Artwork © Richard Spisak

 

Chapter 14

Emerson, in one poetic albeit vague statement, expresses something to the effect that one should accept the individuals who, through happenstance, have become his acquaintances and the environment in which he finds himself. By that, he must mean that one must accept the normalcy that is the framework of life and which is inevitably shallow as it emphasizes the expedient of the mundane, the pragmatic, and the vulgar for individuals to successfully survive, thrive, and get on with their lives, going through redundant, predictable, and petty steps of falling in love, seeking money and career, reproducing, getting discontent in the waning brevity of life, and so divorcing and remarrying for a next generation to emerge and another transition to begin. If vulgar and crude in ribald humor, myopic, and solipsistic, this is their means of staying embedded in concerns that bring about that transition of one generation to the next. If unconcerned about ideas of justice, equity, and other “virtues,” inner depths over ostensible motivations, extenuating circumstances, and myriad other complexities, or for even overlooking the splendor of life, they should be forgiven as such considerations are impediments to those aims.

Apart from others in concentrating on deeper realities that are unrelated to that fixation on survival and thriving in society, an intellectual must nonetheless accept the mainstream even though it is antithetical, indifferent, and sometimes even hostile to his emotional affinity, intellectualism, and personal growth. He must not, it can be inferred from Emerson, expend energy fighting less than optimal conditions, but instead must allow the fallow and inclement nature of the environment and those that populate it to provide, by their presence, fodder for thought as they too are rich in depth percolating below the surface like life in the heated bathing pools of Europa under its thick layers of ice, and they too are a source that engenders in a thoughtful man philosophical speculations that can proliferate in the mind like wildflowers as empathy processes perspectives with as much accuracy as is humanly possible for greater understanding.

Admittedly, at times empathy renders wrong conclusions and sometimes one becomes manipulated by the object of empathetic consideration in untoward directions as this mental faculty uses imagination to arrive at some degree of understanding, and imagination, even when employed for rational discernment, is not infallible. However, this is the faculty that we have and it is better than no faculty at all. Just as it is a laborious task for anyone to imagine states of feeling and thought that are not his own, for an intellectual the embracing of that which is superficial ad nauseam is not only onerous but unpalatable. But then the vast majority of interactions which are transactional in some way or another are superficial for intellectuals as well.

Artwork © Richard Spisak

Downtown Honolulu seems to be under an enormous cloud of smoked methamphetamine and cannabis stretching as a mist into Waikiki and Pearl Harbor, and although perennially sunny in days of a non-ceasing springtime, Honolulu with its mountainous hills, palm trees, beaches, Yellow Tang and Striped Marlin fish, and even its rife feral chickens is a specious paradise indeed, especially with that asphyxiating cloud and the cloud in my mind that has trouble believing that my 27 or 28 years in Thailand could go away like dispersed smoke, while knowing that all things do. As for my homeless peers, they are invariably chemically dependent, ignorant and crazed scavengers. The brighter ones might be thought of as freeloaders although more euphemistically and more accurately they do not care to be commodified in the rat race to slave away to have and get ahead and who can blame them for that when, metaphysically, our lives are anything but solid and fluent so actual having and being are beyond our grasp.

Honolulu, as I understand it, has become a dumping ground for homeless people in the continental USA. Excessive homeless individuals can be flown out here to mitigate the burdens of states. This week a transsexual woman, actually a man, hit me in the nose at the rest stop where I wash my clothes and catch the van back to my dumpster home in Sand Island; A woman, presumably a misandrist, leaving the city bus, hurled expletive-enhanced invective at me and nearly shot mace or pepper spray into my face; A lunatic deliberately smashed a glass container on the street to see what the glass shards would hit; and as I waited for the van a man attempting to rebuild his makeshift tent that blew over in the wind shouted his vitriol, accusing me of staring at him, while a dog of one homeless proprietor bit into someone’s leg, so I think embracing one’s environment and society is different from liking it. But it is not easy for those boasting of their petty concerns and appetites to appreciate the intellectual any more than the intellectual can of those who never seem to be conscious of anything but getting money, power, and status and fulfilling sexual, acquisitive, and delectable appetites. But just as ethical intentions are not ethics if stillborn singular subjects of the imagination of the brain so the intellect creates innovations of inventions, morals, and thought based upon the real world, and if we cite Aristotle’s Poetics, tragedy in art (I think that can include all drama and comedy as well) is a beautified tragedy of life. By witnessing a more palatable aspect of tragedy it allows catharsis and emotional healing to take place, especially if our tragedy was either not witnessed or was deliberately repudiated by those who are culpable for it and have a vested interest in gaslighting, further victimizing the victim. Art has its purpose and is born from the real tragedy of existence.

 

Steven David Justin Sills is a literary writer in Honolulu Hawaii. His early book of poetry is in many academic libraries in the United States with a scanned copy in the Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/americanpapyrusp0000sill. Sills’ early work can also be found on the Online Book Page at the University of Pennsylvania. After Sills finished his last literary novel “The Three Hour Lady” over three years ago, he began devoting time to writing a long war poem about what is happening in Ukraine. Most of those 25 cantos. including his most recent canto, can be seen at this particular journal. As his graduate degree is great books of the Western Canon, he has been hoping to write his own ethical treatise, and this forum affords him that opportunity.

As the Arkansas Gazette says, “Twenty-six poems make up this first published book by Steven Sills, 26, of Fayetteville. Sills’ vision is often a dark one. He writes of the homeless, the abused, the forgotten people. He is also intrigued with the mystical, the sensual, loss–as in losing those whom we hold dear, such as a spouse or lover–as well as the lost, such as someone who is autistic, who seems unreachable. Sills’ skillful use of the language to impart the telling moments of a life is his strength. He chooses his words carefully, employing a well-developed vocabulary. He is thoughtful about punctuation, where to break lines and when to make a new stanza. He’s obviously well versed in “great” literature. Sills’ command of language helps to soften the blows of some of the seemier passages found in his poems. Seamy may not be the best word to use. Perhaps gritty is a better word or just plain matter-of-fact and to the point… ”

Richard Spisak began his artistic career as a light artist in the Lumonics Studios of Mel Tanner, a legendary Light Artist. After serving under Jack Horkheimer as a planetarium operator at the Miami Space-Transit Planetarium, he left to begin traveling with Lumist Kenvin Lyman, whose show Dazzleland Studios traveled across America. Richard later worked as a Laserist with LASERIUM and Laser Productions, served as a technical producer for the festival company PACE Concerts, and later as operations Manager and Senior Producer at WWHP and WTCN-TV in Stuart Florida.

Richard writes for Theatre, TV, radio, and the web. He published two short story collections, Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors, and Between the Silences. Followed by his poetry collection 7370 Allen Drive and the recently released STONE POETRY. Richard also produces “POETS of the East,” a televised webcast featuring poets from across the globe.