There is nothing left to discover. Nothing undocumented, undisturbed by the morals of man. A resource to be found in every whale’s bone at ocean floor instead of awe for how she might have lived, a ‘perhaps’ that might start a wonder-filling story. Resources are the ‘ought’ from the ‘is’ now. No, there is nothing left to wonder at.
The world has been conquered; divided up, fought over, controlled, transmuted, derived. Each thing and place, their meaning: ‘utility.’
Having subdued it all, perverted and imputed each atom’s magic and meaning, in aim of accumulation, our world, she turns inert again. If all is known, there is nothing upon which to act—to tell new stories about; no magic. We live in a world unlike any of our predecessors—a world without magic. And how they would all have rued the day they knew everything in perfect knowledge. So stark a shock to their hopeful, loving, awe-filled minds it would have been—a mass suicide would have ensued.
We have shrunk what was a great world. With our greed and fear of death that makes a hammer of every branch, a screw of every twisted twig, and a meal of every creeping thing in the forest. If every thing screams at us ‘use me,’ perhaps we are innocent of these demands. Perhaps we are the animal meant to ascribe meaning and to shrink wonderful things, awe-inspiring things, the world itself even, into our hammers and screws.
But when the world is built; when it has been built for some time, why, what then does the builder see before him? A heap of outdated structures? Knock them down and scramble the pieces? Hang wires and extract the soul of man from him?
Yes! The animal who makes meaning; he himself is to be objectified; the great meaning maker; let us pick apart his mechanisms and find the resources in his bones. From where do those stories of his originate? Who is the hammer maker and why for gods sake does he see the world as nail?
Not the heavens above, not the waters beneath, but inward will the architects and subsidizers turn for their final mystery; and no different than mother whale will we find ourselves picked apart in the holy name of progress by the hands of this most curious ape.
Our sons will surely tire of our passé psychic buildings. They will —like we have done— drive wrecking balls through the hardened walls of our hearts, topple our mantles, steal our spiritual bricks, and leave our love, our mortar —written on the pages of our dusty books— buried ‘neath our rubble. In preparation for reconstruction, we hope a blind sage of his day, blind even unto himself may pick them up, having dug amongst our bruised bones with that same pomp and projectile curiosity. Perhaps they will find a meal or a morsel and bring it home.
Perhaps we old men, we sunken, baleen late ones, can best hope to be a shapely portion of rubble, that men amongst our ruins —and theirs— may scavenge a worthy cornerstone.