Operating System: Metaphysical Core Poem by gershon hepner

By searching for an inner core that’s meta-
physical, we designate our spirit
as operating system we consider better
than one that, physical, has greater merit.
We learn to cope with crises that are caused by crashes
rebooting cannot fix because we choose
the metaphysical, whose soft drive comes with flashes
of insight that may last though they confuse.

Inspired by an article on Bruno Schultz, “The Age of Genius: The legend of Bruno Schultz, ” by David Grossman in the June 8,2009 issue of the New Yorker:

In his story “Tailors’ Dummies, ” Schultz wrote about his father, a cloth merchant:

It is worth noting how, in contact with that strange man, all things reverted, as it were, to the roots of their existence, rebuilt their outward appearance anew from their metaphysical core, returned to the primary ide, in ordr to betray it at some point and to turn into the doubtful, risky and equivocal regions which we shall call for short the Regions of the Great Heresy.

There is no more precise description of Schultz’s writing itself, of his incessant search for the “metaphysical core” of things, but also of his brave capacity to change his point of view in an instant, and to turn, at the very last second, in the most ronic and ambiguous way, to the regions of the Great heresy. This is the strength of this writer, who has no illusions about the arbitrary, chaotic and random nature of life yet is nonetheless determined to force life––existence both indefinite and indifferent––to surrender, to open itself wide and expose the kernel of meaning hidden in its depths. I would even add: the kernel of humanity.

But although Schultz is a big believer in some significance or meaning or law that generates and regulates everything in the world––people, animals, plants, even inanimate object, to which he often also grants, with a certain smile, souls and desires––he is still able to uproot himself suddenly from this faith and deny it absolutely, with a sort of bottomless, demonic despair, which only intensifies our sense of his profound loneliness and our intuition that, for this man, there was no consolation in the world.

6/4/09