by Doc Cuddy, Editor
Heirs of privilege and greed are always bent on preserving and further enriching their own kind. Any student of history can see that, once such persons gain control of the levers of power, they will do whatever it takes, use all power available, to maintain and improve their exploitative but comfortable position. Easy to see, easy to say, and clever eyes and minds have been seeing and saying as much in many different ways—from Plato to Marx to Foucault—for a long time. Less easy to see and much less easy to say is: What then of us, the put-upon who suffer not only the quotidian slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and other minor problems of living but also the immediate and long-term effects of the temper tantrums of those spoiled little boys at the top of the ant hill? One can perhaps speak of possessions, and pampering.
Who, these days, considers the lilies of the field? Certainly not those who make big bucks and build big churches while reminding us to consider the lilies of the field. Who will you believe? Those at the top who implicitly think that they will die happier knowing they are passing on wealth and goods and property to their children, or the occasional solitary voice reminding you of the lilies of the field? Andrew Carnegie put it bluntly: "The man who dies rich dies in disgrace." And the rich and their heirs stand always before us, strutting models of success and happiness, surely to be envied, admired, and if at all possible emulated. Yet, please, precisely which of their excess dollars and which of their excess things have any leverage at all for them beyond the moment of death? How many of the toys in Egyptian tombs now, still, provide pleasure to the dusty remains of the long-departed powerful? But how we the underlings strive to imitate them, spending our days working for the next upgrade in lifestyle and our nights worrying about how far we fall short of the standards of ease and the wisdom of wealth that we see daily spread across the news. Both lots, us and them, think little enough of the suffering and hunger still in the world. What then is to pick between them and us? Which group has done less harm, the one that destroys words like "compassionate," or the one that destroys words like "God"?
How fine it is to perform! Finer still to perform to applause and, yes, money too. Wealth is good, truly, but add fame and surely we are in the vicinity of Olympus. Godlets we shall always have with us. We strive for wealth but only the wealthiest get media inches and minutes relating to their acquired stuff. Fame, though, brings out the universal urge to clip, to record, to s-a-v-e for posterity. There, lo these millennia later, sits Nefertiti, exquisite on her modest but well-tended pedestal in a Berlin museum. If she had only known… And what of her, the one who sat for da Vinci? Did she have any inkling? We, those who revere, admire, and seek autographs of one kind or another, know. What bliss to have enjoyed such a super-abundance of attention! So much attention that a mere lifetime of it wasn’t enough: We trek to Paris and the Louvre by the million to heap more on. Indeed the mere mention of my hosting the garden club, of my chairing the charity ball, of my speech before Congress, is better than no mention at all. Clip, clip. Clip 'n' save. Why once my photo was in the Style section of the Times. What’s hiding deep behind this universal lust for fame is unacknowledged awareness that in fact when it comes to possessions, we actually own only one thing. Only one: Our attention. Only that is truly ours, and in the most basic sense the only choice we have from moment to moment is what we choose to pay attention to. That's worth repeating:in the most basic sense the only choice we have from moment to moment is what we choose to pay attention to. All the rest—and this too we know though usually we don’t want to think about it—can disappear in a twinkling. But as long as we live in some health we always have the point of attention. Looking at history, it seems we will do, try anything to get others to give us that. Watch me! Pay attention to ME! Because this vast, infinite panoply of Being Here spreads always before us. Attentive, we are aware of others, millions, billions, trillions, of Others, animate and inanimate. And, we think, if I do not do something to get the attention of at least some of those obstinate, self-centered others, surely, surely, I am alone, worthless as a rock, ephemeral as a violet, wholly and constantly endangered by a cosmos intent on forgetting me me me. "Who," Rilke asked at the beginning of the Duino Elegies, "would hear me if I screamed?" The East, at least a few in the East, were far cleverer than we, learning long ago that until you figure out that such questions are traps, you will continue, blind, in your quest for possessions and pampering, leaving behind only detritus of no more value than your nearest beach’s display of rotted flotsam and water-logged jetsam, even if you live in a place like Crawford, Texas, hundreds of miles from the ocean.
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Magellan's Log Copyright ©
2003 Texas Chapbook Press
www.texaschapbookpress.com
| After
three years Magellan’s Log is nearing what seems to be a state of completion, if such
a large, variegated structure can ever be said to be complete. From the beginning, as I’ve said elsewhere, I thought of the undertaking in architectural terms: a place (it is after all a "site") occupied by a large building or a group of buildings, a cyber-compound if you like, of various sizes, styles, and purposes. That metaphor still holds, but lately I’ve also begun to think of it as a tapestry, after the Renaissance model, full of detail and imagery, many smaller stories converging on one larger narrative. Given the stated editorial stance ("culture—counterculture—anti-culture"), the narrative turned out to be quite a bit more complex than I expected at the start. Though I wanted to do both the serious and the silly, I was more than once overtaken by events and wound up with more-—and more cutting—satire than I expected. As the turn-of-the-millennium world became yinner, I found myself becoming yanger, and vice-versa. The serious stuff is quite serious, the silly stuff quite silly, and the satire, well, the satire strove ever more mightily to follow the dark path of wisdom through ridicule where few show the way as directly as Dean Swift. Magellan’s Log, in this state of near-completion, is now yours for the wandering. Whether you see it as architecture or tapestry or just another web site really doesn’t matter. What matters here, as in the world, far more often than we want to admit, is serendipity. Wander, please, explore the nooks, the crannies, the crevices, the hopefully lovely small chambers, the occasional vast hall, and now and then the carefully plotted distant vista that opens through the occasional aural or visual window. I will no doubt make additions (and emendations), which will be duly entered in the "What’s New" page, but no more new issues, I think. Fifty-eight is just enough. Access is easy. Use the categories at the top of the page. Go to the various issues directly to the left. Or immerse yourself in the site search engine at the bottom. May the goddess of serendipity smile on you in your walks through Magellan’s Log as often as she did on me in the making of it. --Douglas Milburn Houston, July 2002. |