Of Jetman, Creation, Destruction, and Hurricanes

Okay--here's what I want you to do:

Right-click on this link and turn the sound down. Right-click on this one and turn it all the way up. Go back to the first one and watch and wonder.

****

Of course, me being a vocal bastard, I sent along this comment to the HuffingtonPost page announcing Jetman's successful crossing of the English Channel yesterday:

It's things like this that give me hope for humanity.

Think of the opposition to his plans to do this from the Endless Multitude of the Mediocre:

"I can't date you any more, Yves; you're too unrealistic."

"You want to be what? 'Jet Man'? Get back to your homework, boy, before I take you outside and beat your behind!"

"Your work production has fallen behind, Yves. You are no longer an asset to this corporation. We're letting you go. When you decide to pull your head out of the clouds and join the rest of humanity, please feel free to reapply."

"You only make how much per year? Lord, Yves, when are you going to get a real job?"

"Why do you think you're so special?"

"You're being totally unrealistic, Mr. I Wanna Be Charles Lindbergh."

And on and on.

Americans used to employ the thinking that led to Jetman's glory today; but under the Republicans, such go-for-it-ism has completely fled under the specters of endless greed, consumption, and corruption. Sad, and beyond sad. Tragic.

My congratulations to this great man.

****

War, disease, starvation, globalization, overpopulation, Peak Oil, McCain/Palin, climate change ... We have our problems, we most certainly do. But we also have people like Yves Rossy, who remind us, via their actions, that all is not lost, all is not hopeless.

I'm no technophile--I believe that we should be very, very cautious of new technologies, seeing that, as Fromm pointed out not so long ago, we are an extraordinarily immature and shortsighted species--but at the same time I must declare that things like this, like Jetman, inspire great good in the few courageous and alive enough to be so inspired as it conjures up evil (How can we kill millions with this new technology? How can we destroy governments and farmland and poison rivers and sell endless, useless Chinese-made crap with it?) in the masses so inclined to profit by evil; and so, choosing to be hugely inspired, and choosing to believe and participate in the good, I soar with Jetman.

I can't wait till he tries crossing the Atlantic.

****

The hurricane gathers and tightens and spins across the Atlantic. Within it is the destructive force of millions of nuclear bombs.



Humankind now has a direct hand in the creation of these amazing storms; and so we have a direct hand in their destructiveness. Creation and destruction: there cannot be one without the other.

With destruction comes creation: new homes, reborn hope, fresh dreams, bigger, better wings to fly higher and higher, to witness both, to understand both.

As an angel tells a scientist in Philip Pullman's great His Dark Materials, "matter loves matter." Nowhere in that statement is anything about gentleness, quietness, peacefulness, or even nonviolence. The word love doesn't necessarily imply any of these.

Fire, air, earth, water, space--if you don't want the secret one,
you can't have these either.

--Kabir

"The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

--William Shakespeare

Before birth, beings are unmanifest;
between birth and death, manifest;
at death, unmanifest again.
What cause for grief in all this?

Some perceive it directly
in all its awesomeness; others
speak of it with wonder; others
hear of it and never know it....

... Blessed are the warriors who are given
the chance of a battle like this,
which calls them to do what is right
and opens the gates of heaven.

--selected stanzas from the Bhagavad Gita

****

What is the point of all this? I honestly don't know myself, except to perhaps reflect that we have a choice in all this creation and destruction stuff. We can be like Jetman--glorious, courageous, fearless, inventive and--yes--creative; or we can continue to turn a blind eye to our true natures, and so bring tremendous, pointless destruction into our lives. Being a comfortable little suburbanite does not excuse you from these choices. You get to, and are, partaking of them right now. So why not be a creator?

Then the unnamable answered Job
from within the whirlwind:

Where were you when I planned the earth?
Tell me, if you are so wise.
Do you know who took its dimensions,
measuring its length with a cord?
What were its pillars built on?
Who laid its cornerstone,
while the morning stars burst out singing
and the angels shouted for joy!

Were you there when I stopped the waters,
as they issued gushing from the womb?
when I wrapped the ocean in clouds
and swaddled the sea in shadows?
when I closed it in with barriers
and set its boundaries, saying,
"Here you may come, but no farther;
here shall your proud waves break."

--selected stanzas from The Book of Job

~~*~~