Controlled Folly

All action and participation in illusion is folly.

So said Don Juan (Matus)...
                     and Siddartha Guatama, more or less...

If either of those two pillars of humanity actually existed.


Even if they were fictional characters--even if all the saints, masters, avatars & pubah kahunas throughout time were merely fabrications of my own hyperactive creative mind--it makes no difference. A piece of wisdom is either true or it is not.

This gem of insight is most certainly veritable.

A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering. – The Buddha

The difference between the man of knowledge and the normal man, is that he knows his actions are folly... and still chooses to enact them. His "controlled folly" is even more intense and masterful than the stumbling of the delusional because he knows it is his art. As such, despite full foreknowledge that this action is ludicrous, and will not likely result in any profound change in the true nature of his beingness... the master fool will choose to act.

With abandon and gusto!

Apropos to foolishness... in my last post, I decided to give away a book I wrote if even a few people indicated that they wanted me to. Knowing full well how few people actually read this blog, and having a rather sparse amount of comments in total, despite calls for participation and setting it up so that people can comment anonymously... (Who doesn't hate being forced to sign in or join some OpenID BS just to leave a virtual 'sup?) Yet and still, I proffered the fool's hope.

Is it surprising that no one begged me to bestow my goodies?

Thinking it through, I realized that it was an empty gesture anyway. I will go ahead and publish it, and anyone who wants a free copy can have one. This is pretty much my policy with all my writing. Feel free to steal it... distribute it even. As long as people don't alter or appropriate my words, dissemination is the goal.

At any rate, I have always lived the foolish creed. And most of it was controlled, if not fully un-self-conscious (or well-nigh unconscious.  ;-) Zorba the Greek, if ol' Z preferred yajé to vino. Wizardly intense, but not really attached to the results... interested & fully invested, but not serious.  (Note that serious is generally prefaced by the word deadly.)

I've decided over the past months to step it up a notch even. I'm a veteran producer and playwright in this Dream Theatre, but I have tended to favor cozy corners where the light isn't very lime. I don't imagine I will ever really enjoy taking center stage, but I do like to give a masterful performance--In the studio, or other makeshift laboratories usually--I don't cower backstage, but I am usually there VVIP behind the scenes... orchestrating... or at least enabling.

<the abstract incognito>

At times it has been too much controlled... and not enough folly, I suppose.

This dream wizard is loosening up a bit, though. Dancing with the hyperspace harlequins is one thing, but if you are always the DJ and never on the dancefloor, your perspective gets skewed.

Who knows?

Perhaps a heartfelt performance actually makes a difference. At the very least, the artist's craftsmanship, and the blinding, blazing soul infused in it, stand as edified monuments to novelty and life. Signposts... no, totem poles pointing towards the ineffable, shaking the foundations of delusion in all who become aware of them.

Or not.