Thursday, July 3, 2014

Truth is in the Youth


I live in a neighborhood populated mostly by young adults. This evening walking home from the train station, the week's end coming early because of the Independence Day holiday tomorrow, I realized that the mark of youth is to believe that one's animality -- one's physical body and the wants and needs that go along with occupying that body -- is fundamentally spiritual, even though such is not the case (something which becomes increasingly clear as one ages).

And while the body is not spirit, and neither is the mind (I'm not sure spirit is even spirit), the body erroneously thinking itself to be spirit is strength. And strength is all there is.

So, as Richard Hell reminds us in Artifact: Notebooks from Hell 1974–1980 (1992), "The truth is in the youth." It is just that that truth is based on an error. Which leaves us with the idea that all there is is a mistake.

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