Spirit Nothing Dimmed
Created | Updated Jul 14, 2003
He is an Old Man, yes.
But merely in terms of His years.
His Heart still flies when He reads Blake.
He sprawls on riverbanks, listening to the clamour among the grass-stalks.
He walks the shore and diamonds glisten in His footfalls.
In His Day, He was a Genuine Radical.
His World-View was fashioned in a Different Age.
He is True to it still.
Sharing its shocks.
Confronting its vertiginous consequences.
These are His Eternal Delight.
The central tenet of His philosophy is that Anyone has a Perfect Right to Think Anything.
In His Universe, the only dead-end lies in Uniformity of Perception.
How strange, that a man like this should grace our freakshow.
I showed Him the path that lead Him here.
I did so with trepidation.
He would meet all kinds within this place.
Ugly combinations of small minds and large egos.
Political correctness in its ghastliest rictus.
Mental bullies of the meanest kind.
For a little while, I worried that they would hurt Him.
Sticks and Stones may indeed break bones.
But Calling, when done with skilful cruelty, may wither the Very Soul.
And of course they picked on Him.
They do so still.
There are so very many of them here.
Their intellects tiny compared with His.
Grotesque little nightmares of repression.
Pathetic knots of sordid rectal tissue.
He would chide me for those words.
He does not despise them as I do.
He treats them with a mixture of courtesy, pity and incomprehension.
I try to dissuade Him of His misplaced Conviction.
My experience insists that not everyone is worth listening to.
To believe otherwise will condemn Him to frustration.
He will be obliged to dwell on the banal.
He will be forced to justify the vain.
He will be compelled to console the self-pitying.
And He does all these things, and yet shows no frustration.
He shrugs, and He smiles, and He fails to understand my protests either.
And then I notice that His Conversations scatter Pearls among their ordure.
He is so perfectly Right that my objections congeal into sophistry and incoherence.
Anyhow.
Anything goes in this place, I conclude.
Anyone should be able to say Anything in this Community of Implicit Consent.
Absolutely not, He replies.
(His Smile is a Wonderful Thing of Unassuming Radiance.
This is the Man who gave me the gift of life.
It was no more than the Countless Other Gifts that He has bestowed upon this World.
I love Him deeply).
Absolutely not, because one must not go hurting people.
So He says.
But they hurt you, Dad, I protest.
You're entitled to give them some vitriol back.
Vitriol is your bag, Son, He replies.
He remains determined to answer in His Own Way.
They will never hurt Him, you see, but they might yet hurt themselves.
He wants to try and help them See Things Differently.
I look at His detractors.
I shudder, and doubt that He will ever succeed.
But to Delight in Trying, that is a Precious Thing.
To find Value and Virtue in their trivial criticism.
To express Wonderment and Tolerance at their twisted perceptions.
To offer Friendship where lesser spirits would recoil in contempt.
The Epitome of Turning the Other Cheek.
Not even Blake could have managed that.
But merely in terms of His years.
His Heart still flies when He reads Blake.
He sprawls on riverbanks, listening to the clamour among the grass-stalks.
He walks the shore and diamonds glisten in His footfalls.
In His Day, He was a Genuine Radical.
His World-View was fashioned in a Different Age.
He is True to it still.
Sharing its shocks.
Confronting its vertiginous consequences.
These are His Eternal Delight.
The central tenet of His philosophy is that Anyone has a Perfect Right to Think Anything.
In His Universe, the only dead-end lies in Uniformity of Perception.
How strange, that a man like this should grace our freakshow.
I showed Him the path that lead Him here.
I did so with trepidation.
He would meet all kinds within this place.
Ugly combinations of small minds and large egos.
Political correctness in its ghastliest rictus.
Mental bullies of the meanest kind.
For a little while, I worried that they would hurt Him.
Sticks and Stones may indeed break bones.
But Calling, when done with skilful cruelty, may wither the Very Soul.
And of course they picked on Him.
They do so still.
There are so very many of them here.
Their intellects tiny compared with His.
Grotesque little nightmares of repression.
Pathetic knots of sordid rectal tissue.
He would chide me for those words.
He does not despise them as I do.
He treats them with a mixture of courtesy, pity and incomprehension.
I try to dissuade Him of His misplaced Conviction.
My experience insists that not everyone is worth listening to.
To believe otherwise will condemn Him to frustration.
He will be obliged to dwell on the banal.
He will be forced to justify the vain.
He will be compelled to console the self-pitying.
And He does all these things, and yet shows no frustration.
He shrugs, and He smiles, and He fails to understand my protests either.
And then I notice that His Conversations scatter Pearls among their ordure.
He is so perfectly Right that my objections congeal into sophistry and incoherence.
Anyhow.
Anything goes in this place, I conclude.
Anyone should be able to say Anything in this Community of Implicit Consent.
Absolutely not, He replies.
(His Smile is a Wonderful Thing of Unassuming Radiance.
This is the Man who gave me the gift of life.
It was no more than the Countless Other Gifts that He has bestowed upon this World.
I love Him deeply).
Absolutely not, because one must not go hurting people.
So He says.
But they hurt you, Dad, I protest.
You're entitled to give them some vitriol back.
Vitriol is your bag, Son, He replies.
He remains determined to answer in His Own Way.
They will never hurt Him, you see, but they might yet hurt themselves.
He wants to try and help them See Things Differently.
I look at His detractors.
I shudder, and doubt that He will ever succeed.
But to Delight in Trying, that is a Precious Thing.
To find Value and Virtue in their trivial criticism.
To express Wonderment and Tolerance at their twisted perceptions.
To offer Friendship where lesser spirits would recoil in contempt.
The Epitome of Turning the Other Cheek.
Not even Blake could have managed that.
