Rejoicing in the Hands

Good For Nothin

2009-04-08T21:07:00.000-07:00

I will start to post again starting now

2007-12-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

I am trying to be plain with you.
I want to explain a moment that was
usual but important. By which I
mean, this custom was brought to
me and is therefore significant.
Which is to say, it was shown to me
and held energy and force. We were
a fort and we ravished. I’ve got dirt
under my fingernails and dried
blood on my hands, still. I’m
telling the truth. And without
ligation we were the same.

2007-12-15T09:59:00.000-08:00

When I came home from the country side
I found a flower the size of my body
lying on the bed. And orange bright cosmo.
That’s how beautiful it was. It was. And
I turned to see a different large flower
on each piece of furniture. Laying with
peace. In my house. My home, the place
where I live is delicate. And I grow.
I dig my feet down into the hardwood
floor, which is now soil. Are you in
the soil with me, that sings?

2007-11-06T11:52:00.001-08:00

As if we were not humans, as if we
were horses walking around laying on
our sides in the grass. Talking with
our stature. I was brown, you were a
paint. What a pleasure to leave
language, it was spacious. The space
immense and soft, but felt. Imagine.
We were horses and we ran at
comfortable speeds off the ledge
and into the green water.

2007-11-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

Hot meat and flatware. Peril. Peril.
Sitting in the chairs, we eat and feast.
For the first fifteen seconds--
laughter.
For the first fifteen seconds--
(body standing like a cross)
laughter.
With? Which is to say: blithe.
At? Which is to say: ugly.

Who still seem sober, we rush them to
water. Our clothes are torn.

2007-10-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

The day was today. Again. Again.
I hop in my truck and head south,
to stop by my old home. The ride
rode light, being as a child
baggage was balloon, thought of
flight. I light a cigarette and
pick up the old friend. He left
his home dropped control and made
the confession. Then we head for
water. My sister there already and
her husband with her. We all knew
the ___ of the ___ (inescapable moment
of turning). The verse was right on
our heels. One felt. He felt. She
thought this might be important.
It had been planned. We gather,
more come, and spoke of beauty.
And I, like a bird, lost the sun
over the cliff and flew down into
the water. The wind soft. The
water fluid.

something i am still thinking about (recalling one of my very first posts on this blog)

2007-08-15T15:52:00.000-07:00

Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

a stanza from Friedrich Rückert

2007-08-02T10:26:00.000-07:00

used in Mahler's Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!

Into the Nada

2007-07-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

"its in nothing that you have so much to give,
and its in nowhere that you've found your place to live..."

Derek Walcott's OMEROS

2007-06-03T13:28:00.000-07:00

Book 1: Chapter 1 - Section 1

"This is how, one sunrise, we cut down them canoes."
Philoctete smiles for the tourists, who try taking
his soul with their cameras. "Once wind bring the news

to the laurier-cannelles, their leaves start shaking
the minute the axe of sunlight hit the cedars,
because they could see the axes in our own eyes.

Wind lift the ferns. They sound like the sea that feed us
fisherman all our life, and the ferns nodded 'Yes,
the trees have to die.' So, fists jam into our jacket,

cause the heights was cold and our breath making feathers
like the mist, we pass the rum. When it came back, it
give is the spirit to turn into murderers.

I lift up the axe and pray for strength in my hands
to wound the first cedar. Dew was filling my eyes,
but I fire one more white rum. The we advance."

For some extra sliver, under a sea-almond,
he shows them a scar made by a rusted anchor,
rolling one trouser-leg up with the rising moan

of a conch. It has puckered like the corolla
of a sea-urchin. He does not explain its cure.
"It have some things"--he smiles--"worth more than a dollar."

He has left it to a garrulous waterfall
to pour out his secret down La Sorciere, since
the tall laurels fell, for the ground-dove's mating call

to pass on its note to the blue, tacit mountains
whose talkative brooks, carrying it to the sea,
turn into idle pools where the clear minnows shoot

and an egret stalks the reeds with one rusted cry
as it stabs and stabs the mud with one lifting foot.
Then silence is sawn in half by a dragonfly

as eels sign their names along the clear bottom-sand,
when the sunrise brightens the river's memory
and waves of huge ferns are nodding to the sea's sound.

Although smoke forgets the earth from which it ascends
and nettles guard the holes where the laurels were killed,
an iguana hears the axes, clouding each lense

over its lost name, when the hunched island was called
"Iounalao," "Where the iguana is found."
But, taking its own time, the iguana will scale

the rigging of vines in a year, its dewlap fanned,
its elbows akimbo, its deliberate tail
moving with the island. The split pods of its eyes

ripened in a pause that lasted for centuries,
that rose with the Aruacas' smoke till a new race
unknown to the lizard stood measuring the trees.

These were their pillars that fell, leaving a blue space
for a single God where the old gods stood before.
the first god was a gommier. The generator

began with a whine, and a shark, with a sidewise jaw,
sent the chips flying like mackerel over water
into trembling weeds. Now they cut off the saw,

still hot and shaking, to examine the wound it
had made. They scraped off its gangrenous moss, then ripped
the wound clear of the net of vines that still bound it

to this earth, and nodded. The generator whipped
back to its work, and the chips flew much faster as
the shark's teeth gnawed evenly. They covered their eyes

from the splintering nest. Now, over the pastures
of bananas, the island lifted its horns. Sunrise
trickled down its valleys, blood splashed on the cedars,

and the grove flooded with the light of sacrifice.
A gommier was cracking. Its leaves an enormous
traupaulin with the ridgepole gone. The craking sound

made the fishermen leap back as the angling mast
leant slowly towards the troughs of ferns; the the ground
shuddered under the feet in waves, the the waves passed.

Watch Out

2007-04-06T12:47:00.000-07:00

in a room
a window stands

light chased on
plants like a TV show

a light inside
pointed at me

a person sitting in
a room like a TV show

a horror show a comedy
and i rejoice

in the shroud
that was given to me

Bill Callahan

2007-03-21T21:10:00.000-07:00

Check him out.

Photo by Joanna Newsom

a poem by WCW

2007-02-21T14:40:00.000-08:00

These

are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man.

The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night

to an empty, windswept place
without sun, stars or moon
but a peculiar light as of thought

that spins a dark fire--
whirling upon itself until,
in the cold, it kindles

to make a man aware of nothing
that he knows, not loneliness
itself--Not a ghost but

would be embraced--emptiness,
despair--(They
whine and whislte) among

the flashes and brooms of war;
houses of whose rooms
the cold is greater than can be thought,

the people gone that we loved,
the beds lying empty, the couches
damp, the chairs unused--

Hide it away somewhere
out of the mind, let it get roots
and gorw, unrelated to jealous

ears and eyes--for itself.
In this mine they come to dig--all.
Is this the counterfoil to sweetest

music? The source of poetry that
seeing the clock stopped, says,
The clock has stopped

that ticked yesterday so well?
and hears the sound of lakewater
splashing--that is now stone.

i met a genius by Charles Bukowski

2007-02-06T18:26:00.000-08:00

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

Few and Far Between

2006-12-14T21:50:00.000-08:00

If only we could forgive ourselves, and didn’t
have to have somebody else forgive us—

Where I came from everybody could see anyone coming,
Even storms: and out there the etiquette

was not to say right off what you came for when you did
or ask anybody why, if they come where you wer

in all space, and time; it made for a kind
of trust, or—well, it was like trust.

I remember some of those storms, how the dust
would kick up before them in the wild wind, and behind it

the blueblack cloud piled high white on top
with lighting flaring inside, and maybe only a few miles
wide,

coming over the desert sort of slow and grand:
you could got out of the way if you wanted to

but nobody did; as I said, seldom enough is welcome.
Didn’t I say that? One night when mother was away

my dad and I followed a storm clear down
to Needles in the state car, His job

Was to take care of the highway, so it was work, sort of,
for us to ride along behind that cloud we see by its
own light

through the wild fragrance the desert has after a rain
in the lone car on the road that night, to keep track

of the damage it did. He showed me a place near Essex
where a flash flodd had ripped out three hundred feet of
roadbed

two years before, where it hadn’t rained
in fifty years before that. The foreman said so,

Billy Nielson, and he’d been out there fifty years
without seeing the ground wet .
My dad and I stopped on the grade below Goffs
and watched the storm go on out of his territory

across the river into Arizona
where the sky was getting gray,

and turned for home as the sun rose behind us
back across the clean desert in slant light

that lit the smoke trees in washes that were churned
smooth
where the water went, and sharpened along the edges
through Essex and Cadiz Summit, great tamarisked
Chambless
Ludlow for breakfast with the humorous Chinaman, Lee,

Newberry Springs, Daggett and Elephant Butte, Nebo
Hidden by wire,
On home over the hill to Barstow on the good road.

somebody gave me a copy of this amazing poem, but i do not know who the author is. if you know, please tell me--if not, im glad you got to read it.

i think she may be a goddess

2006-12-04T12:19:00.000-08:00

Everyone who is not deaf should buy Joanna Newsom's new album Y's (ees). And if you are deaf try your best to get an operation which will enable you to hear, then buy the album--and listen to it of course.

If you do not have the money to buy it, I will buy it for you.

James Tate

2006-11-28T14:49:00.000-08:00

Smart

I had a theory for a while
but I had to let it go.
It was wasting away in captivity.
It sat there in the cage of my brain
and wouldn't eat.
When i had first trapped it
it was beautiful and wild and amused everyone.
"Too much attention," the vet said.
It wasn't cut out for that kind of life.
But when I tried to imagine
letting it go back to the craggy, brambly,
uproarious and vehement landscape
of its origins, I realized
I had sucked its lifeblood from it.
It stood no chance
of survival against those beasts
never glimpsed by man,
never photographed,
never tagged,
spooks with pigtails
lumbering through love songs
in lunatic lunchrooms,
and then dueling with cowboy snowbirds.
My little nothing had forgotten its tricks.
So I let it loose in a city park
whereupon a desperate pensioner
immediately recognized it
as the golden goose
or some such rubbish.

Diving into the Wreck

2006-10-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it's a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me.
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black and I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crennelated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

By Adrienne Rich

Make This Simple Test by WS Merwin

2006-09-18T18:47:00.000-07:00

*note* if you are going to read this make sure you read the end*

Blindfold yourself with some suitable object. If time permits remain still for a moment. You may feel on or more of your senses begin to swim back toward you in the darkness, singly and without their names. Meanwhile have someone else arrange the products to be used in a row in front of you. It is preferable to have them in identical containers, though that is not necessary. Where possible, perform the test by having the other person feed you a portion—a spoonful—of each of the products in turn, without comment.

Guess what each one is, and have the other person write down what you say.

Then Remove your blindfold. While arranging the products the other person should have detached part of the label or container from each and placed it in front of the product it belongs to, like a title. This bit of legend must not contain the products name nor its generic name, nor any suggestion of the products taste or desirability. Or price. It should be limited to that part of the label or container which enumerates the actual components of the product in question.

Thus, for instance:

“Contains dextrinized flours, cocoa processed with alkali, non-fat dry milk solids, yeast nutrients, vegetable oil, dried egg yolk, GUAR, sodium cyclamate, soya lecithin, imitation lemon oil, acetyl tartaric esters of mono- and di-glycerides as emulsifiers, polysorbate 60, 1/10 of 1% sodium benzoate to retard spoilage.”

Or:

“Contains anhydrated potatoes, powdered whey, vegetable gum, emulsifier (glycerol monostearate), invert syrup, shortening with freshness preserver, lactose, sorbic acid to retard mold growth, caramel color, natural and artificial flavors, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bisulfite.”

Or:

“Contains beef extract, wheat and soya derivatives, food starch-modified, dry sweet whey, calcium carageenan, vegetable oil, sodium phosphates to preserves freshness, BHA, BHT, prophylene glycol, pectin, niacinamide, artificial flavors, U.S. certified color.”

There should be not less than three separate products.

Taste again, without the blindfold. Guess again and have the other person record the answers. Replace the blindfold. Have the other person change the order of the products and again feed you a spoonful of each.

Guess again what you are eating or drinking in each case (if you can make the distinction). But this time do not stop there. Guess why you are eating or drinking it. Guess what it may do for you. Guess what it was meant to do for you. By whom. When. Where. Why. Guess where in the course of evolution you took the first step toward it. Guess which of your organs recognizes it. Guess whether it is welcomed to their temples. Guess how it figures in their prayers. Guess how completely you become what you eat. Guess how soon. Guess at the taste of locusts and wild honey. Guess at the taste of water. Guess what the rivers see as they die. Guess why the babies are burning. Guess why there is silence in heaven. Guess why you were ever born.

Enough by Samuel Beckett

2006-08-24T21:38:00.000-07:00

"All that goes before forget. Too much at a time is too much.That gives the pen time to note. I dont see it but I hear it there behind me. Such is the silence. When the pen stops I go on. Sometimes it refuses. When it refuses I go on. Too much silence is too much. Or it's my voice too weak at times. That one that comes out of me. So much for the art and craft."

Furious Pig

2006-08-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

I dont like your face.

http://ubu.wfmu.org/sound/furious_pig/Furious-Pig_I-Dont-Like-Your-Face.mp3

2006-06-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

Whoever rejoices on the very stake triumphs not over pain but at the absence of pain that he had expected. A parable.

Nietzsche

Sputnik Sweetheart

2006-06-10T18:27:00.000-07:00

"...tomorrow I'll be a different person, never again the person I was. Not that anyone will notice...On the outside nothing will be different. But something inside me is gone. Blood has been shed, and something makes its exit. thee doore open; the door shuts. the light goes out. This is the last day for the person I am right now. the very last twilight. When dawn comes, the person I am wont be here anymore. Someone else will occupy his body.

"...I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between. No promises to keep."

Truth?

2006-05-19T12:50:00.000-07:00

From Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil:
An excerpt from On the Prejudices of Philosophers

The will to truth which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of which all philosophers so far have spoken with respect—what questions has this will to truth not laid before us! What strange, wicked, questionable questions! That is a long story even now—and yet it seems as if it had scarcely begun. It is any wonder that we should finally become suspicious, lose patience, and turn away impatiently? that we should finally learn from this Sphinx to ask question, too? Who is it really that puts questions to us here? What in us really wants “truth”?

Indeed we came to a long halt at the question about the cause of this will—until we finally came to a complete stop before a still more basic question. We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?

The problem of the value of truth came before us—or was it we who came before the problem? Who of us is Oedipus here? Who the Sphinx? It is a rendezvous, it seems, of questions and question marks.

And though it scarcely seems credible, it finally almost seems to us as if the problem had never even been put so far—as if we were the first to see it, fix it with our eyes, an risk it. For it does involve a risk, and perhaps there is none that is greater.

Art: Curtis Verdun "The Dance of Good and Evil"

The Desultory Genesis of Existenz in Boundary Situations -- Karl Jaspers

2006-04-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

I am in the world, but I can confront all things. Unwilling to engage in the world’s bustle, I have a chance to be in it and at the same time outside of it: in contemplative thought, if not actual existence, I can reach the Archimedean point that enables me to see, and to know, what is. With an independence that is astonishing, albeit empty, I even face my own existence as if it were a stranger's. I am myself, yet I seem to be outside my existing life; it is from out there that I enter the world to take my bearings in it, not just as a living individual pursuing particular ends in my situations but as myself seeking to know all things, seeking to know the whole whose knowledge is sufficient into itself.

This conquest of my own being occurs in absolute solitude. Whatever happens in the world is doubtful; everything fades away, my own existence included; but I stand outside the world and yet so closely before myself as if I were an isle of safety in mid-ocean, a place from which I aimlessly gaze upon the world as on a billowing atmosphere without limits. Nothing is of real concern to me, but I see everything, aware of my securely supporting knowledge. With my self-being thus enclosed, I am the universal will to know. Unshakably I view the positive objects of my valid cognition; their knowledge assures me that I am. The substantial solitude of one who knows universally, detached from any situation, is like the pure eye that meets no other eye and looks upon all things, but not into itself. At home in the solitude of its self-being, like a being dwindling to a mere point, this eye remains devoid of any content other than the calm of its vision. Si fractus illabtur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae, said Horace. "Should the world collapse, the pieces will hit an undaunted man."

full chapter http://www.kevinfinucane.com/university.edu/PDF
/JaspersBoundary.pdf

Enter the Pessimist

2006-04-11T13:13:00.000-07:00

From Civilization and Its Discontents

When an attempt is made to widen the community, the same conflict is continued in forms which are dependent on the past; and it is strengthened and results in a further intensification of the sense of guilt. Since civilization obeys an internal erotic impulsion which causes human beings to unite in a closely-knit group, it can only achieve this aim through an ever-increasing reinforcement of the sense of guilt. What began in relation to the father is completed in relation to the group. If civilization is a necessary course of development from the family to humanity as a whole, then—as a result of the inborn conflict arising from ambivalence, of the eternal struggle between the trends of love and death—there is inextricably bound up with it an increase of the sense of guilt, which will perhaps reach heights that the individual finds hard to tolerate. One is reminded of the great poet’s [Goethe] moving arraignment of the ‘Heavenly Powers’:

To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us
To guilt ye let us heedless go,
Then leave repentance fierce to wring us:
A moment’s guilt, an age of woe!

2006-04-11T08:39:00.000-07:00

We have art in order not to die of the truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The Paradox of the Press

2006-04-05T14:55:00.000-07:00

‘Objectivity is a legend, a myth’ –Abdul Sattar Jawad

Today I had the pleasure of attending Abdul Sattar Jawad’s lecture on the current situation in Iraq. He was the first man to publish a secular newspaper in English in Iraq and is the head of English Literature at Baghdad University. He is currently working as a visiting professor of journalism and literature at Duke University under the Scholars at Risk Program. He did not want to leave and come to America but many of his colleagues and fellow professor have been torn from their classroom while lecturing to be beaten and sometimes killed due to their religious views (or lack there of). Abdul could not return to his office at Baghdad University because it was being surrounded by religious zealots who threatened to kill him and almost did.

His message, as I received it, was something like this: America is a primary cause of the current and former state of Iraq. Intellectuals in Iraq welcomed the war and were glad to see Sadam Hussein out of power. He did not, on the other hand, approve of the subsequent actions of the US. Abdul thinks that America should have been much more forceful in the beginning. We should have kept an intense marshal law in place and played watchdog in every political process and progression. Our failure to do this is the reason that Iraq is now in a state of chaos which consequently lead to the bombing of Abdul’s newspaper’s headquarters.

What I found most interesting was his paradoxical view of free press. Abdul is obviously a major advocate of free press in Iraq, yet he also voiced a serious critique of American media and free press in general. He held that there is no doubt that the liberal media was a source of coercion in the UN’s decision to back off and let Iraq rebuild their own structure of government and society. Abdul held that first and foremost the Iraqi intellectuals desired new visions and ideas from America—not for America to back off and let Iraq be Iraq.

What are we to take from this? My thoughts bring me back once again to fear the double edged sword of ‘free’ press—although it is essential to present the people with the freedom, we should be weary of what they produce. The people are not always (perhaps rarely) correct.

the town goat

2006-03-29T12:06:00.000-08:00

It Happens Like This by James Tate

I was outside St. Cecelia's Rectory
smoking a cigarette when a goat appeared beside me.
It was mostly black and white, with a little reddish
brown here and there. When I started to walk away,
it followed. I was amused and delighted, but wondered
what the laws were on this kind of thing. There's
a leash law for dogs, but what about goats? People
smiled at me and admired the goat. "It's not my goat,"
I explained. "It's the town's goat. I'm just taking
my turn caring for it." "I didn't know we had a goat,"
one of them said. "I wonder when my turn is." "Soon,"
I said. "Be patient. Your time is coming." The goat
stayed by my side. It stopped when I stopped. It looked
up at me and I stared into its eyes. I felt he knew
everything essential about me. We walked on. A police-
man on his beat looked us over. "That's a mighty
fine goat you got there," he said, stopping to admire.
"It's the town's goat," I said. "His family goes back
three-hundred years with us," I said, "from the beginning."
The officer leaned forward to touch him, then stopped
and looked up at me. "Mind if I pat him?" he asked.
"Touching this goat will change your life," I said.
"It's your decision." He thought real hard for a minute,
and then stood up and said, "What's his name?" "He's
called the Prince of Peace," I said. "God! This town
is like a fairy tale. Everywhere you turn there's mystery
and wonder. And I'm just a child playing cops and robbers
forever. Please forgive me if I cry." "We forgive you,
Officer," I said. "And we understand why you, more than
anybody, should never touch the Prince." The goat and
I walked on. It was getting dark and we were beginning
to wonder where we would spend the night.

Do I detect a bit of resentment?

2006-03-23T20:34:00.000-08:00

You think the public shows and games are cool? Do you like to watch sports or go to the theatre? DON’T DO IT!! Wait until you see this…though you might not part of the audience, Tertullian will surely be watching.

The Final Chapter of Tertullian’s De Spectaculis provides an alternative to enjoying the spectacles and games of the impious:

Moreover, what a spectacle is already at hand--the second coming of the Lord, now no object of doubt, now exalted, now triumphant! What exultation will that be of the angels, what glory of the saints as they rise again! What a kingdom, the kingdom of the just thereafter! What a city, the new Jerusalem! But there are yet other spectacles to come--that day of the Last Judgment with its everlasting issues, unlooked for by the heathen, the object of their derision, when the hoary age of the world and all its generations will be consumed in one file. What a panorama of spectacle on that day! Which sight shall excite my wonder? Which, my laughter? Where shall I rejoice where exult--as I see so many and so mighty kings, whose ascent to heaven used to be made known by public announcement, now along with Jupiter himself, along with the very witnesses of their ascent, groaning in the depths of darkness? Governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the name of the Lord, melting in flames fiercer than those they themselves kindled in their rage against the Christians braving them with contempt? Whom else shall I behold? Those wise philosophers blushing before their followers as they burn together, the followers whom they taught that the world is no concern of God's whom they assured that either they had no souls at all or that what souls they had would never return to their former bodies? The poets also, trembling, not before the judgment seat of Rhadamanthus or of Minos, but of Christ whom they did not expect to meet. Then will the tragic actors be worth hearing, more vocal in their own catastrophe; then the comic actors will be worth watching, more lither of limb in the fire; then the charioteer will be worth seeing, red all over on his fiery wheel; then the athletes will be worth observing, not in their gymnasiums, but thrown about by fire--unless I might not wish to look at them even then but would prefer to turn an insatiable gaze on those who vented their rage on the Lord. 'This is He,' I will say, 'the son of the carpenter and the harlot, the sabbath-breaker, the Samaritan who had a devil. This is He whom you purchased from Judas, this is He who was struck with reed and fist, defiled with spittle, given gall and vinegar to drink. This is He whom the disciples secretly stole away to spread the story of His resurrection, or whom the gardener removed lest his lettuces be trampled by the throng of
curious idlers.' What praetor or consul or quaestor or priest with all his munificence will ever bestow on you the favor of beholding and exulting in such sights? Yet, such scenes as these are in a measure already ours by faith in the vision of the spirit. But what are those things which 'eye has not seen nor ear heard and which have not entered into the heart of man'? Things of greater delight, I believe, than circus, both kinds of theater, and any stadium.

The Image and Symbol of the YoYo

2006-03-13T20:35:00.000-08:00

The Yoyo, the Yoyoer, the string, the energy...

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER: STUDIES IN PESSIMISM

2006-02-26T10:32:00.000-08:00

Once again i must ask: Has there ever been a great thinker without facial hair?
The answer is no.

ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD.

Unless _suffering_ is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.

I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt. Leibnitz is particularly concerned to defend this absurdity; and he seeks to strengthen his position by using a palpable and paltry sophism. It is the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain brought to an end.

Guilt...a good thing?

2006-02-21T22:30:00.000-08:00

First of all i would like to say if i ever find myself capable of such facial hair i must have it. Secondly, read this excerpt of Nietsche's Seond Essay of The Genealogy of Morals with your 'purpose of life' in mind. Does bad conscience propel you? If so how? Also, realize that Nietzsche believes our current system of values to be incorrect, he is not arguing within the popular moral beliefs.

At this point I can no longer avoid giving a first, provisional statement of my own hypothesis concerning the origin of the "bad conscience": it may sound rather strange and needs to be pondered, lived with, and slept on for a long time. I regard the bad conscience as the serious illness that man was bound to contract under the stress of the most fundamental change he ever experienced—that change which occurred when he found himself finally enclosed within the walls of society and of peace. The situation that faced sea animals when they were compelled to become land animals or perish was the same as that which faced these semi-animals, well adapted to the wilderness, to war, to prowling, to adventure: suddenly all their instincts were disvalued and "suspended." From now on they had to walk on their feet and "bear themselves" whereas hitherto they had been borne by the water: a dreadful heaviness lay upon them. They felt unable to cope with the simplest undertakings; in this new world they no longer possessed their former guides, their regulating, unconscious and infallible drives: they were reduced to thinking, inferring, reckoning, coordinating cause and effect, these unfortunate creatures; they were reduced to their "consciousness," their weakest and most fallible organ! I believe there has never been such a feeling of misery on earth, such a leaden discomfort and at the same time the old instincts had not suddenly ceased to make their usual demands. Only it was hardly or rarely possible to humor them: as a rule they had to seek new and, as it were, subterranean gratifications.

All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward—this is what I call the internalization [Verinnerlichung] of man: thus it was that man first developed what was later called his "soul." The entire inner world, originally as thin as if it were stretched between two membranes, expanded and extended itself, acquired depth, breadth, and height, in the same measure as outward discharge was inhibited. Those fearful bulwarks with which the political organization protected itself against the old instincts of freedom—punishments belong among these bulwarks—brought about that all those instincts of wild, free, prowling man turned backward against man himself. Hostility, cruelty, joy in persecuting, in attacking, in change, in destruction—all this turned against the possessors of such instincts: that is the origin of the "bad conscience."

Drama

2006-02-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

St Augustine's Confessions

Stage plays also captivated me, with their sights full of the images of my own miseries: fuel for my own fire. Now, why does a man like to be made sad by viewing doleful and tragic scenes, which he himself could not by any means endure? Yet, as a spectator, he wishes to experience from them a sense of grief, and in this very sense of grief his pleasure consists. What is this but wretched madness? For a man is more affected by these actions the more he is spuriously involved in these affections. Now, if he should suffer them in his own person, it is the custom to call this "misery." But when he suffers with another, then it is called "compassion." But what kind of compassion is it that arises from viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings? The spectator is not expected to aid the sufferer but merely to grieve for him. And the more he grieves the more he applauds the actor of these fictions. If the misfortunes of the characters--whether historical or entirely imaginary--are represented so as not to touch the feelings of the spectator, he goes away disgusted and complaining. But if his feelings are deeply touched, he sits it out attentively, and sheds tears of joy.

3. Tears and sorrow, then, are loved. Surely every man desires to be joyful. And, though no one is willingly miserable, one may, nevertheless, be pleased to be merciful so that we love their sorrows because without them we should have nothing to pity. This also springs from that same vein of friendship. But whither does it go? Whither does it flow? Why does it run into that torrent of pitch which seethes forth those huge tides of loathsome lusts in which it is changed and altered past recognition, being diverted and corrupted from its celestial purity by its own will? Shall, then, compassion be repudiated? By no means! Let us, however, love the sorrows of others.

The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud

2006-01-29T18:14:00.000-08:00

“…all the gods of antiquity have been condensed. The people which first succeeded in thus concentrating the divine attributes was not a little proud of the advance. It had laid open to view the father who had all along been hidden behind every divine figure as its nucleus. Fundamentally this was a return to the historical beginnings of the idea of God. Now that God was a single person, man’s relations to him could recover the intimacy and intensity of the child’s relation to his father. But if one had done so much for one’s father, one wanted to have a reward, or at least to be his only beloved child, his Chosen People. Very much later, pious America laid claim to being ‘God’s own Country’; and, as regards one of the shapes in which men worship the deity, the claim is undoubtedly valid.”

The idea of a small group being labeled God’s Chosen People has always weirded me out …
(just as the phrase ‘weirded me out’ weirds me out).

Does God play favorites? Regardless, it seems everybody just wants to be daddy’s favorite.

Tertullian

2006-01-26T16:34:00.000-08:00

Credo quia absurdum

"I believe it because it is absurd"

Possibly taken from Tertullian's De Carne Christi

"Natus est Dei Filius; non pudet, quia pudendum est: et mortuus est Dei Filius; prorsus credible est, quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est, quia impossible"
or
"The Son of God was born: there is no shame, because it is shameful. And the Son of God died: it is wholly credible, because it is innapropriate. And, buried, He rose again: it is certain, because impossible"

without shame, because it is shameful
credible because it inapropiate...

a familiar train of thought?

Masquerade

2006-01-25T08:33:00.000-08:00

This is an excerpt from Nietzsche's On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History For Life

...the individual becomes timid and unsure and can no longer believe in itself. It sinks into itself, into the inner life. That means here only into the piled up mass of scholarly data which does not work towards the outside, instruction which does not become living. If we look for a moment out to the exterior, then we notice how the expulsion of instinct by history has converted people almost into nothing but abstractis [abstraction] and shadows. A man no longer gambles his identity on that instinct. Instead he masks himself as educated man, as scholar, as poet, as politician.

simone de beauvoir was a clever and thoughtful woman

2006-01-08T09:21:00.000-08:00

What do you think?

“if man is free to define for himself the conditions of a life which is valid in his own eyes, can he not choose whatever he likes and act however he likes? Dostoevsky asserted, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” Today’s believers use this formula for their own advantage. To re-establish man at the heart of his destiny is, they claim, to repudiate all ethics. However, far from God’s absence authorizing all license, the contrary is the case, because man is abandoned on the earth, because his acts are definitive, absolute engagements. He bears the responsibility for a world which is not the work of a strange power, but of himself, where his defeats are inscribed, and his victories as well. A God can pardon, efface, and compensate. But if God does not exist, man’s faults are inexpiable. If it is claimed that, whatever the case may be, this earthly stake has no importance, this is precisely because one invokes that inhuman objectivity which we declined at the start. One can not start by saying that our earthly destiny has or has not importance, for it depends upon us to give it importance. It is up to man to make it important to be a man, and he alone can feel his success or failure. And if it is again said that nothing forces him to try to justify his being in this way, then one is playing upon the notion of freedom in a dishonest way. The believer is also free to sin. The divine law is imposed upon him only from the moment he decides to save his soul. In the Christian religion, though one speaks very little about them today, there are also the damned. Thus, on the earthly plane, a life which does not seek to ground itself will be a pure contingency. But it is permitted to wish to give itself a meaning and a truth, and it then meets rigorous demands within its own heart.”

2006-01-02T09:53:00.000-08:00

First of all, this is not an attack on Australians but towards David Nason because he is an idiot.

Ok, so the NYC correspondent for The Australian is set up to have an interview with, as i see it, the greatest American writer alive today...and he hasn’t read any of his work!

“Three days before we're due to meet at a French restaurant, I haven't read a single word. So I mumble something apologetic and promise to devote the coming weekend to this task, before blurting out: "I should be right, mate, it's only a short book." This is a very dumb and potentially interview-crushing thing to say to an author, but thankfully Vonnegut doesn't seem to mind.”

He later gets into a debate with KV on suicide bombers where Vonnegut argues that we are not so different from them...and frankly I am surprised...usually Australians are more thoughtful, but hey, he’s the NYC correspondent...so he’s weird. Vonnegut is a humanist and a moralist. His word choice would be better understood if you had read some of his work.

He writes “At this point, I give up. I can't be bothered asking him about any of the things I'd thought about: his mother's suicide, how he raised his sister's kids, the great writers he knew and partied with, how he looks back on Dresden.”

Ok, so you were going into the interview with a great writer who is known for liking his privacy and normal living...and you have only read a short bio on him...and decide you would ask about these tender and cool subjects and write a touching article. Do you think he would go 50 years without having other idiots trying to write the same article? Whatever. I just needed to vent some feelings on this journalist who decides to bastardize a wonderful author when he is trying to help people see the world for what it is. So in the end it’s an article about how the book is discredited because it isn’t happy and the author sees good in even those people who happen to be enemies.

Full Article: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au
/common/story_page/0,5744,17256664%255E16947,00.html

I like Kurt Vonnegut

2006-01-02T09:47:00.000-08:00

"WE DO DOODLEY DO,
DOODLEY DO, DOODLEY DO,
WHAT WE MUST,
MUDDILY MUST,
MUDDILY MUST,
MUDDILY MUST,
UNTIL WE BUST,
BODILY BUST,
BODILY BUST,
BODILY BUST.

BOKONON -Kurt Vonnegut

Entropy

2005-12-20T18:21:00.000-08:00

We are born - we develop – we fall apart. Pretty efficient isn’t it? We grow to be useful and reproductive in our prime and then slowly break down. We all have an expiration date somewhere...in our eyes, voice, skin. Character. There is something out there that holds us together...keeps the energy form dispersing too quickly. Conservation? Reuse? Moderation...balance? I am getting tired of trying to achieve balance...it seems to be the only thing my mind and body want to do.

“All things in moderation...including moderation itself” ?

But why? For good measure...or because we need it. To serve our impulses or for the good of life? The good of life...? Doesn’t that lie in serving our individual interests?

Questions.

Entropy is to be expected. But how to we live with it? Embrace our decline? Or fight it? What for?

A quote comes to mind in the midst of all these questions...
”He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.”

And another...

“You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life”

Both written by Albert Camus.

So what do we do?

Photo by Emily Sawtelle

...?

2005-12-17T13:16:00.001-08:00

Why the yellow background and red balloon?

The Early Bird

2005-12-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

Hurray for Germans

2005-12-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

Sweet.

Thoughts on the Absurd Hero

2005-12-09T14:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/00/pwillen1/lit/msysip.htm

All is well?

What do you think?

2005-12-05T22:00:00.000-08:00

Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
Ecclesiastes 7:3-4

who needs money?

2005-12-03T23:25:00.000-08:00