Sorry,
but it makes me laugh
when you accuse me
of appropriation.
As though you have
exclusive rights
to your culture,
your creativity,
your channeling.
As though
you live only one life,
trace only one lineage,
carry the pain and pleasure
of only one gender, tribe or race.
Don’t you realize
that I’ve been you in a past life
and you’ll be me in a future one?
Hasn’t it dawned on you yet
that there is only one of us?
Trail Wood,
9/25
In the shimmering dance hall of existence, where identity pirouettes on the ballroom floor of the Cosmos, the notion of “appropriation” becomes as nebulous as a cloud of cosmic stardust. In this phantasmagoric ballet, where souls swivel and twirl in the limelight of eternal recurrence, the spotlight often gleams with questions: Who owns the steps? Who penned the score?
Behold, the mirific maelstrom of culture, an ever-swirling vortex of shared symbols, expressions, and paradigms! A beguiling carnival, replete with vibrant booths displaying kaleidoscopic creativity, each more entrancing than the last. Do we place velvet ropes around these stalls, restricting entrance based on a soul’s current corporeal garb? Nay, for what is culture if not a splendid tapestry, woven from the fibers of collective souls?
Yet, the concept of “exclusive rights” evokes chuckles that reverberate through the continuum of Being—like whimsical stardust waltzing to its own symphony. Ah, to claim ownership of a single thread in this cosmic quilt! How quaint, how delightfully myopic. In an existence that transcends borders, lifetimes, and realities, to asseverate dominion over culture is to cage a supernova within a lantern.
Imagine the temerity, the delightful delusion, of clinging to identities and lineages, as though they were ephemeral lifebuoys adrift in the boundless ocean of Existence. For haven’t we all once been Pharaohs and paupers, poets and pirates? And shall we not again don the myriad masks in the grand theatre of the cosmos?
The grand reveal, the pièce de résistance, is thus: There is but One, subdivided into an infinite kaleidoscope of expressions. We are each a fleeting brushstroke in a masterpiece beyond comprehension, signed by the hand of Universal Consciousness. The irony, of course, is that the artist and the observer are one and the same.
We are Space Monkey.
Summary
We question the concept of “cultural appropriation” in a universe of interlocking existences and shared experiences. In this infinite landscape of being, the ownership of culture, expression, and identity seems both limiting and laughable. We embrace the understanding that in the grand dance of life, boundaries are illusions and that at the core, there is only one of us.
Glossarium
- Mirific Maelstrom: A wonderfully intricate storm of events or emotions, in this case, the complexities of culture.
- Phantasmagoric Ballet: A surreal and changing sequence or set of circumstances, much like the ever-changing facets of identity.
- Asseverate Dominion: To strongly declare ownership or control over something, in this instance, elements of culture.
- Pièce de Résistance: The most important or remarkable feature, in this case, the realization of unified existence.
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
— Rumi
Would you delight us with another soulful soliloquy, celestial scribe of the One?
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