ideas to ponder

Steward mentality v Dominion mentality. Biblical in nature or "human nature" exampled in Bible?

Climate Change: deniability: Doubt in the science: Science as an idea: epidemeology vs empirical data in chaos systems: GOD again--belief, in the image of the divine--destroyer or shepherd. The world is ours to destroy as we are godlike: or God will save us no matter what; or we are the chosen beings and so we will fix ourselves.

However, God is a belief and we believe, if we do, out of fear, lack of knowledge, tacit/facile acceptance of cultural beliefs--but we don't need to see it to believe it and if we are wrong about it (ie, dead and no after life you're still just dead) no big deal; if we're right we're saved (maybe); so this is a "better safe than sorry" attitude--hedge your bets...why not the same attitude with climate change?

T0 my mind Science (all of us within its long reach) should doubt all things it does and imagine always that any minor change will be bad news...ie, expect Frankenstein's Monster, not the cure for cancer and proceed with fear and caution. We do the exact opposite of this.

What Form the World Has by William Bronk

I watch my concern for the world, how it changes: strong
sometimes, elsewhere weaker, as when the world
stands in the landscape like somebody's barn, clump
of trees. Not my land they're on. Whose,
I don't know. Or what they are. Nor
do I care. Times, though, I could think
of them as refuge, having no other and they
being offered, not then either caring what.

Or my intensest concern for the world might be
the times I find me trapped, as it were, in the trees,
boarded-up in that barn. Those times,
I hate the world, want only to break it down.

When we love the world for itself, the world we love
is one, most likely, we may have made or thought
to have made, ourselves, with love or some other power.
As if we could. Well, maybe we can
and did, but taken out of our hands when it is
as it always is, do we know was it ever ours?

I could rest content with the unseen form of the world
and never see it, believing the form were there.

Sky Tremor by Huidobro

trs. Tony Frazer: http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/poems/huidobrosingle.htm

Concentration of "aahhrrrrr"

All is abstract
you do not need to insist
it simply is

Red is abstracted
is abstraction
of
R
E
D

R is
concentration of ahhrrr
from sound
which is
of necessity
always contextual

else without

proper ear
proper throat
proper mouth
lips
tongue
teeth

proper t
teh

proper
meaning

Continu
E
D

distinction

the human mouth...so limited in its "animal" capacities as to argue for its use as a tool only for sound and sex...in short, pleasure or displeasure (as the case may be).

dog, cat, baboon, horse, etc., have a mouth so encompassing in its capacities not only for eating but for fighting--teeth for cutting; jaw strength for snapping bones...in short a tool for survival.

this is perhaps a clue...one is used for "maybe"; one is used for "be".

Assertions by Negatives

The Emptiness of Human Being
William Bronk

Not long, but it isn't anyway
determined by the interval: we mourn,
maybe, the brevities, as much as to say
form were the enemy--the length of form--
to hide from ourselves, of course from ourselves,--who else?--
that emptiness of content length couldn't fill
no matter how long it might be--forever if it were.

No excuses: evasions are what we try:
form as adversary or, failing form,
other divisions, assertions by negatives.
We are not this, not that.
The determined self makes be by partialness,
sets out his space, says here is truth,
is his, says less is all, defends, fades.

 

I sew shroud to swaddling clothes

"Anyone home?" Nobody answers?
Here were the lives I have spent!
Fortune has gnawed away my days;
madness absconded with my hours.
Powerless to know how or where
my health and years have fled.
Missing is life, existence remains;
and everywhere calamity awaits.
Yesterday's gone, tomorrow's late,
today wastes not an instant leaving:
I am a was, a will be, a weary is.
Today, tomorrow and yesterday
I sew shroud to swaddling clothes,
and so succeed my dead self again.

-Francisco De Quevedo, trs. from the Spanish by Christopher Johnson, Fulcrum #6.

A view of psychoanalysis

Adam Phillips says in his introduction to his collection of occasional pieces, Promises, Promises: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Literature, that his version (or the version practiced in the essays) of psychoanalysis comes out of the understanding that "there is nothing wrong with anyone, that no one is 'ill', but that everyone is doing the best they can with what they've got. It starts from the belief that children have to learn to be kind, and be free enough to have fun (to lose themselves in whatever makes them curious and makes them feel alive)..."

We all clearly need this most, to learn to be kind and have fun.