Mud pact

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour

William Blake
excerpt from Auguries of Innocence


Reverence. We need more of that juice in times like these. Blake’s lines might sound clichéd to some, but every so often I find it well to play an old record. Just so to balm a frustrated soul and knock in perspective. Globally and locally, things just seem a little off-orbit lately.

Newspaper cartoons leading to cries of beheading and boycotts and actual arson. Heads shaved over a mahjong session. Toxic dumping. Illegal logging. Allegations of citizenship and Bumi status up for lelong in Sabah. Crooked bridge and airspace. It’s getting tiresome.

Especially infuriating is when groups or individuals do cheap sales talk in the capacity of an honoured position. Justifying that black is white. I don’t know about you, but I can smell false patriotism from the real thing, vindictive law-enforcing from true peacekeepers, and all the pong of serve-myself-first attitudes. It smells like fresh vomit.

Selfishness impoverishes. Our bank accounts may get fat but our marrow dries up.

Reverence. If only we could begin to see the halo in all things – be it mud, rock, fire, animal, humans – as a direct extension of ourselves, of an Immensity beyond meager scriptures, that I am you and we are one, then maybe we can safely halve the problems we face today.

Belligerence beheads everybody, not just Danish newspaper folk.

"But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all.
I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried. I run all around the house. I knew just what it was…
Listen, God love everything you love – and a mess of stuff you don't.
But more than anything else God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing.
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."

Alice Walker
excerpt from The Color Purple


If there was something I’d dearly wish to behead, it’d be the medusa of belligerence. If there was anything worth shaving, it'd be the locks of ignorance and deceit. If there was one bridge I’d die to help build, it’d be the bridge of commonality. Nothing much else.

Look, look, look… and then see. See the halo. We are all mud and spit and fire. What’s there to hate in that.