Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Anamnesis

I found some previously unpublished blogs, sitting in draft-form in the "Edit posts" section -- this one from early 2007 (about Anamnesis -- the process (to state it simply) of remembering what you have forgotten) (So strange to think about the history of your own psyche) :

"It's that time again - cycle, cycle, cycle - wheel of time churns its melancholy way, me hog-tied to a cross beam, coming up for air.
Asleep in the water, bewildered in the light.
Shall I make written language the memory I don't have? Shall I correspond with the visible - make symbols for the abstract concepts in my head?
The answer to that question is yes. Yes I will do this, having found it the best way to maintain the livelihood of the eternalhoodness of my head. That is, keep the body in step with the "me" that has been a-ponderin for some years now, gnawing at its favorite bone, but forgetful. Forgetting everything it loves, always - its okay. We start again.
Principal #1: Express the yet-unexpressed intuitions of the world and its loveliness.
Principal #2: Wholeness and soundness of being.
Principal #3: Be still and know the voice, the hand, the shepherd. Know the worlds Maker as best as you can, and let the goodness of that knowing change the way you talk and step.
Principal #4: Don't ever hesitate to say what you mean, regardless of what nonsense it seems to be.
Principal #5: Don't try to sound cool. Don't try to be sexy. Don't believe the sugar-lie.

The Sugar-lie? Thus: the lie my body believes, told to it by sweet sweet voices, that hunger must be filled immediately. It must not necessarily. Maybe not evil to fill it -- what is the definition of evil? Who defines evil? Say God, yes, but how do you know what God says? Who made you Lord over the world's knowledge?

All of the symbols of my life stand before me mute, waiting for the signal. I have none. I am listening to Gorecki's 3rd symphony, and I have none. I am holding up a finger.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Objectivism

Ayn Rand, your spirit hovers over these american waters. Since Atlas shrugged, many of us have been following suit. I'm not sure what it was that made me hate you so much before. I think that it's because, like everyone, you failed to say the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. And ye were a brazen lass - wouldn't admit having failed.
Of course, sweet woman passed, I have figured it all out. All of the unfitting pieces of your systematic assembly of the puzzle of existence I have removed and filled the gaps with light. You left me your mantle like Elijah, thinking of the honor of it, and I've cut it to pieces, patched it onto my poor sails, tried to catch a northwesterly wind.
The world exists. In this we agree, apparently. Knowledge is a relationship to this actual existent and orderly world. Yes, this order that we perceive hovers between two layers of flux - our minds and mystic fields of energy - yet it exists.
Certainty is a feeling about the relationship of our minds to this world. Concepts, we agree I think, are abstractions of perceived objects and their relationships - or that language, the ability to perceive ourselves lucidly and conceptualize and step back and speak, is grounded in things. So if there was a chain, our minds perceive things and relations between things, and this is grounds for language, symbol for thing, which causes communication, which causes the ability to abstract, which causes language about abstractions, which causes self-awareness, which I have right now. I am aware of my flesh in a tilting chair in Irvine, CA (we give names to geographical locations!) (language is beautiful) and I am aware that I am aware, and it allows me to circle around myself as I speak, to check myself, to say to self:
"Self, as ye listen to Thomas Tallis' lovely ancient music through two ear buds sucking electronic juice through long black root to release wave-sound-scent into your head's chambers remember that ye are capable of commiting the sins of your foremother, our dearly beloved Aynnie Randoferous. You are capable of speaking too soon and saying a dishonest word. You are capable of flinging words unwinged out of the nest, and they will fall hard to the real ground. Self, come to me, let me hold you, let me kiss you, yes, we are crazy, but it is the kind of craziness I desire, the kind that does not hide from itself, that kind that stands willingly in the hard light of the world, not even turning from the hope that is here, not even turning from the happiness of it. "