Can you believe it? I went to a Goodwill to purposely purchase a cheap, broken watch, then to proceed to go to my Uncle Chuck's house in Corona, California, such that we can intentionally break the watch? All to make this poem? How counter-intuitive!
My high school English teacher, Ms. Dianne Vaez, haunted 16-year-olds with difficult questions that we have to live with to this day (it's been ten years). One day Ms. Vaez challenged all the students with the statement: "There is no such thing as freedom!" Everyone was in a state of shock because we were all brainwashed with "this-is-America-and-we-are-free" dogma. She asked us if we ran down the neighborhood street naked 4am in the morning, were we still free? I guess not (I further explored these ideas in terms of ecological and evolutionary degrees of freedom and constraints, but that's another time).
Then Ms. Vaez proceeded to ask each student to construct a metaphor for freedom. When it came around to being my turn, I stated rather impulsively, "Freedom is a broken watch." And my English teacher raised her brow in a state of impressed shock: "Clever!" I only stated this metaphor because at the time I realized that when I was under no crazy time-deadlines for schoolwork, I actually worked the best--in a meditative mode within long stretches of time.
Now, I am going to be 2 years old (27 actually, but figuratively 2, wow! don't I have something to show for myself?), and still this metaphor "freedom is a broken watch" comes back to haunt me time and time again. I think this metaphor will be a life pursuit of exploration in the full potential of this meaning. Most recently I was inspired by Tariel to write this poem below:
The Broken Watch
By Victoria Stokastika
If Freedom is a broken watch
Then-the human day-to-day has been caught
In a multi-layer, unbound event horizon
And the Future's re-formula of core-valued reason
Ths box of spacetime has been extended
And my mind has you deeply embedded--
You broke the watch
You broke the watch
Release of demon thoughts--
Release of thoughts
Freedom to dream!
Freedom to dream!!!
Saturday, August 09, 2008
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1 comment:
This idea is indeed intriguing and your answer to your teacher was more intrinsic than clever. It is a profound truth, one instantly recognizable in coming from a young student. You made a quantum metaphorical leap with that simple statement.
You have me thinking, which is always a good sign. I imagine the watchmaker who might look at the same broken watch as something else, in addition to the relativism of an implied or realized freedom, as perhaps being a kind of prison as utility and futility must always paradoxically find their truer absolutes within the very nature of the object.
Inherent possession, therefore, dictates the relevance of a thing, perhaps even the illusion of possession. One can easily see how the little canoe of thought might swirl about endlessly within the skookumchucks of probability and possibility.
I may well have to write about that broken watch just to see what spills out. It's a lovely event horizon worth further exploration.
Thanks for the pleasant itch on the brain. Certainly works for me. ;-)
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