Beware the Black Wind

When I imagine the dear reader, I see Raskolnikov’s ordinary, the inferior, the blind, the conservative nothing, the law-abiding that “live under control and love to be controlled.” The stated goal of this blog is to reach out to this uneducated and brutish mass and feed it with wisdom, satiate it, allow it to grow and to proliferate, to provide the means and will for a metamorphosis to take place in which, like a butterfly, the extraordinary is allowed to emerge, flutter its wings, and depart from the pale and insubstantial leaf that has been its world and home.

On this goal, dear readers, I have been unfaithful! A week-long hiatus is a mistake, should not be allowed, and will never happen again.  There is so much to cover, and so little time! Sometimes, I imagine each of our lives as candles that we hold cupped in our hands: we must take the utmost care in keeping them straight and tall, and burning bright, and fear most of all their toppling over and disappearing into the unspeakable nothingness far below. Their lives are short and some stray black wind always threatens to blow them out, to end them prematurely, and eradicate whatever minute light they provided.  Such languidness on my part, such partaking in idle pleasures and disregarding of my Kantian duty to inform, to be a scholar to an unenlightened world, threatens to upend all of the careful progress we have made thus far (minor progress, but progress nonetheless).  To the enlightened age! We must tread carefully, but always forward, for to regress is to fail, and fail we will not! Burn brightly! Always burn brightly.  The light will not last forever, but no matter! Without the blackness, there would be no light. Remember Wallace Stevens: “The imperfect is our paradise./ Note that, in this bitterness, delight,/ Since the imperfect is so hot in us/ Lies in flawed words, and stubborn sounds. ” (The Poems of Our Climate).  Or better yet, remember Brad Pitt: “The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last.  Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.  You will never be lovelier than you are now.  We will never be here again” (Troy).  Beware, dear reader! Beware the black wind!

Advertisement