IV. Interstate 10. San Antonio.
Nogalitos Exit.
Population: 786,023
Elevation: 500
Climate: Semi-arid
Topography: Mesquite-tree barren
Historical Oddity: The Alamo.
Category: Anglo-controlled Spanish city.Telling Detail: The Alamo is a
cenotaph. Santa Anna burned the bodies of the Texian defenders.
Prominent Amenity: The River Walk.
Best One-word Description: Nocturnal. Like all great cities, it comes to
life at night.
Insight: Mariachi mass is celebrated every Sunday in the 350-year-old
missions.
1. Until you learn how to gentle them, avoid those who seek power.
–Mahalia
* * *
2. In the mornin the farmer finds the travelin salesman in bed
with his daughter and yells, "I thought you said last night you got your dick shot
off in Vietnam!" "I did," says the travelin salesman, "but it left a
nine-inch stub."
–.38 Special.
* * *
3. If you believe perseverance furthers,fn1 you create China. If you believe gentle perseverance
furthers, you create the world.
–Mahalia
* * *
4. I've enjoyed about all of this I can stand.
–Gray Wolf.
* * *
4a. That last Rest Area over by Schulenberg, somebody'd written on
the wall, "I'm 12" long and 3" wide. Interested?" And somebody had
wrote underneath, "Fascinated. How big is your dick?"
–Mud Flap
* * *
5. Beware poets with clothes on. They have forgotten how much they
are lying.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
6.The hand-made bricks of hope.
–Lone Stranger.
* * *
7. Pimples, if properly understood, open cosmic doors.
–UFO
* * *
8. Autophagists all.
–Mr. Camp.
* * *
9. Have you examined your orrery lately?
–Spark Plug.
* * *
9a. Old girl went to her lawyer to file for divorce. Lawyer asks
why. She says, "Hobosexuality." He says, "Don't you mean
homosexuality." "Hell no," she says. "That son of a bitch is a
pure-dee bum fuck."
–Sugar Britches.
* * *
10. Must–as in Christianity–the potential for great good
always be balanced by the potential for great evil? The consistent existence of such
phenomena provide the randomists one of their strongest arguments.
–Fritz.
* * *
11. The flight from real community, a social reflection of the
flight from the body. We rather accept and build empty lives on the foolishness of
cosmetics and slothes.
–Celia Celia
* * *
12. Ecstasy? Maybe. Maybe not.
–Tinfoil Seagull.
* * *
13. Awed and unsure of ourselves, we call the next dominant mode
of consciousness imagination and poke around its edges, rewarding those who poke best
with, usually, money and, almost always, fame–much as, no doubt, Cro-Magnon had some
word for dawning rationality and poked around its edges, etc.
–Cottonpicker.
* * *
14. One so wants to be rich, like one's fellows, in anger, or
sadness, bitterness, or hate–any of the emotional coins of the realm. The implicit
lesson is that thus does one build a life, a career here.
–Mahalia.
* * *
15. The universe itself gives according to one's needs, and takes
according to one's ability. Marx's wisdom lay in perceiving this central mechanism; his
folly, in believing that a state could be formed which would do the same.
–Ramrod
* * *
16. "Fantastic dreams" = one of our neater, common
redundancies.fn2
–Mr. Camp.
* * *
17. 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.fn3
–Wild Man
* * *
18. Silly Europeans. I neither think nor am.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
19. Silly Americans.
–Hard On
* * *
20. 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.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
21. There was these two monks who'd been living in silence for
years at their monastery. Finally, one day they's out walkin' amongst the fig trees and
one of 'em whispers, I can't take it no more, let's talk. And the other says, O.K., what
you want to talk about? The first one says, let's say dirty words. O.K. says the other,
you go first. So the first one thinks a minute and says, Hair under your arms. Now it's
your turn, you say one. The other, who's lookin' a little pekid, says, I can't. I'm
comin'.
–Mud Flap.
* * *
22. Addison and Steele have a lot of explaining to do. They can
start with The New Yorker.
–Ken Russell, Jr.
* * *
23. You young fellers what been spoilt by all this stuff these
last few years won't remember but durin' the war, there was actually shortages. And this
lady walks into her grocery store wantin' some onions, and the grocer tells her he
ain’t had no onions for a month. She won't take no for a answer, and he says, Look,
lady, let me put it like this. Who put the blue in the sky? God, of course, she says. And
who put the red in the sunset? God did that too, she says. And who put the fuck in onions?
And the lady says, there ain't no fuck in onions. And he says, that's exactly what I'm
tryin' to tell you.
–Monkey Business
* * *
24. The yellow rose knows best. Just ask one.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
25. The fear of odor-ardor-order.
–Green Mountain Man.
* * *
26. The three-eyed know that art draws on and reflects the future
as much as it does the present and the past.fn4
–Pat Angeli.
* * *
27. You show me a J.B. Hunt driver that can do that and I'll kiss
your ass and give you half a hour to draw a crowd.
–Inch Worm.
* * *
28. It is not a matter of escaping the body. It is rather a matter
of, through loving attention, getting it calmed and relaxed, free of the tensions of its
social jungle-hunting tensions. Then, as the tiger sleeps peacefully by the fireplace, one
blows on and through the ever-glowing embers.fn5
–Mr. Camp.
* * *
29. He's ugly enough to scare a dog off a gut truck.
–Sugar Britches.
* * *
30. Now? The American Association for the Advancement of Gnosis?
The National Gnosis Foundation? If not now, when?
–Happy Marmoset.
* * *
31. The Western explorers? Eckhardt, Swedenborg, Blake, Novalis.
Leary, Lilly. Juan de la Cruz. All feminists.
–Mona Lisa
* * *
32. The two ways of knowing–inner and outer–are mutally
exclusive only in a society that has desaclarized nature.
–Mr. Camp.
* * *
33. Just remember one thing, hon. The bigger the belt buckle, the
littler the dick.
–Wild One.
* * *
34. Semelefn6 was
on the right track.
–Orange Krishna.
* * *
35. This guy takes a girl out for a long drive, then he parks, and
says, "Fuck?" "Well," she says, "I usually don't, but you talked
me into it."
–.38 Special
* * *
36. 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.
–Gulf Stream
* * *
37. Krishnamurti pegged revolutions: rearranging the prison
furniture.
–Ramrod
* * *
38. And Sethfn7
pegged karma: the only way to know what it's like to be poor is to forget that you are
rich.
–Pat Angeli.
* * *
39. Ex cathedra? Yes. Yes. Yes. But not theirs. Mine. Yours. Ours.
–UFO.
* * *
40. It's either this, or a jeremaiad–mosaic, or tantrum. One
of those per lifetime is enough.
–Hard On!
* * *
41. Rigid spines: beware the culture whose music loses a good
beat. Limpid spines: beware the culture whose music is all beat.
–Dr. Detroit
* * *
42. 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.
–New Adam
* * *
43. Open the windows and be a little creative. Open the doors and
be a lot creative. Step outside–and turn yourself and the world inside out.fn8
–Orange Krishna
* * *
44. Vonnegut: Love may fail, but simple politeness will carry the
day.
–Celia Celia.
* * *
46. Wilde's epitaph: Cleverness better be its own reward.
–Long John.
* * *
47. Survival Supplies: Create a mind haven, a mental paradise,
designed, equipped, furnished, and populated in the best possible way, to which you
practice retreating.
–Hank III
* * *
48. Survival Supplies: One medium-size X, where x = the good or
object your given planet values most highly. On earth in this century, a bar of gold, or a
diamond.
–Bullwinkle.
* * *
49. Werner Erhard is right. No planetary solution is possible
without food for all. Simone Swan is also right. No planetary solution is possible without
shelter for all. Marx is also right. No planetary solution is possible without good work
for all. Then, and only then, can America teach the world its kindergarten lessons of
freedom–and we can all head for the first grade.
–Trail Boss
* * *
50. It's time to piss on the fire and call in the dogs.
–Mona Lisa.
* * *
51. How absurd to think one's god leaves.
–Celia Celia
* * *
52. How absurd to think that one's god would throw one out of
paradise.
–Mahalia
* * *
53. How absurd to think that one's god wants one's foreskin.
–Inch Worm
* * *
54. How absurd to think that one's god would nail his son to a
cross.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
55. How absurd to think that one's god hates.
–Lone Stranger
* * *
56. These two drunks is talkin' at the bar, and one says, Shay, do
you like droopy tits? The other one says, No. Well, do you like big asses? No. Well, how
about big sloppy cunts? No, of course not. Then how come you sneakin' around after my wife
when I'm not home?
–.38 Special.
* * *
57. This is not a revolutionary statement.
–Gamekeeper
* * *
58. Who is more untrustworthy–the writer who numbers her
ideas, or the writer who doesn't?
–Green Mountain Girl
* * *
59. 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, when 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.fn9
–Cam's Gillette
* * *
60. Anyone to the right of Marx is fascist, no matter how you try
to sugarcoat the truth. Marx himself will be seen as at best a weak centrist, as a new
left unfolds.
–Ramrod
* * *
61. The malleable cosmos.
–Tail Fin
* * *
62. This old boy was hitchin' rides out west, and was havin'
trouble gettin' anywhere on account of people'd stop and ask him his politics and he'd say
Democrat and they'd drive off. Finally this pretty young thing in a station wagon stops
and this time he says Republican and she says, O.K., get in. They drive off together and
before long her skirt starts inchin' up and pretty soon he can pretty near see her
panties. The old boy starts sweatin' and scoochin' around in his seat and finally he says,
Stop the car, I got to get out. I ain't been a Republiccan more than fifteen minutes and
already I feel like screwin' somebody.
–Bar Ditch
* * *
63. Does punishment ever not tighten the knot tighter in both the
punished and the punisher? The vengeful society, no matter how loving in no matter how
many ways, is always doomed.fn10
–Hard On!
* * *
64. Preciate runnin' with you. Maybe you can get me lost in your
home town sometime.
–Shortstop.
* * *
65. There is light loose before which the darkness cannot flee.
The nature of light is play, that of darkness, rest. Movement, and stasis. Joy, and
entropy. One doubts that the cherub merely stands before God.fn11
–Preacher Man
* * *
66. This old rassler's explaining to his manager how he lost the
biggest match of his life. He was fightin' some old Mexican dude who got him in his famous
hold called the "Greek Pretzel Twist." They was asquirmin' and atwistin', and
this old boy was about give out when he seen this pair of dirty red balls hangin' down
right in front of his eyes. "How come you didn't bite them off," says his
manager. "I did," says the old boy. "Only problem was, they was mine!"
–James
* * *
67. The future will fear our eyes, just as our children do now.
–Widow's Might
* * *
68. I just get pissed off when everbody starts mindin' my business
and gives me the wrong directions, and then I get lost.
–Unit 639.
* * *
69. Don't believe a word of it! I'm playing!
–Rubber Duck
* * *
70. Tell me the difference between the computer keyboard and
Mozart's harpsichord keyboard. Please.
–All Fingers
* * *
71. All right. At this moment there are 48,591 dead animals on the
highways of the world.
–Fritz
* * *
72. Krishnamurti died the other day. There are still 48,951 dead
animals on the highways of the world.
–Trail Boss
* * *
73. All is female.fn13
–Mr. Camp
* * *
74. It's fine to build your identity around nationality, religion,
politics, job, family, language, this world–as long as you're always aware that's
what you're doing.
–Celia Celia
* * *
75. In the deepest sense, "inner peace"–the search
for which has made so many priests and their churches rich and powerful–is a
redundancy.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
76. Miz Goody-two-shoes was out drivin' in the country one day,
and she just has to go, so she stops at this filling station that all it has is a
outhouse. She goes in, sets down, and starts doin' her business, when she hear's this
voice comin' from way down under her, that says, "Pardon me, lady, would you mind
movin' over one hole. I'm tryin' to paint down here."
–Mud Flap.
* * *
77. Many mansions? O.K., but how many bathrooms? And are the
garages attached?fn14
–Marty
* * *
78. Sometimes I want to dig Abraham Lincoln up and shoot him
again.
–Log Roller.
* * *
79. Remember: the point of view in oriental art is suspended in
space, while in traditional occidental art it is that of the observor standing on the
ground.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
80. The Orient distrusts soul scientists, and recommends each
individual reproduce the experiments for herself. At the same time, the Orient takes the
world on faith. The west does the opposite, distrusting the world and world-scientists and
demanding reproducibility of world-theories, while taking the soul and soul-scientists on
faith. So the East gets Buddha, the West gets Newton.
–McLoony Tunes
* * *
81. There are also wandering centers of planetary attention,
consciousness, and one of them in this hemisphere is moving south, fast, leaving Europe
and its East-coast-America clone to shiver alone.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
82. The whites. The white age. We will be judged, harshly,
deservedly.fn15
–Billy Boy
* * *
83.
–We'll catch you tomorrow. Have a nice one.
–I don't want tomorrow. I want today.
* * *
84. Pan lives. Read Rechy.fn16
–Billy Boy
* * *
85. Caravaggio, by painting dark, showed us the infinite lightness
of flesh, which, in compulsively clothed civilizations, is always frightening to see.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
86. It is difficult to care much about a century that idolized the
likes of Picasso. Guernica is such a thoughtful mess.
–Gray Wolf
* * *
87. Small souls seek small art.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
88. Seek the planet with soft rocks on its shorelines.
–Mercan Beauty
* * *
89. The Space Age is already primitive, pre-history, though one
would guess it will take the world a good century or two to figure that out. The poets now
are backed in a corner and have nowhere to look but at the hidden reality, and it
generally takes a couple of hundred years for their perceptions to attract general
attention.
–New Adam
* * *
90. I ain't got no time to jack with you, you goddam weenie
washer.
–Howlin' Jack.
* * *
91. Computers are our first infinitely forgiving teachers. It has
been a long, costly wait.
–Celia Celia
* * *
92. One answer seems likely to be found in complexly mingled
nine-dimensional non-columnar matrices.fn17
–UFO
* * *
93. Have you ever seen a tight tiger jump (tight meaning
muscularly tense)? If you have watched human history, you've seen something very
similar–with similarly slapstick results.
–Mr. Snowtree
* * *
94. A Indian gets a terrible stomachache so he goes into town to
see a city doctor. The doctor looks him over and says, "I can't find nothin' wrong
with you, Sittin' Bull. Have you moved lately?" And Sittin' Bull says, "Me no
move." So the doctor give him a big dose of Ex-lax. Few days later here comes old
Sittin' Bull again to tell the doctor he still got the stomachache, so the doc give him a
even bigger dose. Finally, on the eighth visit, the doc says, "Sittin' Bull, I just
can't believe you haven't moved yet." And Sittin' Bull says, "Don't worry, Doc.
Me move tomorrow. Wigwam full of shit."
–.38 Special.
* * *
95. When the rose blooms, the whole world listens.
–Celia Celia
* * *
96. Might we not be better off herding galaxies?
–Orange Krishna
* * *
97. Nonage creeps slowly past pertuiny, closing the gap wikip
lareen.
–Monkey Business
* * *
98. Hoo boy, it's slippery when it's wet.
–Spiral.
* * *
99. I guarantee you, hon, us old women's candle still flickers.
–North Wind.
* * *
100. Only dream-forgetful civilizations tell tales of frozen
repetition.
–Lorelei
* * *
101. Time is clogged. What this century needs is a good laxative.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
102. Death is the singer taking a breath.
–Instigator
* * *
103. Handel : Bach = Vietnam : Japan.
–All Fingers
* * *
104. 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.
–Mr. Snowtree
* * *
105. This old boy's azippin' through Nevada and sees this sign
that says, "Grandma's Cat House, One Mile." Before long, here's a sign,
"Grandma's Cat House. Stop Here." So he does, and gets out and goes in and meets
Grandma, who takes his twenty dollars and tells him to just go through the door at the end
of the hall. So he does, and it leads right out into the backyard. He looks around and
sees another sign. This one says, "You Have Now Been Screwed By Grandma. Please don't
Give Away My Secret. I'm Just an Old Lady Trying to Make Ends Meet."
–Mud Flap.
* * *
106. 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.
–Black Diamond
* * *
107. Remember the joy of overcoming the loneliness in Cro-Magnon
caves.
–Mahalia
* * *
107b. Anyone who sees life as anything other than a
self-dissolving illusion is still trapped in life.
–Novalis
* * *
107c. Everything is by its nature eternal. Mortality,
transitoriness is precisely a characterisic of higher beings.
–Novalis
* * *
108. Science? Science? Knowing what?
–Mr. Camp
* * *
109. The Bible is the west's most potent repository of its
confused millennia of experience with kundalini. The present upshot of it all is that we
leave sex to the censors, healing to the diseased, and worship impotent gods in air
conditioned churches.
–McLoony Tunes
* * *
110. Konstantin Raudive wants paying attention to.fn18
–Mercan Beauty
* * *
111. So does Gershon Legman.fn19
–Mud Flap
* * *
112. And Paul Goodman.fn20
–New Adam
* * *
113. And Ken Weaver.
–Mud Flap
* * *
114. If you need hope, go sit on the side of a tropical mountain
and read Tobias Schneebaum's Keep the River on Your Right.
–Bullwinkle
* * *
115. I'm gonna meet me a country girl with a lot of money, I
decided.
–Smokestack.
* * *
116. Last Puzzle No. 1. Why are Krishnamurti's words troubling?
Last Puzzle No. 2. What was Beethoven hearing near the end?
Last Puzzle No. 3. Why are the cave-paintings at Lascaux shocking?
Last Puzzle No. 4. What are the metaphysical implications of orgasm?
Last Puzzle No. 5. What do the words "salt," "corn," "book,"
and "quasar" have in common?
–Anonymous
* * *
117. You lay one brick, and you're not a bricklayer, but you suck
one cock and you're dang sure a cocksucker.
–Spiral.
* * *
118. Stop reading over my shoulder. Please.
–Prairie Dog
* * *
119. Dichotomy recapitulates barbarism.
–Dr. Detroit
* * *
120. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing is made from nothing. See
sciencism.
–All Bricked Up
* * *
121. Pedagogy doesn't further. At all.
–Celia Celia
* * *
122. Beware of insomniac seers. How well do you think Jesus slept?
And Buddha?
–Ramrod
* * *
123. Blue riders of the purple sage scare mainly night spirits.
–UFO
* * *
124. This Yankee comes to New Orleans cause he's heard you can get
anything you want at a New Orleans whorehouse. A taxidriver takes him to this one and he
tells the madam what he wants and before you know it, she's trotted out this
fourteen-year-old girl, naked as the day she's born. The Yankee takes one look and shakes
his head, and says, "No wool!" "Hell, mister," says the Madam,
"what you want to do, fuck or knit?"
–Gray Wolf.
* * *
125. The sadist desperately seeks proof that it is
possible–if only for others–to feel, and simultaneously confirms the belief that
those who still feel are fools. A self-validating trap.
–Hank III
* * *
126. In the shared delusion of being rudderless, humanity,
collectively and individually, steers only crooked courses–thereby confirming the
correctness of the delusion.
–Trail Boss
* * *
127. Sounds like it's lockin' gas cap time to me.
–Mrs. O'Leary.
* * *
128. Science is the 19th century's best joke, and we are the
punchline. Just as Christianity is the Jews' best joke, with its waspish punchline.
Marxism is the 19th century's great shaggy dog story, and capitalism, being its own
self-explanatory punchline, the great Polish joke.
–Happy Marmoset
* * *
129. This here driver from Tennessee finally gets to fuck this
here whore in Spokane that he's heard about for years. They's really goin' at it when he
asks her to spread her thighs more. She does, and they go to it again, and then he asks
the same thing of her, whereupon she says, "What you tryin' to do, get your balls in
too?" "No, maam," the old boy says, "I'm tryin' to get them out."
–.38 Special.
* * *
130. Naphtha seeks its own level.
–Rubber Duck
* * *
131. St. Ives? I wonder if he knew the American (the 20th
century?) truth he came to embody.
–UFO
* * *
132. When was the last time you were tickled? When was the last
time you tickled? Why not more recently?
–Bullwinkle
* * *
133. Mozart at least had wit, irony. But Bach? Precious little.
–All Fingers
* * *
134. Playfulness is next to godliness.
–Anonymous
* * *
135. Mankind? No. Mancruel. At least in his received form.
–Billy Boy
* * *
136. At night seek comfort within, by day, without (the sun,
trees, whatever).
–Celia Celia
* * *
137. What an embarrassment Japan is. The yang to China's yin?
–Hyundai Hunk
* * *
138. Beware the man or woman who...
–Mr. Camp
* * *
139. Tweezers. What a curious artifact.
–UFO
* * *
140. Lost? Disconsolate? All you need is a truthful clock.
–Spark Plug
* * *
141. So Germany was our Greece after all. How long until we
realize it?fn21
–Fritz
* * *
142. Fools stalk fortune. Fame stalks us all.
–McLoony Tunes
* * *
143. Without circumferential girth there is no substance. Which is
why we go around repeating ourselves.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
144. Beware the culture that does not respect the mystery of the
hymen.
–Mr. Camp
* * *
145. Fame is the artistic equivalent of the red-shift fallacy in
cosmology.
–Mixmaster
* * *
146. The hermaphrodite also shits.
–Sugar Britches
* * *
147. This is cultural DNA, involving more helices than I can
count.
–Beach Stone
* * *
148. So here I find my freedom.
–Wild Man
* * *
149. Man, I'm tired as a whore on double-stamp day.
–Beer Belly.
* * *
150. 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.
–Mahalia
* * *
151. I don't know which I like better, dollar margaritas or hot
jism.
–Sidewinder.
* * *
152. We are witnessed.
–UFO
* * *
153. I don't rightly remember. I think one goes to the right and
the other goes to the left.
–Inch Worm.
* * *
154. Not art. Put more accurately: not art that is ego-obsessed.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
155. Y'all hear the one about this gal who's out fishin' and not
catchin' a thing. The man next to her's caught a bunch. He tells her he's a doctor and
uses cut toenails for bait. She asks another fellow who's caught a lot, and he's a doctor
who uses appendixes. Finally she asks this third guy who's got the biggest fish of all.
"You a doctor?" she says. This fellow looks at her and says, "No, lady, I
ain't no doctor. I'm a rabbi."
–Mud Flap.
* * *
156. We also take dictation. Far more than we know.
–Lorelei
* * *
San Antonio Notes
1A famous reminder from
the oldest Republican document in the world, the I Ching.
2Patricia Garfield,
Creative Dreaming, Pathways to Ecastasy.
3Wild Man here has the
nerve to try to improve on Chuang-Tzu, Lao-Tzu's follower and one of the great prose
stylists.
4Pat's reference, I
think, is to one of the great, overlooked amalgamations of the perennial creed, "Slip
Inside This House," by Tommy Hall. The last stanza reads:
One-eye men aren't really reigning.
They just march in place until
Two-eyed men with mystery training
Finally feel the power fill.
Three-eyed men are not complaining.
They can yo-yo where they will.
5Mr. Camp paraphrases
several of Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms. Later that night, he told me of his discovery of
the wisdom of the east. He was a scrubbed 16-year-old, fresh off the ranch west of
Sweetwater, wandering around Fort Worth one day. He was, he feels, guided into Barber's
Book Store, where he found himself standing before a shelf containing strange little dark
blue books with gilt titles, several of which he proceeded to buy. They were of course the
old Ramacharaka texts from turn-of-the-century England. He said, when he started reading,
a sun brighter than that in West Texas appeared within him that afternoon. He was also
intrigued by the cultural irony/juxtapostion, which he learned of only later. Somehow,
Thomas Eakins' masterpiece, The Bathers, wound up years ago in Fort Worth, and hung for
decades over the circulation desk of the public library there–less than a hundred
feet from the shelf that changed Mr. Camp's life.
6A mortal who longed to
cohabit with Zeus. He finally obliged. The union consumed her but not before it produced
one offspring: Dionysus. Orange Krishna was particularly fond of Hoelderlin's poem on the
subject.
7I was shocked to learn
that Pat, who otherwise showed remarkable esthetic taste and cultural discrimination, had
not only read Jane Roberts' Seth books, but had re-read them, and re-re-read one in
particular (The Nature of Personal Reality).
8Peter Weiss's
Marat/Sade, of course.
9One of the dangers of a
good liberal education is that it sometimes produces prose like this. The French (e.g.,
Levi-Strauss) are much better at it than we are.
10A.S. Neill,
Summerhill.
11From Schiller, the
"Ode to Joy": Und der Cherub steht vor Gott! ("and the cherub stands before
God").
12The Heretic of Xoana, by Gerhardt Hauptmann.
13The first of a number
of plays on the line by the pre-Socratic philosopher, Thales ("All is water").
14Marty was having a
lot of trouble that night with some of Jesus' more sweeping statements ("In my
father's house are many mansions").
15Billy Boy had been
reading Doris Lessing.
16John Rechy, City of
Night.
17One of UFO's more
cryptic utterances.
18Raudive claimed to
pick up conversations of the dead on tape recorders.
19The Rationale of the
Dirty Joke.
20Compulsory
Mis-education, Growing Up Absurd, Ten Years.
21Fritz later explained
he was referring to what he saw as the insidious effects of fake paganism in Germany.
The Texas Tao
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