“Unappreciated ability becomes devitalized, breeds a self-indulgent sickness—a self pity that suffers alone.” – Austin O. Spare
We live in a world where man’s dissatisfaction appears to be a chronic condition. Like wounded crows and tigers we ramble around in jungles of stainless steel and fear. In search of our voice and mind, in search of kindred of spirit and lost lovers we roam the nights and tunnels of this world in search for what affirms our beauty, grace and purpose.
A man or woman void of appreciation and purpose will eventually create a purpose; it be bound in lies or the knotted cords of Fate. If the purpose is being created from the ‘unappreciated ability’, the disease and suffering it breeds will of course be that most unfitting attribute of any sorcerer or sage, namely self-importance of the most boring kind. This way ward self importance often comes with a boastful and venomous tongue that tries to contaminate the world with its devitalizing venom.
This can turn us into warriors of lost causes and spokesmen of our own suffering self pity. We kick to all corners, decapitate the heads of those we admire so we can become more visible in the landscape… so our suffering can be seen in a hopeless game of fascination - and thus we can experience the cloudy reflections of appreciation… The world is a wicked labyrinth where each choice, each word, each turn at the forked road gives something that speaks of our purpose – or denies it. We can choose many strategies in this hopeless soliloquy of unappreciation where so many of us allow becoming our self pity, a degeneration of possibility, an alienation from the core of Self, a self indulgent disaster.
The suffering of self pity can take many shades and shapes and all of them aim towards glorification of one’s own emptiness. The vacancy is rapidly filled with obscurations of one’s self importance, vagueness and venom. The self injurer turns into a beast bleeding words and enigmas, the bloodied steps of the scolded talon leaves marks of melancholia. What is surprisingly simple in the way towards appreciation of self – is that it needs to begin with our honest self appreciation of our worth. From this purpose grows forth and in these lands of civilized defeat vital rivers, overflowing in honey drenched Love, shall start to crack from everywhere and fill our soul with beauty and contentment. For, I believe the man and woman who is content, who hath a happy constitution are those marked by the appreciation that brings vitality and purpose to our lives. I believe that each time we perceive beauty we can embrace love or melancholy – because beauty hath a secret liaison with Saturn as well as Venus. We can choose the ivory towers of our own failed self importance or we can choose the merriment amongst kin and kindred in Gardens of Bliss and Love. We can choose the spirit of kinship rather than the spirit of distance and enmity, because in truth we are all One as golden drops of honey drawn from the same hive…
The Eyes of Beauty
You are a sky of autumn and rose;
But all the sea of sadness in my blood
Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose
Salt with the memory of the bitter flood
In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o’er
That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate
By woman’s tooth and talon; ah no more
Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate
It is a ruin where jackals rest,
And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay –
A perfume swims about your naked breast!
Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way!
With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared
Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared
- Charles Baudelaire