In Reflection of Jon

As we have been discussing, and you've been discussing, the act of writing about reading is rather difficult (impossible?). And this I believe is part of what we are trying to unravel. The act of blending reality and dream is impossible to a rational mind-unless- through our writing we evoke in the reader the same responses that brought upon our own realization of the blend between "reality" and dream.

This is the difficulty involved in an analytical paper compared to a story; you cannot rationally bring up dream interpretation, hallucinations and so forth and etc. in today's scholarly world. How am I supposed to explain that my discoveries were made by following dreams? And that the fact is that they tell me too follow my dreams. How can you explain in a rational essay something that is irrational?

It is often said that Poetry is trying to explain the unexplainable. This is incorrect. We've programmed our brains into needing a structured formula for truth-value and in doing so we have set the understanding of poetry into a realm of enchantment, of wonder.

Perhaps the hardest thing we have to do, Jon, is return to the beginning of our adventure and not explain, but lead our reader in a direction towards the discovery we've made and by a way that we did not go.

And, if a copy of brains on disk is given to the world,
would it be worth it, if one, as they leay back into the sleep, should say,

"That is not it, that is not it at all.
That is not what I meant at all."

The Significance

And how can I explain rationally where rationality will not go? And how can you follow where only your dreams may go? And when it is not a dream, when it is this reality, how then do you explain this dream without being broken apart?


The clock was slow. It hardly seemed to move. It had that eerie significance of always being three seconds ahead of when you last saw it, whether it be a moments glance, an hours past, or the ethereal of a dream.

And mind you I never did feel the time slow till the evening, before it stopped entirely for the night, and it was in these moments, between evening and the ever night that I enjoyed a lay with her. Beneath the red blanket atop the black couch next to the white wall that ascended so far overhead before its point loomed into the prick that held all the others; then it was up to them to fall back to where they began.

The red blanket soaked with all the insecurities that are pushed out by the communion of two souls. With legs intertwined as poison ivy twines the path where children love to play, yet their are those children who never feel the sting, nor never notice the itch, thus never spread their own disease. It was in this lock, in this tether of limbs that I longed to lay before the world ends each day.

Now, it was on this day, when all the points upon the prick fell to their own design, when the wet blanket, the red saturate, no longer whisked; now is when her question does persist. And though I'd asked, prayed and asked, affirmed that "what is it?" is not question but emotion, still the timing came, that slow time before night, where the skin began to itch; and my hand began to scratch. And so she asked, with her fingers, her vines, they wrapped around mine, tethered to my arm, as once before, and asked, "Is it the time to ask?"

"I've prayed and asked, and you've told you'd never ask."

"Is it me? Is it some ailment in disgust you mistrust?"

"I've asked you once, and I've asked you twice. This third time shall turn me to vice."

"But you make no sense! you lie with me, yet you I do not know outside covers, outside our bed. It's a pity to me that some would call us lovers," and with the descent and swivel of her head, " 'nough said."

" You would make this world a liar, or me in its stead?"

"I would ask only sense of your nonsense instead!"

And as it was, I 'rose to the haunches of my legs and put foot upon foot onto wood. I stopped and put to rest my head upon hands and I left my eyes open, unwinked, pairing the darkness of the palms. And though, the saturated blanket, the wet red was off of my waist, the woman's legs clung to instead. "I'll give you what you want," and the sound of a thigh slap, "If you'll but give me a little room," and then off to the corner cabinet, the one with all the booze.

And as the allusive poet enchants the reader, so the drunk drinks to his story. It's merely Liquid Cocaine for Liquid Courage. It is a delusion of the refugee, for the mind during its allegory.

He start with a shot, a cough, and then some snot,

"You would ask me to split the world in two,
and for you I will do this too, but things you will never know,
no never, is the importance of this event is not to distemper.
Though I lie, or you lie, is not soon to be deciphered,
soon will come the time where do your womb and my member.

I've wanted nothing else than the simple charms of simple airs,
but my charms are hidden between the elements;
my airs are never of your breath, nor the earth,
but between the rush of the bow and the lyre,
is it funny now how you smirk me a liar?

I've seen the parting of the veil,
and no, not the ubiquitous of the whale,
but the passing of a friend who passed a ball
while he passed away from a trivial trail.

I mean to say that as the ball from hands was pushed,
the trigger between fingers by the boy was pulled.
And as I caught the ball soon to be shot,
his stomach, his heart caught buckshot.

And so now you'll misunderstand the treble of fingers,
the tremor in steps while my mind is in its depths.
Mine is not the music while my music lasts.
The depth of my fire is to survive to everlast.
And though this dream is but a dream,
My concepts in analytics will never pass,
My arguments in comparison will be forever last."

Infamy

And deeper that did ever plummet sound, I'll drown my books."-The Tempest

If I thought my answers were to one who could return to the world, I would not reply, but as none ever did return alive from this depth, without fear of infamy I answer thee.- Dante's Inferno (beginning of the Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

"For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume
the practical available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort
of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry
and base. This it is, that forever keeps God's true princes of the Empire from
the world's hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to
those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the
choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted
superiority over the dead level of the mass."-Melville, Moby Dick
Ch.33

Divine Inert-http://http//www.ask.com/bar?q=Divine+inert&page=1&qsrc=2891&dm=all&ab=2&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.atma-institute.org%2Fsaibabagita%2Fsaigita217.html&sg=fflUKlywXB4SDPlbnC78%2BEB1QP8McawB%2BQ%2FfgoiES0c%3D&tsp=1272605290245

The Divine Inert.

The Quinta Essentia-(The Ether)

The Inherent Knowledge

The Common Logic

The Esoteric Knowledge

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

to swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advice the prince; no doubt, an easy tool

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-

Almost, at times, the Fool."-Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

TEMPEST

So as I was doing the things I do to discover the connections hidden everywhere throughout our texts (and Melville's) I ran across something that pertained to The Tempest. I thought it was mighty interesting and extremely relevant considering James Joyce's Finnegans Wake contains hypertext coding. I'm guessing most, if not all of you, will find this tedious and boring. And it is, if you do not understand the Origins of Tempest.

Here is the TEMPEST. A U.S. Army device used to gather information. (Steal)

read up:http://cryptome.org/tempest-old.htm

http://cryptome.org/tempest-time.htm

The Send Off.

Sexson assigned me the research topic of explaining the importance of Prospero's Epilogue to The Tempest, the importance of this class, as well as the relation to all of the themes.

I am happy to say that I understand the importance of all of these. And I assign myself to failure in the fact that I cannot bring it across to you, though I've tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried.

It is a place only you can go, and I can only guide you with steps. But what are the right steps? surely they are not my own steps? Our steps are all the same in this discovery...yet my words will only bring about distraction, and i fear that you will not become distracted from the distraction by the distraction. And if you see what I mean then you know already.

A man apart is how I feel.
Mark me Twained between the Ascension
felt at each moment,
and the dissension
Driven into at each attempt,
Each Analytic argued down to its depths.


I merely wish to please,
To parse what I project,
To give my wind to you.

My Ariel,
My Little Gidding,
The Laurel Bow,
The Wind,
The Spirit My Art Effects.

Now I know the Toilests efforts
When I came this way,

and

"IF you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion.

(for we all know,
now,
that to gain any sense,
first is to have nonsense.)

You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

And All I know now
Is that you must have died once.
That memory must regain its death,
that innocence that so strongly fleets
into the past.

And this is when you will know,
When your innocence death burns
with every blister in the now.

When every burn blisters into
transparency,
when every object is another
object,
and every word is another
story about another word.

When upon Ascension,
You realize that the Aleph

sits upon the step
you did not know
whether
to count,

This is when the Rosebush and The Yew Tree are one.

Things For Weds.

Weds I am presenting on The Tempest Epilogue and its relation to our class.

I WOULD INVITE YOU TO THINK ABOUT YOUR DEATH OF INNOCENCE.

Materials that will help you.

1. Imagination.
2. Reading of Jorge's work on Jon's blog.
3.Imagination.
4. Reading Christina Nelson's research paper About Nabokov and the Nature of Art in Immortality
5. Recollection of the two moments according to T.S. Eliot.
6. Imagination
7. Concrete, nearly partial, always grasping towards, never gaining, because its neither towards nor increasing-perception of NOW.
8. Imagination.
9. Understanding of the two moments in Cees Nooteboom's The Following Story in how they relate to the two moment of T.S. Eliot. NOTABLY HOW THE SECLUDED MOMENT EFFECTS HIS ON FIRE MOMENTS(THE BOAT).
10. Imagination
11. A willingness to fall into the Transparency of Things in order to drag the distraction we are distracted from by our distraction in order to see the true nature of what we are dealing with.
12. Imagination
13. The understanding that Disenchantment is the adult version of imagination.
14. Imagination
15. The understanding that T.S. Eliot tells me this is impossible.

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
IT would always be the same: you would have to put of
Sense and Notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the
living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and Always.

16. The understanding that while you exist in time you are dieing.
17. Imagination
18. The fact that when you die, is how you exit time
19. Imagination
20. The question of why the Greek myths have gods? and why we've copied all there stories.
Be ready to be amused by the largest rant you will ever see.

LITTLE GI DDING-ARIEL-WIND-NATURE OF ART-IMMORTALITY-INHERENT KNOWLEDGE-MIRANDA-3

1 2 3
Prospero-Magic-Marriage-Miranda

Shakespeare-Art-Spirits-You

Shakespeare-Disenchantment-Mnemosyne-You

Mnemosyne- Backward Abysm

Miranda-You combined with the effect of Art- to effect immortality

Disenchantment-The breaking of Illusions so as to see the true effect of art- Immortality.

Art's Immortality in this case= Mnemosyne The Goddess of the muses. The river of Ascension. The river opposite the Lethe. Memory. Completion.



The fact that loosing yourself is part of understanding it again.

An Illusion Rant

Well Sexson told us it was a good idea to brainstorm our ideas on the blog, so here goes. (This will most likely not make sense to you, and probably not myself either at this time, but oh well!)

Illusion.

It has often been repeated, after I spoke, to someone near me, "What did he say?" As if I was speaking gibberish. And no one has listed these words more often than my mother.

I've often thought that between two people there is always two conversations going on; the one you are having, say about a book, and the other side of the conversation which could be about anything whatsoever your conversation partner wishes to be speaking about, perhaps rocks. You Both speak, you both hear what you wanted to here, and then you go about your day, not noticing that the discussion that took place happened in two very different understandings.

I've thought this since I was a child. I've often spoke to it with friends and heard "What did he say?"

But you do see this don't you? on lesser levels. You see this with adaptation of books into films where a moviegoer and a reader will discuss the same thing until the understanding arrives that you had neither the same message, nor near the same story.

You see this through the loss of translation, especially when a book has multiple translations. Something new here in this text, something different or deleted in the next. It is always different.

And this is how gossip starts, and spreads! It is very much like a game of telephone. And if you've never played the game I highly advise it.

Gossip has always been my favorite type of story. And mind you I abhor Gossip! I loathe it as much as perhaps the most of anything. But it is here and there and it will never die. But gossip is the average persons time to tell a story, and fabricate it. It is especially emotion heightening (of all types) to see the spread of Gossip in Social Circles, to watch the mayhem swell as the majestic fall into place over the illusion of what actually happened.

The timid minds. The over-sensitive. The analytical. The Synthetical. The hypocritical. The flirtatious oh and the Anti-Flirt! The ostentatious. The Narcissistic! The Neurotic! The emotional. The heartfelt! the Theologian! The Atheist. The Asshole. The Bitch. The addict. The Sloth. The Looser. The cooler(?)

They all put their life experience into the retelling of the tale!

People bicker, fight, find love, find jealousy, stifle sniffles, spill tears, spring traps, and it as all because of an illusion!

"All I know is what the words know and the dead things!"

Let us take another direction.

If everyone believes something does that not make it so?

It is four O'clock. Everyone knew that. And everyone runs off of it. If I'm to be to work at four and I do not go because I know that the clock has absolutely no control other than what we give it I will still be fired. Yet if everyone decided the clocks meant nothing and ignored them, their would not be time?!

If your clock says 3:15 and your neighbors 3:10 what time is it?

"Check your phone idiot, that's the right time."

It is mad to try and understand it! The logical choice is simply to ignore it.

Yet how many people say they don't live their life by dreams?

Term Paper Topic

As was desired of me earlier this semester I will be writing about Shakespeare's The Tempest with an empahisis on how analyzing it with deep incite into Prospero's Epilogue allows us to read the play again as if for the first time. I will also be talking about, possibly, how i the book incorporates the five themes, especially that of the World as Myth and Dreams, as well as tackling the reason for Shakespeare's widespread popularity in a world of lowbrows in its dependent relationship with Prospero's Epilogue.

We Are Not Horses

Hey class! This is a paper I wrote for Ben Leubner's Early American Writing Class. I'm putting it on this blog because the themes in our class. mainly the world as myth and dream (mainly myth) have infected my mind and completely changed the way I look at everything. This paper is in comparison of Scientists and philosophers comparison of religion to myth and my own comparison of their logic to myth. Enjoy!

WE ARE NOT HORSES

The Religious Debate: Past and Present

“What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires—desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. –Bertrand Russell.

The root words of Mythology are Mythos and Logos; Logos meaning logic, or truth, and Mythos being stories. With the enlightened understanding that the culmination of a man’s knowledge in use is his logic, and the fact that logic itself is an illusion, we will be taking a look at the ideas of men from our past that have formed today’s leading Theologians and Scientist in the ongoing religious discussion, as well as our own perception of reality.

“It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian Church sprung out of the tail of heathen mythology,” beings Thomas Paine in his heavily reserved endeavor to espouse the Pagan Origins in The Roman Catholic Church . Dated, 1794, in his next words Paine proclaims that God’s only begotten Son is a perjury of the then present heathen mythology (Krimnick, 177). He states this without taking into consideration the prophecies from the Old Testament of the Bible. Whether or not he does this out of ignorance, that he believes the origins/handling source unreputable, or that he thinks that these prophecies are being addressed is unknown. My belief, and my reasoning, suggest though heathen mythology by definition is everything except Jeaudism, Christianity, and Islam, that dues to his link between myth and Christianity, he believed the Old Testament prophecies to be accounted for in and as a heathen mythology.

Paine continues on with his degradation of Christian Lore by comparing the Trinity as “no other that a reduction of the former plurality,” adding smugly, “Which is about twenty or thirty thousand [gods]” (Kramnick, 177). He compares The Virgin Mary to a replacement of Diana of Ephesus, and “[t]he deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints,” as well as providing a connection between the values and morals held by mythological gods switching onto the saints. Surmising these points Paine says, “The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud” (Kramnick,178).

Stephen Weinberg, a present day physicist and devout believer in a moralistic order free of “superstitions”, seems a direct descendant of Paine’s reasoning and philosophy (Frankenberry, 317). Weinberg expounds on Paine’s views of “Christian Theory” as a myth by maintaining that religion and mythology are, and should thus be viewed unanimously with, and as one another. Weinberg believes “[t]he Scholar of religion does not need to believe in God, but she does need to believe that religious folk believe in Superhuman beings (frankenberry, 319).Weinberg continues on with his bout proclaiming “[h]ow else can we identify anything as specifically religious, unless in connection with beliefs having to do with superhuman gods, goddesses, ancestors, ghosts, water spirits, and others powers. These beliefs may be judged false, but their truth value is irrelevant in identifying the proper object of the study of religion, and that involves the distinguishing characteristic belief in superhuman beings” (Frankenberry, 319).

According to Weinberg the “belief in superhuman beings”, being the equivalence of religion as myth, unveils the amphibious material and allows it to be viewed on its moral merits, “the proper object of the study”. Both Weinberg’s and Paine’s reasoning and philosophy depend upon the logical conclusion that religion is myth, and Weinberg avows that religious scholars must as well, “otherwise, the object of study becomes so expansive that it should be handed over to the desk of philosopher or the scientist” (frankenberry, 319).

Presently, while Paine’s argument that Christianity is ancient mythology revisioned by a Tyrannical Merchant, and Weinberg’s summative theory that religion need be studied only on a mythical level may seem logical, but with Bertrand Russell’s explanation of the origins of myths we understand that the simplicity of Paine’s evidence, which is only connections, is easily accepted even though he provides no present corollary between the Tyrannical Merchant and his need for a revisioned ancient mythology. In fact, Paine’s assumption proclaims that because of the ancient mythology there exists a Tyrannical Merchant, yet he does not provide any reasonable connections here.

This theory of Weinberg’s is also flawed by his faith in a “Theory of Everything” that comes from his unfailing faith in Physics. His faith is in physics as an absolute truth flaws his logic in vouching that “miracles” are not possible by humans, and thus Christians must believe in superhumans. The lack of theological study is evident: as well as the understanding for the possibility of a human being used as a vessel of power is not prevalent, nor possible in Weinberg’s logic. We will be taking a look at the fallibility of this thinking in the next section, Christians. To do this we need to look at the illusive crutch in the scientific theory that has been so well solidified since Galileo’s time.

The Christians

“I do not find that a Trinitarian and incarnational theology needs to be abandoned in favor of a tuned-down theology of a Cosmic Mind and an Inspired Teacher, alleged to be more accessible to the modern mind (Frankenberry, 340). John Polkinghorne stands for what he means, and has the background to supply his reasoning. Once a leading scientist in Quantum Physics, Polkinghorne left his post to become a Theology Scholar. Polkinghorne, as a fresh theology scholar, argues “The question of design is a metaphysical question, a question that goes ‘beyond’ (meta) physics, and metaphysical questions must receive metaphysical answers, given for metaphysical reasons” (Frankenberry, 343).

In the upcoming remark from Stephen Weinberg we will be looking at a metaphysical remark that is explained away by a physics answer. Through correcting Weinberg’s analysis we will be able to see the flaw in science which does not allow it to answer the question of Design, and why it must be left to metaphysics.

“It would be evidence for a benevolent designer if life were better than could be expected on the other grounds. To judge this, we should keep in mind that a certain capacity for pleasure would readily have evolved through natural selection, as an incentive to animals who need to eat and breed in order to pass on their genes.” (Frankenberry, 329)

“Polkinghorne points out the error in Weinberg’s statements saying, “Although we are rightly impressed by the many things that science can account for satisfactorily, we should also recognize that this great success has been purchased by a degree of modesty of ambition. Science limits itself to considering only certain kinds of experience. Broadly speaking its concern is with the impersonal dimension of reality. Galileo had the brilliant idea, followed so strictly by successive generations of physicists, of confining attention to the primary quantities of matter and motion, and to set aside what he called secondary characteristics of human perception such as color. This neglect of what the philosophers call qualia (that is to say feelings such as seeing red or judging someone to be trustworthy) was an immensely successful technique of investigation” (Frankenberry, 344).

From Polkinghorne’s synopsis, as well as the understanding that Weinberg’s pleasure falls under qualia, we see that Darwin’s theory of natural selection does not provide an evolution for the capacity of pleasure because the scientific theory in which it is tested does not allow, and in fact the theory works because and not in spite of this ignorance. This little known, little questioned, understanding of science only becomes apparent once it is espoused to the modern man; and then still it must undergo extreme scrutiny before the overwhelming truth is understood; that since science doesn’t answer everything. This understanding allows for the shifting of Creation as a physics question to that of a metaphysical nature.

The question of Design, Polkinghorne believes, is one of scope (Frankenberry, 343). Our perceptions shape the question of Design so that it can no longer remain a physical question. Edwards believes that the nature of causality serves as a proof of God’s creation, and Polkinghorne asserts that by thinking about the nature of causality we will be able to better grip the theory of Design in a metaphysical scope.

In discussing the beginning of all things Edwards writes, “That God does, by his immediate power, uphold every created substance in being, will be manifest, if we consider, that their present existence is a dependent existence, and therefore is an effect, and must have some cause; and the cause must be one of the two: either the antecedent existence of the same substance, or else the power of the Creator” (Smith,239).

Edward continues his argument declaring that it cannot be antecedent existence because things would have to be present to cause an effect. He is saying that an effect can not be the beginning, and that a cause must already be present to in act an effect. IF all of the earth is dependent, is an effect that came out of a cause, than we cannot say the past is a cause for the present effect, especially when the past object is completely passive. Edwards further backs up his explanation saying, “no cause can produce effects in a time and place on which itself is not” (Smith, 240). Through Edwards explanation we can see the claws that science digs into its conception, time. Without time, or before it, scientific theory has no grounds or footing to provide a thorough explanation.

After this illumination Polkinghorne would ask, “In a Theory of Everything is the realm of the personal as important to take into account as that of the impersonal?” (Frankenberyy 341) Yes. It is. Though science separates the two, personal and impersonal, it restricts itself to the physical world. It does not exist on the same structural foundation of thought as that of religion and thus cannot be used as a key or tool for its destruction. That is, logically. But of course, modern man will continue with his new god, his new myth, that which conquers all; knowledge.

So what? Am I saying that knowledge is useless? Am I saying that we should do away with logic, with reasoning? Certainly not. I believe they have become very successful tools, but I do not believe that reasoning is an answer in and of itself. A confused Tomas Paine asks, “It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God. Take away that reason and he would be incapable of understanding anything; and, in this case, it would be just as consistent to read even the book called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How then is it that those people pretend to reject reason? (Krimnick, 180)

As a man from the age of reason Thomas Paine believes that through reason, logic, (and from this knowledge) you can obtain absolute truth. Knowledge has become his God, his answer, and this is very common amongst today’s science culture. Just look at Stephen Weinberg. What Paine and Weinberg cannot grasp is the possibility of their perception, their scope, having any flaws in it. They cannot see, nor do they believe that there is any myth, any illusions in their reasoning. “Those people” he speaks of understand that man is flawed, that he cannot know everything for certain. Thus “those people” place their faith in the Man who says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 4:16).

For the ignorant that place all their faith in science, for those who believe religious lies fall at its feet, I ask, what myth do you believe? John Polkinghorne would tell you that you are “historically ignorant to suppose, as the modern myth does, that Darwin was opposed by solid ranks of obscurantist clergyman when “The Origin of Species” was published in 1859” (Frankenberry, 351).

Works Cited

Frankenberry, Nancy. The Faith of Scientists In Their Own Words. 1st. New Jersey: Princeton Univ Pr, 2008.Pages 317-65.

Smith, John. Edwards, Jonathan. “The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (1758).” The Jonathan Edwards Reader. Yale Univ Pr, 2003. Pages 223-43.

Kramnick, Isaac. Paine, Thomas. "The Age of Reason." Enlightenment Reader. Portable ed. New York: Penguin Group, 1995.

Finnegan Page 432

This Page of Finnegans Wake Is a Sunday Service Given by a Dominican Friar. It is all at once a Mockery of The Canterbury Friar; a salute to Bloody Sunday from Anne Besant; as well as a reference to the silent years of Kant in reference to doing nothing, or doing something.

Best Lines are:

"Axe why said"

"bekant or besant"

"he'd marry me any old buckling time as flying quick as he'd look at me"

"be a gentleman without a duster before a parlourmade without a spitch"

"Sever sindays after whatsintime."

Eliot's Children in the Age of Techno

I would invite everyone to watch this video and ponder its connection with the themes we've discussed as well as the Children in the Garden.

Visit this sight on youtube and enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOUPz3eYsNs

Fill up my cup Vosen.

Vosen. I definitely agree with you. Henry gets under my skin! I think the fact that he let one woman ruin his entire life has a lot to do with it. Loving Henry Mussert is like loving a moment of life. Because that certainly is what he is. He lives once, and then thirty years (lets not get technical) later he passes on. Apparently he doesn't know your only alive when your living. Thus when Eliot says "you must go by a way in which there is no ecstasy..." I think he's talking about going in a way in which you do not live.

I realized when reading The Following Story for the second time that once Henry comes to terms with the pointlessness of what happened all his delusions of who he was because of it fall down. He's only able to tell the people on the boat what happened because they no longer see the mirages that herd us from day to day. Once he has given his story he gains the wisdom to understand the false realities that society distills on us. And when he has given up the illusions that he lives by, when he realizes that you can never actually know what another person is thinking from what they say, that's when he gives up his twenty minute lifetime (or this is when he begins to live life again). The Eternal return is what happens when he comes back to the place in his mind, but from a different view. It is the rejuvenation to live again.

"Fill up my cup, let's get f....."

A day straight out of Little Gidding

I'm so stuffed up I can't smell anything! Not that there is anything to smell this time of year. Does everyone else hate this midwinter spring we have? It's a life of its own! one day im in my flippy floppys the next i'm fighting wind burn while walkign to class! You think that since every week it all melts its gonna stop, but NO its endless! All I want is the endless summer! The season where numerals don't exist! The season's are trying to change but it's as if the kids coming out feet first and we've been fighting an endless battle to get that little head out! If punksatony Phill can do it so can you!

On The Class Blogs

Personally, my favorite part of Shaman Sexson's teaching technique is the use of our blogs. I find it to be the most useful tool in my college career. It gives him his "time" to episodically rant wisdom slowly into our mind over the semester, and it gives us our time to discuss the ideas that his lectures and our readings bring up.

I read all of the blogs. It's after textsfromlastnight and before Facebook. They've all given me insight. And it's not so much my favorite blogger, as those blogs that have had a profound influence on my own thoughts.

Lets begin. For starters, Kyle Kenitz's blog about his Terrifying Mental Maneuver's was awesome. It got me all riled up on dreams and interpretations and really brought back the idea of what dreams are.

Rio has been a champ all semester. With his smart pen, and his constant blogging (and I'll forgive his slight obsession with his cat). Rio I really connect with your description in your latest blog about having to relearn to read without the pen. I feel you. There is being a scholar and a being a reader, and often we don't discern between the two. Personally, Rio, I felt disenchanted on my second reading of The Following Story. And the disenchantment did not ruin the story whatsoever. I merely understood the rapture that had enclosed me from the beginning. The Themes we have just studied are all one in the same. They are overlapping because they are apart of the journey/ or are the journey, that we have to take to gain wisdom. The myth of the eternal recurrence is the same as Dolce Dommum. (Up is Down just as much as Left is Right.) And I would say more, but I've yet to find words to describe what I know.

Alicia. Your reading into my blog about being Stupid really hit the point exactly. Wisdom is not something of value in our society. They say Don't Be Smart, but what they mean is Wisdom is useless. If everyone were to look around them would you not say that the most of people are extremely unwise in there decision making? I really enjoy reading your writing. You have a way of bring your life and passion into your blogs that I always find enjoyable.

Zach of The Saving Bells. The Four Quartets and Eastern Thoughts is one of my favorite blogs. You definitely read Kerouac don't you?

Goss. Your thesis sounds awesome and I'm excited to hear/read it.

Thomas. Your obsession with Harry Potter is awesome. (Do you remember how you said Sherlock Holmes is everywhere in Finnegans Wake? Do you notice him anywhere on television?)

Christina. Your blogs are probably the most elaborate and well put together of the class. It's nice to have someone who can supply the flow of their thoughts. (Cause I definitely cannot)

Bizz. This quote from Full Metal Alchemist which you supplied has had a profound influence on the way I've thought about the entire class. It capture its cycle:

"Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth."

Thank you bizz.


Bri. I think you have Dr. Sexson wrong in his explanation. He does not believe we need to give up lowbrow (he himself still reads lowbrow books) but that we should move on with age into bigger things. I don't believe Sexson was attacking lowbrow books so much as an elderly gentlemen reading youth literature. It makes sense doesn't it? We enjoy children's books from our adolescence now because we enjoyed them then. When we reread them, it recreates the past memories of what we enjoyed. But imagine picking up a Children's novel nowadays. Can you really enjoy it? No. You can't. I think that is what Sexson is trying to say.

Jon. What Can I Say? We discuss it everyday in Brit Lit.

Zack Eggemyer- Your explanation of The Matrix is beautiful. I love it. I reread it again. and Again. Profound. Elegant.

Jennie Lynn. I know that your busy with classes and whatnot, but I do miss your blogging.

Sam. What has everyone not already said?

I'm tired of writing but just so everyone knows, I do read your blogs, and there is barely anyone that does leave me deep in thoughts.

Maggie

The World is real. Consciousness is the illusion. -Graig Bruce


Do not be musled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, flasvevalues and false ideals. But you are not part of that world. -Sai Baba


"It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection."- Edward Sapir




Beyond a doubt Maggie's blog about why the hell she is in this class has had the most effect upon
me. Not that I agree with you Maggie, but the questions you ask forced me to deal with the reality of why I feel the need to read these books, spending countless hours in study when I could just be out living life.

And so I did. I had planned on reading and working for spring break. I put aside an enormous amount of reading I had planned to "better myself", but after reading your rant I couldn't help but think, "What the fuck, Kushman? Get your head out of your ass. Go enjoy yourself."

So I stumbled out into the world feeling a myself a yes man. And Maggie, I had a great time. But there was something much different in being around society. I was certainly apart of it, but I viewed everything a little bit differently. See Magster, I've been obsessed with Illusions (or more exactly the delusional) for quite sometime now (It was my death of innocence. That realization when you're very young that you have it all wrong, do you remember Maggie?) and every time I heard someone talk, I heard it from a different light. I noticed where the person was at that point in their life/ rising or falling by the kenosis or plerosis of their speech. I noticed all these people looking around them in the world for answers. They were only talking but they were all searching. They said something, but they were usually just testing things out, letting out a little of their life (that had become all their life), asserting, but only to see if assertion was needed. They were always asking me questions. About themselves. About things going on. About the world. About this or that. Some were nervous, some tense. Others Anxious. Most of them were drunk.

But I usually didn't have an answers to what they were searching for. Sure. The words we exchanged matched a dialogue, but we both had our own monologue of what we were really discussing, and we were both just bouncing response off of this.

And so when school started again I was still in Magmode. I was shirking studies and spending my time hanging out, chasing tail, spending, drinking, goofing, and rather just being completely out of control. And It felt good.

Then Thursday Came Around. I hopped out of bed at 930. Library at 1030 to write a paper about how in The Tempest, Shakespeare does a better job that Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, of forcing the audience to deal with the illusion of everything we know in the world.

I spent 3 hours looking up quotes on illusions, enchantment, allusions, and logic to get a sense of how the hell I could compare these two better. I spent until twelve o'clock in the library writing this paper. Came home to people getting pissed in my house-stayed up 'til 2 entertaining them (hey Jon, guess what? We spent 2 hours talking about DMT which came up on its own accord) after which I st down and continued writing about Illusions. I finished the paper at about 8 o'clock Friday morning.

Do you know what I spent most of that time doing?

Reflecting on the way both texts forced me to look at the illusions man creates. And I wouldn't be able to do it without the Four Quartets, Without Finnegans Wake, Without Molloy, Without The Tempest, Without Dr. Faustus. Without The Alchemist, And without everything I've learned in life. They all helped me to better interpret "reality". I have an astounding understanding of Illusions write now, and none of it would be possible without the books we've read and your blog Magsters. It was sunny out and I still read your blog. And I might never have gone out and enjoyed life if not for you and what you wrote. If it wasn't for you I might not be able to see all the illusions that I see now. Beckett add's it up in a way Stranger than Fiction can't. And maybe you will understand it, but you probably won't. You probably won't spend anytime thinking about it.

"All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To hell with it anyway." -Molloy 27

So Thank You.

Your LowBrow Look at life has helped me more than you could ever know.

I'll go back to my Cultish practices now.

Ign rantces.

I've been obsessed with the idea of Illusion for the past few weeks. Wait. That's incorrect. I've been in rapture since childhood; I've collected them in my pension, recollecting upon them in all their glorious enchantment- until age, until a reunderstanding forces them into the claws of the reality- forcing me to give them up.



Disenchanted. I'm a romance of chemicals exchanging this and that excitement until I no longer see the allusive behavior that captured me in the beginning. Sure. Eliot would say that my inability to see the rapture is the end reflecting upon the past-bringing me to the beginning once again- but enlightened, able to understand!



but isn't it all really a trick of the card? the tongue of discussion masking itself in words that one will understand and another not?



Isn't that the beauty of Illusion?



We've been speaking of Dolce Domum- of Coming to understand through the adventure we suffered to begin with- but I don't really want to move on to this topic.



Sure it applies to Illusions.



The only way to see an illusion is to see it's disillusion- to see it from the beginning from a different understanding.



But my problem is with the "process too complicated to explain". We say it's too complicated to explain- but If I'm to be a writer, to be a major writer, mustn't I understand the complications that I am to bring forth? How Am I to enchant?



I've torn through Dr. Faustus.

Torn Through the Tempest.

Torn through myself.

Torn through my writing.



I've come across epiphanies and discarded them moments later.



I've understood.



Then understood we'd never understand.



I've recollected



Then reorganized.



I've burned books,

and drowned books,



Yet I've yet to here

the sound of depths

in my writings.



I'm Faustus staring at Prospero

wondering what is his wonder

while Shakespeare shakes his speare-

broken'n half- waterlogged

n' soaking fairies!



And yet I see only the allusions of words

and the illusions of his tempest.

Or is it his Tempest?

No, it's his tempest!

Know it's his tempest,-

Alas we'll never KNOW!



I'm a wreck of intellect!

Standing under loss

waiting its weight!



I've given up the Illusions 'ledges,'

I have given to no rants!

I am g'en No rants!

I am g'enrance!

Ignorance! Ah! I am!



I've typed up ramblings

and depyt them back,



I've given into Logic,

saying logic has no chance

and, having given logic its chance,

taken my belief in't back-



Thus then have I started

the way of not knowing

to start my way back?

Societal Rapage?

When my love swears that she is made of truth


I do believe her though I know she lies,


That she might think me some untutored youth,


Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.


Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,


Although she knows my days are past the best,


Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;


On both side thus is simple truth suppressed.


But wherefore say not I that I am old?


O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,


And age in love loves not to have years told.


Therefore I lie with her and she with me,


And in our faults by lies we flattered be. -Shakespeare, 138








....





You like him don't you?





Blush





What do you like about him?





I like tall dudes.





Laughs.


Inhales.


Swigs.





Yeah they're both the same height





Chris says.





Um, Yeah. I don' know if you've noticed-but I'm sure everyone has- or at least I have- they look a lot a like.





Yeah but Tyler's got the abs going for him.





So that's what you like about him eh?





....Yeah.





What else do you like about him?





--Love's not real anyway. What the Fuck does it matter. Some one's going to cheat this way or that


Chris interrupts. Or leads. Or whatever you want.





Oh! If he cheats on me its over.





Yeah, If someone cheats its done





But what if they don't tell you?





Why would they tell you? "yeah I cheated on you" like gloating. That's sick. If someone cheats its over.





What if they can't help it? I mean.... if they're telling you aren't they trying to make amends? They could certainly just not tell you and continue on with the relationship. So would you rather no the truth or continue with the illusion?





I Would Want To Know.





What if you love them?





I'd still want to know.





And would it be over.





Definitely.





Even though you both love each other?





Obviously it's not love.





What's fidelity have to do with love?





It's a promise you make to another person.





A societal promise. A human creation.





Neither speak.


Awkward thoughts on the dark train stuck in the hollow tunnel.





I know it's confusing but if Love's not a human creation, why do we hold it to the bonds of something society deems? If they cheat it's over you say, but that's only if you know. He could very well never tell you, and you'd both go on as if it never happened. Or he could tell you. And as you say it would be over. But would the love end if the love was there? Isn't it only the societal promise that ends? Don't you feel that burning in your gut, the flutter of butterflies in reverse?





What are you trying to say Kushman?





If Love is something that is outside of society, and if society is but a set of illusions we create so that we can survive together-





-are you saying that society is a lie?





Somewhat. I'm saying that we're animals. And that the only thing that separates us from animals is the ability to choose. This or that. Some people might call it right or wrong but there never seems to be a black and white picture. So in a perfect society there would be no need for writing, or Internet, or words, or even language. We wouldn't need to speak because everything would be known, they're would be nothing to disagree over and thus nothing to dispute. There would be no cheating because their woud be nothing to cheat. We wouldn't have societies because nothing would ever change to make it so we set up rules.





We wouldn't need to speak?





Yeah. Or not in the sense we think of it. We wouldn't need to communicate the way we do. Have you ever heard actions speak louder than words? If someones says they Love you, do you all of a sudden feel loved from the words, or do they open up a new perception of how life has been with that person? It's not as if love was created from that word, It's as if you've all of a sudden found the key to understanding the puzzle. And perhaps you find they love you, or perhaps you find that it was only wasted words. The ability to choose, to discern, is inside the words. Do we really need those words in a perfeft world? Aren't they just keys to understanding parts of life? Can't they be right or wrong? Or are they right or wrong?





...yeah. I guess.





So, I'm going to ask you again. If society is all a lie, and if a relationship is a societal promise, than would you rather have the man you love tell you he cheated on you, or would you rather not know?





I would want to know.





See. You say that. But I don't really believe most of us would choose the truth over the illusion.





Why do you say that?





Because what's another lie on top of one you are already living? Nothing really. The love you have sits atop the fictious creation of what society deems. If you come to the realization that the promise was only fiction, a little lie in front of others, won't your whole world you've created come tumbling down and leave you with the that miserable feeling that is love? Is it not unbearable? Can't you only live with it for a little while before your forced to simulate a new world, A new way, a new path?





So you're saying you'd rather not know?





I'm saying that a relationship should not be governed by anything but love, and that everything else around it is a lie, and does not matter, and that often we take to much from the illusions around us. Don't think that I believe illusions corrupt love, but only that it suppresses its growth.





So you're saying you'd rather not know?





I'm saying that when you say "it's over," the relationship formed between the two of you is not over, merely the illusions it was based upon have ended, and you're left with what is "real" between the two of you. Maybe you'll stay lovers, Maybe you'll become friends, or perhaps you'll never speak again, or shortly. But what has been created between the two of you will always be their, and it will be very, very "real".


Relationships do not change with words but with revelations.



How could you stay with someone who cheated on you?


Forgiveness.


Ah! How could you ever forgive someone who cheated on you?


Love.

Isn't that a choice on its own Kushman?

Maybe it's the only illusion worth having.

"Be Stupid"

So The Clothing Line Diesel has come up with a new gimmick, "Be Stupid." I thought it was relevant to how we are saying "Be Smart".

For More Picks.

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=2170

"Can you let your own illusions go?"

I lost my mind at an early age and I'd be lying to you if I didn't tell you I've been searching for it ever since.

Someone once said that words don't really mean anything. What a wonderfull illusion to live by.

The well Oiled machine, the Kant. I lived it. Theology, more importantly the reason of religion in humanity is perhaps, more definitely is what twirls me.



We speak of Illusions. We speak of lies. But really aren't they the same things? Relevant truths. Things to turn the mind this way or that. Settle distant thoughts, those absurd thoughts that could be if we only let them wonder a little farther before we rationalize, reason them into a set box, a little cove deep in the droughts of our mind.



The storm is very much real. But what is reality? If it's all in our head then thinking this or that is as true to this moment as it is false the moment life forces us to deal with a new perception that doesn't fit into the box, the little cove where we've stored our observations of how things should be and how things are rightfully so.



I've lived amongst theologians, and logicians. I've spent nights with the sinister, the mornings stirring the sins free with a crossed chest and a fleeting blessing. I've watched life reason till it couldn't reason anymore and the most common thought that flies into my head is what makes everyone believe? Why this. Why that?



If the world is myth and dream then why do we always turn to books, to movies, to our entertainments to explain? Isn't it everywhere around us? Isn't it in your life? In the depths of your understandings? under standings? Under stand. What are you looking up to that has yet to dissolve?



Life would be much easier if the questions we've raised throughout class were about books. But they aren't. And they are. But they aren't.



Which leads to the next question. If I'm supposed to be outside of time looking in while living it much the same must my own illusions be dissolved to fairly see the illusions, the lies of others? Or is it through my perch that I will see my own illusions dissolve? Oh! but we'd need to know the correct way to look at things, to strike out our disillusion for this to happen, and if religion is anything is it not the structure of how to do just this?



I've studied literature as a support of Christianity for nearly four years. Now, I will continue for another four years studying literature in its opposition. How much can a mind take before it breaks apart from such strain? And why does Literature always come to the point of religion? This semester alone I've prepared two papers which incorporate Scripture, Doctrine, and Literature. And both of these essays incorporate the illusions, (or lack their of) of the writers to prove their point.



The First paper, For Professor Leubner discussed the fallibility of Rev. Samuel Parris' sermons during the Salem Witch Trials. The sermon which I analyzed for discussion was based upon Revelations. Rev. Parris' doctrine takes certain scriptural passages and twists and turns them from being a spiritual war waged between Christ and "The Dragon", into a war between "Christ his followers" and "The Devil and his Witches". Through this illusion (which he believes free of any doubt) he commits a Massacre. He brings about the death of twentysomething people. But it is not an illusion to him whatsoever. He believes it. He lives it. He sees what he is doing is the only just thing to be done.



Now who frightens you more Prospero or Parris? Who is the real Thaumaturgist?



What right does Prospero have to a throne in which he shrieks his duty? ah. But Divinity grants it thus does it not?



And now for Marlowe. For Doctor Faustus. For Gretchen Minton's Brit Lit 1 class we have been surveying early British Literature, notably on its relevance to Christianity. For Friday she asked the students to prepare for a debate over whether or not Doctor Faustus was a Christain Play.



It is of course a Christian Play. But is it really what we expect from it? I did much the same thing for Marlowe as I did for Parris. I looked up the scriptures fleetingly brought up and delved into them. And what did I find? I found Marlowe (a man who spent 6 years in college on a scholarship given to those who will become ministers) was dealing with the lack of belief. Doctor Faustus is caught upon a few verses from the bible in which sin is explained paradoxically as something everyone always has, always.



Here are the two scripture that Marlowe brings up

“

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” –

Romans 6:23

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us! If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.”-1 John 1.8

In 1 John 1.8 Marlowe/Faustus has come to the question of how can this be? Logically it makes no sense. We would be in a perpetual circle of damnation. The only way to heaven would be to die in a moment of redemption? As my inept Catholicism teacher used to explain to me "If you we're on the way to confess your sins and you died, say getting hit by a car, you would be absolved and sent straight to heaven. But if you died while still in sin you would be sent to purgatory to work off those sins."



But for Marlowe, a protestant, I'm not quite sure how he would think this through. Faustus on the other hand deals with it the whole time. the entire play (to me) is based upon those two passages and the inability of logic to understand it. Mind you, Protestants during this time believed that to come to Christ you must read the bible and come to your own understanding of it (or so my illusions are). How then could Faustus believe in God? How could he believe when he saw the illusion of it all?



Marlowe goes on to say:

2 SCHOLAR Yet Faustus, look up to heaven; remember God’s mercies are infinite.

Faustus But Faustus’ offense can ne’er be pardoned! The serpent that tempted Eve may be saved, but not Faustus. Ah gentlemen, hear me with patience, and tremble not at my speeches, though my heart pants and quivers to remember that I have been a student here these thirty years—O would I had never seen Wittenberg, Never read book—and what wonders I have done, all Wittenberg can witness- yea, all the world: for which Faustus hath lost both Germany and the world- yea, heaven itself- heaven, the seat of God, the throne of the blessed, the kingdom of joy; and must remain in hell forever- hell, ah, hell forever! Sweet friends, what shall become of Faustus I, being in hell forever? 13.3-25

The entire play stems on the belief that Faustus cannot be forgiven of his sins (if they even are sins) because of his doctrine. Thus if he’d never gone to school and learned this, he would be stupid enough to have the faith that logic has pushed out of him.

Also.

The serpent that tempted Eve may be saved……

This is Lucifer. Lucifer will not be forgiven. Thus how can God

’s mercies be infinite?

Marlowe finishes with this:

"Faustus is gone! Regard his hellish fall,

Whose fiendfull fortune may exhort the wise

Only to wonder at unlawful things:

Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits

To practice more than heavenly power permits."

He can no longer see the illusion. And beware how much you learn or else you may suffer the same fate.

Thus when reading this compiled with the Tempest I cannot help but see the likeness between both of their thinking. They are both Illusionists. While Faustus is dealing with not being able to believe the illusion of the bible, while simultaneously showing that he will become his own illusionist (Marlowe as an writer Faustus as the only means to live) Prospero and Shakespeare, I believe, one up him.

Prospero at the end of the entire allusion in his epilogue speaks:

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have's mine own,

Which is most faint. Now, 'tis true,

I must be here confined by you

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardoned the deceiver, dwell

in this bare island by your spell,

but release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands.

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned by,

Let your indulgence set me free.

When I read this line, instead of hearing Prospero ask for departure, or the actor ask for his leave, I heard Shakespeare ask me "can you let your own illusions go?" Though I did not know it at the time. All I knew is that there were things in my life that could no longer bear my weight, if only for the fact my mind realized their was never any support to begin with.

I've missed class. I've missed work. I've missed sleep. I've lost ledges. I've exited caves ending up in front of bigger flames. I've entered the deep. I've jumped ship. traded masters. plotted revolts. awoken sleeping kings. I've seen it all and not wanted to believe. I've hid from the entire problem only to deal with it in effect. I've tried to dispossess that which possess me. I've gone free of E. I've gone arrogantly and irrogantly.

I've felt the cold steel. I've cried out for the temptous eye cleaved out! I felt the "healer's art resolving the enigma of the fever chart."

But really I've let go of "nothing", and gained so much in return.

But the question still remains for me.

What the meaning behind Prospero's name.

Do we prosper through our illusion? Or is it going through the illusion that we prosper?

Muses! Speak Mnemosyne! Family Guy!

A few things before we begin.

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN IN FRONT OF THE CLASS.

Tempo- Latin for Time

Miranda- One who is filled with awe and wonder at the world. (Doesn't seem logical.......:)

SIMULACRUM AND SIMULATION- Book in the Matrix. Book out of the Matrix. Book in Reality about reality not being reality yet it seems damn solid to me. Are you following? Good.

PLATO's The Allegory of the Cave! This is where we are watching the Matrix while it flashes us with its simulacrum's and its simulation's.

Now to business? Wait. We're Saying This Wrong. Down to work.

Prospero Is Speaking of the Muses! The Virtues!

The Wiki Link to the Muses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse

For everyone that was in Oral Traditions here's a remember.

http://jkushmanoraltradition.blogspot.com/2009/02/whats-going-on-with-muses.html

Now, Oral Traditions is the only way I know that Prospero is talking about the muses. I know this because Shaman Sexson mentioned it two, three times a day.

And I did not remember that it was The Tempest he spoke of until I stumbled across those lines (1.2.41-60).

"Thy mother was a piece of virtue" (1.2.56)= the mother or model of the nine virtues Mnemosyne=Memory

(Aside: Speak Mnemosyne is the true title of Vladimir Nabokov's fictious autobiography Speak Memory. Sadly the editors lo' bro'ed him.

But all us Nobokavians know that there's a title found by the "dumb author or the stupid publisher"(TT,N) and then there's the other kind:

"[T]he title that shone through like a watermark, the title that was born with the book, the title to which the author had grown so accustomed during the years of accumulating the written pages that it had become part of each and of all." (TT, Nabokov)

And now for my favorite part.

An Episode of Family Guy which references Picard's Flute as a household Item......

Their is also A Giant Cave that peter wishes to buy....

Oddly enough Peter Looses his memory and has to relearn everything......

Here's a review.

http://www.sling.com/blog/6450/%22Family-Guy%22-Non-Sequiturs-Explained!-Episode-8-10:-%22Big-Man-on-Hippocampus%22

Shutting off.

It's very seldom I become so upset over any reading.

The Tempest takes the pie.

I've never read it before.

I'll probably read it ten times before we finish semester.

I do not like it mind you.

In fact I quite detest the undertones Shakespeare places in it.

.....

"Kushman What is Up?"

"Dude I'm in my own world"

This is me talking to my roommates. They are very much in their own world and they still have the cognitive ability to notice that I am completely off of this earth.

The feeling in my stomach, the distant glaze in my eyes, and the running thoughts...... the connections with every character, with Prospero's gambit, with the fact I've read it and I've read it before, that I've read it after.

I've taken the bait.

I'm damned if I do,

I'm absolutely ruined if I delve into it. It will serve to eat me up until I'm done with it. This could not have come at a worse time. Or perhaps it's all in the timing? What is time anyway?

I'm absolutely miserable about it.

I can't even speak about the play.

..................................................................................................................................................................

This is something I wrote last year describing the utter control I lost when deciphering Transparent Things.

The bad thing about finding you,

Once again riddled with mystery,

with that tempting taste assisted

By all our shut off hours,

All your shut in days and nights….

Well, you tend to shut me off too.

And it’s lovely.

........................................................................................................................................................................

Oh,

Ten bucks Sexson mentions the Muses.

I can't go on. I will go on.

I am done with reading
done with it all!
the rising & the fall.

And how hard it is to right poetry,
Oh! when everything ways upon me,

I am nothing I meant to be.
But Am I what I wished to be?
Am I material
or aren't I thought?
Oh! how at first glimpse
we miss a thought!

So it snickers, it snivels
it fills the days' vessels with rot!

It rearranges-pre-arranges the days!

(it makes one hope for May)

This Neurotic, This Opague,
The cynical for cyclical shape.
It wants Its time rations for an
irrational sake!

It toils its time in toilets
swearing it is being the best
of a toilest!

It becquetts a Frey'd tag,
All while screaming there
never existed a name to tag.

Never!
Not Once!
Not Here nor There
Nor Anywhere!

It was all wept tears
without a trace of snot.

It was all a fiction of thought.

Language as Fiction

In my life I've had four teachers whom have done an astounding job. They taught me far more than any objectives marked down and mailed to their superior. Oddly enough all of these teachers have a prevalent ailment. To an outsider, to a parent, and often to other teachers and faculty this ailment makes them unsuitable, or in the whitest of gossip, handicapped in their position.

My personal favorite, Mr. Brown, was for a very short time my religion seminar teacher. Now mind you this wasn't Catholicism, Catechism, or Biblical readings. No, instead we read Catholic literature. We read Merton. We read Percy. We read O'Connor. And it was from this man that I remembered why it was two years hence that I had wanted to become a writer.

That was before another teacher told me, "James, there is a lot of failed writers out there." He was a Jackass. What I'm sure Mr. Failure meant to say was that he himself was a resigned to his own fate.

Mr. Brown was twenty four years old at the time. He was short. He was geeky. Bespectacled. And he tried to force us to recite catholic verse at the beginning of class.

I fought this tooth and nail.

It stopped on the second week.

But enough of the bullshit about what he tried to make us to do, soon enough he began letting us do as we saw fit. He gave out the readings, conducted discussion, and required two pages of reflection on the text everyday. He read every word I've ever written. I know. I once wrote in between a fluent thought 'you won't read this'. "I've read every word James". And so he did. He even once told another student he thought I was genius. Two days later I threw everything I'd ever written away. In front of him. In his own trash can.

In a class of 24 peers who had all grown up together in the same exact classes for the past 4 years there was never a dull moment. Discussion was always heightened and their was always something to be said, or something being done;

One class, a student decided to relieve himself into a 7up bottle during discussion.

One class, I flipped off the student condemning me to hell (and not for the first time) sending her crying to the bathroom.

One class, Mr. Brown told us he had put in his resignation, and that at the end of the week-

But he never finished his statement before our principal came in and sat down on top of a table, interrupting what was a very solemn speech from a man to what had become his friends.

We all knew what was happening. We all knew it was wrong. Yet we were completely defenseless.

Empty space. One minute. Two Minutes. Three minutes.

"Am I holding up class Nick?"

"Yes, actually you are."

"Anything you need to say you can say in front of me."

"This is my time with my class."

Well time to go. I stand up. Grab My bag.

"Mr. Kushman, where do you think you're going?"

"it's 11:45. I have Physical Therapy."

"I'll walk you out." Sullivan says.

I fix my posture. stand up straight as possible. Walk around the U-formation of desks to where Mr. Brown is standing. I give him a hug. I say Thank You. I walk out, followed by Sullivan.

"You know why I had to do that right."

"Yes I know." steps. "I wish you hadn't."

"Tough times. We're living in tough times."

Awkward silence as we walk the hall towards the office.

"You know Kushman, I always thought you were faking it during football when you complained about your back. Then last spring you told me it was broken."

I look at him. He has the same blood shot eyes as me, though his are only at the moment.

More Awkward Silence.

"Well I'll see you tomorrow, Kushman."

I sign out at the front desk. The Secretary no longer looks into my eyes. None of them do anymore. When they did they could never hold, and I always watched them cringe as they turned away. They don't care that I've missed more days then weeks in the semester.

I get into my Jeep. It's cold. I see my breathe. I light my cigarette. I see my smoke. I pull away. From everything.

I did not have Physical Therapy.

Mr. Brown was not resigning.

Practical DemonKeeping

EVERYTHING THAT HAS BEEN WRITTEN HAS BEEN REWRITTEN.

The Second Sexson mentioned King Solomon and The devil this is what I began thinking about.

Christopher Moore's Practical Demonkeeping.

And the craziest thing is that this is lowbrow version of the class (across two if not all five, I would have to read it again)

I'll give you a twenty minute synopsis.

It's about King Solomon's Demon and Genie!

Recirculation and Names.

Names have power.

Lousse- reword

Mrs. Lys- The Brown God.

Martha- The patron saint of house-bond wives

Molloy- Separate and look up.

Gaber, and Morans are self explanatory. Two are the moran that thinks he knows everything/ the other that only knows what the other knows, and one is only able to communicate never forming thoughts (he can't see anything even a moron would know to see.)

Youdi- Separate and look up.

Mag- Maggie, Ma, Nag, Countess Caca

Note to Jon. Does Pearl this you think of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?

Dan- Da, also means Judge, or more precisely God is my judge.

Caca- feces, also a roman goddess. a god.

Also note to yourself.

Pluperfect- look it up. It is told in chapter I, and it is Chapter II, I believe, though do not quote me.


VERY IMPORTANT!

Everything that happens in Molloy chapter II, happens in Chapter I. (it is everywhere)

Everything That happens in Molloy happened in Four Quartets. (it is everywhere)

Everything that happened in Four Quartets happens in Finnegans. (it is everywhere)


Insert vortex.

Finnegans Awake- 1939

1,2,3,1 Quartets- 1943

Molloy- 1947

On Entering a dream

I awoke in a dream the other day. But that's not where to start. That's the beginning, but certainly not where the dream started, I mean the subconscious tip of thought that finally broke through into being. What I mean to say is that I must explain where the rapture began, with her, and how I perceived her, and how those around hers depiction told me what I did not know.



I was serving, running food back and forth, pleasing smiling, fresh-shaved, hair done, shirt-tucked, and they were my last table, and I knew from the first exchange of words difficulty was inevitable, and the funny part being I saw the problem that was, before it had even arrived, whether or not there was an agreement on which of the two ladies to arrive is the problem. I'm sure they have yet to come to the conclusion, or else they are so wrapped into the dementia of the mag that escape was merely out of sight, out of mind.



There were three sitting at the table, a table meant for four people, with an extra chair placed at the end so as to make room for when the fourth and fifth party arrived. Five menus spread across the table, one up in hands, four atop the table, two of which being read. An older gentleman, the father, slouched heavily against the intersection of wall and table, his right leg and arm opening up to the breadth of the table that was there, and that was yet to arrive. Two others, a couple, across the table, but not on the table, no, not even their knees cross the threshold of the table. Nothing of theirs touches the table. Sitting erect, peering down the tips of noses, not crooked of the back. I will be with you folks in just a moment, I say. The gentleman, the father peers up, flips the index of his finger up, consulting me to stop, we have more arriving he says, shaking his head, trying to shake his own understanding into my own head.



The answer rings almost as an insult, and rightly so, almost. The gentleman eats out, often, no one can put on visceral fat with a diet at home, plus the work boots, the oil smeared hat means he works long awkward hours, or that he cares little for his clothing anymore. If it is the former than he should know. I know they are waiting on people. And if the latter he would certainly not be telling me he was waiting on more, he would want a drink, and quickly and so would agree with my announcement instead of wasting pointless words. But it's in the sitting of the couple, the young adult, mid 20's upper 30's with his significant other, that makes me realize it is none of these. They see what I see through them. And I know that this event is something that rarely happens, or it is so fine tuned, orchestrated as such that there is no room for error on any ones point but my own.



All of this may seem quite pointless, and it is, and it isn't. And I must explain the perception of the child, to perceive how she entered, and how I indeed entered myself. So listen, or don't, I merely wish to explain the mental maneuver I saw, and pitiful is it the chains her mother drapes.



The mother, and daughter arrive. and mind you, the mother sits at the head of the table, the fifth chair, the fifth party, and the daughter, sixteen, between the mother and father. The father open to the whole table, especially her, his giant slouch of a show. The mother. Erect! My spine feels the tingle of attention to everything, yet she is only in her mind, and very deep within it, all the gears pressing hard, pressing hard, mechanics forcing the ship to go where it will go, and she believes the table her ship, and herself the captain, and believe you me, James, the tongue is certainly the familiar rudder. And her elbows propped, hands together, but never in a form of prayer, no, she's pressing things together, knuckles white, trying to press everyone together. And the daughter slumps, but not out of slouching, she is merely present at the table. But she does is not part of the table. She is not her own, but anothers, and thus resigns to the way things go.



She does not look at me, and as I go around the table taking the second series of orders (the first being so misunderstood by the family, because the youth new exactly of what I spoke, but the father so lost because he was not listening to me, him so lost in his own thoughts of his family and what it's become and how it does not fit, and why does it not fit! that while he's looked through the menu for twenty minutes he has not read a single word, nor seen a single picture. Such is the eyes that look at me. And I see the depth of his love.) Where was I?



The second order. Yes, the daughter. She does not look at me when her order is being given by her mother. Perhaps the biggest sign of disrespect, but the mother does not know. Like the mother who's son sucks her nipple until his pubescence, that is what she has done to her daughter. and it is only when I ask the daughter a question, disregarding the mother, that i see the small hint of a smile, the flash of life that lies dormant, in this familiar situation.



And let us not forget the mother ordering the daughters drink! no ice! she'll throw the drink if you bring her ice! she says. She will not ma'am. She will not through a drink in my restaurant. You may not know it but I do. She will not test me. I see it in her eyes. And the fact that you would speak of your daughter so in public, though it be a cry of help for all that weighs upon your machinery, is not something to slip in public. You should not treat a family member so, demeaning is it. If this is how you treat you daughter in front of servants, how then do you treat her in the presence of your peers? and God forbid if your treatment has aloud her her own!

The girl is Native to America. Both her parents are white, though the woman is of only European descent, and the father is white, but he is a Native. I see it in his cheekbones, in my cheekbones. In the beard that never wished to grow. I see it in the textured skin of his generations. But mostly in his legs, in his hips, in those feet that a few generations ago ran with the wind. And I see all of him in her. And I know that to be white amongst Native relatives is like having the chickenpox. And I know that she has felt the reverse of this.

They share food. The mother, father, daughter. And the mother tries to send back the food of her daughters that the mother has taken, and is now not eating. I tell the woman that it is not free of charge. And she decides she does not want it. Take it away, she says resigned. Failure shines. And I tell her I will send out my manager to talk to her, perhaps something may be reached. I know the manager will not see what I see, but will see with pity what she has never lived, nor ever will understand, for she is a mother too, she will see what the mother sees and will do what I could never bring myself to do.



Clearing the table, and excuse me I must take a break to remember what it is the daughter dreamt. I'm back. Though did you even know I was gone? Much has happened since I departed. In between the watering boiling, the coffee being pressed, the cigarette smoked outside as I saw the lady outside with her dog which she says to heel as it yet again sees me, and whats to know me, as it did the time I saw the woman being hauled on her ski's across the road, her yelling heel! stop! not yet! and he understood his master, though he was seeing what she could not see for herself, though he wanted it for her as well as for himself. He sees and sense what she does not! A brute of a dog he is yet he does not approach me in anger as most dogs would, he does not see harm in my size, in my stature, he sees how he has been trained, and he only sees what she shares with him. He sees in the present on his walks with her, while she does not dwell in the present, but in the past, in the future, instead giving him the present to lead, only interrupting when his present presses her out of her distraught tenses. do you see the path I see here? Do you see The Jacques? The Morans? Do you see what I say? No and yes. Well know matter. It is in the ashes.



It is when I'm clearing the dishes from the table, when I've dropped off the check to the woman who is very much indeed happy with me, as stressed as the description, and she is relaxed, (the men gone, only the ladies remain,) all of her attention pointing towards the daughter, while the other woman sits in her corner,now slouched, now listening, perhaps texting from the incline of her chest, the round declination of her shoulders, her head down, peering up while the story goes on from the daughter. And it is a dream. And in it is everything I cannot dream. And the daughter describes the dream in utmost detail, using and, and, and, and, and, but never loosing the reader, or the listener, depending upon how your mind associates the text, maybe into words for storage, or perhaps just the music of her voice.



The mother is in rapture, for I doubt she ever here's her daughter speak these words, and when the mother stops her, saying I must stop you to tell you, you sound like some great writer, like Tolkien. And I think to myself, more like Joyce, or Nabokov, (and at the time I should have been saying the Toilest but I wouldn't have understood, only now that it is fulfilled can I see) certainly nothing like Tolkien outside the aspect of the giant birds, and the adventure involved. But the girl describes her dreams, and does so in a way I've never dreamt. She has control in her dreams, something I never have. I'm the man who jumps awake to escape the fall he cannot control. I've never had control in my dreams, nor have I ever wanted to remember them since the days I wished to escape from all that life deals out.



Yet she has control in her dreams, and she sees them with such a vivid depiction that I cannot recount, for I've stripped away all of the matter in storyline, and picture, so as to analyze how it was she did this inside her dream. What I am left with is a girl whose sense have all been shutdown in reality. She cannot talk to people, her mother does it for her. She cannot do things, so she does not. Yet she lives so very much in her dreams, doing so much, that I've only tried to do.





Enough of my blabbering. Here is where I start my dream. It happened in the small hour in between 7 and 8 o'clock last Friday morning. How it happened is I awoke to my alarm. I instantly hit snooze five minutes, though I wished to get up.



It is pitch black. Though the strangest thing. For it was light awhile ago. I must be in a dream. I know I am dreaming. I can see nothing, though I keep trying to see with my eyes, yet I know where everything is. I reach for the lamp on the right side of my bed to turn it on, and I struggle supremely. My body forcing my to writhe as a reach for the string to pull. I pull and fail, and no light comes on. I try and try and try, and try, but nothing happens. I need to get out of here I need go get up. Get up.



I awake. My alarms has yet to go off. This is odd. I reset the alarm, thinking to myself I've already used this space, I must provide more.



It is pitch black again. I try at the light. Same as before. Same writhe. Something new. I try to slide to sitting on my bed. Nothing happens but trying. My body fights me. Alright. Go to the door. my body roles across the bed without a moments hesitation, but as I near the end of the bed I think I must use my feet or else I'll surely tumble to the ground. bad move. I try to use my feet and end up as a result tumbled on the ground. Now I'm on the ground. How peculiar. Why do you work sometimes but not others? I try and reach for the doorknob but all my hand does is slip off of it. My body has made itself so that it is just in reach of the doorknob with the body propped up with an arm outstretched trying for the doorknob. everything is aligned perfectly to open the door except for my arm? why does it show progress in all the areas but where I try? Never ignore the italicized words.



I don't try. I open the door. I am standing. I am no longer in pitch darkness. the glow from the light that has been left on all night, Though I do not see it. I have yet to see. Sense are something that do not work here. I see but without eyes. The perception has the fog of when you are not looking at things correctly though. Still all I sense is where I tell my mind to sense (this I see now, though sense is not the right word). I'm done trying.



I walk out, and look over the balcony into the living room. Their is a giant Tree in the corner of my living room. It turns and looks at me, its cartoonish mouth opening to study why I have deserted it. Mind you it is a Christmas tree in every aspect of what someone stricken of metaphors, but to me it is trees. Other trees starting sprouting and I'm becoming overwhelming scared. And no, not of the trees, but the trees. I begin running back and forth between the hallway of my roommates room and that of my own, constantly peering over at the trees whom are talking amongst themselves when I do not see them as if they were in my eyesight, though I knew where they were the whole time, it has come to my attention that I new what they did, how they acted and moved even when I was out of my line of sight with them, yet I continually tried to peer at them and when doing this they directed all they're attention to me, all turning with a bump as they switched they're core a little, then a jump as they gained momentum.



Run into my room. I need to find a weapon. A long stick erupts in my hand, a rod, one you would hang drapes on, the rounded balls on the ends, yet I need one that is sharp, so as to defend myself against them. I need a spear! The end of the rod turns into a knife, then it blurs, Only when I'm focusing on the tip does it become a knife, when I'm looking elsewhere it blotches out similar to that of felons on Cops. I set out into the hallway, onto the balcony. I am ready. The giant tree, bumps, and then jumps, and then opens its mouth to speak to me. I AM NOT READY FOR THIS! I throw the spear, hefting from foot to foot, a killing glance it will certainly be, but I turn my sight and cower away from what I will certainly kill. I run into my room ducking beneath the wall.



AIAIAIAIAI! AIAIAIAIA! AIAIAIAI!

I'm awake. I've just entered a dream. I've found the mental maneuver, if only partly. I have just entered a dream. I do not dream. I remember when I wished off of dreams. I have just entered a dream. Why do I have to have class? I need the next hours to sort this all out immediately! this is important! Now I have to wait! Four hours of class, followed by a night of work and all I need to do is get his out immediately before it becomes corrupted by all of my thoughts. I must keep it. I must think about it constantly. I must force it into a perversion of itself so as to keep it alive, I must keep it alive! Even if it means ruining what it is, time will leave its stamp yet perhaps some of it will remain. And this I thought as I made my way to the bathroom, commenting to myself about the light that was on in the living room, and how odd that it should be on in my dream. I turn right, going through the door of the bathroom, similarly open as in my dream. The shower curtain is closed. I lean over, on the good leg and turn the water on, no need to lift the already higher shower lever. water on, shower going, I enter through the other side, and I look up at the glow above me. Odd. It's not the same. it's much to bright, not it's usual dim. I look down at the ground where my foot is touching the curtain that is much, much lower than usual. I look it up and down. Oddly enough the rod that it is on is a foot below where it normally rides its walls.



And I do not believe I had much in the way of Lysine that night, though I surely visited Mrs. Lys. I floated down the French river, down the leie, and while there Lousse, you will lose us down the Lethe. I found the decomposition in the garden. I entered the Atlantic, floated amongst the muddied water, and I saw the small group of rocks. The beacon, before I awoke.