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Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Thursday, April 30, 2009

KUMBAYA (Creole for 'come by here')



SHE does not require your beliefs.
SHE calls to be seen.

Look and you shall be astonished,
And so shall SHE.

Look longer-
you will be overwhelmed with
remorse and so shall SHE.

Look to long,
all bars blaze – SHE, you,
naked drunk passionately
indifferent to who is who ?

And whom
would be so wretched
in luminous presence
to dare to utter
who is who ?

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Art, the Sublime and ...

David Lindsay (1876- 1945) the Scottish speculative fiction author whose first book A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS was called by Colin Wilson "the greatest imaginative work of the twentieth century,” crafted many axioms. I have gathered a few of his sayings on the sublime and art.


In the State, in languages, in Art, and in morality, the most settled laws give way in the long run to nature; all actions slope downward towards freedom.

A man must acquire freedom, emotionally, intellectually and personally; but when free, he is only half-way to wisdom; he must now learn suffering and humiliation. And this signifies that he must renounce a great part of the freedom he has won.

For anyone without creative intellect, true culture is impossible; the reason is that he must by his inability to think for himself, defer to the authority of some other man, thereby shutting himself off from numerous other sides of thought.

If there were a Devil, of his inventions ennui might be the one on which he would chiefly pride himself.

Man must unite himself to something. In solitude, to the unseen world, resulting in the Sublime; in society, to his fellow-men, resulting in the vulgar. Tolstoy's touchstone of Art therefore proves to be diametrically opposite to the fact. The use of Art lies not in its power of uniting men, but in its efforts to disunite them. The noblest art will produce in us disgust at the presence of our fellow-creatures; and the best artists are those who love solitude.

Just as complementary colours joined together form white light, so by the prism of individuality, the Sublime is split into Pleasure and Pain. This is why any strong emotional feeling includes both exaltation and grief. It also renders Schopenhauer's question unnecessary, which is positive and negative, of pleasure and pain. Pain must not be regarded as expiation, education, or anything of the sort, but as the indivisible companion of pleasure; just as after staring intently at red, we then see green. And in experiencing sublime feelings, we discover both elements, because both must be present.

Emotions belong to Individuality. The Sublime is an undivided complex; this feeling is most perceptible in the higher grades of music. We do not then feel single emotions but a swelling Whole, which we cannot analyse for ourselves. The Sublime is thus like Light, the emotions like colours.

The individualising principle is not the cause of the anti-sublime, but the attempt to escape from the anti-sublime towards freedom. This attempt is known biologically as variety.

Unity is chaos. Things separate in their nature are forced to live and act together. A resulting existence is secured, but this existence is false and painful; and to escape from it, the component parts seek wrong openings.

From the preceding paragraph, it will be seen that a true ethical system will endeavour to promulgate variety of life; activity, objectivity, and intelligence, as opposed to soul-deadening tradition, formalism and meek stupidity.

The Sublime is not a theory, but a terrible fact, which stands above and behind the world, and governs all its manifestations.

To those who realise the Sublime, a beautiful person is only a living corpse; for an individual is only a branch lopped off from the Eternal, and is already dying.

So-called morbid ideas - death, ghosts, the spirit-world, etc. - correspond to nothing real. It is the Sublime life calling us, which our individualistic nature mistranslates in this fashion.

Harmony, symmetry, rhythm, and numbers, imply internal relationship. When this relationship is rudely interrupted by a force from outside, reality itself.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Shameful Behaviour

How can I disidentify if I know not what I appear to be?

When arrogant see it!
When bitter taste it!
When angry feel it!

These wretched attributes are active members of my self expression.
Perhaps I should manufacture some distance from the affairs of my state and usher vanity to the mix?
Nothing is happening here.

Spin, spin, spin boldly I go from the night and feign beyondness from these base moods.

NO, they are still here!

Perhaps I should mine these base moods and refine them into some abstract thought, or some higher emotion?

NO, they will still be here!

The search for the holy is not caulking of the unwanted holes in my psyche, these holes are members of my psyche. I and them are not separate.

The attending to them and they attending to me catalyzes an awareness of seeing.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

ALL RELIGIONS r 1

ALL RELIGIONS are ONE t

The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness

The Argument As the true method of knowledge is experiment
the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which
experiences. This faculty I treat of.
PRINCIPLE 1st That the Poetic Genius is the true Man. and that
the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic
Genius. Likewise that the forms of all things are derived from
their Genius. which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel & Spirit
& Demon.
PRINCIPLE 2d As all men are alike in outward form, So (and
with the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic
Genius
PRINCIPLE 3d No man can think write or speak from his heart,
but he must intend truth. Thus all sects of Philosophy are from
the Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every
individual
PRINCIPLE 4. As none by traveling over known lands can find out
the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not
acquire more. therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists
PRINCIPLE. 5. The Religions of all Nations are derived from
each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is
every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy.
PRINCIPLE 6 The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original
derivation from the Poetic Genius. this is necessary from the
confined nature of bodily sensation
PRINCIPLE 7th As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various) So
all Religions & as all similars have one source
The true Man is the source he being the Poetic Genius