Dirty Birds, Boys, Exhausted Wanderers
Another passage that should bear no further comment. Is it enough to raise one’s voice in resistance to the denial of history , to thinly veiled misogyny in red-state anti-abortion laws, to indifference to lying by candidates for public office, to climate warming denial,… That is to write or to speak as opportunity affords knowing you will certainly be misunderstood, a lightning-rod to be vilified, without the need to defend, to engage in combat with “the other side?”
We, openhanded
and rich in spirit,
standing by the road like open wells
with no intention to fend off
anyone who feels like drawing from us
–we unfortunately do not know how to defend ourselves
where we want to:
we have no way of preventing people from darkening us:
the time in which we live
throws into us what is most time-bound;
its dirty birds drop their filth into us;
boys their gew-gaws;
and exhausted wanderers
who come to us to rest,
their little and large miseries.
But we
shall do what we have always done:
whatever one casts into us,
we take down into our depth
–for we are deep,
we do not forget
–and become bright again.
–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 5, Section 378 by Friedrich Nietzsche
