American Idyll

yes, the river knows

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Insofar As Fortune Has Favored His Quest


TWO VIEWS OF HANCE RAPID


Laurie Anderson: Muddy River


There is, in fact, no way back either to the wolf or to the child. From the very start there is no innocence and no singleness. Every created thing, even the simplest, is already guilty, already multiple. It has been thrown into the muddy stream
of being and may never more swim back again to its source. The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life.
Nor will suicide really solve your problem. You will, instead, embark on the longer and wearier and harder road of life.
You will have to multiply many times your two-fold being and complicate your complexities still further. Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have to absorb more and more of the world and at last take all of it up in your painfully expanded soul, if you are ever to find peace. This is the road that Buddha and every great man has gone, whether consciously or not, insofar as fortune has favored his quest.
--Hermann Hesse
Steppenwolf


HOPI PT. FROM OUTSIDE TRAVERTINE CANYON
INNER GORGE OUTSIDE HORN CANYON
HIGH WATER 1983

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