Betray

Years ago I read a biography about Charlemagne written by Harold Lamb. And since memory is capricious, barely I remember some images.  However, in particular one of them caused me great impression. So, that sometime later I wrote a poem named “Treason" alluding to the image imbibed in me, after reading this passage. The episode was something like this: "The Carolingian armies, in their eagerness to extend the empire of Charles to the north, submerged themselves in the black forests of Saxony, removing all traces of the lineage that inhabited those places. The Saxon race was indomitable and like lice they clung to their totems, drinking from their gall and preserving their culture around the trees. One of them totems there, Irminsul, was the father of all the forestry and beasts of the place, including the Saxons themselves. Hidden by a thick ocean of stratified forests, Irminsul was located gloating a rhythm that was geological. The tree was hidden and was only known to the bravest Saxons, who protected the last stronghold of their culture with their own lives. Like all great, Charlemagne reached that abyssal depth with of his army and charging an ax to knock the monster. The splinters of the titan were the colour of quartz and their moans were never heard because of the slowness of their sigh, at the moment when the Carolingian horde struck the trunk of the big tree with the ax”.

The story was not exactly like that, but this way it comes to my memory. Why it finds me so relevant has to do with that voyage of Charlemagne's axes and with his eagerness to remove the last bend of sacred savagery from the heart of northern Europe. In other words, to give death to paganism to make way for a new culture, and with it, to Christian literacy. The axes do not know of vergences or capricious turns of history. On that occasion it was the "new" Europe penetrating viscous into shady places; defying the dampness and exuberance of the maternal and old shadow of Europe. She was still hiding in a sinful and exquisite corner, lost, where an old culture preserved for millennia lay. It was the new Europe betraying the old. Eastern and Manichaean Europe; fruit of the mixture between Rome, the barbarians and Christianity; thirsty for self-sacrifice, stimulated by Catholic morality and, therefore, with a vocation of guilt in carrying the concept inherited from the Middle East: conscience. This Europe - which was recently rebuilt from the erased Roman roads through the undergrowth and time - longed for the ax to stock up wood for its houses, for fire and its symbols. To build their crosses, at last. To emulate the banner of Christ and thereby eclipse any old meteor that threatens the exclusivity of the spirits. It was one more arm in the way of totalitarianism of thought. That is why it was necessary to betray the old roots. To uproot the grass and knock down any trunk with a vocation of feldspar, it was not possible a sky where two suns will shine. Whims of monotheism.

Europe is a great spirit. So big that geographically it does not support itself. Today we talk about the West, the schizophrenic West, a kind of extension of European culture. Spirit that does not remain owner of itself, but in eternal inner crisis. A constant and bipolar struggle between capitalists and Marxists, between good and bad, between believers and atheists, rich and poor, ugly and beautiful. That is why the men of the West remain divided. That is why our old dead God was divided on the cross: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That is why the dialectic is so popular among young spirits and even the class struggle excites the young people of the Western postmodern; with internet, YouTube and all available technology. Spirits that can march through the environment and leave dirty streets at the same time. Spirits that claim more equality and who defend wearing long hair, tattoos, piercings or other distinctive difference, affirming their individuality. And it is hard for us to understand that the flow exists, even among our conceptual, artificially created poles. The flow of the Ying-Yang or the moral indifference of the universe is not characteristic of Western thought. The notion of goodness and evil always dwells in our thoughts in any assertion we affirm: a kind of permanent Manichaeism between black and white. I think it would not be enough to start talking about gray either, as it would only be to extend the categorization from two (black and white) to three or more (white, black, gray, etc.). Human judgments are diffuse to me and photography seems like an illusion to me, it is the art of illusion. And how photography is today as cultural expression! Who takes a photo has an inquisitive purpose: hide the movement, hide the future. The judgment itself is part of the totalitarianism of thought, too: in wanting to define the spirit of things at once. And photography seals that definition with an ‘instant’. Is the sun good or bad? Is it good after stormy days? Or is it bad in the middle of the desert? Is it gray? The sun is eight light-minutes away and we could describe it only as it was eight minutes ago, before it ceases to be what it was and it arrives to us, belatedly. The sun is simply not, unless we make a judgment of it and capriciously grasp that moment in which it comes to us. That is why I hate the sun and its heat, for I have made a judgment of it.

I can dimly understand a new, or perhaps older and forgotten, understanding about the nature of the universe. Thanks to Heraclitus, Taoism and quantum physics. However, cultural heritage is stronger, a kind of Eurocentrism, a way of thinking and observing the world. And the inclination in many stages of my life, has also been to take the ax and knock down my old God, to build a new one or drift until a strange and different one devours me. Christ himself, in a very elegant way, killed his God, in himself, to forge a new one, resurrecting. This act of destroying and creating many times has been known as nihilism. Many in the West have feared this word. Others have been immolated by bombs, collective suicides and other acts of vanity. With the hope of invoking the new beast that will emerge from the ocean of chaos: a new Christ or antichrist born of the storm. There is a lot of superstition in this. It is to replicate the rite of the old splinters of Irminsul. As if they were fertile seeds just because they have porphyritic texture. Perhaps there is something in the uncertainty principle that allows the absurdity and the emergence of man and all his races. Perhaps the empty space is full of that energy that physicists have called dark energy. Perhaps there is a possibility in the tearing of the universe so that its little eyes open so much to see beasts, giraffes and gods emerge. Who knows? I allow myself this superstition before becoming totally credulous or atheist. And in that superstition some daring dare to turn on ourselves. A great pain sometimes invites us to the rite. Until we see our most sacred trees lying and bleeding on the ground. That mistake!

But the error is necessary. And if everything is error, there is nothing left but decay and extinction, Schopenhauer would say. For death and disease have become "evolutionary advantages" for living beings during millions of years of evolution. Growth is only possible with an exhaust valve through which to discard the "work" of our mistakes. In critical situations, changing environments and unpredictable storms, only error can save us. Save from what? From inaction, excess inertia, the totemism that binds us to a death curdled in geological minerals. That is why using the ax becomes necessary, without reaching spiritual abortion or ideological suicide. But it is important to be clear about what you want to keep. The stump of Nebuchadnezzar? The hope in the offspring that will arise from him, as Daniel's prophecies said? Who will open a new belly in the abysmal space that exists between the feet and the stars? The most crystalline and at the same time potential splinter? The mystery hidden in the uncertainty principle? The camel of Zarathustra lost and discouraged in the desert comes to mind. Lobsters devoured by John the Baptist come to mind. Honey comes to mind, the sweet that flows from the downed log that dries in the desert. Well, in the desert there is no culture. The desert can be filled with the hookahs that the camel carries on its back. The desert is vulgarized with the merchandise that the camel carries. This ungulate remains ignorant of the will that demands its strength. It is an animal that has sold its soul in the service of a superior will. Of those who want to generate value through the flow of merchandise. That's why the gadgets are distributed in the desert. That is why that empty space becomes vulgar with an embryonic and improvised culture. That is why the lion roars as Zarathustra has said. That's why the ax: to give freedom to the camel and to face the devil with his temptations. And what would be that great temptation? The temptation to accumulate minerals through our diagenesis? Become trees and then sacred totems? Divinize our most conservative ideas?

The cultural heritage of the West is powerful when looking for similes and role models. Several gods have already died, heroes and the paraphernalia of sacrifice are still active. Even the pot is great for frying those who put their eyes white for values ​​and ideals. The vainest rite of all still has an audience: sacrifice for the cause. The cause? As if it were predestined to sacrifice, as if life were a struggle. A sacrifice. A suffering. The old assertion of Schopenhauer: "Life is suffering." The maxim of the left and Marxism: "the class struggle." The error of Darwin and Herbert Spencer: the struggle for subsistence, the survival of the fittest. However, tornadoes do not have a defined direction. They are rather unpredictable. Chaotic and surprising. How to accumulate power then to become the fittest? Wealth and gold as the Spanish mercantilists proclaimed? Influences? A position to take shelter from the storm? And in that eagerness to fight, to survive and survive, the last corner on which to turn, and that has no power over others, is the "self." This is the refuge of our energy. This is where punishments can offer us more direct results, because sooner or later the fight makes us adversaries of ourselves. As much as a blade rotates, the core of its rotor suffers towards infinity. The eternal twist is repeated insistently and inward. The throat is compressed like a scorpion that knots its tongs. As much as we search for the desert, the surrounding silence deafens us with the language we support within. The brain does not shut up. The electricity of our nervous system does not know of calm. Repeat and repeat the transience of electrons. Perhaps Buddha had the ability to enchant electrons, but we are Western men, with a divided soul, and we hardly feel that our reality becomes monolithic, we take the ax and we go to lay down the Irminsul that grows in us.

That's why we betray each other. The jungle of ideologies, concepts, gossip and popular sayings are scrambled through our backs, shoulders and neck. Some turn their eyes white once, then close them and forget to think again. They choose their ideology and act cheerfully, suffering mental laziness. "Occupy your head so that problems do not dominate you." As life is a succession of problems, men must therefore be skilled engineers who solve problems. And this desire is covered with false will and creativity. I no longer fool myself: the higher wills are those that create laws, their own values ​​and norms. Your own truth or "sacred lie." This is why we also betray each other. For as the lion of Zarathustra reach freedom and create new values. To "reinvent ourselves" as they say today.

However, it can be an absurd impulse too. A superstition, as I said earlier. Choose an abyss for wide and extensive, as when everything turns and you bet your only chip in the roulette that is formed. Well, it seems that life is not a struggle.

It is the aesthetics of the narrative that we also inherit. That hateful sense of time that is not ours. Or maybe it is, but that for the universe is indifferent. That mummified sway deceives us. Who knows if it is worth betraying yourself? It would be better, perhaps, if Irminsul still sheltered us with his shadow.

But it's too late. Once the tree is broken, the world that is created is another. And even if I die, the universe exists and continues.