BELIEFS

Think on this: the ‘beliefs’ of Socrates, or Voltaire, or Confucius, or Siddhartha, or Muhammed, or a cognitive psychologist, or a mathematical and theoretical physicist, or a Voodoo priestess, or an astrophysicist, or Guru Nanak Dev Ji, or Friedrich Nietzsche, or an anthropologist, or Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, or Trotsky, or a crackhead on Boscombe Crescent, or you and me have precisely matched probabilities when it comes to the reality of being accurate. 

Didn’t you realise that? 

There are no arbiters as to who’s flawless in their ‘beliefs’. 

We actually have no perception that our beliefs are all outdated. They’re fucking archaic! We have no evidence, no grounds to base our beliefs on, and lacking this we’ve raised a variety of completely diverse beliefs. When you believe something, whatever you believe in, you penalise yourself, simply because you can’t believe something else that conflicts with that belief. Your beliefs become like a house of cards, and you’re scared stiff that just a slight breeze could flatten them. You’ve become subservient to that belief, and every time you do this you relinquish a little bit more of your independence.

This is something we’ve never absorbed as a race. We’ve explored space, we’ve blueprinted the depth of the ocean and the heart of protons, neutrons and electrons, yet we have a dread of gazing internally to ourselves because our perception is that this is where all the inconsistencies flow. 

So, with the intention of discarding all my beliefs, the Gypsy in my wandering spirit went hopping freight trains, hitch-hiking, walking and talking my way across the globe with charisma that is not really wrapped too tight, for when all is said and done, I have holy curiosity and crazy wisdom. I intended to simply go out looking for my bones, to discover what’s out there between light and shadow and to delight in it all. I passed the great arid deserts of the West, and the dust entered my bloodstream and flowed through to every part of my body. The West was both eerie and breathtakingly beautiful for at nighttime I could hear ethereal voices floating in the air like perfume, and I wanted to live there forever. I saw some of the most awe-inspiring groove gulleys I’d ever seen, and the red rock backdrop dazzled me as brutal rapids nose-dived off the cliffs into pools surrounded by abundant green piñon-juniper forests and fiery peach and coral sandstone canyons carved by flowing rivers and streams. It would honestly not have surprised me to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid plunging from an unforgiving precipice into the river below. I next passed red rock mountains with pine trees bordering dark, spooky lakes. Then there was the unceasing horizon, cold-blooded and ruthless prairie. Cowboys and dreamers. Eventually I hit foggy river towns and vast farmlands, smoke curling from the chimneys, then miles of unbroken forests and prime trout-water rivers. Until finally, after boarding a freight train that boomed, rolled and grumbled its way through a blizzard, I was home, in a city that takes no crap. I was back amongst friends who I could trust with my life.

Over the course of my travels, in the whispering pastel shades of dreamtime, I’d heard Indians chanting in deep, compelling tones, and I’d seen forgotten travellers in moonless, black robes. On one warm crimson morning, after the white sun had turned to big red, I witnessed dancing clan mothers telling fortunes in the sand, and I met the caretakers of secrets, and felt as though I’d been on a Shamic journey to the other side of self. And Wizards, Elves and Angels protected me. Yet I still retained my beliefs. 

But I did learn one thing – apart from the fact that every single tree carries a story – I learned that all doctrines, creeds, and articles of faith are nothing but somebody else’s dross. All of them. And that’s because they humiliate the Freethinkers. And that won’t do at all. 

However, we are all immortal children of the universe, and the truth is still the truth, no matter who tries to scare you into believing otherwise. We should view with the utmost suspicion any ideology that claims to own the monopoly on the Creator.

Your soul may well consist of vagabonds and visionaries, cigar box jugglers and snake worshippers, human cannonballs and treasure hunters, for these are the people who the fairies and goblins recognise with that unruly part of perception that the soul holds dominion over, for you are still alive in this deranged and irrational world, and for that reason alone people will say you’re crazy ….. but you’re not. You have the free spirit of a court jester and the wild ghost of an animal inside of you, which is why you can be a little bit unpredictable at times. Everything the establishment has said is faulty and defective with you, is actually what’s genuine and authentic about you because you see things others don’t. You are hard-wired to change the world, at least the world around you. You celebrate meaningful and enigmatic ideas. You paint the town red with ideas! Your mind is uncontrollable, and the establishment is intimidated by this.

You see, we have to create our own roadshow. But if we’re stressing about being misgendered, or racial tension, or being offended at absolutely nothing, perhaps just a word, then we are already suppressed. We’ve already killed off all our darlings. And this is boneheaded thinking. 

Drumming beneath a harvest moon, drumming with a kind of poetry that all the senses, sooner or later, would recognize …. and the world gets hazy. 

A warm kiss, a cold beer, hardened waitresses and explosive affairs while listening to jazz blowing faint across the river, a ratbag of a river, muddy, polluted, oily, smoky and rank. A river of easy virtue, if ever there was such a thing. God continues to give life to womanhood and propels her out onto backstreets and alleyways, but every now and again, a lady walks up with flowing black hair, panther eyes and an ophidian smile, full bloom, just bursting out of her robe, a sex creature, a curse, a zenith, the end of it all. 

Without people like us the world would be full of humans who are little more than robots. I love chaotic human beings, people who don’t follow the rules, who can’t be categorised, but whose loyalty is stronger than blood, and whose integrity is hard as nails. That's how much I value these friendships. We think different and we talk different, and at times we dress different too. And I’ll let you into a little secret; even those who don’t ‘get’ it, who would disapprove of how this kind of vitality and exuberance is occasionally misguided, must surely see how we’re truly mixing with the angels. Mischievous angels, granted, but angels none the less.

Did you know that when a baby smiles in his sleep, he’s dreaming of angels.

Hero or villain, cowboy or dreamer, cobwebs on your bloodshot soul or not, you’re wonderful. I believe in you. Flawed, frustrated, cracked and repaired with gold …. but still kickin’ ass. I believe in you! 

And the ferocious, untamed man, he laid the thunder down.

Copyright © Karl Wiggins