Advertising is filling up spaces in our lives,
oversaturating them with salient words and images that carry no meaning,
leaving no space for thought and action, only for reaction,
robbing us of time and space.
After all of the years learning to pay attention,
I find that the most useful ability is the ability to ignore.
The mad eye of the sun is rising above suburban rooftops, tinting the morning fog blood-red, twisting bows of the trees – its arteries.
A frightened crow is yelling at it to stop, but it keeps coming – inexorable, implacable, indifferent;
making familiar landscape writhe out of the confines of expectations,
making commuters shudder and hunch their shoulders against the cosmic winds of uncertainty.
Breathe in deep the cold air, let the harsh silhouette imprint on your retinas
– today anything can happen.
Principles and rules are very important, they make you think why breaking them in this case is justifiable.
Thinking requires freedom to question, it is a necessary prerequisite.
Hence, there is no such thing as “right thinking”.
There is either free thinking or no thinking at all.
That is why people who think always end up outside any establishment –
whatever it is attempting to establish.
I’d rather lose an arm and a leg
than be afraid of trying.
After all, limbs and bank accounts
can be fixed,
but a broken spirit is irreparable;
it will haunt you
for the rest of your life –
which would be extremely trying,
indeed.
Our landscapes are haunted
by monuments of the past:
castles and churches –
protection from greed and fear.
New landscapes are coming,
new desolate surfaces – Moon and Mars,
inhabited by curiosity
how will they appear?
Sunlight entangled in accumulation
of spider webs –
more palatable, softer,
but half-dispersed;
as reason and perception –
caught in the web of history,
enriched,
but also limited…
“To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”
(Plato, The Republic)
Perception is but shadow, forsooth,
both images and thoughts – reflected glow;
You cannot tell illusion from the truth.
Choose prettiest, sit back, enjoy the show.
“Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment – originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit.”
(Charles Darwin, Descent of Man)
“On the whole, every new aesthetic reality makes man’s ethical reality more precise. For aesthetics is the mother of ethics; The categories of “good” and “bad” are, first and foremost, aesthetic ones…”
(Joseph Brodsky, Nobel lecture)
Out of respect for life and beauty individuality of culture grows. Like old trees, it takes thousands of years to develop, but minutes to destroy…
