The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

Welcome to the inner world. I used to think that I wanted to be an expert on the inner world, went to college for an esoteric inner world degree, wrote words, read books, did everything you’re supposed to do to come to know the inner world. But I can honestly say that I know absolutely nothing about the inner world. With this disclaimer, I will continue to be your guide.

You might ask me why I would want to write about something that I know nothing about. Well, there is really very little else that interests me. It is like fine music, you hear it, but you don’ t know why you love it. I always wanted to know what I was doing when I was dreaming, but it just didn’t work out. After all of the books and all the study, after all of the writing where I journeyed into the inner world, after all of it, I am no closer now to knowing what it is about than I was at the beginning of my trek and this is, well, actually a little embarrassing.

Yeah, embarrassing. Who do you know that spent $30,000 to learn about the inner world by studying mythology and depth psychology only to say these pitiful words about knowing? What is knowing? Sure this is a question that many philosophers have continually tackled and this could be advantageous to the rest of us if we could actually muck through their explanations. Who really has this question in the back of their mind?

Very few people. Not many people sit around wondering about the nature of knowing. When I tried to join the pros I always failed miserably. My questions were my questions and their answers never really did it for me. If I tried to memorize their answers then all I really had were memorized answers. They weren’t the answers to my own questions and my own questions were, I think, much more private, wordless, unconscious.

But like a good fisherman I tried to pull up out of the deep murk all of the answers that I could. I had the impression that the inner world was the same as the outer world. Big mistake. It is nothing like it at all. YOU, the all big YOU of YOU-dom (you know what you are and who), think these same thoughts all the time. You too find it hard to put any of it into words and if you’re like me you want your thought to be eloquent at least, perfect would be fine, like having the highest quality mental state which can only lead you to good things, easy answers, knowing the ineffable. Doesn’t happen. Once you learn something it is swallowed back up by unknowing until you don’t even know what the question was. After all is said and done the old pleasures and needs seem the most reliable. I should have had a family instead of dedicating myself to spiritual pursuits. No, I really should have.

But I can’t sit around and cry over spilt milk. I was taught that the inner world is important and I went down a winding and windy path only to discover, well, nothing. I don’t know anything more now than I knew at any other time of my life. This may be untrue if my mental stability is a sign of having conquered question after question. Knowing became for me a way to be strong and if strong now then I can take comfort in knowing that all of my attempts were not in vain. I am here because I ventured towards the inner world. Just because I cannot see anything of the inside world doesn’t mean that it is not there. It can only be seen through the outer world. Go figure.

If I am to know then I can only know through the reflection of what is in front of my very eyes, for the inner world is invisible, dodgy and unknowable. I think the inner world is what people are talking about when they talk about “God.” God is unknowable. Too vast. Too grand. Too fill in the blank. A flower. A feeling of love. An example of love. You can call God just about anything, choose any nice picture or feeling and you’ve got it. The inner world is the same way.

I could not begin to talk to you about it right now. I guess I could tell you about feelings. They are supposed to be the telltale signs of the inner world. You feel love and the inner world is “blooming,” a metaphor for a state of being using the image of a flower. There it is again. The inner world being described by the outer world.

Why does the outer world always have all the fun? Why can’t we just call the inner world “things” what they are? I suppose that is what poetry tries to do. Finagle words around feelings in the hope that you will show something that will prove that higher thought, an actual wonderful inner world,exists, that there is something under the feeling, the image, the thought, the poetry, and that something is either “you” or “God” or simply the inner world.

Fantasy. It is a need for fantasy I guess. I want to live with invisible toads in something something gardens. I want to mess stuff up, let errors reign so that the invisible world can be exposed as faulty. That’s okay just as long as it is exposed. There is something to that I think. Letting the real inner world poke through. You tend to think that this is the real thing. Just maybe you will find a reason to live. Not that I don’t want to live, but meaning is so important to everybody. Beauty in one’s own soul may just be a proof of meaning as a human being.

I get lost just surmising what the invisible world inside actually consists of. Perpetually the phony. Never have the full on conviction like the others that things are this way or that. Always have to use asterisks to explain everything, have to say, well, I don’t really know, but this seems like the way that it is. I know I want to try and pinpoint these things, but once you bust through and start to use poetry to do it then you are sort of lost. It’s sort of like giving up. But the poetic voice does seem like the truer voice when you are writing about this subject.

How can you know about the inner world unless it tells you about itself? This is assuming that there is a self to the inner world. If so, is it your self? My self? Is the inner world all of the swirling emotions and thoughts surrounding your very core which is just a swirling mass of unknowability? Probably. Sounds right. If so then what do I continue to write for? Seems inane to keep going. But if this were to be a book I would have to continue on and on. My publisher would demand it. So what would I say? The inner world is shown through metaphors from the outer world. Enough. Done. The inner world is a mass of thoughts and feeling which represent the moments of the real ineffable you. Or maybe God. Hmm. Back to being unknowable. So I will continue onward with the trek and find new things to write about. Poetry. Always falling back on poetry.

What is this thing poetry? Most people would say it’s purty words. Others would say it is hyper intellectualism. I guess it can be both of those things. It is definitely an exercise for the mind which is supposed to have importance to the soul. (I guess we’ll get to the soul later. I guess we’ll have to). Obviously we are not very pleased with things if we don’t have some way of registering understanding. Words do that for us.

When you discuss invisible things you of course must find words to express those invisible things so you say things like “the monkey face of the aqua worlds twirl grasses in the welknit of the mind…”you know, crazy things. Why? Because you don’t know! You don’t know what you are doing. You don’t really know of what you consist. The thrubbing and pounding of feeling but not knowing can be way too much for mortal man. The only way to throw off the coil is to face it and come to know it, but when you look, you guessed it, it’s not there. That’s what I mean about the inner world being dodgy. It dodges forever your attempts to throw a good beam of light on to it. Instead it releases little messages to you in code and your brain has to decode those little messages and sometimes it is “aqua worlds twirl grasses in the welknit of the mind.” No really. I really mean it. Then you must decipher that code with another line. Perhaps it can be done. All I know is that you don’t really have much of a choice. You’ve got to do something to come to an understanding of the whirlpool which is your “soul.”

So here we are where I promised you earlier. We’re at the notion of the soul. I could try to remember all of the people who had written about the meaning of the notion of the soul, but being a desperate member of the human race in need of understanding Now, I will not google those things. Instead I will tell you what I think.

The soul is the quicksand in which you drown when you are confused. The soul can be darkened like a burnt piece of toast. The soul can be drowned in all sorts of bad metaphorical liquids, the soul can be burnt up, can be on fire. I’m just guessing here really. But it seems like the soul can do just about anything. The soul is the center of the middle of all that is mysterious. It is where God has coffee with the invisible inner world which is you (but because can be considered a place where God has coffee is possibly a part of God Himheritself.)

Have you noticed that it’s really difficult to talk about the concept of “God?” Have you noticed that yet? Especially as somebody writing to an audience like I am right now. I know how people feel about “God.” But I hate having to do that dance. “God” is simply a part of the equation when it comes to soul and the inner world. Hesheitother is just there like an answer beyond an answer. It is the million trillion mile perspective. The notion that inner world is so inner that ever trying to get to the bottom of the notion with our peanut minds is absolutely ridiculous.

Maybe this is why I have such trouble with this whole inner world thing. I am faced with the idea that at the very end of the line itself is “God” Hesheitorother (according to the beliefs which might make you mad at me if I put it in too awkward a fashion). I don’t know. Even agnostics deal with this. Atheists don’t, but then again, why would they have to be atheists if they could not at least conceive of the notion? It must really drive them crazy, plus all the crap that has entered the world through saints and martyrs and prophets, the loons anyway. You get one good prophet for every twenty loons it seems so you wonder whether any of it is worth it. Atheists have a good point. Let’s just call the whole thing off. But if I am to go into this notion of the inner world I can’t do that. “God” may just be looking over his paper at me right now and I have to say the right thing.

So what to say about God? He lives in the soul. There I said it. If Hesheitorother actually lives then Hesheitorother is housed in the soul. That is the importance of the soul. The house is bigger than the self and the sky where “God” lives is bigger than the house and God can make himself really small and join you in your soul where your inner world lives, I mean self, where you live. You, soul, and the big ol’ Sky.

But of course all of this is invisible so you don’t know who you are in relation to the soul or God and after awhile, well, you guessed it, you try to figure it out poetically or you read book after book or you keep your nose in your holy book in hopes that it will keep you alive through osmosis. Invisible is invisible. “God” doesn’t send emails. Your soul house is a nice little idea and you, once again, are a swirl of emotions and thoughts that will only really let you know what they consist of if you beg them nicely by placing them into words, rather, allow them to be placed into words that sound like, you know, the grasses of the welknit thing.

Isn’t it funny how knowing becomes unknowing in a blink of an eye? We can say that we know something, but the next minute we realize we have no idea what we’re talking about. We might go around for awhile proclaiming that we learned something about ourselves, but then it doesn’t even matter. We’ve moved on. What was the question again?

After awhile, especially if you are losing on the regular playing fields of regular everyday life, it seems to be a nuisance. You wonder why you have to be cursed in thinking the way that you do. Nobody else seems to be that way. Of course, other people also seem to be able to handle the outside world, but you can’t. Your inside world is too vast, too important to you. So you begin to fail. You lose. You can’t join the fray and after awhile you realize that you are sleeping on the ground with a stone for your pillow. That was once claimed as likely to happen for playing this game. But is it really worth it?

Perhaps it is if you are the type of person who might go a little batty if living any other way. Sometimes we have to deal with who we are. Our attention is where it is because that is where it is. Because it is where it is doesn’t mean that we are bad or unworthy or losers, no, but it does mean that it is where it is at and you might just be a candidate for the role of starer into the void your entire life. That’s okay, but you’ve got to be aware that maybe it won’t be all peaches and cream for you. You’ll keep going for as long as you need to and one day you might wake up and realize that you have grown a long beard, have no money, no family and everybody else does and they’re all long long gone. Boo hoo. Navel gazers or star gazers. They don’t know which one you are and you don’t either. You are just who you are and you’d better accept it because at some point you are going to need to pull out of it and go back. Just like the Boddhisatvas in the Buddhist philosophy. Do it and then go home. Give yourself a break and be an all around good guy or gal. That’s your mission. It’s unfortunate in a way because you miss out on a whole lot of things, but some people just don’t have a choice. Often society will reward these people. Maybe it will be you. Most likely not, but maybe. Maybe you too can have love. Stranger things have happened.