Most people most of the time don't get the point. They don't get it because they're too busy brooding about the past or worrying about the future. But the real Point is only, and always, in this immediate, unrepeatable instant--here, and now.
THE POINT
what's the point that's how I feel this morning facing the not quite blank computer screen what's the point of struggling to wrestle coax conjure these words into a work of art which few will read and even fewer care about? if I stop now balked by the price of commitment what could it matter? why do I come back again and again to the same departure point forced always to start over from scratch?
except there's a point I haven't reached yet a truth so clear so simple my words would finally grow transparent their meaning's incandescent core blaze through I know I'll never attain such perfection but if I stop trying I'll shrivel up inside I'm not just a thing or process but a sort of breathing window a living prism angled to refract the rarest wavelengths of Light
I'm also a troubled creature who's slipping and sliding toward death whatever the point is this too is part of it both eternity and time are part of it -- two worlds reconciled only in the stringent play of paradox facing a nearly filled computer screen I return once more to this day's essential labor what's the point? the point is the choice I make each unrepeatable instant to say yes Yes
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"What is to give light must endure burning" wrote Victor Frankel. And Rabindranath Tagore wrote: "Evidently the only way to find the path is to set fire to my own life." Have you set fire to your own life yet?
FLAMES
still haven't learned when I touch fire it burns still believe next time I'll have asbestos skin or else the flames won't be scorching but cool like a lover's fingers caressing my face we're always burned alive by something aren't we? lust or rage or terror licks at our heart and we shudder knowing we're defenseless knowing we could sacrifice our last hope to that devouring inferno adoring it shameless as straw
I'm a breathing bundle of flames searching for a braver reason to burn I'll wind up crisped to a cinder anyway the kicker is Why? back and forth I waver here and there sampling this addiction that obsession dithering over a compulsion or two I'm a magnetized compass needle a vector lurching every conceivable wrong direction before surrendering to true north
so there's burning and there's burning a burning that's slavery a burning that's freedom I've tasted both I can tell you about temptation possession's a vile old hag yet she knows just how to stroke me such bitter ecstasy -- writhing in lava's oblivion! but some other burning's grabbed hold of me now the purging flame which consumes all ephemera until nothing remains but my incandescent soul
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