Actually this video is random footage I shot in Hell's Kitchen. By no means am I a filmmaker or editor, it's just what catches my attention. But I love the smoking metal pole I chanced on yesterday, it come's in around 2:08.
I've past through my period of despair bordering on nihilism regarding the increasingly blatant controls placed upon the world, the cruelties humans in our incarnations as primally driven sacks of meat inflict upon one another...every narrative of change has caveats...voting only does so much. Grassroots movements only do so much before they are violently suppressed, branded as "terrorist", or perhaps most destructive of all, commodified into a softened, palatable mainstream shadow of itself... ("I did my part! I bought a tote bag that says 'go green' on it!") To exist is to be at least somewhat complicit in such systems or as the R. Crumb postcard I have hanging above my workspace says, "Nobody's hands are clean."
So why the change, when nothing changes? Was it waking up with sunlight streaming in and classical music playing on the radio? Well, that's lovely, but I don't know if anything is that simple. I don't always know what's behind the fluctuating moods of my mental state of being, the state a friend and artist I respect says not to consider mental "illness" (the names are just symbols anyhow) because our different way of being doesn't make us "ill". The state a now former friend/collaborator told me limits my spiritual capacities in comparison to whatever New Age hodge-podge her new male friend taught her about in the past two weeks or whatever. It doesn't always operate with the rhyme or reason that we're taught things operate with. It doesn't always matter what we're taught at all when the teachers might not be reliable. But I'm riding with it. I'm thinking instead today of that old chestnut from Loren Eisley about the starfish:
Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.
One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.
As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.
He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"
The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."
"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.
To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."
Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"
At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one."
Apart from the overall message here, I like how the perceived "wise man" can still be taught another perspective from the other character.
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