(Notes for a poem)

Black

‘Stick to the bitumen and you’ll be right.’

 

Black ribbon road

Laid down by some Ariadne of the outback

Through the red dust

(Ancient fire, consumed to powder

By its own heat)

 

Inscribed like black letter law;

Reminds me of Moses in the desert―

O children of Israel!

Takes me back

To my childhood

Land of my fathers

Wanderers in a deforested landscape

‘Pilgrim through this barren land’

 

(Should I start singing Bread of Heaven?)

 

The burning bush

Burns without consuming:

I am.

 

The howling dingo emptiness behind me

Always at my heels

Chasing my wheels.

 

God is an abstraction

Anthropomorphic attributions are idolatrous

 

But necessary

Because redemption is the human and the abstract (or divine)

Partaking of each other’s nature.

 

Prophets are inspired

A means to salvation by virtue of being human mediators of the divine (or abstract)

A variation on anthropomorphism.

 

Who is your prophet, O lost tribe of Israel?

(For so the Welsh were thought to be.)

 

“Speaking for myself, it was my Great Uncle Tom,

Or Rhondda Tom (as he wasn’t known; I just made that up).

The pinnacle of manliness in my family―

Teacher, politician, social activist―

In whom faith and scepticism wrestled,

Each making the other stronger;

 

Engaged

In the issues of the day.”

 

The black economy;

Faces black with coal dust,

Their words hung black and biblical on the air, in their own ink of sound

And fell into print

Black letters

Fingers black with ink.

Tom inspired my father

My father became a journalist

 

A matter of record now

The echoes have died

But not

The fire in their eyes or on their tongues

 

The flames still dance in the darkness

 

Like the sunset up ahead

At the end of this long black road

Out of nowhere

 

(Painting: Three Generations of Welsh Miners, by Eugene Smith)

Dear R and S, I’ve been scratching my head over that last post. What’s going on? It’s a bit artsy-fartsy to say the least, and I notice the About page has gone the same way. I know we’re trying to draw Esse into public debate but I’m not sure this is the right way to do it. One of the things I like about this blog is that it’s usually pretty down to earth, but you blokes are beginning to sound as though you’re feeling yourselves up. Keep it real (or, as we used to say, fair dinkum)! We’re supposed to be bush philosophers, not woosey left-bank intellectuals.

Yours disappointedly,

The Lizard

PS Please don’t address me as “Liz” in future correspondence.

 

Reality begins with consciousness, which may be analogous to a cosmic singularity. Within consciousness there are two perspectives. The first, in order of development, is subjectivity, in which consciousness is spontaneously aware of its singularity.

The second is objectivity, which begins to develop as external objects and events present themselves. The consciousness becomes curious about what might lie outside itself. It seeks to know, and gradually becomes aware of the possibility of The Other.

In pursuit of The Other, the consciousness must address a contradiction: the inspiration for its pursuit is subjective and spontaneous while the execution is objective, deliberate and proactive.

The consciousness contains the contradiction in a synthesis which, like the pursuit itself, is an act of primal creativity (a “big bang”, to labour the cosmic analogy). This creativity leads to the idea of the relationship between Self and Other, which is itself a synthesis of the subjective and the objective.

Suspect ideology. Great pic, though…

But this synthesis comes under pressure as it transpires that the relationship between Self and Other is asymmetrical: there is only one Self, but there are many Others.

The asymmetry can be oppressive and may lead to a breakdown in the relationship between Self and Other with the result that the consciousness becomes alienated.

One way to address this is through another creative act, by conceiving the notion that relationships can be ordered or classified by a range of values or hierarchy. There are not only many Others and different Others, but different kinds of Others.

From the idea of kinds and categories comes the idea of distinguishing between the general and particular. Generalities appear to offer simplicity, coherence and understanding, which may be equated with truth. Particularities by comparison appear to offer complexity and confusion.

Generalities may be extrapolated from the real to the imaginative and, ultimately, to the metaphysical. The biggest of such generalities is, of course, God.

For many cultures, the idea of God is the building block for a model of reality that can address questions about existence and provide a template for social order. The Esse idea of God is a contribution to this tradition, but disavows any pretence to authority. It is purely a lay theory.

The Esse Existential Model of Reality

In Esse, God = existence. Existence (aka Esse) is the first, greatest and last dimension which encompasses all others including space, time and cosmic singularities. It is an infinite constant.

Line, plane and depth are respectively the second, third and fourth dimensions of the universe under Esse, and time is the fifth. According to (my understanding of) Big Bang theory, the universe is expanding and is therefore finite, destined one day to collapse back into a cosmic singularity.

Spirit is the sixth dimension under Esse. In the same way that consciousness seeks to know and relate to The Other, so Spirit seeks to know and relate to Esse. In another similarity, Spirit’s pursuit is a creative act in which the subjective and objective (the human and “divine” spirits) are synthesised.

Through this synthesis, Spirit seeks to transcend, if only momentarily, the finiteness of the universe.

Consciousness, Spirit and all dimensions are finite. Only existence (Esse) is eternal, because nothing can come before or after it without itself existing, existence being the essential precondition for anything to exist.