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
earrings
hair
make up
lipstick
necklace
rings
the
female
uniform
the army
to
be
feared
except
unity
is
not
so
apparent
follow the flaws
the inconsistencies
the answers
will take you
to the deceit
beauty
the poets write about
or legend
yet when i look
it seems not there
was helen a hag ?
aphrodite wizened
narcissus as deformed in body as mind
or
medusa
beautiful ?
ultimate truth
i looked for
and found it
book ended
between
penultimate
truths
an existentially interesting japanese film, targeted at a young audience but it makes you think
strawberry fields
i’ve always had a bit of a "snitch" on seneca because he was executed (he was forced to commit suicide by nero) and you’d think, well maybe the multitudinous advices he is so famous for didn’t save him in the end, but then i thought on looking
at his life , nobody is going to get everything right and i should be more open minded about him, a lot of what he says makes sense
committing suicide as a method of execution for the ruling classes in the historical world was very common, i think the advantage was that if you went that way your family could escape punishment and retain assets as a payment for not embarrassing whoever ordered the deaths, often being personally quite close to the victims
a synopsis of the film "never let me go" based on the book by
kazuo ishiguro
one can see the influence of h.g. wells’ novella "the time machine", but also i think that death row prisoners in china can elect to be executed by organ donation, or at the least, scavenging of valuable body parts like corneas after execution which is by lethal injection, despite laws against it
an interesting documentary on the difficulties faced by
the children of the condemned due to cultural attitudes (2014)
a wall we continually cross
without
ever seeing
life’s
phase
changes
fake worlds
so many
like perpetual motion machines
electronic media bring to us
its hard to see
the real
the net
a memorial
of the deceased
on
facebook
apparently
bonds
formed
then broken
our
usual
death
a "differential diagnosis" of zen compared to other religions is its emphasis on meditation and lack of structural dogma, but like any religion in terms of "safety" your best protection is to have read widely of
quality literature then you won’t be "overawed" by zen and its packaged literary and philosophical concepts, which, after all, have been in the public domain for pretty much forever
“
Psychadelics can help with the "fear of death" ”
because they give a form of death ?
you can’t scramble the brain the way they do without leaving a footprint of damage
quantum darwinism
“ many possible quantum states are selected against in favor of a stable pointer state ”
a superbly written wikipedia entry, i hope it stays that way
basically, the physical reality we know emerges from the quantum along stable lines of least resistance
wojciech zurek on what
quantum is
the talented elle cordava on
emily dickenson
her take on
sylvia plath is also very good
her rap/rhyme and
vocabulary skillset is intimidating
the gone
those we keep vigil for the rest of our lives
when we finally go
they come with us
the lot of ghosts
not the old
decrepit
but young
taken too early
condemned to an eternity
of waiting
for what will never eventuate
sadder than living
is what can never be
voices calling to us
that we cannot hear
the world
asynchronous to ourselves
sadness
seeps
between the gaps
religion
theology
conceptual systems
knowledge hides hypocrisy
and so the world
goes on
as usual
“
Don’t bring the world into this.
Neither religion, theology, conceptual systems, nor knowledge are to blame for your disdain ”
disdain = the feeling that someone or something is unworthy of one’s consideration or respect
"her upper lip curled in disdain"
distain can be founded in objective fact
let’s rewrite what you said
don’t bring the world into this. neither religion, theology, conceptual systems, nor knowledge are
to blame for the cause of your disdain
i agree with that !
one of the weird things about the net is you can get amateurs better than professionals, like this young woman playing
river flows in you by the korean composer yiruma
i’ve looked at other versions and even though she is barely fluent in it, her playing has an emotional depth the other covers don’t touch, even
the composer’s
its an interesting comparison anyway, i don’t think composers necessarily are the best performers of their works
because of legal concerns about safety from electric shocks, many electronic and electric products suffer dramatically shortened lives from lack of air circulation leading to high internal operating temperatures in fully enclosed cases
a stepping drill bit is useful for making small holes in the case walls to improve this circulation as you can drill into the case to make a hole without the drill bit plunging all the way through to damage electronic or electric components on the inside
you do need some electrical knowledge to do this though and it will make the product non compliant from a safety point of view, however you can make the products last a lot longer
children are an extra degree of hazard that needs to be taken into consideration
two ears, one mouth
zeno
what physics has a problem getting a handle on is that immaterial things can exist, from hilbert space to laws governing the planets circling the sun
this realm of plato, everyone has trouble with
the road in
problems accrue
the road out
backwards
where we came from
problems remove
opposites
solve
the material versus the immaterial
the pundits ponder
philosophize
construe
surmize
getting nowhere
thinking
it
somewhere
recursion
lacking salience
defeats everything
one of the puzzles of tattooing is, is its association with criminal, drugtaking and otherwise violent/mentally unstable subcultures a cause or effect ?
i think its both, it is actually ritualized
self-injury and body modification, but maybe there are negative immune and health effects from the tattooing and
inks itself ?
moderate to heavy tattooing is not recognised for what it is, a destructive
anti-social marker that reinforces the problems of its subcultures
if there is an answer
where is it ?
mandelshtam’s sea shell
rolling on the shore
the echo is sonorous
that is the answer
ed. the reference is to osip mandelstam’s
poem (there are a number of translations on the web) which has the ending below
and our whispering spray shall fill
with wind and rain and mist
the walls of the brittle shell
a heart where nobody dwells . . .
you can’t scramble your brains with drugs or alcohol and expect to come out unscathed
yet
many do
you can’t scramble the brains with drugs or alcohol and expect to come out unscathed
yet
many do
lotuses
bland symbols of buddhism
a bland religion
spiced
by sex and financial scandals
aldous huxley’s failed coinage
to make this world sublime
take half a gram of
phanerothyme
which lost out to humphry osmond’s
to fathom hell
or soar angelic
take a pinch
of
psychedelic
my reply
a pinch he took
and entered a maze
but on coming out
was still in a daze
ed. my entire experience of psychedelic users on the web is they are entitled arrogant arseholes, not one exception, dangerously "missionary" for their cause, you can’t scramble the brain safely, a truism they are living evidence of
its chemical concussion to take psychedelics
in my life i have only seen a very few flower arrangements i like
here’s one
ed. the way it vibrates when bumped gives them away as plastic, i probably liked it because i have seen this arrangement before
is and is not
coming into being
and disappearing
all that can be said
is here
in
the closet of the vatican
years ago i watched a video of pope benedict and senior clergy paying close attention to an acrobatics troop performing for them — the men in the troop were good looking muscular types and the pope was totally leering at them, that’s when the penny dropped with me about what was really going on there
i am sure cardinal becciu is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of embezzlement and cardinal pell’s death must have brought sighs of relief all round
its a culture of total hypocrisy and larceny of the public purse, it really made me see mother teresa in a different light with her shift to more atheistic views in later life
men
those blind asses
evolutionarily designed
to be lead by women
who follow
the species imperative
to successfully
breed
darwin
had
a wife
deadlines
get pushed back
for new lines
called
deadlines
meaning in abeyance
he
still
has
to
understand
meaning in abeyance
she
still
has
to
understand
education
worse than drugs
for
distorting
your sense of reality
likewise
an
irreversible footprint
of
damage
so much poetry
meaning in abeyance
in the wrong way
a snarl of contradictions
bad analogical declamations
the words mirror the brain
so pretence is no longer effective
there is a space of attainment
competence
while there
though never easy
yet is easy
and there
don’t get bogged down in the opinion of others
but
go
your
own
way
what goes
is
gone
hard to accept
is
accepted
our boundaries
that we cross
unwillingly
or
willingly
define
us
in
a
way
that
is
difficult
to
understand
the holocaust was an extraordinarily effective operation in terms of deception and organization
its not appreciated the extent to which this was enabled and driven by german academia
i think we are seeing academia go on another toxic bender with neo-marxism, identity politics, diversity, " woke" and "trans"
its not in the same order of harm, but still . . .
a very good
documentary on anton chekhov, a turbulent life in a turbulent period, a lot of social change with dramatically increasing literacy and tuberculosis being a common termination point, we don’t know how in that respect, life is so different today
voices in the wind
its in the town of otsuchi, japan, where those bereaved by
2011 earthquake and tsunami can go to talk to those close to them who died
simultaneity
that space
away from our lives
those who have died
their absence everyday
how quickly we forget
yet
some things
remain
what
doesn’t
fade
observing
from
a distance
dissociating
from a real event
to look
objectively
philosophy — the love of wisdom
when you’ve met sophie
only then will you understand
she’s
a
bit
of
a
nag
philosophy — the love of wisdom
when you’ve met sophie
only then will you understand
she’s
a
bit
of
a
hag
unrequited love
be thankful
the universe
has
delivered
to
you
immersion
solves
all
writer’s
block
galaxies
of
ideas
so
constant
poems
with
one
word
per
line
space
on
screens
is
free
larry eigner at his best is a great poet, totally underappreciated
one of his poems (respaced by me to improve readability and smooth the flow)
again dawn
the sky
dropped its invisible whiteness
we saw pass out nowhere
empty the blue stars
our summer on the ground like
last night another time in fragments
conspiracy theories
aliens
prehistorical civilisations
trying to impose
a continuity that doesn’t exist
the vacuum
of incalculable complexity
is
hard
to
handle
the unknown
is
multifaceted
if there is no answer
question
the
question
"emergence"
isolates
different scales
a
computational
boundary
theology
is
faux
computation
"scrolling paralysis"
if you know what it means you know
pregnancy
a phase change
the depth of which
is
beyond
the male
a butterfly
a glimmering image
beauty takes you in
dopamine fasting
flotation of mood
in
cataclysmic
shortfall
one of the surprising things about south korea is the extent to which it is christian
china and japan would also be this way if not for its brutal suppression at various points in their histories
i would have to say it is the most sophisticated religion and missionizes well, theologically a mess, but they all are
"
O.
K." has quite
a history to it
once you understand that jesus is a fictional character
, this stuff looks completely insane, what are these women doing ?
women
anchored in people
its dragging
is the least of the problem
promises don’t last
because
we
don’t
last
non-persistence
whatever we would hold
fades
hypnotic
just keep reading
you will get into it
finish at the start
the end at the
in-between
the beginnings are mixed in
tell me its not true
nothing resolves to single point
because there is no nothing
nor single point
theology
is
inherently
mistaken
emotions are constructs
leading to action
believable
even
if
they
lead
to
disaster
this
is
the
human
way
undercurrents of surety
family, health, friends
the last two
we accept the erosion of
but the first
we have and do leave
when the depths well up
and pull us back
down
with them
youth
fleeting
good looks
stamina
naivety
health
benign in some respects
and not
others
i don’t think i am
ADHD and indeed are sceptical of the categories, but i certainly relate to some of this
olivia lutfallah
perhaps you do as well ?
eternal
not seen in the mists of time
but
felt
i have had two pfizer (which i think is safer than the moderna) vaccines (with a four? month spacing between) and can’t tell whether i have ever had covid or not, but i don’t think i am going to risk another jab
the current vaccines still fail to address that the covid variants don’t match the antibody targets of the vaccine so relying only on long term immunity and now there is this issue of
overstimulation of the formation of
Ig
G4 antibodies which inhibit the suppression of cancer tumours, the jury is out in this, but the jury "being out" also means it is not "in" on this aspect of vaccine safety
one of the problems with covid is a huge variation in individual susceptibility to serious problems from covid or the vaccines eg. i think i drew the long straw and am not in the "at risk" group (at least from covid), but depending on your genes and other factors the risk/benefit value is going to vary significantly from person to person and there are no tests at this point to delineate this
my list of effective supplements for covid and its prevention
hard to read
any war
you are in as much danger from your own side
as the enemy
there is always a time
to disobey
your
own
command
a favourite poem by zen master fushan fayuan (
10th century) translated by suru
fushan was travelling and lodged overnight at a temple and maybe he stayed there for a while, i can’t remember
blossoms fall on silver beds in
brightly-blooming spring
the moon sinks behind the canopy, distant in the night
the empty hall is silent
and no-one’s around
i simply pick up sandalwood, burn it as i please
ed. i think this is supposed to give a sense of continuous time, i’ll just try a reworking of it
cherry petals cover the flower bed
silvered by the sinking moon
in the empty hall i burn sandalwood
to keep the mosquitos at bay
my reworking of another two of his poems
my little hermitage
high in the cliffs
away from the disease of men
a spring for water
and the moon for a lantern
questions about reality have no place here
the answer is everywhere
the night sky’s lantern
not fixed
yet always returning
there is a lesson
in this
low reading age is
50% of the problem with woke and similar, ignorance is not a passive procedure, its an active rejection of what is not wanted to be known and being ignorant, it can get brutal
some things look benign
until you get involved
then
all hell breaks loose
i don’t agree with most views on "addiction", i would restate it in the terms of the "free energy principle", that is, its a biological misperception of what constitutes "reduced surprise" which of course is why its such a difficult problem to solve
this misperception is, of course part of "mental illness" which is another problem of even more difficulty
journalists
entitled
ineffectual
treacherous
idiots
music
no end to the unique spaces that can be carved out
do we ever wonder about this ?
cloistered
monasteries
convents
seeking silence ?
finding
their time
full of their own nonsense
all things
encompassed by
simply
what is and is not
all things
encompassed by
simply
is and is not
the dust of being
constantly raised
obscures
others
the dust of being
constantly raised
obscures
very large numbers
trying to grasp
humans are hopeless
at
this
very large numbers
trying to grasp
humans are hopeless
very large numbers
trying to grasp
humans are
hopeless
very large numbers
trying to grasp
humans
hopeless
the gap
between the
guest
and orchestra
dismaying
vivaldi himself lead an
interesting life and was pretty much rediscovered in the
20th century
co-incidence
that mainstay of the soaps
compressed so hard
disbelief
doesn’t
even
make it
into
the courtyard
life
however
with
its paucity of probability
except in the beginning
the grand jackpot won
later riches
are
withheld
i feel if alexei navalny and his wife had been more familiar with russian history during its soviet phase, he would not have made the mistake of going back
whatever political purposes his return may have served there’s not much you can do when dead and actually the death of nikolai bukharin is a salutary example, stalin even gave him a chance to flee
a story that sticks in my mind is a
KGB officer claiming as a work expense a massage therapist for the repetitive strain injury for his trigger figure
the way they usually executed was to walk the victim for a few minutes with the executioner behind and then put a bullet to the back of head so that it was never apparent when the actual moment of execution would occur, eerily reminiscent of the state explanation of navalny’s death, he died of "sudden death syndrome" while out for a walk
i don’t think we are going to see his body released
an
anti-tattoo attitude that is rare on the internet
one of the problems of the web is you get "special interest" groups missionizing whatever toxic belief/ideology trying to muscle out any criticism,
pro-tattoos being a case in point !
you actually get this in mainstream media as well with the capture of a portal by a subculture with a certain viewpoint like "semi" or "modified" woke
you just have to look at
20th century history to understand the power of "controlled" information
beauty in women is more of an illusion than bitchery
misogynist saying of the week
dance of the cygnets
women wrecking their feet
this
short story by chekhov is clearly the outline for a novel that he, for whatever reason, did not write
there’s a sense of the fatigue involved in making a well written novel, the various timelines, cross references and impressions to be welded into a coherent whole
at the end of this short story, you feel anton just gave up
whether considering facelifts, body modification or lasik just remember the surgeon’s saying
“ one surgery begets another ”
my view is that the body is a finely tuned developmental mechanism and unnecessary surgery disrupts the balance with consequences that eventually show
of course, necessary surgery has a different risk – benefit profile, eg. lens replacement for cataracts
it takes
mutual experience
of one sort or another
to cross paths
empty worlds
replete
before death
that’s
the
only
way
i
can
explain
it
similarity
in the strangest of places
was solomon right ?
the endless revolution of what has gone before
is life
the dream
or dreams
what happens
is different
dopplegangers have been a literary meme since forever, its interesting to see it in
real life
i think the implication is, there is a "grain" on human configurations, its not infinitely variable, there is an upper bound on variation, in large populations you will get people almost as close as identical twins in appearance with different genetics
writers
drifting through the tropes
they claim
its
creativity
any certainty
thought about
erodes
because
certainty
is
uncertain
any certainty
thought about
erodes
because
certainty
is
uncertainty
horizons
are not just landscape
boundaries
bleed everywhere
neither hitler, stalin, napoleon, genghis khan, vlad the impaler, ivan the terrible nor mao were single
african skies
thunder clouds
african seas
lit with the sun
surprisingly normal
the people
but not the land
still
like
kipling
business is not supportive of emotional irrationality
addiction
identify the costs
it will take a while
for one cost
to sink home
as
not
sustainable
popular entertainment
the interface between the arts and the ignorant masses
who tolerate their brains being stretched in a way no other area of life gives permission for
loss is larger than gain
hard
to understand
irreversible
what is irreversible is reversible in the imagination
nowhere else
in reality
the road has branched
and the fork
gets lost in life’s distances
and the dust of confusion
masks the rearward view
as for your "ramble", there are so many of you and your ilk posting nonsense that its like removing a city tip, impossible, one just has to live with it
there is nothing to heed in your post, its so full of basic reasoning/philosophical errors its impossible to process
of course, like most here, you are not interested in the slightest in moving forwards
if life were a soap
actors rotating between sets
spewing the same old garbage
wait !
life is a soap !
don’t wonder why the world
is the way it is
its in the genes
i notice my own aggression, so much of the functional capacity of the male is built for war
the mongols and hitler were not accidents and dictatorships are a minority at war with their fellows
sustained social stability is a blessing and not necessarily the normal state of affairs
dementia
a woman who doesn’t know her children
yet can still speak
what sort of world is this ?
ed. there’s a few instances on youtube/shorts of this, its fascinating that a woman escorted by her child cannot remember him/her but be otherwise conversant, there’s something more fundamental about our use of language than memory, it must be writ in our genes which is why it survives so well into dementia
make-believe
making the world
bearable
wealthy men
and the circus of women
naïve prey
circled
by
tigresses
somehow
they still expect to come out of it
intact
slipping from purpose
to lack of purpose
and back again
is ever the way
on the edge of being
things look flat
but occasionally
a bit of the wonder
seeps
through
mental health diagnoses
the long list
the injured
seeking comfort
and not finding it
just words
what is a soul ?
i’ve often thought about this, on the surface it just seems religious nonsense, but in fact it is really an idea with some validity, that of consciousness without a body
i can only think this "disembodiment" approaches some quantum/superposition idea of reality so maybe some of those medieval theologians knew more than we give them credit for which is only reasonable, nobody wastes their time entirely
the disabled
do bland minds count as a disability ?
a mixture of sanity and insanity
difficult to parse
why bother ?
precepts
religious flim flam
for hypocrites
you could imagine that as
a carving with faces in
pareidolia
thematic boltzmann in a chinese
fantasy soap
not much point in being
a god/goddess if there’s no evidence for it
a reversion to quantum and superimposition ?
when the shackles of conventional thinking fall away ?
like robots we are
slightly removed from ourselves
going through the motions
of conforming to our beliefs
a circle or a sphere ?
without a center
a surface only
is its own explanation
of nothing
what appears
we conjure
has a history
of necessity
alternatively
its spontaneous appearance
a momentary traverse
from nothing to nothing
is beyond our comprehension
what appears
we conjure
has a history
its spontaneous apprearance
a momentary traverse
from nothing to nothing
is beyond our comprehension
make-up
the ersatz barrier
between
women
and
their
age
make-up
the ersatz barrier
between
women
and
age
“
Explicit historical info on the
day-to-day operations of a temple is in short supply ”
more like censored out imo, too much reality for hagiography
from my own reading monks were notorious for theft, freeloading, "sexual adventure" and monasteries and convents as sources of contagious diseases
h.g. wells steps
into mysticism
an obvious influence on c.s. lewis and j.r.r. tolkien
the interests of others
tangents that fly away
from
us
the "journey" of shuji nakamura inventing the commercially viable
blue led , also with a very good explanation of how diodes work
super persistence !
time locks gates
in the way nothing else
can
you know the old saying
, if you want revenge, dig two graves
well the same applies if you want redress
, there is no redress
those
locked in our memory
they may be dead
or simply aged
but regardless
shining
in the diminishing light
of
inaccessibility
to fade with us
and finally cease
in the magical world
of forever
gone
those
locked in our memory
they may be dead
or simply aged
but regardless
shining
in the diminishing light
of
inaccessibility
to fade with us
and finally cease
in the magical world
of forever
there does seem to be
a big advantage in terms of the immune response to the vaccine if done "contralaterally"
when i had mine i also made them use a baby needle so it didn’t go too deep with its attendant risks of circulatory travel, but am not sure whether they were contralateral or not
its quite possible i have never had covid
there does appear to be a question of the safety of having more than three of these vaccines
partial truths
taken together
are complete
let them
come
together
ed. a bot on reddit made a haiku out of this
partial truths taken
together are complete let
them come together
arrhenius’s law
“
As a rule of thumb in most biological and chemical reactions, the reaction rate doubles when the temperature increases every
10 degrees
Celsius ”
this has a bevy of applications from the need for electronics to run cool to last to a loss of
70% of
vitamin C @-
12°C, but only
20% at -
18°C for
100 days
most home freezers are only about -
12°C, so foods really need to be turned over by about two months i’d say, though this will vary considerably with different foods
i had thought once the food was frozen, the chemical reactions had stopped, but, from this law you can see they still go on at a speed determined by how cold it is
i presume you are not an idiot, but really what you write comes across that way, just a mass of internal contradictions and ignorance
having done so much hunting over the years i have the odd skill of knowing how people in films and on tv should react to various injuries, like what a puncture to a lung does and of course in films etc they get it quite wrong, even (or especially) war movies
the problem with "karma" is that it implies an absolute reference frame from which moral judgements can be made, a christian notion actually. in my view there’s too much uncertainty about the consequences of any action to make the existence of any such frame plausible and you can study some history to see this is so
of course karma and reincarnation would make life simpler and more rational, but unfortunately (or fortunately) things are way more random and unpredictable
interestingly you can argue the christian belief in life after death is a form of reincarnation
the truth is plural
this hard for people to understand
but
its
always
plural
any category
necessarily
branches
into
other
categories
reading and writing age is not some abstract skill but very dependent on and the result of an extensive range of reading and writing experience and part of that needs to be history or you will get enmeshed in contemporary views
in fiction, "unreal" or "magical" elements need to be effective or they parse into the negative "absurd"
in a way, all fiction is about this "parsing" otherwise you might just as well write the factual
most modern entertainment writing does not pass this parse test
doomscroll
ADHD meets the internet
when the browsing feels like the road to hell
the ideal
and its shortfall
too much weight
is put upon
talent
beyond the normal
and abnormal
in a class of its own
boltzmann has no comment
because
boltzmann
is
the book opens again and again
the leaves falling apart
always at the same place
a new paragraph appears
and it closes once more
we have read and reread
what disappears
and re-appears
before us
x² - y² = (x + y)(x - y)
another
visual proof even i can work out !
elizabeth cotten plays her
freight train song, written at age twelve about the trains that passed near her home
the sum of craziness is constant generation to generation
just the detail changes
consequences vary
from the mild
to the horrific
dissolution
the ending
you would think there should be a fanfare
angels in rows trumpeting
demons on kettle drums
god incanting
but that’s
hardly
the absence
that appears
“ aspergers, like a
curse benefit that prevents people from becoming friends with me ”
being on friendly terms is enough, friendship is a bog of difficulty
“ words used
to attract by the dull of wit are not to be relied on ”
ed. quote by huang po
so true !
freedom
consists
of seeing patterns
and not being caught in them
“
Yunmen says, "
F*** the police" ”
you say that between spells in jail
“ Lol
I really feel
Yunmen in this one. "
I don’t follow anybody else’s rules, not even my own" ”
well, he didn’t say that did he ? and in fact, like ourselves there are lots of rules he did follow
i think your statement is a denial of social context, some sort of pretentious posturing, "pseudo rebellion"
rebels have rules too
ed. yunmen was a tang dynasty zen master
, i find the question of "rules" interesting because at a certain point, you decide whether they work or not and your taking them as working defines your life to a degree
that is, taking the rule as working is arbitrary, there are a number of perspectives in terms of which they may and may not work and you are committing to one option out of many
of course you don’t have to commit, but if you look at your life you will find yourself, in fact having made some of these choices and they can be arbitrary
“ this girl can’t speak,
like my daughter ”
but being a melodrama you can expect
inversions
the finale ?
the thing to remember about
C and
K drama is these are highly traumatised societies with insanely dysfunctional and bloody events in their recent past, the unblunted edge of which has still to be eroded by time
the villainess
social and cultural
PTSD in effect
this shit is mentally ill
it occurred to me that rudyard kipling’s writings were in fact that trope known today as "magical realism" and this genre can be traced back to ancient egyptian mythology and similar
the old truths are not stale
unbinding and binding
is the eternal process
don’t expect
to understand more
causality
the down goes up and the backwards forwards
is it always this way ?
other worlds
swim into view
creating you, the viewer
and extinguishing themselves
the seen
i think some meditation is necessary for zen, it teaches the ability to introspect ie "ride the ox backwards"
however, zazen or seated meditation is not an end in itself, which is the position eihei dogen and soto zen take
“
Thinking about things is important.
There are good ways to think and poor ways ”
i don’t think the world divides so neatly into good and bad, there is a necessary and ongoing process of discovery about what works and what doesn’t and answers can flip back and forth without a lot of resolution
when you see weightlifters, you wonder what damage they are doing to themselves ?
“
three things i would never do as a neurologist ”
riding the ox backwards
is the beginning and end of the matter
except
when
infinity
drops
in
ed. "riding the ox backwards" is advice often given in the ch'an records as how to proceed
you would think this advice is plain and easy to follow, but apparently its not
concatenating clichés
what passes these days for intellectual endeavour
today’s education doesn’t teach the humility and incompleteness of knowledge
rather
its dunning – kruger on meth
its not marilyn munroe but inge morath who is interesting as arthur miller’s wife
when you read about
her life , she was some sort of literal superwoman
“ and happily ever after ”
well, it wasn’t happily ever before, so why would it be "happily ever after" ?
a way of looking at cults is as a ponzi scheme with human capital
emotional hurt
staple of the soaps
swinging from one extreme to another
is a life
of sorts
even in the
2D world
of
scripts
all my years at school i never understood what a derivative was
from
this short its quite plain
i think the problem is i was never taught visually, it was always equations
its just the slope/tangent
this is a mainstream chinese soap, but is illustrative of very different cultural attitudes, in this case as to what is acceptable on public tv and too brutal from the anglosphere point of view
, viewer discretion advised
the night time shadow of trees
something mysterious
standing for more
than
appears
anton chekhov’s short story
the proposal which is actually sort of hilarious and i think grows his "style" and wry view on life on you
story of my life
giving more weight to those who rubbish me
than those who don’t
guy de maupassant’s short story
a little bit of string
the female universe
lionesses and their cubs
the flux of their being
is
harsh
emotional pain
some things pass
and others don’t
gnawing at the soul
not really to any end
affliction
has a certain
futility
plain speaking and thinking
devalued in today’s world
of
the
dissembling florid
reality is not all there is
unreality can even have a higher place
youth is like a gift, god knows it passes quick enough
“alzheimer’s development in the brain begins in middle age and its effects can be attributed to an
uncontrolled lifestyle from a younger age
raising awareness among the youth about the benefits of consuming leafy greens, organic foods, or
home-cooked meals is essential, as opposed to regularly indulging in junk or processed foods
such dietary habits impact brain health and contribute to vascular issues and obesity, highlighting the interconnectedness of these health concerns ”
its interesting that doomsday cults can’t get to grips with an idea in physics that has been around for a while, that the universe can flip into
total oblivion at any moment
, its too complete a destruction for them and godless
words
in the beginning were
all else
follows from them
words
in the beginning were
all else
follows
from
them
starcrossed
love despite its failures
better
apart
agonies fade
into a new life
yet
what cannot be replaced
cannot
loss
is the gain
of
grief
in the performing arts, despite having no experience of whatever art, what makes for an
outstanding performer that the naive viewer can recognise pretty well straight away ?
one of the problems/benefits of the web, is once, in whatever area you see one of these outstanding entertainers, what you are used to locally always appears very inadequate by comparison, so life becomes very difficult in the commercial sense for any but the very top tier
large numbers and small
have this in common
they go on forever
who is to say what is large
and what is small ?
a lot of the way we operate is not to our our own benefit, but to the species since the species survives and we don’t
our genes will only code for what carries from generation to the next
answers to questions
backwards
before answers
before questions
ed. this is taking roger penrose’s (a nobel laureate in physics) idea of the backwardation of time with the collapse of the wave function eliminating the plurality of worlds
there is a fascinating convergence between mystical ideas and quantum physics
faces
floating on the sea of being
make me seasick
faces
floating on the sea of being
makes me seasick
ourselves
landscapes of the past
inhabit
what worlds can’t exist ?
why do our imaginings never temper themselves with this ?
what worlds can exist ?
why don’t our imaginings ever temper themselves with this ?
even the moon
no goddess
but a reflected object
hard to understand
there’s things you need to think about
for forty — fifty years
not our usual timescale
follow the peach tree blossom stream
not once in a lifetime
infinity revealed
in its manifestation
not as one
not as two
streams vary
take each as it comes
ed. "peach tree blossom stream" is a reference to wang wei’s famous poem
ourselves
landscapes of the past
inhabit
religions are fundamentally reified literature, several modern christian variants are lifted to a recognisable extent from milton
other worlds
more attractive
but less benign
or trauma
is
their
middle
name
good to train the ear on, follow
the pattern of the notes
more blurred for
comparison
our world of low probability
sundered chances
are sundered
not
to
be
repaired
a well written book or poem takes you into its reality
you
come
out
changed
solipsist inversion
communality
takes its weight from
solipsism
“ what you write, i can’t understand the meaning of ”
what if you don’t look for a meaning ?
black
with a moon
the shadows purl
windless
i shatter
into
a million pieces
refracting
the
light
xie lingyun , an interesting eastern jin/ lui song dynasty
poet , executed apparently
others may pass
but this moment of intensity
is our own
repetition
echoes
mutation
fundamental
from the trivial
to unanswerable sorrow
life’s span
wider
is
not
necessary
our lives
like the flipping through of the pages of a book
that rewrites itself every day
let’s not lose
this glimpse
of
forever
the usual cult follower is gullible and a bit stupid
that mould is never broken
celebrities
empty heads
even
the glamorization
cannot
disguise
celebrities
mostly empty heads
even
the glamorization
cannot
disguise
infinity
transitions
to
once, twice
three times
i wish i understood this
but i am
once, twice
three times
the wonder of people you naturally get along with
against the outweighing of those you don’t
acting
words and actions
decoupled
from
themselves
its not appreciated that marie antionette was the major political oppositional force to the revolutionaries, her husband was a useless chump and her death was elimination of a serious threat
its interesting that the popular view of her today is mouthing the revolutionary propaganda about her, her political enemy
the victors write the history as is said
IQ measures a type of intelligence, just like it and any other forms of intelligence also measure types of disability
take some words
juxtapose them
make a phrase, sentence
paragraph
have no regard for the sense
and what you get
spans from the devil
to
god
joshu would be the nearest thing to a "zen master in the wild" and he is referred to as a monk
how you would know is he cut down everybody verbally
false problems
the sages’ game
verbalizing
what has no point
to no point
wars
obviate opinions
there are only winners and losers
and even
winners can lose
deaf
the visual coupling with the world
that all seeing vision
deaf
that visual coupling with the world
the all seeing vision
ed. i kept having these shorts from a c drama called "this girl can’t speak, like my daughter" coming up on my youtube and the title resonated with me, i don’t know why and it occurred to me that if you looked at deafness, not as a disability in terms of the loss of a sense, but rather a mode of being that is an intense visual interaction with the world, i could relate to that
as a side note, chinese melodramas leave the western ones for dead to the extent that it gives
a disturbing view of chinese culture
english subtitles from the chinese are often confused in gender and personal relation
maria joão pires playing the chopin nocturne op
27 no.
2
i had to listen
two or three times to appreciate it
maria is an eye opening
79 years old
earrings
necklace
lures
to the unwary
and
wary
when i have an afternoon rest
and get up three quarters to an hour later
for the life of me i can’t tell
whether i have slept at all
it doesn’t seem like i have, but the time has passed too quickly
there’s no sense of going to sleep or waking up
not arriving at a definitive understanding
or any sort of understanding
the way to go
zen means different things to different people, however if you are interested in the subject then you need to cover the varied aspects !
r|zen is one aspect, a sort of read only zen, but most people take zen to be a japanese religion, therefore you need at least a degree of real life familiarity with it and in particular some experience with meditation
also its a big help to understand religious scripture as fictional literature, this can be seen across all religions
since i have mentioned "meditation" and there is so much wrong minded instruction on the subject, let me describe "shikantaza" which is the soto/dogen version which is simply to observe one’s thoughts and can be done by sitting in a chair for half an hour or walking around etc
counting the breath, visualizing etc is harmful
anyway hopefully you understand my point, to get a handle on anything wide ranging experience is necessary, not getting obsessed with badly written and biasedly translated books
it turned out that the above reply was well off target in the sense the person i was replying to was a woman with a family, not someone more like myself and in my situation so my further reply was below
ok, your situation is a bit different from most here, in your case i would avoid real life zen, which actually i do (since as a rule some people in it are not nice and a fair portion represent a health hazard)
, your family life is going to be central for you as it should be
"i have a lot of resentment for authority and traditional orders and religious stuff"
, me too and feeling like this is right, just a bunch of power hierarchies run by arseholes
in your situation you have to ask what is productive in the context of life and that’s really wisdom literature and mystical poetry and that sort of thing to improve life smarts
in this respect you need to find what you relate to and is quality, the important thing to understand is if "zen" is valid, then what it is about is universal and therefore its dealt with in art, poetry, literature and philosophy, jane austen is a mystic in this sense as is emily dickinson, poles apart you might think, but actually quite similar
i have
a page of my reading up, probably not in your areas of interest, but an indication anyway
her reply
I get ya.
And many a sutra has been kindled on the lips of
Billy Joel
This was a good conversation, in
English. Thank you
a tossed coin is a wonderful thing
random
however
reality is not random
deep themes and undercurrents
run beneath the surface
other people’s lives
don’t lose any sleep over it
they
necessarily
go their own way
two
50% shareholders
friction from the start
its called genes
no wonder
life is like it is
what is never mentioned about the return of "looted" artefacts from western museums is that
95% of those artefacts (the elgin marbles being an egregious exception) would not have survived had they remained where they were taken from and actually their return imperils them, i bet
65% of those returned will have disappeared permanently within another century
i don’t think the victoria and albert museum is going
to see these again , a marvellous and irreplaceable collection
the long standing british cultural ethic of "collecting" combined with the expertise of the museums in preservation is an unusual combination which has enabled these artefacts to be conserved and in many cases their return is in fact to spell their eventual doom
your pontificating doesn’t come across well, i think you are taking the position of having answers, or more satisfactory answers and understanding than is the case or even possible
r|zen A. I.
empty sounds
echo and ricochet
gnomes on toadstools
as much sense as this
ed. i wrote this in reply to some totally garbled
OP on r|zen and the author replied in a like manner to my comment and my further reply is as follows
so what i was saying is the nonsense you wrote is like what chat gpt does when out of its depth
you are christian in your approach in that you don’t question whether the "scripture" you quote is anything but
gibberish
i can write this of course, but what i said will go straight past you
when i was choosing the link for
passacaglia
i noticed i had a preference for one version amongst the many on youtube, that really most performances don’t hit the mark very well, there is a wealth of variance in any score
this is an
interesting video in terms of that sort of context
from within fertility
the young look
and are blinded
men are just a commodity to women, love is the emotional embodiment of a value hierarchy, no use in being upset when that position is changed
the undoing of what is done
life’s irrevocably closed door
lots of words
a few words
meaning more
than
lots of words
anton chekov : a gossipy soap writer
leo tolstoy : a deranged theologian
fyodor dostoyevsky : autistically not categorizable
nikolai gogol : surreal fantasist
the four pillars of
russian literature
a scriptwriter
god to his own paltry universe
no life of its own
it follows his branching
why is the
"make-believe" so convincing despite not being credible ?
its because we want to trust in it, on the surface, a more palatable world than the one we live in
the surface doesn’t stand up to much scratching however
what the net is good for in terms of pharmaceuticals is researching the side effects of medications which hardly anybody does
it is usually eye opening, people seem unable to understand the nature of prescription medications is their toxicity and danger has to be balanced against beneficial effects in terms of treatment !
eg drugs for pancreatic cancer will kill you later than the cancer left unchecked
"kusurizuke" is a japanese word which translates as "pickled in medicine" which tells you a lot about the
over-prescription culture in japan
it would be a useful import into english
comparing
near far
far has more power
but near
is also necessary
down the rabbit hole
again
cross-referencing
comparison
opens
exits
a new phrase
“ bedtime procrastination ”
it even has
a study
moonlight is empty
hard to understand
the coloured flowers
profuse from such banality
i listened to a
WW2 account of russian troops assaulting a defensive german position during their retreat and the russian commanders deliberately sent a newly conscripted mongolian company through a minefield to blow up a path for the troops behind, most of course were killed
russian tactics don’t seem to have changed much with the avdiivka assaults
the tolerance of the russian population to this sort of criminality by their own leaders is just unbelievable
this problem with the food additive "sugar alcohols" has been known for many decades and is addressed by elaine gottschall’s
specific carbohydrate diet and also my upgrade of it "the biofilm carbohydrate diet"
i think this is news to you, sabine because you’re german and out of the dietary rounds of the english speaking world
women in the police is, i think, a huge and totally unappreciated socially stabilising influence taking the rough edge off the aggression inherent in a male only force
a strange world
our brains designed for a communality that no longer exists
only a landscape of sparse probability
and poorly matched association
a strange world
our brains designed for a communality that no longer exists
only a landscape of sparse probability
now
you can’t unwrap the loss of time
tv cooking shows all have same the same mistake of equating food preparation and cooking with a diet of high nutritional value, indeed i would say a lot of today’s cooking tends too close to the negative
you can pay
$10,000 for a meal at new york’s fanciest restaurant, but its not a patch on the slow cooked possum i am eating this morning, nutritionally supreme with its unusually high omega three levels and quite tasty too
honestly i feel the whole upmarket restaurant thing is a bit of a racket, like designer bags, lamborghinis and the usual bad art, that market is bottomless apparently and true socialism, wealth and poverty united in ignorance and stupidity
rather than being a macro issue (calories)
, obesity can be looked at as a condition of micronutrient deficiency
addiction carries the seeds of its own recovery, just as abstinence carries the seeds of its own cessation
germination can appear from nowhere and is necessarily surprising
the term "addiction" is perhaps used too casually these days, in my mind what makes a true addiction is having a significantly deleterious effect on your life and only complete abstinence can break the pattern
identifying and acting on "incremental opportunity cost" is a way to handle it
there’s two worlds
the absurd world
and the real world
why are they so cojoined with me ?
thich nhat hanh missionaries
like moths around a flame
they join their master
in cremation
isolation
retaining coherence
mood swings
amplification
similitude
becomes identity
the holy way
this is all
do not
be
surprised
at
its
success
scripts
each "incident" radiates a million ways
bad writers choose the wrong ones
michel de montaigne is wonderfully simple
in style and his views on education have not been
surpassed and are highly relevant to systemic flaws in many "modern" approaches
passacaglia
g. f. handel — suite no.
7, g minor, hwv
432; arrangement by johan halvorsen
lots of covers on youtube
the boring
listening to the boring
podcasts
the summum bonum
of ennui
if prose is the brass coin
poetry is golden
if prose is the brass coin
good poetry is golden
if prose is the brass coin
good poetry is the gold
on the way to launceston, near elizabeth town there’s a sign on the side of what is a very busy road advertising freemasonary, newcomers welcome, men better
i figure "men better" is a euphemism for "no women"
an historically
contentious issue apparently
one of the technological changes i don’t think people really appreciate is how modern medicine is extending the lifespan in way that reinforces current power hierarchies and actually in certain contexts like dictatorships is creating some problems
simply put there was a large natural turnover of people dying from fifty on that was perfectly normal, an example of this is king charles having an operation to remove tissue in an enlarged prostate, and princess kate having some sort of major operation, both of which were possibly fatal in several years without treatment and that’s literally was what used to happen
you only have to look at
19th and early
20th century film and the people on the streets, there’s
no-one over
60
in love
out of love
when feelings change
the world collapses
and
rebuilds
the difference
is
the
same
i have a doppelgänger
we converse occasionally
she’s not here
i am
i have a doppelgänger
we converse occasionally
he’s not there
i am
i can’t be honest about suicide
its messy, a death the end result of something else really
not a c drama poignancy, a beautiful life poised in stasis forever
misunderstood love
or a brutal machine
slamming out tickets
each printed
death
the uncaring world glances at
and then moves on
listen to other people’s opinions of you and hear what you don’t want to hear
listen to other people’s opinions of you and you will hear what you don’t want to hear
a spinning world
the whirligig
a kaleidoscope
of fragmented patterns
but the meaning
is somewhere else
unrequited love
the magic
of
rejection
unrequited love
the magic
of
that sense
of
rejection
life’s absurd plot twists
we exist
there’s no recovering from that one
the world makes a phase change
the serious becomes farcical
you don’t even know who is laughing
what is there to figure out ?
time goes backwards
the future is the past
sequence is discontinuity
god is multiple
and solomon wasn’t wise
benign worlds
need to be visited
to
keep
sanity
writing
even an uncrossed t matters
detail
opens up
infinity
ed. this is a very simple poem but it demonstrates very well how to build semantic density in a poem by ambiguity and "surprise"
not crossing a t is intially though to be a bad thing and you can take the sense of the poem one way based on that, but you can also take it as a good thing, something surprising that is an integral part of a less conventional understanding and with shockwaves of recursion and multiple levels of meaning to come back again to a unified sense
the interesting thing about quantum computing, is not that the possibility exists, but that since the universe is infused with it, why is it so difficult to replicate ?
i think that’s because replication undermines the separate existence of the universe, if it occurred naturally on any sort of macroscopic scale , the universe would disappear
there are theological correlates to this, jesus, after all, didn’t last very long and had a very problematic relationship with his social environment
china
a culture in isolation
eroding at the edges
we will see
what
happens
only
my own
understanding
others have their role
but its insufficient
compared
to
my
own
life can be too dry
but
wet
drowns
some
as the wreckage
on
the
shore
testifies
beautiful anomalies
boltzmann smiled
existence
had a point
for once
this is a bit of a trite apologetic
story (by leo tolstoy) in some ways , but there is an underlying edge that is contrary to conventional views about how reality works even though it is masked in religiosity
very similar to renaissance paintings which are able to present everyday truths very cleverly from within the various de rigueur myths
watching a game of chess
yet if you never play
what’s the point ?
amplified worlds
delinquent probability makes contiguous
what is not possible
in
this
reality
i don’t think existence is material reality, i wouldn’t even go so far as to say that material reality exists
the nonsense of philosophy, theology and religion is way too concerned with compartmentalization
that’s the opinion of this boltzmann brain
the three hermits
this is a short story by leo tolstoy, an interesting example of magical realism and has more than a hint of his greatness as a writer, that different perspective
monophysite, miaphysite, chalcedonian
so much bloodshed, political intrigue and intellectual travail
over a difference in nonsense
factional identification
is part of the programming
in
being
human
soap operas
their life is so complicated
they hit their computational limits
in thirty seconds
after that
the universe is not big enough
to
hold
them
a soap opera
its life is so complicated
it hits its computational limits
in thirty seconds
after that
the universe is not big enough
to
hold
it
acting
directors, writers, technical
the sophistication of composites
we believe
when
we
should
be
sceptical
what we come into contact with
how little sticks
but what does stick
we can be unconscious of
when we should ask
why ?
a simultaneous identity
crosses time
past and future
shuffled
take the hand
delivered to you
the meaning of the universe
superposition
implies
everything is there
before
nothing
the total surprise
aging brings
unconscious in childhood
rue in the elderly
and thoughtlessness
in between
contacts disrupt the eye "biofilm" making it more "skin like" and susceptible to infection
bloody mindedness
your own
splashed
everywhere
children
programmed with the disastrous beliefs
that will serve them ill
as
adults
finding
vivian maier
jenny joseph
reading some of her poetry
i haven’t heard
this one before
beauty
the decay of age
and its absence
questions without sense
expect answers without sense
i oblige and don’t
chanting is a "mind control"
hypnotic used a lot in asian religions
beware, its a drug that captures those who are intellectually vacuous, these cults know what they are doing, thousand of years refining their brainwashing techniques
god
a dream
of something before nothingness
wait !
isn’t
that
a
contradiction ?
primed to see a
turtle-nosed snake
they couldn’t even find it
and chagrined at
the snake necked turtle
they found
they lost
all round
ed. my comment on the eponymous zen case
effects are causes
and causes effects
a mixed up mystery
of the not so disparate
ed. my reply to the well known zen koan about an old monk condemned to
500 rebirths as a fox for saying that a holy person escapes "cause and effect"
5 am :
in the shower
a little too cold and
a little too sober
somewhere between
"I don’t care" and
"still thinking of you"
poem by amber prunster
are you lacking the skills and inclination to deal with people ?
amidst all the talk
i discovered i had
nothing to say
and this was a leaving of a sort
not entire
but an easing out
slow
and
painlessly
i no longer belonged
men
excused childbirth
immerse themselves in wars
that dwarf that trauma
shyness
lacking the skills
or inclination
to
deal
with
people ?
a cover of the "love theme" from franco zeffirelli’s film (
1968) of romeo and juliet featuring
yoon-kyung cho on the cello
the churn
of present to future
the
past
seen
over our shoulder
opinions
get washed out
by facts
facsimile realities
modern life
abounds
in
them
a
doppelgänger of
madame X
very well done
the new year
with resolutions
cannot
match
the old year
carrying
its encumbrances
forwards
i can’t understand there being a market for these
very expensive "dress" watches
my own watch has packed up and i have just brought a nice digital on ebay for eighteen dollars
as a child my maternal grandmother gave me my deceased grandfather’s watch which i promptly lost, so maybe there is some sort of trauma there ?
dr. mary haver talks about the benefits of
transdermal HRT in terms of a reduced risk for clotting
my writeup on
HRT, when i look back i can’t believe i got involved in and spent so much time on this stuff
an effective bass song
hoist the colours high elliott, rossio, zimmer
& verbinski
gracing others
with your
absence
often
but not always
mutually
appreciated
the magic mirrorland
of images
upside down and back to front
laughable
except
its how we view the world
what are we
but dreams
caught
in
the
mirrors
of
ourself ?
what are we
but dreams
caught
in
the
mirror
of
ourselves ?
what are we
but dreams
caught
in
the
mirrors
of
ourselves ?
rain on roof —
eyes laden
delicious
unbending road, what do we say ?
existing because it can
constrained by possibility
strung between is and is not
curled within the vastness of inconceivability
enwrapt outside the universe
what do we say ?
ed. a very old poem written when i was staying at the cambridge zen center in boston and righter than i knew
its the cycle from depression to mania that gives intellectual prowess and strength
religion is flypaper for hypocrites
the heavily tattooed
broadcast
their self injury
bad taste
lack of concern for their health
need for the appearance of criminal association
the fact they are idiots
paucity
allows
the gaps to
be filled
with
your
own wealth
the
results
are
mixed
there is a question over whether having more than three vaccines for covid has any benefit or is even
problematic
my own view is that a spacing of several months at least between these vaccines has always been important and now that the covid strains in circulation lack the virulence of the original, i will not be getting any beyond the two pfizer i have already had
also i think between my genes and vitamin
D and
MK7/K2 supplementation i don’t have a problem, in fact i don’t think i have ever had covid
couples
skin crossing its own boundaries
just
ideas
stitched together
and fall apart
and stitch together again
unbeknownst
to us
taurine
remedies
insomnia
and
migraine
a dreamless sleep
a period without memory
when it seems as if we were not
yet on waking
we can see we were
good poetry or writing is a simulation that somehow transcends the limitation of being a simulation
, through quantum means it somehow becomes the actuality of being what it conveys
i suppose the same even applies to acting
lewis carroll
a mathematician
jumped the computational gap
making real worlds
where alice
roams
eternally
how is this done ?
i
don’t
know
but
even
alice
goes
in
circles
simu-worlds
computational necessity creates paucity
requiring
they
turn
in
returning
circles
human hands
really different
a marker
of
a unique
species
ed. there’s something special about human hands, they are an evolutionary product, yet unearthily fragile, like something conjured up from elsewhere
chinese women are
absolutely obsessed with status and wealth and bullying must be socially endemic, the undercurrent of malignant force must be expected in a dictatorship/ police state
look at anything long enough
and the holes and inconsistencies start to appear
and then shout
look at anything long enough
and the holes and inconsistencies start to appear
in the imagination
computation without limit
yields answers
physical reality
hasn’t thought of
scott aaronson basically saying that any reality self limits the closeness of a simulation of it
so the pop culture meme of us living in the matrix is not true
we don’t and can’t
what can be thought
bounded by what cannot be thought
why
do
we
never
wonder
about
this ?
“
I was working at retail home improvement shop (making slightly above minimum wage at two part time jobs).
Customer came in and
I was able to help her with several questions.
She mentioned she managed rentals, what a good business it was, and asked what my rent was.
I told her.
She then exclaimed my rent was way too low, the owner could be making much more
AND THEN ASKED ME FOR CONTACT INFO FOR THE OWNER ”
“
This is why never you share financial details with people.
They will always look at the info from an angle that disadvantages you ”
what we call god
is
a field
not
a point
lewis
carroll
got
what
theologians
didn’t
alice
was
a traveller
god can’t exist
why ?
because
then
existence
can’t
exist
god can’t exist
why ?
because
then
existence
couldn’t
exist
photos of our dead
veneered with a beauty
of what can’t be said
“
Inner dialogue — any practical solutions to overcome looping on inner dialogue, in everyday life ?
Or how to stop rambling with own mind ? ”
this is the "brain default circuit" running and if you observe it, it shows your underlying take on things, it has consistent patterns
mine is so much rubbish usually
one of the problems with meditation is you can
"over-engrave" it
old areas of weakness
once dealt with
uncover
new
areas
of
weakness
men of power
what they have wanted, gained and held
a spectrum of penalty and benefit to those they have power over
one of the better retreats i did was at the kopua cistercian monastery in new zealand, minimal cost, good food, decent sleep and they left you alone
an eye opener of sanity after my experience with the japanese craziness of zen "sesshins"
however my years of christian boarding schools had inoculated me against the doctrine, not an advantage everyone would have, its a painfully bought one
legal robbery , can’t say i have any sympathy for the funds "underwater on their investments"
its amazing what a pretty/handsome face and trendy clothing can do
at least
the journalist was being somewhat honest despite the articles "puff" nature, its a show of what a nice lunch will buy in the way of publicity
its a pleasure to read such skill, the blend of puffery and honesty is so well done, marvellously mixed, the discerning reader can take the truth, the fools suck up the glitz
death
in
the
hall
of
splitting
light
is
a
cover
for
history
ed . a poem i wrote six years ago that i feel means something, but still don’t understand what
death
in
the
hall
of
splitting
light
a
cover
for
history
this world
carefully crafted
to not appear
an illusion
when
it
is
undercurrents
swing us out of our way
but
there
is
no
way
there’s lying by omission
and there’s truth by omission too
i would like to see the catholic church, that bastion of moralising sanctity, condemn the fetid demon who has an awful lot of blood on his hands — patriarch kirill — who heads the russian orthodox church
i am sure i will be waiting forever
its an interesting contrast, byzantine versus the roman church, historically there has not been a lot of love between them, essentially a geopolitical relationship obviated now by the decline of christianity
large language models are more than a human simulation, they fully feature us to a surprising degree including mental illness and false beliefs
the female universe
competition for bonding
they have
few concerns
outside of this
a death
that sinking feeling
what is gone
is gone forever
their absence
carries
us
with
them
“
Breaks can be mended ”
can shipwrecks be undone ?
the law of entropy is not favourable to this
not saying there can’t be some recovery, but "some" is a restriction of "full"
the deep grooves of our experience
wartime
trenches
to rise above the pattern
multiplicity
must be visited
in depth
“ the damage done by aggressive use of psychedelics is potentially not permanent ”
its permanent unfortunately, even only one use messes some
beginning and end
with a nice story inbetween
the way we are used to thinking
or would like things to be
however
it doesn’t correspond to reality
which is more
“ chop and change ”
rejection
the
hook
of
fatality
squared
complexity sinks
catch us
no way out
except
abstraction
tears
paltry markers
of the
sorrows
they
conceal
a mirror
will take
your size
and alice’s
beats falling down a rabbit hole
and telescoping
up and down
though this mode
feels more valid
“ just vent to
Him ”
just vent to myself
him
god
the neighbour’s dog
the
latter
has
more
meaning
the russian orthodox church’s close association with putin and the
russo-ukraine war makes for some post orwellian obscenity
i really don’t know how they reconcile it
calmer seas than can be
it takes storms
to wash up the useful debris
when the winds of insanity blow into prophecy
you know then
the
brain
is
fried
you’re another who talks to god and gets a reply ?
a certain emptiness
settles
clarity
comes
with it
activity obscures
with
its belief
in
itself
boltzmann
not in a vat
without a companion
searching everywhere
that searching
is the only companion
memory
the past encroaches on the future
taking
sadness
forwards
memory
the past encroaches on the future
taking
tears
forwards
the sea
despite the countless dead it has swallowed
only speaks
with its own voice
the gap
between parent
and child
is never
very large
no
matter
how
it
seems
melancholy
a taste too sweet
to
be
safe
drugs
alcohol
transitions too physical
to
be
of
any
merit
injury
wears
and cankers
i don’t know why we get caught up in this
but
we
do
good and evil
you don’t know what it is
life
constantly
inverts
its
values
commenter’s comment
decoupled
from
the
action
of
the
reality
the injury
of letting
some-one you care for
hurt themselves
but
it
happens
schisms
lie
beneath
the surface
waiting
to
reappear
the past dissolves
as we move forward from it
into
what
we
don’t
know
time going backwards
folding up what was unfolding
this core of existence
unexisting what would have existed
part of the wonder
more to ponder
as we wander
what
occurs
or might have been
handsome
rich
except for this
the asian female
is
undemanding
stasis
an unvarying universe
inertia rules
even sadness decays
to nothing
endlessly on media
people suffering some health, personal, financial or other disaster
then dispensing advice on how to avoid it
like they knew ?
at the boundary
faery lands
faery people
its the
only
explanation
that
makes
sense
there’s something odd about acting and the people involved and i think its best conveyed by the phrase
blind mummers which this tik tok seems to convey
a total plasticity of being precluding any great intellectuality, but all the same, interesting
round hay bales in the paddock
late afternoon sun
shadows make
giant commas
representations
are not
the thing itself
are
the
thing
itself
the rules of war
what meaning can this have
in the face of your own death
win, lose
you lost
yet we act
like something else matters
roads that go nowhere
and roads that go somewhere
both are necessary
and
both have their leaving points
to give advice is to try to predict the future
a man of sense doesn’t do that
as a child at boarding school we used to say the lord’s prayer before meals
its senselessness has always stayed with me, unresolved repetition, the insanity of adulthood, an echo of the medieval world and its remnant sounds
however
this version rocks
what is it about process ?
the endless walking of steps
to no conclusion that can be defined ?
"the way" is a daoist idea and not a good one
killing their own men on the eastern ukrainian front and making up the population loss with immigrants, can’t the russians put two and two together ?
actually the current immigration crisis in europe has it origins in the decimations of
WW1 and
WW2
some things
so big and endless
the surprise
is
they
still
don’t
go
anywhere
when the short cut equals the long cut
then you have got it right
the conundrum
the other person is not you
but all you know of him
is not him but you
“
Why are people so boring ? ”
there’s some really interesting people on youtube
scott aaronson for instance
statistically they are not going to be part of your personal life
intellectually, the people around you are not going to have that sort of interest
the self - referential
flip - flopping
on itself
taking meaninglessness
into meaninglessness
this way of idiots
is
so
prevalent
clarity never condenses
nonsense
does
simple explanations
contain the complex
yet without the complex
there would be
no
simple
religion
modifying the world
into
a
schizophrenic
fantasy
i love one
she doesn’t love me
another loves me
i don’t
love her
we three
a
dissonant
menagerie
i love one
he doesn’t love me
another loves me
i don’t
love him
we three
a
dissonant
menagerie
aging
the loss of experience dependent plasticity
the dried and shrivelled
become more dried and shrivelled
the boltzmann brain seems absurd to us
but it is only absurd by virtue of the world we have picked out to exist in
other perspectives define different probabilities
the young
burn brightly
and too quickly
the lower temperatures of age
have their point
this arbitrary cast
we are all thrown into
male and female
what is going on ?
this arbitrary cast
we are each thrown into
male and female
what is going on ?
why would mirrors face each other ?
the glass stops everything
infinite regress
is
not
the case
“
Do you think that leftism is more accepting of people with mental illness ? ”
stalin and mao were mentally ill
“
I would like to add a certain
Austrian painter to the list ”
he wasn’t ill the way stalin and mao were, you can see it in the poetry mao wrote and stalin killing off his wife’s family, hitler in his own context was a much more normal man and actually quite liked on a personal level
you have to be on your toes when in hospital, i think there is an underlying problem in that they do things statistically, that is, in terms of the average or worst case which of course, is not you
this conflicts with what is optimal for your needs as an individual being a certain case and not an average or worst
i guess this also applies to public health advice as some unfortunates discovered with vaccine injury during
2020 the covid crisis
the entertainment industry
a large swirl of unemployable hoi polloi
around a paucity of creative talent
TV
the dumbed down
even
further
dumbed
down
the gideons seem to have a low opinion of travelling salesmen asking on the second page of the version of their eponymous bible that i happened to be reading
“ are you . . . alone, depressed, addicted, stressed, cheated on, experiencing conflict or temptation
, considering suicide, curious ? ”
all quite reasonable questions for the travelling salesman i suppose, the problem one infers with cheating is it is ok to cheat but not to be cheated ?
to be fair, its about the only readable thing in a hotel room
it is clear reading ecclesiastes that the storyteller’s solomon is fictional, too many internal contradictions to be real, but rather is a peg to hang "wisdom literature" on
looking
finding
the proverbial snake still swallows you
ed. ouroboros
looking finding
the proverbial snake still swallows you
the buddhist doctrine of the world being suffering is surprisingly similar to ecclesiastes chapter one
“ all things are full of weariness ”
i am one
who are you ?
reality conjugates
to create confusion
“
Anybody else writes comments
(often for 3-10 minutes) then just deleting it instead of sending ? ”
well, in fact you are gaining a lot by just writing
, even if you don’t send it, helps straighten your thinking out
the trick to handling reddit is if you get downvoted then just say out loud to yourself "a downvote is an upvote" which it really is because of some of the cringy types who only know they disagree and can’t handle actually making a detailed criticism
i used to delete more when i first started, now i hardly ever do, writing comments is a skill that develops
because poetry is a lot of superimposed meanings, it is inherently quantum
therein lies real power
the morons complain they can’t understand
when that’s the whole point
james packer
lured by the female physique
why doesn’t he look at his own ?
inconsistency
leads
to
vulnerability
but fools
never care
do they ?
digging your own grave
when all you need to do is die
and not worry about the rest
sanity and insanity have this in common
in their demise
both are empty
sanity and insanity have this in common
in the demise
both are empty
jonathan thomas writes
all it takes is seeing people as only being able to provide a certain amount of value and nothing more
i feel more at peace now
my comment
well put
a symptom of watching too much
K and
C drama is i can now tell korean (hangul) from
chinese script
hangul, hands down is the "better" script, much more like english with its featural alphabet and created a different social dynamic with its ease of learning for commoners compared to the every difficult "idu" used by the aristocratic class
its interesting to consider how an arbitrary feature like the ease of learning and using a written language can have profound social ramifications since abstruse scripts require a professional class to implement them
wonderful music , but i feel for these performers with the huge oversupply of very good orchestral musicians now that it has become a sort of asian status symbol to work in this profession
all that focus on one instrument, a lifetime’s work and one really has to ask "for what ?"
this ad apparently
i’m not a person who buys flowers, but yesterday on the way home i passed what i know to be a beautiful garden with old trees and they had a sign out saying flower bunches were available so i turned back and drove in really to take advantage of being able to look at their garden again
nobody was around and there were bunches of flowers on a table ranging in price from i seem to remember from
$5? to
$25, i bought a bunch for
$15 that appealed to me with its vibrant red against white, purple and blue, then emptying the collection box of rainwater and putting the money in and going on to looking around their garden a bit
the flowers are now on my window table with a broad spectrum soluble fertiliser mixed in the water having had some success with this previously in making them last longer, so we will see how it goes
ed. a week later, it has worked very well for most of the flowers which appear almost unchanged, but one variety has withered
the infinite drag of emotions
a disruptive brake
what is the point of carrying resentments
when day after day
you can be free of them
if meaning is a fluid
then you too are flowing water
hard to see
disjoint
feelings
an execution of sorts
the question of injustice doesn’t even arise
just
the
contemplation
of
absence
"layering" or multitracking is a revolution in music as fundamental as electronics and computer synthesis
you can see it here represented visually
the ukrainian folk song
carol of the bells
i think the problem is the virus is mutating so fast that the vaccine from an antibody point of view is useless and
the booster is causing more problems than it is solving so a next generation vaccine that addresses a vulnerable substrate common to all covid variants is needed
the age of aquarius , its rare to come across a conductor
and choir so obviously enjoying what they are singing, they are spanish, maybe a cultural difference too ?
this song is, of course the defining anthem of hippiedom and the new age movement
there’s more than the anglo world out there
brains in a vat are no longer
science fiction
“
A monk asked Dongshan :
Someone who keeps the precepts isn’t at peace, and someone who breaks the precepts isn’t suffering
Why is that ? ”
my comment
outward forms don’t constrain the inward
its a world of appearances and deception
often
self-deception
sincerity
mars
misaligned recursive
the fools try
never succeeding
strands of white beaches
ocean curls over the moon
death is the same as love
ed. i wrote this decades ago near kalumburu in northern australia where there are very large tides
i was looking west out across napier broome bay towards the cape on the other side at dusk
there’s a lot of
new research saying that being overweight is a disease state on multiple fronts and imo its a solvable problem for its victims to work through even though though bad epigenetics is a prominent cause
there is something to fat shaming
mañjuśrī is a loud mouth
even if he and vimalakīrti are both silent
they still get it wrong
not responding
he responds
wherein lies the fun ?
not responding
he responds
where lies the fun ?
the breaking of bonds
the forming of bonds
most of life
happens at these edges
of
being
“
According to the
Śūrangama
Sūtra, your mind comes from the void, resembling a cloud dotting the immense, clear sky ”
no mind
no void
clouds twist and rort
chat gpt is at sea with zen
a large language model means it is monotheistic
“ and for you andrew, is zen a polytheistic religion ? ”
see this is the problem, you, like most don’t accept that what zen is, is dependent on the context, it just a word with different meanings in different situations, a word in different stories basically
to answer your question about the story i have made for it, its not polytheism, but rather what the poem you have just replied to says
“ i accept that people use the word zen in different ways. i use zen to mean the dharma of buddhas. do you acknowledge that that is a real thing ? ”
the dharma of buddhas
that’s a rephrase of eihei dogen’s term "the buddha dharma"
i think that’s like asking "is god a thing" or saying there is an underlying ultimate reality
now this actually starts to synchronise with some or a lot of the dynasty chinese zen "stories" where what you have basically is the "masters" refuting what are essentially monotheistic viewpoints and really you can say that zen is simply this refutation or the process of looking at the question
“
I don’t think zen masters ever refute monotheistic viewpoints in particular.
But they certainly refute specific metaphysical viewpoints, and then metaphysics in general, and then all viewpoints ”
zen is deeply infused with christian ideas and its schismatic refutations because, at the time zen was being formed in china, christianity was also making significant inroads, so much so that it threatened existing power structures and consequently later was successfully suppressed
therefore it is to be expected that a refutation of monotheism is so much a theme in ch’an and of course you can generalise monotheism to other metaphysical viewpoints as you point out, however refutation has an inherently ambiguous relation to "annihilation" where you get into "absence is presence" conundrums
“
Why don’t zen masters mention
Christianity or
Christian beliefs in particular ? ”
chrisitanity was severely repressed rather like "gnosticism" by the version of christianity we know today, we only know gnosticism now through archeological recoveries of texts
zen has other influences of course like greek philosophy through the
greco-bactrian kingdoms and the silk road
buddha is a story
the believers believe
everything
except
their
own
craziness
its pathetic the way ideologues and theologians argue over nonsense like it means something
what is the real problem with hypothetical questions ?
they segment the world in an unreal way
melodrama
constant
emotional
extremes
a sad fact of getting older (ed.
50+) is a noticeable proportion of your age peers starting to lose their mental sharpness or worse and in my view there’s a lot of
pre-diabetes around
“
In conclusion, these findings provide novel evidence
for an association between brain insulin signalling and
late-life cognitive decline ”
i don’t have diabetes or
pre-diabetes, but being of the view the road to them comes with age i take
100 mcg of chromium polynicotinate twice a day and i have a fasting glucose level of
4.8mmol/
L which is significantly below average for my age, so maybe the chromium is helping with that ?
the other interesting result from my panel test was a
P.S.A of .53 which is exceptionally low meaning i have no prospect of getting prostate cancer and that could be
attributable to my taking 3000iu of vitamin D a day for many years now (with 90mcg of MK7/K2)
you see studies come out saying that supplementation doesn’t improve the quality of health or increase life span, but when you look at the supplements they use there are a lot of flaws, i do think the correct supplementation which is going to vary individual to individual does offer the potential to wind the clock back a decade
another thing to watch is even moderate social drinking has a negative effect on later life health, it is a systemic poison, nor is exercise a panacea for all ills though in moderation, it has its place
as an afterthought i notice that people in general have dreadful trouble with accepting that their health and quality of older age can be dramatically improved by intelligent supplementation and attention to their diet, to the point of outright hostility
picked the season’s first raspberries today
of all the fruits i have eaten i think freshly picked raspberries have the highest antioxidant levels
when you follow the detail through, you can come up with surprising conclusions, often quite different to what the common consensus is, giving you a very strong edge in prediction
an example would be the october the
7th war between israel and hamas, that the real driver that made conflict of that scale inevitable was the increasing targeting sophistication of rocketry at a level implementable by hamas, that within five years hamas could have developed a "first strike" capability against israel
what takes you out is
your weakest link , not just for health and longevity, but psychological factors in life as well which in my case happens to be uneven "executive function" or in english "working on the right things", whatever "right " is
you are not separate from what you write
let it open like the nightflower
it will
you are not separate from what i write
let it open like the nightflower
it will
i came to the end and went past it
it wasn’t the same as the end
lesson learnt
slowly
and
.
.
.
completely
i came to the end and went past it
it wasn’t the same as the end
lesson learnt
slowly
and
.
.
.
incompletely
ambiguity
mixed feelings
clarity
only
exists
in
books
simple rules
to get through life
when looked at closely
are only half true
you can see how clever
and articulate joni mitchell is, really a step above
it has always seemed to me that we age too quickly and don’t live long enough
there may be an
evolutionary reason for this
stonewalling
is
a shut door
that won’t open
stonewalling
a shut door
that won’t open
the differences between women and men
in the whole world there’s no man with
cupboards full of handbags and shoes
russian propaganda
its hard to get your head around
no-one says what they believe
swimming in
the deep current
of
repression
kapiti island
from raumati beach
mystic horizons
sea
, land and sky
hathepsut
i find ancient egyptian history fascinating because its so different in terms of belief that it might as well be an alien world, yet the good preservation of its architecture, hieroglyphs and mummies make possible its reconstruction into our present reality for contrast
a dot in the span of ages
perspective
changes your views
why would you have opinions on what you obviously have no real life experience of ?
is it drink or drugs or just pure stupidity ?
you are spanning misquoting to fantasy to outright lying
a gold medal in the olympics for bullshit
going forwards
not all directions pay
backing out
pays
“
The lights are on
but nobody’s home
the man of distinction
cannot be found ”
my refutation
if nobody’s there
where can they be ?
misunderstanding
before
and
after
about thirty years ago i did a reasonable amount of actual "zen meditation"; roshis, sesshins, the whole gambit
its not something you will understand unless you do it and you really have to clock up some hours
basically its just sitting reasonably still (a chair is fine, even standing or walking which the koreans do) and letting the thoughts flow through your mind and observing that
the zen term is shikantaza
counting the breath, visualizations, guided meditation etc are all total idiocy
there are hazards, you want to move around every half hour or so to keep the circulation up, some people may find their mental difficulties are accentuated
“
Why idiocy ?
They are just different methods ”
methods for what ?
i would even go so far as to say meditation was "instructionless"
women carrying handbags
that cumbersome badge of office
marie antoinette being the most prominent figure in the resistance to the revolution is the real reason she was executed, her husband was ineffectual
since the revolutionaries won, the view of her that has come down today is defined by their propaganda
a recreated
portrait
an amusing
short if you have ever pondered the duality of this world and its representations and the egyptian afterlife
everything creeps
knowledge
age
the floor
the sky
like the red queen
we can’t judge
where
we
are going
calligraphy by
wang xizhi/youjun
supposedly china’s greatest calligrapher
some people have hard and fast boundaries
other’s amorphous
striking the right balance
is difficult
or not
possible
some people have hard and fast boundaries
other’s amorphous
striking the right balance
is difficult
or impossible
no-one deliberately makes a mistake they can see, therefore assertions of having made a mistake usually err on the glib side
biology exists in the form of knowledge in
DNA
you can’t expect human behaviour to be different
“ dongshan said : the whole, great treasury of the teaching is only one word — "this" ”
洞山曰。一大藏教。祇是個之字。
i don’t think "this" is a correct translation or at least what was originally said which i would put as
the mode of the infinite dharma is one side then another
disagreeing with the terms
you obviate the need for reply
so much
time
here to waste
the secret with writing is do a lot and it will slowly develop
the female surety in the face of its own stupidity
maladaptive
trauma in the past
doesn’t stay there
but migrates to the present
PTSD
barbacue
versus tomato sauce
this is what a relatively normal/ functional "manic"
episode looks like
the continual intensity is what gives it away and of course must (eventually?) revert into its opposite
i do get episodes like this, but its pretty occasional and always is followed by a not fun at all migraine, a "prodrome" so to speak
a good
translation of the poem written by pan yue about a year after his wife’s death
when your brain takes a holiday
not relaxing
but a journey confounding all you think essential
projections shattered
to drift closer to the cascades roar
then close to the edge
pull in to shore
having fulfilled
its own pilgrimage
at one stage i thought i was the most banned person on the internet and i still get posts removed and banning for what by objective measures are innocuous and harmless but what i figured is that even reading me some mods find too challenging, they get upset by what their brain has to go through just understanding what i write
my crowning glory is to be banned from r|poetry for being too poetic in style, and bizarrely, after some to and fro with the mod, it turned out he didn’t even like poetry and this is the major problem with message boards/ subreddits, people with stupid agendas tend to take them over or infiltrate, bossy people clueless about the subject; some competently moderated subreddits exist, but they are in the minority
the span varies from outright insanity to passable mediocrity with a certain utilitarianism and that’s the nature of the beast
there’s no such thing as nothing
we are always in a "something" world
the meaning of life
its that simple
grandeur, mystery, the sublime, reverence, awe
poppycock, drivel, blather, hogwash, balderdash
the truth of mood
seems right
but
it
can
be
wrong
something out of nothing
nothing complains
being
where
it doesn’t want to be
knowing less
and knowing more
this flux that changes
as we get older
where more retires
and less gets bolder
jigsaws with pieces that don’t fit
some or all lives ?
good writing has the ability to mean many things and should continually open up on looking and never be completely understandable
simple truths
the hardest to implement
because
they have
the
most
power
opinions about injustice
are not justice
wars
the commenters aren’t fighting
they are
talking
or
writing
occasionally i think about the difference between lyrics and the sort of poems/homilies that i write and there’s a difference in intellectual rigour and depth, that necessarily what i write has to have it and lyrics can’t have it
the
japanese-american song writer mitski miyawaki talks about
the process she went though writing
my love all mine which has a degree of
cross-over, its a song lyric bending a bit into poetry, very effective with the music, but intellectually not quite there, but if that depth was there it would no longer be effective as a lyric, the text would overwhelm the music, same as the careful balance of roma ryan’s lyrics with "enya’s" music now i think about it
a good cover , you can see how hard it is to make money out of music now, i bet this woman is not paying any royalty
baiyun duan case collection (translated by suru) number
49 : dasui’s turtle
there was a turtle beside dasui’s hermitage
a monk asked “ all sentient beings have their bones inside their skin — why do these have their skin inside their bones ? ”
the master picked up a straw sandal and placed it on the turtle’s back. the monk had no reply
clearly the skin is wrapped around the bone
the intricately drawn divination symbols are worth seeing
he lifted a straw sandal and covered it
but dasui was still ridiculed by this monk.
my comment
inside out
from the outside in
the world
works like this
ed. when i first looked at this, i couldn’t figure it out, came back about
8 hours later and discovered i could
i would take the straw sandal as a symbol of bodhidharma’s understanding
i don’t know how suru does it, but his translations seem to have the ability to "unlock" what is meant, whereas other translations have the opposite effect
narrative
within bounds
out of bounds
breaks the narrative
contrarian to the core
agreement is provisional
a stance that is justified
fairytale tropes
foreseeing the future
changes the past
that’s the hard one
backwardation
alternatives
slip back
to nothing
leaving
being
you’re gullible
a mouse surrounded by cats
accepting the claw marks
as
normal
“
I (
F23) am
a severe alcoholic and
I’ve accepted this will kill me one day ”
you want to reduce the amount over several weeks, keep a drinking diary
ed. likewise with smoking, going cold turkey is too traumatic, tapering down has to be the way to go and also teaches control and recovery for the inevitable "falling off the wagon"
“ everything at once ”
what does that mean ?
30 years and i still can’t tell you
likeness is and isn’t identity
“ perception is controlled hallucination ”
listen to the "sinewave speech" version, then the original, then the sinewave speech again
andy clark "on form" and robert kuhn in familiar territory makes for
a good interview
the brain
conscious and unconscious
what emerges from one
to flow into the other
ideas about ideas
endless inversions and loops
involutions dominate
the
flux
of
meaninglessness
a poem
the onus
is on the reader
to make
sense
of
it
poems
the onus
is on the reader
to make
sense
of
them
the lock of ourselves
pick
and the tumblers occasionally align
and the door opens
take the time to walk through
the simplicity of parallelism
life’s repeating patterns
across people
one wonders
and is
amazed
to see others
and
the
a similar form
in
oneself
karl friston’s notion of
free energy is a fundamental shakeup of the way we view the world, the brain is not simply observing, but is an active inference machine interacting with externals to gain increasingly fine grained and more sophisticated estimates of how they work
i have known about this for years, but notice its get an increasing presence in intellectual life and hopefully it will have an positive effect on that trauma known as education which is based on the antiquated observational model rather than interactive exploration and modification
100-150 mcg daily of the thorne selenomethionine is an assist for dry eyes
the science is that selenium downregulates inflammation in the cornea so helping preserve the tear layer
be cautious, don’t overdo the dose
what needs to be made explicit
what carries best under its own weight
silently speaking
for the cognoscenti to hear
the dull circle of what we know
changes of itself
into what we don’t know
the world is more open than we think it is
likeness can be identity
why be surprised ?
the difference
between
what can occur
and
can’t
is obviated
likeness can be identity
why be surprised ?
the difference
between
what can occur
and
can’t
is obliviated
little fictional worlds
where the prince marries the princess and everyone lives happily ever after
cathartic
for
its
factual
cruelty
the world on repeat
sometimes it seems that way
i make it that way
loss
tears for absence
whatever
the cause
what
is
beyond
remedy
gaza is an enclave, enclaves don’t start wars and win
love sours
palpable hurt
you and the universe
bleed together
love sours
palpable hurt
blood covers the universe
it
is
yours
its interesting to consider how much further chat
GPT can go and what its intrinsic limitations might be, whether it can be smarter than the text it makes its inferences from ?
an inheritance
not from generation to generation
but across the spheres
of illuminance
of
centuries
how the brain works in terms of the "free energy" principle
karl friston explains
like you are five
a good/ well written film or story inducts constant believable "predictive" failure on the readers or viewers part
its the mechanism to keep you reading or viewing
suspense
inconsistency
the opener
of worm cans
that
hardly
bear
looking into
c-drama is the real china
its hard to find a culture more fixated on status and material wealth with an undertow of irrational violence
the
CCP can’t be what it claims to be
neck
stretches that work
propaganda
is what happens
when you deny
criticism
the distant view
a look backwards
feelings mild
the tempest has subsided
outcomes in hindsight
a
mixed
bag
blurring correct and incorrect
the context
defines
blurring correct and incorrect
the context
defines
each
false
and true
even empty representations
may be
false
and true
a pearl
peach blossom
a branch of plum flower
the last two
evanescent
the first
remains
for
you
to
discover
beauty
and
sorrow
are coupled
together
one
the other
reveals
liminal space
our worlds
other worlds
and ourselves
somewhere
in between
liminal space
our worlds
other worlds
and ourselves
somewhere
between
unreal worlds
more pleasant and persistent than this one
when the dice are thrown
choose one or the other
one of the problems of understanding stalin’s rule is it was often more fatal to be a communist than anyone else, but if you look at the soviet union as a state ruled by
CHEKA and then the
KGB who were constantly asserting their authority over the bolsheviks and other ideologically driven power blocks, it makes sense, you have to remember that stalin himself was executed by beria
if you extend that to the
FSB today and the killing or imprisonment of competitors to the FSB proxy, putin,
this thesis , that yuri felshtinsky puts forwards warrants consideration and makes certain predictions about the future of russia
a scenario for putin’s downfall is the same as the fate of stalin, execution disguised as a natural death should crimea be lost or the casualty rate lose public acceptance
two quotes by philip larkin
“ i try the door of where i used to live
locked ”
“ what mainly worries me if you will excuse me speaking of my own affairs for the moment is a strengthening suspicion that in my character there is an antipathy between art and life
i find that once i give in to another person as i have given in, not in voluntarily, but almost completely to ruth
there is a slackening and dulling of the peculiar artistic fibers that makes it impossible to achieve that mental clenching that crystalizes a pattern and keeps it still while you draw it ”
solve the superposition
all things at once
waving amplitudes
reduce to nonce
the primordial experience
everything inverts
backwardation
the many goes to none
and none goes to many
i don’t know how else to explain it
k-drama
c-drama
a glitzy surface
with nothing underneath
the great wall of china makes a lot more sense if you realise its purpose in conjunction with the terrain was to stop horses rather than men
a rather fun thing to do
is draw the chinese character then search to see what it means
for the first time in my life i have written in chinese, my crude efforts showed me why calligraphy is such a big deal in countries that use ideograms
schizophrenia is basically ending up with false beliefs about how the world works and acting on them
i often use the term in my writing in a more general sense to include false beliefs that are the product of a normally functioning brain, both idiosyncratic and cultural
similarly with "normal" and disease states of the brain, in the abstract the result is the same, fundamental misalignments that mean we are all acquainted on a personal level with schizophrenia and its results
life’s metas
a trap
of
accuracy and inaccuracy
dreams
the function of life
in death
against the vast backdrop
philip larkin was so afraid of
i don’t yet feel its inevitability
maybe one day i will
and staring into nothingness
will finally cease
when you injure those closest to you
don’t expect not to get hurt
fragments
persisting in our minds
hidden seams
binding
our illusory
world
once
dai kensho happens it leaves its mark on you and actually strands you in a netherworld
“
You mention this now and then in your posts.
I always get a little confused because some people talk about it as if it were a state you reach and reside in.
Yet there are people that describe their experience as a glimpse
The few that experience a taste, long for more . . .
I remember a
v-log with
Brad
Warner where he described someone that had experienced it but the experience left them as a shell of a person ”
my reply
its not really a glimpse, its a journey, you have been somewhere and come back
the journey changes you and i guess not everyone comes back safely, a bit like pilgrim’s progress ?
an
incremental
understanding
develops
each step
one at a time
opens up the view
which keeps
widening
without
end
i would say teresa of avila suffered from
cataleptic /epileptic seizures and these necessitated careful management of them as "agitprop" for the catholic church to avoid what could have very negative consequences for her
the eye of the needle
the hole everything goes through
and comes out of
to go through again
the eye of the needle
the hole everything goes through
and comes out
to go through again
“
How does the needle with the eye pass through ? ”
not knowing the needle
not knowing the eye
they ramble on
in
meaninglessness
a lifetime stretches out
developmentally
one day is different from the next
and the same
we need to differentiate
the beginning
from the end
i don’t like "agreeing to disagree" because at the root there are conflicts in shared knowledge that must inevitably surface in other areas to create friction
of course a lot of our life dealings are burdened by this penal yoke
scott aaronson on aumann’s agreement theorem
“ years ago i watched a documentary episode that interviewed a mother who survived the holodomor
she described a "sophie’s choice" when a trader offered her some beetroot in exchange for her daughter
she refused and bartered some belongings for a small portion
when the trader had gone her emaciated son crawled naked from beneath the stove and begged for some of the food
his mother told him that there was only enough for the most likely to survive child, the daughter/sister
with "tears as big as peas" he begged then crawled back beneath the stove and did not emerge again ”
ed. a comment on a youtube video, i have come across some over the years that you could hardly imagine
one that sticks with me from the early days of the internet is of a man as who a child saw his father shot before his eyes by two thugs in the teamster’s union, i assume it was some internal politically motivated assassination
robert spencer
interviewed on the question of whether muhammad existed or not
for myself i weep
life’s failings through me seep
feelings rendered asunder
ripped by life’s thunder
cleaved to the bone like this
is it any wonder
to take life amiss
what we ever learn
love is not without conditions
violate them
and expect to be cast out
its interesting to think that the william/ kate and harry/megan rift would in earlier times have developed into factions that would then have gone to war with each other, the main difference being that megan would likely have been continental royalty
there’s some pretty good examples in english history for this
affronted
they keep the door shut
punishing themselves
affronted
she keeps the door shut
punishing herself
affronted
he keeps the door shut
punishing himself
in war
there is no right or wrong
just success or failure
and
the dead and injured
of course
people claim nagarjuna says this and that, but i would like to see a literal translation of the source before commenting on what he supposedly said
that there is "no foundation", but rather a web of cross dependencies is a philosophical position gaining some currency in certain quarters now and i suppose that would reflect nagarjuna’s view
mirrors
repetitions
our lives
seeking patterns
that are already there
the perception of beyond
neither a thing
nor no-thing
what cannot be conveyed
has nobody to convey it to
like jesus, buddha is a fictional character so the "teachings" likewise have to be fictional and in my experience, a confused waste of time
the origins of buddhism are substantially in greek philosophy so buddhism is, in a sense a migration of that philosophy into a religion, lol "with indian characteristics"
i’ve got more objective as i have got older, i just look at what occurs, usually there’s a reason however little one may agree with it
out of love
that reluctance to enter into it again
all the travail
in
that
different
state
a chinese
historical drama , a bit raw for western tastes in the equivalent audience i think, however its good cinema and the chinese do have a different perspective on suicide as a way to protest
possibly "triggering", the series is called
faithful
de rigueur for these actors and actresses is to have plastic surgery to create a creased, somewhat european eyelid, raised nose and often narrowed jaw line making for a "hybrid" racial appearance distanced from ethnic identity that has no correlate in nature
lysander :
helen, to you our minds we will unfold
tomorrow night when phoebe doth behold
her silver visage in the watery glass
decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass
(a time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal)
through athens’ gates have we devised to steal
a midsummer night’s dream, act
1, scene
1
sir henry neville at his best, i know nothing else in english with a comparable synthesis of imagery, and fluidity of sound
midsummer night’s dream and the tempest are written by the same man with some souring of life between
knowing something
forwards and backwards
backwards and forwards
only then
you can understand
sometimes i dream of being "normal"
i look for it
but its not for me
all those shifting references points of other people
too hard a problem
to solve
sometimes i dream of being "normal"
i look for it
but its not for me
all those shifting reference points of other people
too hard a problem
for me to solve
life’s understanding
not delivered in a seamless line of
HD
rather a complex involution of discovery
clashing shards
that
sometimes
fit
life’s understanding
not delivered in a seamless line of full clarity
rather a complex involution of discovery
clashing shards
that
sometimes
fit
together
styrofoam cups are out, the research is continuing to show nanoplastics as a significant health hazard
the absent
one way or another
never came into being
or being and now gone
we can only wonder
the absent
one way or another
never came into being
or being and
pre-naturally departed
we can only wonder
truth is a part of falsity
and falsity a part of truth
philosophers may argue
but are confounded
as which is what of what they say
possible
probable
improbable
actual
let me
count-the-factual
the hard road is not necessarily the right one, nor is the easy road necessarily wrong
mimicry
creates beautiful butterflies
what do those iridescent shimmers mean ?
none knows
male and female
1 plus
2
the whole world revolves on this sum
not knowing
its incomplete
the divorced
separated
parentless
half parented
socially traumatised
poor nutrition
cultural insanities
imbibed like food
failed education
what crosses the generations
today’s ills
the
bitter-sweetness of inadequacy
the lives of fridges, freezers and washing machines (anything with a motor in ) are noticeably extended if levelled so the wear on the bearings is evenly distributed
facelifts
botox
body modification
the media
and entertainment landscape
has changed
irrevocably
and
become
even
more
unreal
the tattooed
all
in
denial
about
their
problem
the
uglification
of
their
skin
poetesses
all a bit mad
the female constriction of view
i have hit the jackpot,
a remastered video from around
1915 showing what i take to be a buddhist ceremony in beijing
the incense sticks might mean that a favour is being asked of whatever deity
buddhism is a culture, not a philosophical abstraction which is how it is commonly presented in the west
a remastered
street scene in beijing in the
1930s, the towering building is either the eastern or western "flower" gate into forbidden city, already looking a bit decrepit following the abdication of the
last qing emperor in
1912
puyi was obviously incompetent for the job and a good example of what happens in hereditary hierarchical governmental systems, interestingly, there was always an element of choice over who was emperor over the millennia of dynastic china ensuring a degree of competency, but for some reason this never happened in the last stages of the chinese and russian empires and directly led to their collapse and consequent travail
the key to the lock
unfolds the key
unfolds the lock
the wine shop (1909) is a painting i really like, i’m not sure
edward hopper ever made a more evocative one, , a blend of art nouveaux, impressionism and surrealism
a while back, i had a panel of medical tests done and on the basis of an
LDL figure that he never gave me, the doctor suggested i take a statin
i’ve been following the story on statins a bit since then and to me its a resounding
NO as to taking them due to many side effects and what would be the problem to fix anyway?, my health is very good, i have the blood pressure of an adolescent and can run
100m in
24 seconds
one comes across so many people proxying their entire judgment to a doctor or specialist to their detriment
my view now is its reasonable for a doctor to expect you to intensively research whatever health problem and medications, but how many do this ?
there’s hundreds of millions of dollars of high quality research on the web, why not take advantage of them ?
the secret to reading a study is not expect to understand it at first but keep coming back and what its saying will fall into place
as a rule the university medical teaching is ten years behind the latest understanding
infallibility
fallibilities claim
backed
by
the
force
of ignorance
infallibility
fallibilities claim
backed
by
force
a belief in witches is not harmless, historically in western culture and today in some regions of africa it is/was used as an excuse to kill women, often cruelly
if you think
some-one is a witch, you want to think about the consequences of any sort of action based on the belief
if you find yourself or another being defensive, try to work out what is being defended
telling
the noise of the human head
trying to
impose
its views
a monk asked zhaozhou : the countless things return to one — where does one return to ?
zhaozhou replied : when this old monk was in qingzhou, he made a cloth shirt that weighed seven pounds
my comment
the weight of a shirt too heavy to bear
the monk struggles to add stones to the pockets
the devil
god
witches
mutations of a reality
that is much more prosaic
“
Yet it’s very much a thing ”
you are not testing your hypotheses
witches belong to macbeth and the devil to zoroastrianism and paradise lost
god is an ontological construct charmed into existence by "likeness to god" and you of course imagining yourself to be "like god" are plagued by the opposite extreme, the "unlike god"
a misunderstood zen koan
a monk asked zhaozhou : i have recently entered the monastery — teacher, could you please give me guidance ?
zhaozhou asked : have you finished eating your porridge or not ?
the monk replied : yes, i’ve finished eating
zhaozhou replied : then go and wash your bowl
the monk suddenly understood awareness
the last line is wrong, in my view the intended sense is
“ the monk understood he had to do his own work ”
“
Only
3 lines ? ”
three lines
cross the universe
with each step