Prolegomena

Tell all the Truth but Tell it Slant

Some things can not be spoken directly and
the truth of the  matter is that it takes lies,
fictions, circumlocutions  to do  justice to
apparently what COUNTS most. True?

 

It's at the borders of the stunning and the
offensive just shy of transgressing these 2 lines
(wherever  they might  be said to be drawn)
that THE GOOD STUFF  begins  to reveal itself.
Frontiers yet unknown until crossed, trespassed,
violated.

Know what I’m saying?  Don’t have to define
 “THE GOOD STUFF,” do we?  Let IT be loose 
and ill-defined for now.

We all know what it refers to  in general; it’s
when we start trying to get SPECIFIC that  the
confusion might be said to generate. The
more specific we get about these  LOFTY
AND HIGH ~MATTERS (truth & honesty;
love & lies,  goodness  & beauty,   atrocities
& the horrors…) the more we generate
dissension,  the more disagreement the more
diversity and  diversion,  squabbles and scruples,
threat and terror:

These tensions rise with specificity as we try to
determine the Good Stuff among our selves and
SELVES. Yes?   Consider as a rule  (for the moment), 
that in trying to argue-out and communicate  what’s
GOOD and what’s NOT:

         the more GENERAL the less Trouble

         the more SPECIFIC the more agony.

Notice how general that rule is. And yet: it’s just shy
of  where it starts hitting the fan, just short of where
dissension breaks out and tensions crack open—just
at those borders that IT gets interesting, true?   IT.
Leave IT undefined for now.