Voluntaries from the Invisibles
Douglas Milburn
Part the Seventh
Virginis ejus squalidae,
et ipsa oppressa amarinidine
Her virgins ae desolate
and she is oppressed with bitterness.
--Jeremiah.
1. Nothing significant
will change
until we pay as much attention
to pedagogy
as we do to science and religion.
2. What reminder do you
want
that you nightly fly
above the panoply of stars and stuff?
Old bedtime stories dont do the trick any more?
Perspective is not three-
but four-point
and the fourth one resides invisible
and oh so quiet
in for now your wee skull and mine,
ever alert and ever ready
jack be nimble, of a night to check in homeward
there to play
and yes pray
and lay the cleverest groundworks
for tomorrows coming cloning clowning
way out there
where these damn lines
damn well meet
just so.
3. First macro tools and
toys
through displacement, recombinants,
appear. Then slowly micro
tools and toys with the same active
physically intrusive and manipulative
procedures. Macro, micro,
the triumph of hands-on, hands-in
technology. Leverage.
New art, the first product of imagination,
beings to morph into the next technology
as mind-focus intrudes on time-past
and time-future, displace itself,
one locus becomes many, and larger
spaces become both home and
laboratory. Psychipulation.
Off with the chains of habit,
the shackles of traditional mind-set.
Assent to ascent.
4. We have a thousand
names for horizons
birth death yesterday tomorrow
but still for all our cleverness
theres only the one where
ships disappear whose
apparent falsity and true
nature weve figured out.
5. If you do not choose
memorize and repeat
often words to guide your ship
the then words of others will
willy-nilly
determine your stop-start speed and zig-zag course.
6. We are all humbled
either slowly or suddenly.
Do you know of one ego
that doesnt deserve it?
So.
We learned how to survive
and created a culture preserve what we learned.
Surely it is time to move on.
Otherwise successful survival-ego curdles
into self-destructive tyrant-ego.
7. What frangible fragile bricks
these crumbly words
with which we seek to build walls
to keep
the darkness and its attendant beasts
out.
7.
Opus 132
Ageless waters stream
down her faces yet
no one tries their luck
pitons tempt me sun
fcrys oassed ah fuck ppluck
phallus seeks but cleft
egg wants light a kiss
tea or lips chose pain
parts awaits her dream.
8. Most old fatally forget
theyre between oases.
9. Words are easy.
Sustained contact with the utter vacuity behind words
is not.
10. Thales looked and
looked at the physical world
and decided that all is water.
Ive looked and looked at the human world
and decided that all is arrogance.
11. The invisible
counselors' words
fall on deaf ears
their nudges on numb skin
their gestures on blind eyes.
12. The contemplation of
nature is water for the mind.
13. Variant: What
frangible fragile things
sentences are for building walls
to keep the darkness out.
Even numbering them, printing then in red,
and bind them in leather
doesnt help much.
14. Variant: A common
tragedy: to see without knowing
that you see.
A greater tragedy: to love without knowing
that you love.
15. After searching
thoroughly here
there are three reactions you can have to the futility of the search:
1. Pretend you found a pearl of great price
and bui8ld a life on that pretense.
2. Welcome, embrace, and nurture despair
in its many forms.
3. Look elsewhere.
16. How great is our
hubris?
So great that
unaware that knowing the truth
would destroy the wanting self
we either construct elaborate
self-serving
fictions
and call them truth
or we lead elaborate lives
that we call
searches for the truth.
17. Words to clarify
the enormity of what we dont know
and the danger of assumptions
based on what we think we know.
18. All biographers are to
be pitied,
none as much as those of composers.
19. In some few, called
composers,
the hypercompression of ego over the years
leaves enough facility
that they at the end communicate
some
small
truth.
Almost never so with philosophers
who by definition and practice
are ego-bound.
Better listen to ten minutes of Hank Williams
that read ten books of Nietzsche.
20. No matter how many and
how great
Freud's later errors
his basic insight hold:
the three rules of individual, social, and historical behavior are
repressions, repression, and repression.
21. Metaphysical Magellans
have a credibility problem
among the logotomized.
22. Those who preach
frequently dwell on
rarely in
humility.
23. Beware the
metaphysical carpetbaggers.
24. Daily we encounter
messengers
whom we with our progress
in single-mindedness
have reduced
to sitting and waiting
for us
to pay proper attention.
25. Once, survival
required teaching the ego to talk.
Now, survival requires teaching it to shut up.
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the
Eighth >>
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the
First
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Second
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Third
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Fourth
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Fifth
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Sixth
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Seventh
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Eighth
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Ninth
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