=kit002s Summary of PVK KIT 001 Mastery -- The Effect of Retreats "Meditation is the art of learning how to use the human focus of a universal will to mobilize that universal will in all its infinite scope." (PVK KIT 002) This looks like a 'phenomenlogical analyis', whatever that means, of mastery. Using one's 'personal will' to 'invoke' the 'universal will' as a 'catalyst' to trigger the 'forces of life' , perceived as 'ecstacy' ('the energy of the psyche'). (kit002s__1) (kit002s__1) [ I (sa) hope in these KIT summaries to demonstrate the complexity of PVK's ideas. Instead of the -- dyadic, I guess -- ideas of pop_intellectuality, one finds , in the above summary paragraph, you might say,: 2 relations linking 4 logical objects. So already we've gone beyond the aRb model of elementarty symbolic logic. ] And thus, as HIK indicates, mastery manifests as accomplishment. "Murshid says that if you are not making a success of your undertaking, the chances are that you are not in control of yourself."(PVK KIT 002) To deem mastery a virtue is to oppose the post_Freudian pop_psychology notion of permissiveness as a redress of repressiveness. (kit002s_2) PVK commends a book by Carol Travers, 'Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion'. PVK notes: "Murshid took a balanced view of this problem. "One is sometimes faced with the choice between wounding one's psyche by withholding an emotion or blowing a delicate situation by behaving simply in an uncouth manner, showing a lack of sensitivity and refinement (rather like an elephant in a glass palace). " (PVK KIT 002) (kit002s_3) (kit002s_3) [ Well, the above paragraph shows the delicate precision of expression typical of PVK. Cf. J.L. Sustin, who remarked in passing (Collected Papers, Oxford Press) that we should worry less about 'the True and the Beautiful' and more about 'the dainty and the dumpy'.] PVK adds: "Just as it is not always advisable to mollycoddle the body, but rather expose it to the seasons, even so the psyche will get strengthened by rough handling it, provided one does not overdo it." (PVK KIT 002) (kit002s_4) PVK adds: "However, while the ascetic orders practice detachment and desirelessness to effect liberation, the Sufis see the whole universe as the divine nostalgia for self-discovery, the actuation of potentialities, proliferation, inventiveness and evolution. " (PVK KIT 002) (kit002s_5) (kit002s_6) (kit002s_6) [ One also sees that from the outset of these KITs, PVK integrates his thought with that oF HIK. Although here it is PVK's thought that is in the foreground; at the end of the KITs, with the Curriculum KITs( I havaen't yet looked at the non_Curriculum later KITs), PVK seems to present his own thought as only a commentary on traditional Sufi teachings, predominantly HIK, and I would say seconarily Ibn Arabi. Susie Harrison once said to me, 'Woman is half the universe.' So PVK notes that "what we believe to be our desires are extensions of the overall divine desire," (PVK KIT 002) (kit002s_7) (kit002s_8) (kit002s_7) [ These summaries are turning into summary with commentary, and I am applying the same style if not technique that PVK uses in his Curriculum exegesis of the teachings of HIK. ] So anyhow, it is not lust, but rage. that PVK turns his attention to. (I am playing off a line by Yeats, in his personna as "an agreeable old scare_crow": "what else have I but lust and rage to spur me into song" ) "Rather than disperse the energy of anger in an explosion of fury, one could make use of that energy in an implosion: gaining an ongoing sense of dignity and sovereignty that imposes respect. "(PVK, KIT 002) (kit002s_9) (kit002s_9) [ Well, the sages did acknowlege that harnessing anger was very difficult. Heraklitus said, "It is hard to fight with anger, for what it wants it buys at the price of soul". PVK here makes, not for the only time, an observation that may hold a key to warding off cancer: "The trouble is that mastery easily becomes a feat of proving oneself to oneself or to others, especially when challenged. It is the stuff that makes the mountaineer, the athlete, the fireman, the hero, the yogi. Besides, people and fundamentalist institutions have a way of making one feel that one should do this or that; one often "shoulds" oneself. One finds oneself in a bind when pushing beyond the boundaries between stress and overstress. The bind is in the mind. One fears being humiliated in one's self- esteem, reproved, punished or even dismissed if one should fail. At a certain point, something has to give. If one has a vulnerable mind, one slips into schizophrenic behavior; if a strong mind, one could have a heart attack or cancer." (kit002s_10) PVK then concludes by saying, that both for our own self_preservation, and from consideraton for others know when to cease from attempting to assert mastery. He adds, that in asserting mastery, do so only when in the impersonal, universal, 'divine' aspect of your Being, not from your personal consciousness. (And I suppose that is how -- "KIDS, DON'T TRY THIS ONE AT HOME!" -- the dervish can look into the sun yet nnot be blinded.) OK, wrap it all up, drop the Notes down to botdoc, cut and print and go check out the icicles. ----------------------------------------------------------------- sa, Campra, 24 Dec '05 -- 23 KisLeV -- 23 Dhu al-Qi'dah ---------------------------------------------------------------- COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY: OK SportsFans, I'm gonna put these Footnotes into my standard EinsteinWriter staggered indents. That's to clarify my roundabout logic -- I parenthetically go into and then back out of sub_points, sub_sub_points, etc. So OK, here's the deal, as I note in many places on my Websites. I do all my typing in EinsteinWriter (Version 8.2, though you can read it with any version. EinsteinWriter (W.EXE) is about 96K I then convert those EinsteinWriter docs into English_only__ASCII using EinsteinWriter's T.EXE That convert strips out all those staggered block_indents, ie, everything gets shoved over to flush_left. It also strips out the block_indent codes, which are .L1 .... .L7 Each block_indent is 5 chars to the right of the previous indent. So Flush_left defaults to 10. And that is .L1 , Layout 1. So the left margin for Layout 2 , .L2 , is 5 spaces in from Flush_left, ie at 15 So the left margin for Layout 3 , .L3 , is 5 spaces in from Layout 2, ie Layout 3 is at 20 . Etc., to Layout 7. I flag all those Layouts with a non_functional tic_tac_toe sign -- # So #L1 is Layout 1 , input in EinsteinWriter as .L1 So #L2 is Layout 2, input in EinsteinWriter as .L2 So Layout 7 , .L7 , #L7, is block_indented 30 chars to the right of the Left Margin. That would be at position 40 with my Left_margin default at Position 10. You can download W.EXE (EinsteinWriter) and T.EXE (EinsteinWriter's Utility to convert EinsteinWriter files into ASCII (English only), from various places on my Websites and in my Briefcases. Both run under DOS, and not under Windows. OK, one more note. When I drop a Footnote down to botdoc (ie to the bottom of the document , or Deep_6 it to a seperate doc of footnotes, I usually copy the preceeding text, and flag that as 'TEXT'. followed by the Footnote number, eg 'kit002s_1' for the first footnote to doc =kit002s. I then repeat that footnote number, and then write the footnote. "Etcetera et Cicero" (Finnegan's Wake, more_or_less" #L1 (Footnote kit002sa_0) (Footnote kit002sa_0) #L2 (Celso said "more_or_less". That Celso's Bar and Grille, at Arroyo Hondo, 10 miles north of Taos on the main highway. #L3 Turn left there to get to New Buffalo commune, about half way down to the Rio Grande Gorge. Or keep on driving up the highway another 10 miles to get to San Cristobal, then drive or walk from 7000 ft. above sea level, to 9,000 feet above sea level, and you're at Lama Foundation. #L4 Though it's best to call first. If you get there, ask for John Kimmey. #L5 The preceeding notes are accurate as of June 1975. #L6 Good luck. #L7 The preceeding was a demo of my staggered_indents system. To this last point is in Layout 7, which is block_indented to 30 chars after the Left Margin (ie to position 40 with my Left Margin default at position 10 #L1 ---------------------------------------------------------------- (kit002s_7) [ These summaries are turning into summary with commentary, and I am applying the same style if not techni1ue that PVK uses in his Curriculum exegesis of the teachings of HIK. ] --------------- TEXT: Using one's 'personal will' to 'invoke' the 'universal will' as a 'catalyst' to trigger the 'forces of life' , perceived as 'ecstacy' ('the energy of the psyche'). (kit002s__1) (kit002s__1) [ I (sa) hope in these KIT summaries to demonstrate the complexity of PVK's ideas. Instead of the -- dyadic, I guess -- ideas of pop_intellectuality, one finds , in the above summary paragraph, , you might say,: 2 relations linking 4 logical objects. So already we've gone beyond the aRb model of elementarty symbolic logic. ] ---------------- TEXT: To deem mastery a virtue is to oppose the post_Freudian pop_psychology notion of permissiveness as a redress of repressiveness. (kit002s_2) (kit002s_2) [ Thinking that Wm. Reich was advocating that, the USA tortured him to death by locking him up in prison to go mad and die -- as far away as possible from the ecstatic'orgone energy' that he had realized. (sa) ] [ Of course poor old Freud was quite in favor of sexual repression (except in his cocaine dreams); he was a proper Vienneese from shoes to goatee. (Cf. 'Civilization and its Discents, which of course I've not read) (sa)]] --------------------- TEXT: PVK notes: "Murshid took a balanced view of this problem. "One is sometimes faced with the choice between wounding one's psyche by withholding an emotion or blowing a delicate situation by behaving simply in an uncouth manner, showing a lack of sensitivity and refinement (rather like an elephant in a glass palace). " (PVK KIT 002) (kit002s_3) (kit002s_3) [ Well, the above paragraph shows the delicate precision of expression typical of PVK. #L2 Cf. J.L. Austin, who remarked in passing (Collected Papers, Oxford Press) that we should worry less about 'the True and the Beautiful' and more about 'the dainty and the dumpy'.] #L3 [ Of course in these KIT summaries I am also trying to suggest that PVK was reasonably well grounded in the secular philosophy of the 20th century. #L4 But Carl Shorske I ain't (he taught modern intellectual history at UC Berkeley in the 1960's).; #L5 in 3_plus years of grad school I didn't read much more than Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and the New York Times News of the Week in Review. (sa) ] #L1 (kit002s_4) [ Note (sa) Well, PVK sure is off to a running start with these KITs. #L2 Having known PVK only as an elder, we tend to forget that he led quite a physically active life. #L3 One gets a glimpse of that in the released portions of the final interview that ZR and Shahabudin videotaped. #L4 (P)VK was a junior British naval officer in WWII, on a minesweeper, and after the war apparently reported rather courageously on French colonial violations of human rights in their attempt to crush the Algerian independence movmeent. #L5 He must have been almost 70 when he taught his children hang_gliding.] #L6 OK, this is still demo stuff. So far the block_indents aint' really necessarily to clarify my meanderings. But by the last footnote in this doc, they is. -------------------------------- #L1 ---------------------------------------------- TEXT: PVK adds: "However, while the ascetic orders practice detachment and desirelessness to effect liberation, the Sufis see the whole universe as the divine nostalgia for self-discovery, the actuation of potentialities, proliferation, inventiveness and evolution. " (PVK KIT 002) (kit002s_5) [ So in this sense the Sufi movement is sensual, even erotic, albeit in a refined and civilized way. #l2 (One Abode member once remarked to me, that everyone who joined the Abode had to give up things, and that for her it was like going into a monastary -- #l3 though I think she meant nunnery, #l4 and on second though, I think that was what she said. ) #L2 So I am tempted to say that what PVK opposed in the Rajaneesh 'chaotic meditation' movement of the 1970s was not its sensuality, but its crudeness. #L3 -- I am familiar only with PVK's remarks iin seminars -- eg he once remarked at an Abode seminar that if you "let the jack out off the box, it may be difficult to get it back in again" (I quote from memory). #L4 The reference of course is to the 19th_century children's toy, the jack_in_the_box, where the figure of a jester is put at the end of spring, and forced down into a small box which is closed. When the box is opened, the figure jumps out. #L5 OK SportsFams. by this Footnote my staggered Layouts are helpful if not essential to chart the back_and_forths of my thought. ----------------------------------------------- ---- #L1 (kit002s_6) [ One also sees that from the outset of these KITs, PVK integrates his thought with that oF HIK. Although here it is PVK's thought that is in the foreground; at the end of the KITs, with the Curriculum KITs(I havaen't yet looked at the non_Curriculum later KITs), PVK seems to present his own thought as only a commentary on traditional Sufi teachings, predominantly HIK, and I would say seconarily Ibn Arabi. ------------------------------------- TEXT: Susie Harrison once said to me, 'Woman is half the universe.' (kit002s_8) (kit002s_8) [ Yeats, writing in is persona as am old man ("here is an agreeable old scare_crow" (Yeats), whether he was or not -- #l2 personally I remain the same average age; as my body for some reason stupidly persists in showing more and more symptoms of old age -- #l3 no wonder St. Francis, thinking of Balak's donkey, called it 'Broather Ass' -- #l2 my personality reverts toward childhood. #l3 If as Jesus reportedly said, that's one of the preconditions for getting through those 'pearly gates' into the next world, looks like I'm maybe on_track -- #L4 but Begone, Gloom, days are getting longer, summer's on its way #L5 if I can get past Santa Claus with his pack. #L6 "Senility is what you make of it," says I. #L7 I told Gal_Or, I have trouble remembering names nowadays. He said, 'I'm Eliahu.' I said, 'We've met.'. ] #L1 Yeats, writing in his persona as an old man, says, "what else have us by lust and rage to spur me into song." (Yeats) ----------- [ The following footnote follows directly from the preceeding one.] TEXT: So anyhow, it is not lust, but rage. that PVK turns his attention to. (I am playing off a line by Yeats, in his personna as "an agreeable old scare_crow": "what else have I but lust and rage to spur me into song" ) "Rather than disperse the energy of anger in an explosion of fury, one could make use of that energy in an implosion: gaining an ongoing sense of dignity and sovereignty that imposes respect. "(PVK, KIT 002) (kit002s_9) (kit002s_9) [ Well, the sages did acknowlege that harnessing anger was very difficult. Heraklitus said, 'It is hard to fight with anger, for what it wants it buys at the price of soul'. And the Rabbis said, in Talmud, 'If someone tells you he can control his anger, he is a liar.' (Or someone said something like that, I quote from memory.) Well, one might see PVK's youthful work as a journalist in this light. His depression following the loss of his fiance, sister, and father -- #L2 and really his mother too, who fell into a seculuded depression with the youthful death of her husband -- #L3 PVK once remarked that HIK burnt himself out, but my guess is that he was dying of cancer #L4 (Cf. HIK's remark, "pain, my constant companion") #L3 and pushed himself to finish his work -- and that he did not suffer physically from lack of sleep -- indeed, King David seems to recommend it (Psalms, "who banish sleep from themselves. #L2 Again, I do hope that ZR and Shahabudin release as much as possible of that final interview -- one of PVK's few autobiobraphic talks. Again, I'd hope they take an opt_out rather than an opt_in approach -- withholding only remarks that could clearly hurt living persons -- #L3 eg 'Atum steals hubcaps on moonlit nights in Seattle'.] ------------------------------------------------------ #L1 TEXT: [ This is Footnote 10 to =kit002sa . It's long and intricate, and zig_zags back and forth ("put that in your pipe and toke it") So you will need the layout flags to follow the argument -- or better -- 'to follow the quarrel'. (A quarrel is some sort of arrow, maybe what they shot from a cross_bow. )] PVK here makes, not for the only time, an observation that may hold a key to warding off cancer: "The trouble is that mastery easily becomes a feat of proving oneself to oneself or to others, especially when challenged. It is the stuff that makes the mountaineer, the athlete, the fireman, the hero, the yogi. Besides, people and fundamentalist institutions have a way of making one feel that one should do this or that; one often "shoulds" oneself. One finds oneself in a bind when pushing beyond the boundaries between stress and overstress. The bind is in the mind. One fears being humiliated in one's self- esteem, reproved, punished or even dismissed if one should fail. At a certain point, something has to give. If one has a vulnerable mind, one slips into schizophrenic behavior; if a strong mind, one could have a heart attack or cancer." (kit002s_10) (kit002s_10) That is: confronted with challenges or with opportunities that we did not really want -- #L2 -- (Cf. T.S. Eliot, "the giving famishes tthe craving" -- #L3 Cf. too Tolkien's fable of 'The Hobbit', #L4 Bilbo Baggins, who would much rather live out his days with a good pipe in his comfortably furnished Hobbit_hole #L5 (and that is an aspect of humility, and humility seems to be a precondition of actualizing one's divine potentiality #L6 -- Cf. the zikr, and also Cf. the remark that Moses was "the humblest man who ever lived" (Chumash, most likely Deuteronomy), #L4 but is drawn by Gandalf -- #L5 who I tend to conflate with PVK -- #L6 Tolkien gives Gandalf the epithets 'Gandalf the Grey' and 'Strider' -- and PVK remarks in a KIT that I don't yet have here, "and I stride on, apparently unscathed" #L7 -- and maybe PVK was influenced by 'The Hobbit' in crafting his public image ( Cf. HIK, on 'the art of personality') -- the chronology and cultural milieu of post_WWII__England fit that guess. ) #L1 [ Continuation of remark: "That is: confronted with challenges or with opportunities that we did not really want -- "] -- and with the sudden burst of energy thaat accompanies such challenges and opportunities -- our first choice is to either accept and utlize, or to try to deny that energy #L2 (though one cannot send it back to the angels #L3 and/or daemons if not demons, #L2 with a polite thank_you_very_much note -- #L3 and that's why one is in a crisis at these cruxes (Latin, crossroads). #L1 Now the 'superior man' #L2 as they say in the (translated) I Ching, #L1 will accept that energy and do great things with it. #L2 And this, as we will next see, is why schizophrenia and genius are contiguous, #L3 so that one who fails to accept his genius -- #L4 "that one talent which is death to hide", as Milton said ("On his Blindness") , #L5 paraphrasing a parable attributed in the Christian Scriptures (the tendentiously self_styled 'New Testament', #L6 as if it somehow superceded the old 'Covenant', (Hebrew, 'brit olam') #L3 -- risks madness or death. #L4 (And that is why the Siddur includes, before the morning Shema/Amidah , the passing prayer, "may we not be tested, and not be brought to disgrace" -- #L1 - now Puran Blair used to say, "+A Sufi looves to be shattered", to which I always wanted to add, "A Hobbit HATES it." So for a compromise I suggest the Schoolboy's Prayer -- may we not be hit with any unexpected tests that we are not ready to take and optimally eager to 'ace' #L2 (a USA poker idiom, for one who holds aces it likely to win the hand who was dealt ) -- #L1 "as a strong runner, to run a race" (Psalams) -- But if you do not accept that energy -- #L2 if the Swiss could not run up into their mountains, they would all have gone mad and become extinct -- #L3 though I suppose that it might be a close call if the Swiss ever held one of their annual Referendum's on whether or not to adopt the topography of Kansas -- #L4 -- they have the wealth and nearly the tecchnology to do so; #L5 the country is so artificially enhanced, with all its nearly invisible multiple_use tunnels and the like, that is already almost a giant Swiss watch -- #L1 -- then, as I said, because you cannot sennd that energy back -- #L2 the so_called anti_psychotic drugs tried to do so -- #L3 and Osmund and Leary suggested that a timely mega_dose of Vitamin B_complex and Vitamin C might neutralize a 'bad trip' -- #L4 I don't know if that meant LSD, mescaline, psilicybin, or all 3 of the psychedlics -- #L5 and there are only three, if we take the range of alkaloids in peyote as the natural form of mescaline -- #L3 and might neutralize 'acute' schizophrenia -- #L4 that is, a sudden onset of -- adaptivae responses, really, not 'symptoms' -- #L5 [ *** YOU ARE NOW ENTERING UPPER GOLETA *** #L6 That is, I now get into a point with so many sub_points that I just start a second set of indents. But since I am limited in EinsteinWriter to 7 successive block_indents, I will throw this next sub_point back to Flush_Left, although it is really #L5 , and I will note the latter. ] #L5 and incidentally the first thing to ask in evaluating psychotic behavior is: to what situation is this is a reasonable if not optimal, response -- #L6 -- by which I mean, an 'acute' response too a sudden -- neuro_chemical, I suppose -- imbalance -- but before it reaches the 'chronic' stage, ie, before that psychotic behavior has become an entrenched aspect of the patient's personality -- #L7 as it very quickly may, because psychedelic experience opens up portions of the -- brain, or mind, or soul -- that from psychologic self_preservation we had placed 'off_limits' -- #L6 and when that happens, one re_creates the precondition of childhood 'traumatic experience' -- #L7 the possibility of imposing a pattern on a very large portion of the mind -- #L8 as if one could draw a circle, or a diamond, or a six_pointed star, on a 100_square grid rather than on the 10_square grid to which after infancy and early childhood, #L7 [ Continuation of: "we had placed 'off_limits' -- "] as the brain becomes more intricately developed. One is ordinarily restricted -- #L8 for the infant must use the whole surface of the mind/brain because the finer structures are not net physiologically developed, so the infant can only function in a psychedelic mode, but the infant consciousness goes down into a smaller_scale mode as soon as physiologically possible -- #L9 (trailing, if not precisely Wordsworth's "clouds of glory" -- and what a pompous fool he was -- at least a few Pampers) #L8 and with luck reaches that point without having had his entire future personality_possiblities distorted by a traumatic experience, #L9 eg physical and/or sexual abuse -- #L10 I mean, it is part of the Divine Plan that accidents can happen, and so they do -- and that bad people can do bad things to "an innocent child" (HIK) -- #L8 and so constrain the child and ensuant adult #L9 ("the child is father to the man", as an English proverb puts it) #L8 to somewhat abberrant if not perverted behavior. #L9 ( Mr. Elton John was married yesterday. The Daily Mail, #L10 with the sort of tasteless cruelty that for many centuries, #L11 after the time when it was considered gauche to paint one's belly blue, #L10 served as the bedrock of English Civilization, #L9 ran a headline, 'Mrs. and Mrs.'. #L8 PVK often says, if you have suffered a trauma, make the best of it. #L9 For years, like a good Rousseua_ian -- #L10 either Rousseu, #L11 the guy with the friendly lion licking the gypsy, or the utopian dude -- #L9 I wanted PVK to be saying, Everything is all right. #L10 Little Joe Gomez could do that -- whatever situation he was in, he found the underlying harmony in it, and somehow you could see that through him. Even when he was buried at Taos Pueblo, he was delighted to have the chance to make love to Mother Earth. #L11 Or so I imageined, upon hearing the news from Jason, #L12 Jsaon used to go every winter, with his daughter Honey_Kali, to live with the Jichole Indians in South American and eat their magic mushrooms, and come back wearing those beautiful clothes that they make -- #L9 But PVK does not say that. He says, bad things do happen, make the best of the situattion. #L10 Agmieska remarked to me, after seeing the full video of his last interview, he really had a very sad life. (I don't recall her exact words.) #L9 Personally, I blame Hallaj for that unwanted realism. #L10 (I would have much preferred to reamin in romanticism, with my copy of Tolkien.) #L9 Once you've gone through ' al Haq', perceiving the world under the Divine Attribute of Truth #L10 -- and we have that in the bracha after thhe Shma 'Emet' -- #L11 which is forcibly intoned, and which happens to be the only word, outside the Shma, that the congregation says aloud -- #L12 or rather, is encouraged to say aloud, #L13 for orthodoxy does without all the rules of responsive reading that clutter up Reform and Conservative Jewish liturgy -- neither of which are taken seriously by the Israel Jewish religious community -- #L1 Oy -- that's what you get from getting up around 2 A.M. and drinking Chico d'Oro coffee cold, after it took a 4_day vacation in my slightly overfurnished shack -- I mean, even the shadows have to walk sidewise here -- OK, so to wrap this all up, because it's 7 AM now and day is breaking, time to go out, see if I can tell a dog from a wolf on the highway, knock off a prefunctory Shabat shaharit, and come in for a glass of wine , some bread dipped in a mix of natural olive oil and basalm vinegar, and a hit of that cheese Rosa brought me up from north Italy, Sondrio -- with a bit more wine to wash it down, of course -- #L2 "One copes" (sa) #L1 And so in quick conclusion, PVK says, as I summarize it here: You get an access if not excess of energy in response to the crisis that is precipitated by a challenge/opportunity , and you can "take it or leave it" (don't ask who once said that to me) -- and if you take it, you may become a great being, #L2 or if all else fails at least a hero, #L3 or if that fails, then if you bail out in time you might become rich -- #L4 but if you don't get off that roulette_wheel__merry_go_round in time, Charlie, you maybe go mad, or save your sanity by becoming rather rationally evil -- #L5 "the Other uprooted the young shoots", as the Talmud says of the paradigmatic four figures who "entered PaRaDeS" -- #L4 or if you don't do all that, you maybe get cancer - - #L5 this was what Wilhelm Reich was trying to teach us all -- #L4 because that excess of energy that you did not acess ain't returnable -- #L5 and that is maybe from Megillat Eshter, once the word of the king is written, it cannot be taken back, it can only be modified -- #L4 -- I mean, gvalt, talk of thanatophilic Puuritanism #L5 -- the Nazis were thanatophilic psychotic facists, but at least they dressed it up in shlock_paganism -- mazaltov, Wagner -- #L4 only in the USA, with Bushie Jr. and his Junior Torture Chamber, do they have the chutpah to pretend this is Puritan Christianity -- #L5 Bushie had twins, which shows that the USA can apply businesslike efficiency even to sex -- #L6 if Clinton hadn't given sex such a bad name, the world would be much better off today. #L1 "But the night has been long, ditto ditto my song, and thank goodness they're both of them over." (Gilbert & Sullivan, "Wen you're lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is taboo'd by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety." #L2 Obviously G&S wrote that a hundred odd years ago -- and they have been rather odd -- just so I could today write the preceeding footnote. #L3 And if you believe that, then I would like to show you how Isiah II et al. prophecied the coming of Jesus. #L4 Like I say, that sort of back_reading of the Bible does not constitute a proof_text in religious Judaism. Like I say, if all the Prophets of the Old Testament -- Nevi'im, that is -- walked up to the Knesset one day and said, we meant to tell you, this guy from Natzereth comes down to the Galillee in about the year 30 C.E., and he's your Messiah -- it would be reported in the Jerusalem Post on page 17 under the headline -- 'So since when are the Prophets experts on religious history? -- Go get Ph.d's, says Netanyahu.' #L1 "John Donne, Dirty old Man, Dirty old man John Donne."(sa) Shanti. Shantilly. Shishkabob. (bouncing a ball of T.S. Eliot) You want more codas, go to Beethoven. ============================================= ==================== sa, 25 Dec '05 -- daybreak Christmas morning -- first time I've ever felt lonely being alone here -- and most likely the only half_hour of it, Heaven be thanked -- Someone once wrote on the Abode chalkboard, something like, 'Do not forget your Friend'. there was a comforting Peanuts cartoon in yesterday's IHT -- Snoopy -- "Here's the World War I Flying Ace sitting in a small French Cafe -- It is Christmas Eve, and he is depressed " / "Nut I shouldn'0t complain. What about my brother Spike who's out there in the Trenches." / "I wonder if Spike is thinking about Christmas" -- last panel -- Spike is silently patiently standing sentry duty amidst some dark and ominous_looking cactuses that leave him in a sort of barbed_wire__topped imaginary trench -- 24 Kislev -- only 12 hours left to Chanukah -- Christmas has sort of worn itself out; I suggest that you all go back to Chanukah and try again with a relatively clean slate -- 24 Dhu al-Qi'dah ================================================================ ================================================== ==== ========