Jane, what is this talk of riddles? Within this dream there is nothing but riddles, mysteries and enigmas. Isn't it a bit redundant to say I talk in riddles? That implies some don't which is just another dream to hang one's hat on. All our talk here is just so much fodder for this dream's mill.
...Like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Shakespeare - (The Tempest, IV.i.151)
more succinctly...
Life is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
Chief Isapwo Muksika Crowfoot
If there is to be any benefit in what we engage in here perhaps we can see it as a finger pointing at the moon. For me there is only one riddle; to distinguish the insubstantial from the substantial, the real from the unreal. Perhaps a vain task for this simpleton. I think Plato understood the dream and the possibility it presents to wake.
...Reflect: is not the dreamer, sleeping or waking, on who likens dissimilar things, who puts the copy in the place of the real object? I should certainly say that such an one was dreaming.
But take the case of the other, who recognizes the existance of absolute beauty and is able to distinguish the Idea from the objects which participate in the Idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the Idea nor the Idea in the place of the objects - is he a dreamer, or is he awake?
So actually yes, you do have to live in a world of riddles to be my friend just like you have to live in this world of riddles to be my enemy. God forbid, if these mysterious images collapsed into the real what would we call each other then? Black Elk would know.
warmly,
ghunk |
