Art by Milo Manera (on Pinterest)
Revolution gnaws at the fetters. It itches. It
festers. And it can galvanize. Unless we activate in us the seeds of revolution
up until our individual "moment of poof", that ineluctable moment at which
one ceases to live, we may else but be trapped within centuries of inescapable immutability. That's what happened to the Egyptians. Three thousand years or
more of little change. Imagine! They experienced no revolution. (Yet which individuals
still lie, stifled?) And then came the Romans.
"Et tu Brute?" Yes, we are essentially
esoteric. We hanker with trivia towards the objective of mental and material
acquisition, or not. And when at last we shuffle off this mortal coil we've
hardly conceived of the plagiarisms we've garnered en route. (Isn't phraseology
generative?)
Yet the mercurial combination of the six
elements that comprise each one of us; Hydrogen; Oxygen; Nitrogen; Carbon;
Calcium; and Phosphorous, are like the six Figures of Speech, or the six Themes
of Conflict. Six, six, six, a number of its own significance. As for ourselves,
so too for all of them! Six elements in magic apportionments; a unique recipe
for each individual. Yet despite that uniqueness, we continue to cluster in
clans and under customs and in cliques. And we yield to the status quo. We await
some other leader. We await some savior. We await. And time slips by.
Self-reliance, self-actualization, individuation, and independence are not our
birthright, it seems; we learn these aspects of ourselves through hard-won
experience. Or not.
Attribution is our nemesis. What makes a thing
of value is directly proportional to the value I give it. (A plastic horse is a
plastic horse.) Hence sentimentality. Hence souvenirs. Hence collectibles of
things and the emotional 'necessity' to complete sets, or volumes, (especially
if you're like me.) Like pursuing that book, or a cd that someone referenced.
Or what about binge-watching a tv series? Someone else's life can indeed be so
much more interesting than every-day reality.
In the grand universal scheme, we make knowledge
of the particulars, like naming the universe:
"My very exotic mother jerked suddenly
under Neptune's pillow."
("What?")
"If Mercury begins the sequence and Pluto
ends it, it makes sense."
("Ah..., Mercury, Venus, Err, ... Oh! A
mnemonic!")
Esoterica can be disarming. In the six Elements
of Classic Composition (see my sea-star Blog essay below*), or in the six
Themes of Conflict; or when considering the Seven Deadly Sins; or the... Well,
the list goes on; in all their fragmenting there is not necessarily the
intuition of Unity. Or is there? Surely history itself, with its wars and
revolutions and horrors and pretexts and pretensions (and achievements too) has
been perpetuated by mans' fairly constant fragmenting of the health of the
whole? We tend to particularize. We see isolated instances and may presume them
to epitomize the whole; we see the bulk of the bell curve and forget the many
outliers. As for me, so for you, but not necessarily as for you, so for me.
It's easy to judge. It's easy to hate. It's easy to subjugate or control (if
one is more powerful). It is not easy to lead, to inspire, to elevate, and to
integrate.
Thing is, bottles of wine with the labels
'Revolution', and 'The Rebel', (recently shared along with a visit to Canada's
parliament building,) as well as memorable phrases like "my moment of
poof," enliven this discourse. We yoke together everything that brought
us, each of us, to our birth, or not. Known, or not, it's called 'Family Constellations'. Apparently, the genetic imprinting is so deeply imbued in us
that we scarcely can escape habits programmed by DNA. And then we go on to
learn more. We add on. But just how much, actually, do we consciously choose?
To what degree are we given to thinking about our thinking? Always?
Continually? Therein lies the rub.
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