Dear diary,
Am I happy? Yes and no.
What’s the yes and what’s the no? The yes is poetry friendship wisdom and alcohol. The no is lack.
What made me happy when I was a child? A snow day: cancellation of school for bad weather. And what made me happy when I was a teenager, employed by the car wash? A rain day: cancellation of work for bad weather. So I’m a fan of bad weather.
I remember drawing and coloring with pencils, paints, and crayons, as an infant — that was about as happy as I could get. What motivates a child to create a picture? Is it the hope of being the featured artist at a museum? Is it the dream of selling one’s work for a record price? Of course not: the act itself is its own reward; it’s pure bliss to move the markers or brushes over the paper and see lines appear, or blotches of color. At first there was no shape; & then, the next moment, there IS shape — and the agent bringing about this creation is my own little hand, which is swayed by my own little mind. I didn’t need to own the Prussian Army, or to be able to halt the sun in its tracks, in order to find happiness as a child. Just that little participation in movement, creation, flux; simply being a tiny flame within the great conflagration (a mind-body within the mind-body of the Everlasting) was enough to make me content.
But when I brought the lines & colors into existence, upon that blank canvas, what should we say: Was this a creatio ex nihilo, “creation from nothing”, or a creatio ex materia, “creation out of pre-existent, eternal matter”? What a stupid question. I’m not even going to justify it with an answer.
Obviously nothing and something are two sides of one coin. Instead of asking “Why is there something rather than nothing?” or “Why is there nothing rather than something?” we might ask “Why must there be any division?” in other words: “Why can’t nothing and something coexist?” For reality does not allow a homeowner to park an invisible jet in the house’s driveway while at once NOT parking that very same jet in the driveway. Only in the imagination can existence be reconciled with nonexistence. That’s why God chose to build his abode in the mind. As it is written:
All deities reside in the human breast.
That’s from William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which also says:
Every thing possible to be believd is an image of truth.
But if the imagination defies reality, then is the mind no part of the world? God forbid. The mind is in the world but not of the world. It’s not that reality and the imagination are at odds, or opposites — that would imply that the twain might be commensurate: no, it’s that the imagination fully encompasses reality, thus reality is more restricted and has more “rules”: thus not only are reality and the imagination unequal, but reality is inferior even to fancy. That’s why, in his first epistle, Saint John says:
Love not reality, neither the things that are real. If any man love reality, the Poetic Genius is not in him. For all that is in reality, the manias of ownership, pretty scenes devoid of thot, and the smug myopia that informs the judgments of advocates for institutions from religion to science, is not of the Poetic Genius, but is of reality. And reality is forever changing, and everything that is real eventually passes away and becomes unreal, as do the cravings that stem therefrom: but whoever glides steadfast with the Poetic Genius thru possibility and beyond is in Eternity and abides for ever. (I John 2:15-17)
Even the Apostle Paul understands this:
Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:2)
In summary: I began by questioning if I’ve achieved happiness, and then I followed that thot on its natural course until it proved for us those lines from Wallace Stevens’ “Of Mere Being”:
You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
So I guess I shouldn’t worry about how I feel: happiness will come or go as it pleases; all I can do is keep tabs on the surrounding atmosphere: left right up down back forth — as long as there are still flames at all sides of my die, I’m in the right act.
& I don’t have to justify myself or waste time connecting the dots to any argument. If it’s love, it is yes: it’s that simple.
P.S.
I’m against war, and I also live within spacetime. Now I was born in a country that had a violent beginning, a violent birth. Apparently not all countries need to slaughter their way into existence: some apparently just declare “I am born” and the surrounding nations allow it. But my country engaged in warfare to become itself, to gain independence from its parent-land. And today is the day that we are urged to celebrate this accomplishment. So I want to say a few words about our “National Day”: let’s do that cheap trick of quoting directly from the encyclopedia’s entry — that way we’ll rack up more words and receive a bigger paycheck:
Independence Day in the United States commemorates the moment when the Continental Congress declared that the 13 American colonies were no longer subordinate to the monarch of Britain but were now independent states. The Congress had voted to do this a couple days earlier, on July 2, 1776, but it was not actually declared until July 4.
So you just declare yourself X and then you get to be X, am I right? Well it’s not so easy as that. Good Luck doesn’t grow on trees: it’s summoned into existence by the stroke of a key on a computer that is rooted to private bank. So when the U.S. colonies said “We’re a baby country now!” Apparently the mother that was digesting this conglomerate in her stomach answered, “Over my dead body!” Therefore the birth resulted in the death of both parents. Which is better than an abortion or miscarriage, in this case, because America is exceptional. (By “America”, I usually mean “U.S. America”; or occasionally “Columbia”, as both are names of goddesses; the graven idols of which prefer be depicted with at least one breast exposed.)
But let’s get on with the festivities — here’s another quote from the Bible oops I mean the Dictionary:
Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, and political ceremonies.
OK let me take these concerns issue-by-issue: I’ll say as little as I can about each one, for the sake of amusement, just because I’m getting tired:
Fireworks
Fireworks are fun. You drive your family to the preordained spot. You park your car. You see explosions in the sky. The noise is loud. It represents the bombs that killed our mother-and-fatherland so that we could become a newborn babe. We now rent our own apartment.
Parades
Parades are fun because they contain villagers marching in lockstep to popular music. Candy is thrown in lieu of arsenal.
Barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts
Barbecues are a great national pastime. I remember my dad cooking hamburger patties and bratwursts on the grill. White bread, pickles, ketchup, mustard, orange processed-cheese slices in the shape of a square wrapped in plastic.
Baseball
Imagine a diamond made out of sand. Paint white lines near its periphery, so that the players can toe the path to prove that they’re sober. Now stand in the center of the diamond and throw a ball toward its home base. Lob the ball gently so that it may be struck with a wooden bat by the designated hitter. Krack goes the bat, when contact is made. Now the ball soars over the heads of all the spectators and outside of the park, past Jupiter and beyond the Infinite. This is known as a “home run”; or rather a “grand slam” because the bases were “loaded”, which is to say that they were fully manned with players: 1st, 2nd, & 3rd base had been occupied by souls who were runners; and now these folks all get to migrate back to their homeland, a base accompanied by their comrade the ball-breaker. Now pray for the umpire to make chalk markings on the scoreboard, under the legend “U.S.A.”, because the winner is the home team: the United States of America.
Family reunions
I say that this topic is a lie because I’ve never seen a family reunion coincide with the National Day. I mean, think about it: What sense would it make for us to reunite with our families at exactly the moment when our homeland is commemorating its act of parricide?
Political speeches and ceremonies, in addition to various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States.
In conclusion, I did not enjoy writing this postscript about today’s holiday. I’m not really a… I don’t know what to say about myself, in relation to my country. I wanna be patriotic, but I just can’t grasp the customs of these natives. I might stand outside of my house and wave a flag, but that seems too cheap of a symbol. Maybe other folks find flag-waving a natural action & can do so with sincerity, but to me it feels false. I’ve hated about 90% of the things that have happened to me in this land — what does that mean? Either the place is well-intentioned albeit stupid, or it is simply oblivious to people like me. Or maybe it’s between those extremes (it cannot possess evil intent, by definition). I guess I’ll keep hoping for peace and assuming that my country has humankind’s interest in mind, when it announces its next list of enemies.
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