Keeping the Poison

Jean Cocteau wrote, "After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to remove its poison, to blunt its sting."

This is true sometimes. A piece of work will stab at something, and you'll become scared others will not understand. The artist is always daring to push out, then pulling back.

I pull a card: What is this temptation to remove the poison? 10 of Pentacles.



We desire completion, to be done with it. The 10 of Pentacles is the end of the suit of earth. We live life yearning for an ending that will provide the meaning for what we've lived through. In the art we create, we are tempted, time and time again, to make the story neat, no loose danglies to confuse.

You'd think that taking the poison out would make things safer, but it does anything but.

The Devil

As in the Tarot Card.

All the majors are, for me, neither good nor bad. They are all Good, as in part of the Law. The Devil is a wonderful friend. He prepares you to have your illusions of bondage torn away. He makes it possible for you to feel those chains and to desire to be rid of them. He is the part of g*d that allows us to alchemize even the most tawdry of experiences. Like the experience of feeling separate, or fearing the dark, or wanting to feel good even when we know we are destroying ourselves. The Devil is what allows us to take those experiences and do something Good with them. Among other things.

[Photo: © 2008 Keir Morse]

Listening to the Elephant

So g*d (whatever that is) found perfection stultifying and busted out, falling into individuality, each piece possessing the potential godlike ability to comprehend itself. Now here we are, in this amazing universe filled with leaves and galaxies and peanut M&Ms and french kisses, and built into the whole thing is the necessity to connect with each other in order to know anything important about those amazing things.

Each of us holds a piece of the world, our very own hand on the elephant. We have our own experiences. Well, I have my experience. And I’m assuming you have yours. You, on the other hand, have your experience, and must assume I have mine. This is the real faith necessary for eternal life.

Over and over again, the things that are important in life prove to be impossible to know by a single individual. We can learn our perspective of the thing, but we can only begin know the thing itself when we start to listen to each other. The universe is made this way for a reason.

If you love that elephant and you really want to know what it is, then know that every person has their hand on it somewhere. And that person has a gift for you. Only they can tell you what that part of the elephant is like. You just have to listen.

What’s a carbuncle

To paraphrase Wittgenstein, “carbuncle” is a funny word. It sounds like a coconut dropped down a stairwell. It bounces from the ah!-I’ve just dropped my coconut!-to a deep, hard “unk”-Oh, that’s a chunk of wall I’ll need to replace!- to the final, horrifying yet comical “ul”. Better call 911. That last bounce took out the building's super.

But unlike coconuts, carbuncles themselves are rarely funny. They are either beautiful or painful. You see, "carbuncle" has collected a pair of the most mismatched definitions ever. A carbuncle can either be a beautiful gem, such as a ruby, or a skin wound that oozes pus.

A carbuncle is something that can be beautiful and priceless beyond measure, coveted and killed for. Or it can be that painful thing which makes others reel back is disgust. We all have our own carbuncle, and at times it can be difficult to see the ruby in the boil because it's not just a matter of perspective. When the carbuncle hurts, it is not a ruby. We can't turn it into a ruby just by knowing it could become one. We have to work to make it a ruby. And that's hard to do when you're in pain and don't really believe carbuncles can be rubies.