Friday, July 02, 2004
Quick followup--as Shakespeare's plays often end intimating that the restored order is vulnerable to the same forces which disrupted it in the first place (i.e. five acts ago), so the short passage I just quoted from Moby-Dick. Up to now, the prominent sharp metal objects have all been piercing-oriented--harpoons, the large blade for decapitating the sperm whale recently killed, the large hook used to strip its carcass of blubber, Ahab's knife used to impale the sighting-prize doubloon upon the mast. Not a direct statement of Melville's, but as an atmospheric I find the suggestion undeniable that these moral goosers will not find themselves removed from the cycle of karma. I mean, if nothing else, think of what Melville did with pens and the effect of their employment in Bartleby--morbid. Death one way or another will get you.
And this whole atmospheric denial of spiritual worth which is the topic of every other employment of the word 'modernity,' (yet is not exclusive to modernity, being broadly discussed as humanity seems to have been having its discussion) it seems sometimes, considered while I was playing with Jonah, who just doesn't have that weight yet, made me think along these lines:
that the desire of a child is the desire of a spirit—very and selfless, additive and of, for spiritual hunger only adds to that it hungers for. The desire of an adult is the desire of earth, of a ghost—it is, in fact, the absence of spiritual desire. To consume is its desire, its very desire, its desire itself, as sustenance, in order to replenish temporarily a temporality; of self to earth, until wholly earth, desireless. Why such desire, anxious to death for life, is in the end desire for death—for finality unbalanced by need. In this context, spirit is ever and everchanging, body is the temporary desperate for permanence.
And this whole atmospheric denial of spiritual worth which is the topic of every other employment of the word 'modernity,' (yet is not exclusive to modernity, being broadly discussed as humanity seems to have been having its discussion) it seems sometimes, considered while I was playing with Jonah, who just doesn't have that weight yet, made me think along these lines:
that the desire of a child is the desire of a spirit—very and selfless, additive and of, for spiritual hunger only adds to that it hungers for. The desire of an adult is the desire of earth, of a ghost—it is, in fact, the absence of spiritual desire. To consume is its desire, its very desire, its desire itself, as sustenance, in order to replenish temporarily a temporality; of self to earth, until wholly earth, desireless. Why such desire, anxious to death for life, is in the end desire for death—for finality unbalanced by need. In this context, spirit is ever and everchanging, body is the temporary desperate for permanence.
