Post Maserati post…
Posted on 19 September 2009
It has been a complicated and not altogether wonderful week for me, and Thursday’s Maserati blog has somehow helped bring the thing into focus. Yeah, I’m drawn to power and beauty, even as I have experienced it to be so unsatisfying. There’s always something more needed around the stuff, isn’t there? To be even thinner, or younger, smarter, richer….
And isn’t there at least the smell of violence around power and beauty as well, which is perhaps why (wrongly, I’m sure) I suspected the Maserati guy in the back seat had a gun? I mean, why do all those beautiful models on those billboards and in magazines look out at us with such disdain? Why does a knockout guy make so many girls’ knees tremble? And even that nice boss, doesn’t he/she have the power to destroy our lives if we tangle with him/her in the wrong way – our salary, our self-esteem, even our homes gone if her/she so deems.
And then there’s the more subtle violence I have been encountering this week – a desire to express myself more elegantly, more effectively, more beautifully – build the website, add some better graphics at the top and see a little less of my mug, drive “more traffic” to my little world here or (even better) — make a movie (a beautiful and powerful one), change the lives of those around me. How can any of this bring violence? And yet here I sit, feeling that violence has been visited on me this past week, even as I have just been wanting to evolve, to grow – not to own a Maserati or a gun, but be a “poet,” sculpt myself into a better human, maybe become more “beautiful,” more “powerful.”.
Then it hits me that there is no difference, really, between me and my Maserati friends, because what I was (what I am) simply isn’t enough. I ache (and therefore work) for something more — the opposite of the Maserati, perhaps, but internally, where each of us really lives (it’s not the cut on the finger that matters, after all, but the pain being felt inside). And in that place a strange and amorphous battle has been being waged by me and it hasn’t been much fun or much more productive than, say, a Maserati.
There hasn’t been peace and quiet this week. I’ve been going 185. But where the hell (really) was I intending to go?
4 responses to Post Maserati post…
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I’ve not responded to your posts in a while but I haven’t forgotten you or this fascinating blog that is a journey towards a very real but as-yet-unnamed goal. I see myself as a fellow traveller. I’m currently in pause mode, getting my bearings, studying the map (is there a map?) and most of all, asking myself some quetsions. And I am beginning to think that you and some others here are converging towards The Point, each from our respective directions.
When I do post my response (soon, hopefully) I think it will be not to a particular post but to the entire exercise as I perceive it – a quest for “the point.” And maybe I can get to share a little of my own experience of this process?
I see people opening up and I look forward to good conversations here.
Take care,
Incognita
Oh no! I posted something and it vanished. I’ll try again in a while.
Hi, hello, howdy. I know this is an old post but a great one. I think we all, in some way, desire power and beauty. It’s ingrained in us to covet. I believe that even the richest most powerful person in the world still grasps for something, still wants to reach the unreachable.
Though, if we didn’t have these qualities then we would strive for nothing. I don’t know about you but I can’t imagine how miserable an actual Utopia would be. No conflict, no strife, no pain, what’s the point? Where happiness is a wonderful thing, it isn’t wonderful without first experiencing heartache, strife, and debauchery.
As for judgment of violence in power, or even in poverty. I think that it is rooted in us also from birth, from our society. That even if our parents teach us not to judge someone else by their money, their disdainful stare, or their gorgeous looks, we still do. It’s only natural to measure others. But it is up to us to use that judgment in a positive way.
When I think of bosses who fire someone over a quarrel I think of abuse of power. To be powerful is an enormous responsibility. So many use it only to their own selfish means instead of to encourage and help others toward a more positive ‘power’. Because power in itself isn’t evil. It is made evil by its possessor.
As a fellow writer, artist, and poet I completely understand the point of view of wanting to create something moving, powerful, and so enormous that it changes lives. If you didn’t have a story to tell or a message to share you wouldn’t be an artist. It’s what motivates us, that desire to create unimaginable beauty.
In my opinion, violence isn’t a thing to be avoided, it is something to be studied. Why and how, when and where. There is a time for violence and a time for peace. Humans in themselves are not ‘peaceful’ beings. We are programmed to fight for what we have and react angrily to certain situations. Even the divine, whichever path you believe in, can be violent. But the mere fact that you worry about being violent shows that you aren’t in yourself an evil or violent person.
But I have ranted and I don’t even know you! Haha. Ah, the constant struggle of understanding oneself and the world around them.