What I Don't Know

Why is this this and not that? Fly izzzzzzzzzzzzz SPLAT!

I wish I could smash the yearning for meaning in life, but that's like beating a child for eating too many cookies. Letting the rock roll back over you, instead of getting out of the way and watching it go. Think of Sisyphus, the one Camus made a hero of the absurd. It's useless to complain about your fate. In fact, like giving your torturer a reason to rejoice, if indeed you feel yourself to be a prisoner of life, why flinch? Shit. Sweetness is its own reward and accepting your punishment, like diabetes, can be managed without shame and blame. Name your price. Set your pace. Then put your shoulder to the boulder and face the music of silence: life without meaning.

The only coherence worth living with is the one you can have in the here and now, the one you carry in your heart like a stone.

"Progress"


Even though I know the light bulb dimmed
the small fires of the imagination,
that central heating sucked the warmth out
from the hearth, extinguishing families,
and though I know the printed word did more
to erase stories from our collective unconscious
than all the universities combined,

I still enjoy reading a book, by myself,
in winter, in my underwear, at home,
in the stone hut inside my heart.