The World and I

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This is a paraphrase of an ancient Eastern shamanic psalm as written by Laotse, translated by Lin Yutang (Modern Library, 1948, pp. 128-9). While the "I" identity refers traditionally to the "Sage," and functions within this piece as an effort to describe the shaman's ambivalent role and responsibility, perhaps even authority, within the Beloved Community, my own word choices are at least partially the result of my own marginalized "outsider" sage and "observer" muse experience. At the same time, I am not claiming to have any more or less wisdom than those I actively listen to; which takes us back to the premise in the very first sentence of this piece..

Banish listening, and teachings end.
     Between "Yes!" and "No!"
     How much spectral difference is there?
Between healthy "live" and "evil"
     Is the difference not normally 50-50?
That which we fear
     Is indeed to be feared;
That which we love
     Is indeed to be beloved;
But, alas, distant, yet also at hand, is this dawn of awakening
     toward loving to be loved as
     fearlessly unafraid of Beloved Climax Community!

We merry-make today,
self-congratulate while sub-optimizing,
     As if consistently absorbing redemptive nutrients,
     As if playing Mountain Warrior in Springs redolent climax;
I alone am mildly wild with harvesting unemployment,
     Like a new-born babe that cannot yet smile,
     Unattached,
     neither grasping at joy nor averting lost identity,
     contention with dissonance is like one without a zero home.

History's prevailing culture has enough and to spare,
But I am like one left out,
     behind marginal invisible boundary,
     my heart and mind must be that of buttless comedy,
     Being as muddled, 
     ambivalently equivalent,
     nebulously coincident!

Left-brain dominator cultures are knowing, luminous,
     strength self-fulfilling and prophesying futures;
     I alone am dull, confused, equivalent.

Egocentric culture is clever, self-assured;
     I alone, depressed, repressed, suppressed,
     not impressed, pressed, pressing, birthing.
Patient as the sea,
     Adrift, seemingly aimless tipping points.

We all have purposed meaning,
     teleologized ecological faith;
     I alone appear stubborn and irrelevantly uncouth.
I appear to differ from SuperEgo Culture,
     In optimally valuing succulent sustenance from Mother Earth,
     universal natural systemic polyculturing in/out-formation.

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