NOW WE ARE AS LOST AS THE ONCE GREAT HERDS (With Selections From ‘A Vision’ by William Butler Yeats)
Four hours from Paris, Texas you told me your kidneys were shot.
Four hours from Paris, Texas you told me you’d taken the shot.
The antithetical tincture closes during this phase, the being is losing knowledge of its old antithetical life.
The conflict between that portion of the life of feeling which appertains to his unity, and that portion he has in common with others, coming to an end, has begun to destroy that knowledge.
I got my mother on the phone in a phone booth.
She said I’m making you an Atomic Bomb sandwich – the kind you love.
I said mother dear, I’m driving an eighteen wheeler.
Oh mother dear, three of the tires are shot.
He can hardly, if action and the intellect that concerns action are taken from him, recreate his dream life; and when he says ‘Who am I?’, he finds it difficult to examine his thoughts in relation to one another, but begins to find them easy to examine them in relation to action.
He can examine those actions themselves with a new clearness. Now for the first time since Phase 12, Goethe’s saying is almost true: ‘Man knows himself by action only, by thought never.’
Oh mother dear, there is a cloud – silvery and blue, hanging above me.
This phase is the beginning of the artificial, the abstract, the fragmentary, and the dramatic.
Unity of being is no longer possible, for the being is compelled to live in a fragment of itself and to dramatise that fragment.
She prayed to Mother Mary swirling in a purple robe.
She prayed to Mother Mary lighting candles on a crimson heart within a crown of thorns.
The primary tincture is closing, direct knowledge of self in relation to action is ceasing to be possible.
The being only completely knows that portion of itself which judges fact for the sake of action.
When the man lives according to phase, he is now governed by conviction, instead of by a ruling mood, and is effective only insofar as he can find this conviction.
Mother dear, I am four hours from Paris, Texas.
Oh mother dear, my passenger fast asleep.
Mother dear left me a note: Your Atomic Bomb sandwich waits on your favourite plate. I left you everything I own. I know it’s not much.
Light streamed through a squat crystal shot glass.
His aim is so to use an intellect which turns easily to declamation, emotional emphasis, that it serves conviction in a life where effort, just in so far as its object is passionately desired, comes to nothing.
He desires to be strong and stable, but as Unity of Being and self-knowledge are both gone, and it is too soon to grasp at another unity through primary mind, he passes from emphasis to emphasis.
In the kalidoscopic setting sun I pass the drive-in movie theatre on Medicine Hill.
On Medicine Hill a cowgirl told me to give it my best shot.
The strength from conviction, derived from a Mask of the first quarter antithetically transformed, is not founded upon social duty, though that may seem so to others, but is tempermentally formed to fit some crisis of personal life.
His thought is immensely effective and dramatic, arising always from some immediate situation, a situation found or created by himself, and may have great permanent value as the expression of an exciting personality.
The thought is always an open attack; or a sudden emphasis, an extravagence, or an impassioned declamation of some general idea, which is a more veiled attack.
The name of the movie on the highway marquee in bold block letters came into view.
Thistles in a ball blew across the hood.
NOW WE ARE AS LOST AS THE ONCE GREAT HERDS.
The Creative Mind being derived from Phase 11, he is doomed to attempt the destruction of all that breaks or encumbers personality, but this personality is conceived of as a fragmentary momentary intensity.
The mastery of images threatened or lost at Phase 18, may, however, be completely recovered,but there is less symbol, more fact.
Vitality from dreams has died out, and a vitality from fact has begun which has for its ultimate aim the mastery of the real world.
The waterfall after an abrupt fall continues upon a lower level; ice turns to water, or water to vapour: there is a new chemical phase.
NOW WE ARE AS LOST AS THE ONCE GREAT HERDS.
Four hours from Paris, Texas I click on my high beams.
Four hours from Paris, Texas I take out my tools.
When lived out of phase there is hatred or contempt of others, and instead of seeking conviction for its own sake, the man takes up opinions that he may impose himself upon others.
He is tyrannical and capricious, and his intellect is called ‘The Unfaithful,’ because, being used for victory alone, it will change its ground in a moment, and delight in some new emphasis, not caring whether old or new have consistency.
The Mask is derived from that phase where perversity begins, where artifice begins, and has its discord from Phase 25, the last phase where the artificial is possible; the Body of Fate is therefore enforced failure of action, and many at this phase desire action above all things as a means of expression.
Whether the man be in or out of phase, there is the desire to escape from Unity of Being or any approximation towards it, for Unity can be but a simulacrum now.
And in so far as the soul keeps its memory of that potential Unity there is conscious antithetical weakness.
He must now dramatize the Mask through the Will and dreads the Image, deep within, of the old antithetical tincture at its strongest, and yet this Image may seem infinitely desirable if he could but find the desire.
When so torn into two, escape when it comes may be so violent that it brings him under the False Mask and the False Creative Mind.
The man in the mirror said my kidneys are shot.
The man in the mirror said I took the shot.
I found various cave paintings online, some images of buffalo, and photographs of an old drive-in movie theatre to juxtapose. All were anonymous. I obviously do not claim copyright for these works. However, I have fashioned new digital work(s) for purposes of commentary and art within a not-for-profit context. I placed my watermark on these images to take credit for creative digital artwork.
I studied a map of where we lived in the Missouri, Ozarks when I was a boy. I realized it was only four hours to Paris, Texas. For some reason I liked the idea.
I found a free PDF download of W.B. Yeats’ work A Vision. It is a mighty work. Not easy. The inscription: ‘Finished at Thoor, Ballylee, 1922, in a time of Civil War.’
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