NEVADA KERR
Falling For Reality
Steel on the skyline
Sky made of glass
Made for a real world
All things must pass
David Bowie describes "Reality" as "thrusty".
The "thrust" (the jab, dig, repartee) could be the joke at our expense yet reality is often defined by what it is not - not a dream, not a joke.
My guess is that Bowie would never entitle an album "Reality" and not be letting us in on the broad farce.
Reality was also once defined as loyalty, fidelity to the king - royalty.
Reality prods and urges us. It rails us in and rails at us.
Let us never forget it's sardonic laugh, it's home thrust.
Reality must always have the final word. It is an ambiguous idea and perhaps Bowie wants to let us in on it's quirks - reminding us that the deranged and the ridiculous lurk just beneath it's surface.
Reality chastises and reprimands. It restrains and circumscribes, often slapping us in the face with it's demands for an interlocking directorate. It pushes and pulls. And when it pulls, it's a strong pull and a long pull. And when it pushes, it's a stab and a shove, a lunge and a plunge into a hostile alliance. It almost always demands a consensus of opinion - compliance to the so called "natural order of things."
The current reality in America is "the state of siege." The ruler and regulator reigns - the divine right of the King to make puppets of us all.*
The right hand/right arm of the law rectifies and refines. The lawmaker's thrust is to punish and purify, rebuke and discipline. The trust we put in our leaders creates both a connecting lifeline and a rope necktie. Our fear of chaos and lawlessness makes us vulnerable to the liar, the pious fraud. He offers us protection and wears the face of the charmer and sage but we must avoid his baited trap.
We must pay close attention to what is left unsaid and unexplained - the lurid lure that lurks unseen below the surface of "Reality."
Both the trust and the thrust of reality are compulsory and binding. Authority, power and force maintain reality, a monopoly complete with trustees and overseers. The thrust of reality is constant, dependable, reliable - a dynamic impetus moving toward greater control and demanding our atonement.
The onslaught of reality staggers the imagination, falsely promising a safe haven from the brainstorms of the lunatic or the thunderbolts of reverie. Reality is not an invulnerable shield against these heathen rays.
At times we accept reality under protest, against our wills, at the point of a sword thrusted down our throats. It then takes on the shape of necessity, fate, destiny. We have no choice. We are bound by its cosmic, karmic trust/thrust. We enjoy its certainty, its greedy creed, and we tolerate its propaganda. It takes possession of our minds - discouraging poetic frenzies and fallacies of vision.
Reality's thrusting is an intermingling, a pounding together. We are impregnated by its hopes, seasoned and attempered by its pacts and conventions, its sphere of influence. Reality is the creditor. We are the debtors quarantined within its rails/jails.
The trusty/thrusty nature of reality removes all doubts and dissent. We can have no qualms with its prohibitions. If we take the law into our own hands, we will imbrue our hands in blood. Reality has a strong base of operations. It always strikes the first blow. It succeeds in scaling our walls every time. Ephemeral flesh, we have no defense against its assaults, no safeguards from its irruptions/eruptions. Reality is our Possessor - always intervening. We are railed in parenthetically by its momentum. Cannon and canon, reality pelts, pokes, and propels. Impelled, we collide and collude with its prescripts.
* Of course, every property owner ultimately controls "a piece of reality" through his acquisition of realty. Hence becoming a little king of his own domain.
Nevada Kerr
June 18, 2003.
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