*image by Ben Harubin

 

 

 

How This Condition Comes To Be:
'Tis the voice of your own commentary
that makes reality seem too small,
and all therein so ill arranged.

One man of yore had this to note,
"Never look now!
Else the silence of the present
might reveal the way things be."

On one planet was once a race of creatures whose development was stopped
By the fact that their vocal sense overwhelmed their visual one, while here on
this one damn-near the opposite occurred.
(And those who say they don't get this need to be on the first mentioned world.)

Once upon a time there was a wooden horse on the last row of the carousel who
finally asked himself, "There's no such thing as the 'last row' on a merry-go-round."
And a beautifully carved swan next to him noted, "That wasn't a question."
And the horse was forced to reply, "Mind your own business, feather face."

...But just think about it: Creatures whose vocal sense overwhelmed their visual one.
(I just feel sure that it means something.)

Part of the impersonal energy that ignites mens' minds causes them
to say "an unannotated life is not the proper life for man."
This idea, whose sole support is self-referential, and whose purpose is
inarguably and obviously no less than self-serving, this idea nonetheless
is such a fundamental part of the structure of thought that to even
question it is beyond routine mental capacity.

Thus does something as basic and constant as his heartbeat operate in man,
standing alone, outside his normal range of inquiry, doing what it does, and
without challenge, defining the scope of its own operations.

A job many a ne'r-do-weller would kill for.

Ordinary consciousness is no more individual to a man than a specific
gazelle is food for a particular lion.