Ancient Chinese Revolution
I was about a million miles away last night, in ancient China. There was a revolution going on and hordes of angry revolution-crazed people were running through the narrow streets. There was huge danger everywhere and I had to keep away from the masses because the streets were too narrow to accommodate that much rage — people were being pummeled to death, like loads of them were being squished to death. A huge portion of the population died in this way over the course of the week or so that the revolution danced its way through history.
But I managed to escape. I didn’t just escape, though, I sort of put it all behind me, washed my hands of it, simply outran the revolution and the rage and the death that laid itself flat on the ground. I reached the heights of this super old Chinese castle. It was all white and suddenly everything looked a bit Mediterranean because beyond the castle turrets (I had never seen Chinese turrets before) there was a large blue sea — The Sea of China? It wasn’t the south china sea, it wasn’t anything so ordinary. I was running along the very tippy tops of the beautiful white turrets of this ancient castle. It was almost as if I was an infinitesimally small creature running along the edges of a carved ivory castle — everything was that dainty. I hopped and almost flew around the white castle with the blue sea as a backdrop, knowing I had escaped the hordes of angry masses and their death-y rage.
I love it when that happens. I love escaping the hordes and traipsing through ancient white Chinese castles instead. There’s always too much rage when you get inside the narrow-street-confines of established order. I don’t know why anyone puts up with it. In the town square and in the court of the king, in the ancient streets and in the marketplace — too many people, too much rage. Too much talking about stupid stuff that doesn’t matter, not enough basking in sunshine and certainly not enough poetry.
The people who get smashed underfoot are always so surprised to find themselves there. I don’t know what they think to themselves before they enter the fray. Maybe people think the narrow walls will stretch out wide and accommodate all the rage in the world now that they are there. People always overestimate their own value. The hordes don’t know they are hordes. They think they are individuals, each with a significant measure of value and import. No one realizes that it is precisely this overestimation of one’s worth that generates all the rage. The streets are too narrow! What part of this truth is so hard to understand? The streets can’t accommodate all those big heads and their horde-forming tendencies. Even in ancient China, the law of cause and effect still works.
One person can get away, two persons can get away. But the rest always fall for it. Who is orchestrating the revolution? No one stops to wonder. They just follow the leader straight to their ignominious doom. All the while believing that too-narrow streets will widen their stance to accommodate such brilliant hordes of death-y masses. Excuse me, but how many times has this happened now? Are we really that stupid? Apparently so. But the beautiful white castle is there, the road that leads away from the determined-to-succeed masses and their too-narrow streets is always there. There are even a bunch of other roads that crisscross the town and exist in a secret, yet not hard to find grid-pattern that just misses the hordes at every turn. I mean, not everyone likes ancient white castles. So there have to be other roads, too, maybe roads that lead through luscious forests, or roads that go around and around and take you all the way inward, like that picture of the pelican who has pierced his own belly with his long beak because he has plunged into himself, in search of bigger fish. He knows the biggest and tastiest fish always abide in the deeper regions. He knows being sliced in half by his own beak is a price that must be paid and paid willingly. No whining and complaining on the way to the gallows, please. Because while the hordes of angry revolutionaries die useless deaths in the too-narrow streets of mass-mindedness, deaths that end up meaning nothing because they are literal deaths, the wise fish know that the road of purification is as wide as the earth but dotted with checkpoints where stern officers take away all your possessions, dress you in a white shroud, and send you to your death. This death leads through ancient white castles or it leads through secret roadways on a grid of truth that just misses the masses at every turn, but the destination is the same for each person who takes this alternate route and moves away from the masses who keep dying useless deaths.
Everyone fears death. That’s why there’s so much rage. If there was no death, there would be no reason to feel enraged about anything, ever. But death is the greatest of all teachers. It is here to say: something must die, now choose. Will it be your body, your dreams, or your top-heavy too-big head where you store all your painstakingly crafted self-images that tyrannize you and everyone you come into contact with? Moi? Tyrannize? Never! But the squirming begins as the truth sets in. This is why so many people choose to die the easier literal deaths in the streets of commerce. Surrendering the self-images, dying to them, letting them die, it’s harder than every other thing in the world. The biggest falsification is always the hardest to kill. Look at Jesus, he’s still alive and kicking!
I finally reached the bottom of the castle walls, and I jumped into the sea.
