It is my calling to eat of the fruit forbidden in amerika, and to pass my dreams on to a negligent, starved society--starved as it does starve the artist who would feed it a healthy diet of forbidden dreams.  Amerika, I shout out visions of sorrow and of joy, of thick-skinned ignorance which approaches evil and of the miraculous brilliance which underpins all of creation.  I shall whisper dreams of the men and women who fight for the only world of which they are aware.  I shall narrate tales woven from the depths of the subconscious, tales which will amaze and amuse, and perhaps shed light upon the darkness of the day.  Hello world, I’m back again.  And this time I’ll not shut up until I’ve gained your ear.

It’s not a question of prerogative--it’s simply who I am.

 A few years back, when I was deeply immersed in the effort of finding a legitimate profession with which  to provide for my daughter, when the artist had allowed himself to be almost totally eclipsed by the student of science, there was an apparent
conflict between long held spiritual beliefs and the new scientific beliefs which I was then accepting.  This conflict was resolved in a vivid and compelling dream, a dream from which I awoke weeping compassionately.

My daughter and I passed through a department store where all of society displayed its wares.  I was shunned by both the salesmen and the customers, and I hurried my daughter through the aisles and to the rear of the store, myself indifferent to the plethora of consumer goods.  A large opening in the back wall of the store led into an old cinder block building, messy and in the process of being renovated.  This was the home I was making for my daughter and myself.

It was not at present a very homey place, being cluttered with construction materials, dirt and debris.  The entrance led into a front room which I was slowly transforming into a gallery of scientific displays.  Progress was very slow and everything was in disarray.  A doorway in the far wall led to another room of similar dimensions which was set up as a living area with a small kitchen and a bed.  From this room there was a screen door leading outside.  Openings on the right side of each room led into the other half of the house, a large hall filled with wreckage which I had not yet made an attempt at ordering.

While we were in the living room some unexpected visitors arrived, friends and acquaintances, all artists and new-age spiritualists whom I had not seen in years.  They were accompanied by a black priest and, after looking the building over, they concluded that this house would do very nicely.  These visitors then approached me and stated that they would like to open a new church in my house.  I protested that I would need all the free space in the building for scientific displays.  We argued for a while and I grew more and more agitated.

There were a number of flies buzzing around the outside of the back screen door, some of them quite large.  At this point, I noticed the priest approaching the screen door intently.  I protested that he would let in the flies.  He ignored me and opened it anyway. I ran over and slammed the door but a few flies managed to get inside before it closed. The black priest smiled placidly at my fury, which smile incited me to violence.  I beat up the priest until his followers managed to rescue him.  They fled from my hues casting disappointed looks at me and making one last plea on behalf of their new church.  I chased them out and was very glad to be rid of them.  After they had gone, my daughter and I also left the building for a time.

When we returned, I stepped into the front room to find that it had been cleaned up quite nicely, with all of the scientific displays assembled and functioning.  I crossed through the gallery, marveling at the wonderful, elaborate displays.  In the back room, I found that all my furnishings were neatly arranged on one side, and on the other side were several rows of seats facing a pulpit.  The black priest appeared around me, along with my friends, all happy to see that I approved of their work and emanating a love which truly made of this house a home.  “You see,” they told me, “there really is room for your scientific displays and for our church too.”  I was warmly touched, and began to weep for the love which would find me and aid me in spite of myself.  They pointed to curtains which now hung over the doorways leading into the other half of the house and told me not to worry, we would fix up the other room in due time.

My eyes were wet when I woke from this dream, and I found myself in a peaceful state of beatitude which lasted for several days.  Thus my scientific endeavors were made possible by my spirituality and my creativity.  And yet, I have since discovered that the scientist must confine his spirituality and his creativity to a straitjacket, under the strict supervision of the rational mind.  Thus restricted, I could no longer function smoothly and harmoniously; tied up in such a straitjacket, I would surely go insane.  Scientists, even at their most eccentric, are imprisoned by their interment at educational institutions. They are forced to think only along certain lines and are tethered quite closely to a specific set of beliefs.  When I wrote in paleontology that mollusks express themselves by taking the irritants of life and making of them the seeds about which pearls are formed, one professor’s only comment was, “That's not true.”  Sorry doctor, but the pearl is the clam’s excretion and its statement of existence.

This brings me to the most basic error of all science; how can you hope to attain true knowledge of anything while confining your study to mere mechanics.  Your very objectivity prevents you from ever seeing the entire picture.  Indigenous peoples, who have a more direct knowledge of nature than any scientist could ever hope to achieve, have always known this.  That is why they marvel at western man's wealth of knowledge and paucity of wisdom.

It is not that I disavow rational, logical thought, but that I recognize that it must be balanced by empathy.  Nothing can be truly understood; it must be experienced subjectively to be fully known.  Objectivity gives us a name and a physical description, subjectivity gives us the identity.  But how can empathy and intuition be trusted?  The scientific mind is skeptical of anything which does not have a tangible basis of logic and fact; supposition is suspect.

Subjectivity must be accepted through faith and trust.  And what is science but a system of self-supporting suppositions; any true scientist will tell you there is no such thing as an absolute fact, merely theories supported by observation and experimentation.  And theories of physical reality, but there is more to reality than its physical expression and the precepts of science tend to break down when one attempts to look beyond the physical.  Here lies the territory of the artist.