Phantoms of identity, becoming nobody, Gomorrah and sin, and the madding crowd

***

             I was to find later, as I had many times before, for many other reasons, that the chaos and disease of society continued to be like a steam-roller crushing every gentle flower in its path, especially the innocent ones; to die into into nobodiness, and then, due to the chronic invasions of the madding crowd, to be forced to become somebody again, is when all the sorrow and illusion begins to take over. The collapse into form.

            It was then that I recognized what happens to the spirit when it mixes with persons who have separated themselves from the concave whole- which is almost everyone- and in separating themselves into the hell of distance they become naught but vexing phantoms which then try to draw all other spirits out of The Undivided and into the separation applauded by the world as identity.         

            I realized then that it was this degenerative process of inevitable accretion which had become the main reason compelling me to head out and away, over and over, time after time, from Gomorrah’s sin and contamination, back to the purity and innocence and healing of the land.

            Which is to say that after a brief spell of life back in the city, back amongst my colleagues and friends and loafing about at first and having a grand old time of it now that I was nobody, and therefore superfluous and irresponsible and all, not only did that somebodiness start germinating and growing up within me again, but also the art of just being slowly wilted away, as per usual, as the world’s impetus of doing crept in and took command within me.

***

These fragments and quotes are taken from the unpublished writings of Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.