My Position

I look at the shape of my face, the shade of my skin, the lilt of my voice, the curve of my lip and wonder how much of myself am I betraying to the world.

How much does the world really know about me?

What about needing to anchor our present in the vestibule of the past intrigues us so?

Will knowing my lineage going to bring me closer to knowing my true self?

My mind is littered with questions like white horses on a storm sea, frothy…More questions than answers. I ease into the basement, retreat into my corner and calm myself with platitudes. I skim over detail and find fortress in fiction. The facts make uncomfortable sentences such sentences soon turn into lies. My curiosity is never satiated. The chronic crowd pleaser has to know. Needs to know.

I see people everyday, they are all around me. Some buzz with a spark of life and others are long dead. I don’t touch them and they don’t touch me. They drive past in the boxes, some shinier and newer than others but boxes none the less. They are effective at pitching a space between us; they present themselves as extension of us, of our lives they represent our style. Our lifestyle on wheels. Like meals on wheels, an entire industry throbbing on the juice of keeping us apart.

Think monkey, think cage, think!

The better defined the box, the firmer the grip on reality? How real is a past long forgotten cept for the dusty pages of books on fragile shelves yet to be committed to an electronic version of reality?

What bearing on tomorrow this past reality? Does the testament of the old lay down the foundation for the new?

Knowledge comes from knowledge. Yes. It refines itself. Builds up over time, time gives relevance to knowledge. “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come” (S Williams). If the pursuit of knowledge, say one’s identity, is classed a noble deed, then surely attaining that knowledge holds the promise of gifts. Wisdom, direction even purpose I will settle for but if knowledge achieves nothing more than the perpetual boxing of thoughts, experience or expression then the pursuit and its promise is fraudulent.

Knowing my roots cant begin and end at the knowing. How do I – one human being – connect with you – another human being? How do we begin to transcend the box? Can I break the grip you have on reality to include a spectrum of mine?

Knowing who is responsible for the enslavement, emasculation and humiliation of my forefathers will deliver unto me a sword.

Dragons have a way of coming back unless you pierce its heart. The heart of the dragon is very well guarded. Dragons are not of this world, they have the power to suspend time, you soon know when facing a dragon that they are not of this realm. Don’t deal with your dragon and it grows to plague your children and their children. My dragon is fear. It taints my relationships. Knowing the origin of the dragon will be as the sword in my hand. Slay the dragon whilst it’s still a dragon fly and rid your line of its plague.

Identity gives us a structure but to be truly free we must be prepared to let go of that structure. In the ashes of a burnt out past you could find a cinder of truth. Perhaps you will find a raging inferno; perhaps you are a pioneer, like me.

Others have thoughts but thoughts become muddled. Just as soon as you figure something out, you have it in your grasp, only to fade, without a trace. You start over, from scratch, your life is a endless cycle of stops and starts. No anchor. No baseline. We know we are unique but we share so much of our DNA with each other. Some concepts castrate just as soon as they liberate. Some thoughts are abrasive, they stop dialogue, some of them wake them up like sleeping dragons in the July sky.

“If you can’t draw on 3000 years then you are living hand to mouth – Goethe.

Somehow the weight of this thought makes our day to day shit seem trite.

Whose account of the past do I accept as my own? Does finding a written account of my heritage mean more than an oral one? Why then have I forgotten grandma’s words!

We study the life and times of the ones who document the slow progression of time. Who is remembering history? What influenced them? Can you name the contemporary historians? Are you happy with their account thus far? Surely their description of us cannot include an identity of mine, not while I am still struggling to find the case for its retrieval. So what is my position?

Things are never as they seem. I feel myself going from blissful confusion to angst ridden obscurity, thoughts flow into one another shapeless and frittering, none taking shape fully t, none able to stand up and be defensible, vulnerability is no longer sexy.

I am humbled by us. We are truly amazing, I am talking about the entire human population, we share a common past but prejudice drew an imaginary line and rallied troupes behind those very same lines. Wars are fought, concepts created, angels, demons, gods, anti gods, borders, boundaries, provinces, streets, houses, cars, bedrooms, beds, telephone numbers, id numbers, eyelids, death. We live and die defending our lines but did we have a say in the matter? Did you get presented with a choice of being? No.

Can you accept the borderless reality of the unconscious? We with divided loyalties understand better than most the value of compromise. We stand in the middle of the battle field in our hearts beat the warriors’ blood. In our hands the coming together of nations that are apart. In us lies an answer for tomorrow. My position is that my identity holds the key to unlocking a common future. Borderless, diverse and conciliatory. Can you dig it?