simplybeing's Blog

The Devil is in the details…

Before you read…. “Same rules as always – Go away. Don’t read this.”

 Choose instead to believe this is just the rambling of a sexist pig who won’t apologize for being a Man.

Okay- here we go...

 ‘The tough lead in’….

 I suppose I am not alone in that I find it incredible, that too often, I cannot write without some prompt, and I suppose also it is so, that I am the worst kind of writer! One of those aged farts that actually DO require a muse to make something beautiful out of nothing at all.

‘Words’…… what are they really? Sounds in the air, markings on a page? It’s hard – often too hard, to make something sensible from those, because really, they cannot take the place of a soft touch, or a warm look. We all have friends who can know more about us in a glance, than if someone else had written a dictionary titled “All About (your name here)”…

Did you ever have a friend that could just KNOW your mood, or feeling - without cause or reason? Maybe you’re the friend, who instinctively ‘knows’ when something is troubling someone close to you?

I’ve always been troubled with this.

 I had a girlfriend who for a time was away from me (in Japan) and during the time, we made a fine game of her trying to trick me. You see - the game was like this – I’d make a point to call only when she was sitting on the commode. Okay, it wasn’t what I’d make a first choice, but it was a challenge, and my ‘success’ rate was at least about 97%. I thought it was cool, feeling I was so 'tuned' in to her.... But, it turns out, it wasn't always cool.

Sadly, I’d awaken also when her moods would grow dark, or some small setback would bring her to the verge of tears…

While all that might sound like a very cool thing, it opened another door as well. That door is the one which sees the end – long before your partner becomes aware. What do you do then?
Do you hang in there, like you’ve promised, and stand by this partner even though it will cost YOU dearly, or do you find some way to bow out gracefully, to shield yourself from the inevitability of sorrow?

I remember long ago, watching a play, The Merchant of Venice. In it, one character, an attorney, managed somehow to distort justice with the most beautiful play on words. She reduced a man to nothing by invoking Mercy and claiming it is better to serve mercy, when justice demanded only the unmerciful payment that was due. I remember later feeling that it was not only the merchant who paid, but the community at large, who were made forever impure by their twisted acceptance of his yielding to their (Christian) normalcy. I remember feeling sad afterward, because I remembered an old axiom - which I have too often witnessed - that those who claim to be closest to God and of the ‘highest virtues’ will too often attempt to destroy anything that they cannot control or possess.

In The Merchant, Mercy was served in the most fanatical and twisted way, while justice was cast by the wayside, an unsolvable truth lain before her- that to be true and just is too often an impossibility in a being so pathetically contentious as man, while her sister Mercy, is praised so highly, having accomplished nothing more noble than to make us more blind to anything outside our chosen perceptions. Perhaps I might imagine here the definition of a muse. Someone that challenges us, to find the truth within ourselves, be it ugly and twisted, or fair and true, because to love truly, is to witness these challenges, and then decide- to bear the weight of our decisions, or to pass them along instead to Mercy, the kind goddess who accepts our offerings of self-pity, then kindly blinds us to the self loathing it becomes. We idiots revel in Her glory, while being simultaneously reduced to mindless chattel.

I think I have found my muse, and not in the person I’d imagined. Instead, in someone more much beautiful and equally merciless, the sweet sister who prefers that we honor our own words, without intervention. The Sister who reminds us instead that we should have care with our words because the price we pay is rarely equal to the trades we make, the fairer sister who demands of us nothing more than all that we are at our level best, in humility, in guilt, in truth.

Yes instead of paying our agreements, we sometimes instead -pay too much.

If you wonder what the detail is in me, it’s simple really, and I take (very) small solace in it…

In the ever changing vicissitude of time, I’ve managed to keep one thing safe and true, that tiny little ticking inside of me that has marked forever the joys and sorrows of a very human being. It translates into a small thing- that when the end is near, I pretend it away, and choose instead to offer the small, fist sized, pound of my flesh. It isn’t so beautiful, I am sure, but I know I will always offer it - as opposed to choosing the insufferable and mind numbing dehumanization that Mercy would grant to me if I chose to make excuses and run away instead.

Maybe it isn’t much, and actually more the ‘Devil’ than a detail, but it’s one of the things I feel defines me, because I choose it as a definition of what I find important, and I will it into being in my life - ‘Something beautiful out of nothing at all.’

Who could ask for a kinder, more beautiful muse, than the one who inspires strength as we stare with ambivalence into the face of twin sisters? One, the beautiful face who asks us to surrender our very humanity, or the other, whose face can reflect only the loveliness we impose upon our very private hearts and whom for her love –

She demands from us nothing short of all that we can be?

I will to choose the lovely over the beautiful in every instance.