Warrior Jester From the Endless Void

One day I had said to myself that I no longer believe in War. That is, are there not other, perhaps better ways, to experience utter terror, despair, to feel more alive than ever and to find meaning? Of course, to be a complete pacifist is absurd in a world where bad actors will inevitably black mail us into having a military or perish. So we live in this strange absurdity of our lives, for a cause, yet ultimately the only true matrix of our being here is life, not a machine or a mind set. And so only a fool would dare knock over the cool aid, play his own cards and leave this crazy civilization behind on a journey to no where in particular. Where time and consciousness are so obviously conjoined. Into a place more terrifying than death? Yet more beautiful than our greatest works of art. Is this the matrix of life?

I had a question back in the mid Teens. It was about War. Is war the end all and be all of the human adventure? Is Peace only a deceptive calm between a past and future conflict? Is War and Peace fundamentally two sides to the same coin? And what is that coin so often left in the dust of fallen empires? And so on.

War is riveting. It is traumatic, where one can play many roles from liberator to monster. War is theater and we are the stage. What can move us from War to something else? What is that something else, that must be equally riveting, engaging and liberating if not more so? Perhaps these questions are more rhetorical than questions in search of definitive answers. War is not in our genes. Genes work on a cellular level, mostly engaged in assembling proteins and not so much in creating the script for the Shakespearian stage of our world. We are more story than genetics, or even epigenetics: Something passed on from generation to generation, from the school room to the grave.

Besides the coin of War and Peace, what other coins might there be, equally engaging, or really equally terrifying, that might make our lives so much richer? These were the questions in the back of my mind as I started this painting. Is there another coin at hand?