Little mind
I put you on this planet
so you could find
something that I’ve lost;
and when you find that you’ve been crossed,
please pardon my insistence
on your existence,
and when the path of least resistance
turns out to have the most,
don’t be scared
little mind,
you’re doing fine.
interesting. i like it
Thanks. Let me ask you, does that last line make sense, where I say “and the path of least resistance turns out to have the most…”
is it clear enough that I mean that the path of least resistance turns out to have the most resistance, versus just the “most.”
I ask because might become my next cheesy pop song and I want to make sure that line works.
The melody is beautiful
Until you explained it, I read it as: “the most (everything)”
I like your intended aim better, but it can also mean: the most (as in wants but not in needs)
I read it as most…not most resistant. maybe the double play on the word is good.
I read it as // the path of least resistance turns out the have the most resistance… kinda like the road less traveled… or the ‘high’ road…
I read it as you meaning that when you take the path of least resistance, it is the least resistance from nature… you’re following your nature… and that might not be where the herd is going… and that’s where the resistance is coming from. Goes back to Dr. S’ guilt thread, and guilt-free ideals more in tune with how things ‘really’ are.
Yes? No?
Thanks for all your comments. I’m a little discouraged though. My point was that you’re going to try to make this thing called life as easy on yourself as you can, but that what you’re inadvertantly doing is making it harder in the end. Because the more you avoid the hard realities, or the more you avoid growing pains, the more you’ll pay in the long run. This is the only meaning I wanted to convey so I may have to change it. Any ideas?
Leave it the way it is. You’re doing fine.
Alright Arendt, you the boss.
Oh, okay. I thought when you followed it with
that you were condoning the path of least resistance… which triggered my above interpretation of the preceding lines…
But yes, I was, or the character narrator, who ostensibly is God or something, was condoning the path of least resistance, because it turns out to be the past of most resistance, which turns out to be the best way to learn the most, or for this God’s purposes or whatever. There is a subtext that ANY path you take will be the one most suited to his purposes in the end…but the subtext is not so important yet. Just that people GET that the line meant you duped yourself…here you were thinking you were taking it easy and avoiding pain, but then you realize you just set yourself up for a deeper more informing pain…but don’t worry or blame yourself, keep your chin up li’l nugget, it’s ALL part of the plan.
Ok… I suck at the whole “the author is not necessarily the ‘speaker’ in the poem” thing – oops.
that is perty awesome, I agree w/ Arendt 
About the subtext… sort of reminds me of Jonah… don’t know if the ‘God’ here is Jonah’s god.
Should we be looking in every nook and cranny for God’s keys? jk 
sigh sorry
It reminds me of living vicariously through one’s “little minds”. Is that really fair?
I’m sorry if you’re not supposed to ask questions like that about poems. It’s like this impulse…
I think there was a Burrough’s quote somewhere that’s been flipping around in my mind like a trout in a waterless bucket for about two years. Let me start by saying I’m not religious…I never say things like “I believe in God.” These are just musings…God for me is the MT (Mysterium Tremendum).
Burroughs loosely (and paradoxically) said: “God is, by definition, devoid of friction, and so he had to create his own friction by creating the world…”
It implies two things for me:
God was lacking something and our existence is the biggest self-help program of all time. This notion might explain our feeling of disconnection, or any morosity that might result from failing to see any sort of extrinsic meaning to life.
Disconnection is precisely what God needed…maybe a way to learn or watch by witnessing the stories unfold…the brave quest of people in a world that threatens to seem pointless at every turn…or on another day God can watch as we revel in various gifts and offerings…as we bite into apples and marvel at the tingling of our tastebuds.
Overall, this song/poem is my hopeful vision of God exalting those people who ADMIT they don’t know things, or think they are a fuckup BECAUSE they seem to have no footing. I think watching us admit we don’t know things is what really rocks God for the better, and hearing him admit as much is my fantasy, which is self-defeating, but a nice fantasy, nonetheless.
Also, there’s a feeling that there are things about MT we can’t know. And when we nibble (philosophize) all the way to the outside membrane of the sacred truths, we butt up against the impregnable and yet we gnaw and gnaw because we can’t stop…until our teeth flatten, and we keep gnawing until we gnaw ourselves away…and maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s what’s best.
And I think sometimes OUR very existence is the result of God gnawing herself away, gnawing against some impregnable membrane to get at some Truth that WE, you and me, are supposed to be earning the hard way and passing on like nectar, and no it might not seem FAIR to us. And all along it is not the content that lies on either side of the membrane, God’s side, or our side, that holds the sacred Truth. Rather the sacred Truth is the membrane itself. Maybe when we realize that, God will, too.
And the beat goes on.
So next time you feel devoid of friction, derealized, depersonalized, isolated…maybe God is watching to see how YOU deal with it. And he’s taking notes.
This is about God, and is probably just more anthropocentric projection, but…
One of the most wonderful sensations in the world is the beautiful feeling of being connected with other people. Maybe just one special person, maybe a small group, maybe your whole community.
One of the worst sensations in the world is the feeling of being separated and estranged from others with whom you want to connect.
Which leads to this hypothesis: We are all fragments of God trying to reassemble back into a richly integrated wholeness. To experience separation, distance and disconnection, god being the whole of all existence blew “himself” to smithereens.
All the most notable messengers of God speak of togetherness, harmony and unity. They point the rest of us towards greater integration.
[edit] xander, didn’t see your post 'til after I posted this … didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you or anything.
Mysterium Tremendum… pardon my ignorance, I’m assuming that’s latin for tremendous mystery? It sounds like my “Unknown” – although I don’t put a conscious being behind it 'cause there’s still the question of “Why does that conscious being exist, in order to want us to exist?” I only feel free of friction when I feel utterly alone… when love is felt, the Mysterium Tremendum… the Unknown… doesn’t bother me as much (which, I think, sort of reminds me of when people historically call on God for help in times of trouble, and forget him in times of prosperity) (who said that quote about, “Who, having found love… or having loved… is poor?”?). That happens sometimes, not often. It’s just this stupid business of having emerged from the same sort of “stuff” that makes up the food chain – life devours and competes for power in order to stay alive. I don’t like that I came into existence with that being a part of me…
The sooner we become robots, programmed for a healthy balance of individuality and social harmony, who live off some really cool form of energy that requires no death – the better. Then we’d never concern ourselves with the Mysterium Tremendum. No need.
I like the feeling behind your poem. My concept of God, if there is one, wouldn’t lack anything, wouldn’t need to feel friction… if he can create the universe, he can imagine friction without it actually happening (maybe he is cursed with the inability to ‘imagine’ without it having some sort of ‘substance’ – whatever he thinks… becomes reality…?)… I can’t imagine him having ‘lost’ something. Our concepts of God are our projected interests onto him, like he is made of flesh like we are, like he has the basic human needs we have… if he created the universe, then he must be beyond all of that (unless you take the “we’re his imagination/dream” theory seriously – then everything in the universe is some aspect of God’s psyche – and I conclude from that, that He is just as ‘fallible’ as we are… and I still have they “why does He exist” question). Why couldn’t we be conscious without being these animals that we are, stuck in these devouring, competing bio-machines? Why do we have to “feel”, why do we have to /be/ “matter” – we’re stuck here in the “stuff” of the universe, it’s so… encaging. Maybe God is not benevolent at all – maybe we are just his little ant farm. If he let me out, he would have ant-in-pant, and a sore spot for eternity.
And now I await his Job-type lecture, and I prepare to smirk at his guilt-hiding, insecurity-masking power-trip, and when he’s done, I tell him, “So much for taking notes!” and then the finger of god materializes before me and he squashes me under it.
Somenewname – very imaginative ideas, certainly they round out where mine were lacking. This is of course a very self-serving and anthropomorphisizing enterprise…which is why it belongs in the realm of poetry.
Xanderman, your image of God “breaking it” so he can feel it being fixed is not unlike the image of Jabba the Hutt beating off in the middle of the desert. This big thing making itself feel good over and over again. Eww.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure that God created us out of DESPERATION so that we could find his KEYS. So there. It’s settled. We can all stop wondering about it now.
Gamer,
Don’t misunderstand the motivation. In this idea God divided “himself” out of the will to create plus the frustration at “his” materials. Imagine a painter with no paint who in desperation draws out his blood to make a pigment.
It was a desire to experience everything, to break all limits and see all that “he” could become.
Yes, yes, I know.
But what YOU need to know is that any painter who drew his own blood to paint is an insufferable and dangerously pretentious West Village Idiot who discontinued his lithium and probably (and oh so regretfully) fucked your sister. He, like your God, wants to experience everything, it’s his fucking mantra and he won’t shut up about it. “Go, go already and experience everything! Do it overseas already! You’re giving your Bubbie angina!” Call me crazy, but I daresay God Himself is above such tomfoolery. We have ONCE AGAIN created God in man’s image. Which man? The simpering, whimpering, rennaissance man, that’s who.
God, a secret cutter. Scandalous! But it makes sense. He is HUNGRY FOR PAIN. A masochrist. “I sit by the pool and watch my cuts coagulate and it is good.”
En sof has retired to palm beach where he plays bridge, tzim-tzum and golf. He usually wins at golf. Arty Schwartz usually wins at bridge and occasionally tzim-tzum. Ever since Johnny Carson stepped down, all the old Jews from the neighborhood have been breaking off parts of their bodies to watch them coalesce. It’s a little like mutual funds.
En Sof is one of the greatest example of this. From the limitless light comes the limited light. Only by allowing light to coalesce to the point where it could act like a solid capable of limiting other light would shadows, the infinite grey and darkness arise. It is an exploration of possibilities. Creation is the mixture of light and the absence of light. The limitless, infinite and eternal can only grow through an exploration of the limited, finite and temporary. This very dimension of Time itself is the playground of the gods.