Booked again

Robert Pirsig asks, "Does that [doing what you like] mean you are going to go out, shoot heroin, rob banks and rape old ladies?" Or does it mean the opposite, out of fear of punishment by law or any supernatural being? How often in the face of adversity or in the throes of emotion, when we think no one's watching, can we make near-rational choices? That is an indicator of a good society.

I think the idea of absolute freedom is overrated. Though slogans of freedom and liberty are often warranted, I think it's our own imaginations, or the lack thereof that can confine us. And it isn't ironical when a poet disabuses the idea of freedom.

Homo Sapiens

Tell me about this other country
Which you call the country of death.
It sounds nice. It sounds like the kind of place
I would like to live in,
Because I am not happy here.

I am free here. I speak. Others speak to me.
Each day I choose what tie I should wear
Or I choose not to wear a tie.
I choose to believe or not to believe
In God or the people or myself.
I am doubtful about myself.

Sometimes I feel afraid of the name
My parents chose for me when others say it.
Then I pull myself together.
I exercise my voice
In one room or a park or somewhere
To chairs of pigeons or strangers.
Someday I could be Archbishop
Perhaps, or Prime Minister,
Or I could remain what I am,
A Judas betrayed by choices. Stop
Me before I tell you the truth.
Tell me about the other country
Which you call the country of death.

Assure me that I shall not dream there
That I have wings, and then wake to be ugly
Nor worry about the activity of my right hand
Whenever I think of women,
Nor about the boredom of my liberty,
From these deliver me.

Announce my death in words of one syllable.
Say I found it foolish to be free.
Do not try to unravel me from the earth
Where I sleep, forgetting I am ugly,
And could not choose to change, if I should ever wake.

~ Dom Moraes[/i]