Suffocating mask
Reminder of gravity
Stuck to the earth
Weighed down
Flight to the sun
Undone
Launch to the blue
Untrue
A stay
In the gray
Eye level
Headed nowhere
Smoke ascends
Disappearing into
Gray
Dust to air
Out there
Tree reaching
Yet smashed
Thick blanket
Of the sphere
Gray bound
Unwound
The blue
I’m starting to believe that truth can be found in anything….even untruth. It can be found in the trivial, mundane, and vulgar. It can be found flowing from the lips of fools, the eyes of the blind, the child. It can be hidden in a one liner from a terribly filmed, edited an organized motion picture….from the lips of nerds, comics, jocks, and fictional characters. Truth transcends the scenarios of life but somehow enters into our own. I can walk home, turn on the television, and hear something from the mouth of a fanatical televangelist that morphs into truth before hitting my heart center in a very personal, pragmatic way. A way that applies to me, comforts me, and gives me hope. But I think we must have the right lens for it. Sometimes the naked eye lures us. It guards truth like Buckingham Palace, perhaps for our own protection. Sometimes, we’re just not ready to see it. The senses-our shield, our compass….sometimes truth is the hairs standing at attention on the back of the neck. Sometimes, it’s the bottomless pit of the gut continuing to fall, or the loss of breath when the mind rolls a clip of a scene so clearly….the truth is collaboration at its finest. Emotion, thought, body and spirit each contributing their two shillings to the mighty cause of truth. If only they didn’t quarrel, it would be so much easier. We’re caddy, and perhaps that’s a good thing. Knit pickers of ourselves, others, and our world…gold diggers, aspiring for greatness, but mining coal. Truth can be seen, felt, understood, unspoken, wailing in the microphone, drowning, floating, bombing, walking, waiting, quiet…truth is. In spite of you, in spite of me…it will always be true to itself. Truth is a textbook narcissist, a borderline, and a schizophrenic. It’s snobby, shy, impolite, and cordial. Truth knows way too much about everything. The nosy neighbor, the hovering coworker, the monster within who tells us way more about ourselves than we’d like to know. The truth hurts, heals and happens. Truth is…everywhere. But especially, it is within us.
Maybe the media is doing its job…much better than I am doing mine. If painting, matting, and framing the unattainable is indeed its objective, then bravo! Maybe that’s what the media is supposed to do? Make us covet, envy, desire, strive, and long for that which can never be!!! It gives us the gift of hope, false hope that keeps the hunger alive…the quest for the holy grail of perfection, which is impossible. Nonetheless, the chase is oh so appealing isn’t it? We all want what we don’t have. The grass is always greener, as the common adage goes. Maybe the media is a human in its most carnal form: the temptress, the murderer, the gossip, and the glutton. The problem perhaps is that we entertain the media as god at best, demi-god at worst, when really it’s just human. Rather than criticize, blame and idolize the human, what if we simply saw it for what it is-a mere mortal? A mighty, charismatic, influential one no less, but alas, it is human.
From this perspective, there is then the dilemma of how to treat it-not in the medical sense, but in the judicial sense. For humans living in modern civilizations, there is a code of ethics and a governing authority. If a man living in the United States commits murder, he too will lose his life: via life imprisonment OR death penalty OR retaliation. Of course there are caveats: intent, self-defense, etc. But there are always consequences for actions, imposed upon the self by a higher power. And every culture has it’s own menu. Singapore serves up severed limbs, for example. But the media seems to be living in anarchy. The older it gets, the more cavalier it becomes. It is its own authority. It is the law. It self promotes and waves giant foam fingers, the pointer on one hand, the middle on the other. Mixed messages are its modus operandi. It loves to stir the pot, start rumors, and hold people against the wall by their throats. Is it human? For human by its very nature is capable of both good and evil, is it not? Perhaps instead, it is the great evil of our time. Its power is supernatural. The heroic villain cloaked in black…the phantom, the chameleon, and the great deceiver. And we are all deceived because we think it’s just like us…wandering mortals aspiring for divinity, seekers of comfort without a cause.
