alt.surreal.impeach.iraq.sammich
Richard Martin
see it---
Any a you surrealist folks got any response to how every other response
to the impeachment-bombing juxtaposition referred to it as "surreal"?
barrett john erickson
surreal (adj., illiterate)
a vulgar colloquialism popularized as a synonym for "weird" or "bizarre,"
this is a word with no meaning whatsoever among surrealists, except as a
certain identifier of the user's carelessness or ignorance. [also: --
surrealistic, (adj.) -- surrealistically, (adv.)]
-- barrett
bar...@MagneticFields.org
http://www.MagneticFields.org/
"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at
which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable
and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions."
...André Breton
Richard Martin
barrett john erickson wrote:
> Richard Martin wrote:
> >
> > Maybe you all covered this in some thread over there, but if so I didnt
> > see it---
> >
> > Any a you surrealist folks got any response to how every other response
> > to the impeachment-bombing juxtaposition referred to it as "surreal"?
>
> surreal (adj., illiterate)
> a vulgar colloquialism popularized as a synonym for "weird" or "bizarre,"
> this is a word with no meaning whatsoever among surrealists, except as a
> certain identifier of the user's carelessness or ignorance. [also: --
> surrealistic, (adj.) -- surrealistically, (adv.)]
does barrett john erickson speak for all you surrealists?
i.e., there is nothing in the juxtaposition of the televised
proceedings of the impeachment of the commander-in-chief
& the commander-in-chief's ordering of a bombing
whose images appear on the other half of the TV screen in green light
which rings of the "surreal"?
& the word "surreal" has no meaning for any of you
aside from its offensiveness?
barrett john erickson
Richard Martin wrote:
>
> does barrett john erickson speak for all you surrealists?
> i.e., there is nothing in the juxtaposition of the televised
> proceedings of the impeachment of the commander-in-chief
> & the commander-in-chief's ordering of a bombing
> whose images appear on the other half of the TV screen in green light
> which rings of the "surreal"?
> & the word "surreal" has no meaning for any of you
> aside from its offensiveness?
perhaps i should've elaborated a bit:
i took your question to be about the repeated (mis)application of the word "surreal"
to various events and situations by the media and its darlings (sorry if i
misunderstood your intent).
this pains me because the use of the word "surreal" as an adjective synonymous with
"bizarre" or "strange" trivializes "surrealism" and generally (in my experience)
indicates an ignorance of the full scope of the surrealist project as it exists among
surrealists.
juxtapositions such as your example are quite worthy of surrealist attention, but
they are not themselves "surreal".
what i'm saying is that "surreal" is not an attribute or a characteristic of any
thing, person, event or process. "surrealism" is what surrealists do as they seek
to integrate the liberated imagination with daily living.
as for the events themselves, i posted my reaction last week. the resulting
poster/flyer/letter that i have since been circulating can be found at:
http://www.MagneticFields.org/EnactiveAesthetics/enACTion/poverty/poverty.html
Perceptor
I will jump in here with my usual simplistic
personalized statement.
I am guilty of using the term surreal in the common vulgar usage as a description of a
thing or event that is warped a bit beyond unusual or weird only because I find no other
word that comes close to this special category. I think it is because the artists who are
able to visually illustrate this state have been refereed to as "surrealists"
The term surrealist when describing a thought process or a philosophic movement
has a completely different meaning and context to me.
My own view of the original question put forth is that the responses to the events were
given in the common usage of the term which I felt diminished the horror and further
magnified the impression that
I was witnessing or hearing about things I would like to think were insane or unreal but
maddeningly knew were not.
All of which brings me to question my self as to what Surrealism means in terns of how
can I relate it's goals to my answers.
don wheeler-mings
barrett john erickson
Perceptor wrote:
>
> I will jump in here with my usual simplistic
> personalized statement.
> I am guilty of using the term surreal in the common vulgar usage as a description of a
> thing or event that is warped a bit beyond unusual or weird only because I find no other
> word that comes close to this special category. I think it is because the artists who are
> able to visually illustrate this state have been refereed to as "surrealists"
i'm sure we've all done this at some time, myself included.
my position has evolved over the last four or five years as i pondered the ever
deteriorating understanding -- even among those who identify with the movement -- of
what "surrealism" is actually about vs. how popular culture uses the word.
> The term surrealist when describing a thought process or a philosophic movement
> has a completely different meaning and context to me.
i guess i treat it as a kind of crusade to return this fuller meaning to currency --
especially in this space. the goal is heightened awareness among those who are open
and condemnation only for those who insist on their narrowed (and derogatory) usage.
> My own view of the original question put forth is that the responses to the events were
> given in the common usage of the term which I felt diminished the horror and further
> magnified the impression that
> I was witnessing or hearing about things I would like to think were insane or unreal but
> maddeningly knew were not.
indeed. and you posted several comments worthy of mention in this context.
Perceptor
Richard Martin
Perceptor wrote:
For Don & Barrett, then,
on this day of mighty (apparent) contradictions.
I hope I'm not exasperating you, cause I'm not trying to.
I connect to the quote above.
Is surrealism, or a surrealist work, like a koan?
What happens to or in the mind, or is expected to happen, or is
experienced,
if it can be described,
when the contradictory appearance
of life & death, real & imagined, etc.,
ceases?
Has it happened to you?
Is all simply being then?
Simply seeing?
Perceptor
> For Don & Barrett, then,
> on this day of mighty (apparent) contradictions.
>
> I hope I'm not exasperating you, cause I'm not trying to.
Hello Richard:
This is don. I want to say a couple of short
things at this time.
First of all, That speaking for myself I do not find your posts
exasperating at all. I welcome the questions you have put forth in
your post and if humanly possible intend to answer what I can
before my eye surgery monday morning. If not, then in a few weeks
time. At the present I am trying to get caught up with a backlog of
correspondence.
Thanks for your response to my post.
don wheeler-mings
barrett john erickson
Richard Martin wrote:
>
> Perceptor wrote:
>
> > Wishing success in our endeavor..............
> >
> > "Everything tends to make us believe that
> > there exists a certain point of the mind at
> > which life and death, the real and the
> > imagined, past and future, the communicable
> > and the incommunicable, high and low, cease
> > to be perceived as contradictions."
> >
> > ...André Breton
>
> For Don & Barrett, then,
> on this day of mighty (apparent) contradictions.
>
> I hope I'm not exasperating you, cause I'm not trying to.
nope. no exasperation.
> I connect to the quote above.
> Is surrealism, or a surrealist work, like a koan?
don't know what a "koan" is, so you'll have to explain.
> What happens to or in the mind, or is expected to happen, or is
> experienced,
> if it can be described,
> when the contradictory appearance
> of life & death, real & imagined, etc.,
> ceases?
> Has it happened to you?
> Is all simply being then?
> Simply seeing?
as i've come to understand it, this is not an enhanced awareness -- not just a
clearer understanding -- but an enhanced reality.
"surrealism" is based in action.
so, not surprisingly, it finds its strongest correlation to the enactive cognitive
model [this is a _late_ 20th century model just gaining momentum among cognitive
scientists] in conjunction with autopoiesis [the _late_ 20th century study of
self-organizing systems].
we _enact_ reality through our (sensori-motor) explorations (as opposed to
encountering something pre-formed).
[within each species, this enacted reality is both personal and shared.
reality differs, individual to individual, to the extent that the sensual processes
(including the "organizational" functions of the brain and the extrapolations of the
"mind") differs when encountering the same latent reality (the color blind, for
example, enact a slightly different reality from the same "raw material" than those
who see distinct difference between red and green).
reality is shared, between individual, to the extent the sensual processes are the
same (human vision, as a process, varies little from person to person in structure
and general function).
of course, if we compare species to species we can easily assume far greater
disparity between enacted realities. vision, for example, through compound eyes, or
in two vs. four "dimensions" must produce vary different worlds within which to act.]
if our sensory explorations enact reality, then to find "that certain point of the
mind" is to spontaneously recognize all living as an exploratory process seamlessly
embedded in other processes, to recognize the imagination as a sensual exploration of
the poetic dimensions latent in that embeddedness, and to integrate those dimensions
into our daily living -- to enact (sur)reality.
the imagination is, i believe, our most advanced "sense". so "that certain point"
needs to be understood in the context of human evolution, rather than individual
enlightenment.
-- barrett
bar...@MagneticFields.org
http://www.MagneticFields.org/
"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at
Perceptor
> Perceptor wrote:
>
> > Wishing success in our endeavor..............
> >
> > "Everything tends to make us believe that
> > there exists a certain point of the mind at
> > which life and death, the real and the
> > imagined, past and future, the communicable
> > and the incommunicable, high and low, cease
> > to be perceived as contradictions."
> >
> > ...André Breton
>
> For Don & Barrett, then,
> on this day of mighty (apparent) contradictions.
>
> I hope I'm not exasperating you, cause I'm not trying to.
---------------------------------------------
Hello Richard,
I ask also for your patience also as I have been asking myself many
of the same questions since I have been lurking here on this NG
>
> I connect to the quote above.
> Is surrealism, or a surrealist work, like a koan?
Interesting you would ask .I think It is one of the closer
definitions I have seen put forth to describe the intent
>
> What happens to or in the mind, or is expected to happen, or is
> experienced,
In my personal view I compare it to the experience of an
undifferentiated state of unity when arrived at using the
external senses.
It is comparable so i am told to the zen state of satori which is
arrived at internally
in a sudden realization of insight.
> if it can be described,
Like the writers trying to describe the state of zen as an achieved
goal, I am not sure there are the words coined to do so with.
I feel it can be alluded to like in poetry or a koan, but I don't
know enough or am I skilled enough to attempt it with the medium of
words.
when the contradictory appearance
> of life & death, real & imagined, etc.,
> ceases?
> Has it happened to you?
yes in several different kinds of manifestations mostly via the
medium of art
> Is all simply being then?
> Simply seeing?
I don't have a clue about that.
I have always maintained that what a loaf of bread looks like
depends on how hungry you are. Others have expressed a different
view of the sight of bread.
"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to
them except in the form of bread."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
sorry about the spelling and grammer. I am no scholar.
don....
Dale Houstman
>It is comparable so i am told to the zen state of satori which is
>arrived at internally in a sudden realization of insight.
Isn't it rather a sudden realization of the futility of insight?
As far as I can tell satori is a "small nirvana" in the way orgasm is a
"small death"
and is a "trailer" (artfully edited) of the nihil experience of that
peculiar beyond.
But I'm not the expert on such matters.
DMH
Dill Mackerels Heighten
Perceptor
Hi dare Daley,
Hope your Holiday was hilarious.
As for Satire all I could say is that you would have had to have been there
to know
what it was like. As for my personal dip in the waters all I can say is
that I saw a picture postcard of the beach. Never even got sand between my
toes let alone get wet. Must admit I would love to swim under water so long
that I would grow gills.
When I was a young man I used to love to swim at Venice beach in California
because there was a part of the beach where it was forbidden because of the
deadly rip tide and undertow. I would swim out to it and allow the current
to suck me out to sea where the wave would grab me lift me straight up then
slam me down to the sea bed rolling me end over end under the water up to
the shore where the tide would grab me again and pull me back out. what I
loved about it was that there was one moment during the process where I was
completely out of control . No amount of strength could prevail . All that
could be done was to give in to the force and let it take me where ever it
would.
The merging of the two opposing forces of resistance and giving in was
accomplished
because the I had absolutely nothing to say or do about it. It was close to
bliss for me.
Glad to be back on line with my eyes working so soon after the operation.
Come on in the waters fine !
don.....
barrett john erickson
Perceptor wrote:
>
> responding to Richard Martin:
> >
> > What happens to or in the mind, or is expected to happen, or is
> > experienced,
>
> In my personal view I compare it to the experience of an
> undifferentiated state of unity when arrived at using the
> external senses.
> It is comparable so i am told to the zen state of satori which is
> arrived at internally
> in a sudden realization of insight.
i don't know anything about zen, but to describe that "certain point of the mind" as
a "sudden realization of insight" seems pretty accurate to me.
>
> > Is all simply being then?
> > Simply seeing?
>
> I don't have a clue about that.
i think it's very much the opposite of "simply being" or seeing.
such illumination comes only from the fires that consume us.
the "sudden realization" emerges from spontaneous action, leading to the "insight"
that there is _only_ the action -- i.e., all that we are is determined by our
pursuits (processes with varying degrees of physical manifestation).
i'd say "being" is inapplicable to living, the illusion of solidity where there is
only flux.
-- barrett
bar...@MagneticFields.org
http://www.MagneticFields.org/
"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at
Perceptor
It would seem to me that living and being
boil down to the same thing: Animation.
Living as an animated process and
being as a process of animation
Richard Martin
Perceptor wrote:
> Must admit I would love to swim under water so long
> that I would grow gills.
> When I was a young man I used to love to swim at Venice beach in California
> because there was a part of the beach where it was forbidden because of the
> deadly rip tide and undertow. I would swim out to it and allow the current
> to suck me out to sea where the wave would grab me lift me straight up then
> slam me down to the sea bed rolling me end over end under the water up to
> the shore where the tide would grab me again and pull me back out. what I
> loved about it was that there was one moment during the process where I was
> completely out of control . No amount of strength could prevail . All that
> could be done was to give in to the force and let it take me where ever it
> would.
> The merging of the two opposing forces of resistance and giving in was
> accomplished
> because the I had absolutely nothing to say or do about it. It was close to
> bliss for me.
> Glad to be back on line with my eyes working so soon after the operation.
> Come on in the waters fine !
> don.....
this i believe is the secret of art that reaches deep inside--it expresses the
kind of helpless connection with power that drives us inarticulate & beyond
security, beyond certainty, beyond the dream we can save ourselves...
Richard Martin
Perceptor wrote:
> Richard Martin wrote:
>
> > Perceptor wrote:
> >
> > > Wishing success in our endeavor..............
> > >
> > > "Everything tends to make us believe that
> > > there exists a certain point of the mind at
> > > which life and death, the real and the
> > > imagined, past and future, the communicable
> > > and the incommunicable, high and low, cease
> > > to be perceived as contradictions."
> > >
> > > ...André Breton
> >
> > For Don & Barrett, then,
> > on this day of mighty (apparent) contradictions.
> >
> > I hope I'm not exasperating you, cause I'm not trying to.
>
> ---------------------------------------------
>
> Hello Richard,
>
> I ask also for your patience also as I have been asking myself many
> of the same questions since I have been lurking here on this NG
>
> >
> > I connect to the quote above.
> > Is surrealism, or a surrealist work, like a koan?
>
> Interesting you would ask .I think It is one of the closer
> definitions I have seen put forth to describe the intent
Suzuki calls koans, or "the statements made by old masters" "pointers":
"A pointer would then function in two directions: (1) to check the
working of the intellect, or rather to let the intellect see by itself
how far it can go, and also that there is a realm into which it as such
can never enter; (2) to effect the maturity of Zen consciousness which
eventually breaks out into a state of satori."
I like that "breaks out into" . . .
>
> >
> > What happens to or in the mind, or is expected to happen, or is
> > experienced,
>
> In my personal view I compare it to the experience of an
> undifferentiated state of unity when arrived at using the
> external senses.
> It is comparable so i am told to the zen state of satori which is
> arrived at internally
> in a sudden realization of insight.
or maybe slowly sudden
>
>
> > if it can be described,
>
> Like the writers trying to describe the state of zen as an achieved
> goal, I am not sure there are the words coined to do so with.
> I feel it can be alluded to like in poetry or a koan, but I don't
> know enough or am I skilled enough to attempt it with the medium of
> words.
we are pointing, words can point, to where we can see & where we cannot
>
>
> when the contradictory appearance
>
> > of life & death, real & imagined, etc.,
> > ceases?
> > Has it happened to you?
>
> yes in several different kinds of manifestations mostly via the
> medium of art
do you meditate, have you meditated?
>
>
> > Is all simply being then?
> > Simply seeing?
>
> I don't have a clue about that.
> I have always maintained that what a loaf of bread looks like
> depends on how hungry you are. Others have expressed a different
> view of the sight of bread.
i may be misseeing what you seem to be seeing in what i wrote
i mean, as it is for me, this moment of pure being is brief, but just
right, enough
and i know it is there even when it feels far away or nowhere
>
>
> "There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to
> them except in the form of bread."
> - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
> sorry about the spelling and grammer. I am no scholar.
> don....
i like you, don
Andrea Chen
>
> Maybe you all covered this in some thread over there, but if so I didnt
> see it---
>
> Any a you surrealist folks got any response to how every other response
> to the impeachment-bombing juxtaposition referred to it as "surreal"?
I liked the standing ovation given to Livingston for admitting to
adultery. There is a question of whether or not surrealism need be
intentional; but there is no question if tuned into all these events in
a certain way they are indeed mind flipping and shift reality. Far more
than many worn down methods and symbols which while (perhaps) once mind
altering have become familiar and safe.
Those not attuned to such events (in much the same way Japanese kids
tuned to a certain animation) find them merely "weird" not understanding
that the weird refers to the deeper paths of reality and that reaching
such states would certainly seem one of the goals of surrealism.
Bill Cleere
>
> Perceptor wrote:
>
> > that I would grow gills.
> > When I was a young man I used to love to swim at Venice beach in California
> > because there was a part of the beach where it was forbidden because of the
> > deadly rip tide and undertow. I would swim out to it and allow the current
> > to suck me out to sea where the wave would grab me lift me straight up then
> > slam me down to the sea bed rolling me end over end under the water up to
> > the shore where the tide would grab me again and pull me back out. what I
> > loved about it was that there was one moment during the process where I was
> > completely out of control . No amount of strength could prevail . All that
> > could be done was to give in to the force and let it take me where ever it
> > would.
> > The merging of the two opposing forces of resistance and giving in was
> > accomplished
> > because the I had absolutely nothing to say or do about it. It was close to
> > bliss for me.
> > Glad to be back on line with my eyes working so soon after the operation.
> > Come on in the waters fine !
That's great, Don.
> > don.....
>
> this i believe is the secret of art that reaches deep inside--it expresses the
> kind of helpless connection with power that drives us inarticulate & beyond
> security, beyond certainty, beyond the dream we can save ourselves...
Golly, when did you guys get all *deep* and stuff?
Seriously, it's wonderful stuff. One of my favorite things
for many years has been to go to beach and just wade out and
get slammed by the surf. I love that feeling of having all
the breath knocked out of my body, and getting bowled over
and just tumbling with no idea which way is up and down until
I get a mouthful of sand.
-- Bill Cleere
Status: res. LoyolaNet. Expect.destin. Fumat pro Soc.
Richard Martin
barrett john erickson wrote:
> Perceptor wrote:
> >
> > responding to Richard Martin:
>
> > >
> > > What happens to or in the mind, or is expected to happen, or is
> > > experienced,
> >
> > In my personal view I compare it to the experience of an
> > undifferentiated state of unity when arrived at using the
> > external senses.
> > It is comparable so i am told to the zen state of satori which is
> > arrived at internally
> > in a sudden realization of insight.
>
> i don't know anything about zen, but to describe that "certain point of the mind" as
> a "sudden realization of insight" seems pretty accurate to me.
>
>
> >
> > > Is all simply being then?
> > > Simply seeing?
> >
> > I don't have a clue about that.
>
> i think it's very much the opposite of "simply being" or seeing.
could you & will you please describe what it is like, for you, to "simply be" or "simply
see"?
Talysman
write in alt.surrealism:
:)i don't know anything about zen, but to describe that "certain point
:)of the mind" as a "sudden realization of insight" seems pretty accurate
:)to me.
so:
after all that fuss about "the orientalists are invading!"
we agree that the final goal of zen and surrealism is the
same thing, and we, as surrealists, just reject the posturing
and religious trappings of zen buddhism?
what was all the yelling about?
--
we must all cry great tears of cotton for the island of lost toys.
His Most Feathered Eminence, the Ur-Beatle
H.B. Fante
> so: after all that fuss about "the orientalists are invading!"
> we agree that the final goal of zen and surrealism is the
> same thing, and we, as surrealists, just reject the posturing
> and religious trappings of zen buddhism?
>
> what was all the yelling about?
what *is" all *your* yelling about?
who can imagine a zen Buddhist (or at least a zB
who is as much a zB as Ur-Beatle Talysman
is a surrealist) writing:
"so: after all that fuss about 'the occidentalists are invading!'
we agree that the final goal of zen and surrealism is the
same thing, and we, as zen Buddhists, just reject the posturing
and aesthetic trappings of surealism?"
now, if you believe the goal of ZB & S are the same,
try to use, for fun and profit, a ZB means when you ur-respond.
is yelling a surrealist's posting tool, tactic, technique?
Perceptor
> I love that feeling of having all
> the breath knocked out of my body, and getting bowled over
> and just tumbling with no idea which way is up and down until
> I get a mouthful of sand.
>
> -- Bill Cleere
Thanks Bill
Now I am fianly getting to know what a surreal state of mind must feel like.
Perceptor
> connection with power that drives us inarticulate & beyond
> security, beyond certainty, beyond the dream we can save ourselves...
I often wonder what the driving force is that creates in us such a pervading
terror of giving in completely to the unknown.
Is it the fear of a living insanity ? , Of loosing ones selfhood ?, or perhaps the
unconscious secretly knows or senses at some deep level that what is at stake is
the life or death of an illusion, a phantom that has convinced us to our very core
that without it's continued existence we will cease to exist. It's power lies in
the contradiction of it's existence. It is a phantom and yet it exists as
something so all powerful we are driven to invent a concept of a God to deal with
it.
Indeed, even to face it and do battle with it we must first kill our mates and
children, burn down our homes, and vow to die before we are able to bare our
hearts to the point of it's sword.
Some have named this phantom ego, some call it fear it's self, but I have no name
for it.
I have met it and known it, and became it. It is the I that has no name. It is the
phantom I read these words to as I write them.
It is the insanity men presume in me.
don wheeler-mings
.
Perceptor
Hello Richard Martin,
I am not sure you are addressing me in the post this is in response to
since the thread
doesn't look like it is connected to my name.
But when I read it i think you are talking to me.
If you were not, I feel very foolish in writing this so please let me know
and I will remove it from the NG as I do with most of my posts after a few
days.
Now I will write as if your post was addressing me.
For my own feedback I am going to enclose what I write with a double line
like this=
===========================
sample writing between double lines
==========================
Now I will begin the rest of my post
============================
Richard Martin wrote:
> Perceptor wrote:
>
> > Richard Martin wrote:
> >
> > > Perceptor wrote:
> > >
> > > What happens to or in the mind, or is expected to happen, or is
> > > experienced,
> >
> > In my personal view I compare it to the experience of an
> > undifferentiated state of unity when arrived at using the
> > external senses.
> > It is comparable so i am told to the zen state of satori which is
> > arrived at internally
> > in a sudden realization of insight.
>
> or maybe slowly sudden
>
> >
> >
> > > if it can be described,
> >
> > Like the writers trying to describe the state of zen as an achieved
> > goal, I am not sure there are the words coined to do so with.
> > I feel it can be alluded to like in poetry or a koan, but I don't
> > know enough or am I skilled enough to attempt it with the medium of
> > words.
>
> we are pointing, words can point, to where we can see & where we cannot
==============================
Here I am.
It is the "cannot" referred to above that most intrigues me.
It is my suspicion that the fruit of Zen ,or Surrealism as I define it is
the reconciliation
if not the merged unity of that "thing" that
cannot be understood (known) or gone to
(arrived at).
The mystery of a "thing" that is a contradiction because it seems not to
exist in that we cannot go there or see it or know it, yet does exist in
the sense that we can allude to It's state ,and even in a way that
contradicts conscious logic, sense that it exists is something that informs
me of it's potential.
The actual experience of the unity I refer to
is a thing that no human mind can be prepared for. Indeed just the
intellectual act of recognition that one has "seen" that which "cannot" be
seen because it is not possible that the impossible can exist as something
to be sensed is in it's self enough to jerk one back to the state of
"reality".
In my personal experience this state cannot be arrived at by an act of
will. but as I like to refer to it, by an act of grace. And can be visited
with out "the jerking back" by allowing ones self the freedom of not
thinking
about "being where you shouldn't be able to be"
One could say that this I refer to is an illusion
constructed in the imagination to give credence to a thing that cannot
exist and they would be correct within the boundaries of accepted reality.
On the other hand I can say correctly that
what I have experienced does exist as a reality for me in that I have been
there and am here as well.
================================
> >
> > when the contradictory appearance
> >
> > > of life & death, real & imagined, etc.,
> > > ceases?
> > > Has it happened to you?
> >
> > yes in several different kinds of manifestations mostly via the
> > medium of art
>
> do you meditate, have you meditated?
==============================
No I don't think so, but I am not really sure what it is.
I have experienced many other altered states
trough out my life however.
===============================
> > > Is all simply being then?
> > > Simply seeing?
> >
> > I don't have a clue about that.
> > I have always maintained that what a loaf of bread looks like
> > depends on how hungry you are. Others have expressed a different
> > view of the sight of bread.
>
> i may be misseeing what you seem to be
> seeing in what i wrote
=============================
I'm not sure of the specific you mean but
maybe I just used what you wrote as a cue or a springboard (like a call and
response ) to say what was on my mind that was stimulated by what ever you
wrote. or is that just an excuse on my part ? could be, but I am trying to
be honest. (I find it odd that I am even saying that I have to try. ha, ha
)
=================================
> i mean, as it is for me, this moment of pure being is brief, but just
> right, enough
> and i know it is there even when it feels far away or nowhere
=============================
I feel that I understand this statement and It's
implied meanings.
==============================
> >
> >
> > "There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to
> > them except in the form of bread."
> > - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
> > sorry about the spelling and grammer. I am no scholar.
> > don....
>
> i like you, don
==============================
I am flattered that the person who wrote the things you have would say that
to me and find myself not knowing you but liking you as well. I think I
must just like to like.
If you were speaking to me in the post I am replying to, then I thank you
for your reply and patience with my slow, plodding, and seemingly
insane/sane sense of things.
I don't ever get the chance to speak with anyone about things like this and
only have for the few months I have been a guest here on alt.surrealism. I
thank you for providing me the chance to "think out loud" trough this
medium of writing.
I have been in isolation for most of my existence and it is a completely
new experience for me. Up until a few years ago I had not even as much as
written a postcard to anyone let alone write in a public forum like this.
What a wonder the WWW and usenet poses for the interaction of humanity.
Enough for tonight . I'm growing dimmer (I mean my eyes, you bums)
don
=============================
end of transmission
==============================
Andrea Chen
brilliant, deep and beautiful humanity naked yet truly humanity.
(and not what I habitually expose)
thankyou Richard for sparking this as a mirror reflecting.
Big Hugs
(((((((((((?)))))))))))
This is (not as I imagined it, it was beyond my imagining) a step in neu
neutopia, the new new (postmodern) no place the dynamic of the unspoken
consciousness spoken and something else besides.
barrett john erickson
Richard Martin wrote:
> > > > Is all simply being then?
> > > > Simply seeing?
i answered:
> > i think it's very much the opposite of "simply being" or seeing.
Richard asked:
> could you & will you please describe what it is like, for you, to "simply be" or "simply
> see"?
i did start to address this after Don's post, but thought better of it. i realized
my usage may be a bit specialized and not really necessary to the main discussion you
were having, so i was going to just drop it.
but since you ask...
my usage and response to the word "being" is very much tethered to my early reading
of the existentialists -- particularly Sartre. luckily, when i grabbed an old copy
of _Being and Nothingness_ i found he'd included a glossary at the end, which still
comes quite close to explaining my usage, so i'll quote it:
[begin quote]
Being. "Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is." Being includes both
Being-in-itself and Being-for-itself, but the latter is the nihilation of the
former. As contrasted with Existence, Being is all-embracing and objective rather
than individual and subjective.
[end quote]
Being-for-itself is further explained as "consciousness conceived as a lack of Being,
a desire for Being, a relation to Being." this is identified with the human
condition -- the "nothingness" we attempt to fill with our living.
Being-in-itself is non-conscious being, all that is not living (i think Sartre would
go a bit further and say this is all that is not human).
Existence of course, for the existentialist, precedes essence.
so to try to draw this together, while i don't feel as connected as i once was to
existentialism and may not put it exactly this way anymore, i still conceive of
"being" as something associated with the objective (done, having an essence) as
opposed to something associated with the subjective (still a work in process).
i consider living very much a process of becoming, not being.
sorry to bore.
-- barrett
bar...@MagneticFields.org
http://www.MagneticFields.org/
"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at
Richard Martin
Bill Cleere wrote:
> Richard Martin wrote:
> >
> > Perceptor wrote:
> >
> > > Must admit I would love to swim under water so long
> > > that I would grow gills.
> > > When I was a young man I used to love to swim at Venice beach in California
> > > because there was a part of the beach where it was forbidden because of the
> > > deadly rip tide and undertow. I would swim out to it and allow the current
> > > to suck me out to sea where the wave would grab me lift me straight up then
> > > slam me down to the sea bed rolling me end over end under the water up to
> > > the shore where the tide would grab me again and pull me back out. what I
> > > loved about it was that there was one moment during the process where I was
> > > completely out of control . No amount of strength could prevail . All that
> > > could be done was to give in to the force and let it take me where ever it
> > > would.
> > > The merging of the two opposing forces of resistance and giving in was
> > > accomplished
> > > because the I had absolutely nothing to say or do about it. It was close to
> > > bliss for me.
> > > Glad to be back on line with my eyes working so soon after the operation.
> > > Come on in the waters fine !
>
> That's great, Don.
>
> > > don.....
> >
> > this i believe is the secret of art that reaches deep inside--it expresses the
> > kind of helpless connection with power that drives us inarticulate & beyond
> > security, beyond certainty, beyond the dream we can save ourselves...
>
> Golly, when did you guys get all *deep* and stuff?
>
> Seriously, it's wonderful stuff. One of my favorite things
> for many years has been to go to beach and just wade out and
> get slammed by the surf. I love that feeling of having all
> the breath knocked out of my body, and getting bowled over
> and just tumbling with no idea which way is up and down until
> I get a mouthful of sand.
I think it's a womb thing.
Richard Martin
Perceptor wrote:
> Richard Martin wrote:
>
> > connection with power that drives us inarticulate & beyond
> > security, beyond certainty, beyond the dream we can save ourselves...
>
> I often wonder what the driving force is that creates in us such a pervading
> terror of giving in completely to the unknown.
> Is it the fear of a living insanity ? , Of loosing ones selfhood ?, or perhaps the
> unconscious secretly knows or senses at some deep level that what is at stake is
> the life or death of an illusion, a phantom that has convinced us to our very core
> that without it's continued existence we will cease to exist. It's power lies in
> the contradiction of it's existence.
> It is a phantom and yet it exists as
> something so all powerful we are driven to invent a concept of a God to deal with
> it.
Hi, Don. Could you go a little further with the last sentence above? Are you saying
that, in your view, we actually invent God, or invent a concept of a God? And is this
invention to you a need for us to have something more powerful than the phantom in
order to reduce its power over us or within us? In other words, what to you is it
about the great power of the phantom (whether its power is imagined or real) which
frightens (?) or maddens (?) us and drives us to invent God or a concept of a God? Is
it clear what I'm asking? I have my own evolving views on this but I'd like to hear
yours because I feel that you have a pretty fluid or playful (serious playful) way of
seeing and also we may have different views & I want to see how fixed or flexible my
views are.
I have found that I change by listening to people I like who have different views
rather than people I don't like because I rarely get past what I don't like about them
even though they may have something to teach me. Maybe "change" is not the word so
much as "stopjudging" or "stoprejecting".
I'd like to someday feel comfortable enough with my vision of life that I can hear
others' conflicting views---especially the views of others who I strongly
dislike---and not feel that powerful, toxic urge to judge, correct, critique, put
down, bark at, break to pieces, etc. I would like to accept the vulnerability of my
own vision without having to run around like two Dobermans protecting it every time
somebody approaches the fence. There is so much illusion in this I know, so much
sleepwalking, zombiebot-think.
Thanks,
Richard
Talysman
so: after all that fuss about "the orientalists are invading!"
we agree that the final goal of zen and surrealism is the
same thing, and we, as surrealists, just reject the posturing
and religious trappings of zen buddhism?
what was all the yelling about?
and "H.B. Fante" <hb...@webtv.net> replied:
:)what *is" all *your* yelling about?
:)who can imagine a zen Buddhist (or at least a zB
:)who is as much a zB as Ur-Beatle Talysman
:)is a surrealist) writing:
[ my first paragraph, with substitutions ]
you, obviously, can imagine it, since you just wrote
it. and so can everyone else. reparse your preceding
paragraph. try harder next time.
:)now, if you believe the goal of ZB & S are the same,
:)try to use, for fun and profit, a ZB means when you ur-respond.
I reject the supremacy of your begging bowl.
:)is yelling a surrealist's posting tool, tactic, technique?
yes. so is gunfire.
--
get your tax dolls here! ask me how.
H.B. Fante
Talysman wrote:
> yelling
> reparse
> gunfire
you're a tiny baby painting your playpen with your poopoo
you're silly, harmless, loud, stinky
Stefan Kapusniak
In alt.pouting.sandwich, Richard Martin <richwi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I have found that I change by listening to people I like who have different
>views rather than people I don't like because I rarely get past what I don't
>like about them even though they may have something to teach me. Maybe
>"change" is not the word so much as "stopjudging" or "stoprejecting".
Just as you don't willingly have sex with people you don't
like, you and people you don't like won't mind-fuck with
each other either.
Unless you both enjoy sado-masoch-memeistic play.
This fact gives us grounds to re-interpret the central
neutopian concept of the "lovolution" in terms of mind-fuck
and memenome sexual reproduction, whilst understanding
that the process may (but only may) produce aphrodisical
effects upon the mind-body.
Therefore the Pan-Neutopian School of Cyber-Surrealist
thought strongly commits to the fostering of "lovevolution"
through _sexual_ reproduction of memenomes, rather than
random mutation, aesexual reproduction and viral transfer.
-- Kapusniak, Stefan m <------ mind-controlled zombie-type-thing
*shuffle* "A is not A"
*shuffle* *shuffle* *drool*
Perceptor
Greetings Richard,
I shall reply to your post by sniping out what you wrote and putting it plus my reply in a
separate post to you which I shall send as a reply to this post.
Sorry If that makes it complicated but I want to keep some of the concepts discussed
separate from others in this thread of cross communication.
don........
Perceptor
Perceptor comments after reading this last response in a
thread of hilarious back and farthings:
Babies Just happen to be the loveliest creatures on the earth
to this human.
I love the smell of baby shit for it tells me baby is
healthy.
I love to hear the sounds of a baby for that tells me baby
has a functioning brain.
But most of all I just love the silly harmlessness of baby's
love.
don
ex-baby
Richard Martin
Stefan Kapusniak wrote:
> In alt.pouting.sandwich, Richard Martin <richwi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> >I have found that I change by listening to people I like who have different
> >views rather than people I don't like because I rarely get past what I don't
> >like about them even though they may have something to teach me. Maybe
> >"change" is not the word so much as "stopjudging" or "stoprejecting".
>
> Just as you don't willingly have sex with people you don't
> like, you and people you don't like won't mind-fuck with
> each other either.
>
> Unless you both enjoy sado-masoch-memeistic play.
What a nasty and mean response you give me. Anyone can learn learn from those he
does not like. What you say above is a lesson for me that you, who I once liked,
I no longer like, at least in the present mask you are wearing. I hope it is a
temporary game you are playing. When I first saw your posts a month or so ago,
you were sensitive, intelligent, vulnerable, lucid, even very tender. Now the
above. Whether you like me or not, I have an unasked-for suggestion for
you---watch out who you hang around with and watch out who you emulate. You play
long enough at something and you become it.
H.B. Fante
Perceptor wrote:
excellent! happy new year & respiro respondo fortunata!
Stefan Elisabeth Kapusniak
>What a nasty and mean response you give me.
I apologise.
I see I should have used 'one' rather than 'you' (meaning
one), and then the philosophical speculation might at least
have a chance to come through language that seems to not
to mean the same to anybody else as it did to me when I
framed it.
It appears I lose the ability say what I mean in a way that
others can understand. I was never very good at it.
Any fault is mine, and your comments upon evolution into
evil are certainly very true and well taken.
Oh well, damage is done now. So it goes.
*abasing bow*
-- Kapusniak, Stefan e
Andrea Chen
I agree with you about Stefan's comments. Which I commented on in ast
pointing out that they could pop the bubble which is you and Don so
beautifully blew (hopefully of glass so as it cools it will not pop.)
I do think that the cruelity was unintentional. An artistic effort
without enough consideration.
Your point about pretending to be evil turning into real evil is
valid. My only defence is that if we don't consciously act out thes
roles marking their behaviors; then they are unknown which makes us more
vulnerable to the unconscious evil such is evidently happening in acjfk.
I have currently detached most of the experiment from aps so hopefully
the group will resettle to what it's supposed to be with a few neu
members such as Don who will at least visit sometime.
Perceptor
Gratzzi
Richard Martin
Stefan Elisabeth Kapusniak wrote:
> I apologise.
Apology gratefully accepted, Stefan. You are very skilled at expressing
yourself &, as I said, I've admired & been moved by your posts. That is the
main reason I was so upset. I do not believe that you or your response was
evil, just very harsh. Again, thank you for the apology, I hope I didn't
overreact, no major permanent damage done, & I look forward to different sorts
of exchanges with you in the future.
Richard
Perceptor
> watch out who you hang around with and watch out who you emulate. You play
> long enough at something and you become it.
"If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will
gaze back into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Andrea Chen
>
> Stefan Elisabeth Kapusniak wrote:
>
> > I apologise.
>
> Apology gratefully accepted, Stefan. You are very skilled at expressing
> yourself &, as I said, I've admired & been moved by your posts. That is the
> main reason I was so upset. I do not believe that you or your response was
> evil, just very harsh. Again, thank you for the apology, I hope I didn't
> overreact,
You did. Stefan's analogies were strong and the first effect of
reading them was emotional. Going back for meaning I still find it a
bit confusing though I get the drift. There is obviously something
there (been said with words we find disturbing or insulting (the most
obvious buttons).
So you were disturbed and insulted. You were hurt. And rather than
look at this persons past and think maybe I don't understand what he's
trying to say; you take your emotional reading and say "I don't like
you." A lot of what you said is ok. The rest is ok, there is some
reason for doubt abd hurt, but Stefan's being mean; you don't like him!
Waah.
Richard thinking about this and the other things you post you come
across as being a self centered, rather shallow person who rather
spitefully resents anything which doesn't fit into your little box.
Rather than ignoring Stefan (or at least putting in it's place) and
attempting to continue the conversation with Don or wax off with the
glory it involved; you fall back to this. After all you had your
beautiful moment, you can bask in it, rather than use it to fuel another
and another to greater intensity. You will start a collection of
beautiful moments to solace yourself with when you grow old.
Stefan Elisabeth Kapusniak
In alt.pouting.sandwich, Richard Martin <ricwi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>yourself &, as I said, I've admired & been moved by your posts. That is the
>main reason I was so upset. I do not believe that you or your response was
>evil, just very harsh. Again, thank you for the apology, I hope I didn't
>overreact, no major permanent damage done, & I look forward to different sorts
>of exchanges with you in the future.
No, no. You didn't overreact.
If I screw up and cause hurt, I appreciate it -- even tho'
I don't enjoy it at all -- if someone tells me fairly directly.
I do not pick up hints about such things easily.
Andrea, your post in ast, I found so beautiful, so delightful
in construction and multi-leveled ambiguous meaning that I
laughed out loud in joy at it, and completely failed to pick up
that part of its intent until Richard called me upon my post
in aps.
Something more along the lines of "I think you just accidentally
bashed someones brains in with a sledgehammer...in an EXTREMELY
BAD way." is likely to prove more effective with me.
I still find the post you _did_ make wonderful tho', the now
revealed intent just makes it better.
The philosopher Wittgenstein apparently asserted that there
could be no such thing as a private language. I doubt him
immensely at this point.
The meanings I meant to convey were so far from the meanings
I _actually_ conveyed, I feel I must dig myself further into
the hole by trying to explain what I intended to mean. I
screwed up so bad with that post I suspect that nobody other
than me has the slightest correct inkling as to what I thought
I was going on about.
You know how every other day or so, or in the process of
writing or listening to something, you hear a tiny phrase
or see some small little thing, that sets within you growing
a new way of seeing and interpreting the world? Quickly
it posseses you, it entrances you, and you cannot stop
playing about with it however hard you try. For a few
hours, or maybe a day or so for a particularly powerful
vision, everything you see, hear, remember, or speculate
upon, springs from, or gets coloured by, this new filter.
Certain words semi-permanently acquire new and radically
different meanings and significence.
If you tended to believe that your own thoughts when combined
with the excitement of intellectual play represented "truth"
in some sense, and you didn't know that in a day or so you
would most likely see the world in yet another, quite different
way, you might decide to rename yourself Archimedes Neutopian
and renounce your daddy's fortune in order to wash dishes at
major American Universities and spread the word of your
"genius" and mystic vision.
Fortunately -- tho' I don't think I've learned to handle it
as well as the average person does -- I don't find it quite
as difficult as that.
(that's part of what spooks me about the Objectivists, how
do they manage to stay reasonably sane when their perceptions
change, if their conscious mind is busy training their
unconscious to use the "is of identity" (*chants of "A is A"*)
all the time? -- I probably just don't understand their
philosophy very well *shrug*)
But, to cut to the chase, the following words of Richard's
post set a seedling in me...
In alt.pouting.sandwich, Richard Martin <richwi...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I have found that I change by listening to people I like who have different
>views rather than people I don't like because I rarely get past what I don't
>like about them even though they may have something to teach me. Maybe
>"change" is not the word so much as "stopjudging" or "stoprejecting".
When I first read this, it seemed to me to say something
deeply profound and very true. Not about Richard, but
about humans in general -- I have a perchant for wild
generalisations. I observe this in myself also. We might
think it pretty much common sense.
Also something about this was tugging at me, it reminded me
of something else...unfortunately for the prospects of clear
communication, it reminded me of sex.
Just as one doesn't (normally) want to have sex with people
one dislikes or hates, one doesn't (normally) want to engage
in discourse that might change us with those we despise or
distrust. The prospects for a mutually pleasurable result
seem small in either of the cases.
Notice how we're analogising between _consensual_ sex and
_consensual_ discourse -- this is the root of my completely
novel, and unfortunate, redefinition of the deeply hostile
term "mind-fuck" to possessing fluffy-bunny, big-hugs and
exhaltant qualities.
Oooops. Serious prospects for communication errors there...
...but, fearing no dragon(-ladies), we push ever onward.
Contemplating the process of sexual reproduction, I remember
that the variation between siblings of the same parents
gets caused by the shuffling of the different genes (I can't
remember the techinical term for this) from sperm and egg,
producing an unique genome for each sibiling.
We can use memes as the analogical equivalent of genes,
with a "menome" as the genome equivalent. "Changing"
becomes the takeover of an human organism by a newly birthed
memenone after the parent menome enagages in sexual-memenone-
reproduction (discourse). Since we can all "change" and
initiate "change", we can model ourselves as hermaphrodites
on this level.
"New ideas" emerge from the shuffling of the memes from the
many parents during sexual-menome-reproduction into novel
meme-complexes.
I'm now heading off into the realms of blackest kookery
having gone beyond mere pseudo-scientific deconstruction
(oh, you've already noticed?)...
We have a "body-sex" drive, do we have a "mind-sex" drive?
Could we model the rise of human consciousness on an
evolutionary timescale as triggered by the emergence of
such a drive producing the equivalent of a "Cambrian
explosion" in memenone forms? Was this what they
blathered on about in 2001: a space oddessy (my mind is
going Richard Martin-Dawkins, I can feel it). How
do reports of current alien visitations fit in?
What about an individuals propsensity for change (fertility)?
Is their any evidence, like for body-fertility, that it
follows a cycle tied to the phases of the moon? Longer
cycles? Could this tie up with astrology in any way?
In some ways we can think of the distinction between
mind and body as an artificial one, so does great
mind-sex act as an aphrodisiac for great body-sex?
And/or vice versa?
Orthodox Surrealism emerged from Freud's take on the
nature of the mind. What sort of Surrealism-equivalent
might emerge from a memetic/mind-sex take?
Where do I find the mind-sex-orgy? I WANT TO HAVE YOUR
MENOMES' BABIES!
My God, we suddenly realise, Neutopianism might actually
make sense when viewed through this particular distorting
mirror!
...
At this point having descended into complete gibbering
madness, and entranced by the prospect of the Doctress'
grand vision _actually making sense_, the temptation to
report back 1/10th of this iceberg to those who made it
possible, became overwhelming.
Unfortunately due to lousy wording, and my usual
forgetfulness of the fact that the chain of unreasoning
I've used generate the post _isn't_ utterly obvious --
as I'm the only one who can read my mind -- somebody
accidentally gets holed below the water-line.
Sorry again Richard.
AAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!!!!!
-- Kapusniak, Stefan e
Grantland
<snip embarassment>
Er ..
I .. forgive you Stef ..
Grantland
ugh
Richard Martin
Andrea Chen wrote:
> Richard Martin wrote:
> >
> > Stefan Elisabeth Kapusniak wrote:
> >
> > > I apologise.
> >
> > Apology gratefully accepted, Stefan. You are very skilled at expressing
> > yourself &, as I said, I've admired & been moved by your posts. That is the
> > main reason I was so upset. I do not believe that you or your response was
> > evil, just very harsh. Again, thank you for the apology, I hope I didn't
> > overreact,
>
> You did. Stefan's analogies were strong and the first effect of
> reading them was emotional. Going back for meaning I still find it a
> bit confusing though I get the drift. There is obviously something
> there (been said with words we find disturbing or insulting (the most
> obvious buttons).
>
> So you were disturbed and insulted. You were hurt. And rather than
> look at this persons past and think maybe I don't understand what he's
> trying to say; you take your emotional reading and say "I don't like
> you." A lot of what you said is ok. The rest is ok, there is some
> reason for doubt abd hurt, but Stefan's being mean; you don't like him!
> Waah.
>
> Richard thinking about this and the other things you post you come
> across as being a self centered, rather shallow person who rather
> spitefully resents anything which doesn't fit into your little box.
> Rather than ignoring Stefan (or at least putting in it's place) and
> attempting to continue the conversation with Don or wax off with the
> glory it involved; you fall back to this. After all you had your
> beautiful moment, you can bask in it, rather than use it to fuel another
> and another to greater intensity. You will start a collection of
> beautiful moments to solace yourself with when you grow old.
Thank you for showing some real feeling (for the second time in two months). Or
are you simply being clever again, simply pretending to be in touch with the
feelings of desire and frustration?
Richard Martin
Perceptor wrote:
>
> The actual experience of the unity I refer to
> is a thing that no human mind can be prepared for.
On the other hand, I think the human mind might recognize the unity as a
long-lost man bursting out of the woods suddenly sees his home and family
before him. In other words, that unity is exactly what the human mind *is*
prepared for, via all its wandering, frustrrating lostness.
> In my personal experience this state cannot be arrived at by an act of
> will. but as I like to refer to it, by an act of grace.
Grace, yes. On will: for me that is where I have to start. Will is like someone
who wants to give the impression it is in charge, it is responsible, it knows
what's going on, it is action man, it is manipulation woman, it can do, it
knows. But all it is is a gangle of nerves trained to plow forward, dragging me
with it in chains. In writing & meditation & conversation, the will can be
quieted, stilled, even silenced, but I have to be in either an utterly
vulnerable place in which I dont care what I look like, or in a place of deep
trust of those around me, including myself.
> And can be visited
> with out "the jerking back" by allowing ones self the freedom of not
> thinking
> about "being where you shouldn't be able to be"
I like that. Maybe that's the trust part, but also Bill's "mouthful of sand"
helplessness or powerlessness.
>
>
> > do you meditate, have you meditated?
>
> ==============================
> No I don't think so, but I am not really sure what it is.
For me, it is (1) being aware of (2) my awareness until the membrane between
the two begins to fade. Sometimes it fades completely away.
>
> =============================
> I'm not sure of the specific you mean but
> maybe I just used what you wrote as a cue or a springboard (like a call and
> response ) to say what was on my mind that was stimulated by what ever you
> wrote.
Yeah, that's kewl because otherwise these can turn into Russian novels
> I think I
> must just like to like.
Much better than the alternative, which stiill tags along nonetheless. Some
people insist on being disliked.
>
> I don't ever get the chance to speak with anyone about things like this and
> only have for the few months I have been a guest here on alt.surrealism. I
> thank you for providing me the chance to "think out loud" trough this
> medium of writing.
> I have been in isolation for most of my existence and it is a completely
> new experience for me. Up until a few years ago I had not even as much as
> written a postcard to anyone let alone write in a public forum like this.
> What a wonder the WWW and usenet poses for the interaction of humanity.
> Enough for tonight . I'm growing dimmer (I mean my eyes, you bums)
> don
I think if we find one or two or three kindred souls in this weird realm, we
are doing pretty good.
Thanks,
Richard
Andrea Chen
>
> Thank you for showing some real feeling (for the second time in two months). Or
> are you simply being clever again, simply pretending to be in touch with the
> feelings of desire and frustration?
You know this is incredibly dishonest, yet I believe you are sincere.
There have been a number of cases where I revealed myself or said what I
feel. An earlier followup to this thread (in which I praised both you
and Don) included this group and yet though it happened less than 2
days ago; you comfortably ignore it; keeping safe your view of Andrea
Chen.
Most of my posts are driven by real feelings. There is a degree of
acting in them; but this is in fact of all human behavior; I do
consciously attempt to make the common contradictions known (such as how
the worse lies are often sincere.)
I am used to the odd perceptions that people have about what's going on
all around. This is one reason I like Usenet because there is
documented evidence of what actually happened. But if that documented
evidence were laid in front of your eyes you would not believe it. You
*know* what reality is.
Sadly enough this means that breakthroughs such as that you had with
Don will not go much further. Sooner or later ones inner dishonesties
block the way and only if one is dedicated to facing them will it
reopen. The pure lie of your statement indicates that this is unlikely
for you.
You think you are a "nice" person but the immediate unequivocal anger
you showed for Stefan shows your real attitude. If Stefan had said
something that hurt me or that I thought was cruel I would ask him what
he meant, but he does have a record of behaviors. You immedietely
jumped to your self indulgent judgement. If this is "feeling" then keep
it, it hurts too many people needlessly.
Richard Martin
Andrea Chen wrote:
Your denial of your desire creates in you such a twisting frustration. Your desire
can set you free if you will yield to it & to the loss of control such surrender will
bring. One way for you to begin to connect with your desire is to ask the questions
which will increase your nakedness, Andrea, instead of continuing to believe that
your mind can name and control things which it does not understand. Desire, not
control. Liberation, not understanding. Ask the questions with no cleverness, no
bitterness, and, especially, with no concern for the answers.
Perceptor
> Perceptor wrote:
>
> > Richard Martin wrote:
> >
> > > connection with power that drives us inarticulate & beyond
> > > security, beyond certainty, beyond the dream we can save ourselves...
> >
> > I often wonder what the driving force is that creates in us such a pervading
> > terror of giving in completely to the unknown.
> > Is it the fear of a living insanity ? , Of loosing ones selfhood ?, or perhaps the
> > unconscious secretly knows or senses at some deep level that what is at stake is
> > the life or death of an illusion, a phantom that has convinced us to our very core
> > that without it's continued existence we will cease to exist. It's power lies in
> > the contradiction of it's existence.
>
> > It is a phantom and yet it exists as
> > something so all powerful we are driven to invent a concept of a God to deal with
> > it.
>
> Hi, Don. Could you go a little further with the last sentence above? Are you saying
> that, in your view, we actually invent God, or invent a concept of a God?
Hi richard, I hope you are reasonably happy and are feeling well as you read this.
Sorry to have taken so long to get back to you.
I had to work up enough courage to presume to address the topic in this post. I hope it
addresses you question with out digressing so far as my posts do so often------
I believe that as we draw nearer to unification
the more opened we become to the majesty and scope of that which we are a part of.
This grandeur is so magnificent that it eludes perception and defies comprehension .
This "thing" I speak of , by It's very suggestion of existence creates a dichotomy within
us.
The dichotomy being "it " cannot be perceived in conceptual terms. "it" must be conceived
of in order to be understood.
So clever little man in order to have his cake and eat it too devises a way to create that
which he worships. and in that respect becomes both the worshiper and the worshiped.
> And is this
> invention to you a need for us to have something more powerful than the phantom in
> order to reduce its power over us or within us?
To me this seems to be the hardest part of the question. Probably because it seems like it
should be the easiest.
The self which cannot be seen in any mirror is the part of us that is the god we wish
unity with.
The fear that this part is an illusion is the part of us that cannot look into that
mirror.
The god we invent is the god that holds the mirror that reflects the image of that which
believes it can be seen yet knows not how to look or how to see. Because if it did and if
it could it would see there is nothing in the mirror.
> In other words, what to you is it
> about the great power of the phantom (whether its power is imagined or real) which
> frightens (?) or maddens (?) us and drives us to invent God or a concept of a God?
Trying not to speak in riddles or cute old man on the mountianisms I have to resort to
experiences.
Most things that live have one major program, which is not to die. This is usually enough
to keep the life form from having to do anything else. But in the case of the self aware
life form such as man,
the self awareness is the step that trips him up in that first step on evolution's long
staircase. He thinks therefore he thinks he is self aware, when that self he thinks is
doing the thinking is in fact an illusion of self. He invents a god to be to him what he
thinks he is to a dog.
To him this misconception is necessary to continue as a self aware entity. To die on the
other hand seems like the least likely way for the self to continue existence. But it is
only trough dying or giving up that illusion of self or consciousness that one becomes
alive and begins to live rather than to exist.
> Is
> it clear what I'm asking? I have my own evolving views on this but I'd like to hear
> yours because I feel that you have a pretty fluid or playful (serious playful) way of
> seeing and also we may have different views & I want to see how fixed or flexible my
> views are.
I am sorry but I must end this post here at this point.
I will try to get back to the rest of it tonight or tomorrow.
I am weary with what I have put out . I am uncomfortable speaking around or to such issues
and concepts such as these. I am just a simple person whose simple conclusions become
pompous
when viewed trough the medium of the written word. It is embarrassing but it is what I
feel and in honesty what I must write. It is a much easier thing to convey in conversation
or with the visual aid of art.
>
>
> I have found that I change by listening to people I like who have different views
> rather than people I don't like because I rarely get past what I don't like about them
> even though they may have something to teach me. Maybe "change" is not the word so
> much as "stopjudging" or "stoprejecting".
>
Perceptor
Thanks for sharing this with me I enjoyed seeing how another person sees some of
the things I have
been talking over with you.
I would like to respond to some of your perceptions
with some of my own views to provide contrast. It is not communication in the back
and forth sense. It is more like a commentary within a commentary.
I don't mean to agree with or disagree with the things you are saying , nor is it
intended to alter or color what you have said. I merely wish to add to or enhance
the subject matter in the areas that I find leave room for it.
Richard Martin wrote:
> Don, I focused on a couple tidbits which might contain the rest.
>
> Perceptor wrote:
>
> >
> > The actual experience of the unity I refer to
> > is a thing that no human mind can be prepared for.
>
> On the other hand, I think the human mind might recognize the unity as a
> long-lost man bursting out of the woods suddenly sees his home and family
> before him.
You are speaking I think, of a recognition of something lost and found. Of
something that is a goal obtained which is recognized as the goal when it is seen.
If this is the case I feel that I should say yes and no.
In the unity I speak of the long lost man comes out of the woods not having known
he was "lost". The "woods" to him are not a wilderness but the natural
or ordinary "world" he has known and lived in for his entire existence.
The "home" he finds is a refuge and a palace that he has never had reason to expect
to exist for him. I might even go so far as to suggest that this very concept of
habitable abode may well appear as something completely novel to him. The "family"
and the loving acceptance that implies in my myth
does not yet exist for the man as a remembered concept.
What I am meaning to convey is that This "thing " I speak of that man can find
himself unified with is not a thing he can conceive of in the remotest way
beforehand because it is a thing that does not exist yet in the cosmological
dimension he is a part of.
It does not and cannot exist until he finds himself engaged within the unity as a
living and integral part of that process. It is at that moment when all things
change into the one thing that is existence its self. It is at that moment that one
discovers that he was not where he thought he was but is where he belongs.
$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$*$
-----Which brings us to our commercial break------
Poised somewhere between being born and dying,
two acts you have had no control over , the question is "Where do you want to go to
today?"
@&@&@&@&@&@&@&@&@&@&@&@&
> In other words, that unity is exactly what the human mind *is*
> prepared for, via all its wandering, frustrrating lostness.
NO not prepared for, not a thing that can be obtained , not a thing that is granted
and especially not a thing that will fulfill the aching loneliness of the human
condition. Frustration is the only reward
found in such a quest. It would be like someone who is devoid of all love looking
for love and expecting to find it. On the bright side though, to paraphrase D.H.
Lawrence , those who are loving never have to look for it for they are always in
love.
>
>
> > In my personal experience this state cannot be arrived at by an act of
> > will. but as I like to refer to it, by an act of grace.
>
> Grace, yes. On will: for me that is where I have to start.
I hope it can work for you. It is remarkable what the will can do in terms of
providing a means of annihilation regardless of the consequence. Where the mind can
stay the hand the will can make it move mountains.
> Will is like someone
> who wants to give the impression it is in charge, it is responsible, it knows
> what's going on, it is action man, it is manipulation woman, it can do, it
> knows.
It can also become the desperate weapon of choice
for the self when faced with annihilation.
> But all it is is a gangle of nerves trained to plow forward, dragging me
> with it in chains. In writing & meditation & conversation, the will can be
> quieted, stilled, even silenced, but I have to be in either an utterly
> vulnerable place in which I dont care what I look like, or in a place of deep
> trust of those around me, including myself.
I think one must allow the will to annihilate it's self.
To trust it to do so and to have the will to let it.
>
>
> > And can be visited
> > with out "the jerking back" by allowing ones self the freedom of not
> > thinking
> > about "being where you shouldn't be able to be"
>
> I like that. Maybe that's the trust part, but also Bill's "mouthful of sand"
> helplessness or powerlessness.
I don't think I know Bill's context.
> > > do you meditate, have you meditated?
> >
> > ==============================
> > No I don't think so, but I am not really sure what it is.
>
> For me, it is (1) being aware of (2) my awareness until the membrane between
> the two begins to fade. Sometimes it fades completely away.
I like that image. It reminds me of a lucid dream where you forget to dream.
> > =============================
> > I'm not sure of the specific you mean but
> > maybe I just used what you wrote as a cue or a springboard (like a call and
> > response ) to say what was on my mind that was stimulated by what ever you
> > wrote.
>
> Yeah, that's kewl because otherwise these can turn into Russian novels
Yeh, I hate the taste of binding glue and old leather.
plus they always have sad endings.
> > I think I
> > must just like to like.
>
> Much better than the alternative, which stiill tags along nonetheless.
What's wrong with hating to hate ?
> Some
> people insist on being disliked.
I pride my self in the people who dislike me.
> > I don't ever get the chance to speak with anyone about things like this and
> > only have for the few months I have been a guest here on alt.surrealism. I
> > thank you for providing me the chance to "think out loud" trough this
> > medium of writing.
> > I have been in isolation for most of my existence and it is a completely
> > new experience for me. Up until a few years ago I had not even as much as
> > written a postcard to anyone let alone write in a public forum like this.
> > What a wonder the WWW and usenet poses for the interaction of humanity.
> > Enough for tonight . I'm growing dimmer (I mean my eyes, you bums)
> > don
>
> I think if we find one or two or three kindred souls in this weird realm, we
> are doing pretty good.
Since we are all in the same boat I think it's more of a question of if we can
tolerate those with ideas or goals divergent from our own. And will we be forced to
jump overboard by those who's goals run counter to humane ideals. Are you prepared
to kill
to keep your seat or will you jump into the sea ?
> Thanks,
> Richard
And I don, thank you
Talysman
write in alt.surrealism:
:)"H.B. Fante" wrote:
:)> Talysman wrote:
:)> > yelling
:)> > reparse
:)> > gunfire
:)> you're a tiny baby painting your playpen with your poopoo
:)> you're silly, harmless, loud, stinky
[ ... ]
:)But most of all I just love the silly harmlessness of baby's
:)love.
H. B. just doesn't appreciate this baby's grandmotherly
kindness.
or maybe she does! spotted the following in
alt.syntax.tactical. unfortunately, despite H.B.'s
comment, Bill *wasn't* talking about me... and I'm
not sure whether "ur-beatle from kibo" means that
H.B. thinks I'm Kibo, or meant to write "ur-beatle
or kibo", which is still ranking me pretty highly.
BEGIN:
Subject: Re: BEST of the Year
From: "H.B. Fante" <hb...@webtv.net>
Organization: WebTV Subscriber
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 19:01:40 -0800
Newsgroups: alt.pouting.sandwich,alt.syntax.tactical
Bill Cleere wrote:
> jaZZmanian Devil wrote:
> >
> > Bill Cleere wrote:
> >
> > > After a promising fifty weeks or so, This Year in Usenet
> > > is grinding to a rather miserable close. However, we do
> > > have a late entry which is the flat-out hands-down winner
> > > in the Best Parody of the Year category.
> >
> > I'll hand it to you, Bill. That one takes the cheese, no doubt. Thanks
> > for finding it and sharing it.jaZZ md
>
> The coolest part, which I did not mention, is that I have
> a clue to the identity of the author.
i bet it's ur-beatle from kibo.
--
apes await at our atavistic edge.
don
> i bet it's ur-beatle from kibo.
>
> --
> apes await at our atavistic edge.
> His Most Feathered Eminence, the Ur-Beatle
Imitation Is the sincerest form of imitation of the great ape mind.