[dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”]O[/dropcap]n a social media hiatus… a respite from the Pixel Inferno.
An endless archipelago of pits inhabited by (with rare exceptions) gibbering, snarling, spiteful, self-obsessed, vanity-lousy imps of the collective mind chasing their gnarled version of what they consider happiness.
The deification of happiness is a capitalist/consumer con job. The pursuit of happiness amounts to chasing a mirage. Happiness is, the, occasional, byproduct of the participation mystique inherent to life itself.
What other animal on the planet is compelled to pursue happiness? All the ones who are not destroying the planet itself in a desperate search for a happiness fix.
At times, one must return to and explore the breathing landscape of the unfolding moment… to remember what is crucial… but, by all evidence, forgotten by my fellow, bipedal land mammals.
Each breath, gesture, and utterance constructs a world in the architecture of eternity. I am compelled to search for sanctuary made of the abundant material of the eternal now.
A walk with my son in early evening reveals a parcel of eternity, a stroll through a landscape lambent with divinity.
What realm of the godhead is social media located? Hermetic, perhaps… but only manifesting the god’s trickster aspect thus is devoid of autochthonic imperative. Mephistophelian, absolutely — i.e., the emptiness of knowledge devoid of participation mystique.
What talisman protects the yearning/grieving soul from possession? The body itself… that is restored by communal engagement. The body cannot thrive without dance, without eros. The body… that hears the songs of the bones of the earth… that lives beyond itself when taking in the evening sky.
The body that is slighted to the point of neglect by the misnomer of life spent before glowing screens. The body that suffers like the besieged earth at the rapacious hands of humankind, alienated, as we are, from the verities of life itself. The neglected body… yet which is encoded with maps of the pollen path of healing.
The ground before us is skeined in gold.
Image by Dan Booth. Not to be reproduced without express prior permission.
Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City.
Yet a bio amounts to dharma for dimwits: It defines a human being in the same manner and degree of veracity as a restaurant menu describes the various slabs of meat offered … commodified things that were once living beings.
