Well, dear friend and reader, S.O.S. is nearing completion. This means that I'm back from the doldrums of the blogosphere, just in time to see off winter and welcome in the plethora of springtime inspiration and cliché rebirth. Speaking of cliché, read my latest entry...
The Ophthalmologist's Dirty Little Secret
Long before I could even think,
they placed over me the lens of credulity,
as common and routine
as a childhood vaccine,
nearly drowning me in the act,
to forgive my transgressions unforeseen.
From then on, when I came upon beauty,
the sky, a face, a particular melody,
I would thank him profusely,
for I truly believed
in the creator of which this lens conceived.
And long before I could articulate an idea
they prescribed the lens of national honor,
which filtered false sentiments of superiority,
reinforced by the pressing majority,
applauding our sunlight as the brightest,
our defects the slightest,
our war the noblest fight,
our sundown the starriest night,
and making us the apple of our creator's eye,
having won his blessings and favor
so that everything within these demarcations
is the chosen fruit of his divine labor.
And not long before I could thoroughly reason,
just in time for my scholarly season,
all the trained ophthalmologists around me
had prescribed the lens of ideologies;
the Us and Them schisms,
shimmering and alluring isms,
and other divisive tendencies,
whose highbrow dogmas gave me deep conviction,
and that basic sense of inclusion -
Ah yes! - the comfort of secular religion
and its widespread, reassuring delusion.
And not long before I had reached maturity,
they prescribed the lens of achieving,
honed through the science of insecurity,
whose measurements were generally misleading,
tactfully inexact,
and by means of comparison only.
"What's the conversion rate of success,"
I once asked naively,
"into overall well-being?"
"Nothing you can afford,"
they all laughed with averted eyes,
"you're better off just dreaming."
And every time I wiped the lenses clean,
I was more bewildered than before.
It wasn't until I took them out,
I quickly realized there was more.
To find Truth, you have to know lies
and see beyond the lenses on your eyes,
for everything that stands holds a claim
in that five letter trap,
that philosophical word game,
the unreliable map.
Truth as a word is but abstraction,
suffering gravely from its meaninglessness,
though it never fails to impress
those who aspire to someday being clever.
Like all slippery ruminations,
Truth, - how I cringe at the sound -
no different than the stumbling drunken abomination
when crutch-less,
falls flat on the ground.
Truth pales next to what is true,
real and tangible, like a Doric pillar,
whose atoms are finite,
whose existence is absolute and enduring,
and whose design is humble and steadfast,
supporting a civilization.
Even the wooden crutches under Truth's scrawny arms
have more truth than Truth itself.
They are the rapping as it hobbles
in search of an easy mark;
the crashing when Truth slips,
and splits its face on the concrete
with a muted thud.
"Real truth is objectivity,"
I woke up elated one day,
"the arbitrator of all relativity!
Like a camera lens it watches
and doesn't judge.
It connects the witness and the crime.
Truth is and I am.
I am and you are.
Truth is observation.
Truth is perception," I cried,
"Truth is perception."
It was as though I had discovered a hidden lens
that ophthalmologists had ever mentioned,
the ophthalmologists' dirty little secret,
determined to keep hidden
the lens of awareness and attention.
