The Free Spirit

After such a cheerful commencement, a serious word would like to be heard; it appeals to the most serious. Take care, philosophers and friends, of knowledge, and beware of martyrdom! Of suffering "for the truth's sake"! Even of defending yourselves! It spoils all the innocence and fine neutrality of your conscience, makes you headstrong against objections and red rags, it stupefies, animalizes, and brutalizes when in the struggle with danger, slander, suspicion, expulsion, and even worse consequences of hostility, you have to pose as protectors of truth upon earth:—as though "the truth" were such an innocuous and incompetent creature as to require protectors! and you of all people, you knights of the most sorrowful countenance, dear loafers and cobweb-spinners of the spirit! After all, you know well enough that it cannot be of any consequence if you of all people are proved right, you know that no philosopher so far has been proved right, and that there might be a more laudable truthfulness in every little question mark that you place after your special words and favorite doctrines (and occasionally after yourselves) than in all the solemn gestures and trumps before accusers and law courts! Rather, go away! Flee into concealment! And have your masks and subtlety, that you may be mistaken for what you are not! Or feared a little! And don't forget the garden, the garden with golden trelliswork! And have people around you who are like a garden—or like music over the waters in the evening, when the day is turning into memories. Choose the good solitude, the free, playful, light solitude that gives you, too, the right to remain good in some sense! How poisonous, how crafty, how bad, does every long war make one, that cannot be waged openly by means of force! How personal does a long fear make one, a long watching of enemies, of possible enemies! These outcasts of society, these long-pursued, wickedly persecuted ones—also the compulsory recluses, the Spinozas or Giordano Brunos always become in the end, even under the most spiritual masquerade, and perhaps without being themselves aware of it, sophisticated vengeance-seekers and poison-brewers (let someone lay bare the foundation of Spinoza's ethics and theology!)—not to mention the foolishness of moral indignation, which is the unfailing sign in a philosopher that his philosophical sense of humor has left him. The martyrdom of the philosopher, his "sacrifice for the sake of truth," forces into the light whatever of the agitator and actor lurks in him; and if one has so far contemplated him only with artistic curiosity, with regard to many a philosopher it is easy to understand the dangerous desire to see him also in his degeneration (degenerated into a "martyr," into a stage- and platform-bawler). Only, that it is necessary with such a desire to be clear what spectacle one will see in any case:—merely a satyr play, merely an epilogue farce, merely the continued proof that the long, actual tragedy is at an end: assuming that every philosophy, in its genesis, was a long tragedy.

---------------------------------------------------- Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Helicobacter pylori (HEL-uh-koh-BAK-tur) (py-LOR-eye)

Aaah! This is the nigga up in my biz. Some goddamn bacteria that causes peptic ulcers; that is all a man has to show for almost two years in a self destructive fit, all of course of his own making because we are nothing more than the constructs of our feeble minds. {fcuk society;-) fcuk society} I would like to think that I have been dark places but often I don’t think am that much different from anyone else, sometimes I think I’m just like most people, a little bit lazy some of the time, a little bit nice another time.

I have weighed and measured the things that matter in my world, played God and like most men, have wondered what to do with those that don’t quite measure up. Life is a journey, and I guess within it, a series of journeys to different places with different people. Sometimes you will meet people you would walk forever forward with, oftentimes paths diverge but life for its greater portion is a complex and beautiful tapestry of journeys, perhaps crisscrossing the face of the earth with those you would hold dear to your heart. I have weighed and I have measured; with time, there will be an equal count, for I am sworn to teach, even if there is but one student, myself.

I know there is a kind of love that transcends the self, the kind with which a loyal dog gives its life for its master’s, one man for the fate of a people. I also know the love of another, the kind of love that wraps you up and takes you that much higher with it, til you would fly high above the world and see your true form, naked and untethered. I would feel that love again; when it wills it will visit me perhaps once more. I would that it will not rend me to bits if it should find a want in me, for I am in need of water, this desert burns me so, I would drink of your fountain and soothe my spirit.

I have been taken, by things. Things I think are bigger than me; wants, wills and desires. I will that I would be bigger, so that I would carry that much more. Yet I have seen this before, I would lose myself in a love of the world and forsake my own heart, for I would believe that it cannot be made whole, that it cannot suffice. Who would you say is less? The fool that rounds the world chasing Liberty or he that gives his heart to the lass. I would gladly follow either man any other day than lay there and waste away, but today, today I would lie here and push these buttons and leave be for a little while, for I am weary and in need of respite from the sharp edges of the world.

I have been bound and kept together, even when I felt like letting go, by a motley band of friends; family that I will for my part be forever bound to. I will that I would be worthy of mentioning names but I am afraid that it would only seem vain worship to put them next to such worthless words. I would do more, I shall be more. There is a grand mystery about life, in that it’s more often that you find that which you seek in places you were never looking. I am lucky to know all you damn human beings, even though you suck sometimes.

I will know love in whatever form; be it the kind that would run rivers down your cheeks, be glad that you would know and hold such depths for I like you have waded such icy waters and I am that much better for it. I will break your heart, if you give it to me, for mine is an intellectual love; it would not be bound by this earth and realm. It would seek to know the heart of that which you call God and move unto the beyond. I shall surely break your heart, and I will be sorry for it.

There is nothing. I have felt it; it is a place of levity where the future forks in countless directions. If you will hold such depths in your mind, you would see how much gentler and fairer life is unto you. For you are still here, so you can do right and move on, even today. We should all seek to rise above our selfish base natures; we make countless proclamations of our desires to do so and yet lay claim to these hunting grounds with excuses of being only human. Would you that will you see our true human forms; that you would seek for a man to lay his base nature before you, naked as the day he came forth? I would say you ask too much of any man, yet this man would prostrate his mortal form before you and beg that you show compassion and kindness to the next soul and spirit.

Most often than not, the people who hold the world together are those you least expect. I have walked by a four year old street child who while falling asleep on the curb, holds out his hands high above his head, palms outstretched.
“Alms for the poor. Alms for the poor.”
You cannot honestly tell me that there is dignity there and yet behind those shaking hands are mouths waiting to be fed. Is it right? Is it fair? On yours and my watch while we are still able to, will we? I know that life in its grand mystery provides, and despite our shortcomings as individuals and human beings, the whole silently plods on, forever seeking, to be better, the next time round.

Your world is as it is because those who came before, and you, bound it that way, the future is yours, do as you will but remember the earth and life itself is that much grander than you can ever hope to know, yet you shall surely know something before she comes for you, for everyone gets a lifetime, nothing more, nothing less.

I'm OK, you're OK.

This has been hard but I am me again, with all the hidden emotions, for better or worse. The truth thing is over people, I will lie through my teeth like the rest of you. Ciao