Sojourners

Refulgent emporiums of light exiling in drowning faith,

the impalpable empires stand overwhelmed.

I hear argent tongues I cannot comprehend,

the trees speak forth with gliding leaves and sojourning trends.

Like us, nature vows to the inexplicable truth transpiring on the coral reef,

the permeable universe prudently resting under the sapphire dessert.

The aquifer of our rhythm, our pulse and the zephyr thought of grief,

the province of anonymity, the tainted dream of unilateral belief.

Let us vitalize relief with self assuring intrigue:

confusion is certain; certainty is a false state of being.

So it is, from here on in, that knowledge is bent not to coexist with persistence,

nor it lives to be invented, only discovered, never found, only unraveled.

Vanity is not a pond, love is not a song;

diving without prejudice is not suicide, it is justice to us all.

The trees bled for much too long;

soon, we shall gaze upon the golden leaves of fall.

Ginkgo Tree, from the Tyler Arboretum.

On Dreams and Other Existential Conundrums

          And now you open your eyes. And now you’re awake. And then the conscious part of your day starts, too. There is a dancing light filled with flaky dust particles that penetrates deep into your window. Its warmth is undeniable. The day seems to be reaching out to you. The immediate future sounds auspicious, or at least that’s what the weather lady leads you to believe. A short moment later, you ignore her predictions because, as you’ve seen it on previous occasions, she just gets paid to play with your optimism. You shower, you get dressed and finally get ready to go out there to grind for half a day.

          You spend the following 8 -10 hours invested in a very particular state of mind where everything you are asked to do seems to be conspiring against your master plan of dozing off. You pray for the hours to die soon, as you despise the clock face with a passion that is usually credited to prominent religious figures. The present dies again, and again, and again, as the plain hands of that infamous, time-telling device just keep on turning. The torture is over. It is time to go. You are now filled with a new sort of energy, a kind of nourishing substance that feeds your interior with exquisite anticipation.

          You now get to the car. The energy evaporates like ethyl alcohol. You’re passing out. You manage to get home safely. You get off the car and, as you open the door so that you come into the house, you feel a softly mannered sense of accomplishment padding your shoulders, as if the wind itself were trying to congratulate for surviving yet another day. That feeling, too, soon dissipates. You are home. You nap. You wake up. You have dinner. You watch T.V. You go to your bedroom. You go to the bathroom and you brush your teeth. You hit the bed. You pass out. The end.

The Persistence of Memory - Salvador Dali

Repeat cycle (weather may vary).

Repeat again.

Stop.

Fuck this.

You wake up.

Stop.

Were you dreaming?

          
          You open your eyes. You feel but cannot see; there is no color, no light. Your eyes go on full tilt as they continue to see nothing, your pupils dilate with no success; the darkness around you is inescapable. You go back to feeling, and what you feel is overwhelmingly making its presence more and more palpable. You feel the fear in the back of your neck. Your senses become as susceptible as an open wound. No images, only tact and textures adorning your imagination. Suddenly, you forget about reality, you forget about which world you are in and, most importantly, you feel as if there is no conflict between these antithetical worlds. A dichotomy is created, a line as thick as gossamer now separates your previous visions of the world. No such thing as being conscious or unconscious - you are the moment.

          You feel. And you feel until your entire body is nothing but a feeling. There is peace in this newfound realm. There are no bars, no walls, and no limits, only feelings. But now you see something swelling in the distance, a glowing spot that can’t really be looked upon directly. You are now thinking, thinking about what you feel, and you feel that there is something terribly wrong with whatever awaits you outside of this dimension.

          The problem soon becomes evident, and that problem is that there are no limits, only self-defeating illusions that chain you to a post as you stare into the horizon of possibility. You get used to the post, and to the chain that contains you and, in an effort to deflect pain, you simply accept this repressing condition as nothing more than a rule to which you have to comply. You conform to rules and to limitations that tell you to stop feeling.

          And then you grow more and more frustrated; you feel that the moments are to be spent in rituals of grateful compliance, for you think that what you feel is completely illogical and therefore you repress it by squeezing hard until there is no more resistance.

          You are scared of change; you are frightened by the idea of complying with non-compliance. But what scares you the most is that if you actually do fight these besetting conditions then everything you know will be torn to pieces; you need of this comfort, you need familiarity and repetition. You need all of these things because they have you floating, and you see it too. This is the framework of your life; this is the prison of your life.

          The room is dark. No light paints the walls, no colors to look at, nor any signs of physical confinement due to the simple fact that you cannot see anything but the harsh black screen that stands perpetually in front of you. You go back to feeling. And you now start sweating. You feel the dampness of the bed sheets, and you feel the slight stir of the air around you. Soon enough, there is little to feel. Suddenly, a muffled horn cries from far away, echoing from unfathomed distances. The sound eventually becomes more apparent. Its presence grows more and more persistent. There is something really frightening about it, a somewhat shrilling quality that makes its persistent presence more and more real. You try to make sense out of this pathetic noise and, in a fraction of a second, you finally understand - you make some sense out of it all.

         Now you’re entire body is flushed right back into reality. You are shoved through a tube and pinched back into the world you claim to live in.

         And now you open your eyes. And now you’re awake. And then the conscious part of your day starts, too. There is a dancing light filled with flaky dust particles that penetrates deep into your window. Its warmth is real. The day seems to be reaching out to you. The immediate future sounds auspicious, or at least that’s what the weather lady leads you to believe. A short moment later, you ignore her predictions because, as you’ve seen it on previous occasions, she just gets paid to play with your optimism. You shower, you quickly get dressed and finally get ready to go out there and think for the rest of your day.

It’s ok, it doesn’t matter what it was. But then again, what was it about change??

Diogenes and the Honest Man

          Upon the limestone tiles sat the tub where one Diogenes, the philosopher, rested. The scent of hay, slashed and drenched by the unmistakable aroma of filth, decorated the interior of this man-made cocoon with a repelling quality. Onions, beautifully dressed in a thin layer of copper, were lying on the ground, coated in freckles of humid dirt, within almost immediate reach of the philosopher’s right hand in what poorly resembled a pyramid. The lamp, however, stood lit and proud, showing signs of decay around the corners of its very base. Strokes of negligence had corroded the frame of the lamp in blooming nebulas of rusty iron flakes, with nothing but the very wax and wick of the candle to be left unchanged.

          The metallic hairs pouring down from his head and chin distilled a faint smoky fragrance that insinuated a clear disregard for personal hygiene, but, in the end, it was his harsh coal-spotted skin along with his coarse clothes that led one to believe that this man had nothing to live for.

          How deceiving can an image become once a man is convinced of seeing only what he wants to see! One had to just slightly tweak his mind in order to truly appreciate the wisdom in his disguise. Diogenes knew better, for even a brick in all of its insulting simplicity wants to be something else; even a brick, as stiff and irrevocably dull as it may be, may turn into a magnificent monument when a higher idea surrounds it and fills it complete.

          His eyes, one had to just gaze into them to see how rich and powerful this man was. His eyes were like beautiful mantelpieces surrounding a bright, dancing fire which would never cease to burn; like the petals of the hibiscus that curl away in prudent yet flamboyant shapes, exploding in a vibrant, flaming crimson hue. This was a man with an idea within him and, indeed, his idea had already taken over him.

          It is said that Diogenes, an influential member of the school of Cynics, would wander among the streets of Athens while holding a lamp in broad daylight in the search of an honest man. Diogenes’ pivotal principle was to live life in harmony with nature, so that we would never fall in self-deceptive ways. The practical goods, he called them.

          He laughed at men keen on literature and other arts, for they mourned the scars of many characters but neglected their own, and at priests who preached the values of a humble life to the mass for being surrounded by gold and silk; the orator teaches how to enforce truth but never how to practice it. It was hypocrisy and self-deception that he felt great disdain for.

          Actions are to be taken in order to fulfill the principles of any sincere philosophy, for ideas aspire to transcend the merely physical; actions are the statues erected from the virtue of good thought, and from the lack thereof as well. Society tends to bend, with overwhelming pressure perhaps, the endoskeleton of our very own philosophical foundation, but upon its numbing grasp we are to remain true to the essential qualities that make up who we are.

          Diogenes would never falter on his fight against the vulgar sophistications of the social life and the clearest instance is described in the following anecdote of the moment when the philosopher met Alexander III:

Alexander the Great and Diogenes

“The king opened the conversation with "I am Alexander the Great," and the philosopher answered, "And I am Diogenes the Cynic.” Alexander then asked him in what way he could serve him. "You can stand out of the sunshine," the philosopher replied. Alexander was so struck with the Cynic's self-possession that he went away remarking, "If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.”

He who remains true to himself shall always bestow some of its magnificence upon anything surrounding him. 

          This is what true leaders are made of. A concoction made out of self-confidence and an unapologetically burning passion for being themselves.  Alexander the Great did not intimidate Diogenes simply because Diogenes was great himself. Conviction in thyself shall thrust the true power within to run amok. Do not succumb to the pressure of being anything other than yourself, for the true genius is he who recognizes his own truth to be universal.