The Hold (Archives) The Byblos Fragments 101-200
101. Every age chooses its Greek role-models. Tiresias is about to have his day. * * * 102. Vidal's villa. I would like to speak at length to the maid. * * * 103. The digitalization of reality = us trying to keep the universe at finger's length. * * * 104. Norman Brown at least tried to buffer the force of his arrogant threads by giving a miniature bibliography to each fragment. Nietzsche didn't, and look where it got him. On the other hand, neither did Novalis. * * * 105. What I'm trying for is a kind of "intellectual Basic," idea-bytes, if you will, that can be combined and re-combined, "run," with each "program" then having a different effect--sometimes small, sometimes large--on the manipulating mind. * * * 106. New maps are maybe the most difficult of human undertakings. * * * 107. No. Turning the other cheek is the most difficult human act. The genes cry out to strike back. * * * 108. * * * 109. The Bible, like a freeway, is all continuity and not plot. * * * 110. It is the nature of ages to glorify themselves. Mediocre ages glorify their own mediocre leaders, art, law. Being mediocre and thus boring, such ages seem at the time to go on forever. Only later do they pass with proper speed. * * * 111. As the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Indians were trapped in Eurasia and could only make tiny forays in primitive craft and draw funny maps, we are trapped in this century and can only make nightly forays in primitive dreams and draw funny maps. * * * 112. Systematic thought is about as lively--and fertile--as old men's sperm. * * * 113. Lessing, virtually alone, has already spied the next century and is busy taking readings that no one understands. * * * 114. The Orient = the last eroticism. * * * 115. You tell me where an idea is and I will tell you where the universe ends. * * * 116. Gentle men are those who learn what the great unrecognized benefit of the traditional woman's role: nurturing nurtures the self as much as the nurtured. * * * 117. Rules for the Young, Contd. When travelling, always--unless the view is going to be spectacular--take the aisle seat. * * * 118. Ru???? Messed up in Commodore file??? * * * 120. Rules for the Young, Contd. Change language, change the world. * * * 121. Rules for the Young, Contd. Choose laughter. * * * 122. Rules for the Young, Contd. Beware of religions or religionists who justify war. * * * 123. Rules for the Young, Contd. When shopping, find the most expensive choice you can afford, then buy one notch above that. * * * 124. This is not a revolutionary statement. * * * 125. Who is more untrustworthy--the writer who numbers her ideas, or the writer who doesn't? * * * 126. If Houston failed, asking why may save your world. * * * 127. We give certain culturally and/or personally selected vectors of the past unnecessary energy, validity, and continuity by deeply expecting them to continue with only limited changeability tomorrow. In so doing, we ignorantly impart similar values to like vectors of the future, which, we we wake up in the morning are there, ready and as potent as we expected them to be. No wonder it is so hard to change the world, or oneself. * * * 128. So here I find my freedom. * * * 129. The great souls come in a thousand forms. I have one outside my window, and if passersby noticed it they would call it a live oak tree. * * * 130. We are witnessed. * * * 131. Not art. Put more accurately: not art that is ego-obsessed. * * * 132. We also take dictation. Far more than we know. * * * 133. Nothing is lost/everything is lost. * * * 134. No headache. The fundamental sub-truth, reflected primitively in the antique wave-particle conundrum about light, is that when our present consciousness approaches fundamental sub-truth it must speak in paradox, e.g.: all is one/all is many. Or: neti neti/tat tvam asi [thou art neither this, nor that/thou art that]. * * * 135. Nietzsche was half right: everything recurs, and nothing recurs. * * * 136. The caged bird, released, flies farther, and more happily. * * * 136. The caged bird, unreleased, goes within. * * * 137. The caged bird, unreleased, also sometimes writes inserts for nonexistence fortune cookies. * * * 138. What dumb stares the grunts of apes produce. My silent shouts across miles of space usually prompt at most a tiny tic in the soul. Response, when it comes is primitive, primitive, but so warming. * * * 139. Rilke, yes, but don't neglect the French. Like the Jews, they seek desperately more approval than they need. * * * 140. Though the quality of mercy is never strained--which means it is always effortless, its effect is more powerful than that of any weapon, as Gandhi knew. * * * 141. Power corrupts because it gives the time-bound persona the illusion of control over that which is not subject to its control, thus distracting that persona from its proper business. * * * 142. Remember the joy of overcoming the loneliness in Cro-Magnon caves. * * * 143. Science? Science? Knowing what? * * * 144. At night seek comfort within, by day, without (the sun, trees, whatever). * * * 145. What an embarrassment Japan is. The yang to China's yin? * * * 146. Beware the man or woman who... * * * 147. Tweezers. What a curious artifact. * * * 148. Lost? Disconsolate? All you need is a truthful clock. * * * 149. So Germany was our Greece after all. How long until we realize it? * * * 150. First we reshape the world map, then we start the new age. Unpropitious omens, many sacrifices. * * * nx:byblos 151-200 cm:byblos 151-200 151. America, the second great civilization destroyed by Christianity? Or will those Christian bombs get the hole world this time? That seems to be what the Western religionists have all these years been after. * * * 152. The many threads reduce to two: identity, and outrageous fortune. * * * 153. The soul at play in the playpen of time and men. * * * 154. Beethoven's even-numbered symphonies. * * * 155. Caravaggio, by painting dark, showed us the infinite lightness of flesh, which is always frightening to see. * * * 156. It is difficult to care much about a century that idolized the likes of Picasso. Guernica is such a thoughtful mess. * * * 157. Small souls seek small art. * * * 158. Seek the planet with soft rocks on its shorelines. * * * 159. The inchworm freezes when frightened. The modulations of music are like the puppet strings of our souls. * * * 160. Of course it's all a joke. Only those who work to laugh take it seriously. And those who can't laugh are mere automatons. * * * 161. Caffeine, the static of the soul. * * * 162. Tobacco, the free heart's last gasp. * * * 163. Epater la siecle. * * * 164. The idols of the age, signets, signatures of culture so well-known. And I can't even identify poison ivy. This? A culturist's field-guide to his century. * * * 165. The rough-hewn American heart is a sucker for the amiable aristocrat--even when badly, badly played. One wants to vomit. * * * 166. And sugar? For Swedenborg it was the bridge to paradise. You figure it out. * * * 167. There is a demarcation line here where I play. A fence. So, one builds a sty. * * * 168. It's O.K. to swim or dive, even if you do want to be a far-seer. * * * 169. The Age of Work. That capital "w" is very important if you want to understand this era. Only the arrogant, the greedy, and the ambitious can be so foolhardy as to think they Work and then go home and stop Working. * * * 170. Krishnamurti pegged revolutions: rearranging the prison furniture. * * * 171. And Seth pegged karma: the only way to know what it's like to be poor is to forget that you are rich. * * * 172. Tread carefully through the ruins of this century; everywhere there are Republicans wearing fake hearts on their silk sleeves: T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, Jean-Paul Sartre, Igor Stravinsky, Ingemar Bergman. * * * 173. Time honors the time-free. * * * 174. Lao-Tse pegged causality: wei wu wei. * * * 175. Susan B. Anthony pegged guilt: failure is impossible. * * * 176. Novalis gave us--not the map, but the path to the map: Nach innen geht der geheimnisvolle Weg. * * * 177. Who pegged shame? * * * 178. Rilke worried about the angels. I worried about the children. Where did it get us? * * * 179. America's O.K. as long as it errs on the side of mercy. The earth is slower to forgive mistakes of might. * * * 180. Jetstream, timestream, nightstream, daystream, worldsstream, selfstream, itstream. The Great River flows here now always. * * * 181. Patanjali gives kinship. What a gift! * * * 182. Houston is my secret. * * * 183. The gods and the Chinese eat from Lazy Susans. * * * 184. "Whither goest thou?" Beware of poets who have lost the way. * * * 185. Happenstance leads us around by the nose; the carrot stinks. * * * 186. If we could see souls, we would have politicians in an intensive care ward for the crippled, maimed, and deformed--adjacent to the religionists ward, and only a few doors down from the parents ward. * * * 187. Wilde lost his way in the swamp within, while the rest of the world turned cartwheels in the charnelhouse outside. * * * 188. They all want surcease, do you hear? There lies the definition of humanity. A human is a creature who equates peace with surcease. With such a profound misreading of all that is, it's no wonder that we are such lovers of artifice. * * * 189. Blake lost his way in the paradise within, altogether an easy thing to do--as witness Bach. * * * 190. Alleged scientist, alleged poet, alleged priest, always alleged. You can remember that even if they don't. * * * 191. Ex cathedra? Yes. Yes. Yes. But not theirs. Mine. Yours. Ours. * * * 192. It's either this, or a jeremaiad--mosaic, or tantrum. "Filicide" was a barely controlled tantrum, a linear jeremaiad. One of those per lifetime is enough. * * * 193. Rigid spines: beware the culture whose music loses a good beat. Limpid spines: beware the culture whose music is all beat. * * * 194. Present-day occult orthodoxy is childishly simple--and childishly right--about the hidden reality much as the Greek atomists were "right" about the structure of matter. * * * 195. Open the windows and be a little creative. Open the doors and be a lot creative. Step outside--and turn the world inside out. * * * 196. After studying their sauces, their wines, and their revolution, you need waste no more time with the French. * * * 197. Oriental art used to pretend the body doesn't exist (the point-of-view is in space). Occidental art used to pretend the nose doesn't exist. * * * 198. Be careful around Beethoven. He's not doing what he seems to be doing. * * * 199. Zarathustra's mistake was the same as Nixon's: they, like the west generally, took mountains and valleys seriously. * * * 200. The Buddhist river-metaphor, though seemingly profound, is inadequate. Rivers, like freeways, are all continuity and no plot. * * * Byblos 201-300 Magellan's Log front page |
