| 13.
View from the Peaks of Otter Lodge,
Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia.
The Curse of Realism
Enough with surfaces already!
Stories are supposed to take us somewhere we can’t go to or have forgotten how to go
to—beyond, beneath, through these cursed surfaces called reality.
Oh, to be sure, the surfaces are worth celebrating, regretting, memorializing. But to
celebrate, regret, memorialize that which has already been celebrated, regretted,
memorialized 10,000 times is the fate of small talents and deficient, decadent cultures.
Only connect? Yes. But while doing so, probe deeper, see differently, feel wildly.
The more accurate admonition: only spelunk.
Worlds undreamt of by whole centuries of so-called realists await. "So-called"
because they are blindered, myopic kindergarteners praised more or less highly by other
kindergarteners as they splash and re-splash the same old finger paints on the same old
walls, ignorant of windows but especially of doors and what lies through them.
It was important—for safely, for survival, for fun—that we thoroughly map the
kindergarten room. But enough already! To persist at this point is a kind of social,
artistic, scientific, political, and religious incest.
Lust’s labors lost.
The Peaks of Otter continues >>
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