Tripman
Bluelight Crew
Hi guys,
Never saw this sub-forum before but thought I'd pop in as I love to write and express myself through writing. Just thought I'd share a short story i wrote, well not so much a story, more a rant but it is a piece that I always smile at when I read it and remember the day I wrote it.
The Politician and the Unicorn
Today may be the dawning of a new period of wealth. My Egyptian money box will only accept ten cent coins. This could be a sign, or it could be a simple matter of space. I wish my charitable impulse could be contained within a larger sphere, but unfortunately my avarice will always win out. Altruism doesn’t put food on the table.
I wouldn’t mind losing some weight. Every time I glance in the mirror I envision my body stretched between two extremes – obesity and anorexia, the two giants of our age, or maybe even of some earlier age in which such extremes were common, but only now become disease. I’ve never associated myself with such problems, but what else can you learn from current affair shows. They teach me what I hate, and my hate creates me. What’s the point of not eating all day only to return home and languish in self pity. It seems I can be a better man for others, but for myself I remain nothing. Writing isn’t easy, maybe because there are a few too many words, too many words for the one thing, too many ways to say the one thing. Yet none of these words can describe emotion with particular clarity.
Sometimes I like to talk politics. I think I like to perceive the world negatively. At times it helps to see the worst in others, it helps to strengthen my identity, it teaches me who I am by teaching me who I’m not. Politics is little above this. Politics is about identities and identity crises. It’s about little men with big ideas, and big men with even bigger egos. Yet somehow the human race is pushed forward. You can call this momentum progress. With all of us stumbling forward in the dark it may not be so bad that we have these delightful characters, these little men, these gigantic men, to charge forward valiantly. We can watch them, we can comment, we can analyse, criticise, reduce, debate, and cross reference them with the most up to date economic indicators. I think deep down we know that we are really just watching to see what traps may lie hidden ahead in the unknown. Knowing all too well how better it is that these ambitious fools stumble into them headfirst. We can learn from their mistakes. To do so we must always keep a step behind them. A great idea can be a shining light, but it only allows us to see what we already know. I believe in introspection. I don’t believe that introspection can give us the truth. To see the world you must live it. I do not see it all in my mind’s eye. My mind’s eye is ignorant, inexperienced and childish.
So they charge forward into the dark. This is fine. Like I said it gives us an idea of what lies ahead in our own lives. In the real world. Mistakes have a great illuminating power in that sense. However great injustice arises when these men, drunk on their own ideas, drag the rest of us forward with them. Into the dark, and into the light of their ideas which are never anything more than the past; A pitiful reflection of their fractured minds. An ugly subconscious being which threatens to devour us all. The fractured mind will consume us when we are at our lowest. For when we are at our lowest we will accept any helping hand, any promise to drag us up out of the mud, and through to a brighter if muddier future. What if the brighter future is in this mud. What if we are this mud? We are but aborting ourselves when we despise our circumstances. Are we a reflection of our circumstances, or are our circumstances a reflection of ourselves? These are the sort of questions we ask ourselves when we lie in the mud. We come to love mud. We love mud because it has created who we are – and so that of us which is not mud, we hate, and we suppress. So who then can lift us out of the mud? Little men? Great men? Ourselves? Fate? Perhaps none of these. Perhaps what we really need is a unicorn, a unicorn which breaking free of its forest sees us in our predicament, and with its lonely unicorn tears shares with us its hope.
Some will tell you that it is too late for unicorns. I myself fear they might be right. I fear that we, in our irrational hatred, have already done away with these majestic creatures. What may emerge then is the mere reflection of such a creature. Maybe it will be enough? Perhaps somewhere in our mind lies the hope of unicorns. Maybe all our ideas are nothing more than remembrance of a greater time, a time in which unicorns took pity upon mankind. I feel that it might help at this point if I told you a little story. I think you know the one I mean, the story of the politician and the unicorn.
Once upon a time their lived a lonely politician. He lived a life of despair, a life of emptiness and contempt, a life in which life lost its value. He was then, the ideal politician and politics was part of him. Politics was his soul. He understood this, and perhaps this understanding comforted him. We don’t know. What we do know however is that somehow this wasn’t enough. Each day he found himself becoming more, and more distracted. Sleep blessed him with its presence rarely, and when it did his dreams were dominated by a hazy image of some majestic beast. He would toss, and turn, and whimper to himself in his sleep, but no matter how hard he tried he could never grasp the image. Gradually the image consumed him. It dominated his thought. Consequently he found himself increasingly at odds with his fellow politicians. There were times when he wanted to speak, to express his yearning for this distant image. Each time he tried to form the words he crumbled, and he realised how useless it was to describe the indescribable.
One night it became too much. He realised that if he was to understand this creature he must find it. So equipped with only his sheer wit and economic rationalism he marched off into the forest. A place so explicitly irrational, so embarrassingly natural, that maybe, just maybe, such a creature, if it existed, might be found. For nights he wandered this alien wilderness until exhausted he came to a cave. It wasn’t the civilised comfort he was used to, but it provided comfort nevertheless in its own quaint way. He slept the sleep of the exhausted, of those who do not so much seek rest as fall into it. As he slept he was finally greeted by the creature he had longed for. The majestic unicorn spoke to him in simple, musical tones. “Think of me,” the Unicorn said. “For I am all you long for; simplicity, compassion and kindness. Take me back to the people so that they too may come to know beauty.”
So the politician awoke, refreshed and with kindness at heart. Triumphantly he returned from the forest, to the world of politics; the world of economics and ideas. But wherever he spoke people only laughed and ridiculed him. The politician, confused, began to despair again. He was even more isolated, even lonelier than before. Not only did no one understand him – they saw him as a laughable remnant of an inferior time. Despairing, he returned to the forest, to his simple peaceful cave. Again the unicorn visited him.
This time it was the politician who spoke to the unicorn. “Why do they laugh at me? I don’t understand. I brought them everything they needed, kindness, compassion and peace.”
The unicorn was saddened, but he knew he must tell the politician the truth. ‘They laugh at you because you bear the mark of the unicorn. Whilst the horn is a thing of beauty to some, to many it is but the mark of a fool.”
Never saw this sub-forum before but thought I'd pop in as I love to write and express myself through writing. Just thought I'd share a short story i wrote, well not so much a story, more a rant but it is a piece that I always smile at when I read it and remember the day I wrote it.
The Politician and the Unicorn
Today may be the dawning of a new period of wealth. My Egyptian money box will only accept ten cent coins. This could be a sign, or it could be a simple matter of space. I wish my charitable impulse could be contained within a larger sphere, but unfortunately my avarice will always win out. Altruism doesn’t put food on the table.
I wouldn’t mind losing some weight. Every time I glance in the mirror I envision my body stretched between two extremes – obesity and anorexia, the two giants of our age, or maybe even of some earlier age in which such extremes were common, but only now become disease. I’ve never associated myself with such problems, but what else can you learn from current affair shows. They teach me what I hate, and my hate creates me. What’s the point of not eating all day only to return home and languish in self pity. It seems I can be a better man for others, but for myself I remain nothing. Writing isn’t easy, maybe because there are a few too many words, too many words for the one thing, too many ways to say the one thing. Yet none of these words can describe emotion with particular clarity.
Sometimes I like to talk politics. I think I like to perceive the world negatively. At times it helps to see the worst in others, it helps to strengthen my identity, it teaches me who I am by teaching me who I’m not. Politics is little above this. Politics is about identities and identity crises. It’s about little men with big ideas, and big men with even bigger egos. Yet somehow the human race is pushed forward. You can call this momentum progress. With all of us stumbling forward in the dark it may not be so bad that we have these delightful characters, these little men, these gigantic men, to charge forward valiantly. We can watch them, we can comment, we can analyse, criticise, reduce, debate, and cross reference them with the most up to date economic indicators. I think deep down we know that we are really just watching to see what traps may lie hidden ahead in the unknown. Knowing all too well how better it is that these ambitious fools stumble into them headfirst. We can learn from their mistakes. To do so we must always keep a step behind them. A great idea can be a shining light, but it only allows us to see what we already know. I believe in introspection. I don’t believe that introspection can give us the truth. To see the world you must live it. I do not see it all in my mind’s eye. My mind’s eye is ignorant, inexperienced and childish.
So they charge forward into the dark. This is fine. Like I said it gives us an idea of what lies ahead in our own lives. In the real world. Mistakes have a great illuminating power in that sense. However great injustice arises when these men, drunk on their own ideas, drag the rest of us forward with them. Into the dark, and into the light of their ideas which are never anything more than the past; A pitiful reflection of their fractured minds. An ugly subconscious being which threatens to devour us all. The fractured mind will consume us when we are at our lowest. For when we are at our lowest we will accept any helping hand, any promise to drag us up out of the mud, and through to a brighter if muddier future. What if the brighter future is in this mud. What if we are this mud? We are but aborting ourselves when we despise our circumstances. Are we a reflection of our circumstances, or are our circumstances a reflection of ourselves? These are the sort of questions we ask ourselves when we lie in the mud. We come to love mud. We love mud because it has created who we are – and so that of us which is not mud, we hate, and we suppress. So who then can lift us out of the mud? Little men? Great men? Ourselves? Fate? Perhaps none of these. Perhaps what we really need is a unicorn, a unicorn which breaking free of its forest sees us in our predicament, and with its lonely unicorn tears shares with us its hope.
Some will tell you that it is too late for unicorns. I myself fear they might be right. I fear that we, in our irrational hatred, have already done away with these majestic creatures. What may emerge then is the mere reflection of such a creature. Maybe it will be enough? Perhaps somewhere in our mind lies the hope of unicorns. Maybe all our ideas are nothing more than remembrance of a greater time, a time in which unicorns took pity upon mankind. I feel that it might help at this point if I told you a little story. I think you know the one I mean, the story of the politician and the unicorn.
Once upon a time their lived a lonely politician. He lived a life of despair, a life of emptiness and contempt, a life in which life lost its value. He was then, the ideal politician and politics was part of him. Politics was his soul. He understood this, and perhaps this understanding comforted him. We don’t know. What we do know however is that somehow this wasn’t enough. Each day he found himself becoming more, and more distracted. Sleep blessed him with its presence rarely, and when it did his dreams were dominated by a hazy image of some majestic beast. He would toss, and turn, and whimper to himself in his sleep, but no matter how hard he tried he could never grasp the image. Gradually the image consumed him. It dominated his thought. Consequently he found himself increasingly at odds with his fellow politicians. There were times when he wanted to speak, to express his yearning for this distant image. Each time he tried to form the words he crumbled, and he realised how useless it was to describe the indescribable.
One night it became too much. He realised that if he was to understand this creature he must find it. So equipped with only his sheer wit and economic rationalism he marched off into the forest. A place so explicitly irrational, so embarrassingly natural, that maybe, just maybe, such a creature, if it existed, might be found. For nights he wandered this alien wilderness until exhausted he came to a cave. It wasn’t the civilised comfort he was used to, but it provided comfort nevertheless in its own quaint way. He slept the sleep of the exhausted, of those who do not so much seek rest as fall into it. As he slept he was finally greeted by the creature he had longed for. The majestic unicorn spoke to him in simple, musical tones. “Think of me,” the Unicorn said. “For I am all you long for; simplicity, compassion and kindness. Take me back to the people so that they too may come to know beauty.”
So the politician awoke, refreshed and with kindness at heart. Triumphantly he returned from the forest, to the world of politics; the world of economics and ideas. But wherever he spoke people only laughed and ridiculed him. The politician, confused, began to despair again. He was even more isolated, even lonelier than before. Not only did no one understand him – they saw him as a laughable remnant of an inferior time. Despairing, he returned to the forest, to his simple peaceful cave. Again the unicorn visited him.
This time it was the politician who spoke to the unicorn. “Why do they laugh at me? I don’t understand. I brought them everything they needed, kindness, compassion and peace.”
The unicorn was saddened, but he knew he must tell the politician the truth. ‘They laugh at you because you bear the mark of the unicorn. Whilst the horn is a thing of beauty to some, to many it is but the mark of a fool.”
