Mole
Permabanned
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2008
- Messages
- 20,282
Talking about things is safe.
Talking about things is at one remove - we are not in direct contact.
Talking about things is normal - everybody else is doing it - so no one will look askance, never mind challenge us.
So taking about things is a socially acceptable defence mechanism.
On the other hand being something is risky.
To be something is like putting all our eggs in one basket - if we drop the basket, we lose the eggs.
And to be something is downright weird - to talk about a tree is acceptable but to become a tree is incomprehensible - it is not even possible - it is not even logical as it offends the law of the excluded middle.
And yet the temptation is always there - to be. You just let go of yourself and become something else. But if you become something else, how can you get back? What if you are stuck forever as a tree?
Fairy stories often deal with this problem - of someone stuck inside a tree, and of course their rescue. And it is an existential problem and one that even children are concerned with. But as we grow older we build up our psychological defence mechanisms and we all end up talking about things to one another rather than experiencing them directly - rather than being a tree.
The poetic beginner not only wants to write a poem but to live the poem - particularly love poems. But the jaded poet knows that poetry does nothing. Can there be anything sadder than a jaded, older poet for whom poetry does nothing?
But that's what we are all like, and that's why we are all alike.
Talking about things is at one remove - we are not in direct contact.
Talking about things is normal - everybody else is doing it - so no one will look askance, never mind challenge us.
So taking about things is a socially acceptable defence mechanism.
On the other hand being something is risky.
To be something is like putting all our eggs in one basket - if we drop the basket, we lose the eggs.
And to be something is downright weird - to talk about a tree is acceptable but to become a tree is incomprehensible - it is not even possible - it is not even logical as it offends the law of the excluded middle.
And yet the temptation is always there - to be. You just let go of yourself and become something else. But if you become something else, how can you get back? What if you are stuck forever as a tree?
Fairy stories often deal with this problem - of someone stuck inside a tree, and of course their rescue. And it is an existential problem and one that even children are concerned with. But as we grow older we build up our psychological defence mechanisms and we all end up talking about things to one another rather than experiencing them directly - rather than being a tree.
The poetic beginner not only wants to write a poem but to live the poem - particularly love poems. But the jaded poet knows that poetry does nothing. Can there be anything sadder than a jaded, older poet for whom poetry does nothing?
But that's what we are all like, and that's why we are all alike.