<eyebeam><blast> Now And Forever

[Phantom Overtone <overtone@gte.net>]

Now And Forever


The following charm was whispered to me by a ghost that haunts my
subjectivity:

        Lo! 'tis a gala night
           Within the lonesome latter years!
        An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
           In veils, and drowned in tears,
        Sit in a theatre, to see
           A play of hopes and fears,
        While the orchestra breathes fitfully
           The music of the spheres.

This body, this physical body, is growing stronger; yet growing older. 
Its forces are forged in melees of opposition and resistance.  Being
strives to continue.  Being strives to live on, to live immortal -
blossom and flourish in a divine sky of iconoclastic eddies.  But time
wreaks its own havoc: its virtue is patience and it lurks within the
seams of being; biding the days, the nights, slowly devouring all hope.

        Mimes, in the form of God on high,
           Mutter and mumble low,
        And hither and thither fly -
           Mere puppets they, who come and go
        At bidding of vast formless things
           That shift the scenery to and fro,
        Flapping from out their Condor wings
           Invisible Woe!

Time has no face; time has no structure: it is the polymorphing guise of
fate weaving the eternal currents change.  So much rises to prominence
on its stage; flashes here and there of life - but time will always
claim these observances and return them to their origins in the heart of
nothing.

        That motley drama - oh, be sure
           It shall not be forgot!
        With its Phantom chased for evermore,
           By a crowd that seize it not,
        Through a circle that ever returneth in
           To the self-same spot,
        And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
           And Horror the soul of the plot.

Though we reflect on time, we constrained beings, never adequately grasp
it; for its existence is phantasmic and invisible, it is a reality only
of designation - we are caught in its web, and eventually, all claimed
by its true absence.  There is no place for us.  There is no end.  The
energy of this physical space will revolve and return again, never to
this point, never to this time, but unto itself now and forever.

        But see, amid the mimic rout
           A crawling shape intrude!
        A blood-red thing that writhes from out
           The scenic solitude!
        It writhes! - it writhes! - with mortal pangs
           The mimes become its food,
        And the angels sob at vermin fangs
           In human gore imbued.

One moment, we will all be at home in a disquiet grave.  They will
provide a capsule of transition for us to pass away.  Time is nature and
its remnants shroud our every motive and desire; its course is clear -
its path is change.  The consumption of Being by being is only one of
nature's modes:  we are at its threshold - for to live, life must feed
on life; and this cycle, as long as life by nature is forthcoming, will
thrive now and forever.

        Out - out are the lights - out all!
           And, over each quivering form,
        The curtain, a funeral pall,
           Comes down with the rush of a storm,
        And the angels, all pallid and wan,
          Uprising, unveiling, affirm
        That the play is the tragedy "Man,"
           And its hero the Conqueror Worm.*

The sky will never open - dimensions will never crack.  This place, this
inscribed territory, is only our space for a brief period.  It too must
change hands.  One can only revel in the destiny and fate that is our
nature, for resignation means its conclusion.  Hope can raise the
curtain, but we must fill the void that is the stage.  To mime again,
incessantly and virtuously, only to pass into the end.

It is here that I speak, it is here that I dwell - in this space I will
pass with you:  Now and Forever.

* _The Conqueror Worm_ by Edgar Allan Poe

- Phantom Overtone
-------------------------------------------------------------
a critical forum for artistic practice in the network
texts are the property of individual authors
to unsubscribe, send email to eyebeam@list.thing.net
with the following single line in the message body:
unsubscribe eyebeam-list
information and archive at http://www.eyebeam.org
Eyebeam Atelier/X Art Foundation http://www.blast.org
-------------------------------------------------------------