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The fruit that bites back

Part 4 of Messages from the Edge


by E. J. Ward

Its true we have been clever


Weve found a way to amuse our fingers
And abuse our minds
A trip into the unknown known
Where everything exists
And people we never heard of
Tell us things we have no need to know
About a world we never knew existed
It frees us and enslaves us
This truth that lies deep down inside
That everything exists for us to find
Lies we believe because weve looked for them
They warned us about this
This fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
That bites back
Leaving us hungry always wanting more
We knew a thing or two back then
We wrote the book
Our Stone-Age minds programmed to lift the stone
And find underneath another stone
Just waiting to be lifted
A perilous descent into the void
The game was on
Nothing could stop us now
We had the taste for it
This thirst for more than data
For the knowing not the knowledge
For the seeking not the finding
For always looking further than there is
Drunk with the thirst for thirst
For the unknown thing just round the corner
Underneath the stone
Out of control
On a roll
Thrilled by the prospect of collision
That might release the one thing we are seeking
That stops us in our tracks
A definitive confrontation with ourselves

But this is only a blip isnt it


For THIRTY-TWO-THOUSAND YEARS AGO
Our genius ancestors
Were throwing us a link to the sublime
The world they knew
Our world
Filled with transcendent grace
Unimaginable beauty
Magical animals
That rambled through their lives
And gave them meaning
These people are US
And we are them
What happened to us
That we so lost the thread
Betrayed our race
Distorted our humanity
How to recapture
Our birthright
Our family
The creatures of our world
Who shared our pain
Astonished us with their abundant life
And blessed us by their presence?
How did we so fall from Grace
And shrivel into what we have become?

If I believe what you tell me

I give you power


If only for a moment
If I do not believe it
I empower myself
And take your power away
If only momentarily
If I believe you sometimes
I retain the power of judgement
And diminish your authority
But not always
If I believe nothing you tell me
I am calling you a liar
And increase my self-esteem
By judging you
If I always believe everything you tell me
You are my parent or my teacher
And I am very young
Or very stupid
If I am not very young
And still believe everything you tell me always
I have lost the capacity for rational thought
And need to give you power
By making myself stupid
If I am not very young or very stupid
And still believe everything you tell me
However improbable
Unlikely
Or impossible it seems
I have relinquished what intelligence remained to me
And have made you into a GOD
Because I need to worship someone
Or something
Irrational
That cannot be explained
Or believed
This makes me happy.

OK Ive made you into a God


So now what happens?

You have to find me a name I suppose . . .


Cant I just call you Fred?
Its not very Godlike . . .
But it is your name . . .
Yes . . .
So now I can worship you?
I dont know. There may be other considerations . . .
Like . . . ?
Im not sure Im qualified to be a God . . .
But if I worship you isnt that enough?
It depends what you want . . .
Just the usual stuff remission of sins and so forth . . .
Have you got any sins to remit?
Of course. We all have sins dont we?
Such as . . . ?
Let me think. Hostility. Aggression. Impure thoughts. That sort of thing.
But have you actually DONE anything? Committed a crime for
example?
Of course I have! Im sure I have. I just cant think of one at the
moment.
Well let me know if you do and well see what can be done.
And in the meantime I can keep on worshipping you?
I suppose so.
THANKYOU! You see? You just needed to believe in yourself . . .

Its not the suffering that warps us


Its the addiction
The fiddling with the scar

The exploration of the wound with grubby fingers


Embedded in the hole we keep on digging
Deeper and deeper
Seeking the truth about ourselves
Groaning and sleepless into the pain we go
Following the WHY
Lured on by the spectre of an answer
To dig the bullet out that caused the wound
But supposing there is no bullet
Suppose at the bottom of the hole
We find a note I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU WANT ME
How do we handle that
How do we fill the gap left by our anguish
The Holy Hole
The Sanctum Sanctorum that we venerate
Empty and aching to be filled
We fill it with the suffering of others
For now we have the skills
Forensic tools to explore known territory
To further the investigation
The game is on again
Were good at this
Our hole is filled once more
And we are almost happy
Weve found a meaning to our lives
But are we not free to leave?
The door is open
Why cant we get out?
What is it we love about the pain
That we must shut the door against a radiance
That cauterizes like a flame of light
Healing and cleansing
Giving and forgiving
As only Nature can
Whats the ferocious charm of guilt
That we so cling to it?

THE ASTONISHING FLUKE WE SEE EVERY

DAY AND TAKE FOR GRANTED

The Sun happens to be 400 times larger


than the Moon
And happens to be 400 times further
away from the Earth
So that the Sun and the Moon appear the
same size to us
Coincidence is Gods way of remaining anonymous
Einstein

The day I beat my man at chess I never played again


My heart which should have leapt with joy shrunk with sudden pain
I sensed a marked strategic loss where should have been a gain

I didnt mean to do it and it cast me into limbo


For he was a chess champion and I was just a bimbo
So to keep my husband happy and contented as before
I took to losing battles so that he could win the war
But that was many years ago and things have changed since then
I no longer have a husband or a need to pamper men
And feel no need to demonstrate that I have got a brain
For the strategy of losing has proved a major gain
I discovered intuition had a potent inner core
And the boundaries of consciousness were greater than before
My world was now much larger than the world you find in books
For a formal education is more formal than it looks
So glowing with contentment I played some games for fun
And much to my astonishment discovered that I won
A unforeseen sensation invaded me inside
An increase in self confidence of smug contented pride
Good Lord I thought Ive cracked it Ive found out how to win
With just a bit of practise theyll never know Im dim
But then I had the same response as I had felt before
A shrinking of capacity where I had looked for more
For this new world was pitiless was narrow and unfeeling
No crazy sense of empathy no shared delight in healing
And the boundaries of consciousness had shrunk again to this
If I get it right I win it if I get it wrong I miss
I still play silly games of course as often as I choose
But with this subtle difference I dont care if I lose
Our lives have hidden strategies not always of our choosing
And it seems I had discovered the Strategic Art of Losing.

Silence at Noon
Older than knowing or unknowing
This held breath

Tells us that we are mortal


That we are sacred
The answer to no known question
Silence at Noon
Nails us down senseless
Uncomprehending
A sacrament in another language
Beyond our grasp
Dense with meaning
With implications for our dwindled state
We can no longer hear
Silence at Noon
We know not who we are
Or why
Understanding has left us
The tide gone out
And we are stranded
Unfinished
Incomplete
Swamped by Eternity
Silence at Noon
Unpeopled streets and empty skies
A shred of light fidgets an oak-leaf
But nothing moves
Silence at Noon
For seven hundred years the Angelus bell
Flooded the fields and woods
Lifting the labourers face to heaven
Emptying skies and putting the birds to bed
And now we live in a secular age
This elemental energy holds us still
For no-one has told the birds that God is dead.

Put a white coat on WHY and you found a religion

Give him a clipboard and let him make lists


Let him attempt to describe the indescribable
Penetrate the impenetrable
And ask unanswerable questions
Then give him money
Letters after his name
Staff in white coats with letters after their names
And large buildings to worship in
Invent new instruments to investigate the WHY
To tear its wings off
Penetrate its pounding heart
Eavesdrop on its intimate parts
And discover the astounding language of its soul
Then let him invent a language of his own
A sacred tongue acquired painfully
Through long and arduous processes
Procedures stained with smelly substances
That make no sense
And let these barbarous sounds be elevated
Given magic properties and special numbers
To increase their supernatural qualities
And enhance their glamour
You are well on the way to founding a religion
By now the WHY has many followers
Eager to join the throng
To sacrifice themselves in its blessed name
Many will die in this great vocation
Scurrying for letters after their names
But many will win prizes
Their fame attracting others to the cause
A life of devotion and white-coated sacrifice
To sacred worship of the holy WHY
And everyone will believe what they say
Hallelujah!

A poet knows that the bottom line


Is where the Truth dwells
Just as the banker knows
Thats where it lies

It is the payoff after all


The twist in the tail
The moment of truth
Even when it lies
Both know you can tell a story
Weave a legend
Hoist a sail and embark for a land of dreams
As long as the bottom line is what it seems
In Shakepeares time the bottom line was a couplet
Which targeted your soul precisely
Which only goes to show that a handsome man in a doublet
Could sum things up nicely
The bottom line has more power than you think
And its message is sometimes darker
The problem being that however cleverly you approach it
You end up sounding like Dorothy Parker

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