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.