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| Spring by Abel Grimmer |
[In a vivid dream dreamed in my mother's house, the home where I first took flight from the nest, I experience a dream unlike that yet experienced on this visit to the places of my origins.]
I am an Occupy demonstrator; with stereotypical shaggy hair and a wiry beard sparse enough to age me youthfully. At first impression, a fire-born Sagittarius without regret or remorse. I have a taste for the insane rush of amateur denial. A ferocity grows in me to bleed with the public truth of mass suffering at the hand of the few: 1%. I feed off the morning dew before the violent marching of our militant society exhales its smog of consumptive dread over the undreamed folds of a quotidian, earthly stress.
With sudden instantaneous manifestation, my surroundings turn into a punctilious mold of congruent geometry. A seemingly shapeless mass of grey and beige frosts the walls of my interior perception with gross boredom. Enraged, I tear with mad vivacity for a new paradigm. Social dominance does not move astray from my line of sight as it defies internal contemplation and steers ever clearly into the bedrooms of the few: 1%. I give them all the middle finger with raw, open tenacity.
I am reminded of W. Bush; his first trip outside of the U.S. after his term of totalitarian presidency. We geared to angry maximums in a show of torrential defamation at his name.
There is a slump in the public demonstration. The efforts sway to clandestine operation. There is an underground swell of purpose. An optimistic slumber chimes beneath the sidewalk cafes. I am welcomed at a subterranean meeting place. The air is unpredictable. There is a contingent wading in passersby and onlookers who wonder about the end of their movement; it may be nearer than they fear. I have a purpose. I make my delivery and ask desperately for a place to sleep. I need to rest on a surface other than that of concrete smoothed by nylon. The muffled sound of sheets once quelled my silent might and now I am only stirred with the jarring gripes of untrustworthy leaders from this, our autonomous modus operandi of Darwinian survival.
Sleepless, I cower trenchantly outside the walls of an Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. The streets are emptied with sacred failure. The notches of murder scale high across the batons of the street police. I have come here to die to the American Lie. I wait restlessly, dealing with bureaucrats in twilight hours. The Cairo dawn inflames my vital organs with a need to escape this devil-coaxed life of American savagery. I fight for the freedom to move, for my wife and our sanity. We ask only to be awake, and not depraved of a social camaraderie known from collective suffering, shared through speech, and simultaneously lightened through action for one being, our whole. At the same time, we fight for the dignity to rest our heads on a feather of respect in this anthropomorphic hole of modern factory-style life ways.
The struggle continues.
Some powerful thoughts and impressions, thanks for posting this. Reminds me how we are caught up in the dream of it all -- writing down truth on placards only to find the beast selling us the markers and the posterboard. It's that old narrow path...
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment!
ReplyDeleteI wrote a small entry into the idea of the 99% art manifesto. As I am traveling, it's been hard to focus, however I have a start here:
99 % Art Manifesto
I want to write in the sky. I would paint with clouds and the rays of the sun through the grandiose atmospheres above. If the thunder and lightning were my voice I would shake the ground with seeds in the roots of the forests, I would string my lyre of earth with the tributaries of a thousand rivers, I would crash the ocean into a cymbal of sand. I want my voice to be omnipotent as the wind. If I were an escapee, recently freed from the fugitive curse of social death in America, I would be inhaled as sure as the breath of all life on this planet.
Our art must be for all. There must be no more exclusivity, no more obscurity in the allure of exotic distraction. The electric grave of recording, image and page must be transcribed on the blank sheets of the human soul. This is our hour of sharing. We can create communal awareness in this creating.
Stand and do not waver with the quavering of your voice. Be on the pedestal of spoken performance, through a windpipe of color, sound or word. Do not fade into the gray smoke that mixes with the unclean background of bleak misery. This is our time to listen to one heart beat.
Instill in those around us not merely an excitation to do, but an impetus to listen with respect. Root the values of respect with that of love in mutual cultivation. The soundless wane of one throat grueling in the maw of forgotten tirades does not linger any more than candle smoke billows from behind an iron curtain, or any more than an insect, reminding us of grandchildren’s laughter, crushed under the iron heel. Do not forget to dream waking dreams. Dream an active dreaming to know the fruits of a collective mind willed into being by the dream of one being, dreaming as one.
See the active truth in interdependent unity. Be alive through being unique. Distinctive qualities enhance under the fire of knowing infinite connectivity. The voice is an eye through which our predominant species may not dominate, but see into the heart of all life to a united truth that we are all suffering the same love.
In brevity is the confidence of limitless potency.
Join art with all life. Holism is a prayer from the gods of antiquity. We ask that all gather around this decaying sphere, this economic pyre, and prepare a grave for the death wish of eternal sanity.
The art of the 99% is a vision, asking if one day the 100% may wade together in the cool water of one river. The fresh water has nearly ceased its flow, almost at a boil, and we are motionless.
Beautiful articulations, beautiful passion, the beginnings of a roadmap for proceeding on a very big endeavor.
ReplyDeleteI can't add much to what you say, so I'll make a hopefully constructive comment on each of your paragraphs:
para. 1 - This is about devic creation, our hidden heritage. We are all at bottom creators of the world, not just its art. We need to claim that potential as our birthright.
para. 2 - "The electric grave of recording, image and page must be transcribed on the blank sheets of the human soul" is a powerful and important statement that needs to be clarified and further developed.
para. 3 - The key is overcoming the fear of expression - a quite formidable task - and not (here at least) listening to the communal heart beat.
para. 4 - Listening and dreaming are not tied together here.
para. 5 - Right on target - we need to think more about how to accept the universal as intrinsic to the most unique parts of our (illusory separate) selves.
para. 6 - This is an egoic critique in the midst of a plea for a paradigm shift - best to leave out.
para. 7 - Perfect - needs more, more, more.
para. 8 - Suggests how society's relentless focus on the efforts of the 1% has stagnated and polluted the waters when they could be free-flowing and fresh. Again, more development of this idea is required.
The idea is right on, and I urge you to hammer away more at the developing image at the heart of the stone. The expression can become more full, more precise, more pedagogical, and more informed with example and illustration. I'll give some thought to these ideas, and let you know what I come up with.