The Forces for Change

Friday, November 18, 2011 (collage poetry)

Throughout my life I have been amazed

leaving aside the odd historical accident,

[where] the most intolerable conditions of existence appear as acceptable;

a violence that is hardly noticed, almost invisible [that include]

ways of walking or blowing one’s nose,

as if to give them the appearances of naturalness,

to sense or intuit what is likely (or unlikely) to befall

which is so extraordinarily ordinary.

Taste is an acquired disposition to ‘differentiate’ and ‘appreciate’,

it ensures recognition (in the ordinary sense).

To speak of habitus is to include

those complexes of gestures, postures and words

favorite clichés — which only have to be slipped into, like a theatrical costume.

Decorated like a savage with feathers,

an exotic tradition is indispensable

to liberate the forces for change

beyond the reach of introspective scrutiny:

The sense of limits [that] implies forgetting the limits [of]

the language of the magical transfiguration [of] symbolic conversion:

a language (or a pronunciation),

a style of life (or a manner of thinking, doing or acting)

[that is] perfectly arbitrary and non-predictive,

discovering an approach that will be capable of grasping

the damaging dichotomy between the "material" and the "spiritual".