it is so long since i wrote a stream of consciousness that after a year it is about time i let my teeming mind overflow or even act as a conduit for what has arisen within where the metaphor of mind plays interesting games with the brain and somehow i know i ache as i write these lines in that old existentialist sense after having spent the morning raiding nietzsche and lou salome and paul rée for ideas and yes i know that in that triangle of love in that ménage a trois mostly and totally intellectual as it was there yes there was a psychic or intrapsychic depth a depth only keen thinkers could know and yet and yet so much of that thinking was linked with suffering so much of that thinking was linked with pain and this does not surprise me because these great kindred spirits were existentialists who fought against all convention they were frontiers' men and women yes they were the ones who railed openly against society they were the prophets and the seers into the depths of the modern soul and how much they knew especially nietzsche of the catastrophe ahead that all that enlightenment and rational stuff could only lead so far so far so far and it did indeed it would eventually lead to two great world wars oh they were right there was and is no linear progression of truth or of science because everything as the great jesuit poet gerard manley hopkins put it wears man's smudge and shares man's smell as he so well put it in a poem uncannily and ironically called god's grandeur and it was nietzsche who proclaimed the death of god that is the death of humankind's true beliefs because they had sold those beliefs very cheaply for a mess of pottage and i will go on having just come back from a two week vacation in the sun where i read much about the depths of the soul the sheer frightening depths of my own soul and this is what i learned on the pulses of my own heart as the romantic poet john keats i think put it that truth is only truth when felt on ones own pulses...
and how can i deny the truths that rose to meet me and rise to meet me now as i type these poor words this stream of consciousness here in order to plumb my own depths find my own truth as nietzche would put it after all that's what it's all about not about finding the truth in capital letters like an objective truth out there cold cold cold - no no no that truth is warm it courses in our own veins always always coursing and let me be true as nietzsche and ree and salome and yalom and all the philosophers and psychiatrists i like to read are true to themselves as this is the very heart of existentialism and i want no marshalled thoughts here no comas no periods or fullstops nothing like that possibly what e e cummings was about possibly what james joyce was about possibly possibly possibly and all is possibility if only i become brave enough to take a chance and in the end learn to own my own fate learn to love my own fate as nietzsche was wont to put it and he did express it in a beautiful latin phrase amor fati the love of one's own destiny and even yet i can subscribe to this hard and difficult and painful though it is and i can subscribe to his metaphorical doctrine of eternal recurrence because once one has really found and integrated one's truth one's very own unique truth only then only then can one choose rightly and wisely because once one has realized and integrated that truth there is nothing left to choose anymore because that is existentially you and you alone or i and i alone...
and newman had it right you know when he said it was impossible to separate out the thinker from the thought that these two were inextricably links and that other old phrase i learned from thew great lecturer i had years ago the great barney kelly that phrase from the french enlightenment thinker buffon that le style c'est l'homme meme and nietzsche knew this and all his friends knew it and no wonder he was one of the first existentialist because he knew the man could never be separated from his thoughts and that was salomé's writing in her memoir on nietzsche and that was her recommendation to anyone wishing to read the words of this complex oh so complex philosopher and she said we must direct our attention to the human being and not the theorist in order to find a way in nietzsche's work and yet strangely newman who was anything but an existentialist knew this too and of course all this shows how fallible are all our categories and after all are not all philosophers tired of telling us that they do not want to be forced into this or that school of thought after all each is uniquely themselves and so i write in a confusion here yet in a healthy confusion that is integrating all the subpersonalities in me all the positive and negatives even the bisexuality in me and the tension between both poles that is alive in me these days the tension the tension the tension from which comes often the inspiration to write the inspiration to set things down on paper
and like nietzche and breuer whom yalom has walking through a cemetery in vienna i walked through the cemetery where my father is buried yesterday and it quietened my soul salved my conscience it was as if life was greeting me in death yes in death in the very inevitability of dying and death and i read the headstones like i would my prayers when i was a boy all those years ago when i was a little lonely boy so long ago yet in a strange way just like yesterday and as i bowed my head before my father's grave i stood in the silence in the profound and deep yet bright silence and watched all those lovely honey bees go from flower to flower on the fuchsia bust resplendent in red in blood red blooms among the dead and they were all there all there people or souls whom i once knew liam o. not far from my father's grave and pat mc. not too far away either and i walked and walked but could not find my cousin mary's grave but it was somewhere there somewhere but i had thought of her yes i had and then the unmarked grave of my past-pupil who drowned one night on his own vomit jesus he was only sixteen only sixteen not even started out on the journey we call life and i waled and walked and walked and sort of cried silently inwardly in my own soul at the impermanence of things at the fleeting nature of time and at the frightful inevitability of dying and death and death and dying and yet of life and living...
and the sound of the wonderful honey bees brought me back to tommy quinlan's grave back to the grave of my dad my dear old dad who once told me that someday that someday i would understand and he was so right so right so right and it is like that great drama by eugene o'neill that we studied in college all those years ago like that great play long day's journey into night where mary tyrone says to her son that life teaches us to accept what we cannot understand what we cannot understand and yet and yet there are those like nietzsche and salomé and even i who wish to understand and yet that is the cross we have to bear our deep desire to understand and in the end there may be no understanding per se and yet and yet we are meaning-making creatures and we need to make meaning and whether that meaning is in the end meaningful in an objective sense is irrelevant once it is meaningful in a subjective existential self and so
i will write and i will write i will write myself beautiful and ethical and true and moral and congruent in these words that come not just from my thoughts or from my mind but from the whole man from my thoughts and from my person as salome says above ah yes these thoughts are from the very centre of my being from what it feels like to be human from heart and from head from deep within me and it is a cry for meaning like monck's famous painting the scream and even if the universe is indifferent we have friends or at least this writer knows he has friends who will listen to his tales of weal and woe
... then the sound of the combine harvester and the tractor from the next field to the cemetery drew my attention drew my attention as the world of basic work continued but it was a work that binds us humans to the earth from whose bounty we spring and on whose bounty we live great mother earth great mother gaia in all her rich abundance as the harvest was now being cut and the farmers are so happy this year as there will be a bumper harvest for a second year in a row and life and the living and the planting and the growing and the reaping go on apace and will continue to go on and it is all a cycle a cycle yes a cycle and it is those who deny the cycle and believe in the illusion of the linear myth that truly die...
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| Gated garden, St Ann's Park, Raheny |
and newman had it right you know when he said it was impossible to separate out the thinker from the thought that these two were inextricably links and that other old phrase i learned from thew great lecturer i had years ago the great barney kelly that phrase from the french enlightenment thinker buffon that le style c'est l'homme meme and nietzsche knew this and all his friends knew it and no wonder he was one of the first existentialist because he knew the man could never be separated from his thoughts and that was salomé's writing in her memoir on nietzsche and that was her recommendation to anyone wishing to read the words of this complex oh so complex philosopher and she said we must direct our attention to the human being and not the theorist in order to find a way in nietzsche's work and yet strangely newman who was anything but an existentialist knew this too and of course all this shows how fallible are all our categories and after all are not all philosophers tired of telling us that they do not want to be forced into this or that school of thought after all each is uniquely themselves and so i write in a confusion here yet in a healthy confusion that is integrating all the subpersonalities in me all the positive and negatives even the bisexuality in me and the tension between both poles that is alive in me these days the tension the tension the tension from which comes often the inspiration to write the inspiration to set things down on paper
and like nietzche and breuer whom yalom has walking through a cemetery in vienna i walked through the cemetery where my father is buried yesterday and it quietened my soul salved my conscience it was as if life was greeting me in death yes in death in the very inevitability of dying and death and i read the headstones like i would my prayers when i was a boy all those years ago when i was a little lonely boy so long ago yet in a strange way just like yesterday and as i bowed my head before my father's grave i stood in the silence in the profound and deep yet bright silence and watched all those lovely honey bees go from flower to flower on the fuchsia bust resplendent in red in blood red blooms among the dead and they were all there all there people or souls whom i once knew liam o. not far from my father's grave and pat mc. not too far away either and i walked and walked but could not find my cousin mary's grave but it was somewhere there somewhere but i had thought of her yes i had and then the unmarked grave of my past-pupil who drowned one night on his own vomit jesus he was only sixteen only sixteen not even started out on the journey we call life and i waled and walked and walked and sort of cried silently inwardly in my own soul at the impermanence of things at the fleeting nature of time and at the frightful inevitability of dying and death and death and dying and yet of life and living...
and the sound of the wonderful honey bees brought me back to tommy quinlan's grave back to the grave of my dad my dear old dad who once told me that someday that someday i would understand and he was so right so right so right and it is like that great drama by eugene o'neill that we studied in college all those years ago like that great play long day's journey into night where mary tyrone says to her son that life teaches us to accept what we cannot understand what we cannot understand and yet and yet there are those like nietzsche and salomé and even i who wish to understand and yet that is the cross we have to bear our deep desire to understand and in the end there may be no understanding per se and yet and yet we are meaning-making creatures and we need to make meaning and whether that meaning is in the end meaningful in an objective sense is irrelevant once it is meaningful in a subjective existential self and so
i will write and i will write i will write myself beautiful and ethical and true and moral and congruent in these words that come not just from my thoughts or from my mind but from the whole man from my thoughts and from my person as salome says above ah yes these thoughts are from the very centre of my being from what it feels like to be human from heart and from head from deep within me and it is a cry for meaning like monck's famous painting the scream and even if the universe is indifferent we have friends or at least this writer knows he has friends who will listen to his tales of weal and woe
... then the sound of the combine harvester and the tractor from the next field to the cemetery drew my attention drew my attention as the world of basic work continued but it was a work that binds us humans to the earth from whose bounty we spring and on whose bounty we live great mother earth great mother gaia in all her rich abundance as the harvest was now being cut and the farmers are so happy this year as there will be a bumper harvest for a second year in a row and life and the living and the planting and the growing and the reaping go on apace and will continue to go on and it is all a cycle a cycle yes a cycle and it is those who deny the cycle and believe in the illusion of the linear myth that truly die...
