Language is my forte. To a fault, in some sense, “too much of a good thing” at times. But I’ve learned that words can be hollow, merely formulaic to manipulate people into mirroring my performance-art of an inauthentic life. The W. R. Rodgers poem excerpt I shared yesterday so elegantly described how language can decay and even die, becoming what is called a “dead language.” And Rodgers singled out politicians in the cited poem, accusing them of falsifying language to accomplish selfish ends:
Words are “now they are the life-like skins and screens
Stretched skillfully on frames and formulae,
To terrify or tame, cynical shows
Meant only to deter or draw men on,
The tricks and tags of every demagogue,
Mere scarecrow proverbs, rhetorical decoys,
Face-savers, salves, facades, the shields and shells
Of shored decay behind which cave minds sleep
And sprawl like gangsters behind bodyguards.”
(PLEASE NOTE, AM HAVING TROUBLE WITH EDITOR; COULD NOT ITALICIZE ABOVE QUOTE)
This morning I discovered relevant wisdom from the 13th century Persian mystic Rumi who emphasized the importance of living a dual life, abiding in and respecting the “false” world that Rodgers had in mind and another where authentic moments are available here and there. He described this “in-between” residence as a “small market between towns.” He presents a solitude that one will find there, which the mystics and many artists are very familiar
A small market between towns
There’s a town where the soul is fed, where love hears truth and thrives, and another town that produces lies that degrade and starve love. Your voice is a small market set up between the two towns. Goods arrive from both directions, flimsy, fake items and honestly made, wholehearted tools and wares. Some travelers immediately know which is which. Some voices open a shop and spend sixty years cheating customers, gossiping when they leave, and flattering women to get their attention. Others weary of the marketplace altogether and rarely go there.
Rumi
Version by Coleman Barks, in “The Soul of Rumi”
HarperCollins, 2001
literary lew 