posted 09 April 2003 09:34 PM                   

The world exists in layers. We are living at the center of the onion Earth, our vision distorted by watering eyes. This layer upon layer of organic mist is made up of infinite numbers of smaller onions, each carrying their layers of mystery like burdens and blessings.
Acquaintances sense the outer skins of other beings, not having soaked into one another sufficiently to intuit the inner form. Generalization and mis-understanding run wild due to lack of familiarity with guts other than our own. Lack of knowledge breeds lack of compassion, and consequently a mere acquaintance of our mother Earth can rape her on a whim and never flinch, having destroyed the encompassing bonds which make any rape self-rape, and abuse a form of masochism. The farther we drift from our foetal spot within the mother's womb, the more willing rapists we become.
As soon as we begin viewing one another's skins as the end of space and the beginning of the Other, we have missed the basic point that our mother always knew. Skins and bodies are semi-convenient containers for mass consciousness and nothing more. Peel away that foreign skin and find your own heart beating, a rhythmic accusation of your ignorance. Peel away the skin of the Earth, (the soil from which you emerged), and find the basis of your soul, staring back at you inquisitively, curious that you do not understand.
Peel away the layers of pretense which grow around us all, intentionally or otherwise, and see what you find. As layers of clothing, of speech, of mannerism, of upbringing, of conditioning fall about the reddening feet of a willing individual, it becomes clear that they were nothing more than techno-organic, artificial barriers against universal compassion.
These defenses, begun through the suffering of one tragedy or another, are necessary for only a short time, and then become self-perpetuating, serving not the individual within them, but only themselves. Building and layering in a manner completely foreign to a pliant organism, they multiply and grow more like rock crystal than like living seeds and buds, thereby suffocating the fragile flesh within.
Deep within this fragile flesh, there is a spinning, pulsating, feeling sphere, a turbo of conscious energy revolving. Non-differentiated, it exists in pure space, attempting to weave webs of enjoyment throughout the world. Every plant, every animal (penguin, human, jellyfish, cat (zebra, coconut, protoplasm, rat)), has this basic, non-analyzed, non-intellectual drive for pleasure. It is, by definition, what we most want.
Human emotional rock layers have grown, through lack of use of our pleasure centers, to such proportions as to encrust our lives and beings almost totally. Our intricate and delicate onionskin layers of pleasure are being corrupted and broken down, and replaced by crystallized, ungiving prisms which diffract our attempts at ecstasy and transform them into labour, mistrust, and struggle.
A set lip you pass on the street is a victim of the corporate Leviathan. A misplaced glance in response to an overture is a sign of mistrust, result of perverted expectations and a lack of pleasure overflow. We as a species still possess, though in an incubated and almost non-functional form, the power to transform one another's lives into pleasurable, ecstatic experiences. Our lives can become loves with a return to the circle from the straight and narrow.
Physical, emotional, and spiritual contact, erotic abandon, hedonism, all flowers of enjoyment crushed by the power structure and crammed into minute boxes in the dusty ink dictionary. Classify, sterilize, and control, that's the message the smiling State spews out, chatting mildly to its citizenry while tearing up their freedoms behind its clenched and painful back. Politician's words are glowing marbles, falling from their mouths and clattering among the multitudes for them to pick up and admire. These words have no pwer save that of deceitful beauty. The words or actions of another have no power to set your prison on fire. The state hierarchy, bureaucracy which transforms pliable, compassionate human beings into metal efficient adding machines, is the ultimate expression of the loss of pleasure layers. The crystal inflexibility has infringed so far into this system that it is no longer diffracted and broken pleasure which it creates, but pure machine-death-efficiency. Efficiency is the diametrical opposite of life. Mother Earth, in unthinking wisdom, possessing an infinite number of pleasure-compassion layers, does not engage in efficiency. Millions of leaves fall in the forest unheard, billions of snowflakes melt away, countless eggs perish in the shell, all nature an orgy of surplus, a system so rich and life filled that it need never even consider the dry concept of efficiency. Waste is a meaningless word in a system with no garbage.
Waste, a creation of the Leviathan (human non-compassionate efficiency), is nothing more than the inability of the waster to connect with the natural environment. Waste is a concept incompatible with the many layered circle of nature, and is a sure sign that our circle has broken. Shards of existence spewing out of the gaping hole, where formerly they spun timelessly, silently, in a balance dependent upon a repetition which we are destroying. Tides, days, heartbeats, lives, skins shedding and returning to soil, these are the essential bases upon which we stand, and they weaken as we straighten. Once the circle breaks, everything begins to calcify and straighten, to crystallize and stiffen, and we find ourselves before too long entrapped in a world of cubical filing cabinets and straight edged business suits, hair shorn and animal natures deafened, innocent playfulness being snuffed out at a monster rate. Straight lines, like waste, are a concept unkown outside of a death system. We see this illusion, occasionally, in the rise of enormous cedars, or the ocean's horizon, or the streak of a meteor, but these are the foibles of the tiny human eye. What we are truly seeing are the tiny segments of enormous, powerful circles (of which we too are a part), so large that they look like anything.
As soon as we separate ourselves from the soil and from one another, we immediately assume the viewpoint of a speck. And specks don't see very well. Even though each individual is infinitely precious and unique, being the sole example in the universe of that particular configuration of genes, that individuality can only be appreciated within the context of the system which created it. That sytem is not the political system of nations, nor the psychological system of intellect, nor the religious system of God, but rather the organic system of soil, cell, and flesh. We have been browbeaten into accepting the concept that psycho-politico-religious systems are on a par with organic systems, when in reality they are nothing more than tattoos on the flesh of organic fortune, designs on the flesh of fate, superficial doodlings which have always been closer to vandalism than art. Intellectual systems are gauntlets where creatures of love are forced to spend their days with a number two pencil; religious systems are neck braces forcing the face to the sky while ignoring the ground which supports us; political systems are herding pens built to amass formerly free animals. Trinkets are hung upon the walls of these prisons in order to appease us, and to block the view of freedom through chinks in the walls. Many people seem happy with these trinkets, but a bit of scratching will tear them away, making one suddenly and painfully aware of the immense freedoms which we do not have. Those who have seen through these walls will never again be satisfied to strive for cheap carnival tricks, when true pleasure exists within their reach. Secondary experience is no experience at all. The lawn will not do when the forest lies empty; television will be buried in a blizzard of liberation.
A free human is concerned with food, warmth, sex, and other forms of pleasure. A free human would not argue the benefits of Marxism vs. Capitalism, or put on impractical shoes, or hold a job unless it was really fun, or write this essay. We have our eyes so transfixed upon the artificial requirements of a pay or die system that we don't see the reality looming up behind it.
All viewpoints are arbitrary, and all regulations are optional. Few things are as exhilarating as the final mental push which tumbles a wall within one's mind, destroying yet another dingy efficient workroom, exposing yet another grassy field, another haven of life. Minds were made to play with. Fondle yours today.
Real enjoyment is one of the most revolutionary (and evolutionary) things a person can discover. Reject those trinkets which the money changers try to pass off as enjoyment. Televisions, hairstyles, automobiles, all those material possessions which oppress rather than lift the spirit, all so many beads in the ad-man's necklace, so many links in the human ball and chain. True erotic abandon is free. Laying on your back nowhere for hours is education. Breaking social norms is life giving. Every minute of every day, Earth is calling you back to her womb. Our beautiful layers of skins, no matter how tormented, contain within them still the power to destroy the infringing Leviathan.
Your flesh and blood body was not made to do the work of the taskmaster, your face not to be encased by the maskmaker, your mind an unwilling slave to the thought-taker.
From the stone and dust rubble of the ancient Leviathan, a supple sprout will shoot...

- Autumn 1986 - Burlington VT

posted 10 April 2003 02:29 AM                   

Maybe an analogy or two might have helped.