Truth

Truth

What is truth but the point where you and I agree.

You look good in yellow and I look good in green.

Having a thousand points is the same as having not point at all.

He looked forward to a cut and dried case, an easy win.

The expert can examine and turn over a thing until it is beyond understanding, but is attempting to make clear a thing that should be allowed to just behave naturally or savoir-vivre.

Who cried out?

Did I cry out?

Take your truth and shove it.  I am not listening anymore.  I know what I know but shall not be forced to recount the ways in which I know it!  Artists create something beyond words, when it is art it glimpses of something beautiful or clear or truthful or evident.

“No man can say what he is. But sometimes he can say what he is not.”

“You would vomit if I told you.”

“They destroy harmless opinions and replace them with implacable rules.”

Kaji slaps his assistant, he whips the prisoners he refuses the treat made with flour.

“The strategists are the scourge of this world, its evil-smelling breath”

What will you tell the military?

I will not report it.

“They are the whitewashers of putrefaction.”

“...the salvoes of laughter, the singing and stamping.”

“Because I am not dead, he doesn’t exist.”

I bid you farewell. It was I who shouted out.”

Be Patient

Resist

Assist

Can you work with or within the system with integrity even  if you do not agree with the current state?  Kaji went in with ideals and a position in middle management.  What happens when you come in as lower management or a worker.  If you disagreed with the way things are being done usually you are not rewarded with a promotion unless they think that that is the best way to force you out quick.

A change of state requires violence.  It seems that to retain a state it may also require continual violence.  

Kao the rebel.  The anti-hero to Kaji.  He wins the love of his woman but refuses to run away with her or marry her.  Be patient,  Kaji says.  Be Patient, Kao says.  

To Kaji: you are straddling a fundamental contradiction and trying to justify it (2:03)

Bending, creating, twisting the truth, creates a fundamental contradiction. An exceptional climate cannot be prolonged.   As soon as you do bend is the truth also a bent thing.  If I start out with a more elastic, organic moral code away from black and white and cube like does that make me more or less likely to condone murder.  To me it seems less likely. Then am I one of the patient, silent, rationale masses that allow the zealots to get away with the programs that support them? “Compromise with duplicity” is a well worn path and the renewed sense of civic responsibility is short lived.

The Wildermuth with the ax who was willing to go along with the official story, because it seemed so precise.  The Wildermuth who ate cabbage not noticing what happens on the street. The Wildermuth who is obsessed with truth to the point of exhaustion. If a Wildermuth falls a tree in the forest but no one is there to see it, did the tree really fall?  Crazy people don’t wonder if they are crazy.

An enigma of light and truth

Why bother to create

Be patient

I feel a strange updraft

The sun is behind you

The flaxen fires flare

Every artist is pursuing her enduring truth

Turn around and face it

Find the right lover

Who is also a creator

One who can criticize

Yes, all this noise

Objective and absurd

The light seals my mouth

Finding truth thru art. Art when it is art reveals something real if not correct.  Right, wrong, formal, essayistic or even verbal or written speech are not a prerequisite to "come out" with your work.  Some people do need to process by sharing what is reverberating in their head.  Some people need to expose themselves to see themselves.  We do not all need to squeeze the bruise blood. AYO not everyone needs, can handle or deserves your truth and you are the expert on you.

What do men in a cage dream of most?  The pause was long enough to let the view think freedom.  It seems that Freedom is the poet’s answer and Sex is the cynic's answer.  Again, I recall Kaji whipping the prisoners who were gorging themselves on the rice upon arrival to camp.  The men looked at the women as they entered the walls of camp like the looked at the rice, but now they were being "told" implicitly to eat eat.    The quote,"we all suffer the same misfortune" from the film may be the key for me.  The truth- the struggle is all connected.

Slapping Chen- That may be a new phrase for me but, I'm afraid you all may be the only ones who may get the meaning.  When your child does something and you scold him too harshly because it points to a similar fault of yours or to the fault prevalent in the system or the nature of being human.  That would be a moment to remind yourself that you may be slapping Chen.  Not at all helpful to the situation- possibly shutting down trust and setting the haters in motion.

The mashup of the texts mixed with my own words have rubbed some the wrong way.  This is the way I am attempting to find commonality without having to pedantically iterate the profound and perplexing texts to a simple understanding. This weeks point was that the truth is not a simple matter.  Simple understanding, common sense, human decency are minutely and bluntly battered into a corner and asked to confess that they are not true.  

"Take your truth and shove it.  I am not listening anymore.  I know what I know but shall not be forced to recount the ways in which I know it!  Artists create something beyond words, when it is art it glimpses of something beautiful or clear or truthful or evident."  This phrase is unfettered me.  A mangled quote of song lyrics "take this job and shove it, I ain't workin here no more." combined with my only metaphorical shouting- I am not a writer.  I am a visual artist.  I enjoy reading, and discussing but when writing I feel that I am forced to take too substantial a stand while I am still synthesizing the information.  The Char piece, short though-it-is was especially trying for me.  The first time I read it it was as if it was in a different language still.  After revisiting it and becoming accustomed to the cadence I find it a tragically plain spoken writing that illuminates a state of mind and society that still echoes in world, US, Chicago, CPS current events.

Do you like working here?  How long have you been working here?  At least once a week someone asks me about my job in a southside Chicago neighborhood public high school. There is no simple true answer to the real questions they are asking.  Why are they asking me?  Do I seem unhappy or like I am enjoying myself? What do they think I’m going to say?

Trauma is everywhere not just in war zones or post war zones.  They way it is dealt with depends on the day and the person.  If it seems like a trauma it is.  However it is dealt with may be the best way for that person on that day.

What is your art about? Why are you making that? It looks different [than your old stuff].  Just look at it.  I don’t want to answer you right away. I want you to process.

In response to Galina,

I read thru your link.

10. I saw what a forcible argument a simple slap could be for an intellectual. - Slapping Chen

46. That a writer must be a stranger — in the subjects he describes. And if he knows the matter well — he will write in such a way that no one would understand him.

So true.  We may not be able to read, understand someone else's truth.