posted December 30, 2009 11:49 AM         

"In the sense that I believe in form,
I do not believe in content, and in the
sense that I believe in content,
I do not believe in form."
~ Valus

Truth is a hummingbird in flight. It dazzles us, when it hovers near, and intrigues us, largely, because we cannot make out its features. The wings drum, more rapid than the human eye. But we demand to see more, and, already, to communicate our vision.

We seem to blink with eyes wide open. Even our most fluid speech appears to falter, and stutter, and struggle, to articulate something so mercurial, -- so mutable, and mobile, -- as the Truth.

Our thoughts, words, suspicions, assumptions, and conclusions, like snapshots, blur her form, but we continue to declare, in haste, the shapes we see.

Not satisfied, we want the bird. More than the bird, we want to hold her in flight, and study her with eyes as quick as she has wings. Impossible!

But passion will have her way, though it means the very death of what we love, -- and though the murder itself be a kind of mockery, or mimicry, of the act of love.

We shall have the bird, not in flight, but in body. We shall have the form of a truth, but never the Truth. And with it, we shall have remorse.

Our "truths" shall be epitaphs on the graves of disincarnated Truth. Pathetic and banal, for all that they recall, and cannot inspire back to life.

Will we understand the strange obsession of the murderer, who pleases himself by fondling and exploring the body, -- the limbs, breasts, nails, eyelids, and pores, -- of his victims; now that we hold the dead bird of Truth, as it were, in the cold palm of our hand?

Will we cherish a secret thrill, as we splay open the wings, like a woman's legs, and peel back the feathers, lust dripping indecently at our fingertips?

How long before we turn away in shame, disgust, or remorse? How long before we confess that our lover lies silent, while we vainly pretend to speak, -- to flatter, flirt, or coddle, -- in her voice?

The consciousness of what we've done dawns like a dark night. The Moon shines to remind us of our ignorance of the true source of borrowed light.

We are drowned in the cries of animals, the living and the dead, whom we've trapped and stuffed. Surrounded by cages, in the mad Zoo of our discoveries. And farther than ever from the natural world.

Where is the wisdom and freedom we sought? Where is the breathlessness and innocence of flight?

Or, if we cannot know such things, -- what, then, is the substance of our transgression?

What is our sin?

Only this:

To have written,
and not to write.