================================================================ NOTES TO =scaa32a thru page 33 ================================================================= TEXT: (Caveat Tabbycat, Caveat Blackhat, ie, Snias Alert, Shtuyot alert) (aa32-0e) (aa32-0e) Incidentally -- with my usual false modesty, I have hitherto used the term 'heresy alert' for what I now term 'shtuyot alert '. But there I conceeded much too much: heresy exists, it's bad stuff, one must do one's darndest to run away from it (Fat Larry once said, 'Tere is no problem too big to run away from ) (And this is also maybe, 'Keep far from an evil companion'), and also it is, on an intellectual level, 'He who is kind to the cruel will the end end up having been cruel to the kind.j'= I don't quite know what heresy is -- though the Thomists know a whole lot less -- but I can usually hear the grating dissonance of it. It is close to occult. One encounters it, or seems to, from time to time in unduly pious commentaries on traditional Judaism. Whenever I spot something that might be taken in a problematic way in these teachings of RSC, I try to flag it in a footnote, though most often I do so only in jive, which is an extremely colloquial dialect of USA English, and will most likely be mis-taken and mis- understood by most readers. And for that matter, by this writer too. ----------------------- The whole of L'KUTI MARON (aa32-0e) (aa32-0e) [ So then L'KUTI MARON -- Writings of the Master is I gues sthe translation -- is the primary text from which RSC has been teahing, in all the transcriptions of this RSC Ms. AA* series, and in many other talks as well -- and that is of the utmost importance to know , for anyone reading these transcdriptions] TEXT: Tzdakim are running after people to talk to them about G_d, (aa32-1) (aa32-1) A tzdakik don't run after folks. He "just sits there" and folks come to him. And that is because a tzadik is tzdaka, and tzdaka is Justice, in the Heraklitean sense of dike -- that is balance, like that Roman image of the scales of Justice, usually used to represent the sign of Libra. And a tzadik don't talk about Supreme Being, that's for the Thomists to do to differntiate all their isms & schisms. A tzadik talks about more down to earth stuff, because if he didn't he wouldn't have to be Jewish. So he's talking about halacha and Gemora and how to deal with the nudnik next door. --------------------- TEXT: The hold Tzdakim [ transcript sic, 'the hold'] are the ones who can beless people who have no children to have children, because they have the key of childrne in their hands. (aa32-2) (aa32-2) But of course we are speaking only of lady tzadikim, eg Emunah Witt. For some old goat with a beard down to his watch-fob ain't apt to have the keys to even a lady's constipation. And too, some but not all female infertility is psychologic: even assuming the husband is "full of spunk" or that she has boffed the milkman as_it_is_said, "it is forbidden to rely on a miracle", so she can boff the milkman because he he comes every day, you should pardon the expression, so it is not a miracle. So anyhow, there was this old carpenter up in Natzeret, and they marry him off to this young chick -- "How's your sweet young wife, Fred." "Eh, she's ok, boys. But I got one problem. She ain't got pregnant." "Better take a lodger, Fred." "OK boys, whatever you suggest." "Ain't seen you for a month or more, Fred. How's the sweet young wife." "Eh -- oh, she's pregnant, boys." "And how's your lodger, Fred." "Eh -- Oh, she's pregant too." ----------------------- TEXT: my mind, the human mind, is: 'I can know one thing and do something else. (aa32-3) When I lived on the Lower East Side, I would often stop by and visit a neighboring couple, because the chick usually ran around the apartment naked. Her old man once said to me, 'Steve, some day when you're stoned you must stop by and groove on our snake. He only does one thing at a time.' If you look down on your own body, right, want to destroy your body, damn you, right. (aa32-3a) COMMENT (sa): Well, you see (R.) Shlomo learned a bit the USA slang of the 1940's. Damnation is essentially a Roman Catholic notion, as far as I know, and they do take it quite seriously. To them it is blasphemy to utter such a phrase. But in the secular USA of the 1940s and 1950s it was used quite casually, and I suppose even considered a bit chic. Like smoking cigarettes -- Bogart and all that. Bogart the cynical Knight Errant, not 'bogart' the verb. ------------- TEXT: Then he [ Reb Nachman] says: My house. What does it mean, 'my house'. (aa32-4) [ 'my house' was a term often used by hadidim for 'my wife', or so I once read, if memory serves. (sa) TEXT: What's the door. (aa32-5) Golly gee, I can't guess. "Confucious say: He who lose key to girlfriend's house get no new key." (USA 1950's) There is no doubt a point to regarding the key as the essence of a house, if one lives in an essentially hostile society. But if one lives in an essentially mutually supprotive community -- and many of the places I've lived in, most people rarely locked their doors -- then the key is not the essence of the house. It is merely an accidental necessity in an mmperfect world. Incidentally, the Inidans used to speak of 'doorway in, doorway out', but I think they were referring to incarnation and resurreciton. The door is the way I walk into learning. (aa32-6) Block that yeshiva-bocher logic. If I meet a friend, we become good friens, like building a little house, right. And if I don't tremble before him, it has no door, you know. (aa32-7) Block that hyperbole. I mean like, be normal. Romanticization is an evasion of reality, not its quintessence. Bugger Young Werther. Some now that I've stumbled into that cowplop: I wonder if Reb Nachman, for all that he professed ignorance of secular literature, was influenced by Goethe. So there's ther's holy trembling. i study something and tremble before it. (aa32-8) Well, there were the "Quakers", as the Society of Friends, which was in Emg”ad. was called by some. And there's Kierkegaard's 'Fear and Trembling'. But he is referring to having enough faith to do what one believes to be, but is not certain that it is, the will of G_d. And Kierkgaard's paradigm is Abraham at the Akedah. And Kierkeaard's personal paradigm, he himself says as I recall, a conviction that instead of being a great wit and prolific writer, he should have proposed marriage to -- Regina, I think it was -- and then settled down as a country parsion. I know the way things were before they were created. (aa32-9) Well, PVK has remarked that Buddha said he did. But I ain't heard of no subseqemt claimants. Not till now anyhow. The fourth leve is, he says, that: My mind, nothing matters to my mind. (aa32-10) Cf. Leary, Psychedelic Prayers (after the Tao te Ching); "One to me is pain and gain, said he mind to the brain ... " It doesn't mater to my mind if its there or not. (aa32-11) $ Mayge this is deep, or maybe its only what Wittgenstien called a 'grammatical statement', something like a tautology, which does not report some new discovery, but merely notes some of the oddities of the consequence of our preuppositions. As PVK seems to suggest, its not all that profound to note that fictioal characters and set theory exist, but not in physical space. TEXT: The second htings is i know them even before thy wwere created. (aa32-12) There are two possible meanings here, one needs a translation of Reb Nachman's text to reasonably guess which he meant. Do I know (as is implied above), the stte of the world before it was open. "Before there was fire," Buddha said Or is it merely that I know things in their potentiality as well as in their actuality. (aa32-13) {I don't see how one can say this without getting silly, like Alfred Jarry's 'Pataphysics (featured as the cover story story in Evergeen Reveiw about 1957 ). I mean, within the religious perspective it is an essential supposition that everything in creation has a purpose. This point is made in a story about the Prophet Mumammed (Peace be Unto Him (and unto us too)): He said: Everything has a purpose. A heckler rejoined: "What about the mosquito." Ah, said the Prophet, that is to wake you up in time for pre_dawn prayers. } He says: If you reach taht level, then your mind is G_D level. (as32-14) (as32-14) I suppose that would be what PVK calls 'Pure Inelligence' which I guess is 'Chochma'. (aa32-15) Well, IF you go up there only by hanging on to the coat_tails of a Master, THEN, if you behave yourself and mind your manners, he can most likely put you down again, safe and sound. It goes without saying that you must be free of psychedelic drugs -- and any other consciousness-altering drrugs as well, including all that crap that's slopped out to hoi polloi hogs nowadays. I mean, the Scientologists -- quite a bad group, by the way -- are no doubt right in their opposition to psychiatric drugs. Because there's no way you can surf in the jet_stream of a Master if your soul is all mucked up with drugs. And of course you must be as clean as possible. Eg eat nothing but brown rice for the preeceeding month, drink lots of water, breath good air -- nicotine is a drug, by the way -- the American Indians use it, but only on very special “ccasions, and in very limited quantity. Maybe one cigarette every few months. Coffee is a drug, too. At Abode Retreat Seminars, they would serve it only after the last class, so that when people drove home that afternoon they would do so on earth. If you don't have a guide, you might not get back. PVK remarks that when he first went up there -- because, as I've noted, the realm of 'Pure Intelligence' or (I think) 'Chochma' is , I guess, what in the good old days of pychedelics we called 'ego-loss'. By the way, everyone knows, Vitamin B complex plus Vitamin C -- with bioflavanoids, of couse -- are good for neutralizing an acid trip . So is red meat, although I sometimes wonder if its socially acceptable, in Switzerland at least, to walk down the street eating raw hamburger with one's fingers -- even if one does get no more than a negligible ammount in one's beard, and is, of course, careful to first sprinkle it with salt. When travelling amongst the goyim, one should always carry a few packets of salt, stolen from any convenient McDonald's. So anyhow, Sarida Brown told this story of a guy who was flipping out, and they went to ask PVK what to do for him, and he recommended three things. I think the firt was that he should maybe go down to the garden or farm and work with his hands in the earth -- I've always found pulling weeds enjoyable -- sort of warfare on a reaonably ethical scale, and with an appropriate advantage of several orders of magnitude -- . And then, eating raw meat -- beef, I assume. Puran Blair once said, pork clogs up the subtle body. That would be pigmeat in general, i assume. And then PVK, who was of course somewhere up around 7th Heaven, or anyone one, or maybe more, of the upper spheres, remarked, as Sarida Brown told the story one year at Zenith -- "And --- of yes -- sex." Commenting on the story of the four who entered PaRDes, and only one returned, R. Zalman writes, in one of his earlier -- 70s or before -- papers, that Rabbi Akiva's wife "sent him off and welcomed him back with earthly love." Now Leary once said that maybe the only people who could handle psychedelics -- that would be in relatively large quanity, a full cap (ie, one pill) or maybe more. Myself, I never took more than a half-cap, which does not take you up to ego-loss, it takes you only to the Archetypal level. And there are some fine role-models there -- Marvel Comics and all that -- Tolkien, etc. -- but also all the Freudian monsters are right beneath the floorboards. So like the hasidim say, don't try it if you ain't got an old lady. were "swingers". That term was at that time -- hte 60s -- predicated of those who on Saturday if not Friday evenings were less likely to be found at a Bet Knesset than at the sort of social gathering where, upon walking in the door, it was only common courtesy, after hanging up one's 'capeau' of course, -- and this is -- "Ma femme est morte -- je veux un capeau noir" "Ah -- quelle politesse" -- to first boff the hostess, before attending to one's date -- but I think Leary was here using it in a metaphoric sense -- those with the spiritual resilience to "swing" with the winds of psychedelic experience -- rather than resisting them on the basis of previous -- social conditioning, PVK would term it -- OK, that's about all I can offer -- otherwise, you're back to Bob Dylan -- "They'll stone you and then they'll say -- 'Good Lu__ck___'" Amd the fifth level is, that my knowing them doesn't make them less possible. (aa32-13a) (aa32-13a) [ I can't imagine what this means. It does not, as best I can see, which is mamash "through a glass, darkly" (to quote St. Paul, from the days when windows were darned near opaque, I suppose)correspond to anything I've heard from PVK (sa) ] (aa32-0ae) [ CORRECTION: There are two books of Reb Nachman's teachings, one written by him, and one written down by Reb Nathan of things he said. The latter is Likutei Maron; i forget the name of the former. RSC may have been teaching some from Likutei Maron, but he is now teaching from the book written directly by Reb Nachman. I would only add that a dedicated and hopefully inspired student - - a disciple in the best sense of the termm, equivalently a hosid or mureed -- is apt to remember accurately the important sayings of his Teacher, Master, Rebbe, or what have you. Incidentally, almost the entire collected works of HIK are from notes taken of his lectures -- in effect stenographic transcriptions, I hink, ] "It seems like what it is saying there, your knowing doesn't stop its being, is like a poem by Word[s]worth(?) (aa32-16) [ Transcriber adds a '(?)' after 'Wordsworth'. Like, maybe it wasn't Billy Wordy, but rather, Al Pope ("the piddling rococo poop of Pope" (sa)) ] where he says, 'We murder to disect. In order to know things we stop it from happening and so its not happening anymore. But in this case you wouldn't have to stop it in order to know it." (aa32-15a) (aa32-15a) I think it was Alan Watts who made that point, most likely in various books, but maybe in 'Nature, Man, and Woman'] -------------------------- * I'm going to a new footnote numbering system -- Ms.number -- page-number -- footnote on that page -- so eg (aa32-22a) is Ms. AA3 Part 2 -- Page 22 of Ms. -- lst footnote on that page (aa32-22a) [ This is, at last, a very good discussion, which extends Reb Nachman's type of analysis of the complexities of trying to live a spiritual life. Reb Nachman analyzes in detail the psychologic phenomenlogy of the spiritual fall; RSC here starts to analyze the sociologic complexities of trying to put spiritual insight into action. He here uses a simple quadratic conceptualization -- light vs. vessels, large vs. small . So then we have a basic Aristotelian group of four pssible conceptual possibilites to instantiate: large light, large vessels; large light, small vessels: small light, large vessels: small light, small vessels. Large light, large vessels is eg a renown Rebbe. Small light small vessels is Schmendrik, "L'homme moyen sensible", the "rosh katan". Large light small vessels is the Fool (not really a madman, for he does only harm, and means to do only good, but does so in a way that is ridiculous and most likely inept. If he is rich his impatient inheritors will have him locked up in the Funny Farm before he gives away his money; if he is poor he will stay free, since there is no money to be made in locking him up. Small light large vessels is the religious hypocrites. Pious beyond a fault, but there's practically nothing there of spiritual merit, their kids will all pierce their eyelids , half will turn homo and the other half will join Shinui and buy split-level ranch houses in Miami. ] The Baal Shem Tov would always say to people that: I bless you that your body should be strong enough for your soul.! (aa32-23a) (aa32-23a) { But one might add, and even more so -- your personality, and your emotions, and your mind too, and even your minyan. For only bodies wear down and wear out too.} (aa32-23b) Jesus speaks a lot on this problem. This is 'new wine in old vessles' but also it is 'not one yod nor tittle of the Law shall be abrdiged' This is maybe the best encapsulated description of Judaism I've read, exactly what my Sufi friends, not to mention the triumphalist Christians -- and most Christians presuppose a triumphalism, its one of the mainbeams of their ridiculous religion -- New Testament and all that, as if the Torah came dwon Mt. Sinai came down with a shelf-life sticker on the 10 Commandments -- like, "but when gays starting forming PAC's, please Obsolete that bit about 'don't lie with mankind as with womankind, its abdomination"' -- well, in the Welfare Department, we had legislation, which had to be obeyed, and implementing regulations, which could be obsoleted, replaced and revised as the times required. Rabinic opinion, oral torah, may be modified, written torah can not. though its not quite that simple. )) (aa32-24a) Not so; they have one vessel, and it is a very strong one, though by the same token a very confinig one, and that is exactly why this a good path for those in extremis -- jailbirds etc. -- and not a good path for folks who can constructively, or at least non_destructively, use more freedom. Their vessel is their manta, which, it is my impression, they say all the time. Also they dress in a uniform, like most monks do, take a vow of poverty, which no doubt keeps them out of trouble -- a strict monastic regime in short, but a heck of a lot better than jail or the looney bin. Or the streets, too. (aa32-24b) Some frumie once came to the Bet Knesset and said, in the kind of bad English they only learn in the frumie yeshivas of Brooklyn: All nations have a share in the world to come, but the goyim have lesser shares than the children of Israel. I would have put a porkchop in his tallit bag, but I had barely enough for myself for breakfast, and also it was my favorite cheese sauce. But maybe RSC has a point here -- I mean, to go to Heaven and still chant Hari Krishna all the time, this is almost as bad as getting up there and being given a complete ArtScroll Talmud and Chumash, and told, call us as soon as you're done and will give you another one. Jesus said, "In my Father's house are many mansions," but he didn't warn us, they ain't all 5-star, and an Olympic Size swimming pool with chicks in bikinis you get only in the Islam Hilton. (aa32-24c) Hatzkala served as MEVO MODI'IN ASSISTANT POSTPERSON while I was there. He answered my unlettered unorthodox Torah questions with patience and honesty, and made ok jokes, when he wasn't having potdrought withdrawal systems. He had much anger, unlike the rest of us -- or the rest of you, I should say, I mean its me and Jesus and maybe Mother Theressa against the world -- of which he was aware, and with the great strength that made him a great Sofer kept firmly leashed, but pot made it easier. Maybe the only person I've ever met who was emtot”ed to a psyhdologic medical exemption to toke -- so they who invaded his home to seek the evil weed will spend their first millenium reincasrnated as potpushers in Harlem . Hatzkala sat in the Bet Knesset listening to Gideon teach Talmud. I used to go to those classes to get a head start on my evening's sleep. I said to Hatzkala, you could eat him in one bit. He said back, what good would that do. Gideon was teaching on "a sweet savour unto the LORD." Hatzkala said, that's cannabis. Hatzkala said later, Gideon is so naive he thought I was speaking of the canopy of the Mishkan. He said, Whenever there's a Red Alert, we just throw the seeds over the Rabbi's fence. (Half the Modiiniks, like half of Israel have smicha -- I mean, there's just two classes, do's an dont's -- but only one is called the Rabbi, because he thinks he is one. Its a very galutz concept, where it's assumed to come with 40 thou per annum starting. In Israel Zusha sells flowers and Yankele plants vegetables. ) I can work for Wetern Union and say its ereally bad, brother. Or I can do it thinking, gvalt, gretest privlege in the world to bring somebody a message. (aa32-24d) (aa32-24d) And so Henry Miller writes, in Tropic of Cancer as I recall, of his time with 'the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company' And so Cf. Jesus: Whatever comes to you do do, do it whole_heartedly. YeRUSheLaYiM is a vessel for this holy light. (aa32-24e) (aa32-24e) Well, I do enjoy walking around the Rova -- the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem -- at Chanuka, looking at the olive oil menoras that people place in little glass boxes in front of their houses. Also it its nice to see them light the Menora on the Kotel, though that is fueled with Naf, kerosene. I mean gvalt, Israel couild not maybe afford a truckoad of olive oil once a year. Sell an old F-102 to Pakistan maybe. On the roof of his Yeshiva, which is on the Kotel, Rav Goren, without permission, but up six large candles, in commemoration of the victims of the Shoah. Each was of glass, topped with a silver-coloured Magen David. I always thought, the face of each Magen David should be kept polished, nor tarnished, that it would boldly reflect back the sun in daytime. Teddy Kolleck wanted to take it down, but of course nobody dared. And anyhow Teddy Kolleck always respected cultural and sub_cultural diversity. That was what made him the Mayor of Jerusalem. There has not been one since, just as there has not been a U.S. President since JFK. Moshe Rabenu, what happened, he came down from Mt. Sinai, said give some apple juice, you know. (aa3-25a) (aa3-25a) "Where was Moses when the lights went out. In the cellar eating sauerkraut." (From my fathr's childhood in Pittsburgh, 1920's, I think.) "Ring around the roses / a pocket full of Moses' / ashes, ashes, we all fall down." (Sung at least in Maine in the 1950s as a children's circle dance. It stems from and describes the Black Plague of the Middle Ages, bubonic plague. (aa32-26a) In later versions, maybe now on the commerically-released CD's Torah Times or on The Best of Shlomo Carlebach, RSC pares down this story. It would then go something like this: THE ALTER REBBE' and 'THE ANGEL' were sitting learning one night, and like, Heaven and earth were opened [ or 'opening' ] up before them. The Alter Rebbe went into the kitchen to get a bagel, and came back. The old Hasidim said, the miracle wasn't that he got the bagel, the miracle was that he put butter on it. (aa32-26b) [ With reference to the Alter Rebbe bringing back a buttered bagel for his guestm 'The Angel': ] This is, incidentally, what PVK calls 'samadhi with open eyes' or equivalently, 'Awakening in Life'. And also this is Ram Dass remark, in his first book, Be Here Now - - "you don't have to forget your Zip code.." (aa32-28a) [ "The greatsst thing in the world is to do somoene a favor." That is from Reb Kalonymous Kalman of Warsaw, died in the Shoah, as told in RSC's story, The Holy Hunchback. The books of Reb Kalonymous Kalman survived, rather miraculously, and have been published in traslation by Aronson Press, New Jersey, and are sale, eg at Pomeranz Booshop in Jeruslaem, the Israel agent for Aronson. ] This great light ws tremendous. But he had no vessles. He [ Essav] could walk out from [ learning from Yitzach ] there and right away kill somebody. (aa32-28b) [ This is the Midrash that Esav came exhausted to Yakov, to ask for "some of that red red" lentil stew, becuase he had been out hunting down and killing Nimrod. ] ost of us, when we talk to a big thief, it rubs off, right. (aa32-28c) (aa32-28c) (Cf. HIK, the soul identifies with whateer situation it is in. ) (aa32-28d) This is from Genesis 32:5 , V_Yi_ShLaCH , when Yakov is about to cross the Yaboq and return to the land of Israel, and he writes to Esav saying "I have sojurned with Laban and stayed until now." 'iM LaBaN GaRTI V_AChaR 'aD 'TaH . (aa32-29a) Well, maybe that was Jesus' 'Pick up your bed and walk.' (aa32-30a) That means there's something wrong there, right. [ That is: Something right there is wrong, Chong.] he last generation didn't make vessles for this gret light. (aa32-30b) (aa32-30b) I would assume RSC is referring to his father's generation, the preWar European German Jewish movement away from orthodoxy. (aa32-32a) Right, for a change. I can go to the Kotel and groove on the vibes -- all those holy people davening -- but if I take along a siddur and follow the movie with it, it is a lot fuller and deeper, -- well, truth to tell I dono't follow the movie, but I do see a few flashes of lightning at a few instants. (aa32-33a) Well, yes. At New Buffalo, especially after I flipped out and got taken away, Susie once wrote me, they sometimes had 'silent days'. And also, at Zenith of course the Camp often went on silence for at least part of PVK weeks, and of course also at Abode Retreats, not to mention personal retreats. PVK was very much for it, but me, I dunno. I mean, there is nothing noisier than a dining tent where everyone is not_talking. Gvalt, do they not_talk loud. Much louder than they talk. And me too, I mean, around here most of my talking I do to the fox, if they didn't go kill it -- aint seen her / them in a week or more now. Had very nice eyes. Just had to tell it, don't come in the shack and eat my own food. Much nicer than the cat, that darned fat scardey cat, maybe someone was cruel to it when it was a scroungy kitten, but now its a fat camp cat. So anyhow, I don't find not talking much different from talking, Im alone just about all the time anyhow. But sometimes on Shabat at HaOn on Shabat morning I would just sit outside the house in a chair in a bit of shade, waiting to working up energy to knock off a very instant shaharit -- and so Id just sit out there with a cup of coffee, and drink it slow for a few hours -- "to think long thoughts" the Indians would say, or Walt Whitman, "I loaf and invite my soul". That was for sure what RSC says here, to make vessls for Shabat. The so-called hillonim do assume, as RSC addresses here, that one does not need vessels for Shabat -- well, even that's not true, they actually assume that going to the beach and doing a barbecue on Shabat is such a vessel -- and it is, but I would guess not as good a one as sometimes doing a rather halachic Shabat -- though some of the vessels they use at Mevo Modi'in could curdle whiskey -- like all that teenage kabalat shabat, llike a high school football game but less spiritual, or that teenage Musaf, like a frat house singalong -- and sometimes some of the meals, too -- like by myself, I would sit out under the tree in the front yard - - this was when I was in #103 -- and make kiddish over a big glass glass of cold grape juice, cold from the refigerator -- and then eat some yogurt with chives floating on the top of it -- and not much else -- and maybe a dog or some chickens would stop by to say hello -- but also sometimes I would be invited to eat sodium nitrite cholent in a chamsin, and sing a few rah-rah yeshiva songs, and nod amen to the dogma of the week -- so like, there's a pretty wide range of Shabat kelim, and a lot of them you wouldnt sell a world_to_come shlock_shop -- Cha_cha___Cha --- ================================================================= NOTES (sa) to =scaa32e FOLLOW, STARTING WITH PAGE 34 =============================================================== And above all I realize I must have vessels, one way or another. But them. Get them at a pawn shop. (aa32-34a) (aa32-34a) A most promising metaphor, like a hockshop ticket. So what might it mean. Who pawned them. Not me, or Id be allowed to take them out every Shabat. Some old guys who got snuffed in the Shoah I suppose. Sad beyond words, but life must go on. That is the will of Heaven, even if we should have nuked Berlin instead. Don't feel quite right to buy someone's Shabat candlesticks for a few Drachmas, but the don't do much good and can't be having much fun sitting in some goy's shop window year in year out, or maybe ending up at some shiksa's sit_down raw_pig orgy in SoHo, Moe. (aa32-34c) PVK speaks of the need to 'earemark' those passing insights which one wants to retain -- for in meditation many insights may pass before on, like cattle on the prairie . (aa32-34b) [ my cap for 'Truth', meaning Al Haq, rather than 'truth', meaning 'Bushie was elected and re-elected Runnig Dog Lackey Figurehead Prez in two rigged elections. Cheney pulls the strings, but who pulls his, Ms. there are lights which have no vessels. (aa32-35a) (aa32-35a) I suppose that would be the 'celestial spheres' of 'celestial levels' of which PVK often speaks. But then this is essentially what Wittgenstein would call a 'grammatical' point, albeit of the metaphysical sort. And curiously, when one starts applying philosphy -- conceptual analysis, that is, and I think 'conceptual analysis is merely a more modern name for metaphysicis -- to the mystic realsm, then, especially if one takes Kant's methodologic route of transcendental realism -- ie that all we perceive is necessrily overlaid with our essential conceptions -- then we find ourselves back in something like Aristotle's primitive notion of metaphysicis, as a sort of mapping of terra icognita, similar to but beyond the realm of (physical) physics. Of course a sphere has no vessel, since it is an Attribute of Being. Well, if all this ain't "clear as mud" what is, Fudd. *And P.S. -- RSC did not use the term 'Toff', I just tacked that on But if I have a little bit light and vessls, then I'm strong enough also to carry light which has no vessels. This light which surrounds me. (aa32-35b) I suppose this might be what PVK, following HIK ('the all- pervading light in space') , and taking a term from the 'Church Fathers' -- calls 'the Uncreated Light' But G_d can only fill a full vessel. If you're filled with womething holy. (aa32-36a) (aa32-36a) I suppose this is Jesus rather politically incorrect remark, "To those who have much, shall much be given" You see, if you're filled with holiness, then you always have space for more holiness. (aa32-36b) (aa32-36b) So this is PVK's Sufi story of the Rajah who invites all the great musicians to come play before him, and when the last guy gets up to the like Throne Room, the Rajah has like OD'd on all that great music, but he's got too much class to say, Cool it Bro' -- PVK did not tell the story in precisely these words, Birds -- so the Rajah like takes a crytal cup, and fills it to the top, with even a meniscus on the top, that's that curved overflow which stays on only from surface tension, like you do when you make kiddish -- I mean, maybe this Rajah was once a dude named Goldstein who once had to split quick from wesern civilization with only the jewels he could carry on his donkey -- so like the Rajah has like filled this cup to overflowing as if to say, politely, Dayenu Habibi, go out on the streets and find a pick-up band and make like a Dixieland Ukelele -- and so the Musican picks one petal from a rose, and places it on top of the wine or whatever Rajah's drink - - distilled hummngbird sweat maybe -- and of course the rose petal floats nicely thereupon -- and so the Musican is saying -- and now for the first time I use something close to PVK's words -- "For what I have, there is always room" -- (aa32-36c) "There is nothing as embarassed as a peasant with a revelation." That wasa a bot mot, a pretty quip, that struck me one afternoon in some abandonned pad on the Lower East Side after I had taken half a hit of mescaline sulfate. The fact is, RSC's English , and for that matter his secular education, was on a far lower level than his revelation, or insight, or whatever you want to call it. His maqam, meaning Place, the Sufis would say. (aa32-36d) Aw, gimme a break, Jake. I mean, "and after many a summer dies the swan. Me only dull imomortality consumes" Or like they say in the USA, in the good old days before Darth Vader brough the Bushies and planted them in Connecticut -- "Methuslah lived nine hundred years ... But what girl wants to go with a man who has nine hundred years" (That's from the song in Porgy and Bess, "It ain't necessarily so" -- George Gershwin as I reall -- once Nixon came to the campus of U.C. Berkeley -- he was running for governor of California -- and before he gave a short speech the band serenaded him with the refrain from that song -- Nixon then thaked "the Orchestra" -- that was in the good old days, I was standing close enough to have hit him with a spitball, if I took a deep breath -- out on Sproul Plaza, I suppose he had a few security guards, but I don't reall them -- and also one day I'mambling down the Midrahov and Shamir drives up, he was PM at the time, in a little car with maybe two bodyguards, and goes into the barbershop on the Midrahov where I used to go -- also I saw and heard him once on Kotel Plaza, he was talking to a gorup of Sar-El Volunteers I was wish -- just standing out there on the Plaza, talking to us as we gathered around -- I couldn't understand a word of it, but how firmly he took his stance on the ground, and delivered his speech -- such contained, controlled power and energy -- seemed like a nice enough guy , but tough -- All I can recall now of my impression of Nixon was that he seemed to not quite fill his clothes -- but of course that was the impression Nixon always gave, and this is just my reflection, 40 years later, on that experience, I did not think it at the time -- I did not think much of anything looking at Nixon, what was there to think about -- Shamir, of course, gave quite the opposite impression, a thoroughly comact man, neatly but not ostentatiously dressed -- Because deep deep down we really dont thik we need our body for ever. (aa32-36e) "Deep blue sea, baby, deep blue sea. Deep blue sea, baby, deep blue sea. Deep blue sea, baby, deep blue sea. It was Willy what got drownded in the deep blue sea." Cf. HIK, "You need a strong ship to sail the ocean." Or a children's song, from the Netherlands maybe: "Sailing east, sailing west, sailing over the ocean. Better watch out when the boat begins to rock, or you'll lose your Self in the ocean." I read it now as 'your Self' not 'yourself'. Ie, your ego, or personality, or whatever that stuff is or is called. What you need before you take money and go out to the grocery store. Once we got stoned and I borrowed the neighbors' sportscar and we went out to the Supermarket. I took a shopping cart and we went around the aisles, quite stoned, and I was picking everything that seemed irresistable, mostly from the upper shelves, where they put all the luxury goods. So we got to the checkout counter, and the cart was piled ahove the top, and I took one look at it and left it there, and we drove home. That was in Santa Barbara, with Susie. We lived in a 3.5 room apartment, quite modern, a short walk from the beach, which still had tar from the most recent oil-rig spill. I tried to make orange wine out on the porch, and also put up olives in rocksalt, but neither worked well. I had a rather garish orange oil on teh wall, that I got from Marilyn Rice and brought from Alburquerque. She gave it to me after I dropped acid one day in Placitas, and then, upon reflecting upon the symbolism of it, rode my moterbike over to the home she shared with Bill -- some rather tough poet who wrote "Surfing off the Ark" -- and tried to punch a hole in one her paintings, because I opposed the symbolism in it -- he threw me out of the house rather bodily, so I rode back to my Adobe, and that was the highlight of that acid trip. He later apologized, and anyhow my fist just bounced off the canvas. Ah, the Good Old Days. We don't know the holiness of the body yet, you know. so we really think, you know, my soul is so holy, you know, really got to keep on going. My body, ok, knock off a few years, you know. (aa32-36f) Quite so. I once wrote, with reference to Balak's ass of course, "You stupid donkey, just take me where I'm going and don't talk back. You ain't a Mercedes. Not worth fixing." I had a bit of indigestion at the time, and was quite annoyed at it. PVK, as I recall, would sometimes direct our attention a bit to the complexity and miracle of the body. Though nowaday -- well, Sarah once remarked in passing, "It was then that I realized that I am not immortal". So nowadays I carry around in my mind this glossy little image of a physiologic depiction of the body, and think, gvalt, so packed with so many things that can go wrong, its amazing that I can get to the afternoon with enough strength to keep typing. Something's bound to break down sooner or later, I'd better get as much Save'd to harddisc as I can before they catch up with me. And this is also SatchMo Paige, the great St. Louis Browns Relief Pitcher, one of the first Negros in Major League Baseball, in the 1950's -- "Don't look back, something may be gaining on you." And this is also R. Zalman, echoing the bored-again Christians: "Are you Save'd, Brother -- not your soul, your writings, whatever you have on your cmputer. -- That was back in the days of 5_inch floppies -- maybe even of 8-inch. (aa3-37a) Yes, that is the fallacy of Christianity. Francisco Franco was Defender of the Faith, I don't doubt. So Picasso did a Picasso Comic Strip, "Le Songe et Mensonge de Franco." The dream and lie -- So you can see how Roman Catholicism ccan tend into Facism. And the Faggotry that Bertolucci depics. I mean, females are yucky -- even Judaism acknowleges that , though we're cool about it -- a little Tameh, mazaltov, just wait a few weeks, one lap around the mikveh and go back to it -- like, sex is dirty, and what is sexier than a female -- a man can just shoot and turn his back -- someone once reproached me for that, so thenceforth I turned my back but reached out over my shoulder to hold her -- for some reason that was no one of my longer-lasting relationships, though I much resented the breakup -- run back to the yeshiva but a female -- hardly beears thinking about it -- so the facists say, along with the apocalyptic Christians -- ("It is better to marry than to burn" said St. Paul, which is not necesasrily the greatest pick-up line of western civilization) -- so anyhow, what could be purer than death -- So the ultimate facist nightmare would be -- fucking skeletons. We should try putting out that image on the media. Might drive a few of them crazy. Every little bit helps. The world would be a better place if Cheney was sitting on the floor somewhere, cutting little paper dollies out of coloured paper -- (aa32-37b) This is the only Siddur I have here -- I'm writing now from Campra, not Modi'in -- lesser library but it ain't by a freeway with the old eucalyptus trees cut down so a few folks, I don't know who if any, I'm just guessing -- could take rakeoffs on an unneeded 'security road' -- Lashon hora is what you make of it. So is senility. I remember an ad, on the back of a Response magazine -- they published poems by Joel Rosenberg, who started teaching at Connecticut Wesleyan, and then went to Tufts, maybe as head of the Deaprtment of Judaic Studies -- rather a great midrashic poet, and a darned good, deep, philosopher of Judaism -- so anyhow this ad shows an old geezer shaking his cane, and says - 'For Senile Dementia -- Try Thorazine' -- Gvalt, the original Zombie Pill. I mean, this takes Age_ism to a theologic level -- Satanistic, to be precise -- an Alter Kaker who couldn't hurt a fly in a fair fight, and you want to take away his soul because he is annoying you -- and of course you will never grow old yourself, there is no evidence of it -- and that is the presupposition of Age-ism -- and so Kant said, do only that which you would have become a universal maxim -- (aa32-38a) Agnieska would sometimes say -- "you know" ================================================================ sa, Campra, 7 Jun '05 -- gvurah sh'b' MALKHUT --29 AIYaR -- a bit of a chilly day -- green just about up to ridgeline -- ==================================================================