Criticism and Intelligence

    It seems as though we've collectively agreed that to love is to be ignorant, and that criticism is a display of intellect. If we accept something as it is, obviously we must not have thought hard enough about it. We must find flaws in everything because acceptance is resignation - blindness.

    I've fallen prey to this malign mindset and I cannot take it any longer. If love is blindness then tear out my eyes because I do not want to be smart, I want to love, I want to be loved, I want to live. If all my "intelligent" eyes can do is see through things, then I do not want them. 

    Let the blood run from my empty sockets. Let my heart pump it out into the world until I can give no more and let me be glad that I have given everything and kept none for myself. 

    Intelligence is criticism and it is lonely and it is selfish.

Basho's Crickets

Ungraciously, under

A great soldier’s helmet

A cricket sings

- Matsuo Basho

Though this poem is undoubtedly a statement against warfare, I think there are two ways to interpret it. They are similar, to be sure, but each holds its own value - particularly on the matter of crickets.

The first and more obvious interpretation relates to the indifference of nature towards human warfare. To the cricket, this helmet is nothing more than a convenient shelter, and its song is unbothered.

I suppose the second interpretation doesn’t differ from the first so much as compound it. In our culture (the easiest example is comedy) crickets paradoxically imply silence with their song - their chirps are empty. With this understanding, the cricket's presence seems to symbolize the nature of war: a racket that amounts to nothing. You could take it even further in saying that a cricket doesn't just imply silence, it magnifies it. In this case, war isn't just futile, it is putting on full display the stupidity of human affairs.

        Either way, I think this poem rules and crickets are an untapped source of brilliant metaphors.