The Hold (Archives)

The Byblos Fragments 001-100

1. Dante had the right idea. Empty eyes on warm rocks mean trouble.

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2. The raw malleability of each new day maddens the unfeeling.

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3. I own, therefore I am.

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4. Like the best movies, the best dreams have no words.

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5. Television is anything but far-seeing.

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6. This century is blind to itself, and unfeeling. The Anesthetic Age.

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7. My century wants sleep, and I give it alarm clocks.

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8. You want to play Columbus? You cry because there are no worlds left to conquer? Try clouds. Try sleep. Try dreams. Try the heart. We live and we sleep still in emotional hovels worse really than the crude houses of cave men and women. We don't even have an emotional Praxiteles yet, much less a Sullivan or a Wright.

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9. Scientists and religionists get on so poorly because both try to live the same mistake.

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10. Fame is real, but self-canceling. All who abet the amnesia of the famous assume an appropriate degree of guilt.

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11. Pornography is in the eye of the beholder.

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12. Identity is multiple, ultrachronistic, and eternal.

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13. In an age of information, ideas become the true weapons of guerrilla warfare. Blinded by the darkness of my time, I retreat to the light of mind and entertain ideas.

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14. It is possible to be alone, but it requires years of work at shutting off the vast input which is our birthright--and then it lasts only the short time remaining until death begins.

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15. Circumcision explains so much about our barbarism. More than clothes, more than religion, more than science.

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16. We are going to stop speaking. Rather: we are in the early stages of developing languages far purer than those historically derived languages we now use, and methods of communicating which will so exceed the present rate of transfer of information between persons that spoken language as we know it will seem as primitive as pictographs do to us now. It is likely there will be an age and a society wherein spoken language will be considered not merely impolite but downright obscene.

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17. Paradox is the pattern of taboo for our rational tribe.

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18. Charles Ives. Me. Who else?

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19. The most dangerous idol of every age is the always-present sense of apocalyptic importance. The people in Kampuchea (or wherever) in 913 (or whenever) had the same sense of self-importance, disgust with their rulers, and impending doom as did those in France in 1790, and as we do now.

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20. Art reveals, mediates, and affirms the hidden experience. Bad art does it poorly. Good art does it well.

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21. Joy is seeing, and remembering to see. The aging Wordsworth found joy only in the seen remembered ("abundant recompense"). Poor fellow.

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22. If you don't like the days of our lives, change channels.

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23. Hitler made us think the political devil is easy to spot. He should have made us remember that devils are above all else devious. Apparently we are to learn that from the emerging American political devil. How many will die to teach us the simple lesson that the devil can also be cheerful, attractive, and well-spoken?

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24. There were sunny days in Germany, like these. There were people, closeted like me, who saw what was coming.

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25. The future will study the jerky, manneristic editing of our movies and see, as we don't, a symptom of the primitive, dangerous discontinuities in our consciousness.

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26. The future will be as baffled by our clothes as we are by Aztec sacrifices.

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27. In this age of compulsive transportation, "To go, or not to go" ceased to be a viable choice.

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28. Standing on the shoulders of giants? No. No. No.

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29. Not understanding death, we understand absolutely nothing.

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30. Houston, my Koenigsberg.

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31. Kant, my humorless jester.

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32. There is only one day.

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33. Fools deny the earth thinks, and feels.

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34. Proof? Go within, go within, fool.

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35. Dreams the byplay of chemical interaction, brain static? Of course, and surgeons used to wear the same longcoat for each operation, because they prided themselves on the layers of accumulated filth. The success of one's career could be read from the gore on one's gown.

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36. We are constantly visited, constantly attended, though rarely interfered with.

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37. Men can no longer be excused, or allowed, their brutality. At work, they think it is serious; at play, fun. The earth is in pain, and we with it.

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38. Ideologues are the ultimate, decadent, civilized luxury, and one that the Third World can least afford.

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39. Monotheism = western brainspeak.

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40. Remember: as the century waned, Norman Brown, and the Fugs came back.

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41. Not Mozart. Not Bach. Handel.

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42. Ex cathedra, you say? Of course. Try it some time.

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43. Understand why Bosch's people are not smiling, and you will understand why this is not arrogant.

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44. There are two John Donne's. The second, forgotten one belongs to the beginning of this century--another of our overlooked gifts.

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45. What w a s Marx's mistake?

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46. Having added significantly to the tapestry of our being, this century persists now in looking at the loose ends and tangled threads of the reverse side. It's very crowded back there, but quiet and peaceful out here. Don't be taken in by crowds.

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47. If we have made the eye the path to our kind of rationality, the ear remains the path to profound change. "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city tremble."

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48. Trailing clouds of glory? Yes. And they stay with us.

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49. Blake saw too much, and too little.

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50. Seeds that my age does not want planted, or tended, or harvested. No wonder we are hungry all the time.

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nx:byblos 51-100

cm:byblos 51-100

51. Any century in which Glenn Gould dies at age fifty has big problems.

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52. Time is the mannerist manifestation of physicality.

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53. The Bible is all plot and no continuity, while a freeway is all continuity and no plot.

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54. Dance, Nietzsche? Come on. Europeans haven't known how to dance since they locked their pelvises at Sumer.

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55. We're overdue to revive and put back in general use the word "sophist."

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56. No, tailoring is the oldest profession.

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57. How long, King? Ask the children. They are earth's current resident experts on bondage.

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58. There are aspects of our being--such as disease--which, when thought about, reveal that the age has hardly begun.

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59. When the two-backed beast gets going, the going gets tough.

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60. High play is the most serious thing in the world, more serious even than apples.

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61. Philanthropy--or what passes for it in this world--will be the death of us yet.

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62. The tragedy of Vietnam is that it brought America to Asia, which didn't work. The miracle of Vietnam is that it brought Asia to America, which shows signs of working.

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63. Aside to the more distant future or to the more prescient inhabitants of the near present: For a good foundation on which to build a proper understanding of the 20th century, read Reich, Purdy, and Seth. Follow by a comparative study of advertisements from the beginning, middle, and end of the century. Read Myra Breckinridge and watch the movie three times. Find and contemplate at length a car (do not drive it). Conclude by reading Bettelheim's Symbolic Wounds.

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64. My century was born curvilinear and died digital.

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65. Patterns of consciousness quilt time. Think of Russia and America going to Mars together.

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66. The trees want so much to nurture--which is to say, teach--us.

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67. The animals stand by helpless, endangered because they are too close, so close to us.

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68. Of course this is flight, but think very carefully before you condemn it.

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69. And the East is a footnote to Buddha.

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70. Money. How primitive.

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71. It is not that the lilies of the field do no work. It is that their work is perfectly, healthily focused.

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72. In losing my century, I have gained an audience.

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73. Patience snaps when options cease.

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74. Beware the notetakers. They are up to no good.

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75. Fallow ground? Where?

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76. Heaven succumbs, at times, to our earnestness.

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77. Blessed are those who wait, for they shall catch the next bus.

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78. Hermes comes a-calling. Watch your wallet.

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79. Notions of divinity? Notions of divinity? You gotta be kidding.

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80. It is difficult to think of one of our precious concepts that is not a partial--and therefore misleading--externalization of the hidden reality. For that reason, what we call science, which seeks to eliminate ambiguity, is finally sterile.

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81. The years of the wolf are unrelenting.

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82. Try candles.

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83. After Brazil, what?

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84. The world language is already here. We are immersed in it, and speak it every night, just as animals "think," only they don't know they think. Remember, we used not to know we think.

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85. How is it that congruent emblems often produce such different results? Think of Thales watching the ocean, the rain, and sweat.

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86. The only way to learn the way out of the maze is to go all the way in.

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87. As we are amused and apalled by an earlier age's use of leeches to bleed humans, our perception of the "uninhabited" planets will amuse and apall a future age.

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88. Japan was the true imperialist of the end o the 20th century: they gave nothing and took everything.

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89. It remains for China to show us what the world looks like from Asia.

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90. Nostradamus? Maybe. The middle-class civilization remains innocently ignorant of the extent to which time is the artist's playpen.

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91. The surprise is not that we have capital punishment. The surprise is that we have so little, and that we are having doubts about it altogether.

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92. Study Switzerland. In a world of plenty, belligerance becomes an extremely undesirable, even loathsome option. To change the Soviets, reduce mutual arms spending, and the resulting increase of consumerism in Russia would have revolutionary effects.

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93. Advice to the Children (Part of a Continuing Series): As a new coat of paint is to a room, new tires are to a car.

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94. Where does art stop and philanthropy begin? As I age, my guilt at doing this instead of that increases. I think of funny old Goethe coping a plea by letting the aging Faust do it.

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95. "Fantastic dreams" = one of our neater, common redundancies.

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96. Silly Asians. I am all four: a man dreaming I am a man, a man dreaming I am a butterfly, a butterfly dreaming I am a butterfly, and a butterfly dreaming I am a man, plus several more manifestations that do not easily lend themselves to language.

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97. Silly Europeans. I neither think nor am.

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98. Silly Americans.

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99. I felt most at home, most comfortable on this planet, in this century, one night on Maui. Asia and Europe and America seemed equidistant, equally remote, equally irrelevant, equally entertaining.

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100. Forgive me my tapestry. If I cannot do what I do well, then...?

Byblos 101-200                     Magellan's Log front page