The Quintessential Escape
by Odin odin@aflx.com — Read all 3,869 poems by Odin odin@aflx.com
To be a poet or a novelist addressing life that matters, a short story writer creating anecdotal gems needing exposure, is to be unsatisfied with the status quo. In other words, those who follow such directions are often thought of as pariahs, needing to be captured and destroyed, except by those of us who know better. (Image by Pensante)
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
The Quintessential Escape
There’s a place
we’d all like to be.
Call it utopian.
Call it ethereal.
Call it…
Imagination?
Oh, forsooth!
Why must so many
avoid such focus as a PC undesirable,
vying instead for the “real,”
that preordained “right,”
by mainstream suffocation.
So, c’mon…
Tell me about the real.
Is that what dogma pounded into our heads
is supposed to represent?
Is the “real” actually void of imagination?
Oh, so many cringe in their boots,
feel as though a wedgee is strangling their potency.
Just to think about something that might be pure,
unadulterated imagination is too far “out there,”
the quintessential buy in,
a some kind of cop-out?
Cop-out?
Consider where we would be as a species
without the full thrust of imagination,
more often than not,
making far more sense than reality?
Such is the plight of the artist,
having to live in a world of imposed factuality as others see life,
knowing there’s more for the mind and heart
to massage, reform, consider as a step forward in discovery,
a rung on the ladder to greater self-realization,
for both artist and the patron.
Quite a ride this…
Rising above the fray,
considering the ethos of self,
the rewards of accepting faults
along with the excellence of being who one is.
Some might attest
such an attitude too highbrow,
too elitist.
For many of us, however,
such an escape is just the beginning,
the move into the landscape of sentience,
void of hesitation,
a naked stance before creation,
finding there’s nothing to hide,
nothing to make excuses for,
nothing to convince and lure one back to.
Captivity in mere existence is a state of mind
imagination should never have to live and die in.
I have tended to write dystopian futures in my stories because they draw attention. However, while watching National Geographic's Year Million last night, I discovered a number of imagineers that have a decidedly positive view of the far future including what they call the "Singularity" where organic intelligence like us would merge with an inorganic intelligence like computers in the near far future. Both scary and wondrous, these concepts are beautifully presented by wonderful computer artwork thanks to CGI.
It is a heady time to be alive in spite of all of the anger and hostility hanging in the air. We writers and poets are the wave of the future and need to express it.
Ron
Love ya!
Jane