2004-01-26 - 5:46 a.m.
the ghost rose
from factory yards
a scent perplexed by itself
moonlight touched itself and the earth
haloes paused in smoke circles
the human imitated various living things, remembering their sweetness, feeling inside him the fish, the bird, the things he had been. but it was imitation now, a somber dance to a tuneless hum.
the sound, the pervasive, underlying hum, was industrial chemistry claiming more air for its sicksweet nose, eating more earth with its harsh teeth. amusing us with its ever-more grotesque imitations of food, medicine and other things which are "natural". and we, the humans, the only animal to conceptualize the "natural" as being in opposition to something "else",
the "artificial", standing in the shadow of our unruly creation.
artificial. artifice=lies. are these machines liars? are vats and stamps of metal deceiving us, deceiving "nature"?
or is it the men who have learned to turn earth into money, life into money, most everything into money, sitting, standing, walking in buildings, signing things, eating, turning things into money.
I actually had someone say to me "Oh, you must be one of those environmentalists."
it's worse than that. I'm human.
friends, we are the only animal that is "broken". and we have to "fix" ourselves.
we do this in various ways. the junky. the businessman. the artist. the student. the monk, the nun, the priest, the rabbi. the celebrity. but these are all ways of fooling the mind. we have not yet learned how to live.
individuals, perhaps, have. tribes may have lived in a sustainable fashion, in balance with their "environment". (we are also the only animal to have an "environment"). but the human race, taken as a whole, is unhappy, sick with itself. bound up in it's "artifice".
friends, we need a new animal.
