History and Humanity: How Self-Awareness Leads to Reconciliation

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley by George J. Stodart

"No more let Life divide what Death can join together." Shelley

"We cannot continue to be recognizable and survive…if everything you know is wrong, then all the problems you thought were insoluble can be framed differently. And there's a way to take the world apart and put it back unrecognizably. We don't really understand what consciousness is at the really deep levels," said Terence McKenna in an interview for bOING bOING #10, to hail the oncoming psychic transformation of humanity in the 21st century, also known as the post-2012 New Age eschatology. 

Yet, historically, we have ever been unrecognizable when we look at interrelations between human societies, especially with regard to the European saga of colonialism and the institutionalized racism that followed (and arguably continues) in its wake. People from other continents, the Native, Indigenous peoples of the world, most emphatically Africans, Australians and Native Americans (from both North and South America), were for a considerable portion of history considered an inferior race, a subhuman species likened to earlier primates less developed than the European genus. 

As we have now begun to recognize ourselves wholly, all of humanity included, through science and reconciliation with our inhumane past, the challenge now remains clearer than ever, for it is our own selves, the Self of Humankind that is in need of development, and not any other form of life. So, we might ask, might we grow up from the childish state of irresponsible resource waste and join the community of life on planet Earth, or become extinct. As the human family becomes recognizable, next the whole of life on Earth must be recognized as our own self, as the body of a relative, and until it does, and we remain unrecognizable to ourselves, there is catastrophe as we straddle the line between dominance and extinction. 

Interpreting the above quote by Shelley in the last line of the third to last stanza of Adonais, An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, essentially reads as "don't let life get in the way of dreaming" where the diversity of life, as it manifests in the human family, a wealth of ethnicities, spiritualities, and physiques can be seen not as a source of division, but of connectivity. And so, as I write, this the capital city in the state of my birth, Boston, has allegedly been bombed. In such times, it is ever paramount to instil the meaning of reconciliation within the human family. Peace studies author and professor George Melnyk recently shared with me the simple notion that "That's what happens in war, you define an enemy." And, so, with our nation(s) at war in the Middle East, and the "enemy" at hand, we can keep vigil with the caution that we should not jump to quick conclusions in our search for vengeance. 

The crossroads of human life in the 21st century divides Humankind between himself and the planet; the potential of nuclear fallout and the immanent ecocide with the unabated burning of fossil fuels. The struggle to survive as one, whole being, as a united humanity, is to be fought at our doorstep, and we must remain strong not to waver from our ultimate direction towards peace through reconciliation. See the documentary by Chris Hedges OBEY, at minute 22, where he writes, "Resentment against a disenchanted secular world will find deliverance in the ecstatic escape of unreason." Let this unfortunate incident be an opportunity to empathize with those who experience bombings on a regular basis as part of our government's foreign policy, as opposed to perpetuating violence through self-pity and aggression. 

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A stone-bedded homely abode of five rabbis, all with simplicity and humor muttering of their bearded visage, they meander from home to a day’s work in the predawn night. I, a furtive wraith, clandestine in the dim corner, emerge to observe the floor-set scribes and their flowing fountain of wise austerity. The dusty air breathes sanctity unknown to most, yet from the window a flicker of artificial light breaches the soup of mind with Maras of temptation, apparitions of the female sex, flaunting a shadowy tint of flesh. I trudge outside, unencumbered by the pleasures of the intoxicating sights. We are at war.

Titus destroying Jerusalem by Wilhelm von Kaulbach

The direction of sight is clear. The enemy is known, and our targets destructible. The air is thinning of passion and feeling, to make way for hate. The true victim in this war is Earth. The all-out industrial fire has spurred on the makers of enmity under a veil of infinite resource. Brothers, sons and fathers bleed with for the ground on which they are laid to rest. The backdrop is far-reaching. There is a sense of humor in this war.

Toronto Rolling Mills by William Armstrong

Foregrounds blur into modernity, as a civilian is murdered, shot in the back, running towards us. Iraq is not Germany. Civilian and army are a rough and indiscernible duality. The cold smoke of hate becomes the backwash of sanity as soldiers and men secrete their pain into the willful triggers of deadly remorse. I, a photographer, capture the minutiae of existence full-born in the surviving families of Earth-bred singularity. Modern natives, the indigenous, bold eyes of people, now the last grave on which an unmarked praise still glorifies the vanity of war and power. Massive trucks crack and sputter past me, with so much gun, bomb and shell materiel that my knees weigh fierce into the concrete below. Rushing past, the soldiers reveal faces of bleary sweat and stinging tears, flowing from a smiling façade of youth, their graying eyes grow cold with fate as my photos are ignored.

Collateral Damage by James Miller 

When we declared war on Earth in WWII, the invasion of Iraq granted us full impunity as we commit the last atrocity on the only lasting connection humankind might instill from Earth to the mass of societies born and bred of global war. They line up, shaman to farmer, hunter to midwife, storyteller to seer, a community of global wisdom, attuned to the lightness of being, as in the creation stories of practical love. And in their firing squad, they choose to sit, meditating on the gun-barrel of unsightly loss – the drifting eyes of hate and need merge.

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After a cumulative process of self-publication, a DIY attitude of writing and publishing often spreads into the realms of experimentation and exploration with all aspects of the creative process and, especially where self-publishing is concerned, into self-innovated and creatively conceived avenues for sustainability.

Art is the "divinely superfluous beauty" as Robinson Jeffers says, however the artist is inherently tied to the whole of life. For this reason, I have decided to experiment with monetary value as a way to further understand my self-published works and the general field wherein I am situated as a self-taught creative artist active in a variety of artistic disciplines, with special regard for the overlap of media, thought and art.

Please join this conversation as society embarks ever on towards greater connectivity between the sacred, the communal and the entrepreneurial; that all three may one day join in a vision of society directed at once toward pragmatic utopia, while mutually creative and destructive, or better worded as discerning, in its ability to see and create potential.

I will still be offering the full collection online for free viewing, however, I have added the option of supporting the artistry exhibited by none other than the Dream Author. Jah!

Cyclical Wordplay by Rusty Kjarvik

Opening the page to experimental, improvised writing which emphasizes and attempts a most strict depiction of the spontaneous nature of mind can be perceived with harrowing aspiration in the realm of continuity, that is flipping the page, and its mystery, that is interpreting the language. As a forewarning of sorts, this collection of writing, as devised for readership, is the result of an editing which has purpose in giving the spontaneous flow of mental activity form. While attempting to convey the refreshing action of letting go, all structure and boundary and, in sense, constructs of mind are dissolved.

Created solely by one human being through "One Shot" intuitive improvisation stylings, Evocations: Cyclical Wordplay is the completion of a creative cycle of renewal, regeneration and return to the primary source of visionary inspiration: voice. With due reverence and respect for the infinite diversity of vocal and verbal forms among the worlds of the living and the dead, I hereby speak directly from the heart. Here, in these soundings, I am re-conceived through the mouth of the pen in all its power to amplify and obscure.

"Evocations" is a practice in contemporary experimental narrative, as opposed to the traditional conventions of spoken word. The poetics of oral storytelling are alive through soundings for the muses of voice in all its forms, whether in the tongues of wood, metal, plastic or flesh. The language of unity speaks through every medium.