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| sanctify |
| 12.30.06 (4:38 pm) [edit] |
"Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotions and actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer. It is as impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin as of an earth without 'sky'. Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God's beard and the Devil's horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon - such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas." A.M. |
posted by: lindy (reply)
post date: 12.31.06 (5:23 am)
When you decide to talk, you drop a little something that makes the room shut up and take note.
posted by: thejongleur (reply)
post date: 12.31.06 (6:29 am)
Reply to: lindy
Ah, that's because I borrow words from far better people than I.
Thank you for letting me know you were here.
ams
posted by: Bob (reply)
post date: 12.31.06 (6:52 am)
My first thought was that we are a two sided mirror. It all depends on which side you look at but we are the same mirror
posted by: surrogate (reply)
post date: 12.31.06 (8:09 am)
I'm a simple man. I don't pretend to have opinions on concepts beyond my understanding, but I am able to distinguish between good and bad behavior, and attribute it to the person, or group of people, I see doing whatever the deed(s) is/are. There's a point at which the motivations behind the actions stop meaning much to me, and I distill what I see as having come from either the "good" or "bad" sides of our individual or collective personalities. I wish I could grasp or giv more importance to the more subtle shades an/or reasons behind our actions...
posted by: lindy (reply)
post date: 01.02.07 (5:36 am)
Reply to: surrogate
'I don't pretend to have opinions on concepts beyond my understanding, but I am able to distinguish between good and bad behavior'
Really?
Shouldn't that read that you don't pretend to *not* have opinions on concepts beyond your understanding?
Try this on for size. A man's mother leaves the family and he is confronted with the ugliness of her reality. He struggles with it, discovers that she is so controlling that she takes to stalking him for reasons that fit within her own agenda and not his. He lashes out at her. You come along and hold his words up to prove his bad behavior - without knowing anything about the situation. It might well be that what you profess is incongruent with your actions. Perhaps it would be helpful for you to determine (and of course publish) what percentage of 'good' and 'bad' people are allowed to express that you deem tolerable.
posted by: Unmutual (reply)
post date: 01.02.07 (7:24 am)
reply to: surrogate
"There's a point at which the motivations behind the actions stop meaning much to me"
Yeah. That's weak. Talk about living your life at face value.
posted by: Unmutual (reply)
post date: 01.02.07 (7:28 am)
Reply to: thejongleur
The quote reminds me of something Machiavelli would have said.
posted by: juniperflux (reply)
post date: 01.02.07 (12:52 pm)
The other night I watched a brief story on the local news about a group of about twenty or so people who, apparently, hold a nightly candlelit vigil at a busy and prominent intersection in the city they call home. Each night, rain or shine, they gather… this little clotted group of doers, huddled together, sometimes wrapped in blankets and warm winter coats, other times sharing umbrellas, but always holding candles and standing, in silence, next to a hand painted sign that simply has a number scrawled across it. On New Year’s Day it read 3,000. I liked them immediately, if for no other reason than this thing they do… it’s small and quiet… but it is the thing they can do, and so they do it. How lovely the world would be if we all subscribed to that philosophy.
But as the story went on, I began to think of the number on the sign. Now, I’m no good at maths, but even I know their numbers are way off. 3,000 Americans, yes… but so many others who may never be counted properly. Saddam may be gone, but the mass graves continue.
Then this post appeared, with its broken rope – hanging lifelessly over the abyss, and our fat, faceless hero, just a few steps away, clinging to the one thing he has, a hollow, flaccid symbol of power. I read Miller’s words and found myself thinking of a few later lines from the same work in which John Proctor declares: “I hear the boot of Lucifer. I see his filthy face and it is my face and yours… For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud – God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together.”
And so I sit here. A little sadder than on most days, perhaps, but determined not to look away. Resolved, instead, to – like the artist who renders his soul (and mine and so many others) on these pages – to look these things in the eye and to think about them and talk in such away that, if nothing else, might help to burn away my own ignorance.
In a strange way, these moments in which drawings like this appear next to words of great power, followed by the thoughts of those brave enough to immerse themselves in both long enough to feel saturated, are -for me anyway- very much like a few flickering candles amidst a sea of darkness. I treasure the lines that come together on these pages, exposing the soft, vulnerable underbelly of who we are, and I’m grateful for those who are not afraid to leave a bit of themselves beneath each offering. These are small things, I know. But they are the thing we can do, and I hope we keep doing them.
jennifer
posted by: Lindy (reply)
post date: 01.02.07 (7:33 pm)
Reply to: juniperflux
Thank you for cutting in to my selfishness by reminding me of a much bigger picture. I wonder if anyone else felt sadness when Saddam became a number too. The suffering is on all sides, which is precisely what many Americans don't understand. And many of us don't understand how ridiculous it is that such a man was condemned for decisions that reach the same horrific proportions as those of our own government's.
Well said, Jennifer.