them at their word. Moreover, light is a deft liar as well. Yet, when tales of light and shadow are entwined, we start to move in the direction of a compelling tale.
Do not demur from dialog with difficult feelings, and those seemingly irredeemable aspects of your hidden nature…even if doing so engenders inner conflict and involves trespassing into your comfort zone. Violate the fascist catchphrase: "Don't go there."
By all means, go there. As T.S. Eliot wrote: "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
Part one of this essay is here
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City.
Yet a bio amounts to dharma for dimwits: It defines a human being in the same manner and degree of veracity as a restaurant menu describes the various slabs of meat offered … commodified things that were once living beings.
