Alchemist I

Though sometimes it may seem unlikely
amid the myriad mithers of bills unpaid, bills rising,
buttered crumpets, minor indiscretions and irritations,
when getting just a single thought down before the next
interruption bobs cheerfully around the door, seems
an insurmountable task,
in matters alchemical
each of us is entirely alone.

Oh it may be that we study the same tracts and treatises,
and scout-like crouch to examine the mercurial footprints
of those who trod this path before us,
scraping what crumbs of understanding we can from those
who's caution made
obscurity an obsession
else
discerning those who's offerings were inflated
with a self-importance and posture
for purposes pecunious and avaricious,
a perfectly abominable pairing.

An iterative process, as I have said before and elsewhere.
Every re-examination revealing
aspects overlooked,
giving insights, once blindly rejected.

A frustrating feeling of being so close.
Questioning why I cannot be mindful of this all the time?
Ah, but there's the rub.
Each time bedding a little deeper,
each seed still deeper in the dark fertile soil of the subconscious.

Remember!

No, it is gone.

Remember again!

Blanched fingertip hold on a cliff edge, desperate not to fall

Once more into sleep,
Gurdjieff Shouting in my ear.

WAKE UP.

Remember!

An iterative process.
Recall that I have mentioned that before.

A return to the theme,
though in point of fact I have never left it.
Impossible, though I may proclaim elsewhere otherwise,
to escape eternity.
Yet again it slips unseen,
behind a horizon of humdrum,
unmoved, uneventful.
We can dichotomise till the cows return,
though it is hardly helpful.

Damn it.

Remember!

Perhaps the root of it is this:
each man is many, a collection of sometimes competing ambitions.
The lonely one might remember, but is often shouted down,
How well Screwtape knew us and counselled appeal to our appetites.

A glimpse.
Soars ascending. spiralling eagle lofty
over a plain, mundane, till again
crashing Icarus blackened, unconscious.
Sinks into the seared meat
nauseous, not nihilistic
Sick of the same old, same old
treadmill turn of tedium
tramping through the streets
alone among the masses
who's healthy indifference hurts us not at all,
but rather produces a wave of pity
that laps chronic upon the shore of humanity.

For we are ever at the water's edge.
Casting our nets into the ocean,
searching the shoreline,
splitting oysters,
perhaps to pluck a pearl.
Be wary of wisdom,
layer upon layer accreted about a mote of grit.
Pithy aphorism, printed on a poster,
put up in your room.
Inspirational and indistinguishable from all the rest,
dross and leavings that leave the experience unexpressed.


Inexpressible
the experience leaves us tongue tied.
Eternally.
Oh, but there lies the truth of it.
Never quite forgotten,
even when we are submerged beneath a shit-load of
cancer, suicide, betrayal and murder.
High drama, most undramatic,
after the first loss,
all else is surface.

STATIC

Alchemist II  (13+) By way of being the second part of an iterative process. #2253501 by Adherennium Dr of Phoolishness