“Work and art are the best and often the only escape from insanity which life inflicts on us. “
Donne once said ( or should have said) that work and art are the best and often the only escapes from insanity which life inflicts on us.
( If Donne didn't say this, don't worry. I am saying it today. If he didn't say it, then I consider it a good thing that the madcap left something for the likes of me to claim as their own and original. ..ha !! )
The point was that life chooses some to perch its insanity on and inflict wild west winds into their delicate souls of these earth-worms , who are used to the firm though fleeting safety and security of wet soils and sands. But at the end of this note is one riot of a flight from our very own,
Harman Jeet . Mad stuff. that fantastic flight carried surprisingly on the gentlest of wings. Insanity unadulterated. Harman's pen and mind both run wild here - utterly insane.:
Why, O,Why !
An explanation lies perhaps in this equally mightily mad flight of fantasy in what is believed to be a dream fragment from Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
““ Beware! Beware! /
His flashing eyes, his floating hair! /
Weave a circle round him thrice, /
And close your eyes with holy dread, /
For he on honey-dew hath fed, /
And drunk the milk of Paradise.”
(Coleridge was another crack-jack of a cater-pillar to suffer the insanity of too much mind, too much heart, too wild for the safe and highly commendable wisdom which only the safety and ordinariness of wisdom can bring. Do not advise the caterpillar to fly. You will kill it with your wisdom and advice. If you do not mean it to fly, let it stay a caterpillar. And that is why mother earth and jungles and rains joined hands in a cosmic conspiracy to keep caterpillars as caterpillars –soft and sumptuous bottom of the pyramid of food chain for the kings of the earth, the snakes,to eat. If snakes reject them too, caterpillars do not feel disgraced and dejected. They can pick some meaner insect to come and feast on them. But eaten they must be. This is the tryst of their race with destiny. They are born to be eaten, which is the best way to end the crime of being born.
In Nature, all insects are born to obey. Some of them don’t, and they dare defy. Their numbers are admittedly negligible . But when Nature is the force to dare, even one is an army of armies. It’s about courage which earthlings often deride and dismiss as “insanity, pure and purple.”
‘Insane of course it is.We were given this beautiful planet and its soil and its water and air to own and rule over. All this entire planet is ours to rule. No one challenges us, none can,till we arrive on the final hour to serve the goals of our tryst with destiny: to be eaten by other forms so that those other forms can continue this tryst thanks to our mounting the Cross.”
So goes the daily wisdom on which we are suckled. All earthlings,I mean, but certainly not starlings.
The insanity of Nature is that some insects have eyes that can see as far as the skies. Then, there is another problem. Some caterpillars are plain stupid - they and their friends,the centipedes. They just do not sit still, using their feet and legs for purposes other than walking or crawling. They begin to try and touch and feel the small pods that sprout on the backs of some of these earthlings. Like a human tongue that cannot resist a void in the teeth and must go on slipping into precisely the void where it hurts for the tongue to touch, the legs of these insects begin to touch and rub against the pods. May be because of their frequent rubbing or may be as Nature’s reward for their unnatural insanity, these pods begin to sprout as small arms. Slowly and slowly, these arms grow some fur which helps them feel warm in the cold of wetness. More importantly, these arms are transformed into wings and what had once looked like earthworms turn into butterflies.
And Nature has a problem here.Once an insect turns a fly, it can never been unfly-ed.Nature is totally helpless here. The worst it can do is knock its wings off and make it look like an insect again. But it has grown wings on its mind and spirit now.And these wings carry one far,far higher and farther - and at speeds even more unimaginable - than any bodily wings ever can - even if these bodily wings belong to the fastest bird’s back . That insect once a fly will never become insect again. It remains and will for eternity remain a fly -a wingless fly .It will die but it does not surrender its spirit before Nature, foolish guy. And eternity and immortality are stuff of the spirit.
But it is wrong to say that insects can fly. Insects can’t. Even Nature can’t help them to do so. They are flies only when they are no longer butter. And we all know what flies - with or without butter - are to wanton boys.
Nothing can be achieved in life with a price smaller than death. Death is the only price life demands from you to change your address and your signatures. It holds nothing back nor offers anything for free: just check the price and be ready to pay it. Life will not deny you anything. Because life keeps no favourites.
Life, in fact, is the cruelest trader out there. It brooks no haggling.This is because the most precious item life has is time. It doesn’t have a single drop of time to waste. Therefore, it puts everything up on the shelves ,with price tags. If you want something desperate,check the tag ,pay the quoted price and take it home - whatever it might by.
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There is no reason for any one of us to crib or complain,or to live a life full of grouse and grievance or grief.Ask anything you want; it shall be delivered -often at your doorstep. . Everything you want in life is displayed out there and you can pick everything - glory, sainthood, heroism, power, riches, love, ruling over the universe or whatever. It is all all up there, displayed on the shelf in this sprawling and endless multiplex. Pick up anything off the shelf any time. It will be offered and delivered to you with as much love and respect as to the next client if he is willing to pay what you are not.Life,which truly loves you and is always ready to hug you, will be just as kind and loving to the next man standing if he deserves as much as you do,or more - even if he is your enemy. Just as life keeps no friends and favourites, it also keeps no enemies and enmities. It loves you but it hates no one. Even if you deserve nothing from life, it still nurtures no ill will or enmity or ill will towards you. It is just that its most precious asset in business is time, and it has none to waste on enemities - against you or against your enemies.
Life denies you nothing. But if you can’t or are not willing to pay the price, just give one good admiring look to the item ,smile and move over. There are others in the queue - willing to die for what you want to live for. Life will offer the goods to the highest bidder. The bazaar of life does not run on charity but on merit. Nothing is withheld and nothing is offered free.
Jesus Christ knew it and acknowledged it and accepted the terms. Not because he wanted death but because he wanted life and he wanted it to be full of love -for you and for himself. He knew that life is death without love. He wanted life,and therefore love. This isexactly what he meant by “Love is God.” He also said God is life. And there is no life without Love . So,he said God is nothing but Love , and God means life, and therefore, Love is life. The only thing he acknowledged as Death was life devoid of Love.
And he was not talking airy fairy.He was a realist, the greatest you know.By Love he did not mean love for something vague and indefinable like your or my idea of God.He meant love not for God but for you and me and others like you and me. And that love alone is God and that love for life and the living alone is God. He took the deal which life offered : thou shalt have life beyond the Cross and thou shalt have love beyond hatred. Jesus heard life, and heard the deal and took it. And life on its part honoured the deal. And Jesus declared In my end is my beginning,in my death is my beginning.
Jesus today is the way you speak about love and life.
Guru Gobind Singh ji is what you mean by life. The man who carried a surgeon’s knife which resembled a sword, never talked about hatred nor about death. He spoke,he wrote,he sang only about Love and Life. “Sach kahoon sunn le ho sabhe,jinn prem kio tin hi prabh paayo.” ( He alone shall attain to God - and him alone - who carries lovein his heart . “
As was Life, so was Guru Gobind Singh. Full of love for everyone out there. And he carried no baggage of hatred,prejudice, jealousy or grievance.He was an sovereign, independent soul in a slave land. His love was his liberation and he passed it on to others. Even in the midst of fiercest battles against an enemy who did not even what he was up against,the Guru declared,”Na ko berry, na hi begaana/Sagal sung hum ko ban aayee.”..Koyoo na deese baahra jio.”
The most poignant and painful martyrdom of his most remarkable, gallant and enlightened and yet sweet and innocent children whom we refer to as Sahibzadas in love - even such gruesome and heart rending tragedy right in front of his spiritual eye failed to bring even a trace of hatred in his heart and in his life towards anyone, not even against the barbaric killers of his innocent children.
Is this what they mean by “ik aag ka dariyaa hai “ ( a river of fire in spate) when they talk about love?How many of us fellow insects can even afford to utter the name of this most beautiful but most difficult sentiment?
And this is also what I meant when I said life keeps and no favourites nor foes. It refused to treat even Guru Gobind Singh ji asa favourite. The Guru sought a way of love in life. And life quoted its price -the lives of four young sons on the path of the most extraordinary love story ever told.Life said,”Pay the price and take it off the shelf.” The Guru quietly paid the price and took his commodity off the life’s shelf, said,”Thank you,” and walked off gratefully, quite the business as usual kind of quiet and peaceful way.In his eyes,he had truck the deal nof his life-time, and probably smiled at life for surrendering something for which the Guru might even have been ready to pay a still higher price.
He had bought life out its very existence. He took life away, and must have wondered,”What is now left behind out there?”
This is the scale and the stature and the magnitude of the vision and heart of someone whom we remember for everything except the immesasurable and boundless love in his heart.
Before I complete the story of a few of these caterpillars who changed not only the tryst which their race seemed destined for but who actually rewrote with their tender and gentle wings the history of destiny itself on a canvas referred to as the sky. These lovely fairies ,our flies, look sensuous and sublime, gorgeous and Godly in the sky as they choreograph a whole new dance up there. But this has been achieved through death. An insect in order to be a fly has to die -a fact not acknowledged by any species or tribe. The reason is that all species and all tribes have to protect their young ones against death.
I wish to declare that of these few caterpillars, it is the privilege of my destiny to have known one. He is born to me. He is about seven years old according to my family history written on of my palm and on his fingers and forehead. I suspect he used his own fingers to write that as a song on his forehead.
This is thus the story of the caterpillar run amuck and challenging the eagles to claim the sky :
(And here is another caterpillar who wishes he could also grow wings of insanity but has too much sense to risk the safety of his mud house to fly into purple storms. Fear flouts my fate Fate as fate frightens caterpillars.I stay out of harm’sway.
