what people once openly debated.. and in closed circles made allusions

Deep exploration into political economy, history, politics, beyond the sources generally approved of by the taskmasters and wardens whose authority we admire, reveals some interesting things.

Many of those we thought of as heroes were scoundrels, bastards, and thieves.

Much of the art we thought sublime,w as in it’s time aptly recognized as tiresome and banal.

Much of the literature we found inspirational, was the paycheck seeking whoredom of paid liars, and simple propaganda.

Or at best, the sincere scribblings of amateurs worshiped by those more amateurish still, in later generations.

And that much of culture and civilization, “ours” (whoever we are) and others is simply a fraud.

You realize that men long ago knew Tacitus and Bede were liars.

You realize that those many are wont to think of as superior forebearers were taught to wipe their asses by others, now seen as barbarians. That the superior were often enslaved and made thralls by those they tutored, and that these superior ones were themselves barbarians of unspeakable cruelty only simply mastered by those lacking their few checks.

You realize that much of scandal, recently unraveled, was openly known and called what it was in pasts, before the broom-sweepers of official chronicles swept through.

Few have the courage to admit their fore-fathers may have been stinking hide clothed idiots. Most want to create myths of our be-sainted trees from which we are scions. And indeed saints, heroes, men of intellect or morality may be found in our past, as with idiot cudgel brandishing brigands who didn’t know how to properly wipe their asses.

We are wont to remember one half and forget the other half, thus we murder our own past by our own lies.

The tongues we love and think beautiful, and there is beauty in them, were to others simply inarticulate gruntings.

The arts we think sublime and full of harmony, to others are rather mediocre.

There is safety in bigotry, and great danger in looking at all, with the same eyes we turn to those we love, in seeing our own gaping wounds with others..

In seeing the beauty we see in ourselves, in others.

There are disadvantages to voracious reading in peculiar and esoteric avenues.

Not fiction nor romance nor childish shite (which is not to say that all fiction or romance is childish) but non fiction and, moreover more select or obscure corners of history, politics, economics, political economy, &tc., is this.

If such reading is conjoined with frequent travel and exploration, commerce and social intercourse with others, you start to notice small things and mentally correlate them with an increasingly growing body of facts, a database if you will.

But you begin to grow out of touch with others. You begin to absorb what you have read and things that are not obvious to many become obvious to you.

Moreover you become rather disgusted with people in general.

History are lies selected and sifted, and passed through committee. The wider your grasp on things, the deeper you dig, beyond what sits on the surface, the more you learn language and tongues, the more you learn the obscure origins of the phrases and words most take for granted, the closer you get to a  nebulous gauze veil that is forever out of your reach. Infinitesimally closer but unable to touch, like two branes vibrating, each a world and order of it’s own, to pierce the one would be fatal to both, and yet to pierce or even to touch is never possible.

You perceive patterns, both those the mind projects in a desperate attempt to perceive order in chaos, and those you realize truly are order beneath a veil of apparent chaos. You begin to realize what few ever are able to articulate, that all about you is some vast joke, a fraud, and a masque on-top of a dancer, dancing to a tune far different than you thought.

You look at the streets and see bodies, dead, dying, aging, intents and motive forming brick, tarmac, mortar, steel, bending, growing, falling. Buying, selling, trading vegetables, flesh, and souls.

Blah blah blah,

Basically if one develops the ability to see a scam and a mugging a mile away, but is unable to articulate it to others, because the number of steps it would take to clearly articulate it requires someone far more clever than oneself, one finds oneself at a lonely branch of the road.

And this can be very frightning.

And being well read isn’t cleverness, it can actually lead to what appears to be an idiot savant like condition, pass a certain boundary.

Eventually if one matures enough and has enough wits one realizes that no one who says she or he truly, fully, understands what is going on and why, really does. That such confidence is a sign of ignorance.

And that however many books one has read, and people talked to and met, and secrets heard, and coded language decoded, and subtle allusions realized, and the pattern and spectacle of human behavior, amusingly banal beneath the fancy words, is rather simple..

You realize that something still eludes you, and likely always will.

Dance with the people, and do not be a wall-flower, for the one who knows is he who knows how little he knows. This cliche has been expressed, with greater brevity, and greater eloquence, by others. But I say it anyway.

6 Comment

  1. […] Kamal S. – “What People Once Openly Debated…and in Closed Circles Made Allusions” […]

  2. very good stuff. very inspiring to hear someone with an aversion to vetted lies, lies vetted usually by the elite or the agitated masses, but rarely by the gentlemen scholar. i like your wariness, all too obscure in these times, when everyone is searching for their opinions in the halls of academics, powerbrokers, and art dealers.

    “Much of the art we thought sublime, was in it’s time aptly recognized as tiresome and banal.” reminds me of two of my poems –

    To Art

    We adore you
    if you pour your soul
    out for all to see
    in authenticity

    show us your
    subjective experience
    through words, dance, and art

    I want to know your reality
    expressed anguished generativity

    The deal we have stands
    as long as we agree
    that behind your dysfunction

    lies only an unhappy relationship
    or an unsupportive family

    Please don’t condemn a larger system
    one that includes me
    for I don’t want to change
    I want your improvement
    not to include a sacrifice on my part

    So keep your art where it belongs
    in galleries, exhibitions, and playhouses
    whose shiny bronze railings
    you need me to support.

    ————————

    THE CENTER OF POETRY IS THE POET

    what a presumption to call yourself the center of poetry,
    housed as you are in the art institute,
    that racket bent on selling postcards and day planners,
    when i own the material and inspiration for creating
    a world of words outside your marble doorways.
    fuck the poetry center.
    poetry is within me,
    unaligned and unaffiliated,
    i bow only to myself.

  3. really great writing, reminds me of the writings of the immortals!

  4. i am so glad you have the talent and have had the discipline to accomplish and see so much truth, beauty, lies, and ugliness for what it was. it is lonely to see those things, and your last statement, along with humor, and telling your own Story of the Nonverbal Words without succumbing to the despair of The Great False Idea, is really the best wish i have for you, when staring squarely into the hopeless void that is the mortal world.

  5. I see only dimly through fog and haze, a few small snatches and glimpses of light may reach my eyes, then I’m lost in the bewildering wilderness of my imperfections.

    But my reliance is on my maker, and our maker alone enables us both to see in glimpses what benefits and aids us.

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