If a turtle is a story, then
it's turtles all the way down...

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The most contemptible thing



The most contemptible thing about dreams is that everyone has them. The delivery boy who dozes against the lamppost in between deliveries is thinking about something in his darkened mind. I know what he's thinking about: the very same things into which I plummet, between one and another ledger entry, in the summer tedium of the stock-still office.

-Bernardo Soares

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected...



For as much as a year Satan continued these visits, but at last he came less often, and then for a long time he did not come at all. This always made me lonely and melancholy. I felt that he was losing interest in our tiny world and might at any time abandon his visits entirely. When one day he finally came to me I was overjoyed, but only for a little while. He had come to say good-by, he told me, and for the last time. He had investigations and undertakings in other corners of the universe, he said, that would keep him busy for a longer period than I could wait for his return.

"And you are going away, and will not come back any more?"

"Yes," he said. "We have comraded long together, and it has been pleasant – pleasant for both; but I must go now, and we shall not see each other any more."

"In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?"

Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, "There is no other."
 
A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words might be true – even must be true.

"Have you never suspected this, Theodor?"

"No. How could I? But if it can only be true – "

"It is true."

A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before it could issue in words, and I said, "But – but – we have seen that future life  seen it in its actuality, and so – "
  
"It was a vision  it had no existence."

I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me. "A vision? – a vi – "

"Life itself is only a vision, a dream."

It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times in my musings!

"Nothing exists; all is a dream. God  man  the world  the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars – a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space – and you!"
  
"I!"

"And you are not you  you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream -- your dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me....

"I am perishing already  I am failing  I am passing away. In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever – for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!

"Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago  centuries, ages, eons, ago! – for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane – like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell – mouths mercy and invented hell – mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!...

"You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks -- in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier.

"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream  a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought – a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Honour is a gift a man gives himself



Father, will McGregors ever be kings again?

All men with honour are kings, but not all kings have honour.

What is honour?

Honour is what no man can give you and none can take away. Honour is a gift man gives himself.

Do women have it?

Women are the heart of honour, and we cherish and protect it in them. You must never mistreat a woman or malign a man, nor stand by and see another do so.

How do you know if you have it?

Never worry on the getting of it. It grows in you and speaks to you. All you need do is listen.


-Raibeart Ruadh MacGregor

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Homer in the moonlight

Since I have nothing to do and nothing to think about doing, I'm going to describe my ideal on this sheet of paper -

The sensibility of Mallarme in the style of Vieira; to dream like Verlaine in the body of Horace; to be Homer in the moonlight.


To feel everything in every way; to be able to think with the emotions and feel with the mind; not to desire much except with the imagination; to suffer with haughtiness; to see clearly so as to write accurately; to know oneself through diplomacy and dissimulation; to become naturalized as a different person, with all the necessary documents; in short, to use all sensations but only on the inside, peeling them all down to God and then wrapping everything up again and putting it back in the shop window like the sales assistant I can see from here with the small tins of a new brand of shoe polish.

All these ideals, possible or impossible, now end. Now I face reality, which isn't even the sales assistant (whom I don't see), only his hand, the absurd tentacle of a soul with a family and a fate, and it twists like a spider without a web putting back tins of polish in the window.

And one of the tins fell, like the Fate of us all.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Nosce Te Ipsum


The old woman gives you a cookie and points to the cross-stiched sign that hangs above the kitchen door.

"It means, 'Know Thyself'", she says, drawing a cigarette from the pack she pulls from her apron pocket.

"The thing is," she pauses to strike a match, lighting her cigarette, inhaling slowly, "you never know, do you?". She exhales, the smoke casting a blue aura over the kitchen table at which she has seated herself heavily.

You blink, look away, out the open kitchen window. The sunlight casting slight shadows on the old sink and floor through the whisps of smoke. "Why am I here?"

"Ahh, yes well. If I told you that, you'd already know, wouldn't you?"

You look at her, a confused line crossing your face.

She leans back in her chair and looks up at you. "So why are you here?"

"I don't know. I don't remember. I was walking down the street, walking home. Then I opened the door and....I.....uh......."

"Go on, eat your cookie. Maybe it'll help."

"It's weird. I don't really remember getting here. Am I in the wrong place? Oh god, I'm sorry, I must have been completely lost in thought or something and wandered in, oh I'm so sorry. I should go..."

"No, no. Stay. It's alright. I like the company."

"But I'm not supposed to be here."

"Then where are you supposed to be?"

"I.....I.....can't seem to......", you look around, behind you through the kitchen door. It leads out into a living room. "I just can't seem to remem.......sorry I just....I"

"Hey there, don't worry about it. The only place to be right now is where you are, right now. And don't worry about that old sign, I just like the way it looks over the door there. Don't take it seriously."

"Who are you?"

"Well, that depends I suppose, on who you are."

You feel a bit dizzy, keep looking around, over your shoulder, out the window, back to the old woman smoking her cigarette at the kitchen table. "But I....I should be...."

"Look hon, don't worry about it. Why don't you sit down and eat your cookie. We'll talk awhile and get you all straightened out. I promise."

You look around again, then move to the chair opposite her, pull it out and sit, awkwardly.

"Go on, take a bite. I promise you'll like it, and by the time your done you'll feel right as rain."

You look at the cookie in your hand, raise it to your mouth, and take a bite.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Willy Wonka quotes poetry



One of my favorite lines comes from a nineteenth century poet named O'Shaughnessy. The poem is an Ode from O'Shaughnessy's Music and Moonlight. In the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with Gene Wilder, Wonka quotes the first two lines.


 . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . , . , .


We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems

We, in the ages lying,
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying,
To the old of the new world's worth
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure,
Can trample a kingdom down

Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more

Friday, February 26, 2010

The Curse of the Modern Age



The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart. It is the curse of the modern age.

Nature, in her wisdom, had made us so that we could not look into our own eyes, at our own face. The only way to do so was to assume the properly humble position of stooping over to look at the reflection in a pond or stream. But now we have proven too clever for our own good. We live in the age of narcissism. Remember him? Narcissus? The cruel hero of Greek myth, renowned for his beauty, who upon falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water could not tear himself away, and so he sat, stooped over looking at himself until he became the flower that to this day bears his name.



In all this there is deeper meaning for us who stare at the modern mirror. I'm not talking about the mirror in your bathroom, I'm talking about the mirror you are looking at right now. Turn off your monitor and you will see the face of the future of humanity. Our eyes looking out to an endless sea of ourselves, we transcend the shackles of our physical selves and become avatars in the new frontier; the undiscovered country.

Beautiful, but so tragic.

The man who invented the mirror poisoned the human heart.

So turn off your ipod, get off the phone, and for God's sake tear yourself away from this accursed mirror! This...what is around you and in you right now, this very instant that you read this word.

You are sitting right smack in the middle of the beatific vision. THIS IS IT! You are in it, but most importantly you are the eye that sees it. So just enjoy it.

But if you still are not convinced, maybe Howard Beale can.

TURN IT OFF!!!