Wednesday, September 29, 2010

If Only I Were An Artist

I find that I move faster than myself
I can't stop because it isn't possible
I probe myself with words because
There is nothing else to do

I move with everything else
Like the world as itself
A thing that means nothing
It means everything only
To the things inside of it

The innards are the most important part
The flowing pieces that make up the whole
The stop and start of the juice and the parts
But a whole has no regard
For itself or for otherwise
It isn't something to think of

It simply is
We all simply are
Just how we need to be and how we are

What does it mean to understand?
If we simply are then how do we become?
What is this
What am I

I'm a monster

As I have heard before
That no one needs to be a human
That we wish we were men or women
But we aren't
We are aberrations
Not because we are savage or unknown

But because normality is a lie
A fiction at best
A place where we will never go
Normality is heaven
Heaven isn't a place

Life is a palace
I am king
We can all be kings
We can all exert our sovereignty

If only we were willing to go to war
We could think of something lovely

We could feel ourselves loving life
We need to love everyone
War needs to be okay
Not because violence is good
But because struggle is necessary

The war needs to be within our own minds
The war needs to be in our neurons
I won't stop this terrible life
I don't have a choice
I will keep up the fight against myself

I will keep loving you all
Because I want one of you to love me

I won't stop smiling
Because I spent too many years being afraid of teeth

I hate what I've been told
About life and love
And I won't stop trying
To understand it all
Because I love the way empathy settles my mind
And fills my heart

I love it all
For all its confusing complexity
Because to give up on understanding
Would bring too much hate
And imply too much insanity

I don't believe in insanity
And think that irrationality is a lie

Isn't everyone doing the best they can?
If you really believed that
Then how could you hate?
How could you give up on understanding?

If you really doubt the existence
Of stupidity and insanity
Then doesn't empathy know no limits?
Doesn't empathy become everything?

If you really believe
In something like struggle
If you really believe that life is hard
Then don't you need to sacrifice yourself
To the altar of empathy?

If you reject the commonplace explanations
You must embrace forgiveness
You can't fight others
Because you haven't even tried
To understand

I'll crush you
If you think you can condemn me
Because I don't want to condemn anyone
I want to feel for you

This is for the love of life
And the sympathy I feel
For every terrible thing
For all the violence
And all the hate

Were all caught up in the parts
Of this moving whole
This frightening swirl
Where we have lost sight
Of how much sadness pushes us
How much fear hurts us

For all the empaths
Reach
Don't stop
Keep apologizing
Keep smiling
Keep loving

Because no one is worth your hate
Everyone is worth your time
And everyone is worth
The extension of your imagination

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About Me

I spend most of my time working as a mental health professional. I have been preoccupied with philosophy, politics, healing, and many other questions for the last 15 years or so. I am currently working on putting together my study of Plato and Aristotle with contemporary work in philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy, and trauma research. I use this place primarily as a workshop for ideas. I welcome conversation with anyone working on similar problems. The major contours of my basic project have been outlined here

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