Dreaming and the Box (Director’s Cut)

Dreaming and the Box (Director’s Cut)
 
The box is what’s real;
It’s what we agree on.
It shapes all out words:
What our facts are based on.
 
Outside of the box,
Is the irrational.
The pure world’s chaos,
Purely relational.
 
It is relation
Without any center.
It is free floating,
Always in a wild stir.
 
It has no grounding,
And it has no language.
It can’t present facts
Or reasoned lineage.
 
It’s real, in a way.
It has physical force,
And it can move us
And influence our course.
 
But that influence,
We cannot comprehend,
Cannot understand…
We can only pretend:
 
Pretend to see it;
Pretend to understand;           
Pretend to name it;
Pretend we can command.
 
For that is our age,
To control and command:
Infallible sage,
Nonconformants be damned.
 
It’s simply dreaming:
Outside the box thinking.
To make it something,           
Takes much work and planning.
 
To give it logic--
To forge* the words for it--
That’s the only way,
We can comprehend it.
 
The box is what’s real
Just because we agree
On the facts and words
To confine what we see.
 
 
* James Joyce from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: “… to forge in the smithy of my soul…”