Somewhere in a nondescript alley
Hidden in the heart of D.C.
A silent drama is underway:
Caught between the Owl
And the Lotus
And the Rose…
Is the Freeslave.
Will he ever be truly free?
-Iliad Alexander Terra
The Owl
The Lotus
The Rose
The Freeslave
The other night, after almost seven years I finally dreamt about my father again.
The last time I had dreamt of him was right after he had just passed away.
…In that dream so long ago I had found him in an abandoned and surreal hospital, as if it were a painting by Giorgio de Chirico, cast in a late afternoon light. He was on a stainless steel pathology gurney draped over by a white sheet. As I approached him, he sat up with a kind smile and assured me that he was fine, that he did not suffer any longer, and that he was in a much better place…
That was the last I saw him, that is … until two nights ago.
…He appeared in my recent dream at the end of a long and convoluted story, most of which I cannot recall. It was a brief visit, and soon afterwords I awoke, fully cognizant that he had made contact with me. As the rest of the dream quickly evaporated into the ether of my unconscious, I held on to the last bit where he spoke to me.
…He emerged through the layers of my dream only to name four books for me to read, two of which I forgot as soon as I awoke. And then he faded back into the folds. Of the two remaining books, one was called Rain, and the other The Trees Fall Off The Leaves. …The trees fall off the leaves?
And so it begins, my journey to where trees fall off the leaves, to where a nation collapses beneath its people, to where a leaf learns to fly…
Anyhow, for something worth flying for, here’s the indomitable Aly about to wield the radiant dagger…
Aly getting ready to ask a hard question...
-Iliad Alexander Terra
Photo: JOHN D MCHUGH/AFP/Getty Images
…How Culture resolves itself … battle of arbitrary identities.
Culture is a byproduct of the parasitic State feeding on the vitality and labor of the individual.
As a highly evolved and efficient parasite, the State lures and entices the individual with its facile and abstracted benefits while it ultimately destroys the radiance of the individual.
However, the Cultural beast has become malignant and is unable to be birthed into its evolved stage; thus it is suffocating with obsolescence and irrelevance amid escalating and perpetual acts of absurd and meaningless consumption as it thrashes about for legitimacy.
In all fairness though, it must be granted that the secondhand artifacts of Culture and the derived products of State can and do indeed benefit the needs of the individual through this de facto outgrowth of symbiosis; however, it must be made clear that under no circumstance should either Culture or State act as the basis and matrix for the Individual’s identity or logos.
In an ideal mode the Individual inherently and ultimately exists autonomous and independent of the confines and constructs of State. The Individual’s value transcends the pedestrian preoccupations of State and the superfluous trappings of Culture. Likewise, the individual’s identity stems from the fundamental core of being and source element of life.
It is this recognition of the potential of the radiant Individual that has enabled a few among us to illustrate the sinews of providence while the rest of us fester as fodder and perish as inert matter.
-Iliad Alexander Terra