Of the Common Seas

OF THE COMMON SEAS "We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice." ** Truth need not be found in philosophers' musings, or complicated by thoughts bound with theorems and words, fusing, nor within the intricacies of mathematical proofs, as one and one may indeed not equal two; un-truth is truth. Truth becomes vast in life, and like the pearl, can be found as beauty captured, in seas rife between the common oyster's gown, Or found within the common leaves of books written by common men, discovered by those literates who read. Truth is simple, now and ever been. I stumbled on such a prize In Dana's autobiography; of common men on common seas living truths of common humanity. ** Dana, Jr., Richard Henry, Two Years before the Mast, World Publishing Company, 1946, p. 283 1 Like a moth to a candle flame I pondered the perceived right of those of wealth, culture, piety and fame to control and lead the common blight - (the average, struggling and forsaken souls); yet have never descended to the lowly station to learn the culture of these earthly ghouls, their dreams, their pleas, their damnation. As gods atop their cloud draped mountain how dare they, in their empiric quackery force the masses to their impure fountain to drink of the laws and life that they decree, yet having not trod the tracks of the plebian path, having never felt the sordid plebian passions, but worshipping instead their comfort and wealth, adorned in decadence and richly clothed fashions, how can they govern those they do not know, minister to anguish they have never felt or heal their sickness of body, heart and soul? How can they play the cards, to them never dealt? Are they leaders, statesmen, kings and lords, or simply counterfeit men full only of themselves, vainglorious peacocks, strutting hordes deceiving not a common man, only just themselves? We have them here, in this land of the free, politicians, preachers, corporate men and judges. None have suffered and worked, you see yet dare to rule, when by common men begrudged.