Thursday, January 06, 2005

Why Do You Think They Call it 'The Big Bang'?

All the young college beauties matriculate into the minds bedchamber. Why don’t we pick up a six pack’s worth and drink them on the way home? The variations on a theme are legion; each one comes in singing a new song, or so it seems; another ship of dreams laden with spices and exotic materials from the Orient side of the equation. You may call it nouvelle cuisine. Sometimes it looks to me like pastry in a bakers display window. Sometimes it looks like an amusement park ride called The Washing Machine. Yes, as someone once said, “and the beat goes on”.

The power of Mars is not only sexual energy but volition as well. Venus is not only Love but the creative imagination. A twist at the waist and a catch in the throat and you may consider yourself headed home. It’s at a point like this that more penetrating minds begin looking for code at work.

A lot of people, most everyone really, do not know that the Hebrew Alphabet came from the Chaldean Flame Alphabet.... Hmmmm, Aleph, Beth, Alpha, Beta; look what I found and I wasn’t even thinking about it. Anyway, that assumption about primary origin of the Hebrew alphabet looks like a form of deep politicking over protracted time.. You lift up one thing and you find another and another and another.

Susanne tells me that last night she woke up and thought the TV was on. She couldn’t figure it out for a bit and then she realized I was talking in my sleep; a rare thing for one who is ordinarily during sleep as quiet as a mouse overdosed on Seconal. She said it seemed that I was speaking in Latin and having some sort of reciprocal conversation. Whatever the language may have been, I was fluent in it. Lately I’ve been getting emails from someone who writes from an address that can’t be replied to. I know this because I tried. The letter is just one word. The first one was ‘ehben’. So I responded with Chokmah; which seemed appropriate, though some might argue for Tiphereth. The next was ‘handrail’ and I replied with “get a grip.” But I didn’t reply did I. It was a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it. Is that a message too?

Ahebah which is Love and Achad which is Unity, share a common association with the number 13. Maybe you can see that they have a lot in common. Elohim gets translated as The Lord God, but it is a feminine noun with a masculine plural ending, actually meaning ‘the joined male and female spirit of God.’ Supposedly they said, “Let us bring forth.” Or ‘beget’. So you see how the Lord God is just what someone wanted the interpretation to read. This should make you think about your King James Bible. Now, you put the letter Peh at the beginning of Achad (Love) and Presto! You get Pachad= Fear. Do you think when your mind gets challenged or do you just glaze over like a baked good? Do you wander away? Do you get annoyed? We don’t really want to know do we?

Sex and Death anyone?

Most of the world’s problems are caused by a misunderstanding of the sex force. Of course a misunderstanding of something leads to a misapplication, which leads to undesired results. Why not take a moment to check out the graffiti scrawled on the tunnel walls of your sub-conscious mind. Sexual energy is sacred. When it isn’t treated as such you will have problems. Luddites and Fundies of all stripes have problems with this. They got a repression problem. Repression as you should know, always leads to guilt and then Presto! again, now you got the gas that feeds the industry that is forever building the inmate city. Yes, the imprisoning force is the liberating force. The serpent in the garden and the messiah are the same. Understanding is the true determinant of prisoner or free status.

There are few more profitable actions than to see the sex act taking place in everything, at all levels, at all times. Is this a dirty thing? Murder and War are sex acts; rather more forceful than the recipients might wish. Rape is probably more directly associative. Dying on the cross; seeming to die on the cross, or perhaps transiting death- experiencing it as it is thought to be known and then unveiling the eternal for the salvation of the human race is... a sex act; man, talk about your climaxes. But then, Jesus isn’t on the cross, you are. Let me take this moment to offer a toast followed by the imbibing of mysterious wine; “May the Roses Bloom on Your Cross.” May the green leaves glisten with that cosmic dew.

Most sex doesn’t create Unity. It creates separation; hence guilt. Maybe it’s just a sense of wasted effort, or like badly digested food. Consider the refinements and ironies of the sex act. It comes up from the brutish animal spiraling into intercourse with angels. Consider the mating of Black Widows and The Praying Mantis. While studying a form of Praying Mantis Kung Fu, I was able to travel back into an actual yoga that involved a spiritual equivalent of this. I should point out that only the mad may safely venture there. It’s kind of like meeting Smashin Tara in the graveyard; I can’t tell you how many times I saw Kali waving her arms at me in a meadow basin while working on preliminary Tandava.

I realized some time ago that I could not make love individually to all of the beautiful reflections that abound. Around the same time I realized that I could make love to all of them simultaneously; as consistently and as often as my intention went to it.

It’s not that sex is wrong, not by a long shot. It’s what we are expecting and what we feed that causes us grief. Children aren’t just human forms emergent into the phenomenal. You have all kinds of children. You are raising many children and they can be just as much a problem when they grow up as any of the ill-raised people you encounter. It might be wise to kill some of them; better to never give them birth. But cleanup may be all we have sometimes. It’s a simple matter of not feeding them. Of course they are going to cry out for food. You did feed them before. We fail to see analogies. We fail to understand. And we often think that by keeping out of sight we remain undiscovered.

I love sex. I love the idea of sex more than anything. So few people know where you can go riding the sex force. You can ride the sex force as if it were a mythical beast across Heavens that the ordinary mind cannot imagine. Why not have the greatest possible sex? Why not take every experience to its highest possible point?

Breathing is sex. Eating is sex. Talking is sex; verbal intercourse? Everything is a sexual act. This is the real message of Tantra. I suppose you could go take some tantric lessons course from a former Reichi practitioner who doubles as a re-birthing consultant and who is going to put you in touch with your feelings to the degree that they understand what that means but... but... wouldn’t it be more pleasant to be able to say, the next time someone tells you to “go fuck yourself”... wouldn’t it be nice to say, “I’ll get right on it.”? It gives, “been there, done that.” a whole new meaning.

A slow, profound, attentive enjoyment of everything you do is the key to an entirely new world. I really shouldn’t have to say any more about how unfortunate it is to wander through the kingdom dressed in rags while surrounded by wealth beyond measure.

20 comments:

ciinc said...

In that piece you move even further toward mastering the right mix of parable and straight-talk, thereby getting close to certification as one of the great cosmic bartenders. (You might wanna take that thought and riff on it in a future post - if so, please feel free.)

Also, I wanted to post an crost-posting sequence of two posts from a different board for a particular reason.

Bruce said in a comment a post or two back that whether or not you are an avatar, the same guys are after you as have always been after the avatars.

As a wanna-be empirical scientist, I like to see what empirical evidence might exist for claims such as Bruce's above.

So as empirical evidence for Bruce's claim that "the same guys are after you", consider the following sequence of two posts. Please note that "InTheRoomAtTheInn" is my new nic at this other board - I thought of specifically as a result of reading your more recent posts here - if one is in the room at the inn, then one is open to the best of whatever is out there, which is one thing I think you're trying to get folks to see. Anyway, here's the two posts:

First post (from me):

Subject: Piety: the OTHER scoundrel's last refuge
From: InTheRoom-AtTheInn
Date: Jan 5 2005 1:00PM

The poster "nom de guerre" has chosen to conduct a poll here:

TheBadFaithPoll [fray.slate.msn.com]

within the context provided by Sartre's notion of bad faith.

Here are some poll questions constructed within a different context of faith:

a) was Jesus acting in "Sartrean Bad Faith" when he appeared to the elders as a child

with the wisdom of elders ?

b) does Jesus act in "Sartrean bad faith" when he appears as a bum, a homeless person

seeking a hitch or a handout ?

c) more specifically, did Jesus act in "Sartrean bad faith" when he recently appeared

to the Fray as Appolonious, a still-deranged ex-druggie with delusions of answers ?

There are many pious Christians who post to the Fray who would readily admit the

historical truth of (a), the historical possibility of (b), and must therefore admit

the possibility (if not the likelihood of (c)).

But any pious Christian who claimed to believe the historical truth of (a) and the historical possibility of (b) would be laughed at by many of the superior intellects at this board as someone who was probably a fundamentalist believer in Intelligent Design, etc. In other words, the piety of the pious Christian appears to many at this board as the last refuge of a scoundrel.

So, it appears that one man's piety is another man's poison. In the case at hand, the unctious and smarmy toppost by "nom de guerre" is NOT my particular cup of "pi-e-tea".

Particularly inasmuch as there is a simple up-down moral question now on the board at

FrayWatch: should a masterful piece of Fray psychology disappear with the total flush of a long-time poster's entire MBTY ?

irati and not, therefore, irate

*************
Second post in response to mine:

Subject: Part of me wants to say
From: BaldTony
Date: Jan 5 2005 11:21PM

Seek professional help! Please!
Because I know you are serious about C.
But another part of me just really, really wants Appy to move to some South American jungle compound with lots of cyanide and Kool-Aid for his disciples. Or maybe somewhere in Texas with lots of automatic weapons. Or you could all drop by Walmart for from black warmup suits and cheap sneakers and lots of applesauce to help keep the pills down. Ti is calling you. Can you hear?

Visible said...

Hi Ci-inc

I always appreciate your imput. I'll digest this and collect a response for later. On the matter of Bald Tony this post is especially relevant. Fred's sexual thing is all fucked up. But I'll be addressing that with the release of his song in March at a number of locations. I didn't want to have to do this but, there you go.

You should know that there are those among us who believe they will attain celebrity through some connection, no matter how irrelevant, to someone who has it. It's almost a defining characteristic of a stalker. I know enough not to be flattered by any kind of attention because I understand the root imperative.

Clumsy and inaccurate flailings have no real effect except to spotlight ignorance and lack of ability. Those who have climbed from tragic circumstance into achievement are always going to be a threat to those who use their circumstances as an excuse for bad behavior. As long as it always remains the other guys fault and their conditions are those of failure you will have that budding Saul looking for the road to Damascus. Imagine the embarrassment when the lights go on. The irony is that I'll have to trade being pursued by homoerotic insults to being pursued by abject cringing apologies; no matter either way since you have to run in order to be pursued.

There's a pack of them and if I could ask for anything it would be a better class of detractors. Then again, they likely don't exist.

Regards.

p.s. the less certain people aree mentioned here the better. Some of them live for this- pathetic as that may be.

Anonymous said...

A spectacular post. I've some experience with both Sepir's; Zohar and Yetzirah and so I can state unequivocally that this is prime, prime.

On the other matter, you know I'd be honored to head over to that site and cork that sucker good. I'm sure the feeling prevails here in that respect. It might be fun to see what he's like with a cloud of Stinger Missiles around his head.

Anonymous said...

Darn, that was me, sorry.

z a

Visible said...

No, that's not the way to go. What's important to understand here is that I don't even go over there. I wouldn't know what anyone was saying about me unless it reaches me some other way; I'm thankful for email alerts or I might have missed this and had a raft of suggestions to follow.

When I play, sometimes there's a drunken lout making an ass of himself near the front. Usually this doesn't happen because I don't draw those kinds of crowds. Now that I'm in Europe, where people are, on the whole, more civilized than Americans I never see it.

When the time came in the past to deal with virtual drunks I had the means and it was very effective. Once I move out of range it isn't important anymore. In awhile or so I think we'll be able to say that what's perceived as a problem by others will have been neutralized. It may happen sooner, given the self destructive bent or it may happen on schedule with all available rope played out. How ever it happens, as amusing and devastating as it will be, it won't amuse me. But I do have to work on my chops and give evidence of reach... after all, I'm a avatar (grin).

ciinc said...

OK - you've dropped too many biographical facts lately.

First - you've said enough to indicate that your Dad was either in the World Bank, IMF, or was one of the original US government signatories to the Bretton Woods accord. You've also said enough to indicate that a lot of your life can be interpreted as a rebellion against him.

Hmm - bankers ... money-changers ... rebels against money-changers ... YEAH! it fits

Second - you indicated there was a time when you had to decide whether to continue on at Swarthmore. OK - that explains a LOT to me - when you indicated you did time in the Air Force and had no traditional education, I assumed you really were a self-educated genius who came up from the streets or the mills (at least till you dropped the comments about your Dad.)

But Swarthmore - hey bud, if you got in there when you did, then you had a superb secondary education somewhere, probably the equivalent of most BA's THESE days.

Also - I now kinda know your type. When I was at a HS in NY called "New Lincoln", which was the radical spinoff from the old Columbia test school (the other spinoff was Horace Mann), I knew a girl named Jill Rosenbloom whose older brother Gordon (probably close in age to you) actually turned down his acceptance to Harvard because he wanted to go to India and then drive a cab in NYC (like Larry in The Razor's Edge.)

I have a feeling your path may have crossed with Gordon's at some point in your lives, though I never knew him and have no idea where/what/if he is today.

ciinc

ciinc said...

PS - in your Pacific days in HI or CA, might you have known a young woman in the music scene named Nancy (part heiress to a big Eastern US resort hotel fortune) who had a husband named "Gut" with a band and who for a while lived on a sailboat with him ?

Anonymous said...

a super piece of writing Visible! I wish this other stuff didn't intrude now and again. Slate's full of impotent blowhards like the clown Ci-inc mentions but they don't deserve mention here. It's like letting stray dogs into the house to sleep in your bed.

This is a higher class joint than Slate. People know how to use a knife and fork here. Theyre potty trained and generally don't shit themselves in public. I went buy Slate yesterday and was nauseated by some of the self-serving claptrap by star posters, especially at Fraywatch. One of them wrote a whole post outlining how someone else responded to two of his posts and then pointing it out to the editor as something fascinating for him to look at. That's worse than picking our nose on a TV show. These people got no shame.

Bruce

Visible said...

Greetings ciinc.

I was born poor to a military father and lived in dependent housing throughout. In the U.S. and abroad. I never actually went to Swarthmore. I was getting a scholarship there because I had a 4.0 average during a community college stint and came recommended by professors as a bright guy. When I say, 'continue on' I meant it differently than taken.

I am principally self educated except what I got in rudimentary form in school. I quit high school after the tenth grade and had to go into the service because of all the trouble I was getting into.

I didn't come from money and I never really had any. I have met a number of very rich people and some of them may have been my friends.

I know a Nancy who is set to inherit about 100,000,000.00 Her people own a huge ski resort outside Aspen and mucho property there and I think they had something to do with hotels. She is actually a friend of another person who replies here. Susanne went diving with her a couple of times and she came to a party at my place in Maui once. I didn't find her to be very sincere or someone I would want to invite into the intimacy of my life.

I'm always glad to drive the moneychangers from the temple if I am cued to do so.

I had some good breaks in life if you count not being killed, not doing life in prison and having marvelous health. Other than that fortune has not smiled overly upon me me the way that so many wish it would shine on them. I do notice a trend now, spanning a few years, in which things are getting better and better and better. I would say that I am in a divinely serendipitous state compared to sundry. I am filled with a profound gratitude most all the time and it doesn't have to be reflective in outer circumstance, but it passes through them without effort.

Magic has been a constant and help from Elsewhere always at hand.

Visible said...

Oh by the way, I was supposed to tell you that I had BOTF shut down for the day. Impressed?

ciinc said...

glad you clarified all that - I was starting to get a really mixed read on things. You know us religious types - we're not comfortable less we know all the who and what begat who and what. Pedigree is everything and I would be disappointed if yours was Westminster.

Well - shutting down that other place is certainly demonstrating "reach". But you gotta find and read "The Last Unicorn" by Peter Beagle(?) if you've never read it. Talk about reach gained late in life!

ciinc

Anonymous said...

This is a truly inspired work. I'm realy glad I found you Les. Very often what you speak about on a given day plays right into what's happening in my life. I see where you say you are grateful all of the time. I am beginning to feel that way too. Thank you.

CC

ciinc said...

LesV -

This is my last comment on the topic of you as avatar (unless other posters here wish to contribute this line of thought.)

I post it for two reasons: a) to clarify what I mean, so folks don't think I'm a loonie; b) one part of it has to do with what you said in your last post about easy ways to ... and difficult, disciplined ways to ...

Anyway, please forgive this post if it is an intrusion into the blog and believe me when I say that it's my last unsolicited post on the topic.

Post to a friend of LesV's on another board:

Subject: such easy questions! (not)
From: InTheRoom-AtTheInn
Date: Jan 7 2005 5:47AM

1. Jesus and Appolonius

1.1 Jesus

My "religious" views on Jesus are actually more unconventional than my non-religious views.

When I think of Him religiously, which is not always, I emotionally intuit him as:

a) some one who has come back repeatedly and been crucified repeatedly in each generation, and who will continue to come back until some future generation gets it right;

b) an older brother, not as a "Lord", but as an older brother who says to us "Come on, I need your help to do this."

When I think of him non-religiously, I tend to think of him more conventionally, i.e. in the secular contexts of certain fictions which are very much about him, primarily:

The Greek Passion (Kazantzakis)
The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)
TheBrothersKaramazov(Grand Inquisitor) Dostoyevsky

Note that his appearances in such works can be considered as reincarnations, in the sense of (a) above. (Also, I know you know this, but anyone else who might read this thread should note that he is symbolized in the first two of the above works (by Manolios and Preacher Casey), but is actually a character in the third work.)

So I guess you could say, yeah, I think of him conventionally as a metaphor when I am thinking of him non-religiously.

1.2 Appolonius

Interestingly, LesV is a few years older than me, probably five or six, so I tend to think of him also as the older brother I never had, kinda like I think of Him.

When I say that LesV could be an avatar, I actually mean it again in the sense of 1.1(a), rather than in the usual "mystical" sense. If I believe in the avatar construct at all, I do tend to believe there is only one, and that he/she/it grows just as we do - hence his/her/its different messages in different appearances.

This personal reaction to LesV is based, as I have said, on my visceral emotional reaction to the parts of his writing that are what I called "parabled", i.e. indirect, metaphoric, and allusory.

I tell you quite honestly, that other than LesV's "parabled" writings, I have never read anything by anyone which has affected me as deeply as the Parables as told in the four Gospels of the King James Version. (This is apart from fiction, e.g. Lear.)

So if I were to take a leap of faith based on this visceral reaction, I would say, yes, LesV could be a manifestation in the sense of 1.1(a) above.


2. Drugs.

Only marijuana in the EARLY sixties and I'll tell you why as best I can. It has to do with what I learned from Kazantzakis, coupled with what I learned from a certain classial guitar piece.

2.1 Kazantzakis.

Why I didn't get involved in drugs is partly due to
what I learned from Kimon Friar's introduction to Kazantzakis' poem "The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel", and in particular, Friar's discussion of the Appolonian vs Dionysian modalities in relation to K's work. I was exposed very early to K's work by being taken to see "He Who Must Die" when I was nine, and somewhere between age nine and sixteen I read the novel on which the movie is based, "The Greek Passion". So at seventeen in 1965 I did my senior lit paper on K's Odyssey, and the whole Appolonian thing really put me off drugs.

2.2 The Guitar Piece "Recuerdos d'Alhrambra"

From 11-14 I took serious classical guitar lessons with this guy Rolando Valdes-Blain in NYC, who is known to classical guitar bouffes as a bit of an oddball but who has had at least one student go on to serious recognition. (I mention this only to indicate that MY aspirations were serious.)

In every classical guitar student's training, there comes a point when he or she has to master the tremolo technique, and one of the usual assigned pieces is Tarrega's Recuerdos D'Alhambra. If the index, middle, ring fingers do the tremolo in this piece correctly, then the melody of the piece soars out of this tremolo - you no longer hear nor recognize the individual fingerstrokes that are actually creating the tremolo.

I immediately felt that the struggle toward getting the tremolo right was exactly the same as the exercises that the Far Eastern religions put on novitiates - that you cannot hope to achieve any new level of consciousness without discipline, more discipline, and more discipline. I also intuitively felt that drugs were not a modality of the required discipline - a point, interestingly, which LesV himself makes in his latest blog piece.

ciinc said...

PS - it is very interesting to note that apart from LesV's Dionysian side, which appears to be familiar to many readers here (hehhehheh), he manifests a distinctly Appolonian side in his dedication to and expertise in the martial arts. Perhaps this is what kept him from falling into the Merry Prankster trap entirely.

Also, what I meant about the tremolo is that when the student gets the tremolo right thru discipline, boring boring discipline, then he or she transcends technique and enters into the ecstatic realm which lies within the melody of the piece; this is the true lesson of the East, in my opion: ecstasy only thru the transcedence produced by absolute mastery of technique and discipline.

Carla Beal said...

My goodness, a response thread longer than the post. I find a lot of this to be startling and I'll have to think about it. Of course I don't have to say anything about it. This is a very beautiful piece Les, I've read it 3 times now. I still don't understand parts but I think you are talking about something I haven't run into.

Carla

Anonymous said...

This is some outstanding writing. I'm not sure about the claims being made in the responses but the work has a viceral certitude that I haven't encountered except in ancient texts. I most especially like the seamless flow of the thought. The inspiration is obvious.

Anton Marquis
presently from lovely Los Angeles

Anonymous said...

whyen are you going to put up more tunes?

ciinc said...

Anton said:

"the work has a visceral certitude that I haven't encountered except in ancient texts"

Exactly - whether he agrees with my conclusions or not, Anton senses that LesV's stuff has the power of the parables in the gospels of the King James version, which can be considerd fairly "ancient" texts at this point.

ciinc

Anonymous said...

surely there is to be a weekend piece?

Anonymous said...

sweet and ringing with truth. i'm glad i stopped by.



A classic Visible post:



With gratitude to Patrick Willis.

Click here to watch and comment on Vimeo and here to read the original text