Argento vivo

 

Ho sedici anni / Ma è già da più di dieci che vivo in un carcere / Nessun reato commesso là / Fuori / Fui condannato ben prima di nascere / Costretto a rimanere seduto per ore / Immobile e muto per ore / Io, che ero argento vivo / Signore / Che ero argento vivo / E qui dentro si muore / Questa prigione corregge e prepara una vita / Che non esiste più da almeno vent'anni / A volte penso di farla finita / E a volte penso che dovrei vendicarmi / Però la sera mi rimandano a casa, lo sai / Perché io possa ricongiungermi a tutti i miei cari / Come se casa non fosse una gabbia anche lei / E la famiglia non fossero i domiciliari

I am sixteen / But it is already over ten years now that I have been living in a prison / No crime committed there / Out there / I was condemned well before I was born / Forced to remain seated, hour after hour / Motionless and mute, hour after hour / I, who was quicksilver / Oh God! / Was I quicksilver! / And here, inside, death overtakes us / This prison corrects—and prepares a life / That has no longer existed for at least twenty years / Sometimes I think about ending it / And sometimes I think I ought avenge myself / But, in the evening, they send me home, you know / So I can be reunited with all of my loved ones / As if home were not a cage as well / And as if my family were not my house arrest

What is this describing? School: prison. Home: prison. There is 'in here', in the human world, yet there is an 'out there': the world beyond, the heaven before the world, where the mistake happened, where the 'crime' was committed, the moment that the child of God (all of us) decided in favour of specialness over unity.

The kid is quicksilver. Argento vivo literally means silver that is alive, with quick in quicksilver having the same meaning as alive (as in 'the quick and the dead', which means the living and the dead).

He was quicksilver, but is no more, yet that is what he absolutely was. [Note, as an aside, in Italian, to have quicksilver on your back means to be fidgety and distracted and be unable to sit still, conveying the restlessness of someone who is sufficiently awake to realise this world is not real and this world is not enough. 'They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity,' The Doctor's Opinion.] Yet he is aware he was something else before he was here.

A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what it is the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again. (ACIM, Lesson 182)

This place, the human world—the material world—is a place of death, in which the future is worked for, but in which there is no future: the future promised is a charade, over before the kid was born (cf. ACIM, 'This world was over long ago,' T-28.1.1). Before the kid was born, when he was condemned by his own (our own) decision to be separate. One option is suicide, but that's hardly a beneficial solution. Another option is retaliation: an attempt to destroy the system, but the system is too big.

E il tempo scorre di lato ma non lo guardo nemmeno / E mi mantengo sedato per non sentire nessuno / Tengo la musica al massimo / E volo / Che con la musica al massimo / Rimango solo

And time runs, off to the side, but I do not even watch it / And I keep myself sedated so I cannot hear anyone / I keep my music at full volume / And I fly / Because, with my music at full volume, I remain alone

A further option: block everything out; deny, override, and circumscribe the laws of time and space.

Ho sedici anni / Ma è già più di dieci / Che ho smesso di credere / Che ci sia ancora qualcosa là / Fuori

I am sixteen / But it is already over ten years / Since I stopped believing / That there is still something there / Out there

Double meaning: the out there could be what lies in the world beyond the immediate, or it could mean what lies beyond the world. Earlier, it meant the latter; here, it could mean both.

È così facile da spiegare / Come si nuota in mare / Ma è una bugia, non si può imparare / A attraversare / Quel che sarò

It is so easy to explain / How to swim in the sea / But it is a lie, it is impossible to learn / To cross / What I will be

Here is the recognition that what we are in the world: the identity, the image, the place in the world, the whole character, the whole persona, who we think we are, who and what we're told we are, the body, is the obstacle to be crossed, so, to escape, we must cross ourselves. Hence the impossibility: how can self transcend self? ('And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God’s help.' Chapter 5)

Nella testa girano pensieri / Che io non spengo / Non è uno schermo / Non interagiscono se li tocchi

In my head, thoughts whirl / Which I cannot turn off / It is not a screen / These words don't interreact with you when you touch them

This is a very clear indication of the dreamlike state not only of the world, where the individual is ultimately powerless, but the wrong mind, where the individual is powerless, because what else there is to turn to, namely the voice for God, has been suppressed, like the other side of a bridge shrouded in fog. In dreams, agency is stripped completely. In the ego's thoughtlife, agency is similar stripped. We are watching a film: we are literally watching a projection, an outpicturing of the internal sin, guilt, and fear.

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ACIM quotations

The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. (What Is The World?)

What is the world except a little gap perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months and years? (T-28.III.7)

Yet it is time alone that winds on wearily, and the world is very tired now. It is old and worn and without hope. There was never a question of outcome, for what can change the Will of God? But time, with its illusions of change and death, wears out the world and all things in it. Yet time has an ending, and it is this that the teachers of God are appointed to bring about. For time is in their hands. Such was their choice, and it is given them (M-1.4)

Darkness is lack of light as sin is lack of love. It has no unique properties of its own. It is an example of the “scarcity” belief, from which only error can proceed. Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no needs of any kind. The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything to you; or rather, to restore it to your awareness. You were given everything when you were created, just as everyone was. (T-1.IV.3.)

The world must fail. It is a blip in eternity, an explosion of time and space that will eventually contract back in on itself. It is an attempt to usurp God's authorship and establish a reality in which there is no God. Within it, each fragment performs the same Big Bang, making itself, snatching what it can, before being sucked back into nothingness.

The system does not work and cannot work.

Yet another belief: happiness will come if you manage to change the situation you are in and the people around you. Not true. You stupidly squander so much energy trying to rearrange the world. If changing the world is your vocation in life, go right ahead and change it, but do not harbour the illusion that this is going to make you happy. What makes you happy or unhappy is not the world and the people around you, but the thinking in your head. As well search for an eagle's nest on the bed of an ocean, as search for happiness in the world outside of you. So if it is happiness that you seek you can stop wasting your energy trying to cure your baldness or build up an attractive body or change your residence or job or community or lifestyle or even your personality. Do you realise that you could change every one of these things, you could have the finest looks and the most charming personality and the most pleasant of surroundings and still be unhappy? And deep down you know this is true but still you waste your effort and energy trying to get what you know cannot make you happy. (Anthony De Mello)

Why is it there at all?

The body no more dies than it can feel. It does nothing. Of itself it is neither corruptible nor incorruptible. It is nothing. It is the result of a tiny, mad idea of corruption that can be corrected. (T-19.IV.C.5.)

Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. (T-27.VIII.6)

The tiny mad idea: to have specialness away from God, to be something separate from God. This desire for specialness is the 'sin'. Of course, we cannot be separate from God, so the separation never happened, so there is no sin. But we believe there is.

Whatever form of specialness you cherish, you have made sin. Inviolate it stands, strongly defended with all your puny might against the Will of God. (T-24.III.2)

Having made sin, we create a world in which we seek an alternative to God's love: specialness. This fails, because it is one illusion made to treat another: a maladaptive solution to a non-existent problem.

Every illusion is one of fear, whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another must fail. If you seek love outside yourself you can be certain that you perceive hatred within, and are afraid of it. Yet peace will never come from the illusion of love, but only from its reality. (T-16.IV.6)

Where is that in the book?

The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. ... Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? (Chapter 5)

What is the solution?

There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and He did not depart from it nor leave it separate from Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within. (T-18.VI.1)

We have come to believe He would like us to keep our heads in the clouds with Him, but that our feet ought to be firmly planted on earth. That is where our fellow travelers are, and that is where our work must be done. These are the realities for us. We have found nothing incompatible between a powerful spiritual experience and a life of sane and happy usefulness. (Chapter 9)