Yesterday I walked to work watching a day-moon. The morning was awake and shining, and the sky was powder blue, and the gibbous moon–even in that broad light–stood above the high-rise condos and the bank towers, like Atlas at peace.
He seemed a wiser but sadder Atlas–bearing the sky upon his shoulders, and bidding us to look up. But we were all in cars, or checking ourselves in store windows. And anyway, looking up, past the steel right angles, is hard in the city. The towers loom and our eyes are only used to the dim light.
Dimly, to my left, out of my small dust spattered window rises one more condominium. It’s a testament to progress, ingenuity, and function. And like the city itself, it’s also a testament to a flood of fabricated meaning. The city says that only what is fabricated is real. Only what is engineered counts. Only the mechanical is actual. And the condo says, that this condominium, a community doth make.
Caught in the lie that mass-mind is community–the bewitchment of fabricated meaning is entire. And so–Atlas is sad. His sky and moon unseen because they are not real. Their speech, all the moon’s beautiful words, and the sky’s phrasing, silenced. Only the hammering and riveting and the hum of power, signify.
I have decided I can put up with the noise, dampened through glass. What I, what we, must not put up with, and hope we will never put up with–even though the temptation (the bewitchment) is always there to put up with it–is the kind of dehumanization that fabricated meaning, and progress, and misdirected ingenuity, creates. When the moon goes unseen, when the sky is unreal, collective dehumanization ensues.
If it were not for those few sky and moon watchers, who dwell in the bush and in inner-cities, who understand the uselessness of their sky-watching task, but who do it nonetheless, as they’re compelled to do, our world would long ago have ended. Their "uselessness" stands as an accusation against–even infuriates–all our manufactured meaning, and our reducing-all-to-function. It’s this tower, that needs dismantling.
Still I know, as Rumi and Purdy, and Merton and Morton, have always known, that confessional formulas, apocalyptic declamations, will not work. This is the time for poetry and irony–but mostly poetry. Or at least, poetic irony. Oh, and beauty…the meaningless and message filled beauty of a day-moon.
Hi Stephen
A daytime moon is always better than darkness at noon.
I loved your poetic irony reference….. your last lines alluding to how the poetry of the scriptures has been turned into systematic theologies and confessional formulas really struck a cord in my thinking (linear or non-linear i know not which).
Thank you Len! And yes, the time for formulas has ended…they only brought us a cold marble God.
There is 4 part series on youtube called “Gnostism, Knowledge of the heart”. It contains interviews with Elaine Pagels (the gnostic gospels author), jung, the man that found the nag hammadi in ’45 and many other sources of truth and light. We are moving quickly from intellect to intuition.
Thanks for the recommendation Nathaniel.
So beautifully said!
Thank you Kassandra!
Hello Steven. Thank you. Don’t forget shakespeare (Bacon), Plato, Pythagoras, Solon, Tesla, Feynman, Bohr, Liebnitz, Newton, The whole of the Renaissance, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Sumeria, Kimet, The creation of the Jewish, Islamic, and Roman catholic empires, Nathaniel Bowditch, Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Fermi, HINDUISM, ARYU VEDA, ZOROASTRIANISM. I’ll stop now. Joseph merkel said we must include the spiritual and unseen into our scientific method. For the spiritual and unseen are a part of life for us all and that is beyond question. My wife and I noticed this phenomenon the day we moved into our new home OUTSIDE THE CITY. Reading this brought on a shimmering wave of connection to providence. ??
Oh my, thank you for this wonderful response Nathaniel! A “shimmering wave” for me, for a post that seems to have held up. Thank you again!
Coming to this in 2023 when I am approaching a spiritually led timing to a day-moon, the meaning of an alchemical symbol I have chased for years.
I stand at the edge of the universe, doing dishes with love staring at an unfinished feminized version of Atlas. None of that is metaphor.
I don’t remember what it means yet.
I will. Thank you for helping.
Thank you for this, Jo. And you’re welcome. Here’s to your own inspirational traveling.