An old philosophical point of discussion to mull over while I am on vacation next week.
What is Spirit, and how may we understand it?
I am reprinting a post "The Sock Drawer" for Sunday while I am off with the Army of Northern Virginia: we are seeking to bedevil General McClellan and the Army of the Potomac around Sharpsburg, Maryland. A creek runs through it.... Antietam Creek. You may have heard of it. So I am off and I shall have that post about socks.
When I wrote that post, I asked myself one morning whether I could dash off a post about anything at all, anything under the sun, something which had not been gnawing at my attention. Could I just do it cold?
So I looked around the bedroom and saw the drawer full of my socks, irregularly stashed and positively seething with the urgency of King Cotton. (Sorry, still in persona as Johnny Reb. If I have to state my Confederate beliefs, I shall avouch that I fight for States' Rights!!... ... especially the Right of States to own Slaves!! There is a lot of revising history going on about the Civil War, as you know.
Truth be known, if I had been around, I would not have sufficient wealth to own slaves. There was a difference in philosophy - as there always is! - between the history view-festive of the rich and powerful, and the view-onerous of the poor cannon fodder upon whose broad backs the feast of history is spread.)
So I wrote a story about a drawer of socks. It took no longer than 60 minutes, including the time for finding a photo and proof reading. And it was pretty good.
That's Spirit.
Now I am trying to be published and am sending things out and accumulating rejections from the enormous momentum of what-is-already-there. The tastes of mankind are like elephant footprints: there is an astounding amount of force involved in putting that ungainly pod down into the mud along the water hole, and once it comes down under the force elephantine, it creates a big impression which endures.
It endures until another pachyderm comes along.
That's Matter.
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4 comments:
For me, Spirit is contemplating or being a part of everything that there is, and everything that there isn't. Matter is focusing on a tiny snippet of life, without realizing that the aura of infinity surrounds it.
Also, what are you trying to get published? Is it a novel?
And very interesting that you should just bring up about Slavery and the Civil War as I am currently studying its facets myself, and especially examining The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in relation to it. Also, I was just wondering: in the era that Huck Finn was set, the Union and Confederacy had not yet been polarized from the whole (I don't think), so did the North still have slaves? But perhaps not as many as the South since they did not have the huge cotton plantations.
Ben
Baysage is the expert on the War Between The States, very much an expert. But since he is not here now, I shall answer.
The North did not have any slavery, except for instances of debt servitude here and there in the early days. One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the Original Union was slavery and how to handle it. That's why the Constitution has such odd provisions in its early form dealing with slavery: they are the compromises worked out between the non-slaves states and the slave states.
At the time of Huck Finn not as many people had been polarized, but there was indeed polarization: from John Brown to Edward Ruffin there were radicals.
You will see the Civil War through the eyes of other people and writers.
Do not stop there.
See films, documentaries, read diaries...
Try to fathom the human dimension of it all and ask yourself this question:
Why are there things in Human History that cannot be solved short of War and Death?
This is a question I am working on. I am looking at the film "Fight Club", the history of John Brown, Slavery, and our own times from 1999 to the present and wondering what forces compel us to disaster and why can we not stop short? (I see what I think are parallels between Fight Club and John Brown)
And I do not believe there was any other course short of the Civil War that would have changed the minds of men.
Why? Why? What it karma? Was it vengeance for the evil of Slavery?
I think that is an important question for any of us to answer.
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trying to publish poems, working on a book of unknown genre, and possible study of some failed communities in the aftermath of the Great Impoverishment (2008).
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ps.
the more I think about it, the more interesting that question becomes: why we paint ourselves into corners from which we cannot escape short of violence...
@ Ben
Professional Civil War historian here: within a couple of decades of the end of the Revolution, the northern states had gotten rid of slavery. You are correct in your surmise that large-scale agriculture was much better suited for slave labor. I don't really have much doubt that if black bondage had been economically viable in the North, we would've had slavery taken root there too.
@Montag Spirit is the life force of the universe. Some people worship it, some people are ever aware of its presence, some people think about it occasionally, and some people don't even have a clue that it's there.
Well said, Sage of the Plains (and the Bay).
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