Dear unknown reader.......

1st Postcard

Kiss it all goodbye; remnants of childhood imaginings evaporating off crumpled pillowcases and vibrant dream worlds overshadowed by monochromatic reality.
There was a boy back there; clean and bright and full of unhindered curiosity, running through wonderment and lost in the playgrounds of the mind.
Then, when the first tinges of actuality touched his feisty fingertips, he was filled with the shock of compassion, that only ones sharing in his depth of empathy could comprehend, and he knew misery for the first time.
And now?
An acerbic senescent man wonders how such naiveté could have been him and feelings of embarrassment, for having ever believed that mankind deserved redemption, contort his face into a jesters mask.

The world has become a drab grey charade, imitating the light spectrum; a pasquinade in place of monuments.
And these streets, these avenues of simulated living?
They violate the aesthetics of a mind that can be enthralled with just the quiet serenity of a mountain slope and the understated elegance of a leaf blowing in the wind.
Simplicity is so underappreciated.

Urbanization has done more than litter the landscapes and constructed synthetic order over the chaos. It has emptied the countryside and made them gardens devoid of spirit.
Neon meat-markets and ostentatious billboards have replaced woodlands, and careers in service separate man from the artefacts of his creativity, making him another instrument of means.
There, around swimming-pool lakesides and electronic hyper-realities, un-meritorious mechanoids muster in search for a glimpse into verisimilitude and a genuine experience with substance; robots looking for an ‘emotion chip’, some software of conscience, some inkling of philotimo, that will reintroduce them to humanity.
These ensconced souls, using the myth of ‘human rights’, that the system provides them with, vent their anxieties and become more than they pretend to be or could ever be. Protected from the complications of culpability they turn conceited, impertinent and demanding. They turn three-dimensional.

This distance from responsibility, this immunity from personal choice and action, has made human existence into a farce.
In the resonating vapidity, excess becomes commonplace as parody is used in place of the real that is missing.
All things become a monstrosity of overkill so that the basic sensation can be appreciated and the ‘experience of living’ – as Campbell claimed to be a myths purpose- can be had.
‘Reality’ is inflated out of proportion to accommodate declining sensitivity, but also made impotent through disinfection and quarantine. A white-walled sterile world where nothing you touch touches you back.

In the pressure to maintain a hygienic environment nothing is left to chance, no sign of imperfection is tolerated and no hint of illusion is condoned.
Markets are filled with produce minus any memory of where they come from or how they got there. Saturated with pesticides and picked before stress has sweetened them and the sun has burned color into them, they look plastic in their veneer and feel forged in their texture.
No worms, no bugs, no spots of natural decay.
Meat comes neatly packages with no remnant of the slaughter; canned goods with taste enhancing additives, preservatives and food coloration to give off the illusion of salubrity.
The world must be cleansed of any hint of authenticity.
Here in this enhanced reality of testosterone distended muscles, hormone therapies, surgical mammary glands, botox injections, penises in spectacular Bacchus splendour and excessive juvenescence, expressing desired dependence and faked virility, everything gets notched-up an octave and a new artificial median is found.
It is a world of dolls, with perfect skin and hair, with push-up bras, lipstick and gaudy toupees.
An environment of caricatures where numbness is counteracted with extravagance; where a whisper must reach the crescendo of a scream to be heard… and a scream…?
A scream becomes an inaudible Munch-like facial contortion where, in the silence, the horror is lost in travesty; Simulacra of a Baudrillard nightmare.

Under these circumstances enjoyment can only be had through overindulgence and amplification. A caress must become a slap, a kiss must become a bite, a voice must become a shriek and a gesture must become accentuated through theatrics and dramatizations, so that purity can be replicated in the superfluity of emptiness.
Passion made clear through sadism and masochistic magnification.
Circumstances, themselves, spin into staged events and legitimate characters vanish under thespian exuberance.
In the frenzy of thrashing panegyric ecstasy-mirroring the ones from Nyssa only in style-, sweat drenched bodies fatigued and made receptive to virus, become vulnerable to any unexpected cool draft and fall sick as a consequence.
The very thing that shelters them, imbuing them with a false sense of imperviousness, makes their immune systems delicate.
For with the death of this modern dogmatic, unreachable God, mans soul has turned diseased and a fever burns mankind’s temples.
But what else could we have done with such a God? We had to kill Him in a pre-emptive strike.

And now, that boy cowers in silence in the center of a much more austere man; the world a grey-shifted kaleidoscope of imagery that washes over him like rainwater; a screenplay where the lines between fact and fantasy overlap and leave him indifferent.
Life imitates art these days and the world is an amphitheatre enclosed within an arena.
All reality is measured against the recycling imagination of the human mind and the distorting inevitability of memory; expectations are heightened to a delirious pitch of a wet-dream.
If it does not correspond precisely to the imagery of inflated realism, it must be revved-up, improved, embellished, diluted, warped.
The world made large to be seen by eyes that have lost their acuity or made small to hide the shortcomings.
Man takes examples from the screen and the screen takes examples from itself until the circle is made complete and reality, or the lack thereof, is left excluded on the periphery.

Even this confession is a parody.

Yours truly, from the temples of doom,
Wanderer

2nd Postcard

The universe of the surreal no longer comes to us through Rene Magritte’s imagery of hypothetical subconscious symbolisms or through the pen of Andre Breton.
It has spilled over into the world at large.
It has left the dream-world for the conscious one.
And what is the difference? If the real and the surreal have become indistinguishable then what does fact matter, or action, or truth, or inertia?
All is malleable and nothing matters.

The first casualty is that of severity.
In a culture where not even the self is taken seriously, everything loses weight and gravity becomes a myth.
Imponderable realties come to be and all sense of permanence and reliability vanishes along with interest.
Cynicism is the lovechild of extreme scepticism, where no single thing has value unless it fits into a self-created personal reality where nothing external is allowed to disturb its internal harmony and tranquillity.

But reason wasn’t meant for exploring the manifestations of its own subjectivity.
It was meant to create subjectivity through sensual elucidation and with it build strategies and castles of power, to withstand the unperceived objective.
When it was forced to turn on itself, due to the absence of creative frontiers, it became a cannibalistic entity, a self-effacing glutton.

The second casualty is that of energy.
In a jaded muted world, referential second-hand experiences are just as reliable as any other.
War, violence, brutality, love, sex, adventure could all be explored while lying on ones back reading books of fiction/non-fiction or watching screens of imagery or listening to a tune.
Acumen built on minimal effort; bought in used bookstores, in DVD outlets and corner magazine stands.

The experience of battle is shared through camera lenses and the voyeur convinces himself that he is just as worthy of expressing the terror and euphoria of combat as anyone that was actually there.
The deconstruction of authority begins with the absorption of distinction into a multiplicity of voyeuristic co-experiencing.
One mans involvement becomes everyone’s involvement and action/adventure another product to be distributed and consumed.
We no longer exist, we observe existence.
The hero of the quest loses his face and turns into a 3-D character in an interactive simulation; he becomes a detachable prosthesis that is worn by all so that the cellular memory of the limb is downloaded into a communal trough.

But the totality of the experience is lost through such an appreciation by proxy.
In place of what is lost, the parts are severed from the main body and are nit-picked with surgical precision and scanned with microscopic accuracy.
The medium focuses on fractions and disregards the whole; frozen images, camera angles, sound-bites, micro-bites, microphones, micro-technology, as the miniaturization of the real distracts the senses from the entirety of nothingness.
In pornography the essence of the sexual act is misplaced in the conglomeration of images of body parts, writhing and sweating. The spectator is a participant and an observer at the same time and the event is assimilated into the consciousness, as if it had been in reality.

That’s when everyone becomes the idol, everyone turns into the leading man and the event loses its magic.

But what happens to these doppelgangers of surrealism?
They speak with the commanding certainty and ostentatious power of the unaware and on their heads, the quintessential bowler hat to draw the eye away from their faceless craniums.

Yours truly, from the deserts of anonymity,
Wanderer

3rd Postcard

I had a meltdown again today; part of my usual cycle of self-pity.
It usually begins in the morning, when the mind searches for reasons to persist and before possibility has been slandered by the day’s disappointment.
I rummage through subconscious detail and only find an insatiable Will, curious and full of unjustifiable hope…. then I open my eyes to the other four dimensions that remain and I am reminded of my disillusionment, again.
The process repeats.
The Will is all that drives me now.
A pride that will not capitulate.

Later in the day, I watch the tube.
A cartoon character using the catch-phrases of movie-land reality for the umpteenth time, introduces, in that Austrian accent of his, an empty husk of a man unto the podium of Democratic theatrics.
The others inner vacancy is splattered on his simpleton visage in a silly grin that says ‘For Rent’, as he makes his way to the microphone where he will recite his carefully crafted –by others- and memorized speech, making sure he hits all the talking-points and makes all the rehearsed pauses.
He mirrors, so accurately, the pattern of self-realization of every hollow vessel, as he once looked for content in substance abuse before he settled on that ‘mother’ of all vacant space renovators, religion; a kind of ‘spiritual-eye-for-the simple-guy’ that results in a ‘born-again’ vivacity.
The crowd cheers their heroes in oblivion; milk laden herbivores, munching on the fodder of ignorance and waiting to be relieved from the pressures of their engorged adders.

One is the incumbent and the other a symbol of the American dream; both marionettes of hypocrisy and idols of pretence that reflect the bankrupt qualities of the masses that adore them.
They embrace and become indistinguishable.
I change the channel to a documentary.
At least here the lines between predator and prey are easily discernable.

In the absence of meaning I settle for purpose and go through the motions of living.
But the mind wants more.
It craves a connection to the real, a taste of finality.
Death becomes so attractive at times.
It’s not that I crave recognition or attention, but a desire to find something, someone to not feel so alone; something, someone to share the joke with; something, someone to be real with, to become a child again, to stop analyzing the ramifications and to surrender to chance.
This need is what keeps me grounded to my humanity.
I accept all aspects of it, with some bitterness.

All emotions have found a way of purging out of me, except that single one that wells-up until it knots my throat in rage.
It now dominates my thoughts, not because it is the only thing I feel but because it is the only thing I am not allowed to feel.
I live in a world where such displays of temper are intolerable and punishable. The result of my free self-expression would have unacceptable personal costs and it is this restriction that burns the fires of my rebellion.
I am consumed with a desire to release it in the full glory of its sexual force, by the desire to exact my own vengeance upon an existence of contradictions and indifference, by the yearning to spit in God’s eye.


My mind is filled with visions of destruction, of smouldering citadels and decapitated corpses. The blood of morons splattered on my face, with a euphoric grin on it, and their cow-like eyes pleading for mercy before I spill their unexploited brains before my feet.
There is so much stupidity to cleanse this Earth from, so much filth.
And if I should fall victim to my own fantasy; what a way to go? What a perfect ending?

The predictable ensuing feelings of guilt, compassion and regret, products of my nature accentuated through cultural indoctrination, but easily dealt with and ignored in the presence of so much splendour.
How can a man remain a man when he is asked to bear his neck daily and he is forced to accept the taunts of lesser beings?
He loses a piece of himself, forced to turn womanly in his strategizing, forced to swallow his pride, forced to endure the shame of castration and plan for an escape; a redemption.
Most of this unexplored violence remains concealed under layers of civility, as I do not even dare write most of them on paper, just in case they become discovered sometime, somehow.

Do you think you know me now?
Fool, I am more than this.
How can I be encompassed with crude labels?

Yours truly, from the edges of sanity,
Wanderer

Alright ...


Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.
One evening I took Beauty (http://www.1001art.net/chag%20Lovers%20in%20Blue.htm) in my arms - and I thought her bitter - and I insulted her.

I steeled myself against justice.

I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care !

I have withered within me all human hope. With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy. (http://www.artchive.com/artchive/G/goya/colossus.jpg.html)
I have called for executioners ; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. Unhappiness has been my god. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have played the fool to the point of madness.

And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot (http://pavlov.psyc.queensu.ca/~psyc382/MagritteNot.html).

Now recently, when I found myself ready to croak ! I thought to seek the key to the banquet of old, where I might find an appetite again.

That key is Charity. - This idea proves I was dreaming (http://noosphere.cc/clas6.html) !

"You will stay a hyena, etc...," shouts the demon who once crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Seek death with all your desires, and all selfishness, and all the Seven Deadly Sins."

Ah ! I've taken too much of that : - still, dear Satan, don't look so annoyed, I beg you ! And while waiting for a few belated cowardices, since you value in a writer all lack of descriptive or didactic flair, I pass you these few foul pages from the diary of a Damned Soul.Hellish. (http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Once.html)

...



(I apologize for the elaborate link-work -- couldn't find any sites that would have just the pics I was looking for ...)

Ah, viva po-mo ...

RosaMagika
Alright ...


Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed.
One evening I took Beauty in my arms - and I thought her bitter - and I insulted her.

I steeled myself against justice.

I fled. O witches, O misery, O hate, my treasure was left in your care !

I have withered within me all human hope. With the silent leap of a sullen beast, I have downed and strangled every joy.
I have called for executioners ; I want to perish chewing on their gun butts. I have called for plagues, to suffocate in sand and blood. Unhappiness has been my god. I have lain down in the mud, and dried myself off in the crime-infested air. I have played the fool to the point of madness.

And springtime brought me the frightful laugh of an idiot.

Now recently, when I found myself ready to croak ! I thought to seek the key to the banquet of old, where I might find an appetite again.

That key is Charity. - This idea proves I was dreaming !

"You will stay a hyena, etc...," shouts the demon who once crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Seek death with all your desires, and all selfishness, and all the Seven Deadly Sins."

Ah ! I've taken too much of that : - still, dear Satan, don't look so annoyed, I beg you ! And while waiting for a few belated cowardices, since you value in a writer all lack of descriptive or didactic flair, I pass you these few foul pages from the diary of a Damned Soul.Hellish.Hmmmm....interesting.

Ah, viva po-mo ...
po-mo? Translation?

Po-mo: post-modernism.

I played around with the quoting technique ... And, begorrah, Rimbaud said just about the same thing as you!

Great minds think alike. :cool:

But thanks for introducing me to Rimbaud.

I'm sure this one is very much in place:
http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Bohemian.html

4th Postcard

I wrestled with the devil again tonight and, like always, I was badly beat.
He knows all of my moves, by now, and he always manages to pin me with a clever promise and a dexterous threat.
It’s my firmness that lets me down; my mass.
But all is not lost.
In his hands I have learned much about myself and I have seen the world as it is.

Through defeat I’ve become ethereal, losing substance with every fall.
I’ve become skeletal.
He now struggles to hold my will and gets winded trying to find a part of me to exploit, a part of me that still cares, a part of me to manipulate, as he once did so easily.

In the race of the everyday I have lost all concept of solidity. Objects drift through my fingers and pass through my mind without touching me.
I am like a fog.
Nothing is mine and I belong to nothing.
This is becoming more and more disconcerting; it confronts the essence of my primitive being.

I danced with the devil again tonight and, like always, he was the lead.
Floating through the moonlight landscapes, a nightingale played a note and I struggled to find a rhythm.
Dark images that once made me gasp now only fill me with longing for the world I left behind.
This too is slowly draining out of me.
My tears: crystal dewdrops forming on luscious canopies and dropping on the thirsty soils of continuous recurrence.

These silly creatures I called my kind, now look so absurd to me; penises and vaginas fighting for a place in a vast bacchanal, fucking their way out of meaninglessness.
This is called life.
A fool’s existence.
Mucus filled corpses governed by chemical necessity, spewing excrement, releasing gases, gushing liquids from every orifice.
Then with ridiculous appendages and soft grey-matter they search for eternity, for nobility, for truth, for understanding so as to become more than animated dirt; a slow decay of cadavers obscuring the stench with perfumes, deodorants and disinfectants.
I laugh to stop myself from gagging.
Consciousness, as it is defined, is an orgy of engorged testicles and ovulating ovaries; every meeting a fuck-fest to weather mortality.

Cocks, pussies, tits and asses sum up humanity and an orgasmic spasm defines mankind’s creations; all that you see are remnants of multiple ejaculations splattered against emptiness, excrement of desire.

Priapus should be erected in every town square as a symbol of our real spiritualism.
Every other idol has been but a variation of the original.

Holy trinities representing mans triangular balance: father/son/holy spirit, mind/psyche/body, life/becoming/death, justice system/government/the people, instinct/emotion/intellect, male/sex/female, attraction/apathy/repulsion, good/neutral/evil, true/doubt/false, pleasure/contentment/pain, love/indifference/hate, master/power/slave, past/present/future, material/ethereal/immaterial, here/movement/there and so on...
A fitting heritage for those to come…. and come… and come….

I sang with the devil again tonight and, like always, he drowned out my feeble chant with a guttural bellow that stirred the dead.
The tune reached a deafening climax before it tumbled into a silent murmur of discontentment.
A splenetic lament for those exiled from the kingdom and condemned to build their own or perish trying to, a dirge of indignation towards a God that had to pay for His vanity.

Then I realized that I was in the company of a friend and not a vile fiend as I was taught to believe.

And there, behind the singing fallen angel, stood my father.
He smiled at me like he had rarely done when still alive. His brow uncharacteristically soft and his glance full of gentle mirth.
He knew what I will soon find out on my own.

“This world was not meant for eyes like ours. They see too much and can tolerate so little of it.” I heard him say.
“Behind every idol we see a fraud and behind every word we hear the motive.”

“How can I make myself blind to it without losing the magnificence, how do I become deaf to it without losing the song?” I wondered.

“This flesh was not meant for fires like these. It feels too much and the spirit warps in the blaze.’ he went on, ignoring my plea.
“The most impressionable materials must be protected from such harsh environments or else they solidify into twisted shapes and lose their beauty and flowing glee.”

“How can I find the balance between my blazing senses and my cooling mind, how do I absorb the world without letting it soil me?” I asked.
There was no answer.

Yours truly, from the shores of Styx,
Wanderer

5th Postcard

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Eloisa to Abelard
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

For once, to lie down in sleep and to awake into a world made anew.
All past events vanishing in the rising sun, as if they were dream, and reality, once more, a pristine source of spectacles that dare you to make them yours.

To be a child again, unhindered by the prejudice of hindsight and unsoiled by the remnants of experience; a naïve, curious, student of life, pure and honest in his thoughts and actions.

For once to kneel down low and drink deeply from the flowing waters of Lethe that so sooth the wearied soul.
All symbols of yore fading with one swallow and the scars that made them true, evaporating like sweat off the skin.

To be clean again, fresh and bright like childhoods Saturday morning joy; rested and ready for a day of play in the fields of happenstance.

But no such gifts are offered to mortal men as I.
What is known cannot be unknown and what is done cannot be undone.
Mistakes either edify or they victimize, they cannot be erased from memory but only denied direct access to consciousness.

There is so much to regret, so much to recall with sullen grief, but nothing more grievous than my incessant need to color humanity with my own brand of exaggerated decency and my persistent practice of openly speaking my mind with little insincerity and even less guile.
This, most of all, has been responsible for my failure to put into practical use the products of my receptivity; this and my utter indifference concerning the possible rewards.

The world was not meant for naive dreamers.
No, this world was meant for liars and charlatans that vomit words with forked tongue and guiltless duplicity, while wearing faces of unaware innocence.
This world was made for self-deceivers and conceited pretenders that bury diffidence in delusion and uncertainty in confidence.
This world was invented for actors that need scripts to find the words and wardrobe/makeup to fit the image they cannot interpret otherwise.
This world was created for simpleminded morons that come to believe in the chicanery of self and the ludicrousness of an existence with meaning.
‘The meek shall inherit the Earth!’

For what is more believable than what is already believed and what is more easily manipulated than what is ignorant of its self?
The mind has an inbuilt propensity to grasp onto anything that flatters it and to totally ignore what will drive it mad; existential retardation which ensures that the living will continue to find reasons to persist.

What little deceit I have been responsible for, was in passively allowing others to continue defining me and the reality around me, with epithets that did not correspond to my own and in allowing stupidity to take its course and find its expected natural conclusion with no intervention by me.
My calm has been my retribution.

However, even here I’ve not remained disciplined to my own insights.
These occurrences, of my own culpability through silence, have usually and regrettably been prematurely sabotaged when, in an ensuing moment of credulity, I open my mouth and speak my conscience, a terrible thing to do in a romance-obsessed, politically-correct world as this.
If only I could follow through with it and let simple minds, construct their own theater-stages where, swallowing my own pride, I can be cast to appear in the outfits selected for me, with a feigned earnestness that denies the ridiculousness of the shallow performance to come.

What has it cost me, this impatience with bullshit and idiocy, this arrogance of honor and dignity?
There is so much I’ve lost; so much I’ve pushed away with my free tongue and relentless desire to be appreciated for my authenticity rather than for my pretense, to be valued for my presence rather than for my promise.
Friends, women, jobs, opportunities and even a child have been burned away with the fires of my vain straightforwardness.
All of them thrown away due to some myth about the existence of nobility.

Nobility!? It sounds so absurd now.
Where, in this cesspool of hubris, could such a concept of lordliness survive?
A ‘Philosopher King’ would require the sheltering force of an entire Republic to remain untarnished in this universe.

Language is fraught with so many empty words of vanity and ‘nobility’ is but another example.
Only a pathetic creature like man could come up with standards of distinction he could never live up to and then feel ashamed about it; standards so ambiguous and murky that no dictionary descriptions can thoroughly encompass their nuances.

Have I learned my lesson yet?
Have the last remnants of romantic idealism been purged out of me, yet?
Have I stopped dreaming, yet?

A fool I am to have ever considered that there is such a thing as authenticity and dignity or that a thing like intimacy is even possible.
A big game of dominance is life, where everyone believes himself the winner when speaking the phrases of partnership and equality.
Consciousness is built by subterfuge.
Whose falsehood is labeled ‘truth’ is determined by power balances and circumstance and has nothing to do with fact, supporting evidence or ideals of fancy.

An agreed upon equivocation permeates social interactions and civilization is constructed on commonly acceptable approximations.
These are called morals, values, virtues and ideals.
Then they become traditions, laws and get the benefit of being considered truths, if they make it to the top.

Every human relationship is littered with ignored realities and underlying tension; a natural consequence of trying to find conciliation in the conflict between intellect and instinct or of trying to find harmony between human need and the Other that quells it; a kind of negotiation between reason and necessity, attempting to avoid unconditional surrender and to save face, despite of it.

People are not interested in who other people are, they are interested in who the other people might be or could be or should be.
People don’t accept other people the way they are, they tolerate parts of them so that the other parts can be accessible to them.

Successful human interactions are the ones where one or both sides accept piecemeal the realities of the other by either stifling the parts that collide or by masking them behind consent so that specific shared goals are reached and specific shared interests are maintained.
A cooperative dance of illusion where no movements which contradict common rhythms are tolerated and everything that threatens the chimera is punished with exile.
Sometimes they may result in long-term affairs, empires of harmonious coexistence, when after the objective is achieved, anxiety, comfort and familiarity prevents change; the secret to a ‘good’ marriage.

What does man appreciate more in the other than the reflection of his own imagination?
We are attracted to beauty because it gives off the imagery of health and spotless vitality which we covet; we are attracted to intelligence because it gives off the fable of power and control which we crave; we are drawn to the external to fill in the gaps in ourselves.
It is possibility that makes us disregard our reason. Possibility grounded on empirical elucidation.

We adore anything in the other that lends credence to our fantasies and hopes. Whether they are justified or not never enters into the equation unless the dream is foreshadowed by awakening. Then we react violently in defense of our own errors and we blame the other for our own mistakes.

And here’s where I slip up by trying to reshape the imperfections in accordance to my own wishes, because I cannot bring myself to ignore the blemishes or blind my eyes to them for the momentary gain.
It’s the power appetite of my nature.

Perhaps it is time for a reinvention of purpose an alteration in strategy; one of those adaptations that enhance existence and are the mark of a true survivor.
Perhaps it is time for a reincarnation, just like the ones I’ve done before, a reawakening of the parts that slumber unused inside me, a forgetfulness that will reinvent the self.

If trickery is the lubricant of social participation and all a person is allowed to be is a projection of sensual information, then let it be I that decides what is perceived and how I am defined and let me be indifferent to all others.
A peddler of hope and thoughts I’ll be, feeding the wants in others so that my own are fulfilled; a yes-man to idiocy that claims to know the universe and constructs edifices of convenience to hide itself in; a passive participant of agreeing positivism while I manipulate hope, ignorance and misinterpretation into moments of pleasurable ludicrousness.

Life is too short to be taken seriously and reputation too ephemeral to be overly preoccupied with.
It means nothing if you are praised or damned after death. This too fades in the eternity that follows.

No more trying to connect honestly and no more remaining loyal to my misinterpretations of virtuousness.
Virtue is personal and the world has nothing to do with it.

The universe is a playground; a vast, cold, wonderful, soulless gaming area and all that is in it but playthings to be enjoyed and forgotten.

Who am I to change the world?
Who am I to resist nature?
Who am I to want more?
Who am I…?
All I can hope for is an ‘eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’.

Yours truly, knee deep in the fertilizer of life,
Wanderer

All I can hope for is an ‘eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’.



I thought that movie was a little bit shitty. It had some poetic parts, but on the whole was ill-conceived and loosely assembled.

WANDERER, have you tried smoking dope? It may help. Or it could make things worse. Or maybe you already are.


The world was not meant for naive dreamers.
No, this world was meant for liars and charlatans that vomit words with forked tongue and guiltless duplicity, while wearing faces of unaware innocence.
This world was made for self-deceivers and conceited pretenders that bury diffidence in delusion and uncertainty in confidence.
This world was invented for actors that need scripts to find the words and wardrobe/makeup to fit the image they cannot interpret otherwise.
This world was created for simpleminded morons that come to believe in the chicanery of self and the ludicrousness of an existence with meaning.
‘The meek shall inherit the Earth!’

You must be very insightful to see these people's weaknesses. Either that or, you know yourself very well.

You must be very insightful to see these people's weaknesses.

It could be the crack talking, but it seems to me that once you can see those weaknesses, real insight comes from being able to forgive them.

We are humans, the grand, complicated apes - awash in a sea of interacting subjective values. If you're not careful, you might drown in it.

It just seems to me that if you really want to observe the system of humanity, to see it for what it really is - it's a waste of time to judge because in doing so you screw up your analysis. Actually the act of judgement itself is necessarily dependent on the assumption that you are somehow above the fray.

We are all complicated apes. Pointing out one's dissapointment in how the other apes behave doesn't render you above it, nor does it demean the value others take in it.

This ape is bored by pretenscious rubbish.

Make your point consice and easy to read, otherwise, stick it on your blog.

It could be the crack talking, but it seems to me that once you can see those weaknesses, real insight comes from being able to forgive them.

We are humans, the grand, complicated apes - awash in a sea of interacting subjective values. If you're not careful, you might drown in it.

It just seems to me that if you really want to observe the system of humanity, to see it for what it really is - it's a waste of time to judge because in doing so you screw up your analysis. Actually the act of judgement itself is necessarily dependent on the assumption that you are somehow above the fray.

We are all complicated apes. Pointing out one's dissapointment in how the other apes behave doesn't render you above it, nor does it demean the value others take in it.

Hello wesmorris, Bob also enjoys the crackpipe.

As for judging human beings, nothing substitutes for the cold, crisp, razor's edge of science. If you view people as meat, then you begin to realize what a wonderful sort of meat they are. All those little things they do are- well, endearing.

6th Postcard

There can be no more joyous day, for the troubled traveler, than after the long leg of a demanding trek has ended and he focuses his sight upon a new horizon.
The bruises and cicatrices, that mark his hide, are reminders of the road left behind and symbols of struggles to be worn proudly like war medals; each attached, through memory, to a battle that was survived and proof of what was experienced and endured.

There need not be bragging, no verbal testimonial presented, no admission of guilt; the body wears its past like a garment.
Each blemish, each scab, each callous, each fading cut is a visual memorial of individual history and those inner wounds, that cannot be readily perceived, find their way to the surface through glances, smells and movements, through words, postures and mannerisms, through subtle details of action and linguistic particulars.
A mans physical shell is a narration of his past, a moving script of credentials; everything that has touched him has left the stigmata of his perseverance.
It is this that connects the multiplicity of individuations and encompasses them in a singular being, where sometimes who someone is and who someone was bear little resemblance to each other. Two strangers entangled through history by I fine linear strand of time.

In this way my early love for mankind has marked me well.
Such ideals I had, such high hopes, such expectations…such bullshit!
I built podiums to raise them on; trophy cases for the, supposedly, laudable.
The highest of these towers, the most honored throne I reserved for, none other than, woman; those mysterious god-like creatures that beardless men find themselves consumed by.
To them I wanted to prove myself and from them I wanted to win my pride.
Such a slave to my instincts I was. Such a victim of my ignorance I was.
And they, such willing feeders off my needs.

Now, these same pedestals remind me of my past naiveté.
They lie shattered within my heart; artifacts of lost innocence.
I’ve destroyed them all, one by one, vandalized them into smithereens and deconstructed them into oblivion.

Only one I’ve dared to keep in hiding for all this time; a single tower of hope that has slowly decayed over the years and has caused me much anguish.
There I had dreamed of placing the one I might have bumped into, by chance, out there on the open road. The one that would earn my worship, the one that would live-up to my expectations of human dignity and exhibit the graciousness of spirit and eloquence of presence I would be honored to walk beside and call my own.
Oh, and what gifts I was prepared to give.

I’ve spent years offering opportunities towards this end, decades risking all for that off chance that she’ll appear and make it all worth while.
It has all been for not.
This childish dream burns today in the pyre of experience and with it the last pieces of my youth.
Tonight, when the lights are turned down low and I lay me down to sleep, I will incinerate this temple of romanticism and the ashes I will scatter, as souvenirs of emancipation, across the void.

In its place I will erect something indecipherable.
A castle of obscured decadence, a crystal palace of distorting mirrors where everyone sees what they want to see and all are treated in the way they believe they deserve to be, without any contestation from me.

If they think they should be pissed on and spat at, then that’s what I will do.
If they think they should be beaten and stepped on, then that’s what I will do.
If they think they should be fucked like the little sluts they judge themselves to be, by night, and then adorned like princesses so that the world is fooled, by day, then that’s what I’ll do and more.
If they think they deserve the privileges of royalty and the sacrifices reserved for gods, then I’ll let them continue in the thinking.
If they believe themselves to be part of the chosen few and the holy gifted, then I’ll show them whatever faked reverence I can muster.
If they secretly consider themselves human waste, to be used and thrown away, but insist on maintaining an air of faked pride and decorum to make excuses to themselves, then I’ll play along in the farce.
If they think they should be praised and flattered with little justification for it or that they are, at the very least, my equals because they cannot claim to be my superiors, then I’ll become a shameless sycophant.

The days of me insisting upon honesty and imposing my own sense of honor upon them are over.
The days of me wanting to embarrass them into realization, are over.

There will be no more resistance from me. No more placing my own ideals about dignity, pride and worthiness upon those that have no understanding of them.
This solitary drifter will allow his natural talents to resurface, once again, and a wily grifter will be resurrected, like a phoenix from the dust.
I am nothing if not ingenious when I can control my impatience.

This new course fills me with clam now.
The old tears of grief resurface as absurd hilarity and I laugh again, with the untroubled glee of a dotard.
Laugh and croon I will, in that eastern ululation, I reproduce so accurately.
Sing those old songs of a land long gone, which capture life’s tragic-comic resonance and wail against reality.

And those that hear me will stop and listen, and will find themselves quoting my words and will find themselves seeing through my eyes and noticing the things I showed them so clearly.
Nobody forgets the wanderer when they notice him in passing.

Yours truly, from the paths of possibility,
Wanderer

If they think they should be pissed on and spat at, then that’s what I will do.
If they think they should be beaten and stepped on, then that’s what I will do.
If they think they should be fucked like the little sluts they judge themselves to be, by night, and then adorned like princesses so that the world is fooled, by day, then that’s what I’ll do and more.
If they think they deserve the privileges of royalty and the sacrifices reserved for gods, then I’ll let them continue in the thinking.
If they believe themselves to be part of the chosen few and the holy gifted, then I’ll show them whatever faked reverence I can muster.
If they secretly consider themselves human waste, to be used and thrown away, but insist on maintaining an air of faked pride and decorum to make excuses to themselves, then I’ll play along in the farce.
If they think they should be praised and flattered with little justification for it or that they are, at the very least, my equals because they cannot claim to be my superiors, then I’ll become a shameless sycophant.

The days of me insisting upon honesty and imposing my own sense of honor upon them are over.
The days of me wanting to embarrass them into realization, are over.


And where in this doing exactly what others want you to do will there be room for you?

Where will *you* be, if you will only piss on and spit at those who think they should be pissed on and spat at?

Where will *you* be, if you will only beat and step on those who think they should be beaten and stepped on?

Where will *you* be, if you will only fuck those who think they should be fucked like the little sluts they judge themselves to be, by night, and where will *you* be if you will then adorn them like princesses so that the world is fooled, by day? And where will *you* be if you'll do that and more?

Where will *you* be, if you will only let those whose think they deserve the privileges of royalty and the sacrifices reserved for gods continue in the thinking?

Where will *you* be, if you will only have fake reverence (and as much as you can muster!) for those who believe themselves to be part of the chosen few and the holy gifted?

Where will *you* be, if you will only play along in the farce for those who secretly consider themselves human waste, to be used and thrown away, but insist on maintaining an air of faked pride and decorum to make excuses to themselves?

Where will *you* be, if you will only be a shameless sycophant to those who think they should be praised and flattered with little justification for it or that they are, at the very least, your equals because they cannot claim to be your superiors?

In all those charades that you plan, there will be no room for *you*.


Honesty can be there only among the honest, honesty is not something that could come from insistence.

Honor cannot be imposed on anyone.

The days of you insisting upon honesty and imposing you own sense of honor upon others *should* be over -- but they should be over for the sake of realizing that honesty and honor can be there only among the honest and honorable.

Your days of insisting upon honesty and imposing you own sense of honor upon others *should not* be over because you have grown tired and weary of trying to insist in honor and imposing honor.

The days of you wanting to embarrass other people into realization should be over for the sake of the realization that the teacher comes when the student is ready.

If you think that you have a crown on your head, then you have already betrayed it.



You need discipline and steadiness, Wanderer, and a warm embrace.

RosaMagika
And where in this doing exactly what others want you to do will there be room for you?

Where will *you* be, if you will only piss on and spit at those who think they should be pissed on and spat at?

Where will *you* be, if you will only beat and step on those who think they should be beaten and stepped on?

Where will *you* be, if you will only fuck those who think they should be fucked like the little sluts they judge themselves to be, by night, and where will *you* be if you will then adorn them like princesses so that the world is fooled, by day? And where will *you* be if you'll do that and more?

Where will *you* be, if you will only let those whose think they deserve the privileges of royalty and the sacrifices reserved for gods continue in the thinking?

Where will *you* be, if you will only have fake reverence (and as much as you can muster!) for those who believe themselves to be part of the chosen few and the holy gifted?

Where will *you* be, if you will only play along in the farce for those who secretly consider themselves human waste, to be used and thrown away, but insist on maintaining an air of faked pride and decorum to make excuses to themselves?

Where will *you* be, if you will only be a shameless sycophant to those who think they should be praised and flattered with little justification for it or that they are, at the very least, your equals because they cannot claim to be your superiors?

In all those charades that you plan, there will be no room for *you*.*I*’ll be drinking from the fountains of mirth and enjoying the scenery of absurdity.

*I*’ll laugh again, like I once did before I first saw what I saw.
But this time it won’t be the laughter of blissful ignorance, it’ll be the mirth of awareness and the surrender to destiny.

*I* cannot change the world so *I*’ll only change myself.

Honesty can be there only among the honest, honesty is not something that could come from insistence.

Honor cannot be imposed on anyone.Yes, I’ve come to that realization.
Nothing can be taught if the student is not of the right kind.

There are two types of knowledge, the one you get from books and the one that exists already in you, like a pool of oil, and only needs a spark to ignite into awareness.
For example:
In the martial arts you can spend decades learning the movements and the philosophy behind them.
You can perform well when you are under controlled conditions when you know the strike is coming and from where it is coming.
You can train endlessly and read the theories behind every aspect of the art.
You can understand it.

But if the knowledge does not become ingrained into your psyche, if it does not become second nature, if you do not have a pre-existing intuitive understanding of it or a natural disposition for it, that is called talent, then in a fight, when the adrenaline rushes and fear grips your heart you will fall back to raising your hands to protect your head or flailing about with your fists trying to land a lucky blow, as if you were never trained at all.

I believe the same can be said for social interactions.
A person can read books on psychology and social graces, he can understand things conceptually, intellectually and in the abstract and connect the dots in hindsight but he will still be socially inept if he does not have a natural talent, an ebb and flow, a quick analytical mind and a detailed perception which will enable him to put into practice the things he comprehends intellectually.
This is usually called charisma.

In opposition to this the one that understands social interactions conceptually, has read a myriad of books on the subject and may very well have a broader knowledge of it, will freeze during the actual social interaction stage.
He will be silent, absorbing the preceding but unable to participate, he will be incapable of joining in, because he only understands the theory of it but has no real-world example, no action, scent, sound reference to guide him.
He can, afterwards, deconstruct the proceedings through memory and abstraction and fall back on scholarly definitions but during the actual phenomenon he will be completely helpless and inept.

In the areas of philosophy this is particularly telling when many come to read authors like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, just to name these two favorites of mine.
They can understand what is being written, they can then look back on it when experience offers the opportunity and the dots can be connected abstractly, they can gain second-hand insights on things and see vicariously through another’s eyes but will they ever grasp the totality of it and feel what is being said.

For this the knowledge has to already be present and the author but a vehicle through which a connection is made, but not between the dots here but between your already conceptualized dots and the perspective of the other who connected them the same way or, perhaps, connected them more clearly and more thoroughly.

Perhaps I diverted from the subject a bit but it is relevant in that honesty and honor cannot be taught nor expected.
A person either is or is not.

Should I get a lantern like Diogenes?

The days of you insisting upon honesty and imposing you own sense of honor upon others *should* be over -- but they should be over for the sake of realizing that honesty and honor can be there only among the honest and honorable. And in such a world how would you recognize them?
And in such a world how would they remain pure and uncorrupted?

The personal costs of offering what is not returned are incalculable.

The days of you wanting to embarrass other people into realization should be over for the sake of the realization that the teacher comes when the student is ready. Very oriental wisdom.
In the west, influenced by our Hellenic heritage, we are more proactive.
We make preemptive strikes.

If you think that you have a crown on your head, then you have already betrayed it.I wear no crown although I did fancy myself a prince once.

I’ll only be your jester now.
A scavenger of stupidity.

"Betrayed it"?!
My, still holding onto idealistic tripe.
There’s nothing to betray but self. SELF!
And I’ve betrayed it for far too long.

You need discipline and steadiness, Wanderer, and a warm embrace.Discipline and steadiness I have plenty of.
Vast amounts of them.
You have no idea.

A warm embrace?
I’m coming to believe that man can only rely on his own two hands for both warmth and embracing.
When another embraces you, it’s almost as if you are embracing yourself through that other.
He/she becomes an extension of you.
It is the species, the group accepting the individual into the fold.

Quit enjoyable.
Narcissism and Hedonism are underrated.
:D

I can see how your evaluations of me can be influenced by the things I write.
In so doing, you actually place yourself into my shoes, using your imagination, and think of how you would react if you saw the things I show you or believed the things I tell you.

But how you would react is not how I would react or it might be the first stage of realization that has to be followed through.

You cannot comprehend Nietzsche, for instance, unless you’ve reached the depths of despair Schopenhauer fell into.

I assure you that I am quit physically and mentally stable.
I am told that I’m also funny and charismatic but that’s just their opinion.
You can’t imagine how many excuses I have to come up with when my coworkers want to socialize with me, not knowing who I really am and what I really think of them.

Your perspective on health is, perhaps, warped by your idealization of it.

Just out of curiousity, since when does a man who cannot read poetry or do drugs read or care for Andre Breton?
Yeech. Go spend the forty bucks to get laid and spare us the Celine imitations.

Wes:
"It could be the crack talking, but it seems to me that once you can see those weaknesses, real insight comes from being able to forgive them."

And to see and accept your own. That's part of the essential art to being human - to hold your own merit without losing that connection with others.
I can grant a smile to any stranger, and know that I've reified something, that I please them with that unexpected sharing.
I flirt with the guy who sells my Gorerotted cd. Nothing there but two people reaffirming their animality, a pat on the back for both our egos. Of course to a coarser mind that's sweat and filth, a power struggle in miniature, all "draining ovaries and priapus"
A man with the passion, ferocity and tenderness of a dead cat slurring what he can't have. Then quoting Nietzsche. Quite ironic.
Here you have the fascist mind - the love of hidden things, the conviction that dirt and ugliness hide under everything.

But then they do, life is quite dirty and sordid. That's half what makes it so fun.

And to see and accept your own.

Don't tell tiassa! Ha.

That's part of the essential art to being human - to hold your own merit without losing that connection with others.

The more I live the more I wonder if life for most is basically an extended act of rationalization, regardless of intellect. Those with greater intellect can better rationalize their fuckupedness. I think that for personal growth type stuff, one can really only complicate their fuckedupedness until they can accept it for what it is. You're a fucking ape. Rationalize that, bitches. *snort*

Nothing there but two people reaffirming their animality, a pat on the back for both our egos. Of course to a coarser mind that's sweat and filth, a power struggle in miniature, all "draining ovaries and priapus"

And to a fluffy mind it's "sweet". I used to lean towards coarse. Now I figure, if I'm going to lean one way I generally try to choose fluff. Actually I get all fucked up myself, with the impression that I see the trinity of coarse, fluffy and nuetral. Regardless, If one gets lost in the illusion of fluff, reality will surely set them straight. I don't think the same is true regarding the illusion of coarseness.

If you frame the world in disgust, disgust it what you'll get.

wes:
Don't tell tiassa! Ha.

Hush.

And to a fluffy mind it's "sweet". I used to lean towards coarse. Now I figure, if I'm going to lean one way I generally try to choose fluff.

You're fucking up. It's not sweet, it's not coarse, it just is.

Regardless, If one gets lost in the illusion of fluff, reality will surely set them straight.

Ever read Truthseeker's posts?

I don't think the same is true regarding the illusion of coarseness.

"I've seen the rapture in a starving baby's eyes,
Inchoate beatitude, the Lord of the Flies."
-Bad Religion

I think a person sees what they want to see. If you're determined to see only ugliness, you get what you want. It's Dante's fifth circle - the sullen who saw only filth are condemned to literally wallow in it.
If you're willing, beauty slaps you out of that. But only if one is willing, and ironically, with sensitivity to beauty comes sensitivity to coarseness. To overcome that one must be very strong and very tolerent, tolerence being a luxury of strength.

If you frame the world in disgust, disgust it what you'll get.

Basically. I've come to believe in a sort of karma. Now I'm not Doctor Pangloss here, but there's a fundamental justice to the universe. You get what you deserve. On some level you can say that pain is punishment for weakness, that we say things like dead Iraqi children are "unjust" simply because we're whiny little shits who can't take punishment.

On a higher level, 'justice' doesn't even exist.

And I leave you with a little illustration (http://files.palp.org/sa/start_the_reactor/19.jpg)

On some level you can say that pain is punishment for weakness, that we say things like dead Iraqi children are "unjust" simply because we're whiny little shits who can't take punishment.

Politically correct shit. It's not like anyone *really* cares about those dead children there, anywhere. It just doesn't sound right to actually say it. So in time, we have become concerned, but are powerless.

Both concern and the feeling of powerlessness should be applied wisely, lest they should become meaningless. In a consumer world they are, of course, treated as yet another commodity.

Wanderer, oh Wanderer, wherefore art thou a wanderer ...
Eh.
(I'm angry.)


*I*’ll be drinking from the fountains of mirth and enjoying the scenery of absurdity.

*I*’ll laugh again, like I once did before I first saw what I saw.
But this time it won’t be the laughter of blissful ignorance, it’ll be the mirth of awareness and the surrender to destiny.

*I* cannot change the world so *I*’ll only change myself.

I am actually angry with you!
Why are you doing this to yourself?!
Are you trying to punish yourself?


Yes, I’ve come to that realization.
Nothing can be taught if the student is not of the right kind.

There are two types of knowledge, the one you get from books and the one that exists already in you, like a pool of oil, and only needs a spark to ignite into awareness.
For example:
In the martial arts you can spend decades learning the movements and the philosophy behind them.
You can perform well when you are under controlled conditions when you know the strike is coming and from where it is coming.
You can train endlessly and read the theories behind every aspect of the art.
You can understand it.

But if the knowledge does not become ingrained into your psyche, if it does not become second nature, if you do not have a pre-existing intuitive understanding of it or a natural disposition for it, that is called talent, then in a fight, when the adrenaline rushes and fear grips your heart you will fall back to raising your hands to protect your head or flailing about with your fists trying to land a lucky blow, as if you were never trained at all.

I believe the same can be said for social interactions.
A person can read books on psychology and social graces, he can understand things conceptually, intellectually and in the abstract and connect the dots in hindsight but he will still be socially inept if he does not have a natural talent, an ebb and flow, a quick analytical mind and a detailed perception which will enable him to put into practice the things he comprehends intellectually.
This is usually called charisma.

In opposition to this the one that understands social interactions conceptually, has read a myriad of books on the subject and may very well have a broader knowledge of it, will freeze during the actual social interaction stage.
He will be silent, absorbing the preceding but unable to participate, he will be incapable of joining in, because he only understands the theory of it but has no real-world example, no action, scent, sound reference to guide him.
He can, afterwards, deconstruct the proceedings through memory and abstraction and fall back on scholarly definitions but during the actual phenomenon he will be completely helpless and inept.

In the areas of philosophy this is particularly telling when many come to read authors like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, just to name these two favorites of mine.
They can understand what is being written, they can then look back on it when experience offers the opportunity and the dots can be connected abstractly, they can gain second-hand insights on things and see vicariously through another’s eyes but will they ever grasp the totality of it and feel what is being said.

For this the knowledge has to already be present and the author but a vehicle through which a connection is made, but not between the dots here but between your already conceptualized dots and the perspective of the other who connected them the same way or, perhaps, connected them more clearly and more thoroughly.

Perhaps I diverted from the subject a bit but it is relevant in that honesty and honor cannot be taught nor expected.
A person either is or is not.

Yes. But don't you find it ... odd to discuss these things here?
Is the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche just the external words to what is otherwise native to you?
Personally, I find it odd to have a Nietzschean stance -- and then talk about it. It goes against the grain of it.


Should I get a lantern like Diogenes?

No.


“ The days of you insisting upon honesty and imposing you own sense of honor upon others *should* be over -- but they should be over for the sake of realizing that honesty and honor can be there only among the honest and honorable. ”

And in such a world how would you recognize them?

If you would be honest and honorable yourself, you could see others who are such as well.
And those who aren't -- you wouldn't put it against them.


And in such a world how would they remain pure and uncorrupted?

Your question is a possible question, but that doesn't save it from being a non-question testifying of being asked from a very idealistic position.


The personal costs of offering what is not returned are incalculable.

You have to meet people half way.

And you are being .... just so bloody cynically scared that it makes me want to come to you in Canada and shake you through and through.

A smile does not cost you anything!

And if you smile, this doesn't mean you are faking it.


I’ll only be your jester now.
A scavenger of stupidity.

Ah. Be glad I'm not there.


"Betrayed it"?!
My, still holding onto idealistic tripe.
There’s nothing to betray but self. SELF!
And I’ve betrayed it for far too long.

You have only betrayed your self by thinking that you must be perfect and finite.


A warm embrace?
I’m coming to believe that man can only rely on his own two hands for both warmth and embracing.
When another embraces you, it’s almost as if you are embracing yourself through that other.
He/she becomes an extension of you.

Are you afraid of losing yourself in the Other?


It is the species, the group accepting the individual into the fold.

Quit enjoyable.
Narcissism and Hedonism are underrated.

You reify, unnecessarily.


I can see how your evaluations of me can be influenced by the things I write.
In so doing, you actually place yourself into my shoes, using your imagination, and think of how you would react if you saw the things I show you or believed the things I tell you.

But how you would react is not how I would react or it might be the first stage of realization that has to be followed through.

It is always like that.


You cannot comprehend Nietzsche, for instance, unless you’ve reached the depths of despair Schopenhauer fell into.

Schopy's despair was never complete. He never was poor, out in the street, sick and persecuted. His despair is a clean, safe, bourgeoise and above all comfortable version of despair. There is very little to it.


I am told that I’m also funny and charismatic but that’s just their opinion.
You can’t imagine how many excuses I have to come up with when my coworkers want to socialize with me, not knowing who I really am and what I really think of them.

Why do you torture yourself like this?

RosaMagika:

Politically correct shit. It's not like anyone *really* cares about those dead children there, anywhere.

I cared, once. And felt it was very unjust.

In a consumer world they are, of course, treated as yet another commodity.

In any world they are, let's not tell that happy lie about how the "consumer world" devalues things.

Wanderer, oh Wanderer, wherefore art thou a wanderer ...

He's hiding somewhere to deny me the pleasure of mocking him.

You'll do instead. What shall I poke fun at first, your pretentiousness or your silly feminine idea that you can save the poor depressed dude?
Best hurry, I've got a date in an hour and I have to change my shirt five times.

Schopy's despair was never complete. He never was poor, out in the street, sick and persecuted. His despair is a clean, safe, bourgeoise and above all comfortable version of despair. There is very little to it.


No, but if it was I bet you'd want to hold him and reassure him.
Anyways Schopenhaur had a mean sense of humour - he's not despairing as much as you might think. He'd mock your pity or your "Schopenhaur was not hardcore!" whining.

But then you'd keep at it, because doesn't pity feel so good? As if you could heal the world just through your "aww, it shouldn't be that hard for you!"

Aww.

And you are being .... just so bloody cynically scared that it makes me want to come to you in Canada and shake you through and through.

Ooh, hail the returning mother figure.

Wanderer is scared because he's realized that people of quality abandon him when he mistreats them. He doesn't know how to show affection except to people he feels he can control, which he masks as wanting to "teach" and "give to" them. It's all very altruistic of course, nothing to do with desperately trying to maintain his fragile self-esteem by criticising others, nothing to do with the fact that he never learned to relate to his peers, as peers, as friends. Probably a fluke of his personal history.

Have you ever read Crime and Punishment, Rosa?

Of course the only way he can be with others is by drastically idealizing or devaluing them. Hence his attitude towards women alternates between "Madonna-Angel" and Schopenhaurean vitrol. Which would be fine if he could be funny like Schopenhaur - but being funny requires that one, not take oneself seriously. Now if you showed him a bit of muscle, Rosa, he would moon all over your feet. Any weakness and he'd exploit it.
Now he doesn't do this because he loves having control, but because he needs it. A drinker loves a cocktail, an alcoholic needs one.

In the end, he's scared and bitter because he knows where that will all lead.


Why do you torture yourself like this?

Because people put up with his bullshit if they pity him.

Xev: you are so cruel. So.... Cruel....

Wanderer: I'm sorry you can't get laid. No, I really am sorry. You can join the club though. If it makes you feel better, you can use me as your whipping boy.

I'm pathetic. I know it.

All that time wandering up and down mountaintops is what does it, I think.

Maybe somebody could use a stomach-pumping? Some literature can be contaminated with germs of subjectivism and megalomania.

No need to blame yourself. Repeat after me: "I am a product of my environment as are we all".

Now, what a blessed world we live in, eh?

In any world they are, let's not tell that happy lie about how the "consumer world" devalues things.

No no no. That's not how I meant it. How about, say, 16th century Europe? How much were people concerned about the misery of others? I can't imagine that in that world, concern and feeling powerless were a commodity.


What shall I poke fun at first, your pretentiousness or your silly feminine idea that you can save the poor depressed dude?

Ah. I really don't feel like "saving the poor depressed dude". I was just being critical.


Best hurry, I've got a date in an hour and I have to change my shirt five times.

How did it go?


No, but if it was I bet you'd want to hold him and reassure him.

Not at all.
It must be that my nickname comes across all wrong ...


Anyways Schopenhaur had a mean sense of humour - he's not despairing as much as you might think. He'd mock your pity or your "Schopenhaur was not hardcore!" whining.

But then you'd keep at it, because doesn't pity feel so good? As if you could heal the world just through your "aww, it shouldn't be that hard for you!"

Aww.

Ah. Totally not.


Ooh, hail the returning mother figure.

Really, this is how it came across? I would have judged myself as stern, and distant.


Wanderer is scared because he's realized that people of quality abandon him when he mistreats them. He doesn't know how to show affection except to people he feels he can control, which he masks as wanting to "teach" and "give to" them. It's all very altruistic of course, nothing to do with desperately trying to maintain his fragile self-esteem by criticising others, nothing to do with the fact that he never learned to relate to his peers, as peers, as friends. Probably a fluke of his personal history.

But he does want to relate. He may not know how, but he seems to try to find ways -- even though he himself masks them into something else.


Have you ever read Crime and Punishment, Rosa?

Yes.
Your spin on it being ...?


Of course the only way he can be with others is by drastically idealizing or devaluing them. Hence his attitude towards women alternates between "Madonna-Angel" and Schopenhaurean vitrol. Which would be fine if he could be funny like Schopenhaur - but being funny requires that one, not take oneself seriously. Now if you showed him a bit of muscle, Rosa, he would moon all over your feet. Any weakness and he'd exploit it.
Now he doesn't do this because he loves having control, but because he needs it. A drinker loves a cocktail, an alcoholic needs one.

Show him a bit of muscle?
See, that must be the European me: I am curious, but not that interested.


“ Why do you torture yourself like this? ”

Because people put up with his bullshit if they pity him.

I wasn't pitying him. It must be the cultural differences in how criticism is expressed and understood. I would think very very hard if someone would say to me the things I said to him.

...just a minor off-topic note, then please resume your interesting prodding...

No no no. That's not how I meant it. How about, say, 16th century Europe? How much were people concerned about the misery of others? I can't imagine that in that world, concern and feeling powerless were a commodity.

Why is it that people -- even intelligent people with the capacity to perceive -- keep cross-referencing the human historical psyche?

Politically correct shit. It's not like anyone *really* cares about those dead children there, anywhere. It just doesn't sound right to actually say it. So in time, we have become concerned, but are powerless.

Concern is a first movement -- like a flower turning towards the Sun. Awareness has already been instilled, like the touch of the Sun's warmth. "Powerlessness" has nothing to do with the maturation of a trait such as "concern". "Concern" isn't a commodity, but a refinement of an extended and overflowing psyche -- like the noble Sun's rays reaching across the Galaxy.

Anyway, why is it that every prosperous, mind-your-own-business Westerner is concerned about the next capricious terrorist act upon their soil? The idea of interruption, of being torn apart is... powerful. Do they care for their own welfare?

Ah -- coffeebreak'sover.

-Bob-
Xev: you are so cruel. So.... Cruel....

Now don't get too excited there.

No need to blame yourself. Repeat after me: "I am a product of my environment as are we all".

I would have preferred: "I am not a unique and delicate flower. I am the same decaying organic material as everyone else"

RosaMagika:
No no no. That's not how I meant it. How about, say, 16th century Europe? How much were people concerned about the misery of others?

Less than now since it was more ubiquitous. Probably not as much in our abstract way, but definitely in a concrete - help a fellow out - way.
People can be pretty decent at times.

Ah. I really don't feel like "saving the poor depressed dude". I was just being critical.

Odd way of criticism, quite touching it was.

How did it go?


Quite good, thanks for asking. My roomate glares at him the next morning, but is quite sweet to me. Odd woman assumes I sleep with everyone I have over, yet she seems not to hold it against me but them.

But he does want to relate. He may not know how, but he seems to try to find ways -- even though he himself masks them into something else.

That's the real comedy of it. It's not like he's a sadist, who gets off on manipulating others and wreaking havoc. That I'd think was cool and try to chat him up.
Nor does he have high standards that make him overly critical. On the contrary, he'll be anything you want him to be, assume any persona that he thinks you'll like.

Which wears on him, hence the constant comments about "if they only knew I despise them". He desperately wants to be authentic, beyond that to be loved, but his behaviour is the worst to achieve that.
At the end of the day, he doesn't know any other way to be.

Yes.
Your spin on it being ...?

Granted I'm Raskilnikov...
He's Luzin.

Another stab behind the arras. Lots of men like him these days.

7th Postcard

Damn the French and their Post-modern wastelands!
It’s only fitting that I should find kinship with those great western outsiders of our times.
What have I been all my life, if not an outsider?
Always the new kid in school, the stranger from a strange land, the foreigner knocking at the door asking permission to enter and requesting a hot meal to eat and a warm place to sleep in.
In those moments, standing before the walls and closed doorways, when uncertainty grasped me, I awakened to the architectures of human creativity and studied the bricks one by one; saw the fragility of the cement holding them together and the subtle deformities in their form.
And when the door was, sometimes, opened I absorbed the atmosphere with a breath and swept the interior with the clarity and curiosity of a new arrival.
I seized the details, learned the mechanics and made myself sensitive to the ambience and the invisible tensions.
I became conscious.

His words echo now, with renewed resilience, within my chest:

The Wanderer
The path ends! Abyss and deathly silence loom!
You want this! Your will stayed to its doom!
Now wanderer, stand! Be keen and cool as frost!
Believe in danger and you-are lost.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Upon what territories have I trespassed now?
Beasts of burden roam the streets, un-harnessed and untrained.
What more dangerous animal can there be than the simpleminded one that has been unbridled and set free before real fear has taken hold of it and it has not felt the limitations of its being?

Look at this world! - A repugnant zoo of bestial domiciliary.
What most cultivated brutes’ lack, in comparison to their wild brethren, is a sense of caution derived through the humility of brutal experience.
The wild has a way of forcing a more efficient disposition, a sense of cutting irony and a more modest self-evaluation.
It demands respect! – Exactly what kennelled, cultivated souls have little of; their poise and confidence more a product of artificiality and unchallenged ego.
You give permissions indiscriminately; desensitize them from reality, by offering an assortment of realistic imagery splattered across every sensual reference points and relieve them from the constraints of responsibility, morality and religious horror and what you get… is this!:

“Universal education has created an immense class of what I may call the New Stupid.”
-Aldous Huxley

“Poets, in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult.”
-T.S.Eliot

Liberty is not for all.
There has to be some innate self-regulating mechanism present before so much wealth and possibility is given.
There has to be some discipline of mind before it is opened up to the universe.
There has to be some hook-up present; a metaphysical plug-in; an ingrained health.
Passions must be channelled into dammed reservoirs so that their full potential can be cultivated and so that they do not lead you astray into flooded farmlands. Those that know not these disciplines become destructive to themselves and to others.

In my abject state, I offer a false face of tranquility, as my inner being churns trying to throw me into its turmoil, where I will surely drown.
I remember:

“Not belonging to any place, any time, any love. A lost origin, the impossibility to take root, a rummaging memory, the present is abeyance. The space of the foreigner is a moving train, a plane in flight, the transition that precludes stopping.
As to landmarks, these are none. His time? The time of a resurrection that remembers death and what happened before, but the glory of being beyond: merely the feeling of a reprieve, of having gotten away.”
-Julia Kristeva (Strangers to Ourselves)

And:

“Meeting balances wandering. A crossroads of two othernesses, it welcomes the foreigner without tying him down, opening the host to his visitor without committing him.”
-Julia Kristeva

She and Derrida presenting an alternative to the more masculine:

“We must either transcend the Other or allow oneself to be transcended by him. The essence of relationships between consciousness…is conflict.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness)

Anima/Animus engulfed in a battle over our moral fibre.
Who shall win, who will we allow to claim our futures, who will dominate our collective unconscious?

What happens in this modern obsession of peering into the abyss, of deconstructing into infinity, is that the soul is dissected, opened up, laid bear until nothing is left but dark nothingness.
The onion layers, that keep the self in a cohesive unity, are peeled away, exposing it to the universal flux. Culture, religion, authority, mythology, tradition, all discarded and defamed until one reaches the inner core and, discovering emptiness, he realizes that it was the layers, participating in unison, that made-up the mystery of self.

Let them ostracize me now.
The vengeance of the weak should never be underestimated.
Let the one that is sinless, cast the first stone and let him smile, in that self-contented, self-righteous and mocking way that so perfectly shows his soul.
Let him call it passion or poetic justice or strength or majesty or even….love (?)- As he hurtles his retribution at me.

They hold the Bible, or that popular post-modern substitute ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’, like a safety blanket against their chests. They quote from it and worship the authors with only a selective abstract understanding of what was being said or how it actually applies to real life.
What were Ghandi’s seven mortal social sins?

Smelling the blood from my open wounds let them gather, one by one, to feed off my energy, to spit into my gaping heart, to jeer and add their pebble of anger to the frenzy.
Mass hysteria manifested.
They want to tear me to pieces for what I’ve said.
They want to teach me a lesson for what I’ve dared.
They want to erase it from memory by annihilating me.

They forget, perhaps, that I, myself, have willingly and in full awareness of the consequences, placed myself here; that it is I that voluntarily laid down here on this hard ground before them and it will be I that decides when I shall get up and tell them, what they forget about who they really are.
How easy it is to unravel a soul, especially when it is offered to you upon a platter.
An onion, as a gift - It’ll make you cry before it nourishes you.

They speak of love and trust and honour, these children of the west.
They claim to have aspired towards nobility.
They speak of brutality and war and ferocity….HA!

But their actions….their actions…What do they say about them?
When they ask: why am I insulted? - Do they always flatter themselves with explanations that degrade the other?
When they cast stones, do they forget their own vulnerabilities to them?
When they love or hate do they demonize or sanctify the other to find reasons for their indiscretions?

The lesson has been learned, so let me be silent now; stoic and serene, as I want to be, emulating my highest virtues.
Let me live up to my own expectations and hold onto what memories of compassion and love that remain me.
Let me hold my mouth still and my heart exposed.
I fear nothing, now that I’ve lost it all!
I’ve felt this before. I’ve survived it.
This world can’t disappoint me any more.
Now it is time for play and joyous abandonment to pretence.
To be serious, is to hold onto ideals.
I have found none thus far.
So let me be like them: clownishly painted fools laughing at themselves through the other, sweepers of dirt under the carpets of reality, psychologically retarded souls with no capacity to forgive their idol for being human, emancipated minds lost in possibility.

Sincerely yours, from the frozen north,
Wanderer

Quite good, thanks for asking. My roomate glares at him the next morning, but is quite sweet to me. Odd woman assumes I sleep with everyone I have over, yet she seems not to hold it against me but them.

I'm glad the date went well. (You seemed unease about it -- this is the man you were talking about in the other thread?)
As for your room mate: hm. Maybe she holds it against them because they have let themselves so low to be with you -- and she doesn't think highly of you: that she holds it against others to stay over at your place testifies of what she really thinks of you ... and being sweet to you and holding it against others are just cover-up techniques. Or she has a crush on you and is jealous.
Women can be the most cruel beings.


On the contrary, he'll be anything you want him to be, assume any persona that he thinks you'll like.

It is not good to be this way.


Granted I'm Raskilnikov...
He's Luzin.

Another stab behind the arras. Lots of men like him these days.

Shall we open up a Slavic department?

Anyway, just a thing on the name "Raskolnikov". (I hear you are Slavic -- Russian, Polish, Czech, ... ?)
Namely, it is related to the verb "razklati" (that would be Slovene, but as far as I know, the verb is recognizable throughout the whole Slavic family), which means 'to split up, to tear apart (with a sharp object)'. The root being the verb "klati koljem" (an old Slavic verb), which means 'to slain, slaughter'. So "Raskolnikov" would mean something like 'he who is from those who split things up, tear the apart'.
Really, when that idea of killing the old lady and the ax come, we (the Slavic readers) are not surprised at all.
Names of book characters can be very very telling.



* * *


“We must either transcend the Other or allow oneself to be transcended by him. The essence of relationships between consciousness…is conflict.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness)

Anima/Animus engulfed in a battle over our moral fibre.
Who shall win, who will we allow to claim our futures, who will dominate our collective unconscious?

Bloody dualism. Those dichotomies are there so that from the tension between them a sense of identity is derived. Which is a secondary identity, and existing only as long as the tension exists. Take away the tension, and that thus made identity is lost. Which alone tells me that this is not an efficient way to conceptualize identity.


What happens in this modern obsession of peering into the abyss, of deconstructing into infinity, is that the soul is dissected, opened up, laid bear until nothing is left but dark nothingness.
The onion layers, that keep the self in a cohesive unity, are peeled away, exposing it to the universal flux. Culture, religion, authority, mythology, tradition, all discarded and defamed until one reaches the inner core and, discovering emptiness, he realizes that it was the layers, participating in unison, that made-up the mystery of self.

(Do you remember that scene in "Accidental hero" where Geena Davis wins some award and has a speech, and she's peeling an onion, and cries at it?)


Let them ostracize me now.

Ah. Stop feeling so rejected.


They want to tear me to pieces for what I’ve said.
They want to teach me a lesson for what I’ve dared.
They want to erase it from memory by annihilating me.

What are they to you that you would care so much about what they think about you?


They forget, perhaps, that I, myself, have willingly and in full awareness of the consequences, placed myself here; that it is I that voluntarily laid down here on this hard ground before them and it will be I that decides when I shall get up and tell them, what they forget about who they really are.
How easy it is to unravel a soul, especially when it is offered to you upon a platter.
An onion, as a gift - It’ll make you cry before it nourishes you.

What you are doing is defining reality by this definition: "If it doesn't hurt, then it isn't real."
This definition is sometimes true, but it definitely isn't something to build a life on.


The lesson has been learned, so let me be silent now; stoic and serene, as I want to be, emulating my highest virtues.
Let me live up to my own expectations and hold onto what memories of compassion and love that remain me.
Let me hold my mouth still and my heart exposed.

You are not as helpless as you may sometimes think.


I fear nothing, now that I’ve lost it all!

Really? How would you know that you've lost everything?


So let me be like them: clownishly painted fools laughing at themselves through the other, sweepers of dirt under the carpets of reality, psychologically retarded souls with no capacity to forgive their idol for being human, emancipated minds lost in possibility.

Don't do that.
Because I said so.

I will stoically accept everything, absolutely everything, that civilization throws at me. The dysfunctional relationships, the crowding, the disconnection from nature, the "communities" that are a thousand or more times larger than our instincts evolved to deal with, the processed food, the guilt over what my ancestors did, the guilt over what I did, the pollution, the wars, the work week that is double or triple the length of that of our Neolithic forebears, the inability to escape, the loss of control, the frequent ascendence of our Shadow, the oversimplified and spiritually vapid monotheistic, patriarchal religions, the fear and loathing. And anything else you suggested that I might have missed in that generous list.

The reason? Music reproduction technology. Music is the most wonderful thing in the universe. It's so wonderful that it balances out all of that crap and, for me, makes the world an extremely pleasant place to be. I can't imagine living 150 years ago, when all the music most people could ever hear was the pianist in the saloon playing the same songs every night, an occasional traveling show, the church choir, and Cousin Amy's earnest but thoroughly amateur harp recitals.

I really can't imagine having to live in one of the Golden Ages you refer to, before music as we know it had even been invented. When people just tried to imitate birds on wooden flutes, banged on a lot of drums, and chanted with rhythm but no melody.

Today I can listen to music during every waking hour and even while I sleep. There were years when I did that, although I've cut back a little lately. The music of my childhood: Julie London and Vaughan Monroe. Early rock and roll: Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. The Sixties: Cream and Big Brother and the Holding Company. Heavy metal: Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult. Progressive Rock: Gentle Giant and Renaissance. The MTV era: Eurythmics and Duran Duran. The Nineties: Sara McLachlan and Sisters of Mercy. Today: Alana Davis and Audioslave. Classical music. Ballet scores. Swing, Dixieland, Bluegrass, Reggae, Fusion and all the other offshoots of jazz and rock.

This world is a wonderful place. I love it. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I know people who feel the same way about chocolate, about domesticated animals in their homes, about visiting people and places thousands of miles away, about television, about the empowerment of the internet. Come to think of it, I like all those things a lot too. Civilization gives me much to be happy about.

You folks are just way too down! This is the life you've got. You can complain about it or you can go out and find some stuff that you like and start enjoying it. We only get one ride, so I made my choice the first time I heard Peggy Lee sing.

Stupid ass -- as if *music* owes its existence to human conflict!

RosaMagika:
I'm glad the date went well. (You seemed unease about it -- this is the man you were talking about in the other thread?)

I'm always nervous about men I'm into. Obsessing about my shirts gives me the feeling of control I need. Like a talisman.
Which is funny 'cause there I am in fucking girl clothes and we spend the evening listening to Floyd.

As for your room mate: hm.

Hm. is right, she's just wacky. Hey, she puts up with me!

It is not good to be this way.


But there is the trouble of distinguishing between altering a behaviour for another person's sake and giving your ego to that person.

Shall we open up a Slavic department?


We ought!

Anyway, just a thing on the name "Raskolnikov". (I hear you are Slavic -- Russian, Polish, Czech, ... ?)

Czech and German. I know none of the Slavic languages, although that is something I do want to remedy.

Bloody dualism. Those dichotomies are there so that from the tension between them a sense of identity is derived

Read Deleuze?

[quote]But there is the trouble of distinguishing between altering a behaviour for another person's sake and giving your ego to that person.[/b],,,and blending into them too.

But there is the trouble of distinguishing between altering a behaviour for another person's sake and giving your ego to that person.,,,and blending into them too.

... and finding oneself mimicking their body language! Get's embarrassing at times.

But there is the trouble of distinguishing between altering a behaviour for another person's sake and giving your ego to that person.

I don't understand how it is possible to give your ego to another person.
By desperately wanting to be that person?

Also, as far as altering your behaviour for another person's sake goes: the way you put it sounds to me as if one is merely having patience with the other person then (or has some hidden agenda), as if one is denying one's self or a part of it -- what for? So that the other person would like one? So that one could *earn* the other person's affection?

With person X I am something else than with person Y, that's true. But this comes from the communication/relationship between me and X being different from the communication/relationship between me and Y. But in both cases, it is *me* in that communication/relationship. I am many things, but I am myself, I don't feel like I am giving up something so that I could communicate with someone.

I don't *alter* my behaviour *for the sake* of another person -- that would be bribery and betrayal.

The way I see it, with person X communication/relationship x exists, and with person Y communication/relationship y exists. I don't think there is an absolute way to behave/communicate/relate -- that would/should then be downscaled to x or y.
What matters is that x may be more meaningful and more pleasing to me than y. Thus, I will invest in x, not in y.
But if I don't like y, but still invest in it, then I am trying to bribe or betray Y, or I have some other hidden agenda. But I am definitely always doing everything for my own sake.


“ Shall we open up a Slavic department? ”

We ought!

And what should it be about?


Read Deleuze?

No.

an>roid.v2:
I've never blended into a person but I have lost ego to one. Twosomeness is disturbing.
I find myself picking up and using phrases friends use. Sometimes they pick up and use phrases I use. An odd form of intimacy.

RosaMagika:
I don't understand how it is possible to give your ego to another person.

Well, to lose the sense of absolute singularity. An ego is a very permeable, motile thing. But that isn't what I meant.

So that one could *earn* the other person's affection?

Well no, so that they don't call the cops on me. Fear of the State is the beginning of wisdom, or something like that.
One earns another's affection by being excellent at what one is, not by changing what one is to suit their judgements. But that isn't what I meant either.

There's a line to tread between being a trendy pussy and being people-adept. That is all.

Xev, I'm sure there are lots of descriptions to depict the ego -- and especially one's experience of the ego, if one can observe its interplay -- but I figure -- and I'm sure of it -- that the ego -- or at least mine -- is very fluid because my being is fluid. We -- or at least I do -- have filters -- I think -- that -- or a mechanism -- that translate external stimuli to adopt one's level of study (when someone, for example, in the middle of an engaged discourse, goes boring all of a sudden, I tend to go blank-white all of a sudden) -- so, in effect, we're absorbing not only a person's animated mien, but also their attention and attitudes -- their focus upon us.

Now, dependent on that focus, whether it has ulterior motives or not, and usually it has -- other than the motive to be permitted to be what it can, or the motive to just communicate -- but sometimes it doesn't have ulterior motives -- or at least such ulterior motives would be suspended or non-consistent -- but when the focus just is, that fabulously unprejudiced focus towards us attracts us within its own periphery of being -- if we are swayed enough to approach so closely.

So imagine two people having intercourse with the other's unprejudiced being (seriously). Such attractions sometimes commune beyond the scope of veneer. However, if there's fascination involved -- or any such attraction -- a fascination that especially encourages the other person's personality to amplify but that that fascination is being superseded by the business of communication, then that fascination will somehow wander and manifest itself -- like a darling child roaming about unattended, poking its fingers in other people's dishes. Silly kids.

Thus, with unattended filters or a mechanism that soaks-in external stimuli that buzzes with unrepressed fascination, the fluidity of being -- via the ego's uncompromised attestation -- will blend in and out of restricted peripheries that seem to swell and overlap. The ego will naturally, without reservations, tag along for the ride, and link itself to the other person's personality (which is also ego). Thus a blending effect. (Or perhaps a colorful Picasso.)

I refuse, tho', to admit this has anything to do with empathy because it's not a relating to a person from a strange retrospective vantage point, but is a free-flowing, freedom-of-being, enactment playing out in realtime. It's also -- from my experience -- unpredictable and incredibly harmless since it never quite intrudes upon a person's sacred Will -- since the periphery of being is simply the starting point of the eminence of being (I would assume). A person's Will forges that eminence. Some people have pretty sun-rays; other's are laced with harmful invisible x-rays.

(So, when this blending is not happening in bed, the body language tends to mimic street language -- I suppose. Or something like that.)

p.s.: sorry about this loooong post -- I'd rather be curt and to the point but I needed some extra space to, uhm, overlap.

Uh, some devilish purgatory ... Anyway, I remembered more of Rimbaud to fit this wonderful scenery:

http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Alchemy.html


* * *


My turn now. The story of one of my insanities.

For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.

What I liked were : absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints ; old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, silly old songs, the naďve rhythms of country rimes.

/.../


The worn-out ideas of old-fashioned poetry played an important part in my alchemy of the word.

I got used to elementary hallucination : I could very precisely see a mosque instead of a factory, a drum corps of angels, horse carts on the highways of the sky, a drawing room at the bottom of a lake ; monsters and mysteries ; a vaudeville's title filled me with awe.

And so I explained my magical sophistries by turning words into visions !

At last, I began to consider my mind's disorder a sacred thing. I lay about idle, consumed by an oppressive fever : I envied the bliss of animals - caterpillars, who portray the innocence of a second childhood, moles, the slumber of virginity !

My mind turned sour.

/.../

Finally, O reason, O happiness, I cleared from the sky the blue which is darkness, and I lived as a golden spark of this light Nature. In my delight, I made my face look as comic and as wild as I could :


It is recovered.
What ? - Eternity.
In the whirling light
Of the sun in the sea.

O my eternal soul,
Hold fast to desire
In spite of the night
And the day on fire.

You must set yourself free
From the striving of Man
And the applause of the World
You must fly as you can...

- No hope forever
No orietur.
Science and patience,
The torment is sure.

The fire within you,
Soft silken embers,
Is our whole duty
But no one remembers.

It is recovered.
What? Eternity.
In the whirling light
Of the sun in the sea.



I became a fabulous opera : I saw that everyone in the world was doomed to happiness. Action isn't life : it's merely a way of ruining a kind of strength, a means of destroying nerves. Morality is water on the brain.

It seemed to me that everyone should have had several other lives as well. This gentleman doesn't know what he's doing : he's an angel. That family is a litter of puppy dogs. With some men, I often talked out loud with a moment from one of their other lives. - That's how I happened to love a pig.

Not a single one of the brilliant arguments of madness, - the madness that gets locked up, - did I forget : I could go through them all again, I've got the system down by heart.

It affected my health. Terror loomed ahead. I would fall again and again into a heavy sleep, which lasted several days at a time, and when I woke up, my sorrowful dreams continued. I was ripe for fatal harvest, and my weakness led me down dangerous roads to the edge of the world, to the Cimmerian shore, the haven of whirlwinds and darkness.
b I had to travel, to dissipate the enchantments that crowded my brain. On the sea, which I loved as if it were to wash away my impurity, I watched the compassionate cross arise. I had been damned by the rainbow. Felicity was my doom, my gnawing remorse, my worm : my life would forever be too large to devote to strength and to beauty.
Felicity ! The deadly sweetness of its sting would wake me at cockcrow, - ad matutinum, at the Christus venit, - in the somberest of cities :


O seasons, O chateaus !
Where is the flawless soul ?

I learned the magic of
Felicity, it enchants us all.

To Felicity, sing life and praise
Whenever Gaul's cock crows.

Now all desire has gone :
It has made my life its own.

That spell has caught heart and soul
And scattered every trial.

O seasons, O chateaus !

And, oh ! the day it disappears
Will be the day I die.

O seasons, O chateaus !



All that is over. Today, I know how to celebrate beauty.

I don't understand how it is possible to give your ego to another person. By desperately wanting to be that person?That's not an accurate description of what happens, and it's certainly not an accurate speculation as to why it happens.

Counselor Deanna Troi said it best on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

"Marriage is a commitment to share who you are with another person."

In today's world I think we can safely say that the formality of marriage is not required in order to make this commitment. I also believe that many relationships that do not have a romantic or erotic component are nonetheless so deep that this sharing of identity happens to a certain extent. Partners in art, music, athletics, or science, for example.

It's not at all unusual for people who work together creatively to fall in love. This blending of egos and becoming more than the sum of two individuals has already begun, putting one of the most awkward and difficult experiences of romantic love somewhat out of the way, allowing them to enjoy the other experiences with less of a sense of being stalked by the spectre of identity theft.

I can't tell you the day or even the year when this happened between Mrs. Fraggle and me. It was probably a longer process than that; perhaps it is never quite finished. But you notice that you start to talk about yourselves more often in the plural than the singular, and that other people do as well. To most people we are now -- uh, got to give her a pseudonym quickly -- Rockerandred rather than Rocker. And. Red. (No she's not a redhead, but Red Fraggle is her favorite Fraggle. Actually, she is Red Fraggle.)

It's a sweet thing. If you kids are looking for a clue as to whether a romance is really working out after a few years, this is it. This simply will not happen if it's not destined to.

Feeling a bit melancholy Wanderer? What happened to the character that made every one seem like an insect compared to your self proclaimed superior intellect? You doubt your ability now, have you been exposed? Or did some lover dump you?

Regardless you still inspired me to read works of Nietzsche, and I have. Your writings have some remnants of Nietzsche, you write eloquently even though you seem a bit disturbed, about realizing that you are just normal, with a tad bit more intelligence than those around you.

Thus I picked a single word from Xev, none the less, this word is “tolerance” One must learn to tolerate the stupidity, and absurdity of those around you. This I believe has made people like you, Xev, most thinkers and I a bit stronger.

Yea life is bit screwed up, so who gives a shit?. Thinkers like us have realized this. Make the best of it, you do well with you writing. I think you should pursuit this avenue.

So here I go with my triad at some sorrow story:

The gambler; what a high it has been for me to live here in Vegas, this place is full of decadence and misery right next door, the multi billion dollars casinos on the strip and just a street or two behind them are the slums of were crack addicts, dopers, hookers, and beggars hang out, the worst dwellings here are the ones closest to the strip, I’m a born gambler, we all are. We gamble with love affairs, airplane trips, trips in cars, every waking moment we are alive and leave home it’s a gamble. Gambling is not only about money it’s about the chance one takes, I rather bet a few dollars than put my life on the line like the cops, or military service men. There was and there is a profit motive to my move here, I regained my self respect here, this place were I lost it, is were I began a life free of drugs, coming here as inspired me to write, and work on getting some of my work published, I want to write a book on drug addiction, and how to cope of the loss of having it, or beating the odds in a casino, I thought as well to write a story of the bums of this city. I can disguise myself as a bum and get some good stories. This place a rich man can come and loose a fortune, a bum can walk into a casino and make one, however this happens rarely, I’ve heard stories that one of the hotels in downtown was purchased by a bum who struck it rich.

I like the change of scenery as well, I left the greenery of the Houston area, for the desolate scenery of the dessert, it’s colder here. I gambled all my money to get here, but here I am, living one day at a time, in a land of chance, every were is a land of chance, but at least here I got the gleaming lights of the strip, it’s like Christmas every night as I drive through the strip, it’s full of distraction at a very affordable prize “free”. While I drive through the strip, I forget all my problems seems the gleaming lights fill you with hope, a distraction a sort of drug, like music is a drug for the lonely heart.

In Houston driving around was getting boring too many bad memories there, my chance at true love ruined, another gamble I had taken, and lost. But this loss though, does not hold a strong man down, and I consider my self a strong man, I’ve endured many hardships before, what’s one more, I’m sure there’s more to come, but with each loss I get wiser, stronger, and learn from my mistakes, I only hope that coming here was not a mistake, this is the gamble I’ve taken, it’s not monetary, it’s not getting away, it’s finding a purpose, following an inspiration, taking the gamble.

Godless.

8th Postcard

What precious moments I’ve savoured, what instances of sublime near-perfection
I’ve collected:

I remember…
…Sitting around a dinner table under a starlit summer day with a group of assorted characters sharing food and drink and, united by a common tradition, a moment of rare camaraderie.
One of my companions was strumming a bouzouki, sending notes of twinkling tears into the night, and the rest of us sat there singing songs of grace, tunes of mirth and sorrow, melodies of absolution, embracing each other with both voice and hand, our spirits locked in mutual exoneration.
And the world?
The world was exiled from our moment of merriment and grief; our singing an invisible wall to keep the demons away, a vocal wall of harmonic vibrations casting waves of disturbance through the air.

The evening lamb became our sacrifice to the phantoms of the surrounding darkness and the homemade wine a conductor of inner spirits releasing their energies into the midnight calm; intertwining there, for a moment, above our table in a melodic dance before drifting off into the nothing.

Oh, how I sang that night; my voice rising and falling, twisting and turning, straining against the knot in my throat and my own physical limitations, that held the better part of me concealed.
Tears pooled in my eyes, my heart gushing forth from every pore, my body tingling with the delight of release.
Lost, I was, lost is elation and torment…taking them all with me.

We became one that night; a revelry of the damned, an alliance of the defiant, made courageous by the godly nectar.
And what songs we sang! What poetic curses we let go!

Anthems of resistance, ballads of love and hate, psalms of mourning, nostalgic hymns of remembrance; they became our shared reverence for life, our unified condemnation and we but instruments of the great unknown absolved from all liability.

And we cried…Cried the tears only those that have seen life at its fullest can, that only those that have felt the ecstasy and the horror of it all can appreciate.

And when the songs were done and the night turned into dusk, we parted, strangers once more, but now joined in the memory of our coupling denunciation.

I remember…
…Dancing on a mountain top, frontier, outpost in the middle of nowhere, with only the guard dogs and the surrounding forest as our witnesses.
A band of soldiers, we were, sharing a common duty but also a common fate.
Dressed in dirty torn khakis and seeped in cheap Retsina we danced…danced like Zorbas only knew how, danced with the pneuma of our forefathers guiding our every step, in that manly hands-to-shoulders way, from a time before our birth.

We whirled in the darkness, dipping down low, in a swoop, upon the sacred soil before leaping into the air, as if to set sail upon it, as if to shatter our earthly chains; the body spinning, weaving, and flowing with the rhythms of an Asia Minor that is no more and our ardent breathe sending shocks of heat into the winter air.

We shared a soul, drinking greedily from a common pool and supporting each other in our quest for transcendence.

What were we that night? - Agents for divine hands and will-less minions to the sound of pulsating tempo.
Our bodies were taken over by nameless powers, secret ancient forces connecting us to a long line of descent.
We were one.

But there was order in the seemingly ebb and flow of ecstasy, a hidden code of meaning in the circling flow and random patterns of our limbs.
There was a symbolic imitation, so different from the thrashing and gyrating of more modern dances with their primitive sexual innuendos and garish vulgarity.
There was a narration of the past that only men can produce.

I remember…
…Waking to a sunbeam splash, her nestled face pouting against my chest, and her warm breath a caressing reminder of an earlier inner heat that engulfed me and pulled me into its vacant depth.

My mind grasped for wakefulness but settled for the groggy half-stare into empty space, where body has yet to be rekindled into animation and just lays there paralysed but perfectly contented, despite of it.

She stirred in her sleep and I felt her breast stroking me with its fullness.

A subtle smile stretched my lips as I dipped down into the memory of here thrashing desire and as the echoes of her earlier yearning groans resurfaced in my mind.

So soft and subtle she was, with a delicious round rump I loved to cup my hands around, and a face of large-eyed femininity that drove me crazy when she bit her lower lip, in that way she did, teasing me into tumescence.

My mind then drifted into the daydreaming serenad