Never Enough

'Tis the sickness of Western civilization.  Nothing is ever enough. There always has to be more. The sickness makes us unstoppable because we cannot stop.  We always win because we cannot stop, but we can never win because it's never enough.

We have to keep building in order to keep winning. We have to have more because we have nothing.  Everything was taken before we knew what it was.  How could we know what was being taken?  How could we know that our animal bodies, mute and humble, were our greatest treasures?  How could we know that we would learn the fear of death along with our name? How could we know that every word would be a wall between us and our animal bodies?  How could we know that it was all a trap? How could we know we could get so lost?

But there is always the daylight and the night, and what we lost is right there before us, waiting for our return.

Borderlands II

Without realizing it you might find yourself in the borderlands between the citadel of civilization and the outer territories - those states of chaos and truth that we long ago built a wall against and left behind. It is an invisible wall, of course, a psychological wall, a wall that is as much a cutting as a building, both bulwark and wound simultaneously. It is a wall of words, and of what came before words, the first intention, the first plan of attack or of defense, the first knowledge of fear, of life and death. I want to go there, back there. You can never go back, and yet you can, not in innocence, but in a non-innocence that is neither cynical nor wise.
Our civilization wants to shut out the experience of open-ness, of open space. Cut out and box up. This is a short-term fix to our fears and anxieties. Our words harden and we forget that we live in the boxes of civilization by choice, that we choose our duration in the rooms and hallways, the enclosed mental and physical spaces, of civilization.

Say its Name, over and over again,
Naming what is beautiful and what is dark,
Standing under the mountains:
Pākua, Makanau, Kaʻiholena, Puʻuiki, Puʻuone.