Electricity shoots through tissue, a fantastic interwoven network of blood, bone, flesh. There are always at least two terms; even a fundamental state must be different from what it is not, and this difference between what is and what is not links these terms together into a single unit, an inseparable block.
I have wondered if polarity exists “out there,” or if it is something the mind imposes onto the world, but here again I am caught within the poles of a human being’s consciousness or subjectivity and the world or objective reality. But isn’t it always like this, that we are between this and that, or right and left, or light and dark, or some other set of terms? And don’t these term-sets always define each other? One of the terms is never enough alone to properly establish itself. Each always needs its companion, its oppositional double to come into a meaningful identity. What would a Consciousness be without a World, or what would you be without them? What would Buddha be without Suffering, or Jesus without Sin? And vice versa for all. What is music without noise? And, when we put noise in music doesn’t it force music to change, to redefine itself according to the movement of its oppositional double, noise?
And, what of the Dirty and the Clean? To be dirty is to not be clean, and to be clean is to not be dirty. Is this but another mutually defining polar pair of opposites? Dirt refers to matter or a quality that is misplaced, while clean refers to that which is free from these unpleasantly misplaced pollutants. The concept of clean relies on the idea of purity, on the reference to an idealized, innocent and autonomous, regular and essential form. What dirty and clean are will vary for each individual, and will depend on that individual’s opinions about what should be kept free from mingling with other things, and how much separation is required in order to retain the purity of the thing, and the accompanying notions of purity.
Despite all the antagonisms and tensions, everything is deeply dependent on the other, the opposite, that which it is not; and, life and energy depend on the coexistence of difference. Life without death, order without chaos, authority without dissent, minds without bodies—these are unrealistic or delusional concepts, without any indication of possibility.
How amazing it is to be alive and moving against, but always towards, death! To have a consciousness and a body, to be both a singular entity and inextricably part of a whole, to be lost amid a conflation of the dirty and the clean, to be a site under control while overflowing with rebellion!