a “Deeper Shudder..”

“… and never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself,
and so present in the world.”

“Man is the only animal that refuses to be what he is.”
~Albert Camus

dou·ble·think
/ˈdəbəlˌTHiNGk/
Noun
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morally while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forger it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself–that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.”
~1984, George Orwell

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the man.

“… At times the man, shuddering at the alienation between the “I” and the world, comes to reflect that something is to be done… and thought, ready with its service and its art, paints with its well-known speed one- no, two rows of pictures, on the right wall and on the left. On one there is… the universe. The tiny earth plunges from the whirling stars, tiny man from the teeming earth, and now history bears him further through the ages, to rebuild persistently the ant-hill of the cultures which history crushes underfoot… On the other wall there takes place the soul. A spinner is spinning the orbits of all stars and the life of all creation and the history of the universe; everything is woven of one thread, and is no longer called stars and creation and universe, but sensations and imaginings, or even experiences, and conditions of the soul…

Thenceforth, if ever the man shudders at the alienation, and the world strikes terror in his heart, he looks up (to the right or left, just as it may chance) and sees a picture. There he sees that the “I” is embedded in the world and there is really no I at all- so the world can do nothing to the I, and he is put at ease; or he sees that the world is embedded in the I, and that there is really no world at all- so the world can do nothing to the I, and he is put at ease…
But a moment comes, and it is near, when the shuddering man looks up and sees both pictures in a flash together.
And a deeper shudder seizes him.”
~Martin Buber (I and Thou)

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Monsters.

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“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you;
not as the world gives do I give to you.

Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful…”
~Jesus

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I’m scared of swimming in the sea
With dark shapes moving under me
And every fear I swallow makes me small
Inconsequential things occur
Alarms are triggered
Memories stir

It’s not the way it has to be

I’m afraid of what I do not know
I hate being undermined
I’m afraid I can be devil man
And I’m scared to be divine
Don’t mess with me my fuse is short
Beneath this skin these fragments caught

When I allow it to be
There’s no control over me
I have my fears
But they do not have me

Walking through the undergrowth, to the house in the woods
The deeper I go, the darker it gets
I peer through the window
Knock at the door
And the monster I was so afraid of
Lies curled up on the floor
Is curled up on the floor… just like a baby boy

I cry until I laugh

I’m afraid of being mothered
With my balls shut in the pen
I’m afraid of loving women
And I’m scared of loving men
Flashbacks coming in every night
Don’t tell me everything’s alright

When I allow it to be
It has no control over me
I own my fear
So it doesn’t own me

Walking through the undergrowth, to the house in the woods
The deeper I go, the darker it gets
I peer through the window
Knock at the door
And the monster I was so afraid of
Lies curled up on the floor
Is curled up on the floor… just like a baby boy

I cry until I laugh

not sure… but so very Sure :)

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“… For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake,
But My Lovingkindness will not be removed from you,
And My covenant of peace will not be shaken,”
Says the Lord who has compassion on you.
“O afflicted one, storm-tossed, and not comforted,
Behold, I will set your stones in antimony,
And your foundations I will lay in sapphires.
“Moreover, I will make your battlements of rubies,
And your gates of crystal,
And your entire wall of precious stones.”
~Isaiah 54
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I think I fell in love
You smile alone like a drunken drug has gone and left me…
Lord I’m comin’
I think I sold my soul; to what… to who…
I still don’t know
My world is broken, my world is broken
And all the big mistakes, who knows who’s right… who cares who’s wrong?
Lord I’m comin’… Oh Lord I’m comin’

I never knew the sound… the sound of fear till I hit the ground
And I’m dying… Lord I’m dying
The little things in life: the way you talk… the way you smile
And I miss you… you know I miss you
I think I fell in love but now the hurt…
the hurt is gone
And I’m homeless… Lord I’m homeless
I don’t know how to feel I don’t know what to say or do
Lord I’m comin’… Lord I’m comin’

A whisper in my ear… and all things disappear
I think I fell in love but now I know… I’ve forgotten how.
And I’m comin’… Lord, I’m comin’

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The World that We ‘Created’. :(

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Just think of all those hungry mouths we have to feed
Take a look at all the suffering we breed
So many lonely faces scattered all around…

Searching for what they need.

Is this the world we created…
What did we do it for?
Is this the world we invaded?
Against the Law… so it seems in the end
Is this what we’re all living for… “today”?
The world that we created.

You know that everyday a helpless child is born
Who needs some loving care inside a happy home
Somewhere a wealthy man is sitting on his throne
Waiting for life to go by.

Is this the world we created? We made it on our own
Is this the world we devastated… right to the bone?
If there’s a God up in the sky looking down
What must He think of what we’ve done…
To the world that He created?
~Freddy Mercury
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The ‘Search’.

“Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”
~Phillipians 3

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“… It will be evident from my context that the business of saving one’s soul means more than taking an imaginary object, “a soul,” and entrusting it to some institutional bank for deposit until it is recovered with interest in Heaven.
Speaking as a Christian existentialist, I mean by “soul” not simply the Aristotelian essential form but the mature personal identity, the creative fruit of an authentic and lucid search, the “self” that is found after other partial an exterior selves have been discarded as masks.
This metaphor must not mislead: this inner identity is not “found” as an object, but is the very self that finds. It lost when it forgets to find, when it does not know how to seek, or when it seeks itself as an object. (Such a search is futile and self-contradictory.) Hence the paradox that it finds best when it stops seeking: and the graduate level of learning is when one learns to sit still and be what one has become, which is what one does not know and does not need to know. Debts are paid (and they were largely imaginary). One no longer seeks something else. One no longer seeks to be told by another who one is. One no longer demands reassurance. But there is the whole infinite depth of what is remaining to be revealed. And it is not revealed to those who seek it from others. iStock_000007870008XSmall
Education in this sense means more than learning; and for such education, one is awarded no degree. One graduates by rising from the dead. Learning to be oneself means, therefore, learning to die in order to live. It mean discovering the ground of one’s being a “self” which is ultimate an indestructible, which not only survives the destruction of all other more superficial selves but finds its identity affirmed and clarified by their destruction.
The inmost self is naked. Nakedness is not socially acceptable except in certain crude forms which can be commercialized without any effort of imagination (topless waitress). Curiously, this cult of bodily nakedness is a veil and a distraction, a communion in futility, where all identities get lost in their nerve endings. Everybody claims to like it. Yet no one is really happy with it. It makes money.
Spiritual nakedness, on the other hand, is far to stark to be useful. It strips life down to the root where life and death are equal, and this is what nobody likes to look at. But it is where freedom really begins: the freedom that cannot be guaranteed by the death of somebody else. The point where you become free not to kill, not to exploit, not to destroy, not to compete, because you are no longer afraid of death or the devil or poverty or failure. If you discover this nakedness you better keep it private. People don’t like it. But can you keep it private? Once you are exposed… Society continues to do you the service of keeping you in disguises, not for your comfort, but for its own. It is quite willing to strip you of this for that outer skin (a stripping which is a normal ritual and which everybody enjoys) The final metaphysical stripping goes too far, unless you happen to be in Auschwitz.
~Thomas Merton (Love and Living)

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Anna Lise Please

Everybody’s saying I’ve been sinking
Like I’ve got some kind of damned old curse
They keep talking about my drinking
They don’t care nothing about my thirst

Now, there is no greater danger than when you’re trying to find yourself
Because there is no stranger stranger than a man is to himself
Anna Lise please tell em all I’m alright
Cover me a little while
Anna, nobody sees except by their own lights
And all I need from you is a little smile
Anna Lise please
Anna Lise please

Heaven River’s icing over
There’s a ring around the moon
Well if it gets any colder
Anna, we could cross over that river soon
Anna, you could get away with me
Leave all them fools behind
Anna, how else are we ever gonna see
All those dreams in the back of our minds?

Anna Lise please tell em all I’m alright
Cover me a little while
Anna, nobody sees except by their own lights
And all I need from you is a little smile

Anna Lise please
Anna Lise please

Anna Lise please tell em all I’m alright
Cover me,
Cover me a little while
Anna, nobody sees except by their own lights
All I need from you is a little smile.
~Kevin Welch

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“The Silent Wind that Still Blows…”

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She’s faced the hardest times
you could imagine
and many times her eyes fought back the tears
and when her youthful world was about to fall in
each time her slender shoulders
bore the weight of all her fears
and a sorrow no one hears
still rings in midnight silence in her ears

Let her cry, for she’s a lady
let her dream, for she’s a child
let the rain fall down upon her
She’s a free and gentle flower growing wild

and if by chance I should hold her
let me hold her for a time
but if allowed just one possession
I would pick her from the garden,
to be mine

Be careful how you touch her,
for she’ll awaken
and sleep’s the only freedom that she knows
and when you ‘walk into her eyes’,
you won’t believe
the way she’s always paying
for a debt she never owes
and a silent wind still blows
that only she can hear… and so she goes

Let her cry, for she’s a lady
let her dream, for she’s a child

let the rain fall down upon her
She’s a free and gentle flower
growing wild

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“Nothing truly real is forgotten eternally,
because everything Real comes from Eternity… and goes to Eternity.”
~Paul Tillich