A Salutary Vein Of Mystical Thinking Poem by Denis Mair

We have to beware that mystery doesn't get appropriated as a beast by the ravening Beast. We are laboring under large insufficiencies and are failing to deliver the right information on a large conveyor belt, namely nutriment that young minds can gnaw on to rework themselves while avoiding pitfalls into the obscure and insufficiently worried hide of Leviathan. Relationship pulp can be left to Harlequin, and the court of love deserves an Eleanor worthy of respect, but in any case there are cautionary cases of emotional snarls, and their stories should be sounded like foghorns. Reason needs clear sightings and soundings as befits a helmsan's role. Any traffic I have with mystery should, I hope, be chalked up on the side of existence as the basic grubstake for any excavation. By mining it we learn to put an inner vista into our formulations, to imbue them with space for resonance that still thrums with originative life force.* In other words, any spelling done with the unincluded should be a ratchet of receptivity towards the unknown as underpinning and source of all endowments, hence auguring towards awe or even gratitude. In other words working with what one has and being glad to get the chance. (I hope.) In other words, amor fati towards the fati that could have been, even though this one is turning incredibly perverse, jumbled and grinding like rocks ready to shift. As for the existential side of the ledger, we are the ones who got this grubstake to mine what we can. We are the local agents who decide whether to go it alone or throw in our lot with lesser or larger collectives, and from here on we are responsible. As in Sartre. I'm talking about walking on two legs (as Mao used to say) . On one side is the mystery leg, so we can get a leg up by considering mere existence a net gain over nothing at all, a tournament in which we hold the first win that was already won before we knew we were players. Now it's up to us. If mysticism doesn't at least augur and/or militate in the direction of awed ('odd'?) enlivenment, then it isn't worth a rat's ass. And as a matter of fact, the givenness-as-gain aspect of mystery can be seen in in a ratty place as well as anywhere else. As for the other leg, it's Sartrean all the way, taking things upon oneself and not blaming others. It's a matter of making cagey choices, motivating each other and transferring huge conveyor belts of needed information to each other at critical times. And don't go holding demonstrations where people are going to shoot us mercilessly. In other words try to keep safe (in a mystery blind for viewing wildlife) and thrash things out for ourselves.
... ... ... ... ... ... ...

* {Note: Mystery is also a source of madcap perspectives that limber up the logical faculty, for instance because the opening of the nostril is nothing, that means we all breathe through the same nostril. For a romp through various angles on non-being vis-a-vis personhood, see the Ratnakūṭa--- 'Mound of Jewels Sutra'.