Secrets

Truth or Dare!

I've never liked secrets. Like any man who pursues the truth of things … I'd formed an unearthly penchant for openness … that sometimes defies the dress code … we observe as social decorum. But at the back of my mind … I realized that I was pushing openness to its limits … because I wanted to know what remains secret notwithstanding our declaration of transparency. It finally came to rest on objects … a tree … a man … a building … and I realized that as we see these objects … our mind sees the secret of what they are.

Its my impression that the Greeks … who moved out of Asia Minor … sought to erase the secret … and rely simply on what the eyes sees. Xerxes I who came to invade … Greece … gave 100 strokes of the cane to the river at Thermopylae … because it flooded its banks and caused his defeat. The Greeks … left the Persians to concern themselves with secrets … and went on to accentuate on transparency … in a long line of experience that continued onwards to Rome … Spain … Britain and then the Unites States. It all but shut down the issue of secrets … in the experience of man.

Undoubtedly … the American gift to the world has been the … manner of speech … that expresses in lucid detail … what a man actually experiences in physical reality. It points to the observation of his eyes … the touch of his hands … the way his feet moves … and so forth … and it says that he is in that way totally in touch with the physical nature of his bodily experiences. Its a marvel to behold and hear … and the expression of it … proves the validity of physical reality. It brings into new reality … the objects that we behold ... a car … a pair of jeans … the architecture of a building … as it pronounces loudly the world of experience beyond the hidden nature of secrets.

Like the cat and the deer … who both live in the same habitat … the cat relies on spontaneous activity … and deals with what it encounters at the point of contact. The deer is always strategizing … for a story … that engages the secrets of what we are … as the means to the end. The cat therefore emerges as bold and active … and draws our admiration for perfect action. It appeals to the men. The deer brings a powerful … passion related impulse … that is hard to ignore … when associated with the sweet memory of its impact on our dreams.

A pal of mine at WC … wrote a poem about a woman and a riverboat. Its safe to bet … that he felt a sexual arousal … watching the riverboat … all decked out in its finery … glide smoothly over the placid waters of the river. And he must have wondered about that. Hence … he juxtaposed … both images onto an experience … that is unique and personal to him ...creating in effect … a display of his personality. Anyone reading it … must have caught the fine balance of his manner.

But it brings us to the water's edge of humanity … to consider the proposition that … a human is a little more that a riverboat. Perhaps its in the way we bring ourselves … to relate to all as closely resembling the products of nature. If man is more … its in the way … that the man finds a way to collate them into one view … that brings a satisfaction to his sensations as man in the world. A riverboat … as far as I can tell … can't do that.

We are ultimately faced with the question of … if God is there in the sky … earth water and fire … is he also highway 5 … the Dorothy Chandler pavilion … and farmers' market … implying the physical manifestation of creation. Do we draw away the human experience from the perceived inanimate objects … as being creation's finest achievement? Would that still be true of a man on Mars … without a shopping mall and the Santa Monica pier? And would a man … still be the same without a woman?

In accentuating the nature of the individual … by exclusion of all else … we deny ourselves … the totality of what we are. But in the experiences of the varieties of man … in an identity crisis … when we lose the personal and merge into the random gangs on the streets … or we submerge in the personal … in the aplomb of wealth … do we discern the nature of our personalities … with respect to self and the world? How do we measure or calibrate the difference … other than in a manner of our expression?

While the same sex arguments … have centered on much that is destructive … it does one thing … not otherwise possible. It frees the woman from being the only sexual object in the world. We continue to perfect the experience … and certainly we hope to arrive at a uniquely personal expression of the experience … that is of necessity … buried deep in the disposition of a man … about an alternative source of affection in his life. It provides a choice to his scope of passions … as to his multi-dimensional experience of pride and vanity.

Its here … that a man who has made a career of … living the transparent life … comes to in respect of the secrets that have always existed in the annals of time. In that … he views himself … as the source and end of all that is … and by its nature … lives in him as his secret of the self. It is seldom possible even to share that with another man … but may allow itself to be disguised … as an affectation of the passions. He finds that sometimes in the well of secret admiration within.

In such a well of experience … did a Napoleon … wage a war against the feuding royalty in Europe … pissed at the treatment of royalty by the French. Or the spontaneous action of a … Nelson in trouncing the mighty Spanish Armada. How did so few defeat so many at the Battle of Britain? I think we can all agree that its a secret. And sometimes … a man discovers that in himself.

Reviews

[Cory Barrett]

True beauty can be found in honest intrigue, all of the rest is lip service.