Madness, Creativity, & Giving A God Its Due: An Homage To Poet Artur Rimbaud

Artur Rimbaud double vision

It has been found again! 

What? 

Eternity.

It is the sea mingled with the sun"

AH! I am so forsaken I will worship at any shrine impulses toward perfection. — Artur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell

Like a good Zen student Mephistopheles
says, "Myself am hell."
So all the old accounts are mistaken.
We need to translate,
the meanings are turned around:
for his screams read, "Delight,"
and for the tortures he undergoes,
read, "he does not shut out
any part of himself."
--  from "Spell To Be Chanted While Dispelling Loneliness" by John Tarrant,  

"Il a'y aura pas de reposoirs." Translation:
"There will be no altars of repose." - a monk instructing visitors to the Abbe of Solemnes, France.

Entrance to the one of the oldest Churches in Mexico

. . . The old gods were and remain gods of possession and thus are still to be approached with caution, eyes open, alert, conscious, awake, else one can be outrun and overtaken. Such encounters are transformative, yes. But for the better it is not certain. Having had these dis- and re-orienting experiences via "l'abaissement de la senses" (derangement of the senses) Rimbaud was indeed transformed, awakened to the power of the unconscious which in his case resulted in a tremendous, ungrounded ego inflation from possession by an archetypal energetic tsunami, the inundating Greek god of ecstatic merger and dissolution, Dionysus (or Bacchus of the Romans), who can and does indeed "enthuse", meaning literally from the Greek word "entheos" - "inspire, become god-filled," also "shining, brilliant", all of which accurately describes Rimbaud's oeuvre; however, this shining god no matter His brightness, in the end wears one out, as in "down and out", drained of life.

After the shining, the shinola.

*

Shadow awaits on the other side. 

Poet Theodore Roethke writes, "The edge is what I have". 

It is the edge we all have. We dwell upon and within it, often unconsciously or, if conscious of it at all, we flee, or like Rimbaud, plunge headlong, body long, arts long, into it "come hell or high water" which did come to the poet through his dark deeds. Enthused, sundered, the Hell plundered poet, and plundering, purposely a'blunderer. worshiper/creator of "thunder", that and more his hope, was/is endlessly rent, surrendered to each reader for hopefully more clarifying while alive ends than waiting for it, rumored to arrive at "The End". Utterly. 

His poetry remains a flood-water mark ("high water" is still debated) in culture deeded to any who will have it, a great/grate legacy of youthful traumas, treasons, thefts of divine treasures, fractured facets gained at guarded though purposefully razored edges.

Out of the shinola, the shine.

For all the beauty Rimbaud opened up to, the terrible beauty, of dark and violent gods, the spectrum of worlds they create and inhabit with and within us, it did not prevent him from the slave trade and the narcotic numbing yet never negated, ever-inflamed nerve fires of conscience. Rimbaud helped to tear the personal and collective edges, Catholic in his day, which keeps repressed shadow at bay (in Hell), usually projected upon others, activities, places and more, thus giving the projected upon more power. Projected shadow gives the projector license to repress, to scapegoat and punish those others who become their and culture's "evil" purgatorial stand-ins and stunt men in perpetually pejorative/projective acts toward their own misplaced absolution and retribution. Thus the psychic necessity for scapegoats. Transgressors.

*

Transgressors serve. And are served up by the "righteous", the wannabe gilded guru-ic gossips, those glib spirit entrancers, those chin-charmers dime a dozen, those Metro-mancers who plant golden, mass produced flags in the "transformation" business staking their claims of imminent domain in the new gluttony that is now "Spirituality, Inc." from lofts to loony toons, the "enlightenment business" with TV talk show hosts proclaiming the latest best-selling "Secret and Esoteric Science" designed to gain material stuff and, of greatest value in that racket, projections of "Power" with money attached. There will be no dirth of these who so easily via magical thinking with no critical thinking whatsoever please the desperate, the greedy, the forsaken ready to "worship at any shrine impulses toward perfection" (Artur Rimbaud) which are promises for transcendence but most often dissociation and bypass of the problem of the shadow side of existence, of good and evil.

Transgressors bring that disowned shadow and underworld value, that which has been left out of official culture secular and "spiritual", of families, clans, cults, groups, communities, nations. They are scapegoated but at first usually ignored. Jungian analyst and writer, John Layard, said that the crime of Oedipus, whose myth our Western culture is built upon, is ignorance - ignore-ance (pg. xiv). Every rebel, maverick, criminal, rule breaker represents a lost value or a new value which has been ignored by the collective. They may be punished, they will be punished, but in the end the punished one will become wise or has the potential to become so and, that not happening, some child or two or three or more will be born or will arrive from some other shore having crossed a border legally or illegally and the old collective values shall fall to the new values brought in by the invader transgressors.

Sun. Petroglyph. Desert near Albuquerque, NM

Religion, myth, dreams, society historically and currently are full of those mythic transgressors who bring about a new value, a new order, or herald one to come. Jamake Highwater in his book, The Mythology of Transgression, speaks of two kinds of transgressions, theological, which is a breaking of the absolute laws of god, and mythological, which is "a metaphor suggesting a process similar to metamorphosis: an act that brings about transformation. The line crossed by a mythic transgression is a boundary of consciousness at the same time that it is a boundary of collective mores...such boundaries are called "reality" ruled by an ideology or theology or philosophy (all of which are believed to be absolute). Mythological transgressors are always perceived by the collective as theological transgressors and are always considered threats, criminals, and are punished. Highwater pointedly continues: "...transgression [from the theological eye] is generally understood to mean an action that is morally subversive. A transgression is closely associated with the religious idea of damnation...we reproach them as sinners. And the more "terrible" the transgression, the more we reproach them. We may ridicule them, disdain them, beat them, imprison them, banish them, or we may even kill them. But the worst of all possible punishments is doubtlessly our attempts to redeem them: to change them from their sinful ways to our blessed ways...Sartre said that "hell is other people." In matters of dogma [theological or psychological] he may have been right (pg. 42)." 

Pierced Flight, outdoor sculpture near Princeton, New Jersey

In sum, the mythological transgressor leaves the known, received and sanctioned "Walled City" of norms, of the socio-psycho-sanctimonious collective in order to bring about revelation and transformation. The archetypal hero's journey always leads to revelation and transformation. Eventually. Or some version that takes, makes or, yes, perfectly "breaks" to take new ground, to extend, meet psyche's demands to expand, recreate old-to new-land so that more and more can stake their claim to their endowed, "self-evident" place in the "volatile creative f-ruckus that is the citizenry, civil-enough, "rock n roll-us polis" "We-the-People" oriented State. 

Naiveté must go; maturer vision hold strong for stronger space allowing grace-enough for predictable manageable divisions roiling toward inevitable, dreamed of/at/for inclusive to-be-lived-presently vision, given weight, taken on, "pressed down, shaken together . . . running over" manifest "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" born of/from good faith and of faith by faithful efforts trialed, tried, a hermetic enough seal on cauldron-State continually alchemizing e pluribus unum, an ongoing phrase as verb, dynamic, fluxing toward always ripening union.

Highwater says "the crucial turning point of any (hero's) adventure is that moment when a man or woman breaks away from the commonplace world in order to act out a sense of self. It is this decisive act of disjunction from the commonplace, of departure from the known world, that represents the essential act of crossing the line, of breaking the rules and trespassing beyond the familiar world. That trespass represents heroic (often choice is no longer optional) willingness to pierce the protective walls of the community. It represents the daring [and Promethean "gall"] to make a precarious passage beyond the walls by doing that "one thing" that is forbidden (pg. 41). 

***

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses. —Robert (Bob) Fletcher, lyrics to "Don't Fence Me In" (music by Cole Porter)

"He is what he hides..." true of the man & "deus absconditus"

The Year I Almost Became A Catholic by Raul Voz

(translated from the Spanish by Warren Falcon) 

The year I almost became a Catholic
5 stars rose from your breasts in Spring.
My nest was a sudden disturbance in blue.

A veil

a floating head

bleeding thorns

adorned your white throat.

I fled from my boat after one 
long night of fishing only to 
arrive ashore with torn nets 
and apparitions upon my knees.

Without will my cursing ceased.

I discovered I was speechless.

I learned to speak with my hands.
Curious circular clouds surrounded
particular heads without logic.

Genuflections strange rearranged
the air in front of my chest while I
sat upon or hid my left hand.

Purple became everything dear.

Roses diminished before your 
bare feet treading upon a serpent, 
a tourniquet of gold each ankle 
entwining.

Virgin stars minus 5 surrounded
your curved shape defiant of robes
meant to convey the holy restraining
in my groin.

Odd collections mounted in the attic 
where I retired to cloister and wait.

Leaden pilgrimage up and down pointless
stairs accumulated distance.

My beard became a convention of lepers and bells.

Fingernail parings

clumps of hair

bits of flesh

sacks of ears

all were relics in the making.

I became an accountant listing and numbering each holy scrap.

I tried not to be critical but my eyes lied.

I could not confess except by pencil, 
leaving notes and grease stains
for the priest to interpret.

Absolution my hope, 
a mute vow was my prosthesis.

Then Spring returned.

My boat sank. All mended nets, 
a year's work, were lost.

Nothing to do.

I return to you, a parenthesis in the sea of loneliness.

Each star, each breast, you have removed
in my absence, mourning made permanent, 
scars upon your throat oddly fish-shaped.

Astonished, my voice returns, curses then caresses, 
withered left hand free to unravel regret nerve for 
nerve, the only net worth mending.

I reserve this one strange act from a year of orthodoxy, 

to anoint your feet with tears.

I dry them with my hair, your outstretched arms
a beseeching beyond emptiness, your chest barren
but for my hands remembering the uses of prayer, 
kisses but murmurs, rumored stars where swollen sails had been.

The Empress of Contrails Writes Upon Darkness

for Artur Rimbaud & Anthros Del Mar

'the labyrinths

that time creates

vanish.

(only desert

remains.)     

the heart, 

fountain of desire, 

vanishes.

(only desert

remains.)     ' 

-  from 'And After' by Federico Garcia Lorca

I, on the other hand, 

have lain down with

countless thousands.

My tent is worn out.

Stains mark love-cries, 

some blood where tongues

are ground down to root 

words, utterance hard 

pounded, soft tissue 

torn letter by letter, 

tender verbs opened to 

pain, that which is paid 

for more than alabaster 

embraces and this strangling 

of waists

My tent has drained more

of love's body than a mortuary.

Spikenard scented oils taint 

fabric folds and flesh. Rote, 

worn pillows are daily, sometimes 

hourly turned where I half expect 

to find teeth or coins hoping 

still for one true word for

love without name else it flies, 

moths repelled instead by flame, 

pillows revealing nothing.

But I turn them still.

Oasis and cloaca, 

love birds parched, 

now moves caravansary

toward heart's always

winking horizons.

There are many before

the sun rises.

Perhaps my name goes

before me, my press, 

Empress of Contrails, 

peacocks in tow, 

trailing tallies, scores, 

arrivals, departures, 

ejaculations, rejections, 

all faces hands have held, 

and yearning beyond possibility 

hesitant dawn's mourning doves.

Have I not spoken of tears

subtle parentheses of blame, 

brine outlines punctuated, 

thinly silked, easily taken

for wing-laced salt maps, 

tongue lick sighs grown

weary with enunciating.

Nightly misspoken, the

flagons are tossed down.

Recall how hot winds blow loudly 

as do I, billowing the tent.  Men 

cry, mad for my return yet burns 

no desert impervious to heat of 

all kinds, even human, excepting 

the heart, its capacities to startle, 

its dunes in vast stretches beat, 

beat for what moonlight can only 

suggest to scorpions in silver 

shadows, pitying serpents coiled 

smug in their ability to shed skin, 

unlike the veiled men.

Hide what cannot be unwritten

though this trail of brocaded

skulls in time returns to sand.

One cannot see this hand

waving goodbyes, the other

concealing tint and quill.

Through ages, upon human vellum, 

through cycles unending and same, 

what heart heat bids, I write best,

upon darkness, eyes closed, tent

open to all who may, supplicant, 

come wandering in.

APPENDIX (which is also PREFACE)

helpful for reading Rimbaud and Raul Voz

"The Saviors do not lend themselves to art successfully: they are outside the pale, beyond, as incomprehensible in their love as in their example. They have never become incorporated in the blood stream. Forsaking the world, they become as the idols they sought to destroy. This is human perversity. Throughout the ages it displays itself in the individual life, and now and then it bursts forth in cosmic waves of futility and self-destruction." - Henry Miller from last his essay on Kenneth Patchen, "Patchen, Man of Anger & Light"

The author, 26 y/o, on the way to South America, January 1979

photo by Lowery McClendon - compadre, poet

"Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,"1 

I have been taken up into grief, the strange 
relief of clouds. Soon departed, I shall be 
once again returned to disquieted prayer, 
the proud monk to his rites rejoined such 
are covers for disjointedness. 

Adroit is the spoiled self touching only 
late that of Other, of Beauty, Adonais 
"dead then'" when Mr. Shelley, once young, 
now always, has clung 'moderne', as much 
as, as soon as he can deny, spurn, return 
a Vision "toward the vital air." 


He has the advantage of an Eastern detachment.

1 A Grief Earned - An Ode Beginning & Ending With Lines From Shelley [click the title], the opening verses to a poem in 3 parts - for Vajra, after Krsna - "and my comfort brown where I, once again, lost the blue accident of love"

Phrases with quotation marks are quotes from Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Blyyshe Shelley

Met this fellow in the Cathedral of Lemieux, France

Immediately "knew" it was a clear encounter with a

daimon-as-dstiny....and the rest has been histor-ectomy

"to begin with a swelled head and end with swelled feet" - from Canto 81, Ezra Pound  

That one day the book shall be written, 
Odysseus come smiling through the door. 
That I shall live forevermore free of provisions, 
be delivered presently into good, rich life 
and unto the richer world, my Lover, so long 
turning turning turning in distance away from, 
yet to manage a caress, a smooch which 
neither dismisses nor fully embraces and 
it is I that is and shall be erased into this Love 
which shall then in time be erased as well 
in the greater Sun and that Shining too shall 
be erased. Then we shall all be scattered, 
or I shall be only, embrace by embrace, 
toward erasure no longer effortful. 

I soft sift draft by draft rough toward world 
now slowing in spite of parentheses these 
provisional postulations of 'the good life' 
to come. Eventually. There is only this that 
I am living now. And my hands feel, even 
perhaps are, strapped to this wheel that 
turns me as turns Beloved Earth, the Sun 
too each dreaming near to but apart from each. 

My reach is 
here on my tongue, 
in my fingers here 
grasping words from mind. 
I am ever behind in this chase, 
now am further from 
Love/Space than ever 
though my heart 
is swollen from 
wanting It. 

Still, world, accept my blessing. 

I send this message aloft on kingfisher wings.

"I done my duty...got on mah travelin' shoes" - Racing Toward the End of American Empire - Dream of Bernie n Me Foot Racing and the Aftermath Teasing Some Meaning From It

"The sight of a skeletal corpse rarely inspires a rollicking jig. Yet for more than half a millennium, the dance of death in European visual art has imagined a tango between the quick and the dead. Allison C. Meier tracks the motif’s evolution across history, discovering how — through times of disease, war, and economic inequality — printmaking offered a means to both critique social ills and reflect upon new forms of human devastation."

The image above and quote beneath is the opening from The Public Domain Review title essay, Our Mortal Waltz, The Dance of Death Across Centuries by Allison C. Meier, Our Mortal Waltz

My travelin' Shoes, Duty done

Chambers Brothers "Travelin' Shoes (LIVE)" to begin the race:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ngbZgx9EDY

By the by (or goodbye), all games, ALL games are warfare, ritualized, with rules, but still, winner, losers, living and dead...from jacks to tiddly winks to Dungeons and Dragons (my unconscious almost wrote, but I intervened - Guns n Roses) and ALL sports.

But. And. So Seems like an appropriate essay, for this 2024 POTUS ramp-pain....a fitting line up for Late Stage Decay and Fall of the American Empire.

I dreamed of Bernie Sanders last night (I have NEVER dreamed of Bernie Sanders), he was in his poiiti-suit, walking down concrete stairs (old crumbling stairs), BAREFOOT, went to step out onto a vast pitch (sports field) that had many spectator sports taking place at once....there were bleachers as in high school field kind, with people cheering their teams but this pitch was miles long (or so it felt). I was near Bernie who looked very happy, vibrant, smiling excitedly, inwardly happy. BEAMING. At the last concrete step edge one of his heels slipped (gravely crumble beneath the heel) and he nearly fell backwards but corrected his balance and made it onto the pitch. He immediately began to run right, direction right (oh, it was night - stadium lit up as in high school fields) and began to sprint, I mean SPRINT fast with his wide grin and indicated to me that I was to race him so I too - barefoot hmmmmm - sprinted beside him while crowds cheered on perpetually for their teams no matter the sport happening - Bernie and I seemed to be having our own friendly competition but Bernie appeared to be celebrating or taking a victory spint and FAST. I barely kept pace with him....but it was exhilarating.

GO, BERNIE, GO!!!

I woke up very curious about the dream since "agéd" statesmen are the hot topic du jour du munde totale. I guess I count now as "agéd" (I prefer my term - "dega" evoking Edgar's lithe ballerinas) at 72 (though psychologically still too much possessed by the puer (eternal youth) archetype). But my first hit on an intuitive/felt sense "hit" level was this is a death dream. The end is near. I heard the Bible verse of Saint Paul proclaiming he had "run the race, had fought the good fight"....as, I presume, has Bernie in his own way, as has good intentioned enough other states persons serving (or they should) in a Republic of representatives voted in to, surprise surprise, serve the best interests of "the People".

This race between Bernie and I was private though in public in the spectator sports vast arena but with bleachers everywhere with crowds rooting for their teams.

B and I were heading into the dark side of the pitch, no end in sight but darkness (perhaps some light at the end of that individuation race? - hope so)).

To be NOTED that it was a hopeful end to a long wandering dream, a meander through my personal history, childhood homes, the countryside and woods and fields all destroyed by BIG REALTY making hideous suburban mazes on once wild and beautiful nature filled (critters all kinds - FOXES!), etc. Sad, angry, nostalgic, resigned as in first step of Alcoholics Anonymous that I, Warren, schmuck amongst millions of fellow schmuckaroonies, "am powerless over BIG CORPORATE REALTY (throw in an " i " and we have the trickster big hint - REAL I TY), and the much, and too too vaunted PROGRESS that my father's generation religiously praised and proclaimed -

dad was born the year of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) - he was but one of a "team" of children (twelve that lived past infancy, 2 or 3 infants never made it), born to a poor sugar cane farmer and his weary, depressed, angry wife (according to my mother who did not like her ma-in-law) in swamplands, bayous Mississippi River fed, of the American south). Being poor, as were many Americans then, mostly manual labor across the "pitch" of the USA, then of course,the mantra of PROGRESS would be NIRVANA, marketed, commerical-ed, sold to each and every one and all (unless of other than white race but "even poor white trash" would not make the grade).

My dad did make the grade (by agreed upon by corporations wiht national leaders' standards) and then some, achieved middle "American dream" status, etc. Was extremely far right, bigoted, that sad, hateful same old "saw" that MAGA and OrangYna are proclaiming. Ugh. Theater of war, POTUS campaign, winners losers...some literally betting on stats as to which rats stay on the sinking Schtick-of-State (s'just a fun thing to type/say) and which don't or won't, preferring to doggie paddle (or other stroke) toward some other shore or, to be consistent with my dream, "pitch" or patch of pitch, "yer in the army now, yull never git rich yuh sonnum a bitch" so swim or run or stroke-a-doke "where the West commences and gaze at the moon till yah'll loooze yah'll's senses" et sweet cetera...

from :The Tin Drum" by Günther Grass

In Sir (see link below) John Glubb's (perfect name, central casting name for what he and me/this is much about) much researched and considered timeline tracking the Rise and Fall of Empires (see link) the last stages 6 and 7 are certainly where USA and much of the First World now is (Western Civ. especially) 6 being Decadence and 7 being Decline and Fall (KAPUT). But. And. Meanwhile the values of the NEW empire, the NEW world view and systems is already dawning, becoming evident to grow and develop from the rhizome of pervious millennia, previous "empires - that represent Values, Root Belief systems.

So. And. But. Back to Bernie and me leopard speed racing each other to some finish line unseen but known (THE END - at least of an old value that served best (we hope) as it could.

Bernie's grin was ecstatic. Assuming mine was too though gritting my teeth in "mad" effort to keep up with the man running at unlikely speed toward some unseen goal or finish line.

Upon waking I hauled my tired arse from the sofa (where I sleep in this tiny over-priced studio apt. in ground center MOLOCH CITY, corporation corporation corporation with Big Realty, utterly inhuman, controls the decadent show of late stage collapse and hurrah of Empire) went immediately online to see if the headlines proclaimed Senator Bernie Sanders Dead at _______.

Didn't see it (good for Bernie! thrive on). So returned to symbolism and myths (races, prizes, endings, beginnings, old age and youth, athleticism, etc. and what all that has to do with ME as well as the "age I was born into and am olding in and from - this country is killing me).

I recently became reacquainted by a study of Sir John Grubb which gives me the context for my surmises above. I quote this from an essay (posted in comment section) by a colleague of mine) who writes movie reviews and critiques of culture born from moives, media, etc. and in one essay shares this re: the fall of empires and the signs of the stages therein (a bit of repetition but as one of my teachers of hypnotherapy noted, "the unconscious can enjoy repetition" (cue Philip Glass!):

Philip Glass - Solo Piano Works

"Sir John Glubb, a British historian who in 1976 wrote an essay titled "The Fate of Empires". In that work, Grubb lists the seven stages of Empire which are...1. Pioneers, 2. Conquest, 3. Commerce, 4. Affluence, 5. Intellect, 6. Decadence and 7. Decline and Collapse.

The Four Horseman film argued that the U.S. was in stage 6 - Decadence, in 2012, the year of its release. Accoring to Sir Glubb's thesis, signs of an empire In the age of decadence include an undisciplined - overextended military, conspicuous displays of wealth, massive disparity between rich and poor, obsession with sex, exorbitantly wealthy sports stars, and synchronistically enough...celebrity chefs…like Anthony Bourdain. In fact, one of the chefs the film shows to make its point is Bourdain. If Bourdain was a symbol of American Empire's decadence in 2012, in 2018 he is now the canary in the coal mine, and his suicide is a foreboding omen." (see link below, M. McCaffrey's article that goes very interesting into Glubb, McCaffrey's use of his "stages" applied to film and American media, etc.).

*

So. But. And. Today I've ordered some new athletic cross country shoes for aging feet and legs and knees and, OY, MY BACK, MY RIGHT HIP, and athletic Pampers to wear for the rest of the run(s) ahead. Ahem. Apologies.

And am praying for (yes, I confess, I do pray) Bernie, for Biden, but not for you know IT, only that ID disappears immediately all the while knowing that OrangYna is a manifest sign of the SYMPTOM that now IS America (and the human world, clearly).

NOTE: the words SYMBOL and SYMPTOM share the same SYM-....my symbolic drream (all dreams are symbolic) is not just my own but that of the culture, nation, collective cathect-ed upon world I am entangled with/in (sed the spider to the flayed, I mean, fly).

OTHER NOTE: the massive ongoing 24/7 SPECTOR SPORTS events, one of the symptoms of the Decadent Fall of Empire - I refer you to many films and series about Rome 2000 years ago, similar historical dramas of City States and their Caesars (did you know that the word "czar" is short for, yep, you guessed it, "Caesar the God Man human head of State (susch as one running for POTUS is thought to be a Messiah, THE Messiah so the archetypes and historical patterns are manifesting clearly - and so - each living generation and group thinks that it/they ARE the exception to History in the evolution of consciousness and so THEIR GUY IS THE GOD GUY. Their nation is the God Chosen Nation of Nations

YAWN. But

NOT boring.

Terrifying.

Because we know from observing human history (because we can do so accurately now) the patterns of the rise and fall of the delusion of God Empire on Earth.

Philipp Winterwerb - Faust in his Study - Screen grabbed this

from an excellent ongoing podcast from The Nietzsche Podcast

FAUST Explained: Goethe’s eulogy of the Enlightenment & its philosophical influence

Faust Explained - The Nietzsche Podcast

Just look at the history and the rising tides of blood of Western religions...and the Apocalyptic End they preach and are intent on bringing to reality.

I'll spare yah'll a drive-by lecture on the Messiah Archetype and complex that mugs one and all, each and every, and some really prone to such rise, inflate to the top of the collective heap and, godly (the dark side of that archetype too, G-d) afflict citizenry who obliviously vote said "Messiah" (dime a dozen these days) into awe-fice. Hell to pay and the debts are endless..."Buddy can you spare a daimon (google "daimon")?

Now, of a sudden tho leaden still, still though I feel a massive relief to be running with Bernie, barefoot as John Lennon wearing his suit (like my dream Bernie) on the Abbey Road album cover. I'm not sure what I was wearing in the dream but I know that I was NOT wearing shoes, so.the relief I now feel is that I am running away from the massive ADD/ADHD "distraction fits" that are all the sports and entertainment/entrainment synapse/serotonin gushing (dare I say 'Glubbing') screens upon and thru which we all dissociate and break apart. And collectively splinter into designated "pods" - to wrench a phrase from poet Allen Tate,

Pods "are desolation in the plot". (see Ode to the Confederate Dead)

I am gladding now to be nearly over the Carnage Carnival of the ubiquitous "popcorn stand" of Western (perhaps global) Syphilization that is collective (and personal - I am no exception to the amoebic zillions) global human hubris and its/our hamartia (fatal flaw) of "god almightiness" as Carl Jung, a genuine sober yet sorrowful seer, aptly phrases it.

And. But. SO - Here's Dan Bern, the Bob Dylan of the '90's, this song still stands and sings the decay and decline movingly - aptly titled after T. S. Eliot's apocryphal (whether one like him or it or not), Wasteland. Bern also riffs on the opening lines of HOWL by Allen Ginsberg, his Beat amplification of Eliot's vision (who was riffing on Mathew Arnold's "Dover Beach" (funny, a friend, aging too, brought up Anrold's poem but had the title humorously "off" but actually ON aka "Dover Bitch"...at least we can a laff with Felinni tattoos on our faces while slugging back pitchers of Bellinis - during the Fall of Empire mandatory BRUNCH is de rigueur, copies of Nietzsche's Twilight of the Gods, worn from reading, tear saturated, yellowed, torn, wrinkled, page edges dog eared, ink lined with stars and arrows pointing to KEY texts....hey, it's a living..

I'll end with a favorite humorous but grim line from Dylan Thomas's "A Child's Christmas in Wales [I will NOT write "WAILS" in honor of Ginsberg)....Mrs. Prothero's house has caught fire on Christmas Day. The fire brigade shows up, extinguishes the fire, as smoke clears, the downstair's exterior is drenched, black ash and cinders everywhere. Then upon the top of the stairs the proper, mannered Mrs. Prothero descends slowly, smiling, holding a folded magazine, looks at the firemen gazing up at her:

"Would you like anything to read?"

And Thomas follows with,

"She said the right thing. Always."

Here's the essay that triggered all this (my Bernie dream right in my face while reading it upon waking):

https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/our-mortal-waltz-the-dance-of-death-across-centuries/?utm_source=newsletter

Here's the link to Dan Bern's "Wasteland":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaN1VfmI3Io

Of Prosthetic Kulture - Appendages/Hauntings in Languages/Sequences - Solvencies of What Once Passed For Real Presences

"This is an example of Eckermann making Goethe swallow Goethe in order to digest Eckermann . . . " - Avital Ronell

Marvelous surprise of the summer so far, an expected "stumble" in Avital Ronell's book with a title that hypnotized me into blind purchase of it, Dictations: On Haunted Writing. Midway into the slow (for me) read cuz I have not caught up in my philosophy education yet, alas, but am learning as I go, even in my early '70's...and besides, she's actually a damned good and brilliant writer. I know. I know. There was a controversy about her at NYU 10 years ago. But such does not discount her intellectual work. At least for me. Just my opinion. And her Dictations book is just the kind of "stretch" intellectually and more that I yearn for in this most boring of klutch-ures. Terrors a'plenty though so let me take deep dives and get lost in Ronell, others....being above ground among humans smothers me much (of more than late - say when the nightmare of "W" appeared and brought with it international fly-by's and karma kola with a krunch bar kaught up with England and others' invader Pilgrim-mores.

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Her essay about Alexander Graham Bell, from Heidegger to Bell to Cinderella to Frankenstein themes of haunted dictation focussed on the Telephone's symbolic function of connecting the remote and distant spectral Other "not close" but inwardly present as haunting; Bell invented the phone (a happy accident did the trick) just after his mother died, his longing for her voice, to hear it, to evoke her presence...

COME ON! Such writing (at least for me) is rare....an event.

What motivates such inventions (Bells) and event-ions (Ronell's) is human, all too human...and Ronell is masterful and lengthy in her amplifications...just breath taking (at least for me). This in her compacted, dense yet surprising writing if one goes with her flow and then gets caught up in her tectonic undertow - best title going (love it - since she published this right at the end of 1900's, last decade in prep. for 2000's, the nightmare that continues in the fall of Western Civ. and Empire:

Infinitude's Score: Essays for the Millennium:

This will open up to that chapter....but first must sign in/join (free to join):

https://archive.org/details/finitudesscorees0000rone/page/237/mode/1up
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So midway through the accounts, Goethe's an elderly man who has allowed one Johann Peter Eckermann, in his early 30's, to accompany him and to record their conversations, the events, settings in which they take, and it is a delight to read cuz, you know, GOETHE, the massive Western "mana personality" still turning heads and minds, and I imagine, some stomachs too but...anyhow this excerpt below is about a dream Eckermann reports to Goerthe day after he had it.

And I work a lot with dreams so I was almost licking the pages of the book to read more, to see what Eckermann and Goethe made of it. Ronell writes a long passage about this dream, of Eckermann's "attachment" to Goethe, a kind of artificial limb, a prosthesis, a prosthetic attachment ot Goethe who, in modern psychology parlance (on of many) Goethe is a "self-object" for Eckermann...what early Jung refers to as a mana personality, one imbued with and informed energetically by an archetypal energy which others pick up on, are tranced by...one could call it charisma on steroids.

As I read Ronell's take (she knows her Freud so he informs her takes on Eck.s dream plus her own more than two cents), I immediately read the dream as being one that I most certainly have had in various periods of my life, my projections upon "mana" others, places, activities and things (art, books, degrees, etc.) which held for me projections of self and, as Jung would say, Self, greater personality - archetypally more deeply sourced than just the personal level of the unconscious.

And now, aged 72, more than a bit mottled and throttled by 7 decades behind me and right in my crepe-ing face, I really identify with the younger Eckermann's experience of himself, in his dream - his BODY as Other, as Burden, as more than inadequate. Weak, lacking presence.

Something happens in the dream, however, where a robust, abled-bodied young man sees Eck.s struggles swimming in deep water (they must swim from a tiny rock island over a wide expanse of water to get to a distant wide shore, they have no alternative but swim - the able bodied excellent swimmer suggests that they, Eck. and he, exchange bodies, they do so, and Eckermann experiences his body with the all the tremendous vitality of the other man's; Eck. easily makes it to the shore with energy to spare! feels light, energized, positive (unlike his familiar melancholy, heady (intellectual) self.

BINGO! I'm all in that dream, Ronell's spins, so at 3 am ordered Eckermann's book of his time with Goethe, the daily accounts, the conversations, the meals had, the wine drunk, the dreams discussed, the books, philosophy, history, lit., birds and bees (the literal ones, plus the, ahem, "birds and bees and flowers" and such, all these topics more than prosthetics but resonating as authentic "self objects" requiring honest attention.

I paid extra to have it delivered ASAP (though was reading it online, easy to find via google and archive. org.).

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Here's the section I read, that Ronell expounds upon in her book, Dictations: On Haunted Writing, page 108

(Supplement) Wednesday, March 12, 1828.

https://archive.org/details/dictationsonhaun0000rone

"AFTER I HAD quitted Goethe yesterday evening, the
important conversation I had carried on with him re-
mained constantly in my mind. The discourse had
also been upon the sea and sea air ; and Goethe had
expressed the opinion, that he considered all islanders
and inhabitants of the sea-shore in temperate climates
far more productive, and possessed of more active force,
than the people in the interior of large continents.

Whether or not it was that I had fallen asleep with
these thoughts, and with a certain longing for the in-
spiring powers of the sea ; suffice it to say, I had in
the night the following pleasant, and to me very re-
markable dream : —

I saw myself in an unknown region, amongst
strange men, thoroughly cheerful and happy. The
most beautiful summer day surrounded me in a charm-
ing scene, such as might be witnessed somewhere on
the shores of the Mediterranean, in the south of Spain
or France, or in the neighbourhood of Genoa. We
had been drinking at noon round a merry table, and 1
went with some others, rather young people, to make
another party for the afternoon.

We had loitered along through bushy and pleasant
low lands, when we suddenly found ourselves in the
sea, upon the smallest of islands, on a jutting rock,
where there was scarcely room for five or six men, and
where one could not stir for fear of slipping into the
water. Behind us, whence we had come, there was
nothing to be seen but sea ; but before us lay the shore
at about a quarter of an hour's distance, spread out
most invitingly. The shore was in some places flat,
in others rocky and somewhat elevated ; and one might
observe, between green leaves and white tents, a crowd
of joyous men in light-coloured clothes, recreating
themselves with music, which sounded from the tents.
"There is nothing else to be done," said one of
us to the other« " we must undress and swim over."
u It is all very well to say so," said I, "you are young,
handsome fellows, and good swimmers; but I swim
badly, and I do not possess a shape fine enough to ap-
pear, with pleasure and comfort, before the strange
people on shore." "You are a fool," said one of the
handsomest, "undress yourself, give me your form
and you shall have mine." At these words I undressed
myself quickly, and was soon in the water, and imme-
diately found myself in the body of the other as a
powerful swimmer. I soon reached the shore, and,
naked and dripping, stepped with the most easy con-
fidence amongst the men. I was happy in the sen-
sation of these fine limbs ; my deportment was uncon-
strained, and I at once became intimate with the
strangers, at a table before an arbour, where there
was a great deal of mirth. My comrades had now
reached land one by one, and had joined us, and the
only one missing was the youth with my form, in
whose limbs I found myself so comfortable. At last
he also approached the shore, and I was asked if I
was not glad to see my former self? At these words
experienced a certain discomfort, partly because I did
not expect any great joy from myself, and partly because
I feared that my young friend would ask for his own
body back again. However, I turned to the water,
and saw my second self swimming close up to me, and
laughing at me with his head turned a little on one side.
u There is no swimming with those limbs of yours,"
exclaimed he, " I have had a fine struggle against waves
and breakers, and it is not to be wondered at that I
have come so late, and am last of all." I at once re-
cognised the countenance ; it was my own, but grown
young, and rather fuller and broader, with the freshest
complexion. He now came to land, and whilst he raised
himself, and first stepped along the sand, I had a view
of his back and legs, and was delighted with the per-
fection of the form. He came up the rocky shore to
us, and as he came up to me he had completely my
new stature. <c How is it," thought I to myself, " that
your little body has grown so handsome. Have the
primeval powers of the sea operated so wonderfully
upon it, or is it because the youthful spirit of my friend
has penetrated the limbs ? " Whilst we enjoyed our-
selves together for some time, I silently wondered that
my friend did not show any inclination to resume his
own body. " Truly," thought I, " he looks bravely,
and it may be a matter of indifference to him in which
body he is placed, but it is not the same thing to me ;
for I am not sure whether in that body I may not
shrink and become as diminutive as before." In order
to satisfy myself on this point, I took my friend aside,
and asked him how he felt in my limbs ? " Perfectly
well," said he ; " I have the same sensation of my own
natural power as before; I do not know what you
have to complain of in your limbs. They are quite
right with me ; and you see one only has to make the
best of oneself. Remain in my body as long as you
please ; for I am perfectly contented to remain in yours
through all futurity. ,, I was much pleased by this ex-
planation, and as in all my sensations, thoughts, and
recollections, I felt quite as usual, my dream gave me
the impression of a perfect independence of the soul,
and the possibility of a future existence in another
body."

"That is a very pretty dream," said Goethe, when,
after dinner to-day, I imparted to him the principal
features. " We see," continued he, a that the muses
visit you even in sleep, and, indeed, with particular
favour ; for you must confess that it would be difficult
for you to invent anything so peculiar and pretty in
your waking moments."

"I can scarcely conceive how it happened to me,"
returned I ; u for I had felt so dejected all day that
the contemplation of so fresh a life was far from my
mind."

"Human nature possesses wonderful powers," re-
turned Goethe, " and has something good in readiness
for us when we least hope for it. There have been
times in my life when I have fallen asleep in tears;
but in my dreams the most charming forms have come
to console and to cheer me, and I have risen the next
morning fresh and joyful."

"There is something more or less wrong among
us old Europeans ; our relations are far too artifi-
cial and complicated, our nutriment and mode of life
are without their proper nature, and our social inter-
course is without proper love and good will. Every
one is polished and courteous j but no one has the
courage to be hearty and true, so that an honest man,
with natural views and feelings, stands in a very bad
position. Often one cannot help wishing that one
had been born upon one of the South Sea Islands, a so-
called savage, so as to have thoroughly enjoyed human
existence in all its purity, without any adulteration."

"If in a depressed mood one reflects deeply upon the
wretchedness of our age, it often occurs to one that the
world is gradually approaching the last day. And the
evil accumulates from generation to generation ! For
it is not enough that we have to suffer for the sins of
our fathers, but we hand down to posterity these in-
herited vices increased by our own."

" Similar thoughts often occur to me," answered I;
"but if, at such a time, I see a regiment of German
dragoons ride by me, and observe the beauty and power
of these young people, I again derive some consolation,
and say to myself, that the durability of mankind is after
all not in such a desperate plight."

"Our country people," returned Goethe, u have
certainly kept up their strength, and will, I hope, long
be able not only to furnish us with good horsemen,
but also to secure us from total decay and destruction.
The rural population may be regarded as a magazine,
from which the forces of declining mankind are always
recruited and refreshed. But just go into our great
towns, and you will feel quite differently. Just take
a turn by the side of a second diable boiteux y or a
physician with a large practice, and he will whisper to
you tales which will horrify you at the misery, and
astonish you at the vice with which human nature is
visited, and from which society suffers."

"But let us banish these hypochondriacal thoughts.
How are you going on ? What are you doing ? What
else have you seen to-day ? Tell me, and inspire me
with good thoughts."

"I have been reading Sterne/' returned I, " where
Yorick is sauntering about the streets of Paris, and
makes the remark that every tenth man is a dwarf.
I thought of that when you mentioned the vices of
great towns. I also remember to have seen, in
Napoleon's time, among the French infantry, one bat-
talion which consisted entirely of Parisians, who were
all such puny, diminutive people, that one could not
comprehend what could be done with them in battle."

"The Scotch Highlanders under the Duke of Wel-
lington," rejoined Goethe, " were doubtless heroes of
another description."

"I saw them in Brussels a year before the battle of
Waterloo," returned I. " They were, indeed, fine
men; all strong, fresh, and active, as if just from
the hand of their Maker. They all carried their heads
so freely and gallantly, and stepped so lightly along with
their strong bare legs, that it seemed as if there were
no original sin, and no ancestral failing, as far as they
were concerned."

" There is something peculiar in this," said Goethe.

"Whether it lies in the race, in the soil, in the free
political constitution, or in the healthy tone of education,
— certainly, the English in general appear to have cer-
tain advantages over many others. Here in Weimar, we
see only a few of them, and, probably, by no means the
best ; but what fine, handsome people they are. And
however young they come here, they feel themselves
by no means strange or embarrassed in this foreign
atmosphere ; on the contrary, their deportment in
society is as full of confidence, and as easy, as if they
were lords everywhere, and the whole world belonged
to them. This it is which pleases our women, and
by which they make such havoc in the hearts of our
young ladies. As a German father of a family, who is
concerned for the tranquillity of his household, I often
feel a slight shudder, when my daughter-in-law an-
nounces to me the expected arrival of some fresh,
young islander. I already see in my mind's eye, the
tears which will one day flow when he takes his de-
parture. They are dangerous young people ; but this
very quality of being dangerous is their virtue."

"Still, I would not assert," answered I, " that the
young Englishmen in Weimar are more clever, more
intelligent, better informed, or more excellent at heart
than other people."

" The secret does not lie in these things, my good
friend," returned Goethe. " Neither does it lie in
birth and riches ; it lies in the courage which they
have to be that for which nature has made them.
There is nothing vitiated or spoilt about them, there
is nothing half-way or crooked ; but such as they are,
they are thoroughly complete men. That they are
also sometimes complete fools, I allow with all my
heart ; but that is still something, and has still always
some weight in the scale of nature.

"The happiness of personal freedom, the conscious-
ness of an English name, and of the importance at-
tached to it by other nations, is an advantage even to
the children ; for in their own family, as well as in
scholastic establishments, they are treated with far
more respect, and enjoy a for freer development, than
is the case with us Germans.

"In our own dear Weimar, I need only look out at the
window to discover how matters stand with us. Lately,
when the snow was lying upon the ground, and my
neighbour's children were trying their little sledges in
the street, the police was immediately at hand, and I
saw the poor little things fly as quickly as they could.
Now, when the spring sun tempts them from the
houses, and they would like to play with their com-
panions before the door, I see them always constrained,
as if they were not safe, and feared the approach of
some despot of the police. Not a boy may crack a
whip, or sing or shout; the police is immediately at
hand to forbid it. This has the effect with us all
of taming youth prematurely, and of driving out all
originality and all wildness, so that in the end nothing
remains but the Philistine.

"You know that scarcely a day passes in which I
am not visited by some travelling foreigner. But if I
were to say that I took great pleasure, in the personal
appearance, especially of young, learned Germans from
a certain north-eastern quarter, I should tell a false-
hood.

"Short-sighted, pale, narrow-chested, young with-
out youth ; that is a picture of most of them as they
appear to me. And if I enter into a conversation with
any of them, I immediately observe that the things
in which one of us takes pleasure seem to them vain
and trivial, that they are entirely absorbed in the Idea,
and that only the highest problems of speculation are
fitted to interest them. Of sound senses or delight in
the sensual, there is no trace ; all youthful feeling and
all youthful pleasure are driven out of them, and that
irrecoverably ; for if a man is not young in his twentieth
year, how can he be so in his fortieth ?"

Goethe sighed and was silent.

I thought of the happy time in the last century,
in which Goethe's youth fell j the summer air of
Seesenheim passed before my soul, and I reminded
him of the verses, —

In the afternoon we sat,
Young people, in the cool.

"Ah," sighed Goethe, " those were, indeed, happy
times. But we will drive them from our minds, that
the dark foggy days of the present may not become
quite insupportable."

"A second Redeemer," said I, " would be required
to remove from us the seriousness, the discomfort, and
the monstrous oppressiveness of the present state of
things."

"If he came," answered Goethe, " he would be
crucified a second time. Still, we by no means need
anything so great. If we could only alter the Germans
after the model of the English, if we could only have
less philosophy and more power of action, less theory
and more practice, we might obtain a good share of re-
demption, without waiting for the personal majesty of a
second Christ. Much may be done from below by the
people by means of schools and domestic education ;
much from above by the rulers and those in immediate
connection with them.

"Thus, for instance, I cannot approve the requi-
sition, in the studies of future statesmen, of so much
theoretically-learned knowledge, by which young people
are ruined before their time, both in mind and body.
When they enter into practical service, they possess,
indeed, an immense stock of philosophical and learned
matters j but in the narrow circle of their calling, this
cannot be practically applied, and must therefore be
forgotten as useless. On the other hand, what they
most needed they have lost ; they are deficient in the
necessary mental and bodily energy, which i6 quite
indispensable when one would enter properly into
practical life.

"And then, are not love and benevolence also needed
in the life of a statesman, 4 — in the management of men ?
And how can any one feel and exercise benevolence
towards another, when he is ill at ease with himself.

" But all these people are in a dreadfully bad case.
The third part of the learned men and statesmen,
shackled to the desk are ruined in body, and con-
signed/ to the demon of hypochondria. Here there
should be action from above, that future generations
may at least be preserved from a like destruction.

"In the mean time," continued Goethe, smiling,
" let us remain in a state of hopeful expectation as to
the condition of us Germans a century hence, and
whether we shall then have advanced so far as to be
no longer savants and philosophers, but men."

Page 52 into Eckermanns' book linked below for this dream account with Eck. and Goethe. Through the years they actually share quite a bit about their dreams