From Now On, I'll Be Mad

Fittingly, this was the poem I read on Tax Day:

Bewildered

There are many guises for intelligence.

One part of you is gliding in a high windstream, while your more ordinary notions take little steps and peck at the ground.

Conventional knowledge is death to our souls, and it is not really ours. It is laid on. Yet we keep saying we find “rest” in these “beliefs.”

We must become ignorant of what we have been taught and be instead bewildered.

Run from what is profitable and comfortable. Distrust anyone who praises you. Give your investment money, and the interest on the capital, to those who are actually destitute.

Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough.

From now on, I’ll be mad.

--Rumi

Each day I read a poem from Coleman Barks' very excellent collection, A Year With Rumi. Thanks to my friend Fareed for suggesting this to me when I first began recovery three years ago.