restoring awe and reverence to our lives

he lays an increasing stress on the need to restore an epic and mythological dimension to life – a sense of awe and reverence to the world.

a comment on the work of Pier Paulo Pasolini

I don’t know much more about Pasolini than what I’ve just learned by way of RT’s blog. what I do know is that I relate to the importace of cultivating awe and reverence for the world.

perhaps it is a combination of my chronic dysthymia and overruling obsession with riding waves upon the ocean, which have given me passion for wind, and rain, and flowers growing out from cracks in the concrete.

there are so many distractions. and we are constantly being told be each other and by the establishment that what’s important is all that is new in human creation. we get further and further away from the very basic facts of life -from flexing muscle and tendon, from deep breaths, from the exertion of self propulsion, from the basic need to subsist.

instead we revel in the triffling trivilalities of rich people’s weddings, and new technologies which increasingly deplete our ecosystem, and new medications and treatments for ailments that are preventable by living an active life and eating real food. it’s perplexing really.

and when someone presents us with imagery of the awe of the world -a seagulls’ shadow drifting across the receding sands on the beach, salty foam blowing sweetly upon the onshore breeze, the perpetual movement of water as energy -we tend to categorize such things as art and we intellectualize them as art and we shelve them like a something to be stored and not used.

but are we not missing the point? is not the evident beauty in such imagery a beckoning call to action -or to inaction rather? a call to stop and think about the needless complexities we create for ourselves? to think about the simplicity of swimming in the ocean, or going for a walk, or simply sitting outdoors and watching the wind blow the leaves in the trees?

I know the answer. I know it. our adversity is not war, famine and plague. our adversity is disinterest in the magnitude of life, of blood flowing through our veins, of passion. it is a deeply hidden adversity -so much so that we don’t even see it there, so we rarely overcome it.

it is often only through art that I am reminded. we must thank those artists for they suffer in their pursuits to free us from complacency. thanks my friend for today’s inspiration. I hope all if well on your side of the world.