As timeless as the march of
the green against the great western wall.
The air a cut space for ten
skies. A hundred ageing younger
eyes to slip the just and wilful
lines undercover in the hall.
Let two be the directed course
and shuffling masks and grins be there.
Let x is the opposing force,
a burn for every stair and mile.
Imagine you’re standing in a river, you’re bent double with your hands immersed in the stream, waiting for a fish. You’re quite happy to catch fish this way. You’ve always done it this way. But one of your companions walks into the river with something he’s found. It’s a finely woven net. He casts it into the river with a grace that astound you, and he pulls in seven fish in the time you would have caught one.
You realise you want the net. You would normally ask for the net, and you do. But it’s not really what you want, you want to own it, your mind cant get past the idea that by sharing a net the fruits of your labor would be distributed unevenly, or distributed at all away from you. You dont want three and a half fish, you want seven, just like him.
You indicate you don’t want to share. Your friend is upset and tries to take the net back. You fight. In the time you have screamed, pushed, punched and kicked, a school of fish have swum upstream and disappeared, and now you’re exhausted, and you lost the net you took. You can’t find any more fish.
You return the next day with just your hands to use to fish. Even though it’s how you’ve fished your whole life, you now want something else. You might be the best at catching fish, but if you have seen something that does it better, you will always want it more.
It’s one of the most fascinating words in the Human world.
With just the one word, something becomes instantly more valuable for an indeterminate time.
Want food or water? You’ll sacrifice money for it or your time. Want is the reason you’re willing to spend 5.00 for a 600ml bottle of water at a sweaty nightclub rather than just go and sip from the tap, because it’s closer and you want it now, because you want to keep dancing.
An economy based on demand allows us to WANT something that is in short supply, even if we don’t know what it is. Social value is a key part of primate society. It allows us to understand what is appropriate in a social circle or community, but it has a flip-side. Objects that are rare are highly prized, not because they are physically valuable, but because everyone wants it.
I think I would enjoy life a bit more if every day, i climbed a tree. It’s just an issue when your native trees are mostly eucalyptus. The trees and I have something in common, we both lack something. They lack lower branches, and my ancestors decided it was totally dandy to lose that prehensile tail!
In the field, when I am very old,
yet younger than the fastest burning star,
I’ll look across the red and gold
the rising, falling, burning scar.
Here I rise to tell the time
with yellow fields of moments past
and with my efforts gone; an empty breath
the wind; my pattern floats, begins to twine.
So many ladders fall,
for some to knock them down
as enemies, mistake the call
of pendulum, the swinging crown, but each step lifts me.
My distance is around me
all steps and eyrie heights
that bear loftily below, and away
all slight space to fall flat.
When the space was spun,
when my life struck one.
When, from the time I was very young,
I was old.
I will fall from the clocktower,
body cold and small,
all ridges, crown, cells and doors,
nail, leather skin and fur.
For here, I see my pattern
all oblique and clear no damage,
to dwell in brief the tatters
of a treasure, weak with age.
My heart in my mouth as I fall,
but not for the drop
but for these tattered edges lost in all
the wind and distance.
Here my body spins and sinks.
Floating, dead, a dandelion
to fall on new earth and grow,
to keep the time myself.
