Get Real

Dear American Literati and Colleagues Across
                  the Curriculum

             

If you stand right fronting and face to face
to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on
both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and
feel its sweet edge dividing you through the
heart and marrow, and so you will happily
conclude your mortal career. Be it life or
death, we crave only reality. If we are really
dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and
feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let
us go about our business.

     Thoreau: the bum: ripping-off
     society and making virtue of it.
 
       Get real. for crying out loud.
                    Really! 
 
Easier said than done and it’s  usually merely
an exclamation of disapproval or patronizing
advice and has as much substance as  “terrific”
or “awesome” or “o my  god” : gesture is all it
is and if someone asked you. “well what do
you mean  by real or terrific or awesome or
god,”  they’d just be  missing your point
quibbling over  specifics. Devilish details.
 
     Choose: Velocity or Position.
 
Catch the spirit and move on down the road
or demand specificity and bring the converse
action to a grinding halt:  round & round we go, 
down &  down we go weaving  that old black
magic called love.
 
      Both?  Velocity AND Position?
        That would be awesome.
 
Like: once you see a fact (pick a fact any fact)
face to face it’s like seeing both sides  of the coin
at once, flipping you out as it were and you
conclude your mortal  careering and so it goes
and goes.
 
Like, I said.
Not Is.
 
A reduction is all.
Keeping IT real.

Sam