(In Ideal Eyes and Wide Eyes in a Dying Head I am showing how, in my own life, I am having constantly to make value judgments. In Ideal Eyes, it is because the human ego is so dominant that the eyes must be reinstated as the windows of the soul, to weigh beauty and goodness in the scales. In Wide Eyes, it is the head that is required to be strong. In this age of mass communication, mass consumption and celebrity culture it should teach the eyes critical awareness and self-awareness. Unless it does so, the eyes may be wide open, but the head is dying. The idea of arriving at a personal truth through this self-validating dialogue seemed not unrealistic to me. Those with a religious faith in one who said, “Be of good cheer, I have conquered the world”, have one who fought and resolved the conflict for them (no Christian should be worldly or idolatrous, at least in theory) - and it was through elaborating the arguments here and elsewhere that I was enabled to return to the pure faith I had rejected six years before.)
Ideal Eyes
‘To thine own self be true.’ (Polonius to Laertes, Hamlet, I.iii.78)
Ego: My pearly windows, heart’s thoroughfare,
I stand at the mirror and see gold glinting
In you - but my soul is not hovering there!
Eyes: Your heart’s manifestation, peering from the dearth
Of soulfulness, is the lion Ambition, crouching
To ambush the searcher for the good omens of his birth.
Ego: My eyes, my sentinels, success is my oracle
In the worldly way: grow rich, grow indifferent!
My rise to wealth and status will be meteorical!
Eyes: Be calm within your eye! Now see with two ¹
To reap the harvest of your true desire:
Self-acceptance, the luxuriance of the vine in you!
Ego: Eyes, my eyes, you marbles with a vein