Begin Again ... Begin Again ... As if once was not enough ...

Begin Again ... Begin Again ... As if once was not enough ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jul 4, 2002  12:56 pm
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
Deep kindness is rooted in deep kindness … or … how a better sense
of essential inter-relatedness makes us better beings …
While my genes were being bombed in England during World War Two,
hers were safer in Ireland.
My genes survived life down the mines, hers the Irish potato famine
(which almost certainly was not a cruel British plot).
And so it goes … for all surviving sets of genes - chance meetings,
lucky survivals in times of mass death, strange events that might be
planned or might not.
Everyone alive today carries genes that have survived events such as
the Black Death, the Great Plague, the Slaughter of the Innocents.
And they all meet up somewhere in the past - in common ancestors.
There were creatures once who were the first humans - or at least so
human-like that we would not recognize them as something essential
different to ourselves. They might have had names like Adam and Eve,
or their names might have been something else - and they most likely
had private pet names for each other that no one else ever learned.
And so it goes for our relations with the rest of the living world.
Go back far enough and you find a common ancestor.
Something like a shrew - or perhaps more like a hedgehog - was
perhaps the common ancestor of all the mammals, including humans,
alive today. Those little creatures were the 'meek' who inherited
the Earth when the giant dinosaurs died out - though they probably
had to struggle with the birds before the matter of the 'dominant'
land animals was settled (perhaps a deal of sorts was done - nature
seems to like mutualistic deals - whereby they became lords of the
air, we became lords of the land, while the sea was mostly left to
the fish (though the dolphins might dispute that).
Actually, the question of 'dominant' species seems to come down to
issues of scale. On the everyday human scale, it is perhaps true to
say that we 'rule' the Earth (though wider Earthy nature might
contradict that - and give us our comeuppance one day). On a smaller
scale it is the ants. On a scale 'below' the ant world it is the
microbes who 'dominate' (and the disease -causing bugs remind us of
their mostly unseen wide-spreading power on regular occasions). … etc
…
Could there be a scale 'above' humans? It is possible - but there is
no direct evidence for it yet. And the SETI type searches for
extraterrestrial life have proved surprisingly fruitless so far. If
the galaxy was, Star-Trek -like, buzzing with high technology life,
then one would expect it to be easy to tune into - somewhat like a
radio … turn the dial and there is plenty of organized static, which,
although seeming not to make much sense, is a sure sign that there is
life out there somewhere. But the SETI searches have not found that
sort of thing. Maybe they have been looking in the wrong way, or in
the wrong place, but it is very surprising that they've draw what
seems to be a total blank (give or take one or two ambiguities).
Perhaps the origin of life is so unlikely that it has only emerged
once in one relatively obscure seeming part of the universe - it is
possible (and if so, that puts us in a position of incredible
responsibility - to preserve life and to spread its better natured
possibilities widely).
The further you go back, the more connections you find, the more you
see the essential relatedness of all things, and the more common
ancestors you find.
At some time, probably quite soon after the origin of the Earth,
there were the first living things. No one is quite sure what they
were, or how they arose, Perhaps they emerged spontaneously from an
unusual combination of dust, water, atmosphere and sunlight - or some
other unusual combination. Perhaps they arrived, liked seeds, from
some other living planet. Or perhaps they required some 'mind-over-
matter' or 'hand-of-god' intervention to get them going.
However it started - and there were perhaps a number of false starts
before life as we know it got going properly - life soon took off,
and spread widely. Look around: it's everywhere. And in the most
unlikely places … cracks in pavements … rocks in the arctic … a
human being's forehead …
Face mites live in the sweat pores of human foreheads, feeding on
little bits of oil and other apparent detritus, and doing us no real
harm. And face mite families and human families tend to live
parallel lives. You are not born with your resident face mite
population, you get them from close facial contacts with your parents
and other relatives - who got theirs in similar ways. You spread
your face mites by close facial contacts with other human beings.
Face mites cross-fertilize when humans cross-fertilize. On her face
now, face mites that are the cross breeds from our facial encounters.
Fertility is a strange thing, and occurs in mysterious, but perfectly
natural, ways.
Before there was life there was dead matter - boiling down (for the
sake of simplicity) to atoms - but with levels below that (and the
particle physicists, as far as I am aware, have yet to found the
fundamental 'lowest' level of matter).
We share atoms as we share everything else. Name any person, living
or dead, and you have atoms that were once in them in you now.
Everyone has little bits of Jesus in them - or anyone else (divine or
otherwise) you might want to name or imagine.
So long as life goes on, we never separate completely.
Bits of her everywhere … around me and within me .. and around and
within everyone else.
You don't have to be a wild unworldly spiritualist to see things
mystically … and you don't have to abandon physical matter in your
speculations … atomic theory contains as much extraordinary mysticism
as wild-seeming supernatural or metaphysical speculations … everyday
physical existence is far from humdrum …
Where do you begin and where do you end?
The skin is not a barrier that separates us from the world - it is
just a way station in a complex neverending flowing process. We
spread on widely, way beyond our fingertips or hair-endings.
'Simple' atoms were made, most probably, in, or shortly after
the 'Big Bang' event that, quite probably, started it all - whether
or not some divine intervention was needed to get things started is
open to debate, and probably always will be.
More complex atoms are made in stars - during nuclear reactions.
The most complex atoms tend to be made in supernovae explosions -
massive bangs that are, effectively, the deaths of stars. Other new
complexities grow out of those apparent death-like events - the
blasts send energy busts into space, causing turbulence, moving
things about, setting up local denser association of matter, higher
energy places, where new stars are born.
And so it goes on … lives, deaths, changes, meetings and partings,
minglings and mergings, break-offs and breakouts - all under the
influence of forces that are within control in some respect, out of
control in others - … by time and chance, by free will and
determination by accident and design …
… so it flows …
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jul 4, 2002  12:59 pm
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
Today it is Independence Day - which is enjoyable in a childish sort
of way, but strikes me as mostly overblown blockbuster crap … [of
course, that is just the personal prejudice of a peace and quiet
loving small town British near-nonentity] …
It does not look much like Day of the Dead ( … zombies … paranoia …
violent men with guns and other weapons … )
Perhaps it is The Birds again today …
… repetition is a form of change …
… you cannot watch the same movie twice … it changes … you change …
you notice different things …
In Hitchcock's The Birds, Tippi [whose career was to some extent made
and then to some extent wrecked by Hitch - a complex man, with an
roving eye for the birds, who apparently led a quiet, respectable
family-centred life] sits in the playground.
Tippi looks extraordinary in her green costume suit.
[I do identify with Tippi when I see her on the screen … and it has
been suggested to me recently that I
am 'transvestite', 'transsexual' and even 'male lesbian' (I
understand that Tippi is a bit of an icon for the dykes) …. I'll
admit to all three - especially the last (such paradoxical notions
delight me) - but only in imaginary parts … singly, or even in
combination, such labels are not the 'real', 'complete', 'essential'
me … Simplify me (if you must) when I am dead - and time reduces us
all - but living humans, myself and all others, are too complex for
such simplistic labellings.]
Tippi seems worried about something. She is smoking nervously, taking
lots of rapid puffs from her cigarette. Such body language is widely
understood as a giveaway sign of tension. And we viewers know why she
should be worried. We can see what she cannot see: the birds are
massing on the climbing frame behind her.
Then she glances round … does a little double-take … and sees what we
can see. A look of extreme terror appears on her face … and she runs
for it - … not, it turns out, to save her own beautiful skin, but to
alert and protect the children at a school nearby …
But gatherings of birds should not perhaps be regarded as sinister
things. They are social animals, and like to get together for a
twitter from time to time.
In Aristophanes's The Birds, a gathering of birds marks the start of
the creation of a new society by a small group of few human
eccentrics. Some dismiss it as cloud-cuckoo-land - head in the clouds
daydreaming … or insanity even. But perhaps it is not such an
unworldly or insane idea - and even if it is a little made, well at
least it is harmless and gentle enough.
In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes, who is a bit of a joker by trade,
describes his idea of what love is all about. Humans were, he says,
once more whole than they are now - and could be made more whole
again in future. Lov, he says, is the force that drives us on to
search for our missing pieces - to see if we can put something better
together for the future.
+++++
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jul 11, 2002  5:14 am
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
ABC's lexicon of love ...
... if only it were as easy as a...b...c...
...
From bittersweet prissy kissy missy k-k-k-katie's l-l-l-lexicon of
love words: '... I see death in your eyes ...'
Thank you, my darling, everlastingly, for you kindly regards.
It was just everyday, throwaway, knockabout stuff, of course ...
But careless talk costs lives ... or, at least, wastes much potential
good life time lost in contemplation of the words ...
And when such stuff from a loved one is not counterbalanced by more
vitalizing visions ...
Well ... it kinda gets you down ...
And you spend a lotta time analysing it ...
...
...
...
But then one day you wonder ...
... was the nihilism really greater in me than in her? ...
And that becomes an ongoing question ...
For the record, it was not me who wrote an essay starting with a
crassly reductive Camus quote about suicide being (or non-being)the
only philosophical question.
L'etranger reduced too much to terrible simples ... didn't get enough
of it ... and missed out on the joys of expansive minded, multiple-
questioned, generous-spirited philosophy as an unnatural
consequence ...
And when you look into someone's eyes, what you see is partly a
reflection of yourself ... n'est pas?
...
...
...
Kitty's follow-up: 'You never make me feel wanted.'
If such a charge is made against you, then you are guilty as
charged ... but ...
'NEVER' my dear?
Absolutes lead astray ... and more likely to hellish realms than
heavenly ones ...
...
...
...
Not so ancient Irish history ...
Like many cosy liberal middle-class Anglo-Irish catholics, Kitty
O'Pity was rather moved (or was it just kitschly 'touched'?) by the
IRA hunger strikers who killed themselves in the 1980s ...
It seemed like (or could be turned into) principled martyrdom - but,
to be frank, it looked like a monstrous bit of mass stupidity to
me ...
And was not suicide supposed to be against the religion? - no one
forced them not to eat.
...
...
...
The bourgeois pretenders do like to enjoy vicariously the unnecessary
premature deaths of others, don't they?
Unnecessary rock and roll suicides ... Sid and Nancy ... Jimi ...
Janice ... Jim ... Kurt ... the list goes on ...
They die for our entertainment ...
What a truly repugnant truth that is ...
...
...
...
Stick to fictions ... it's safer ... no one really dies in the trashy
books and B-Movies ...
...
...
...
While in the real world, eggers on perhaps carry as much of the guilt
as the wild doers - or lonely self-killers ...
And when I think about the corpse-strewn battlefields ... I wonder
about the fair shares of the guilt that should be linked to them ...
Mostly violent male principles principly? ... or an equal share to
femail principled eggers on? ...
Maybe the wailing women of Troy ... and generations of followers ...
enjoyed their griefs too much ...
...
...
...
Bless 'em all ... bless 'em all ... the long and the short and the
tall ...
and forgive 'em all ... because they barely seem to know what they
are doing and saying much of the time ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jul 11, 2002  5:43 am
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
Some festive light relief ...
To parties they go, mix, leave, and in some ways come back again and
in some ways never come again.
I walked up the hill to the party with the tall, slim, elegant, quiet
woman from Cambridge. We exchanged some private words.
I spend much of the party talking to the short, chubby, clumsy,
talkative woman from London. As ever, she had extraordinary ideas to
share. That night it was that there was no essential difference
between pretending to be drunk and actually being drunk - and to test
the hypothesis she started the night pretending to be drunk and then
got more and more literally drunk as the night wore on. We also
exchanged words on the subject of whether cliches assisted thoughts
and feelings or stifled them. 'It makes you think, don't it?' was
among the considered phrases.
I walked down the hill from the party with a large group of people
including an indescribable bear-like Anglo-Italian Ferrari-man
anthropologist. An empty bus appeared at the side of the road (or was
there all along). It a prop the prankster anthroplogist had to made
use of ... in an instant he was in the cab ... and we were all going
on a summer holiday ... for a few more instants ... and then we
walked on with tedious realism, leaving him to catch us up.
A few weeks later (or it might have been earlier) Ms Choosy gave me
a card inviting me to a party at an obelisk site that was far from
the pyramids - but which always called them to my mind because the
Cleopatra of my imagination lived there. The invite said: 'Please
bring a botle but not a friend.' So I brought two friends and no
bottle. But one of the friends almost did not make it ...
On the way he had made a crude joke combining Cocky Cleo's wandering
eye and my seemingly unrequited devotion to he. Fists almost flew,
but I held back - it was just a joke, and he was normally a good
comedian.
There are bad jokes. And when people get the context and timing
wrong, and don't show enough fellow feeling, they can almost totally
spoil happy comical days and nights. Not everything is a potential
laughing matter - and people who seem intent on making a mockery of
everything can seem nihilistic rather than harmonizing.
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jul 11, 2002  2:34 pm
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
To get your bearings in a state of some general confusion, it seems
that from time to time you have to plumb the depths … your own and
others' …
… and there is perhaps much unfortunate and unpleasant stuff to
dredge through yet…
Haughty boy liked to listen to the sweet sounds and to watch the
graceful motions of Ms Oboe d'Amore …
… but he never touched her …
There always seem to be fresh diversion cropping up…,
In this week's front page exclusive, the expressive oboist justly
represents the painful sounds of rape victims…
It is a terrible issue … and rapists deserve lengthy confinement when
their guilt is beyond reasonable doubt …
But matters of consent are often ambiguous … and the feelings in
consenting acts are often mixed …
The simples issues are sometimes terribly reduced to: … the society
for cutting up men insists that all men are rapists given the chance …
It is not necessarily naturally so … and generalized false
accusations make the gentler men feel generally despised and
distrusted … and can be paralysing…
And can there be raping of minds?…
It is possible to go too far in penetrating others' inners …[And TSE
regularly reminds me that humans cannot stand too much reality.]
Nevertheless …
Sometimes the oboe player did sound out her bleak midwinter worries
in public …
She had watched film actors play out the squalid deaths of Sid and
Nancy in the Chelsea Hotel room, and she had been appalled by it …
but a little bit of her had been drawn to the sordid attractions of
such filthy finalities …and that troubled her …
So she slipped her concerns to the haughty seeming ponderer - as they
sat smoking their cigarettes … sharing an ashtray …and … through the
poisonous cigarette fumes that passed between them … and the minutes
off their full lifespans they were taking from themselves and each
other in the process …perhaps they were enjoying some mildly sublime
Sid and Nancy moments of their own …
The shared bits of bleaker missed her and his misty musings slipped
into a dark back room of his mind … and in the many years that
followed, during which he went through many living deaths himself, he
got the squalid possibilities out to examine from time to time … and
sometimes to play with - it has to be admitted that parts of him
relished the darker, more squalid stuff …
Eventually …
He answered that she had perhaps been fortunate only to have seen the
fictional version - there was worse to be witnessed in the verite
footage in the DOA documentary on which Alex based his fictionalised
film.
It seemed safer (and kinder) to keep darker possibilities in the
realm of ritualised fiction - away from actuality.
It was notable that, with the exception of the Gary playing Sid, the
actors in Alex's film did worse role-playing jobs than the real Sex
Pistols did when playing themselves. The real Sid [not his real
name - he was a John, dear in some respects, not so dear in others …
like all Johns perhaps] seemed to forget that he was playing a role
in the Sex Pistols plot. He played it too much for real … and the
deadly consequences were murder and suicide - vile, pathetic or
tragic, according to judgement.
Partly happily, partly sadly, the other Sex Pistols survived into
tragicomical flabby middle-age and beyond …
So it flowed …
Revision questions for life-long learners:…
Is there a nihilistic death drive locked in a neverending struggle
with erotic life-drive?
Do squalid images of dissolution and death on the small scale
represent possible eventual universal dissolution and death on the
grand scale?
Perhaps …
But life does seem to have a slight edge over death …and in the
struggle against the dying of the light, the tragicomedy of the grand
scheme of things does seem biased towards the comical direction …
with the force of love tending it that way …
The bleak post-punk northern Joy Division got it wrong … it is not
love that tears us apart … it is the absence of love …[And Ian of
that often joyless sounding group died another unnecessary rock and
roll death when he was torn apart by too many lost transmissions and
too much isolating distance from love.]
And while she occasionally played a few bleak tunes, Ms Oboe d'Amore
usually played more uplifting ones … and was always delightful when
flower gathering .. even when wandering on wastelands …
….
Be [re]assured … my aim is true …
… free willing life-lovers can plant more and more seeds … and deny
the nihilistic death-worshippers more and more ground - both
externally and internally …
…
…
…
Quakery side-thoughts: …There was much that was quakerish in the
haughty seeming boy's ways of thinking. … But he was often puzzled by
how much quakerism he seemed to have absorbed without direct
instruction. … Truly, it seemed, when there was loving and friendly
commonality of general outlook, much could be communicated between
minds without speaking or other direct communications. … That
possibility surprised him greatly. Neverthless, much seemed lacking
when communication was not more direct. …
…
…
…
Life's little ironies: …
Catty was the biggest Elvis Costello fan, but Ally got my favourite
of that fake-named Elvis's songs. Ally bought Pretenders albums in
an attempt to get some more rock cred, but Catty got more of the
haunting Birds of Paradise tune. Yet it is all the English roses,
spreading (because nature does not observe petty human national
boundaries) to beautiful cosmopolitan bloomers, who get the best of
bittersweet The Pretenders pieces. [Meanwhile, too many of that
group also died premature rock and roll deaths … although thankfully
Chrissie still sings on in her beautiful off-key way …]
And … for the records … the wind cries yet another name in my
favourite Jimi song. [While Kitty got the wrong Jimi - not
Sommerville, you faggy haggy fool, but Hendrix! (Does she still like
to keep the crop-haired blondie's hanging on the telephone?)]
…
…
…
But … when all is said and done in this present ridiculously
serious /. seriously ridiculous sequence … and if humanity makes it
to what might be a mysterious achievement … with all the expansive
and generous good will in the world ... should we be space-ship
building? … or diving for pearls? … and is it not possible to do
both? - with potentially endlessly wonderful consequences …

+++++