|
A Gold Horse-Head Above the Door Interest will abate with the waves, and people return to their normal way of regarding us. With a suspicious leer from the doorway. You may go about your business then the way the Vikings did. With careful deliberation and long hours in the field. Punctuated by a week or two every summer of violent blood-letting. A caterwauling at the moon. That this will get you fined should not deter you in any way. For what we lose by way of physical liberty, we gain in enlightenment. Or just something that looks like enlightenment. A glow, say, caused by the lights atop the stadium. This is one of the great attributes of mind, the fact that it can engage itself without being overly conscious of its participation. It seems to think sometimes it is simply here to register the workings of an autonomous world. When, in fact, it is pulling the levers. And painting the back drops. And hiring the crew. All the while being, as it were, in a coma. If we are to escape this predicament, we must whisper to the mind to let it know we are present. That we will not give up on it no matter how long the recuperation may take. Can the mind hear such pleading, such reassurance? Opinions are mixed, but most will tend to agree with the author of the Life of King Edward when he states that the king’s inability to stamp out the feud between Harold and Tostig in 1065 led directly to the fall of the Anglo-Saxons themselves. The lesson here being: one must be whole on the inside, without division, lest someone cross the channel and make you speak French. Or, to put it in previous terms, the mind can hear you, but it ought not to listen.
Charles Freeland | Mudlark No. 35 |