Treasures / Downsizing

February 2, 2022 2:09pm

After 37 years, it has become necessary to decide what’s going and what is staying. We go to estate sales frequently; it has become a form of entertainment plus you find a lot of junk you just can’t pass up. Many of these sales are a result of a death or a move to assisted living. Often, it’s the children (many pretty danged old themselves!) who oversee this event. So we look at each other and the “treasures” we just bought and say, “the kids are just going to throw this away when the time comes.”

So at some point you must bite the bullet and pare your holdings. The ephemera were in my sights last night and I came across tax returns from 1978 (when my yearly (student) income was around $3500), transcripts of my college years, an unbound copy of my thesis, etc. So I winnowed and sifted and shredded some and threw away much of what was left.

I couldn’t bring myself to toss the thesis though because I remembered the effort spent on the literature review and the two summers of hot and difficult research on the University farm. However, I know that it will be one of the first things in the dumpster when I’m gone….along with the diplomas that matter not one whit to any human on the planet at this stage. And my resume’s??….LOL….give me a break!!!

This sort of chore does make one think about what you did here.

I watched a documentary on Youtube recently about an ill-fated expedition on Mt. Everest. One of the women interviewed (base camp staff) told of the last hours of a climber who was sitting at about 26,000 feet with a dead friend he had tried to save. He had a satellite phone and talked of making it down before night but everyone knew he was not returning. She said that her role in completing a call between this man and his wife was “the most important thing I ever did.”

I began to think about the most important thing I ever did.

I’m still thinking about that.

Young Werther

February 6, 2022 11:16pm

I saw a dichotomy between conventional paradigms and the alternatives which always seemed illogical and worse than tradition. But there are other choices, other world views that lie between these extremes. A few thinkers start down these trails and lead the way to new visions but even these are dead ends or merge back with the old ways of convention or to destructive and ridiculous “new” alternatives that drown in sophistry.

I finished “The Sorrows of Young Werther” today and appreciate the ability of Goethe anew. I wondered at times if he mocked himself and his protagonist for being too sensitive as some of the other characters intimated.

Werther’s devotion to his “purpose”, his raison d’etre, fell along traditional lines and would cease to exist like everything in the material universe. The young think according to their programming but age leads us to seek the eternal, the sublime, and when that search fails, what is left? Only that we can say we were here….and we tried.

I stumbled upon the Sycthian Ambassador’s speech to Alexander the Great today and thought this was going to end up like the Melian Dialog but those Sycthians spoke the truth and backed it up!

They were among the first mounted warriors and won battles with their speed and their bows.

What will historians say of our age in 2500 years?

Werther (cont.)

February 7, 2022 12;34pm

I am still immersed in contemplation of “Young Werther” – going so far as to watch a lecture by an Ivy League Ph.D. Everyone points out that Werther was egotistical and looked inward with a gaze so intense that he was burned by his own vision. This is an understandable analysis but let me suggest an alternate interpretation. I think that Werther would deny the egotist label. He did not act out of conceit or selfishness. On the contrary, he seemed genuinely to care about people and to give of himself and his resources to insure their happiness.

There is a subtle difference between his putative egoism and his perception of the reality that forges the emotions that define us. He sees more clearly than most the interpsychic conflict at the interface of the outter and the inner life. But clear vision does not make him an egotist. No, he is just a young man too sensitive for this world.

Now let us speak clearly…many see this sensitivity through a negative lens. But then who among us can achieve perfect balance? Others see life through the eyes of the cut-throat businessman, or the eyes of the Lothario, or the social climber, or the child abusing clergy, or the helpless addict. The number of men and women who exhibit a well-rounded character with no vices is much smaller than we think. So I choose to give Werther the benefit of the doubt and attribute his shortcomings to a perspicacity rarely observed.

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As we humans become more enlightened and more conscious of our consciousness, what will be the evolutionary impact of these hypersensitives like Werther? Some will adopt an anti-natalist philosophy, others will follow Werther’s lead, and the unenlightened will copulate with their life-like cyborgs. The result will be that we will “walk hand-in-hand to extinction” as Rust Cohle suggested.

Silos

February 9, 2022 8:01am

The winter sun, just risen, casts a yellow light on the tops of the trees. These trees, silos of life that have no intercourse with their fellows. The isolation of consciousness is far worse with the awareness. Hegel said only one knew him and even he did not. So, we trudge through life staring into the optical orifices of the other blobs of fat and protein and think that we “know” them when all that we see is the result of the convoluted electrical messages coursing through a mass of synapses awash in hormones and occasionally curbed by ratiocination.

You see, the plan, if there is one at all, is to get to the bottom of this and come out the other side with something that might do you some good. So I finish “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” and feel near to the goal. Don’t read this story if you are ill.

Divisions

February 17, 2022 1:06pm

Rain drips from the Holly tree outside my window on a dreary winter day. I will start my tomato seeds in a couple of weeks and need to see if I can get the D-15 started since I did not plow the garden in the fall.

Recent events lead me to question much about our culture and the prospects that we can live together in a diverse society. There are sharp distinctions based on politics, interests and preferences. Outward appearances sometimes are indications of those inner traits but not always. I remember the first time I ran across a young man with spiked purple hair many years ago…I assumed that we would be on opposite sides of many ideological questions. Subsequent experience has supported this kind of assumption. So, the outer is only a manifestation of values, beliefs and attitudes and it is these that really divide us.

Drill Music…are you kiddin’ me????

February 18, 2022 1:45pm

You don’t know what it is either? Read on…..

The 2/17/22 entry (above) was based on my reaction to the Superbowl half-time show. After starting with the thought that the music left me feeling like a stranger in a strange land, I tried to put myself in the shoes of the fans of this form of entertainment and I softened my approach before posting.

Today, I read this essay written by a black man and I am wondering how folks who have little/no respect for their own expect others to respect them or indeed an entire race? At some point, folks have got to take some responsibility for their predicament….blaming others may seem like justice but I would submit that actual justice is elevating yourself and your peers demographically, socially, and morally.

I’m not often a fan of Juan Williams but he nails it: Rap and drill music is part of America’s racial problem | Fox News

Snoop Dog the pornographer…..shoulda guessed!

Time the Sculptor

February 21, 2022 9:49am

What a mystery are the humans. Mystical farrago of greed, envy, and pride: they are a pitiful tribe of grasping, megalomaniacal savages deluding themselves with visions of love and brotherhood.

Once, it seemed that a child began life full of promise, with all that was needed to fulfill destiny. But reality binds down that dream and yields, for many, a lesser product.

Time is the sculptor who, recognizing the fractures of her material, uses the flaws to work toward a likeness of the original concept….an image of God – now become the deformed carney attraction in a cheap sideshow.

Perhaps all that we see is a mark on the measure of progress. Consciousness only arising a few tens of thousands of years ago, maybe there is a spiritual home for the naked ape. How do we transcend the present and reach that next realm? If it exists at all, what does it look like? All who walk that way will fall before our descendants reach that portal.

And this?…..this entry is my review of Nightmare Alley. Worth watching.

Bierce, Chambers, True Detective

February 23, 2022 11:06am

How do I get started down these rabbit holes? I think I wondered if there was any back story to the “Yellow King” in True Detective and started searching. I immediately found that Rust referenced “The King in Yellow” which is a series of four short stories written by Robert Chambers in 1895. The stories all mention a two-act play named, “The King in Yellow” and revolve around the madness of all who read the play. We know almost nothing of the content of the play but it clearly has a horrific effect on all who read it.

The play references “Carcosa” a lost city that first appears in the Ambrose Bierce story, “An Inhabitant of Carcosa.” (1886). Bierce’s story ends with the narrator realizing he is dead and among the ruins of the ancient city. Now, I knew Bierce wrote “An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge.” but nothing about his involvement with Pancho Villa or his mysterious disappearance while in Mexico. These details add to the mystique surrounding the whole Yellow King/Carcosa theme and my appreciation for the intricacies of Pizzolatto’s skill as a storyteller….in his hands, Carcosa becomes a temple of evil in True Detective.

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We seek God for reasons we may not know. Alone in our vaults of thoughts and unable to bridge the gap to any other consciousness, how convenient it is to imbue our personal God with the characteristics we see (or wish to see) in ourselves. Our deity the consummate confidante because we have found our soulmate and he is us.

Ukraine vs. Russia

February 27,2022 11:27pm

Violence, it seems, is always imminent. The causes often obscured and unfathomable. Empire breeds ruthless men who justify their actions with fine words whose abstractions are lost on the victims. Objectivity is impossible even without the curse of propaganda. Truth is never a single story and research and scholarship no guarantee that you will find it. Each of us has his own truth and we seldom know even that. Our beliefs filtered by experience and memory – all is questioned and questioned until we fall back to that final redoubt of solipsism and, finally, it too evaporates leaving us with only…..nothing.

Miss Ukraine

February 28, 2022 5:50pm

What wars have you lived through and which have had a direct impact on your life? You watch dystopian movies all the time and secretly long for the eschaton. Now imagine your country invaded and your government issuing automatic weapons to everyone with an ID. Perhaps you never fired a weapon and have no idea of firearms safety – you are as likely to kill your courntrymen as the enemy crossing your borders.

This is no video game and the stakes cannot be higher. Your mistakes may result in the loss of your jaw or a hand…or if you’re lucky – your life. Capture, especially if you’re an attractive female, ls likely to be …unpleasant. But you talked like they do in the movies because it’s all you know. Your captors watched the same films and know their parts too. You are now in a low budget B movie whose script was written by a high school dropout high on cocaine. Good luck, he is fond of violence and pornography and you? — you are the former Miss Ukraine….the one who made bold threats with legs spread and a Kalashnikov strapped on your chest. Your reign may be short…..but you wished for world peace…..remember?