Life And The World

Life and the world, said Shelley, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. I agree. It astonishes me every day. As soon as I awaken from a deep sleep and begin to feel the first sensations that peel back the chloroform of unconcern and bring me into an awareness of that powerful thing called life, I scribble my way to the surface and allow the phenomenon to take hold. I begin to focus and assume its burden of worry and how to get on in the world and meet its demands while fulfilling the needs of the body and the needs of the spirit. I marvel that I understand so little of it. But there it is. The onus. The bonus. The semiosis of life implementing its array of words and grammar in a carillon of appeals and prayers and sanguine propositions in order to make it seem a little more manageable, a little more endurable. In this latter sense, almost all objects are signs, standing, not for themselves, but for others, in their capacity of suggesting one thought which shall lead to a train of thoughts. And where does that get you? Nowhere. The universe is much larger than a dictionary. And its grammar is one of gravity and space and time, fusions of atomic nuclei whose differences in mass generate heat and light. It’s a very funny thing to realize that the life inside you is a piece of the universe itself speaking and breathing and creating itself through you. And this reverie, which is the abode of poets, arouses a thaw, a dynamic liquefaction, a feeling of dissolving into the universe while simultaneously absorbing, imbibing and harmonizing with it. Indeed, what a strange state of affairs. Because it doesn’t get you off the hook. You’ve still got to get up and get dressed and brush your teeth and brush your hair and go out into the world to learn a trade and make money and submit oneself to the dictates of others. Shelley, I believe, was an aristocrat. He didn’t have to suffer the indignities of a shit job, though he was subjected to a lot of bullying at Eton College, which led to his aloofness, and rebellion. His violent rages earned him the nickname Mad Shelley. I can dig it. I’m in my elder years now, but the water still boils, if you get my drift. I got licked on the face by a dog today, and that helped bring my feet to the ground, and still the waters of my inner being. So yes: there are things, remarkable things, that can feed one’s being with sensations that lift us out of ourselves, that existential separateness that ferments in us like a wine and gets us drunk with ego. You want to avoid that. Try psilocybin instead. Or raise horses. Be a cowboy. Ride the range. Everything gets wide and borderless under the stars. And when the wolves come out to howl the universe quivers like a contralto in a convenience store.