this is work in progress or homilies or miscellaneous items
that don’t warrant a page by themselves
or seem to fit better here
pending poems index
chronological order is from the bottom to the top of the page
audio files can be complemented by listening to them with the eyes closed
there is quite a different scenario where germany and japan could have won
WW2
they would have combined their weapons programs and produced the atomic bomb
they would have worked together strategically in the invasion of russia and japan, probably with germany’s advice would never have taken on the americans directly
this "synchronising" would have to have started in the early
1930’s, but fortunately the advantages and necessity were not realised until about
1943, way too late
youthful misperceptions
bedevil
adult and aged life
youthful misperceptions
bedevil
aged and adult life
after watching quite a few holocaust survivor videos, i really am in agreement with hannah arendt and martin heidegger, the holocaust was created as much by the passivity of judaism as
anti-semitism, particularly in eastern europe where people were much more religiously jewish
the religion had been moulded around survival during "mild" pogroms, the passivity may have been survival oriented in the face of what occurred historically and it must be remembered that the aristocratic rulers usually stepped in to stop the harassment of a very productive portion of their subjects, but with democracy that changed, the brutality of working class sentiment emerged as a hugely potent force with the consequences we now know as the holocaust
the destruction of the most productive portion of their population who fought loyally during world war one doomed germany from the start, just like japan’s problems with incompetent seniority running its war
the problem with meditation, apart from thrombosis, is you are being introduced to the notion you are insane
you need some sort of context of the world and yourself being insane, the best literature gives this context, but of course most people only read junk and get so traumatised by meditation that they do all these stupid practices/ guided/ music/ theological nonsense /whatever to avoid seeing themselves and life as crazy because they lack the context to handle it
"contemplative work" is "discovery" and what you find, why this never seems to be done and people rely on theological or other templates instead of their own work is beyond me. its like a different species, one so stupid in this respect you can cut it, interestingly most are like this also in health matters, its so bad i think there are biological blinders in place here
the need of the world is infinite
it will suck you dry
the problem with mystical experiences, is you never believe them until they happen and the import is always to drive you into increasingly idiosyncratic views which alienate you from all the conventional nonsense and in my observation, very few zen or other "spiritual" teachers have had genuine experiences, a bunch of pathetic pretenders
mysticism is a process of development, there is no final understanding to be arrived at, what has always amazed me is how anti people are to this notion and of course they react strongly against the possibility there is any real work involved, rather wasting their time with inane "dharma talks" crazy waffle in books and stupid ceremonies which have nothing to do with anything
mood swings
we can’t tell what is normal and what is not
because
mood
defines
its
own
normal
the theory of everything
like there’s some sort of overall theory
well everything is its own meta
theories that arise
are necessarily transient
the thin skin of health and freedom from injury
the dark winds of aging ripple
showing underneath what is not recognisable
which becomes recognisable
snow white’s black hair
made the white
plausible
however
the dwarves
were
never
plausible
anne sexton
reading an early poem "unknown girl in the maternity ward"
poetry is a window, not a door
poetry is a door and not a window
poetry is a window and a door
poetry is wall-less
ann sexton is perhaps an extreme example of a "confessional poet"
but actually my writing is "confessional"
only indirect and laced with decoys
the reader will never know where they are
its interesting how poetry reflects the person yet doesn’t
the writing is a a cooler more abstract space than the actual being
what constitutes a desert ?
well it has its riches and oases
but mostly you are sifting sand
life is premised on continuities
occasionally the discontinuities break through
the real
"ground of being"
startles us
with its unpleasantness
we
the creatures of
continuity
this problem of correction
repairing the world
walk away
somewhat
life’s remnants
we read about
the famous, less famous, the well known
not ours
but theirs
my own experience
the experience of others
validity seems to get lost
between them
parenthood
the genetic binding outweighs everything else
you can’t deny
half yourself
the pain of choice
which is really not choice
but where you put your time
the past
no clarion bell ringing
down the steps of time
rather
a murky infiltration
everywhere
two of sylvia plath’s readings
a birthday present
the ghost’s leavetaking
the everyday
every day
seems not much
but contains
universes
sylvia plath
crippled polymath
jointed in this world
one then the other
gates open and close
but caught in one world
denies another
the fabric of polymath
spread
and eventually
tears
being
betrayed into a trap, but escaping
ed. the above link is good cinema and not traumatic viewing
a mother killing her own son
ed. a bit gruesome and weird to link directly, i don’t recommend it; search youtube "alien resurrection — newborn death scene
(sort of)"
simple themes
but eternal
in hollywood
other people’s problems
as well as your own
life
becomes ungovernable
the midnight sun
lights everything
if only we could see it
but when it occurs
we can’t be really there
and conveying it back
is difficult
forget bridge and chess
i have enough mental trauma
just getting
my paypal
ID
sorted out
i don’t think i would make a public speaker
i can’t talk well
why would i talk better than i do to others ?
barely coherent at times
the nothing of nothingness
is the something of somethingness
hard for people to understand
but that’s people
i’m just the empty absurdity of myself
you have to live it
the empty absurdity
those who live full lives
live it
and don’t understand
the meaning
of empty absurdity
where alice and charles
hold hands
walking into
nowhere
i’m not a man
or a
woman – man
or a
man – women
or a
man – man
what am i ?
i have no meaning
just a cipher in the void
that’s my meaning
mazzy star
fade into you covered by im2
the stone monsters
of the north
are really there
staring at us
patient
we wither
under their gaze
good art and writing always has an element of the insane, something the "ultranorms" gag on
the vanity of words
castles in the air collapse
to be
re-formed again
ad infinitum
getting sidetracked
like an army whose wings go wandering
the center is exposed
death is a forced condition
endless rough edges
untied by life
catch up
lonely
in nowhere
the joy gone
to see
truly
loss is all we have
it measures gain
even the loss passes
permanently
loss is all we have
it measures gain
so many wrong roads
i can’t count them
but enough wrong roads
is right in a way
nothing like seeing a photo of what a broken bit of a grinder cutting disk did to
some-one’s eye to make you buy some safety glasses
“ opening the hand of thought ”
“ the open hand of thought ”
the idea of thought opening up itself is sure difficult to describe
“ the opening hand of thought ”
yeah, i think that’s it
actually its interesting how people steer clear of the lives of "'zen heroes" because if you examine them they generally turn out to be bad tragedies or bad farces
eihei dogen spending ten years dying of
TB in an ill suited climate, kobun chino, stony broke forever with a family to support and drowned with his daughter in a swiss swimming pool because he never learnt to swim, kodo sawaki, a japanese nationalist working as a police chaplin in a concientious objector’s prison in
WW2 , alan watts, an alcoholic, maezumi roshi, seducer of young women and drowned drunk in a bath tub, sasaki roshi, embezzler and sexual abuser, the list is endless, nishijima and joko beck with dementia
you look at the lives of these people and think "what the fuck" i’m not trusting a word they say
zen is a book
its different chapters
fantasy
historical drama
endless bad fiction
the final chapter
insanity
at last
i feel we have arrived
somewhere real
there’s an interesting contrast between hitler who was not personally sadistic and the people implementing his ideas at the lower levels who were
neither was stalin, but beria was
theoreticians versus implementers
the million theologies
libraries of books
tomes
all summed in one word
fantasies
words
a ladder
from
here
to
there
and they pull themselves up
after you
traversing
distance
time
one end of which universe to the other
beyond the traversing what is there ?
traversing
while we can
traversing
distance
time
one end of which universe to another
beyond the traversing what is there ?
traversing
while we can
the botez sisters have
never taken drugs
so much of the net is deadhead drug takers its unbelievable
super entitled and in your face
selling their pathetic validity
some-one i know in the usa is involved in the political unrest and protest movement
my view given the lack of ideological coherence is that this is anarchist and history shows that anarchists always come off worse
this has been the case for him, its interesting that history shows such a consistent pattern
the problem with anarchism is its too unstable socially so is always going to fall victim to a more organised socially stable ideology which would then view anarchism as a competitor or threatening its own existance
by socially stable, i don’t exclude incredibly brutal regimes like stalinism or maoism since they do maintain social order of a type, i’m not saying all socially stable systems are desirable, its just they punch with more weight than anarchism
in western society the threat to the existing social order is not anarchism or any ideology but organised criminals who would quickly evolve into warlords if given the chance, i guess mexico is partly down this road
gangs are actually nascent armies under potential warlords, the police and law are all that’s between a stable society and a murderous mayhem
when they are disturbed by not understanding what i write
after all its in english and seems to be able to be understood
but they can’t get there
they don’t behave graciously
marry some-one from a different culture because you will put up with more
you’ll think oh, its just their culture when its really them
the converse is also true
the problem with imagination
is
imagination can undo the past
so it diverges
from reality
there is an inherent schizophrenia
in
day dreaming
which makes schizophrenia
not. all. bad.
the fools chase meaning
meaning chases them
words upon words
what is empty
cannot be made full
don’t underestimate drug users
they get very skilled at manipulating people and situations
goes with the territory
just because its written down
doesn’t make it true
does it ?
maxwell’s equations
einstein’s equations
one a generalization of the other
biological rules
they govern the world
how it came to manifest them
is the puzzle
ed. you can see with evolution how biological systems can increase in complexity, but its very difficult to see how such workable systems of matter from astrophysics to molecular chemistry can arise and there be literally nothing else, it was just born working with no precedent
the answer has to be there is some precedent and what form this precedent takes has yet to be shown
it may be that persistence and an entropy gradient creates the conditions for biology tautologically, other universes that fail to support biology are not persistent or are "entropy dead"
god is not a theory of everything
god is not god
that is a theory of everything
meditation has the same false premise as prayer
a unitary infinity
the misguided ratbags pray and meditate
that’s about it
the joining of the glistening fragments
is unknown to them
a sense of something
conveyed without words
what is it ?
michael palin investigating the danish painter vilhelm hammershoi
when you look at the battleship yamato, just be thankful the japanese imperial navy put
$16 billion into that and her sister ship the musashi and not their nascent nuclear weapons program
so much of our "mental activity" is meaningless chatter to ourselves, deep trenched roads getting deeper
on the other hand it can take us into areas of surprising and useful conclusions
when you "forbear" with others you will be more open to forbearing with yourself, which, often is all you can do
i don’t think "forbearance" however is a beneficial attribute without context, it is arguable a culturally ingrained forbearance to wrongs inflicted enabled the holocaust and soviet russia
i’m having a problem with climbing out of bed while asleep, its relatively new, never had it when younger
so i put up some timber on the sides
last night i leapfrogged them and landed on my feet
for a minute or two there’s that very weird world of being half awake and in a very strange place as you walk around trying to get your bearings
blythe baird reads her poem
relapse
i don’t normally link to "def" though this is on the edge of being more reflective and not tainted by politicisation, but it seemed very real and i immediately thought of doing it
we create our own reality
“ how can that be ?
the world is full of things we have no control over, some quite unpleasant ”
we exist
how does existence come from
non-existence ?
is it that
non-existence is itself a form of 'being" with tension within the fabric of itself arising as platonic forms ?
from these forms come "being"
a wehrmact soldier in belorussia complaining to his jewish "housemate" about the execution of the soldier’s "girlfriend" that day because while he could save her, he couldn’t save her mother as well and she elected to die with her mother
video
the charles bukowski haters
can’t accommodate
his
genius
increased entropy and decreased coherence
this is
the problem with drugs
interestingly this also applies to "medical drugs" where a loss (that shows in side effects) has to be balanced (and discovered) against a gain (what it remedies)
its looking like
10 to
12 weeks and possibly longer
between shots gives better covid immunity
i almost left the word "covid" out as being obvious but of course in ten years who knows ?
dr. john
didn’t the japanese
learn anything from world war
2 ?
there seems to be the trauma in ultraman of the violent futility of a defeated nation that has not got to grips with what happened
a different sort of shadow
more real than the object
memory playing tricks
on us
sylvie and bruno
a tired charles dodgson
petering out
not absurd enough
and too real
in the wrong direction
yet there are traces
of a viable
shadow world there
ed. he was quite
an artist as is shown by his drawings on the "alice in wonderland" manuscript
resolution
a hundred fragments come together
only to shatter
resolution
a hundred fragments come together
and shatter
you can steer
through the wrongness
by virtue of
strangeness
you can steer
through the wrongness
by virtue of
the wrongness
the eye once opened
cannot undo
what it sees
i think what hannah arendt is talking about with "totalitarianism" is the construction of very malfunctional socially accepted "tableaux" underpinned by coercive violence
real life examples have a span of non conformance to the idea
plato or not to plato ?
i like hannah arendt, she is very
robust
an interview
as i have got older i have learned that "errors" of omission are usually so huge you can just hang there wondering what you have not been told
even worse is that often the omitter doesn’t understand that something significant has been omitted and can't even see it if its pointed out to them
but in lots of situations they are quite aware and everyone does this
omission and commission are a never ending juggle, always full of surprises
recommend something
get blamed for something
method and truth
truth is not a method
or even
truth
go to hell
eihei
method and truth
truth is not a method
or even
truth
go suck eggs
eihei
ed. eihei dogen
philomela, procne and medea
those greek women were savage
its not just american football that has
TBI problems
one sees continual behaviour and health problems with league players in the news in australia and even new zealand has some well known instances of a deprecated "oddness" like keith murdoch who actually must have seen the light
joe karam getting sucked in by the very guilty david bain is another instance and there always seemed a sort of dullness that was not right to "pine tree" meads
humans have a taste for gladiatorial sports and these heavy contact ones with their direct brain injury satisfy the masses
even soccer with its "heading" the ball successfully gets a foot in
the ancient greeks had a form of contest where two men were chained to rocks , but within arms length of each other and they had to pummel each other until one was dead
so much of human behaviour winds around the act of mating and its consequences
this notion of "bearing the sins of others" and thereby being a proxy to enable "the righteousness" of others seems the most deeply flawed aspect of christianity, i find the notion repulsive, enabling and apologetic for any amount of bad behaviour, which of course is what you get
if this idea is new to you, its a well known criticism
i got this reply
you need
Jesus praying for you
my reply
see, you can’t even pray for me yourself, it has to be the work of some fiction !
how lazy can you get ?
link dense "homilies"
when "publishing" on facebook and reddit i might put these by themselves, they have a different "feel"' to most of my writing, because in fact they are the work of others and interest in the topics will vary
the positive thing is they break and provide some relief from my writing which in effect is a monotone
when you see media interviews, most people don’t realise the interviewer is only half, the interviewer may or may not be favourable to the interviewee, but unseen is the twisted soul of the editor racked with
anti-creative impulses and perversity, “ fools rush in where angles fear to tread ”
to hijab or
not to hijab ?
the bbc didn’t take any risks with tommy hilfiger, a spineless toad of a man used to dealing with women for money, don’t tell them anything they don’t want to hear
mennel ibtissem
the adage "beauty is only skin deep" you can see in spades in models, they are the most ordinary minds and somewhat stupid to boot
the fashion industry isn’t any better, its basis is confusion
endless suppositions about an afterlife
me
the moon tells all
one cycle
waxing, then waning
thin crescents
there is no going beyond
calling and answers
the different roosts
magpies under
a bright moon
hanna gosler pick’s
account of meeting her friend anna frank in the
bergen-belsen concentration camp
lacking completeness
we seek to be complete
we die on that road
mirrors break
that is their nature
the uncomprehending
vaunt the incomprehensible
comprehension
sees
this
the uncomprehending
vaunt the incomprehensible
the comprehending
see
this
the road of chaos and catastrophe
stalks me
i try not to tread, but what can i do ?
“ with meditation i’m less likely to be chasing my personal narratives down countless rabbit holes ”
the rabbit holes are not so many and have a pattern
my comment on the famous zen poem "xinxin ming"
the great way is an illusion
suckers everywhere fall for the bullshit
prescriptions and methods
are candyfloss for the ignorant
unitary infinity doesn’t exist
what i just wrote will be misunderstood
ed. the xinxin ming is in fact a condensed version of a longer, earlier poem called the "mind inscription", however both suffer from the "silent illumination" heresy of which "zazen is the only way" soto doctrine also suffers from, though is not "silent illumination" per se and eihei dogen in his later years moves away from his earlier views into something more naturalistic
trench warfare was not introduced in
WW1, the sieges of
vienna and
candia were based on ottoman strengths in that form of warfare
a really interesting study on "challenging information" having to come from
peripheral rather than mainstream sources
central or mainstream that gives information conflicting with existing world views creates antagonism
well i guess i am on the periphery
what andrei tarkovsky’s film
nostalgia gives is the sense of life lived in "slow time" which is pretty much how all lives are lived if seen more truely
men follow ideas
to their and other’s deaths
that doesn’t make them right
just ideas
men follow ideas
to their death
that doesn’t make them right
just ideas
the hell of nostalgia
the re-digging of old tracks
no comfort
in that
nothing like a virus
to put you in a strange mental space
what is normal looks strange
and there’s truth in that
a road of words
cobblestones of letters
jolt
the twisted snakes of thought
tangling into insanity
untangling out
into sanity
“ you should like the person you marry ”
puts a different perspective on it, doesn’t it ?
time ticks by
the slough of nothingness appears and disappears
we call this living
god, the absolute, out there
over the edge
but being of this world
we can’t go over the edge
the boundary is as far as we can go
paradoxically the edge having no sides has two sides
at the boundary we are of both worlds
those of the interior have no idea what i am talking about
education
cartoon about life
fanciful
deranged
a fake universe
we are supposed to treat
a
s
real
education
cartoon about life
deranged
fanciful
a fake universe
we are supposed to treat
a
s
real
men don’t understand female psychology
if they did, they’d never get married
i have always known that
MFA’s were
a scam , only the extremely untalented would waste their time with that sort of nonsense
good writing and art doesn’t fit in a box and is confronting, things abhorrent to a university education
i’ll never forget a professor on a web page selling his courses by creating an imaginary scene of the student, complete with degree going on to his first "exhibition" within months and then becoming a "name"
such predatory behavior stinks, but you can argue its justice for the deserving given the
narrow-minded dullness of those taking the bait
abstract expressionism is not wrong
just a waste of time
or
bad dream
the unbearable weight of the net
the unwashed
each its own publicist
the sum has factors
what the factors are
is said by the sum
why do we treat thinking different to our own as "harmful" ?
its not necessarily so at all, beneficial even
with the mind
doors open and doors close
you can hear them
with the mind
doors open and doors shut
you can hear them
“ i get it ”
what is it you get ?
beyond words
you have the clichés pat
even an idiot
can wear a mask
there’s a surprising number of people out there
if you stress their ideas about life
mean you harm
and will do you harm
a low profile is best
there’s something fundamental about recursion
self examining self
the doors of infinity
spring open
a poem by eihei dogen
, translated by b. unger and k. tanahashi
waves recede
not even the wind ties up
a small abandoned boat
the moon is a clear mark of midnight
my reply
the moon
no mark of midnight
the boatless sea shimmers
the stairway
goes both ways
one circus
two circuses
three circuses
an unending multitude
claims to have finished
will be disbelieved
how reality works
we tease out
by trial and error and observation
yet we find ourselves in loops and neverendingness
and it doesn’t occur to us
this is how reality works
in the beauty of death
the landscape remains
the perils of wandering
become manifest
with the approach
of winter
the above is my retranslation of a poem by matsuo basho (below)
i’m a wanderer
so let that be my name —
the first winter rain
great questions need to be answered
i can’t answer them
people have god and his prophets
tomes of books try to explain what cannot be explained
i walk along the breakwater and look out to sea
there is nothing else
stark unpleasant perspectives
re-occur
so they must be true
to some extent
wallpaper shot
snow covered cliffs, lofoten islands, norway
“
The clear star that is yesterday is a storyteller without equal ”
a dream of stars
is neither clarity or obstruction
storyless
points of light
it just amazes me the way these made up stories (ed. the bodidharma myth) are accepted without question by the pompous wishing to impress
if there was an historical bodhidharma, his "hermitage" was in reality quite close to a wealthy donor and he must have been a member of the power clique that was executed at heyin
what i find interesting about the "myth" of bodhidharma is his being a
blue-eyed barbarian, ie more than a hint of the
greco-bactrian origins of zen
when the brain blinks
it sees
before and after
and now
the hubric wannabes
only wannabe
any real work never
the activity of children
forming their own world
children
are
forming
the
world
around
them
for interest i took a keno card for
$30
at the
RSA after a good lunch
that took me into the bar somewhat
an alien world as i don’t drink
the only one with any energy was the bartender
the man next to me was bossy to her
the keno paid back
$10
didn’t seem random to me
i have never played much chess and still really am at the beginner level — hitting some sort of road block, but looking at this
link you can sorta see how to play at a much more advanced level, strategies based on space and position and being able to trade pieces for position is where its at
there’s no road that leads anywhere
there’s roads everywhere
one of which leads
anywhere
you can see the path you should have gone
unfortunately that clear view only comes from having travelled another path that gave the vision
a life that goes "over well" leaves the few who travel it, ignorant
+ . + . + . + . + . +
your sum
the sum of life
you can objectify
bad as the devil
and good as angelic
but what we mean is harm
and benefit
which are
perspectives
of self
and other
i look at something
i look away
when i look back
something has changed
somehow there’s a difference
on one side
the absurd
on the other side
the not
absurd
i know which side i am on
the absurd
on one side
the absurd
on the other side
the not
absurd
i know which side i am on
a million billion trillion
words writ
one letter after another like they mean something
but they don’t
depressing
huh, a poem i wrote a year ago
i can’t remember writing it and at first glance it doesn’t seem like mine, but rereading it, its mine and a good one
i think good poems have to be "mode-ed" into, you may react against a poem on first reading, which i often do on my own poems, then reading later you can get into it
its a reply to one of emily dickinson’s best, if not her best poem "as imperceptibly as grief" which you need to read to understand the reply
emily sails on a breeze of thought
of summer’s highs and winter’s troughs
the empyreal and her garden
one wonders exactly where is she ?
westerns
chimpanzee territory fights
lethal
i’m not judgmental about others driving, i’ve totalled one car and severely damaged a
4WD , both my fault, i have been extremely lucky not to have killed several people
i’m a much better driver now, really "defensive", always anticipating what might go wrong, but its taken decades of driving experience and who knows, i could be in an accident tomorrow ?
diplomacy is interesting because of its lack of moral judgment, there really is no right or wrong, its the view of history
hamas is a police state like iran, under the control of militias
it survives financially because it is a proxy paid to wage war against israel on behalf of funding arab states and iran
every five years it gets its infrastructure partially destroyed by israel and then the donor funding is used to rebuild
more like science fiction than reality
“
US warns
China it will
fight for the
Philippines ”
reading coded diplomatic language
diplomatic language is very indirect
what they are saying here is not that they will go to war over the philippines, since nobody, not even the philippines will go to war over such a poor and difficult to manage country, but that the
US will to go war if china attempts to invade taiwan
so the philippines becomes the arguing point, but the invasion of taiwan is always the backdrop
since australia and new zealand will be dragged in, it should be of interest, i don’t think come to the crunch that australia is at all reluctant to fight
nz less so but would still join in
marxism in all its various forms, doesn’t and can’t work because it tries to turn the vectors of competence and self interest against their natural directions
this is why the political entities trying to enforce it as doctrine have to resort to extreme brutality
you can see similar thematic mistakes being made with today’s
"neo-marxism" and its prioritizing or sanctifying human emotional realities over "objective"
history always has the same theme, the "oppressed" when "enabled"
, go on to become the "oppressors"
, human nature is territorial and group oriented and in those contexts, exceedingly brutal and it will never be any different
the most utopian of any political system, marxism, ended up the most brutal, if that doesn’t tell you something then you are not wanting to see my conclusion
results always subvert intention
life problems
small changes
adding up
are all that can be done
and in their way
enough
the magpies can wake me
and i can dream the magpies wake me
and wake
because of that
anaphora
so . .
so . .
so . .
so . .
where’s the other half ?
the ebb and flow of thought
poems and homilies
have their own rhythm
currents that submerge and surface
otherwise
we’d never know
the ebb and flow of thought
poems and homilies
have their own rhythm
we lose our way in life
the way loses us
there is no way
just what happens
mght as well be lost in a forest
as walk along by the sea
walking this way
we overlook something
walking back
we find it
disabilities
crimp a life
unappreciated and unseen
in some it festers
in others
it doesn’t
what the difference is
i don’t know
downsizing
our income
interests
brain
relationships
whatever
not a pleasant experience
to prepare
for
the
coming
storm
downsizing
our income
interests
brain
relationships
whatever
not a pleasant experience
to prepare
for
the
storm
in whatever
form
from reddit "TwoXChromosomes"
“ At Starbucks recently I saw a maybe
14 year old girl ordering and paying for coffee and at the same time struggling to get her father to stop looking at the cups and mugs and suggesting things they should buy
He was legit acting like a little kid and she sounded like his mother. She finally spoke to him pretty firmly, ”No, Dad, we don’t need that stuff," and he stopped ”
when god decreed
men and women need to be in partnership to
produce children
he outdid
the devil
when we talk its like a sounding board
for the special dimension
writing
that hoofs it
in terms of being
correct
you introduce them to your world
then you can’t get rid of them
lame and blind they trudge on
crying "i need" at every turn
lorianne disabato
had a dream
Last night
I dreamed
I was assigned to teach
first-year writing in a large, shady cemetery
As
I walked the grounds on the first day of class,
I wondered how
I was supposed to teach outside without the usual infrastructure of a normal classroom
I also fretted because my syllabus wasn’t ready for a class that was abruptly starting in July rather than September
Eventually
I found a flat,
coffin-sized tombstone
I figured
I could stand on while shouting to my students, whom
I assumed would be
far-flung throughout the cemetery grounds
Right at class time, however,
I realized none of my students had showed up, so after several more minutes of wandering,
I found my class packed into a small, squarish chapel, where some students were standing and others were sitting on an assortment of rickety wooden chairs they had pushed against the chapel’s stone walls, with everyone’s backpacks and other belongings piled in a messy heap at the center of the room.
After introducing myself and explaining that
I’d post the syllabus before our next class meeting,
I sent my students outside to complete a
small-group icebreaker while
I took inventory of our makeshift classroom
There were not enough chairs, no desks, no podium or table for me, no projector for my laptop, no electrical outlets for my students’ laptops, and not even a chalk or whiteboard to write upon
But since my
first-years had never been to college before, they were unfazed by the weirdness, even as
I explained that today’s class was in July and our next class wouldn’t meet until September
my added "creative" ending
the lesson dragged on interminably and with dusk falling i decided to send them home whereon they all headed for their graves and “melted” down into them, i scarcely had time to be astounded when i saw the ground next to me open up and before i had time to shout out “this is my dream you know” it swallowed me up
nothing lasts forever
people don’t get they don’t last forever
run
death
the dream of life comes to a finish
was it just a dream
what was it ?
so many times i write
maybe it means something
but i don’t know what it is
then i find it
i can’t believe these people
hassling me so i leave the message board
then when i leave they want me back
to hassle more
it must be a definite progression
steps to get somewhere
called nowhere
one day
the train of thought
will run out
its wagons empty
track disused
purpose gone
i will be the happier
for that
supposed loss
when we correct another’s thought
we have to jump out of ourselves and into them
we get wrecked and they benefit
a wrong equation to be in
we look at the boundaries
always rearranged to hide the interior
but to the eye of insight
they inevitably
give the interior away
we look at the boundaries
rearranged to hide the interior
but to the eye of insight
they inevitably
give the interior away
"mini monovision", say .
75D in the non dominant eye with monofocals is a relatively riskless and very effective implant combo imo
any
IOL with "diffractive ring" "ridges" will have some degree of dysphotopsia, look at a photo of a multifocal to see what i mean
latin
its "inflected" forms clash with the looser analytical style of english
try to learn it and it scrambles your brain
“ res ipsa loquitur “
“ similis simili gaudet ”
like rejoices in like
like likes like
if there’s any one source of the world’s troubles
its this
a good
video on vincent van gogh’s year in an asylum
recently it has been discovered he did not shoot himself, but was accidently shot in drunken horseplay with some young louts, weirdly one went on to become one of the wealthiest men in france
also it is quite possible he did not cut off his own ear, but gauguin did
i wonder if his so-called insanity was in fact heavy metal poisoning from various pigments in his paints ?
“ if there’s one thing we have learnt in the last ten years, its that string theory
is not a theory of strings ”
nima has an unusual ability to tailor the level of abstraction to the audience without confabulating which makes him a good communicator
interestingly, robert kuhn has become a much better interviewer, a subtle progressive development with a targeted, more spare style that brings out the best in the interviewee
different levels of understanding
one subsumes another
or does it ?
levels of understanding
one subsumes another
or does it ?
“ is there life after death ? ”
is there life before death ?
what is this life before death ?
“ is there life after death ? ”
is there life before death ?
we
a supposedly "tough" species
ruled by ideas
about ourselves
and others
space and time
divisible ?
indivisible
quantum states
the real is unreal
off track
it never seems like we can get back
on track
but we do
try to explain
what can’t be framed as a question
leaving it alone
isn’t an answer either
the trouble with being a public figure is you unknowingly introduce yourself to people who react strongly against you and want to take you down, they are almost certainly men with what might be called "socially acceptable mental health problems"
i don’t have a benign view of what’s out there in terms of these arseholes
i have never been comfortable with my involvement in the comments section of brad warner’s vlog, but my spending any time there now is becoming seriously unproductive compared to what else i might be doing
i was thinking i have in effect become an apologist for his version of zen and buddhism, identifying various inconsistencies
previously i have felt this "work" offered some sort of return in figuring things out, but now its effectively decoying me away from my own thinking, the process of rectifying his thinking, is itself a running away from my own
the other issue is the exremely aggressive
dunning-kruger syndrome types, who set out to destroy me, personal attack takes your attention like nothing else and one puts way too much time into "defense"
so the next step is to not view his blog for a month, starting now
8th july
sesreim canyon , namib desert
i really think video conveys something photos don’t
an apology : a
half-hearted attempt at repair
how the art market works
abstract doodle = pay for disposal
abstract doodle + sotheby’s promo =
$100 K
cherry blossoms by damien hirst =
$22.5 million
let what has been disappear
the present
is
already
crowded
things like you
sorta you
sorta not
the gap though
is wider
than
you
think
up to your neck in involvement with something that has ceased to reward
time to move on
if you can
pretentious : pretending to be something that its not, an appearance garnering the reputational advantage of some substance it falls short
, or is a travesty of
you close the book and it won’t open again
isoroku yamamoto’s
death , richly deserved i have to say
a good wiki
entry on him
the americans got lucky on midway,
the battle could have gone against them
knowledge
successfully captures us
before the war has begun
since knowledge is endless
and we have no choice but to traverse its wastes
this entails involvment in various hells
as part of the normal course
of existence
as job found
there’s no rhyme or reason
to the balance
nothing comes together
genealogical, hell, representing time in space
nothing
the discards are mountainous
“ i’m a slow learner ”
actually its not bad thing to be a slow learner, i have noticed with some or even most prodigies, few continue to grow beyond high competence when they reach adulthood, that there is some impairment or limitation as a consequence of their rapid skill acquisition as children
that those who really go on to "greatness" have an additional facility for "slow learning" that was always there and always continues
the past washes past
in a roar
its surprising
we remember anything
the straw that broke the camels back
wasn’t really a straw was it ?
there is no defence against the intrusions of the mad
at the best they take your time
at the worst they take your money
at the worst they violate you
at the worst they kill you
meditation is a surprisingly effective remedy for addiction, you get some
self-awareness that gives you a different perspective and more depth on the problem
just go for a walk by yourself or sit in a chair for half an hour or so, not doing anything else
to "dialogue" with people requires some recognition of "commonality", its there if both parties look, its not something that can be denied when actually come across
writing and reading can take you into a more open and larger view with an improved an ability to deal and converse with people from different walks of life ?
constant antagonism is destructive and
self-destructive, but it only takes one party to make a situation so and all you can do is remove yourself from it to the extent possible
for some things there’s no remedy except leaving
you will discover the remedy as you leave
and after
words echo across the page
lewis carroll, emily dickinson, charles bukowski
they echo and echo
where we would stay and dwell
seems to pass
inadvertently
when you’ve got
some-one in the wings
waiting to pounce on every move you make
time to pack up and leave
there’s a broader view to take
there’s a conclusion out there
a decision to be made
you need to reach it
its high
you can’t jump that far
how do you get there ?
i eat a fresh wallaby brain
i get there
i don’t even have to try
to write the strangest thing
i just do
rainbows
sun or lightning
one lasts
the other doesn’t
ed. lightning can create enough light to momentarily see a rainbow in the dark, however the poem is ambiguous as to what is "lasting"
all victories have a cost
work out what it is
“
Being an ethical vegan is the single most effective thing we can do as individuals to be positive members of society and reversing the climate crisis.
Are you vegan ?
You reading this now . . .
If not, why not ? ”
i’m not arguing with
2.6 million years of meat eating hominin ancestors, what the genes need, i give them
tool use giving access to bone marrow became a significant hominin evolutionary driver because of its high energy density
if you have ever done any butchering, the way our arms move has obviously been designed for the task
rainstorm
a beautiful feeling
when there’s no drip drip
in the ceiling
stalking
when you have
mentally-ill people hunting you
its the most awful feeling
i don’t think physics and philosophy have to be in any sort of identity
to try and make it so is a big mistake and very common these days
there is so much beyond our immediate ken
if we could see just a fraction of what lies ahead
we would collapse
i am having an ongoing problem with being stalked on the web by some
mentally-ill idiot calling himself "belligerent man", every six months i seem to get people like this on my back
my latest comment to him
don’t call me andy, i don’t know you
you should seek therapy, there’s some massive problem you have unable to perceive your totally inappropriate full on personal attacks on me, complete projections on your part btw
since what i say doesn't sink in. consider this vlog from the owner’s point of view (brad)
, he wants an interesting comment section to bring new readers and hopefully more donations, your comments to me are very
off-putting since they are so obviously manifesting some disorder or other, its costing brad readers
don’t be mean to brad who is obviously pretty broke and needs the money, participate here in a way likely to bring him readers, use a light touch and address what people actually say
its a wide world, i’m just one person, your obsessive focus on me is unhealthy and frankly a bit worrying
i do feel you are failing to address an underlying problem of some involvement with zen and not having got anywhere, indeed gone down the wrong road
we all have situations like this, all you can do is recognise the mistake and move on
failure to recognise the mistake just keeps us going in the wrong direction
death is necessary
can you imagine the complexity of history without it ?
when a man sets himself up as a "teacher"
, he has already made an unrecoverable mistake
when a man sets himself up as a "teacher"
, he has already made an irrecoverable mistake
a quote from the hagakure written by yamamoto tsunetomo
matters of great concern should be treated with a certain frivolity
a comment by master ittei
matters of small concern should be treated seriously
my comment on the above
advice women already take and implement ?
the hagakure is interesting, not a "fighting" text but is "wisdom literature"
in actual fact a more accurate translation of the quote would be
matters of great concern should be treated with a certain casualness that comes from having considered them previously
I II
you will have to not take some of the aphorisms literally
, but rather the general and abstract sense
for instance the quote below has an easy to understand nonliteral meaning relating to coping with an apparently overwhelming multiplicity of problems we can encounter in everyday life
“ no matter if the enemy has thousands of men, there is fulfilment in simply standing them off and being determined to cut them all down, starting from one end ”
it pays to leave almost everybody
to the echo chamber
of themselves
“
Is it a Good
Idea to
Try to
Change Society for the
Better ? ”
stalin believed he was changing society for the better, the problem with ideas about improving society is that the value judgements involved justify the use of force to conscript society to conform to the imagined "improvement"
of course
, socially we live with this force all the time, the difference between current western value systems and the bolsheviks is that mostly the current social ideas are reasonably adaptive, not chronically wrong like marxism
in terms of mysticism, there has always been a ongoing debate about the requirement for "good works", especially an issue with eastern orthodox and i think you can make a very valid criticism of the purely contemplative which doesn’t produce anything since it doesn’t interact with the world at all and so can become quite schizophrenic
a competence in explaining is in fact a "good work" and i notice here with "belligerent man" who seems to have some soto background that he is hassling me because he perceives me to have that competence and manifestly he doesn’t and personality disorder issues on top of that
if you meditate or do "contemplative work" you don’t want to end up more incompetent, which unfortunately is usually/often the case in my observation, the primary cause being a lack of wide ranging quality reading, without that you are cutting yourself off from your peers over the centuries who actually understood what it was about, today’s "teachers" are just the usual deranged pretenders that make the majority in any generation
to be a "teacher"
involves a moral as well as skill difference
between the teacher and the taught
the moral distance at least
is an illusion
that is not sustainable
battle sorts three ways
the living, injured and dead
doesn’t matter which side you are on
if you argue with a shark
you are going to get bit
swim away and let him feast on others
when you have seen lions
maul a hyena
you know its that sort of world
songs
a deceitful conscription of the emotions
they promote
not truth
but ease
they mightn’t look like the enemy
they mightn’t act like the enemy
but they are the enemy
there is a case for
aspirating covid vaccine shots
interestingly, the vaccine needs to go into muscle so it drains into the lymphatic system
if it goes into blood vessels then there will be problems, so "aspiration" is to check the needle is not going into a blood vessel
all the same i’m not trusting the astra-zenca vaccine, there’s an intrinsic flaw with the design in terms of the way antibodies are generated in the nucleus
i’m gonna try to wait for a second or third generation vaccine
itchy boots does it again
drone shots in the namib desert
i only have one rule when posting, does it extend my writing ?
a man (or woman) of sense would be learning from me, but those who are stuck in the vale of bombast, deceit and stupid belief systems, what can i say ?
the fish with "golden scales"
fool’s gold
the great bright pearl
turned out to be plastic
reading from a book goes nowhere
yet there glimmers something
beyond the morass
ed. the above poem refers to eihei dogen’s shobogenzo essay "ikka-no-myoju" (one bright pearl/jewel)
“
As long as
I am not clinging to the truth,
I cannot be deceived ”
a variant of the "liars" paradox ?
as long as i am not deceived, i am not deceived ?
am i not deceived ?
the mud of history
clarity is fiction
one wanders
too far
into the strange and not so strange
only, foresight is needed to know
what is relevant
and
not
relevant
men women
wars childbirth
everyone takes them for granted
but there is another space
beyond
only to walk there
leaves everything
behind
people who are smarmy and
over-nice to those that agree with them
and brutal and obnoxious to those that don’t
make me sick
things happen to us that are unseen, unremembered and unaware of
yet we are changed
different somehow
there may be cause and effect but it is unknown by us
in more abstract terms solipsism implies we are complete and sociality implies we are incomplete
so we are incomplete and complete
what does that mean ?
that we are faceted
which exactly matches the brain, it is functionally segmented/ has facets
and a special case of facets is the unitary
and in terms of the brain you can argue that consciousness is unitary
that could be what is interesting about existence, a vast accidental biological experiment in the mystical
imo "sociality" is developing in an inextricable way (genetic) as part of the brain from conception, just like for language, yes colour me chompskyan
the intransigent
you can’t hurt them
they wait on the sidelines
to peck at you
the odd thing about war
would you rather be dead on the winning side
or
alive on the losing
a deep contradiction
that has always
bedevilled
violent conflict
and in particular
the nature of prisoners
a world of blind alleys
a prophet at each one
the voice echoes
as i walk
down
a wind shift
they no longer love you
still
in their season
the wild flowers
flame
more beautiful
answers
to no questions
looking for home
no need to look
sorrow and grief and dissonance
are my home
the flame flickers
before it goes out
the milinda/menandrous/nâgasena dialogues are actually socratic, menandros was racially and culturally greek
they are a very interesting read, a snapshot of a religion from a very different culture to ours, obsessed with transmigration,
re-incarnation and various other buddhist tropes like justifying abandoning your family and
selling the children into slavery
today’s western buddhism is clearly yet another religious reinvention to fit modern western mores
a good video showing how the sheer greekness of buddhism was result of the existence of the
greco-bactrian kingdoms
the logical or socratic aspect of buddhism leads to claims its not a religion, but you can see from the milinda dialogues that is not the case, it was a full fledged religion designed to suit the state, in particular, buddha has become a person and there is "supernatural retribution" for "misdeeds" in this life which is essential justification for any moral code
on a moonlit night
everything has its own shadow
literary
fictions that are supposed
to convey insight
literary
fictions that are supposed
to convey something
this crazy world of
hazardous nutrition we live in
“ pathogenic bacteria can invade and kill
caco-2 cells — cells which line the wall of the intestine. the researchers found that an amount of sweeteners equivalent to two cans of diet soft drink can significantly increase the ability of e. coli and e. faecalis to attach to caco -
2 cells.
they also found sweeteners to have an effect on the formation of biofilms – clusters of bacteria that are more likely to secrete toxins and less sensitive to antimicrobial resistance treatment, potentially increasing the risk of disease ”
life
its expectations
a garden without a gardener
a half-filled gift shop
something there
we cannot penetrate
an illusion without source
we wander
"mind" is like "god", people use the term without any discoverable meaning behind it, to embark on discussions involving these terms is to take a journey going nowhere and to no point
facts match evidence, of which you produce none
an interesting thing about "soaps" is the male characters have their own "genre stereotype" not resembling too much except female fear and distain, and of course, themselves
china’s history is periods of internal division interspersed with periods of imperial expansion
we are seeing the second phase emerge again
historically it has only been stopped by force, hopefully the modern world is sufficiently different that it doesn’t come to that
if its not at the beginning
and not at the end
and not in the middle
why can’t it be all three
and it is
and
is
not
does hypocrisy exist at a physiological level?
, that the mechanisms in the brain for the perception of others is different from our perception of ourselves
we wouldn’t survive if we weighted equally our sense of ourselves and that of others
at the beginning and end of the universe there is no time
a really good
interview with sir roger penrose
infinity or not infinity is simply two different ways of viewing the same fundamental geometry as exemplified by escher's angels and devils prints/tessellations
interestingly sir roger has a more abstracted view of time than
carlo rovelli , there are differences, i’m more in agreement with penrose than rovelli
“ we are all in the same present ”
actually we are all in different "presents" its simply a coincidence that we appear to be in the same "present"
a rather massive coincidence, so improbable it is at the limit of statistics, but that is the nature of existence
following a long thread of thought through
leads to
surprising conclusions
productive
i’d
say
a meister eckhart quote
whoever speaks of god as nothing, speaks of god properly
my comment
i’d retranslate that as "ideas of god are empty"
my response to yet another person totally ignoring what i said in a comment reply
you are imposing a nonsensical meta, projecting into the air so to speak, totally uncoupled from any real response to what i have written, schizophrenia if you will
we don’t have heads or bodies
they are just constructs
we could equally well exist without them
being time
is time
and not of it
time and timeless
timeless and time
do you understand ?
“ just more words trying to explain ”
you are not addressing my point about the contradiction, some robot reading my words without understanding what is said
"explaining the unexplainable" is actually what "enlightenment " is about, your stance is not enlightened so to speak
there is an old zen koan about this, a needle cannot pass the border guards but a horse and carriage go through
“ well u said explaining the unexplainable is enlightenment ? that’s absurd, u can’t explain what is unexplainable ”
how you can is what the koan was about, you are taking the theoretical position, that the needle can’t pass, that you can is fundamental to zen and enlightenment, otherwise there’s no point (excuse the pun)
“ if i am the past aiming for the future. what is zazen ? ”
spinning wheels that don’t grip
a waste of time
at the end of time
one of life’s fundamental problems
how to extract "benefit"
from
"choosing beggars"
meditation
the spinning wheels have nothing to grip on
and so spin forever
youtube news flash
yet another warthog is killed by a lion
warthog police refuse to investigate
a spokesman said they have their families to think of
a member of the mbiri pride said they were open to meeting with the relatives
a shrivelled life
time shrivels us
age is a slow leaking away of ourselves
drifting in the desert
we might as well may be
aridity
a mood settles on you
unbeknownst a tap is turned on
its amazing what comes out
just as mysteriously
the tap turns off
the sense of escape
what escapes you
you also escape from
one side or another
or the other
of
one side or another
or
the other of the other of
catch this and you catch everything
A is
B
but
B is not
A
people in effect say this, but the contradiction escapes them
if you say that something "cannot be explained" then that is in effect an explanation about it
for instance, its contrasted to things "that can be explained"
also it subsumes a series of "proofs" that it cannot be explained, which are of course, "explanations" in themselves
even if there was only heaven and no hell (actually a zoroastrian intrusion into christianity) it would still worry me
i think i’d prefer
non-existence to heaven
life
a woven tapestry
or so we think
more like
or what isn’t it like
or there isn’t
any
likeness
life
a woven tapestry
or so we think
more like
or what isn’t it like
or there isn’t
any like
the ending wound up in the beginning
the middle ran off with the afterword
the index shuffled into incoherence
the writer was written about
this is what makes
a
book
we make stories
with a beginning, middle and end
how little we understand !
there’s a certain type of thinking where opinions can and should change within minutes
one certainty is replaced with another
so much for "certainty"
at first glance it would seem logical that men transgendered to women would have an obvious advantage in any sport, but in
fact what we are seeing is the imposition of a neo marxist ideology where complete biological plasticity is assumed and the unyielding effect of developmental processes are ignored
in terms of this ideology, this plasticity is assumed to be general; intelligence, social class, income, practically any category of being is assumed interchangeable with the exception of an aspect of racial identity, other aspects are of course assumed to be as exchangeable
transgender operations and hormone treatments necessarily significantly compromise later health because the male or female developmental process has been markedly disrupted, what sex you are born as is at its base chromosomal and can’t be changed without consequence
in most cases to go ahead with the operations and treatments is diagnostic of a degree of schizophrenia and the high rates of suicide and mental illness amongst the transgendered are not surprising, there was an initial misperception of the only partially discrete nature of male and female
nor is the misperception engendered by ideology surprising, its a facet of "social learning" a core human facility, untested ideas picked up and disseminated
i’m a man
i’m a woman
i’m trans
i’m gay
i’m i’m
its just social media
but they treat it like life and death
why ?
its just social media
but he/she treats it like life and death
why ?
its just a message board
but they treat it like life and death
why ?
its just a message board
but he treats it like life and death
why ?
death is just another state of being
only we can’t access it
as if we could
the man of no
self-awareness
ploughs on
disaster for himself
and
others
opinions usually lack the dignity
of being right or wrong
but are
instead
meaningless
those whose hunger
is to take from you
and punish in return
for showing them needy
you have to be introduced to it
to
believe it
but its there
always has been
the modern reality
vacant opinions
hitting their own vacancy
public attention
a world of intrusion
in varying degrees
destructive
it must be tough as a herbivore
everything else looks at you as meat
things undone have a certain tension
escalation
is the fear
“ belligerent man ”
thinks stupidty is a virtue
his of course
tongue tied
i wish
ed. interestingly there is also a physical condition of tongue-tie present at birth
words
jumbled together
the fraud
exposes
himself
i really favour plato over
neo-plantonism
plato doesn’t meta, but lets "absence" speak,
neo-platonism is too overt
what the fakes do when they go into denial
its pretty effortless
because they are too lazy to even put work into denial
“ what is the meaning of life ? ”
there’s really no answer
because
there’s no meaningful question
that
can be
asked
spiritus mundi
spade in hand
we go to dig its treasures
does it work like that ?
or from a bleeding wound
the diamonds tumble out ?
when you begin
your concern is to impose your view on everything
when more advanced
everything
is
grist
to
the
mill
"belligerent man"
not a fan
of my poems
but
won’t
write
any
himself
how strange the world is
dreams
imagination
other worlds
in
writing
open the walls
of the hereafter
the brain can sense something
and follows it like a hound
over a lifetime
the brain can sense some things
and follows them like a hound
over a lifetime
words
the
order
matters
everything that occurs
is not right or wrong
or wrong or right
because
it
occurs
transgression is an important part of writing
it can’t be otherwise
the secret is to keep it legal
there’s a skill to giving offense
just about anything can be phrased that way
we think of sleep as a passive state that we go into in the absence of activity, but in fact it is itself a process of highly organised active states that do fundamental physiological things relating to memory, cleaning the brain of waste and doing repair
when we wake the brain has to "boot" into consciousness and lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, sleep walking and other problems are all malfunctions of this process
by god sleep walking can be dangerous
something else not appreciated is an ongoing sleep insufficiency physically damages the brain
the easy way to look at "god" and "jesus" is they are literary fictions, you don’t need to do any more deconstruction, its sorta soap opera material, sometimes with a bit of literal historical nastiness to make it all seem more real
“ is it just me ? i find dogen’'s endless repetitions (thousands of eyes here, thousand of eyes there . . . ) really annoying, this never adds up to more than just saying it once ”
yeah it does add up, its just the translations don’t convey the back and forth and the shifts of meaning that go with the movement
its so fundamental that you don’t take a translations what the author originally said, but people just don’t get it
so much of translation is viewed through the eyeglass of contemporary culture and are effectively,
re-interpretations
languages are a dime a dozen
its their expression of the deep root of meaning
that matters
demons are machines
their behaviours run like well oiled gears
all quite explainable really
they don’t negotiate
with you
but are not
uninfluenced
literary writing is like an extreme
its always partly fictional
“ mentalese ”
this idea of
"non-verbal" thoughts
prior to verbalization
verbally expressed
in circles
arguing with idiots
the same idiocy
each time around
in circles
arguing with idiots
the same idiocy
leaving before you can
we would like to
but even if we do
we don’t
ordering our lives
well forget it
ordering an understanding of life
there’s something to that
the malevolent deranged
who mean you harm
wait in the wings
to strike
of course
being deranged
they never target
that well
thank god
autistic women
and the way they try to
re-invent various wheels
autistic women
and the way the try to
invent various wheels
sometimes
the vacancy
behind
a
pretty or handsome
face
is
simply appalling
sometimes
the vacancy
behind
a
pretty or handsome
face
is
appalling
there’s some sort of limitation in talking
compared to writing
not enough density ?
the problem with fame
any sort
is
you
become
a
target
for
predators
a cat outside the door
coughing
it sounded like a distressed child
it had my immediate attention
what you most hate is probably telling you the most
more thought to investigate the matter
rather
than rush on
with an ersatz opinion
living in a child’s world
brooking no disagreement
unable to argue a point
unpleasant repercussions
some adults
and what did hakuin, dogen and keizan say about death ?
what does anybody say ?
a million people, a billion answers
my one answer is this
when someone dies they are gone
that is all
insanity
that thinks its so normal
what can you do about it ?
women weaponize anxiety
and
tears
the brain can accommodate small changes
that’s what we have to do as we get older
do enough and be on target enough that after a while
they
line
up
leave the insane to their ramblings and erroneous views
they only get hostile when you try to correct them
sometimes dangerously so
now it so happens we have first hand accounts of what soto zen monks and priests thought about what death was in
16th century japan because the jesuits argued with them on it
it was very solipsist, that the world ceased to be when we died which i thought was interesting
personally i don't think the question has any real meaning
if not for the brutal
repression of christianity, japan could have ended up with a majority christian population
learning to think for yourself is such a skill
its taken me most of my life
we are so swayed by others
there is nothing
a terrible emptiness fills the world
until the fullness
returns
understanding history adds so much insight and depth to foresight, so many are oblivious to this fact with their immature opinions of the transient
"gesshin" claire greenwood "trained" at a zen convent in japan
her
book about it "bow first, ask questions later" is a good read, her time there was a lot of fun to follow when she was blogging
she doesn’t have much of a sense of humour, but her experience is in the nature of a farce so its very humorous
accomplished writers i notice have been writing from childhood, they can be successful by their thirties because it takes twenty years at least to learn how to write, unless you start young then as a rule its too late
me, i’m more inclined to charles bukowski’s
view
lord jesus christ
son of god have mercy upon me
if i ever believe this bullshit
stalin and hitler both killed more of their countrymen by bad strategical and tactical errors in world war two than was possible by intentional means
i think religion gets re-invented all the time, you can pick it over a generation or two, but not within a generation where it is always assumed to have been like that eternally before and after, a necessary illusion or so-called absolute beliefs would have to crumble because they would more truly be seen as relative
the historical reality of monasticism is very mixed, so much so you have to wonder at the human ability to maintain social facades in the face of so much contradictory evidence
medieval european convents were often high class brothels for the nobility and one subtext of teresa of avila setting up her own order is trying to get away from this
the jesuits were paedophilic, greek orthodox was homosexual, asian and european monastic orders involved in orphanages were paedophilic, its sorta endless the hidden agendas, religious orders were more like half way houses for insanity and perversion, though with orphanages its likely the children would have died without the monastic care so there was a high social tolerance for what went on
like islam , i think monasticism was reinvented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to look "cleaner" or more "pure" than their historical medieval realities, islam was certainly a much more pragmatic tolerant religion than it is today
there's something unique about religion and the medieval period where whole societies turned themselves over to an extreme level of social control under some theological banner or other and it think it was what by any standard were extraordinarily high death rates for war or disease
i got criticized for painting with too broad a brush so to speak
my reply
true, its a wide swathe, but substantially true from my reading of various historical accounts and records and actually the contemporary eg the catholic and greek orthodox churches
the high point of the catholic church is the last pope, pope benedict, a flagrant queen with his very handsome assistant /lover
benedict had a superb "dress" sense
the greek orthodox church is always having various homosexually related scandals
religion is nonsense, why would anyone join these orders ?
its all "fringe benefits" isn’t it ?
don’t mistake me as being negative on homosexuality, its more the context i’m critical of
my favourite story goes right back to "the desert fathers" and two "saintly " men of good public standing ended up having to spent the night in a convent that was lesbian, boy they got "roasted"
starting with a mock hosanna complete with palm leaves held over their heads as they entered , then not being permitted to eat because they were so "saintly"
hmm
pre meiji japan not like north korea, the only thing like north korea is orwell's book 1984 to an absolutely weird and horrifying extent
how can you explain
non-literalism ?
the literal seems like its true
but its not
“ how can i be the only one right and everyone else wrong ? ”
if there’s only you then of necessity you are going to be right
the chaos of events
keeps us returning to the same old tracks
we need to break out
even to form the idea
is difficult
vitamin
D deficiency makes opiates
much more addictive
women need money
“ what makes you say that ? ”
you are kidding me ?
sorrow
so wide and constant
the details we forget
what we do remember
burnishes into
something else
more
than
a memory
the lady
of shalott
stepped into life
and
was
vanquished
she wove the web of image
for
a
reason
the trap of correction
a whirlwind
that sucks you in
the hindu gods are the best
the zen pantheon is bereft
give me brahma, vishnu, shiva
compared to whom
sariputra, huineng and bodhidharma
are a pest
age
so many roads
you have cut and made yourself
and travelled them
but new roads are required and some of the old ones have to be abandoned
its
disheartening
but
necessary
the dream of time are we
lesser, greater
the known and unknown
all different
yet subject to the same erosion and accretion
finally
to
fade
forever
ozymandis, too
one day
will be gone
unmissed
ed. the weird thing is you can actually see ozymandis today, aka ramesses II
to be fair to shelly, his mummy wasn’t discovered until well after shelly’s death
the dream of time are we
lesser, greater
the known and unknown
all different
yet subject to the same erosion and accretion
finally
to
fade
forever
ozymandis, too
one day
will be gone
“
No worst, there is none.
Pitched past pitch of grief ”
well gerard
categories of grief dismember
you wring a perverse comfort from your supposed miseries
but outside categories
what is there ?
a leaden dullness
or something else ?
when i was staying at the cambridge zen center many years ago, it seemed odd to me that mary baker eddy never entered the dialogue, but after many years of observation i have concluded this "blinkering" is fundamental to religion, a self imposed "crimping"
zen shows it in the wilful ignorance of literature as well, i don’t know if you are familiar with the russian theorist mikhail bakhtin, but his ideas of what makes literature, inverted become what makes religion
so literature and religion are opposite poles on a continuum, or more like some sort of perverse parallel, a star trekian "evil universe" so to speak
well stalin was an evil overlord of course, bakhtin’s life is interesting, only escaped death in a gulag camp because of a bad leg
saints talk to god
they are not really saints
saints see god
now they are really saints
there’s this fundamental shift in life
from wanting the world to be the way we think it should be
to taking advantage of whatever occurs
perhaps its a sense of time running out and the realisation that the expectation of a world consistent with how we think it should be is deluded
cancer takes us at our weakest point
the need to grow
girl interrupted is fascinating, based on the real life of susanna kaysen you can see "the girl" has a strong though not overwhelming degree of schizophrenia, an inadaptive brittle streak that places her in a constant situational trauma
that conscious sort of double flip needed to adapt to the world that some of us have to do is being rejected because of buying in too strongly to the normative way of doing things, they (the normative) don't do "the double flip", so why should i ?
well you are "different" and not them at all
i died
heaven turned out to be an insane asylum
hell a sadist’s bloodbath
purgatory
, well i had just left that
dante
you were a fabulist
and
not
“ you are a quite presumptuous and rude fellow. Take care then, bye bye now ”
you can say these things, but who are you fooling ?
yourself ?
you seem to be good at that
you’re a self absorbed little prince with no experience of life who thinks he knows it all ?
the sameness
going on forever
we call it life
depressing
caravaggio used a lot of
white lead in his painting
it would explain his behaviour problems
dementia is an extreme of normal brain function atrophy in aging
don't think it won't happen to you
it does
painters : you want to do something photos don’t do
unexamined "personal competence" in a partner seems to be the elephant in the room for so many relationships and marriages these days
marriage is just a staging post, some journeys thereafter are not worth taking
what is loss ?
the sense of having missed out on something ?
its a wide term with lots of berths
i don’t think you can say eihei dogen was meaning anything except a monk as he understood it, which was celibate and not married (japanese monks are not celibate since the meiji edict)
its inconsistent to take dogen as gospel in most of his writings and ignoring his views on being a monk versus a layman
there is a fundamental issue and its that "enlightenment" is a difficult construct and can’t be extricated from life experience, it is literally torn apart for people in relationships or with children, the directions are different and in a way opposite to celibacy, take one or the other, but cross them and you risk disaster
becoming a monk
promiscuity and poverty
these vows
he
takes
flowers at dawn
opening
infinite face
itchy boots visits
the fish river canyon in namibia, the world’s second largest
i think video offers another dimension compared to photographs
interesting, men and women’s hip sizes are
a compromise from what is ideal for either gender
i don’t know how the feminists are going to handle that part of the pain of childbirth is due to the male need for narrower hips
the mind churns
its not butter it makes
i don’t know what it makes
but its not good
there’s so many walking around these days with a degree of schizophrenia
when they are not reasonable on a consistent basis is when you can pick it
basically they misperceive the world to the extent of not being able to negotiate to their own benefit, sorta locked behind a door of
self-inflicted incompetence
i don’t know why south korea, japan, taiwan and australia don’t take the obvious lesson from north korea, that they are developing the atomic bomb to keep china out, and the limited success they have had to date has been enough to stop them being invaded
its certainly the way china and north korea perceive it for all the
bru-ha about the south
china’s huge coastal population densities make it very vulnerable to atomic warfare
if you look at history, china as an empire (which it hasn’t been for two centuries but is now again)
, has always been territorially expansionist, stopped only by defeat in battle
interestingly the yuan dynasty got as far as
java , while china’s south sea claims are not reasonable in today’s world, they are thinking back to historical glory
the world
a chinese puzzle of involvement
impelled to move the pieces
we suddenly discover
they
are
sticky
because most people don’t read widely in
quality mystical literature, when they meditate they have nothing to work on, so they go some degree of crazy
the exception i would make is for those with addiction problems who certainly have something to work on
weirdly, recovered addicts make up a large proportion of r|meditation, which although quite schizophrenic points to some success in this area
the real deal of "mystical inquiry" is quite life destabilising and i don’t recommend it and in fact this is implicitly recognised by all the fake and pretend in supposed mystical work like zen, buddhism, kabbalah or contemplative christianity
married with or without kids is not the solipsist road, take the horse you have been given and don’t risk destruction by tying to ride two at once
that would be "enlightenment" but the grasping fools reach for what they can’t attain and all that happens is you get an aggressive moil of stupidity and its consequences
i have never really read anything so mind blowing
a societal pyschosis
stalin: the court of the red tsar
the cement of being joined to another
is not quite there for me
is it escape
or loss ?
sa’di’s janus head
how we see another
comes from our inclination
an excess of faults
or merits
we forgive and condemn
with a limited rationality
for a week or fortnight i can write prodigiously in a retired place and a day in london sets me up again and starts me
but the toll and labour of writing, day after day, without that magic lantern, is immense
charles dicken in a letter to john foster 30/8/1846
no sooner than arisen
than fading
and
something else arises
the magic lantern show
of
life
no sooner than arisen
than fading
and
something else arises
the lantern show
of
life
there are limitations on the solipsist idea that "you made it all"
it is in effect an analogy of sorts and all analogies fail because they are not what they analogise
however there is a sense in "being all alone" given the world necessarily does not understand, humans are social animals and rejection hurts and it takes a lot of development to be able to handle this dissonance
you won’t find company in your own generation, you have to look across the centuries and millennia
randomness in art
doesn’t work
randomness in art
doesn’t really work
when you get to a certain level in writing and the arts you lose your sense of criticism of other works and your only interest is in what you can take from them
paradoxically your own works have the least to offer, because you have already taken from them
so many critics twist what they say against their idea of what art or writing should be about because they lack the conceptual repertoire to synthesize what they read or see into new understanding
the usa southern accent sounds
pretty close to sir henry neville’s/ shakespeare’s english
if you research a health problem on the net and read recent quality research or look at a video by a professional who clearly understands his subject and can explain it, you will start to understand what is a known criticism of hospital teaching schools, that they are ten years behind
when you deal with the professionals you should take into account that you may know quite a bit more than them through that research, but also that with so much practical experience behind them they will be well ahead of you in some, most, and likely essential areas and that research has big gaps
its more than a difficult road to tread, "all wrong" and "all right" is more easily seen, but picking out what useful in a well mixed blend is going to be fraught, however just to go along with all the given advice is asking for trouble
you have to be very careful of the web, its sorta a mix of extremely good and extremely bad advice
its frictionless conveyance of information makes it not statistical in terms of what we are accustomed to in normal life, especially the very high percentage of borderline mentally ill people infesting it with their crazy missionizing, often, not at all obvious
i got banned from r/optometery for criticising someone (in the industry) pushing lasik on an
OP who was entirely unsuitable for the operation
my reply to the mods
you have banned me
i lost the email saying so, but after a couple of days to think about it, i know what my objection is
you are not permitting different opinions which is leading to a lot of the advice given being "overly commercial" in the sense of favouring certain interventions like lasik
by this you are making the sub a hazard
your choice i guess, i am sure you will not see the sense in what i say
a reddit
OP suspects that taking
400mg of vitamin
E daily has given him retinal haemorrhages/ valsava retinopathy
my reply
yeah that’s a bleeding dose if taken daily, it used to be and still is used as a remedy for age related "blood thickening"
vitamin
E is extraordinarily difficult to take satisfactorily because it has many forms and different costs and benefits from a health point of view, you really want to research this
i don’t like daily doses of the
d-alpha type at all because it displaces other more broad ranging in effect types of vitamin E got from the diet, but take a bolus dose of
300mg about once every ten days
ideally there should be a supplement with an optimal balance of forms, but have yet to find it
interesingly, one of the other commenters said
“ i’ve had patients who have had unexplained bleeding in their retina and i’m always sure to ask a thorough medication history. often there was excessive ibuprofen/aspirin/vitamin e/fish oil or some other blood thinner taken “
malign missionaries
the web is full of them
specialists
in the half thought out
how big is big ?
not big enough
how long is time
not long enough
time to put
vast in the waste paper basket
anxiety
a knotted mess
no rest
the flaw of "scientism" is its root is "matter"
however "matter" is just another idea, however true
the spinal cord is important, it is not just an extension of the brain, but literally the brain
“ for the snark was a boojum you see ”
i have pondered over the meaning for this for many years and i think its something to do with the image being itself or the image also being real
huh, i am not the only one to have
mulled over this
lewis carroll didn’t come out of nowhere
, he is heavily indebted to w.s. gilbert and i suspect sufi writings
time can be reversed
in images , but not real life
big difference
another good
macro
brad warner gets asked to do paid "one on one" zoom interviews, but he always turns the requests down
my view expressed to him
why not try it and see how it works out, you can stop if there’s shown to be a problem ?
surely , one of the points of zen is to understand that the world doesn’t match our projections and its only through trial and error of experience that our grasp of it improves
you are stuck in an "authors zen"
, you really don't understand how the teaching side works, i have considerable experience with different zen groups and its clear to me you lack a realistic understanding of how it all works in real life, too much a damn princess
ed. well he wasn’t willing
you’re not listening, what can i say ? actually i’m so sure you won’t listen, that’s why i write this stuff, no danger of you following through, it always bugs me when people take my advice, they’re getting something for free
brad warner is complaining about a "meditation activist" debasing the/his coin so to speak
my reply
brad, you are dealing in "intellectual property" and unless you are disney, there’s absolutely no protection from theft
if there’s money in something you are going to get theft
even if there’s no money, you get all the crazies grafting it for who knows what reason
its interesting to compare your books which are protected by copyright to your efforts to create your own brand of buddhism which has no protection at all and all the "choosing beggars" on your vlog with their putrid praise and
self-puffery , all figuring they are somehow paying you with their fetid nonsense and absolutely no cash ever
"choosing beggar" is a net and real life paradigm, worth becoming acquainted with
what it is
why be a victim of such highly entitled idiots, yet you choose to be ?
anne sexton
for whom "being" was agony
shattered and fragmented
death seemed an answer
was it ?
i'm sure
you discounted the price for the sort of problems you are picking up in the yacht, but its an interesting illustration of how it takes a bit of a while of "use" to suss out the real condition of anything secondhand, i always feel that in general the secondhand market is overpriced for anything because of hidden problems it takes a while to pick up, especially since the previous owner is aware of them and tries to hide them
you can make good buys, but i feel its almost a "supernatural" skill to do that
when you get that sinking feeling, listen, its your brain telling you no
there was an
OP on a feminist subreddit about rape jokes, i was thinking i have never heard a rape joke, but actually all the ones i have heard are about male prisoners
however i was thinking that conception is a form of rape, both parties getting raped by the newly conceived child
too subtle and existential for that lot i suspect
the spinal cord is part of the brain and
stenosis is yet another "fun" problem of aging
interestingly, it is as susceptible to "knocks" as the brain and its no wonder the high rate of paraplegics as a result of heavy body contact sports
the eye is a dazzlingly complex mechanical, biochemical, biomechanical machine without peer in the body
the downside is that anything you do to it surgically has some degree of unwanted consequences
this is the huge unmentioned advantage of glasses, they provide vision correction without interference in the actual eye
i think there’s a bad tendency for this "existential substrate" to be ignored and operations embarked upon that don’t truly weight the risk reward ratio, particularly lasik and too early cataract operations
“
Our consent forms are
8 pages long for a reason ”
says it all doesn’t it, talk is cheap
i can say in one sentence what it says, no responsibility is accepted whatever and the client/patient bears all future costs
concert pianists seem to "match" some composers better than others
like yuja wang and
prokofiev
it amazes me
how proficiency
in one area
leads to blindness
in others
my writing
seems to be a machine
that doesn’t
stop
forming an attachment
that gets sundered
life
i
guess
“ kindness and compassion are all of ours to share, as are smiles and helping hands ”
what a load of dissembling nonsense
“ we are living in the end of days. the verse numbers in the last chapter of the bible are
20 & 21
20 he which testifieth these things saith, surely i come quickly. amen. even so, come, lord jesus
21 the grace of our lord jesus christ be with you all. amen ”
worked out what you are going to say in
2022 yet ?
ed. no reply, he might figure he doesn’t need to ?
occupy yourself with what yields fruit to you, a lot of what we do goes nowhere
eva braun was likely half jewish, but that
video is schizophrenic
you don’t research adequately, look at the
shoah interviews
are these people making it up ?
“ everyone knows that the sky is blue and the tree is green, but who is able to say it clearly ? ”
blue skies
cranberry pies
clouds come
striking us dumb
summer leaves
lost their green
all returns
and goes
in cycles
if you take nonsense as sense, you are going to run into difficulty
it is so difficult to be given and pick up effective advice that we have to work out most things ourselves
time slips away
like a river
strange and smooth
swirls and whorls
an opaque
mystery
for "essential peace"
you might as well say "disorder"
yet there is both
peace
and
disorder
rush rush
even for a spare moment peace
is busy
rush rush
even for a moment peace
is busy
to be patient
is to draw back an event before it happens
there it shapes itself
and seeing its development
we step in as needed and to our advantage
absence, nothing
the emptiness of ourselves
starting out
one word drops after the other
some trip
into a new line
sense builds
and fades
and goes in different
directions
to finally
sew together
making
a poem
writing is patience
well i am not that patient
but i have learnt
whatever the muse is
he/she waits
and delivers
what
suits
her
sylvia
your heaviness of being
some angel thrust into hell
not the safety for you of androgyny
following
pre-programmed patterns
wrecked you
callously spitting you into the statistics of failure
and pain
sylvia plath
monolingual
can weave words
on a different plane
the importance of french windows
that sense of space
when
opened
what is outside
falls into
you
there are some "tricks" to mystical understanding i’m reluctant to divulge
one is that the auditory is not reliable
only the visual is reliable
don’t ask me why
in essence pornography
totally at odds with the lyrics
all you had to do was follow the storyline of the lyrics a bit rather than this gratuitous display, bad enough to be ashamed of
"something is in the air right now"
, hmm been listening to
sally’s song ?
a statement and question by stephan bielfeldt (ed. in quotes) followed by my comments
“ recently, someone asked me what i have learned from years of experiencing this meditative way of being, and this answer spontaneously came, “i’ve become interested in what is here” ”
my comment
honestly i would have to say i’ve really learnt nothing, i’m not sure i "learn" at all
“ is there such a thing as a place that is whole and sacred, a place of oneness, beyond thought and all imagining? ”
my comment
what is a place of oneness ?, what is "beyond thought, imagination" what is a place that is whole ?
toss sacred down the well, give up ideas of place and oneness, arrive at where you don’t arrive is closer and you need to see it in thought afterwards
the neo-adviata, advanta and new age patter shows extremely limited reading horizons and no sense of its dissembling poverty, and actually i think that was a weakness of toni packer, too accomodating to the thought of others, but perhaps not so surprising given the trauma of her upbringing as half jewish in nazi germany
just as a side note, black africans in germany were not discriminated at all by the nazis, i watched a video by one african women who said the only trouble she and her brother ever had with the gestapo was on account of their association with a steiner school and it wasn’t on account of their race, but the steiner schools they were in the process of closing down, her brother worked as a chef on a coastal cargo ship for the duration of the war
the nazi focus on jewery was only because of their property, businesses and wealth, all the propaganda and ideology was just a disguise for state sponsered robbery, which was a long european tradition and what happened was super amplified into the ulitmate progrom by technological changes which was also heidegger’s opinion to be fair to him
i have a jewish ancestor lving in lübeck who emigrated to england in the early nineteenth century, i think that’s when the "thermostat" must have been starting to rise, that politics was becoming not the provenance of an intelligent aristocracy who could be relied upon to step in when their commercial interests were being threated by a pogrom, but more determined by popular attitudes which as we know can be quite brutal and outstandingly
self-injurious
back to the topic, i would say "arrive at where you don’t arrive" is pretty much it and won’t make sense without without the experience, i was going to write it takes years and years to garner this perception, but actually i would have understood this at age
7 after "the experience"
there’s no circle like spiritual circles
chasing what they can’t find
enmeshed in conceptual poverty
flailing calling that direction
one pushes on oneself
leaving them behind
a dot goes around in a circle
how many times ?
one two three four
time to bail
a dot goes around in a circle
how many times ?
one two three
time to bail
the world is full of virtuoso players
guitar, piano, organ, trumpet and so on
what’s short is composers who can think originally
our discussion at this point is just a dot going around in a circle, you don’t agree with me and i have spent enough time arguing fruitlessly on the web to be wary of wasting any more
tibetan buddhist mythology would make a good film script
catastrophe/ war/ horror/ science fiction/ opera/ love/ end times/ ghost/ satire/ armageddon
i understand you more than you think
people have surprisingly consistent patterns
age has an underlying fatigue
that saps the energy for life
age has an underlying fatigue
superfluity withdraws
we hope
beware
we all mean well
but when it comes to the crunch
exigencies dominate
“ peggy kennett wanted to be a church of england priest but women weren’t allowed to at the time
, (changed in
1992) ”
quite correct, i stayed at a hermitage in the hokianga new zealand run by a woman who was rejected for the priesthood , so she became a priest in a puritan church, but she was totally anglican/episcopalian in her heart (with some eastern orthodox trimmings of course)
, it was big mistake on the part of the anglican church not to have women priests and significantly contributed to its decline
you are fondly remembered clem
the most extraordinary thing was she had a genuine illuminated bible worth many millions kept in a drawer in her house more like a shack
kensho can be directly visionary or something may occur that you only notice by a change in yourself so figure something has happened, though unsure when and what, diffuse or sudden
without the visionary you will never understand and of course hardly anyone ever does, and they just 'manufacture" the usual nonsense
i think zen like any historical monastic system always has huge problems with mental illness so its a bit of a fraught area and you have to be "enlightened" to handle it
with the real deal you can tell whether the experiences of others are genuine or relevant, this skill has been lost for centuries
the visionary does not fit into western zen because it does not fit into its philosophical rationalist take and actually seething snakes of mental illness below the surface, so for instance you get dogen's visionary experiences in china dishonestly translated as dreams when they are not
the not understood fact of true understanding of the "spiritual reality" of the universe is schizophrenia, autism and psychosis that happens to be true, a narrow long road hardly ever travelled, but it can be, but never even thought of by all the "sane" pretenders
circles return
again
and again
with no prospect of escape
what to do ?
so you are
self-taught, but i’m saying you need to deal with the world to make sense of it, so this conversation we are having for instance helps me clarify my understanding, it can stop at any point and i have "made money" so to speak
i also write and web publish homilies and poems and it provides material for that
i had a look at your
song again, its very good, but there is another level available to you but you would need to take an interest in poetry and folk music
the problem with
self-taught is we don’t live anything like the ten thousand years needed
you don’t seem to get this
the country most like george orwell’s
1984 , didn’t exist when he wrote it, its like he called north korea into being
two roads
one real, the other unreal
ostensibly they cover the same ground
but
they
don’t
the moon washes herself every night
changing
untainted by the seething planet
below
if you have a problem, the most important thing is not to fix it immediately
but fix it enough
so you can be relaxed about finding a lasting solution
boarding school is like the army, its designed to break your spirit
when you look at something for a few years
you start to get it right
decades later
you get it righter
religion
its architecture of insanity
presumed
sane
“ i read what you write but can’t understand it ”
whose fault is that ?
“ yours ”
the web
message boards
sycophantic to what they agree with
devils to what they don’t
the janus faced
have no perception of themselves
the web
message boards
sychophantic to what they agree with
demons to what they don’t
the janus faced
have no perception of themselves
deep thinking
the pasting together of cultural memes and clichés
is not deep
or thinking
deep thinking
the pasting together of cultural memes and clichés
is not deep
or thinking
understanding
as with a staircase
to go
from bottom to top
or vice versa
is not instant
but requires work
and the passage of time
this dunning-kruger world
so ignorant of this fact
-------------------
what was my staircase analogy about ?
you are used to "cut and paste" but it doesn’t work on the staircase
your complaint to me is i’m not giving you "cut and paste", but the ideas i express require you to travel the staircase
you don’t like this
----------------------------
at the top of the stairs there’s a parcel labelled "answer"
you open the parcel and go "oh that’s the answer"
only you can open the parcel
if all the words
we ever spoke or thought
were linked to make a daisy chain
how far would they stretch ?
around the universe and back !
she’s "out"
but not
gay
or
trans
so must mean
something else
she waves goodbye
a door closes
she’s "out"
but not
gay
or
trans
so she must mean
something else
she waves goodbye
a door closes
jacob’s ladder
had rungs
and on each rung
were words
even the angels did not stop
to read them
but angels
were
never
wise
one of the most disillusioning things about writing
is people hostile to you
throw back your words and phrases
at
you
quite unconsciously
they are walking you
and would you beat you to a pulp
with yourself
a library
is labyrinth of knowledge
knowledge is a labyrinth of meaning
meaning is a labyrinth of itself
a paean for luis borges
an empty strangeness
with a sense of
the inadequacy
of libraries
and labyrinths
despite poor eyesight
interior sight
enabled him
to
shoot straight
the garden of life
a confusing vale if ever there was one
ourselves
transient objects partaking
of it
who are you
my reader
who is not me
what byway
have you traversed
to get here ?
sleep
a gulf into which we drop
unsconcious
a mini death
our own perpetual crucifixion
and resurrection
teach your grandmother to suck eggs
jesus
what is it about falling snow ?
accretion without
noise ?
drone
panorama in the karoo desert just south of namibia
its not too bad to appear as an idiot
especially when you compare it
to what doesn’t appear as an idiot
life
an illusion
pursuing
ungraspable
architecture
children
don’t be too depressed by your parents
you are and are not
of them
the potency of mirrors
even a lake reflecting a blue sky and clouds
lies in what ?
after all it is a reflection
everything has limitations
even "limitations"
there’s a huge strength in focusing and getting rid of the superfluous
there’s also a huge danger
"superfluous" is a difficult to make value judgment and to distinguish that from what might be essential in the future cannot be accurately done
coming
going
leaving
arriving
we never mark the transitions
important as they are
untangling female thought
no-one can do it
especially the thinker
"mansplaining" is now a negative attribute, but where is "femsplaining" on the cultural radar ?
the whole "isness thing" is a modern cliché, total rubbish
worse than a poor substitute its a mask to any real understanding and observation
exercise
increases lactate
increases hippocampal neurogenesis
decreases anhedonia
the eternal traveller
across
desert
mountains
jungle
sea
never stopping
to see
the problem with the press is they don’t know their enemies from their friends
its like a medieval battle with the protagonists constantly switching sides
“ i remember a singaporean author once observing on twitter that the most important lesson she’s learned is to never engage with people who are most likely arguing in bad faith
my comment
you take care of yourself, by always learning through the arguing, you don’t have to worry about bad faith or not, they are simply wasting their time while giving you benefit
its all "process", there’s absolutely no advantage in missionizing a viewpoint
you think you understand, but you don’t really and you just have this problem of thinking you understand so you never investigate further which of course can be a rough road, but being ignorant invites catastrophe
to look at a sunset without thinking
its not a category
and walk away
when its finished
emily dickenson’s life and the "aftermath" reads like a
nabakovian story
so rare is sense
that not in a generation found
across the centuries one must peruse
to find a glimmer
or even
not at all
you cannot criticize a poem
all you can do is write a poem in reply
i’ve spent years
, decades even arguing on message boards and its taught me to write and think better and in particular identify the usual sophistical techniques used by the stupid hubric against me, the principle one being "declamation"
to me dogen’s advice about avoiding arguments is self serving and simplisitic and designed to keep the peace in the close quarters of monastic living where cliques form and people can get assaulted and in the extreme killed, i call this containment "self knee capping", its how cults, centers and monasteries are kept together in a schema of nonsense
now i think about it, the privileged status dogen has as
"non-disputable" within the soto sect is actually
self-kneecapping
so, knock the shit out of the ox
in your world, views never change, that i can believe herr doktor
dogen is more understandable as a writer than sage, beats me why this escapes the entire soto sect
though the notion of "sage" is of course another writer’s "fiction"
“ please address ghosts/death/life after death views in zen ”
we never die, its just another idea though i am not so sure "being born" is an idea
ghosts are our memory
honestly the way some women think is like a tangled yarn ball
you can burn your life away on other people’s problems for little or no return, that’s for sure
something approaches on the horizon
only to walk away from me
story of my life
the platform sutra, at best contains some garbled recounting of things said by the sixth patriarch, the sutra does have an unusual and distinct voice, quite anti religious actually
the recounting of huineng’s life is myth
there is a contemporary reference possibly to huineng as a "meditation" teacher, and some steles that on balance indicate he was an historical person, but who knows the degree to which the platform sutra relates to him
to me the outstanding feature of the sutra is its what would have been dangerously anti clerical sentiment and that needs explaining
perhaps the explanation is it is targeted at the sophisticated administrative class where such sentiments were perhaps agreed with
my reply to a song composed and sung by
dark light
time’s running out
back and forth
we traverse
all is not one
the universe fractures
my soul
young goes to old
and old goes to young
harmony is a toxic illusion
dissonance yields the results
every day survival
you’ll see
live long enough
and be enquiring
dark light replies
is this poetry? see . . . i don’t know what any of it means. the feeling i get is that you’re telling me i’m wrong in my song, but maybe you aren’t. i can’t tell. harmony is a toxic illusion? my favorite thing to do is harmonize. it is all very confusing to me
my reply
i really liked the song and music, so surprising for here (ed. brad’s vlog comment section) with its swathes of the talentless
i don’t know whether you can call what i wrote a poem or not, but i wrote it as i listened to the song, its what i feel is a correction to your more conventional viewpoint which is "communal", whereas mine is solipsistic
there’s another level you can step up to, with both the music and the understanding expressed by the lyrics, you certainly have the talent, but whether you want to go there is a different question
it was a huge surprise to come across that song
if you come back to what i have written, its targeted very specifically at certain things your song says and should make sense to you eventually
another reply to her
i think what you are "writing" is more an "impression" than necessarily sense, there is a difference
"for entertainment purposes only!" (ed. she made a deprecating reference to her song)
do you see how that’s a defensive reflection ?
what you wrote and played is really quite good, why trivialise it ?
there’s path of development which actually you are already on, which is the songwriting and composing, even going back a song or two you are moving forward so that’s positive
i do a bit of writing and its painful how useless the contemporary scene is, you have to go back over the centuries in the case of writing to read/find anything helpful
you are obviously somewhat familiar with the
60’s and seventies folk music scene (ed. she wasn’t), in terms of technique and composing there’s a lot to be picked up there and in other genres like classical
i’ve got some
music links in various genres at the bottom of this page
karen dalton’s
blues jumped the rabbit and
lakmé are really outstanding
there’s a perspective from which life makes sense, if you give it time and show an interest it starts to fall into place
if you just sit on your depressive arse you will go nowhere
don’t be so sanctimonious, why not investigate what i say ?
you are sitting there behind walls of your own construction, there’s
a rich universe out there, you don’t live long enough to
re-invent it yourself
“ i’m a bit autistic . . . i take everything literally, think in black and white, and can’t read between the lines, let alone people’s minds ”
reading quality poetry really teaches you how to read "shades of grey" "between the lines" and effectively, what people are thinking
because its a "theory of mind" you have grown, you will eventually be able to it better than most people
she further complains of not understanding my reply or even that there is any sesne in it
my further reply
first off i challenge your notion of time in the song, what i wrote won't make sense if you look from the perspective of time you use
"when I was young I used to dream
of a place nobody's ever been
more real than reality "
its like you have been to this place and come back, ie some-body went there and the different perspective you get from that journey would make sense of what i write
the conventional view is that nobody goes there, the enlightened view in terms of mysticism is that somebody does go there
its real "alice through the looking glass" stuff, its a tangible journey and takes decades to process and it can't be done for you
since you are showing such an interest, its quite possible you have been there as a child and lost it in which case it has to be recovered, which if you pay attention will happen
it amazes me
how they can completely lose memories of what is so precious to them, yet retain a good command of english
i guess the answer is that language is learnt so young and uptake is so genetic, it takes brain death to unseat it
if you want to understand women
look at the
width
of their hips
you are sorta seeking some resolution or going somewhere, but the truth is nothing resolves
something can be
and not be
all mixed up
hard for the black and white thinkers
out there
to understand
sentiment can be complex and a mix, ranging from the serious to the lighthearted all in a few sentences, its a skill of course both to express and understand
web message boards like reddit are not places to throw tantrums or browbeat opposing opinions, but to convey and receive information and be able to argue rationally without being offensive
in other words a school for the development of social and intellectual skills
i certainly feel they have done that for me
a more advanced lesson is being able to pick what is worth getting involved with and justifies the time and energy involved
below is my reply to someone criticising me for criticising a comment addressed to brad, in his words
“ it's like...telling someone not to do a thing, but you are doing that very thing ”
my reply
i wasn’t "directing him" rather saying he was "telling his grandmother to suck eggs" so to speak
it wasn’t that big a deal but whether or not something is serious is up to the person involved to take as they see fit as we all know from experience when responses by people unexpectedly flare up
it can be argued you are taking my comment too seriously, or we are all falling into what is the usual web message board problem of getting too involved in the lives of others
i think what would be a fair criticism of me and the person whose comment i was criticizing, is that of getting too involved in what brad (ed. warner) is doing, yet of course one can’t criticise us because that is getting too involved on the part of the critic
you make an interesting point about a class of "criticism" that really cannot be made because it commits the same sin as what is being criticised, ie is recursive which of course is very "zen"
subtle flaws always come out
however long it takes
there are consequences to error
"the dreaming" knows its own
"chaos" is a rich literary and colloquial use word way more vast than the limited notions of the mathematical "chaos theory"
another way of looking at it is "real chaos" is necessarily going to escape theory or efforts to contain it and descriptions always look a bit thin to me
that religions mean anything are an illusion
that religions mean anything is an illusion
for "ufo's" and "aliens" to be a viable speculation as per the views somewhat emdedded in popular culture, faster than light travel is required but all the physics says its not practically possible
its a wall that you cannot get past
to try to do so is to be tainted with mental illness
the basic attribute of a "better scientific theory" is not "simplicity" but that the range of explanation is larger, more predictive of yet to be made observations and more consistent with existing observations
if its simpler its a bonus but if you look at the contemporary theoretical scene in physics and astrophysics, simplicity got left behind a very long time ago and there's just "turtles" stretching away as far as the eye can see
i think in terms of zen there's no bottom turtle in the form of "enlightenment" or "meditation"
one never thinks of having dangerous mentally ill people in close family
but its there
for some
it took me twenty years to sort out the level of crap the zen system and teachers put out, its really just a form of schizophrenia
why was i so vulnerable ?
well i was brought up in episcopalian boarding schools
what is imbibed as a child is hard to sort out as an adult
i have found the easy way to extricate modern physics from philosophy/mysticism is to look at the crazy by our standards world view of heraclitus and how he had everything else right
in other words the correctness of physics and astrophysics has no bearing on philosophical and mystical purveyance
the truth is as simple as there being "no bottom turtle" and it applies just as much in science as everything else
“ what does buddhism teach about god ? ”
it doesn’t really arise as a question because of buddhism’s origins in greek philosophy
rather it has a pantheon of gods/supernatural figures and an abstract philosophical notion of some "final cause" for being, pretty much what was is the case for ancient greece, an interesting blend to say the least
vermeer’s
little street in delft , there’s a distance in it, yet acquaintance
this
docudrama on claude monet by paul priestley is also very good
david hume stayed at a jesuit monastery in france and had contact with a jesuit missionary returning from asia, western philosophy from that point is very influenced by buddhist ideas, just like
18th and
19th century poetry was influenced by islam/sufi
philosophical and religious ideas are surprisingly easily and quickly transferred across cultures
buddhism itself was formed in part by the greek philosophy that came with the
greco-bactrian kingdoms
christianity is heavily indebted to the ancient egyptian religion, islam is a form of nestorian christianity and got substantially re-invented in the nineteenth/twentieth century, endless circles of influence weaving back and forth and a testimony to the continual mutability of cultural ideas that don’t appear to be mutable to those living within a generation
"god" is an unanswered question
what about the accusations that eihei dogen didn’t go to china, or even speak chinese, that he plagiarized others, and lied about rujing’s teachings ?
my reply
there’s good evidence he went to china, studied with rujing, however rujing never gave him transmission, dogen pretty well says this himself somewhere because transmission was really certification to be an abbot and always given in the context of being appointed to that position and rujing was dead against it so the soto transmission obsession actually comes from dogen himself and his supposed transmission "document" is a "medieval forgery"
"plagiarism" is really a modern concept, dogen certainly was taking from many many sources but i agree with ewk in this respect, that he did pretty much create his own religion
why dogen is an anathema to r|zen is that he is an unabashed mystic visionary and this is completely unpalatable to the hordes of the new "reading zennists" now infesting the web
it will be interesting if it ever "takes" in an historical sense, that in several hundred years there will be a "ewk" sect of zen,
anti-meditation and based only on the chinese records, i think there could well be
actually most people on brad’s vlog don’t get that there’s more to zen than reading, that it is a lifelong process of discovery about the real nature of the world and really that’s the only rule
the question of "god" is not whether he/she exists or not, but is itself the question
"what is god" which is a very large and neverending question and actually unanswerable
so this notion of god being an unanswerable question and that is what god is, simply that unanswerability is actually god
the problem with nothing
is it must be void of something
yet to be void
is itself something
you cannot have a propertyless "nothing"
analogies are an odd animal
powerful harbingers of pragmatic reasoning
yet they saying nothing about their own truth
when you think its sunday
and its monday
what happened
to saturday ?
already shrouded
by the mists
of what has gone before
the average mind
is a turgid mess
and doesn’t realise it
nostalgia is constructed
get real
there’s a difference between complete fiction and that which is complete fiction but pretends to be real
the latter really messes you up
often, the expression of a question conveys
more than the answer
the "gone-ness" of permanent absence
hard to get used to
i don’t know that you ever do
consciousness, awareness, being in the moment, compassion
all the spiritual trivia
of
fakes
israel has emerged the clear winner in the current gaza conflict (ed. may 2021), this time it has inflicted enough damage to cause major repercussions for hamas, yet no doubt hamas with its arab and iranian funding will hang on, and police states like gaza and north korea only go when invaded, oppression is a wonder worker for remaining in power and really the general population has no effective defence against organised cruelty
the big benefit to israel of hamas and the gaza strip situation remaining as it is, is the continued adverserial separation of the two palestinian nations, why do you think israel has not invaded the gaza strip and put in place a more popular and democratic government ?
hamas to have any chance requires missiles with larger warheads (nuclear of course would be a game changer and why there is such concern about iran being able to make them)
, pinhead accuracy and the ability to avoid
anti-missile defences, which is at least four or five generations of development away and anyway, faced with that the israelis would just invade
another war torn day in the middle east, highly intelligent aggressive peoples still stuck in the paradigms of centuries ago
when i think about it, the big problem is iran gaining the ability to make nuclear weapons, its effectively a government by multiple militias and even if the government intended to not use them, they would not be able to keep them out of the hands of the terrorist organisations they sponser, so a possible future senario is hamas or hezebollah getting hold of nuclear weapons, using them and israel responding to any strike by nuking tehran, gaza and lebanon and that would probably be about it, a lot of radioactive ruins in certain areas of the middle east, though i think saudi arabia has cause for concern which is why the whole
anti-israeli dynamic has changed in the middle east, the media are of course at least ten years behind the times, just a bunch of posturing fools
the big problem with nuclear weapons is not their existence since in effect they force and enforce peace, but where the states lose control of them and in fact this was a big lesson for the soviets in the cuba missile crisis, the politbureau were at risk of losing control of missle launching to local forces in cuba as well as the soviet navy and its very telling that during the entire crisis the russian missiles were stood down to the lowest level of rediness to signal to the americans they didn’t want to engage at the nuclear level and the trauma of it all eventually lead to khruschev being "sacked", too close for comfort
these dunning-kruger know nothing stupids who run away when pressed and just start up again back at the beginning like they have no memory of their ignominious defeat in their last conflict
the point of meditation is to become aware of how your brain works
method and practices are an anathema to this, literal blinders to any
self-observation
the fakes come to the cliff edge and turn back
its everywhere
the faux apology you see in media
like there was even a problem sometimes apart from publicity seeking
or there was a problem that required more than an apology
if some-one did that to you in real life
you wouldn’t have anything to do with them
too tricky
for words
today’s
social mores
education
is simultaneously a farce
and horror story
the young are too dangerous to leave uncrippled
so we cripple
them
oh no
"denial" is not a thing
i am never in denial
so many opinions
like and dislike
where does that go ?
erin hanson, an australian instagram poet has an exceptional command of rhythm and rhyme, but as far as i can see she has stopped writing
i suspect the perception has grown on her how in writing for an audience rather than working through her own truths makes the business somewhat sterile
i’ve seen a few really talented young poets over the years stop writing, or publishing in any form at least, so there’s really hardly any quality contemporary poetry around
the dullards persist and publicise their endless profusion of course
it is helpful to understand back posture in terms of "lordosed" vs "kyphosed"
“ a sustained
lordosed sitting posture decreases disk pressure and thereby disc degeneration, exhibits less injurious levels of ligament tension and although it increases zygapophyseal loading, this is not of itself considered hazardous to spinal health
a sustained kyphosed sitting posture, on the other hand, increases intradiscal pressure leading to increased fluid loss, decreased nutrtion and altered cell synthesis and biomechanics of the disc, appearing to culminate ultimately in disk degeneration that is a cause of lower back pain ”
there’s nothing too deep for tears
the soul cries
its anguish
what accepts us
is ripped away from us
out of our control
the big themes of writing are
attachment detachment
acceptance rejection
all the great books weave these threads
rapidly you go somewhere new
time stops while you are there
rapidly you return
your time away has been breathtaking and productive, yet somehow
with damage that needs unwinding
a path parallel to yours
may go nowhere
but helps you
pick your
own
sometimes
something
fills in the gaps
run for it
the sorely missed
the longed for dead
are not coming back
what does this tell us ?
no sense of foreboding
but something happened
while we were away
i’m
not
the
only
fatality
fading
appearing
fading again
people
life
some place
were all is
we visit
occasionally
imaginative worlds
so much more palatable
than the real one
imaginative worlds
are more palatable
than the real one
the mad are mad
its their very intractability that defines them
they cannot be corrected
men might smile to themselves as women flounder though some mechanical task they find easy
women laugh to themselves as men butcher vocabulary and expressive sense
where does the real power lie ?
“ i’m trying to understand ”
no, you are trying to shape the world to your understanding
“ now i understand ”
pity for others
then it happens to oneself
no pity
because after all it happened
no garnish
pity for others
then it happens to oneself
pity for oneself
a mouse
so small
yet so completely
functional
mice
so small
yet so completely
functional
you can sorta see how that alcohol has affected sydney lima, she’s halfway there, but has too dull an edge for the other half, unable to take the good and discard the bad
at this retreat
to me she’s a very typical low key alcoholic and won’t take any notice until the decline starts to accelerate
whether she was always a half talent rather than a full talent is an open question, but i have a feeling she could have done better, the sadness of the self injured
afloat on a sea of meaning
he sees no shore
a pity
for there lie
some answers
anything, something, all things
said or unsaid
the mystery deepens
one of the problems with aging
is the circles
the old patterns
are not really defeatable
when it comes to imagining the future, the
default mode network actually splits into two complementary parts
one helps create and predict the imagined event, what the researchers call the "constructive" function
the other assesses whether that newly constructed event is positive or negative, what they call the "evaluative" function
the "not too bright"
spinning on the
merry-go-round
of more thought
claiming thoughtlessness
buddha is mind
buddha is not mind
not buddha is mind
neither buddha nor mind
more definitions than rain has fallen
but the idiots still bother
the difference between stalin and lenin
is lenin hung by the handful
while stalin killed by the bucketload
when execution is not enough
there’s always a mismanaged war
to really clock up those numbers
only a man would think a woman is swayed by reason
elsa peretti; a busy life, then nothing
“ still, and you’ve (ed. brad warner) spoken of this before, its so hard to wrap my brain around the idea, were you to leave ziggy (ed. his girlfriends dog) in the house waiting for you, then walk outside for ten minutes to film a video and then return to him, that for those ten minutes ziggy doesn’t exist simply because you were not conscious of him
maybe that just indicates a misunderstanding on my part ”
my reply
ziggy exists as an engram of memory even though unconscious
discussions of "consciousness" and existence are just a play of cascading and recursive frames of reference and don’t go anywhere
its not that you "misunderstand", but of necessity for inclusiveness, you have to go beyond understanding and misunderstanding, how do you do that ?
all the modern variants of biological scientific theories of consciousness are, at their root, the "broadcast theory" which says consciousness is an artefact of a superhighway of information in the brain, that this large scale traversing and density of information/meaning intrinsically carries an ability to perceive itself
its not a mystery, there has been a lot of high quality research been put into this, but the "solving" of the problem of consciousness by and large has been ignored
i think in terms of "mystical inquiry" consciousness is a bit of a red herring, the bulk of the brain activity is unconscious so obviously there is more going on that what is called consciousness
what’s more of interest is the "limitation of meaning" and how this might be "bypassed" to make sense of what cannot be grasped in our conventional way of looking at things
religion, philosophy and the zillion theologies are all this failed attempt, and inevitably doomed to failure from the outset because they try to make "a nest" within meaning
, but what is within, cannot be "without"
you can’t be simultaneously all stages of life at once, yet earlier stages do carry somewhat through to later stages
we are such social creatures that the hardest thing to understand when you get to the end of the road
is there is
no-one there
there is only you
and this always was the case
forever the sea stretches
strobing and glinting
in silver
a cloud bank along the horizon
pale blue above
there’s nowhere else i’d rather be
eyeballs rolling on a glittering sea
forever the sea stretches
strobing and glinting
in silver
a cloud bank along the horizon
pale blue above
there’s nowhere else i’d rather be
eyeballs rolling on a glistening sea
time and space spread equally in all directions
men and women
before and after
infinite the nows
there is nothing special about this one
except its yours
supplements that
double up on
DHA are bad for heart health
i think the
2:1 ratio (
EPA:DHA) of unmodified krill is ok on balance because the
DHA is beneficial
for the brain
interestingly
DHA kills tumour cells
study
though they are gone
many a year
in memory they remain fresh
only frozen
and only certain things
remain
little changes
are the way forward
more utilitarian realities
and a better understanding
thereof
the real thing
claude monet
painting "en plein air" his pond, willow tree and waterlilies
when the shit hits the fan
it goes everywhere
non-involvement
is no defence
however
your own rescue
needs to
have
been
planned for
"process" is defined by the results, it does not define the results
12mg of oral ivermectin (same drug as in in dog heartworm pills)
reduced the time for covid viral clearance from
12.7 to
9.7 days
i think i will buy some, i’m trying to put off the vaccine until the second generation comes out that covers variants better
"ivermectin is generally given on an empty stomach with water; however, administering ivermectin with food increases its bioavailability"
i feel that by the fourth generation of vaccine they will offer a complete protection that is long lasting and eventually as this get rolled out we will see the virus become extinct within a decade
the astrazeneca vaccine i am wary of with its adenovirus vector blood clotting
, a problem that has been known about with that vector for a decade which was why the hiv protein "molecular clamp" vaccine technology was developed, it was stupid to ditch it just because it put harmless hiv antibodies in the blood
i get migraine so with the astrazeneca vaccine having bad headaches as a clotting symptom, i wouldn’t be able to tell
i do think that not having type "
A" blood is also protective and any vaccine imo will have some degree of a severe side effect problem in a small percentage of the population
agreements
don’t stand the water
of time
something that is
is revealed
slowly
sa’di hits the spot everytime
you read him and it doesn’t gel
and then it does
i don’t subscribe to the common beliefs
clichés, truisms
the knick knack of thought and thoughts
that passes for "wisdom"
magpies of intelligence
us
velázquez’s "las meninas"
explained
the hardest thing is the way the world is
a very mixed bag
beauty and craziness
competence and murderousness
knowledge and dullness
the benign with pretence
the body
so many hinges
the creaking needs oil
what diabetes does to the eye
scary
“ diabetics who have uncontrolled blood sugar are at a higher risk of what’s called proliferative diabetic retinopathy where new vessels grow in the back part of the eye and have fibrous material to support them
the neovascularization then can contract and in doing so pulls the "seeing" tissue part of the eye away from the shell and you get this, a tractional retinal detachment.
they can be and often are visually devastating and predispose the eye to other disease processes
they are sometimes called a wolf jaw retinal detachment ”
life
not even a needle
when an awl is required
error carries its own consequences
reality is not inert and usually, but not always punishes
sometimes it rewards
deep in the vine
backlit by the winter sun
cherry tomatoes
glow
as i pick them
episode 2 from david adams’ series "alexander’s lost world" titled "the mother of all cities"
i have to say i always wondered why alexander and his army bothered with afghanistan, but in fact it was highly civilised with very extensive and sophisticated irrigation
the video conveyed to me how misguided modern western interventions there have been
the burden of thought
persuading others
is not needed
the context of need
defines us
and our desires
the badly treated
when in a position of power
treat others badly
because they know it works
you lose your way
to find it again
only to lose it again
the box of mystery
is simply
unknown
in science
its called singularity
yet discovery opens up the box
making what was previously obscure
navigable
in science
and life
there never was an intractable mystery in the first place
simply our lack of understanding
i can’t start out to write
more like a sprite of thought
condenses and expands
to make something interesting
the time scales of the universe are long if we lived them
but in thought things begin and end
and don’t end
how easily travelled
dental calculus is a
3D object, porous and with a very much larger interior surface, so its more problematic as a function of its volume and not just surface area
it is actually a bacterial biofilm hosting pathogenic bacteria and their toxins and a primary act of dental health is to consistently remove it
i brought "scalers" some years ago and their use has been invaluable
a disappearing life,
camel herding in the sahara
humans
without mood
don’t do much
a lot of my thoughts are simply absurd
why have i never noticed this before ?
if you ask the question "what is god ?"
, straight away you posit something single and not multiple
if you look at life, everything is multiple
even single
the branching ways
sorting them out
is a life’s work
sometimes
the sums seem to balance
but a large positive
always calls forth
a large negative