SEPARATION

We humans long to know we've made our mark and therefore are living/will have lived a noble or at least worthwhile life, especially if, by so doing, we can leave a curative mark on the very system that has been destroying us and the Earth, and which gives rise to/has infected us with the illness of this same longing. Ironically, of course, is that the purist antidote is to step out of this paradigm altogether and re-inhabit a cyclic, non-linear and intentionally unremarkable life of surrender to and re-absorption by that same generous non-linearity.

The preoccupation with the Mayan moment of 2012, likewise exalted linear time and its mono-directionality. The more we emphasize these marker events, the more we strengthen linear time. Is writing, by its nature, so linear that it is of limited usefulness as a tool that can conjure (and thus inhabit) an alternative ecology?

Is it possible (reasonable? desirable?) – and, if so, how - to (re)forge a dialogic relationship with Life while simultaneously retaining a foothold in the dichotomous, linear, commodified, fear-based, history-bound culture of self-nonself? Can one, ought one, step across that paradigmatic border and arrive intact in the undifferentiated, mythic reality and be sufficiently healed by it to withstand re-infection with modernity? Can one truly inhabit both realms? What kind of mixed message is this of the locus of potency? What is the purpose of our stubborn pursuit of this kind of travel in and out of connection? Do we imagine that we can heal the malignancy of separation and still choose to live within it?