…the Artisten-Metaphysik suggests
that individuals are alienated
from actuality,

the synchronicity of the terms
   suffering,
   willing,
   and becoming
implies that the experience of alienation
speaks not so much to humanity’s
isolation from actuality
but of the point of
its most intimate union
with it:

‘This world is will to power
   — and nothing besides!
And you yourselves are also
        this will to power
    –and nothing besides!’

The Will to Power, aphorism 1067

Pain, suffering and contradiction
are no longer
objections to existence
but an expression of the
tensions of existence itself.

Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche, introduction by Nicholas Davey XXIV

Tuesday, the second day of the work week a convenient label, agreed upon, which lends a quotient of satisfaction. At least everyone in the room is satisfied that “today is Tuesday” and as is our custom, we are together at the Starbucks on Randall and 38 in Geneva. “Reality” is a rapidly flowing, Mississippi-like, and all of us are borne along, sometimes close and sometimes far apart. Things happen, debris, cross currents. Without question life can be confusing in the worst way.

Words are a made-up code which we understand to assure us of our bearings in the great flow of life. In fact we are not alone, and words are effective, pallative to calm our insecurity.

After taking a sip from my cup of dark roast, I had a first look at the list of emails that were waiting. I opened the note from the internet service provider, the host for this blog for the past six years. The email was an order confirmation of a renewal of the service for three more years, and that my charge card had been debited for $535.00. I felt surprise, a bit of panic, since I had already called the provider to say that I was moving this blog to another service (which has been executed.) More objectionable that I owed Visa $535.00. An immediate phone call to hosting service’s phone bank, a brief conversation with a nice woman, probably in the Philippines, – the debited funds will be credited to the account.

Reality, life-in-the-world is messy, inevitably things go wrong, things of all kinds. Everything from including the editor of The Atlantic Magazine in a chat room planning session to bomb the Houthis, to an unwanted credit card charge. This is the very nature of this world such as it is. We know of no other time and place, – just this one which we share with the Houthis too.

Art has always recognized that human beings find life un-satisfactory. This is the prime motivation of all art, the will of response to the friction, from an errant credit card charge, all the way to a cancer diagnosis. I wish that I could imagine the Parthenon when Athens was in its prime, especially the great sculpture of Athena by Phidias, the 5th century sculptor, painter and architect. All art is a statement of resistance, and often an affirmation beauty, a reminder of what we imagine this world might be…

So we are alienated, that’s old news. But what if that very alienation, the inevitable discomfort/suffering and the will to overcome, to not-be-beaten-down is what includes us so intimately with the flow of life, and with all this world has to offer! Every single existing element, “feels” in its own way the contradictions that I feel. I am not alone, and I belong here!  I am a work-in-progress, each life potentially a one-of-a-kind masterpiece! If that is what you and I desire our life to be…

“Pain, suffering, and contradictions” far from being signs that something is fundamentally wrong with us, that we bear the load of ancestral guilt, of sin, – that to beg for forgiveness is our only hope…  Far from it! You and I do not need to be forgiven of anything!

Here is good news is: the pain arising from emerging newness, from the decay of moribund, obsolete constitutions, toxic economies, creates the space for you and I to participate in the fabrication of a kinder and collaborative world for all living beings. You are on! It is your time, now move to center-stage, say your line, play and sing your part!

Thereby we express the tensions of existing – without the mistaken fantasy that we ought to excise pain, and suffering. This tension we call “good and evil” and it is “baked in”.

I say “that is where the fun is!”

*the header image is “Uncertain Journey” 2016 by Chiharu Shiota