Eternal return
predicts the warm summer wind
but not this storm brewing,
under my skin.
If we have only one life
there’s no means of comparison.
Do I don a hat to weigh me down
or give into thunderous thoughts
of mystery and abandon?
Give into a one in a million
magnetic attraction
like heat lightning.
My feet have left the ground,
I soar into the Unknown
centrifugal force
sinuous motion.
Betray gravity.
Cut loose the
sandbags.
Where does helium go?
Author notes
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera uses the inverse Frederick Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return to illustrate Lightness. Eternal Return dictates that all things in existence recur over and over again for all eternity. Assuming that Eternal Return were impossible, humankind would experience an “absolute absence of burden,” and this would “[cause] man to be lighter than air” in his lack of weight of meaning. In the Unbearable Lightness of Being, the character Sabina has a Bowler as her symbol of weight to keep her from floating off.
A contest entry
- ~ Up-Up-and Away in Your Beautiful Balloon ~ by Desire.
700 points, ended May 14, 10 entries
Silver trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 7 of 7
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Thank You!!
Thank You for Your entry: The Unknown
This piece tugged hard at Spirit and for some
reason when I read this which I did several times~
I kept getting the movie: The Ruins
but the part where the seekers are lowered into the
escavation hole~ into the Unknown...
the same scene is replayed to me along with the
young girl staring at a distance...not wanting to get
close~ but for some reason getting reference to
hidden meaning~ like Runessssssss~ancient symbols
Hearing words: Tarot cards and stones...
seeing hands toss what looks like stones...
Ok...may sound strange but here goes~ getting words:
Voodoo Witch Doctor but reference to Louisana...
and Marie Laveau..(I mean no disrespect just passing on what words were shown~)Not malevolent by any means
I'm trying to decipher what I am seeing when I read Your words, hopefully it makes some sense
Wonderful weaving of rhyme also and info in AC~
Powerful images You have brought forth
These lines grabbed and pulled~
Do I don a hat to weigh me down
or give into thunderous thoughts
of mystery and abandon? .
Beautiful take on the prompt~
Thank You for sharing Your Heart also Spirit!
Best wishes to You in the contest Sweet Soul
**Judging will be done shortly...
Many blessings too
and much love~ Desire~*~~*~
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I find it fascinating what the poem made you see, and you also helped me to look at my own poem in a new way. Thank you!
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and it is I that should be Thanking You
Congratulations
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--superficial philosophical mishmash.
--Has some good points
"Eternal return
predicts the warm summer wind
but not this storm brewing,
under my skin."
No. Eternal return predicts both; however, Nietzsche never affirmed eternal return. To Nietzsche it is 'the *thought* of eternal return' that is horrifying and paralyzing because it implies a life of choices heavy with consequences that will be relived again and again, eternally in linear time. The wish for the eternal return of all events is thus a powerful affirmation of one’s life.
"If we have only one life
there’s no means of comparison."
There's no means of comparison with past events under eternal return, either. There's not even an awareness that one ought to be comparing—life is being relived in linear time—though for obvious reasons, one certainly ought to be predicting. The thought of eternal return is horrifying and paralyzing, i.e., heavy, precisely because you can't stop trying to determine the future consequences of every choice. Kundera's philosophy that because there's no opportunity for trial and error, a life that is only lived once isn't worth living doesn't invert eternal return any more than the impossibility of eternal return negates the 'thought of eternal return' as found in Nietzsche.
OTOH, I like the second stanza better because yours is a sensible answer, at least as far as it goes. If you could live with the innocent abandon of an animal, the issue would never come up. For an over-thinking human, the only complete negation of the thought of eternal return is to not think it in the first place. Once having thought of eternal return, or any other ethical guideline for that matter, a sense of lightness flows naturally from its dismissal that allows us to freely walk the utilitarian path.
Your lack of transition makes this seductively easy. The metaphor in the third stanza inverts the usual religious pattern. That is, instead of freedom from the flesh leaving a transcendent spirit in a realm of pure Goodness, abandonment of ethical weight leaves the body free to indulge in “…magnetic attraction like heat lightning.” However, there is no real tension in the decision. Unfortunately, for me that made the piece shallow and pornographic (in the sense of Joyce). In the novel, Kundera ameliorates this problem by leaving the reader in a sort of suspended illogicality where it is difficult to judge right and wrong while suggesting a need for both weight and lightness. Even so, the story is called The Unbearable Lightness of Being for a reason.
It’s not an easy subject. One clappy for effort.
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Thanks for all your thoughts. This is an idea I have been working on for a long time- since I first read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. With your thoughts in mind, I can see it still needs some work.
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I like the thought of abandoning myself to love and to what life would bring, "cutting loose the sandbags" so I could fly. Great metaphor!
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Thank you.
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