Book Two, Letter Seven

To Cicero, on making the world a better place.

Late August 2018 CE

Dear Cicero,

We can't change the direction of the wind by blowing hot air, but the trees we plant can give us shelter from the storm.

I've been thinking a lot about change, and about the problems of government and the persistent quandary of tyranny. The story of dictators being voted in by popular demand comes up again and again in the ancient books, and it seems that nothing has changed in the modern world. Fascism wears a different mask in each country it invades, and demagogues are always ready to manipulate the public through the reasoning of fear and insecurity.

Nothing has changed in thousands of years in regard to this problem, so the question seems to be one of survival. How do I survive these years of growing unrest? How do I survive this ever more insidious terror that grips the policies and actions of my nation?

Can I make the world a better place?

What is my duty to the world, or to those around me, to fight injustice, or to struggle against cruelty, violence, greed and vice?

I will quote you, Cicero, from Book III, of your treatise On Duties:

“Will a good man lie down for his own profit, will he slander, will he grab, will he deceive? He will do nothing of the kind.

Surely the reputation and the glory of being a good man are too precious to be sacrificed in favour of anything at all, however valuable and desirable in appearance. No so-called advantage can possibly compensate for the elimination of your good faith and decency and the consequent destruction of your good name. For if a human exterior conceals the heart of a wild beast, their possessor might as well be a beast instead of a man.”

There are few everyday opportunities to display the valour and goodness you praise, Cicero but plenty of opportunities for the other end of the spectrum. May a man set limits on how far he will go, for the sake of his world? I could argue that your own struggles against Marc Antony were futile, certainly harmful to yourself. Could you have served your family, your friends, Rome itself, by restraining your anger, and submitting to one kind of tyranny, in order to prosper in another kind of freedom?

What is one's duty?

Well, I planted cucumbers yesterday, and played my ukulele, and made a salad for my family to eat and I went to work today and pruned the roses in time for their spring renewal. I write every day, and I share my writing so that others may benefit from the insights I am gaining from these ancient texts. I hope that these insights are of benefit to the world. It is a strange pursuit, writing letters to the dead in order to better understand the living.

Because I cannot change the wind by blowing hot air, but the shelter I can give my kith and kin, with my kind words and actions must be worth something. So as the worst people of my nation lead us in their violent ignorance towards war and civil strife, I drink tea with my woman and warm my hands on the cup, warming my heart by the fire of our love.

Not even you, Cicero, could prevent the collapse of the Republic.

So I will learn from your lessons, (your failures?) and drink tea in peace, for as long as that peace shall last, and plant trees for those who come after me.

*

Spring is almost here

and I am still waiting

for winter to arrive

My friends and I, we dance in the shadows, waiting for our time to bring forth music and light and laughter and to change the world by making it more beautiful.

“In such an ugly time, the only true rebellion is beauty” Crimethinc

When I stand in the night, staring through the branches of gum trees up into the endless worlds of outer space, I am reliably overwhelmed with the feeling of REALNESS. The darkness, the cold, the trees and the earth and the light of distant stars – all real. Then there is the loneliness, but not a painful loneliness, just a satisfaction of solitude, a relaxed state of body knowing that I cannot be seen, cannot be judged, cannot be confused by the conflicting opinions of philosophers, or family or friends..it's just me and...

Well, it's just me and you.

Just me and the world as it is.

Without commentary, without description, and if I let go enough, it is a world without names.

That nameless emptiness is so beautiful to me that even thinking about it begins to create a sensation inside me like a great canyon in my chest, filled with wind, a vast and stony red desert, brilliant and resonant with sound. The wind inside me, that's what I'm really talking about. The empty, cleansing, nameless wind inside me that unwinds my stress, that hollows out my bones and makes me sing like a flute.

When I am empty, and can be with the world AS IT IS, then I have no doubt. That nameless world that I experience, is a world I can believe in. It is always itself, never duplicitous, never misleading, always honest – the natural world is perfect and at ease with itself. Mysterious, but not secretive. Serene, but not bored. Nameless, but likewise so full of implied meaning as to make of every moment an encyclopaedia of philosophic and poetic wisdom.

I stand humbled before the vastness.

Humility.

Recently, through the discovery that a vast array of my preconceptions about the world were inverse to the actuality, I found within myself a knee bending humility as I stared up into the staggering vista of my own ignorance, and saw how very small was my knowledge.

Have I told you of my recurring dream since childhood?

Holding one grain of granite in my right hand, and a one tonne block of granite in my left, I know how many grains are in the one tonne block. Then I look up to the night sky and I know how many stars there are and …

I wake up screaming.

It hasn't always been that exact dream, but every variation on the theme has pointed towards the same truth.

So today, I bend my knee and bow down before my ignorance. I empty myself of the shame of my ignorance, and instead embrace the liberation that is the acknowledgement of infinity.

I acknowledge that infinity goes both ways, in and out.

As above, so below.

*

Thank you Cicero, it is always good to talk to you. A bit of an odd letter, but it is of foremost importance that I be honest with you, dear friend. I've been busy reading Thucydides and Xenophon and Marcus Aurelius, so I haven't gotten around to read your all of books On Duties. Some days I can sit in bed and read for hours, and some days I must work. My beard is growing longer, as is my hair. Spring is nearly here, but I am still waiting for winter to arrive.

The world is dry, but with you, my cup runs over.

Morgan.