this is work in progress or homilies or miscellaneous items

that don’t warrant a page by themselves

or seem to fit better here





pending poems index





chronological order is from the bottom to the top of the page





audio files can be complemented by listening to them with the eyes closed







there’s something toxic about something false being passed off as true

ezekiel’s cherubim and wheels, the monsters and brutal turning circles of life we all deal with, the eyes of the absolute everywhere

2020

i really likefrom theemma, a sense of a woman going from the support of one man to another comes across quite clearly

with mansfield park, jane said good bye to reality and sensibly just wrote nice ending fantasies after that, more commercial surely and more pallative for herself

so much of her life is rewritten more happily in these books

more driver

almost the worst trap of "zen" is the flagrant dishonesty in claiming its not a religion and doesn’t have beliefs

one of the core beliefs is in the historical existance of a real person called "shakyamui buddha" which is a toxic lie, no such person ever existed

once you scratch the surface, there's a heap of other beliefs, for instance the soto belief in zazen as some final state of being and eihei dogen's role as a an uncriticisable "prophet"

any ceremonies, statuary etc also are implicit beliefs in the efficacy of the same

all clouds of bullshit hovering over "nothing", mentally ill and diseased, the putrid miasma drifting through the lives of those involved, the last people you would take the word of as i learnt to my detriment

you can fight religion till the cows come home

it still wins

many against one

i have never liked buddhism, to me it has always been total rubbish and upon investigation owes a huge amount to to the greek philosophy that came with alexander the great in his conquests and "shakyamuni" is not an historical character but part of the usual religious soap opera fiction, in this case, even the appellation "shakyamuni" is lifted from one of the persian kings

,

it disturbs me that these people venerate complete bullshit and lies as though the farce means somethingnever bothering to do any real research or investigation and as a consequence are stuck out in some far away "disneyland" of inane absurdity

what are they doing?, its just mentally ill

you can’t change people, life is this pattern of continual regression and repairing the consequences only to regress again

isn’t all religion false advertising and actually "lying" ?

you can’t change the world, i just take what is useful as do most people, problems occur on agreement of what is regarded as "useful"

SARS-CoV-2

24

thecoronavirus is detectable for up toin aerosols, up to four hours on copper, up tohours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel

the virus can’t go through skin, but can the mucous membranes of the mouth, eyes and nose

just ramp up the virulence and its the next gen bioweapon

“ a hierarchical bayesian model, called, is introduced in which each sample in the dataset is represented as a combinatorial mixture over a finite set of latent processes, which are expected to correspond to biological processes

parameters in the model are estimated using efficient variational methods ”

is a good example of a complex conjunction of latent combinatorial processes

"karma" and "rebirth" can mean a lot of things, but i can’t see any validity to a literal interpretation of these concepts, they are entirely inconsistent with anything except an imaginary world view

i don’t think they are accepted in "western buddhism" anyway, though they may be "de rigueur" in asian and tibetan

is what we see

all there is ?

no its not

such a simple thought

yet so far reaching

i think poetry is a form of computation

not numeric but verbal

the splicing of sums

what is narcissism ?

am i narcissistic ?

are you narcissistic ?

what is narcissism ?

tchaikovsky’s "hymn of the cherubim"by the ussr ministry of culture chamber choir

coronavirus

have infectivity, will travel

virulence may vary

if you have people around, nothing makes any sense at all

if you have people around, nothing makes sense at all

if you have people around

nothing makes sense

or

anything

at all

if you have people around

nothing makes sense

or

anything

BCR

U

when you look at the chan/zen records like say theor mumonkan, they do place a strong emphasis on "the enlightened man" being "nmoved" in distress, what that tells me is there’s a large element of crap in those stories, however this notion of some "practice" or "attainment" or whatever leaving one "unmoved" by the vagaries of the world is a more fundamental problem of "effability" vs "ineffability", interestingly islam unsuccessfully attempts to address this by using a prophet rather than the "son of god"

,

"practice" is a distinct play for "effability" and i’m not surprised (ed. brad warner) you show yourself sensitive to the issue, becauseby promoting "practice" you do ask in terms of what and what for, if some say it makes one more stoic, you, on the other hand are trying to nudge it back into "ineffability" by saying "not so" and actually the paradigm also plays out in terms of guided meditation versus an "instructionless" shikantaza

because soto treats dogen as essentially a "prophet" they don’t accomodate his changing viewpoint throughout his life (how can a prophet change his viewpoint ?) and i feel that while dogen in his earlier years definitely weighs in on the side of effable, in his later years he took the more sensible approach of avoiding the question entirely

what can i say brad, you have a good feel for the rough patches in your buddhist zen beliefs, but don’t seem to take an investigation any further

when there is a contradiction in the base, you are going to spend your entire life fighting a losing battle

you just have to look at the hundreds of thousands of christian, islamic, judaic and buddhist books to know what "losing is", all, with the exception of ten or twenty, being a complete waste of time and are more akin to luis borge’s "the library of babel" than anything else (a good read btw)

(- 18D )

an man on the r|optometerywas accused of "ableism" for being concerned about the possibility of passing a girlfriends extreme myopiaand the other degenerative effects in the eye from that onto their childen

8D

it is quite a reasonable concern given that his sister was a minus, however recent research has shown a lack of violet light in childhood leads to underexpression of a gene that supresses elongation of the axial length of the eye

genetic conditions can sometimes be easiest discerned in a grandparent, but of course you can get mutations in the grandchild and her parents, siblings of course are huge indicators, but it may be that the condition is not genetic

he has a rational concern and its the sort of calculation women certainly make

there is a difference between thoughtless discrimination and rational concerns, the accuser was misusing a valid social construct for her own emotional needs

i do think in general much more thought needs to be given to the likely quality of life a child might have before conception, one certainly sees some bizarre cases of parents failing to abort

,

there’s somethingexactly what i don’t know

a couple of vincent van gogh quotes found by jason

no-one

passers-by

one may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yetever came to sit by it.see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way

i experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. i am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

(explaining a fugue state)

“ what does your wife say ? ”

i don’t have one

and

one doesn’t have me

so many people

wanting to entangle me in their lives

i try to keep out

if you are talked out or have nothing of import to say

then step back

and observe

40%

K2

B12

my immune promoting supplements are taurine, topicalhydrogen peroxide, germanium,, vitamin A and copper sebacate

the

the

at its core a slick group connived fraud with auction houses and galleries as the institutional players

90%

you just have to step back and look,of this modern and even not so modern art is not worth a cent, an inflatable balloon fuelled by easy money, drugs, the stupid rich and cunning poor and not so poor because of their cunning

art suits you i think because you weren’t exposed to english as a baby

you will always have shortfalls in english expression

jason later wrote a poem about it

as a baby i was spoken to in portuguese

later forced to speak english

mastering neither

lost somewhere

in

between

like a mute

i speak in other ways

it always pays to reread what one writes to fulfil an editing function

“ an idea is a point of departure and no more. as soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought ”

a pablo picassoand its what i notice about great painters like van gogh and monet, they know how to express themselves at a very high level which is more than i can say for these modern slick con artists like damien hirst and jeff koons and their rubbish that the media just lap up, insincerity in every word

napoleon is a surprising purveryor of very good quotes

i notice in writing you need to draw from a lot of sources so i read quite a bit

its no good going "soto" style — just you alone with the universe, that way things take a thousand years to figure out and we don’t live that long

also to be a successful artist, you have to be able to spin the bullshit or at least argue cogently and that takes a lot of background knowledge and dealing with people and all their crazy sophistical tricks

sugar shortens your life by disruptingthereby causing the accumulation of uric acid

ACE2

2019

why children are much less affected by the coronvirus is they have less of thereceptor (that thecoronavirus) in their lungs

i don’t know why creationsts skip viruses being made by god, but they do

he’ll have to up the virulence on this one, not a real plague by any means

louis rossmann cycles aroundtimes square late at night

to write about

emotional turmoil

break-up

or relationship

the food of popular lyrics

,

i can’ti don’t know why

oh

have

to be in "samadhi" or "bliss"

the mis-understanding

mis-understood

so far out

its hard to fathom

the first rule of sophism

don’t ask

if your best interests

are served

by deception

using words in a new way

to uncover

something

unseen before

you can tell the real poets

they successfully pinch your "stuff"

not many of those

fortunately

,

irina bogdanovich is a hell of athere’s a whole world of great eastern european performers we are not really familiar with

patricia janečková

when the muse strikes it strikes

i had a long day in town yesterday and so went to bed early and woke several times in the night, but in one of those times poems or homilies keep coming and i jumped out of bed to write them down

28

over an hour or so, jumping out of bed each time

34

in total including those written in town

life

a race against time

time wins

you can’t beat it

unless

you go outside

time

what is god ?

a word made meaningless

by the ignorant masses

beliefs and opinions

untempered by observation

humans live and die

believing anything

i used to think all censorship was bad, especially as i was usually on the wrong end of it, but later setting up my own reddit board, i was obliged to ban actually most people posting (the mongol hordes coming across from r|zen) because their agenda was that of schizophrenics, only concerned with entrenching their own ideas and absolutely closed to taking seriously any other viewpoints, in other words they ruin the board with their aggression and stupidity

so my view now is that censorship is necessary, but its skill that needs to be developed, when done well its not really censorship, but simply keeping a message board low maintenance for the owner and productive for genuine readers

,

being so concerned about censorship, i have observed over many years now your (ed. brad warner) very hands off approach(lol, i have just remembered the hardcore zen blog message board days, a real "wild west" is there ever was one) and wondered about it, ideally you would have skilled moderators "pruning" the message board, but the level of skill required is so high and rare that the appointment of moderators just leads to them creating a message board that reflects favourably their own ideas, so i don’t know what you do, you would think a supposed "serious student" of zen would be able to "skill up" but they never seem to which is just part of my general conclusion of the reality of zen which is that its just a bunch of bullshitting pretenders never prepared to put any real work in

so in terms of your vlog, zen is an illusion, it certainly can’t be taught and as we live there are always mountains of rubbish to trawl through to find the requisite diamonds, but nobody sane does it, its all the wrong reward/work ratio, you have to be sane within the insanity, can you even convey what the diamond looks like and why reality spins around its depth of sparkle, i don’t think so, needs to be discovered

i think my conclusion about censorship is you have to do it yourself, once you appoint moderators you in effect get a communal ownership reflecting communal interests and the real zen is solipsistic, not communal, so you have the censorship side of things right, it just reflects your style and situation, commercial realities impose limitations

the net, if you choose to use it that way is quite good for building social expression and analytic skills, even chronic narcissists can benefit

,

,

when you see people being defensiveyou have to ask yourselfwhat are they being defensive about as their real motivation is usually disguised

belief systems are adopted as a substitute for real thought and sooner or later it catches up with them

the intensity of sophistical endeavor in today’s society is just amazing

the young seem weaned on it

why such an intensity of sophistic focus on what can only be peripheral to you ?

i’m sorta interested

how you can be so concealing

and narcissistic

and put such an intensity of attention

into sophism

that is against

your interest

and benefit

doesn’t the degree

of ratbaginess

fraud

promiscuity

infidelity

and

perversion

in

religion

raise

any

questions

with

you ?

apparently

not

with

most

emily dickinson

barely wrote enough

to be a poet

far from being a recluse

her life

was

actually

quite busy

not sleeping for a while

then sleeping

the brain

washes

all

its

laundry

the attraction of greta thunberg

is heron things

she’s a clunky autistic

but all the same

a thinker

she got lucky with that sailing trip

it will never leave her

the real difference

between

amateur and professional

is not social categories

but doing enough work

to create a statistical spread

of quality

when you are wounded

best lie low

the scavengers

await

what has zen taught you ?

to be concealing

and fake everything

these people treat the celibacy

of the old masters

as an irrelevant triviality

while they fuck their way

to oblivion

the creeps

creeping around the web

because in real life

no-one will go near

their trail of slime

the half dishonest

are worse than

the fully dishonest

they

sucker

you

in

more completely

U.S.

theenglish education

talentless prima donnas

made

more

narcissistic

and

glory

in

it

keep away

there's nothing worse

than dealing

with a mental breakdown

after they

become wreckage

huntington’s disease

has its shadow lands

unfortunately

the muted blast

for those

without

the

full

expression

what the net has done

is bring the artistically talented

in much closer contact

with

the

curmudgeons

its

form

of

death

for

both

the people on these

"special interest"

message boards

their fawning replies

when agreed with

and

extreme aggression

when contradicted

they are

the

absolute

pits

if i tell you

to go away

i don’t mean

come here

mean

"go away"

the doormat rebels

so many concealing frauds

on the net

expecting me to run after them

mummy’s boys and girls

indignant when i tell

them

to

piss

off

entitled arseholes

don’t get

they are not

wanted

but won’t change

they love themselves

as

they

are

an arts education

majoring

in

con - ceit

an arts education

majoring

in

self - deceit

today’s generations

brains of vapour

narcissism

and

indignation

so abrasive

when contradicted

even your reply

has an outstanding level of deceit

its narcissistic

and concealing

we all have our griefs

its not a road we can share

the loss is our own

and doesn't

transfer

canada

a nation of druggies

money

and

brain damage

so many people

with no interest

in anything

except

their own stupidity

the religious

have

no interest

in anything

except

their

own

stupidity

the world seems unreal to me

can i help it ?

the world seems unreal to me

some days

things feel edgey

everything not right

but that’s not how it turns out

quite a bit right in fact

the unstable world

a shell

spinning on the sand

turned by the waves

i was in the woolworths car park

out of nowhere

a young canadian man comes up to me

asking if i know where he can buy some weed

i tell him

you canadians are always on drugs

he didn’t like that but wasn’t fazed

they never are

my mother was right

the clothes i wear make me look like a drug dealer

a mirror world

i was expecting inversion

or some difference at least

but no

its exactly the same

ed. i was waiting at the hairdressers and i noticed four large mirrors in front of the chairs reflecting the trees and outside through the windows behind me and thought, that’s a mirror world and its just the same

as you get older you notice how hard it is to argue with people in their prime

right or wrong, they will outlive you for a start

,

sobrad is

my comment

you’re a bit slouched to the right and i think slow kinhin is a good idea to demonstrate in the context of zazen as well as people might get the idea that you can sit for unbroken long periods when the reality is its not "safe"

also not everyone likes being so close to a wall visually

that bell bowl tone is not great, you can have a big fund raising to replace it and sasaki style, skim it off to fund the "geisha", sex and money he was the most genuine and only honest "zen master"

i notice in the other comments, its still all "an observer sport", nobody actually does it, that’s actually a bit weird, something the net has done, made zazen an observer sport, prior to the net the only context you were likely to observe zazen would also mean you are doing it

,

"brad has been sitting for ten minutes and is definitely entering "samadhi", but no, is that right eye tiwtching — mara at work here, we’ll just have to hold "our breath" (little self depreciating laugh)yes the eyelid has stopped moving, samadhi it is, no, the back is too bent, the excitement is building, but there’s plenty "of track " left, we’re on the edge of our seats here, samadhi or not ?"

what’s interesting about modern physics is a road of comprehensive understanding recedes as fast as it approaches

japan seems to specialise in weird corners of the entertainment universe, a hypnotic work by eitetsu hayashi titledon taiko drums

why is an intelligent account of actually getting the coronavirus so rare ?

a billion words andby dr clare geradao of her infective course is the only one that makes sense i have seen

ah, she was quoted directly and at length, the stupid journalist has messed the rest up with the usual misinformed blather

definitely not fun, i wouldn’t have taken the paracetamol though, it disrupts the bodies natural immune response

jason writes

waking up this morning i have a couple of ideas to make into art

i think they’re not that good and don’t write them down

well now i’ve remembered that a couple of of "not good" ideas are better than nothing

,

what i do for "meditation" is go and sit out on the woodpile for say an hour or longer usually post midnight, there’s just the night sky, often a bit of moon, no sound of traffic, only the frogs, crickets, a dog barking in the distanceowls, whatever,

,

i’m not conscious of "meditating", i move occasionallyi’m not really doing anything except hanging out there, not bothering with the world too much

i quite like doing it, its not painful or joint damaging, i don’t do it because "i have to" but i want to

you do a lot of this and it takes a lot and something slowly happens

you have to do a lot of this, just doing short amounts doesn’t work which is why the old masters were celibate

it just doesn’t translate to the bullshit married with kids business and all the pretence of sanctity and the zombies mumbling clichés to each other

i think zazen did open me up to this because i wasn’t used to the degree of self observation you get with zazen, but within a couple of years you should move beyond it

no-one

what i notice with "net zen" is i almost seewho has actually done any real self observation, they are all busy engaged defending their self esteem or ideas or wrong minded experience

pathetic pretenders, disgusting people with no self understanding at all, utterly unable to answer even one point in my posts

how about "the coronavirus visualisation"

just imagine your lungs filling up with who knows what

you are having trouble breathing

you are going to die

you notice that you are not dying

you notice that you don’t have the coronavirus

there you are, cured of having something you never had

that’s zen

when the trust goes, the relationship goes

what men are for from the female perspective is to be manipulated by them

caution : integrity may vary

what men are for from the female perspective is to be manipulated by them

you’re a fool to ever trust anybody fully

even mothers turn on children

you’re a fool to ever trust anybody fully

higher-order aberrations andare why i’d never get lasik or any corneal refractive surgery done

the eye is a pressurized balloon, you can’t expect too much stability from it

“ yet tens of millions have had corneal refractive surgery, and have not experienced any destabilization with negative effects even 20-30 years after their treatment ”

my comment

that’s not correct, relatively stable within five to eight years i’d say, but not after that, and actually some people have trouble from the start

i don’t feel the industry is being honest about potential long term problems and also cataract surgery being promoted for "glasslessness" and not the replacement of opaque lenses also fits into the category of "iatrogenic"

interestingly the original model for the cornea goes back to wolfgang goethe, that true polymath who came up with the idea that inflatable domes naturally separated into meridians, its mind boggling if you think about it and when you understand its implication you would be naturally cautious about any refractive corneal surgery

the other side is it can give real medical benefit where there’s severe vision problems, that is the risk is balanced by substantial reward, same with lens replacement for high grade cataracts

my feeling is that refractive eye surgery and lens replacement are straying too far into the "cosmetic" area where medical risk is not balanced by benefit

from a personal point of view of one who has held back, its all to my benefit as the income from this "overuse" is driving the rapid development of the maths, equipment and procedures, the safety and effectiveness of the industry operations are steadily improving, and long may it do so

the unsung benefit of glasses is they don't interfere biologically with the eye, even contacts have their problems

,

if you ask what is infinity, what isetc.the whole thing is unending, you are stuck in recursive "voynich"

this is where einstein stood out, he managed to work a way out of the recursive properties of light

theories are a "meta" on actuality, that distance will always lead to imperfections in the meta

its just as well metas contain intrinsic errors, otherwise there would be no existance

when you get more familiar and experienced with something, the notion of favourites falls away, everything has something to offer in terms of strengths and weaknesses, even the very bad

“ maybe no one reads the tsurezuregusa here (ed. brad’s vlog) as who is interested in idle ramblings or zuihitsu literature ? ”

you’ve never read it have you nor are familiar with the fact its one of the most famous books of world literature

there’s no kudos in being dumb and ignorant except amongst zennists is there ?

dogen, ryokan, hakuin, three very literary and artistic people, yet the stinking mobs in their blinkers think there is nothing outside their own ignorance

ZEN IS A LITERARY CONSTRUCT, LIKE ALL RELIGIONS

WW2

the usa made no attempt to indoctrinate japan afterin the way they did to germany and courted one of its biggest(the emperor was another) to meet its own political ends of gaining the countries support in the cold war

it explains a lot about how japan is today and yukio mishima was not entirely a crazy anomaly, though dated

US

unbelievable, rommel wasn't such a great general, what he had was the advantage of detailed tactical information on what the british were doing because the italians and germans could read the code transmissions by themilitary attaché

what i look for in art is depth, complexity and aesthetic

that’s the trouble with modern art, its shallow, simple and has no aesthetic

the japanese are veryin what they absorb from other cultures, the original borg

a poem by courtney peppernell

the stars have died

and left their light to you

remember this when

you feel weak, worthless and blue

my reply

in you starlight lives on

all you have to do

is

see it

françoise gilot on usingin painting

the days evaporate

friday brings the weekend

saturday and sunday evaporate

bringing monday

which

evaporates

“ i need insane poetry

i am working on the next part of my dungeon and dragons campaign. one of the side missions has the players discover a book of madness. if you read it, or listen to someone read it, it sounds like the greatest poetry ever written ! it is actually just the insane ramblings of a mad man. over time, it will drive others to madness as well

i would like some odd/insane/nonsensical poems that i can read at the session ”

i’m a madman

discovered in that madhouse

D&D

campaign

when it ends

the madhouse abates

except for

me

weaving my woof

under

your dreams

an odd thing is neither of the children of pablo picasso and franciose gilot (also an exceptional painter) had any interest or real ability in painting at all

it seems everything is constant warfare

don’t you get tired of it ?

i do

sometimes i just drive like a train in the wrong direction

i can’t help myself

,

DNA

this is what we all come fromand recombination of

the body speaks like a person

do this

don’t do this

ignore at your peril

the body speaks like a person

don’t do this

do this

ignore at your peril

nature speaks like a person

do this

don’t do this

ignore at your peril

nature speaks like a person

don’t do this

do this

ignore at your peril

to say life has a point or is pointless

makes

the

same mistake

to say a life has a point or is pointless

makes

the

same

mistake

sometimes a poem is like following a fractal through

a sequence of coherence

in

a mill of randomness

the religious add up their sums

and get an answer

ignoring that there is

no answer in their lives

that the endless arrives nowhere

,

a bit of a riff on the notion of "balance"that much touted panacea of modern life

"the good die young" what "balance" is there in that ? don’t look for it and it won’t bother you

no-one

wonderful materially successful people and poor arseholes and vice versa, its all there andhas any influence on it

"lady justice" wants carefully looking at and the scene in the ancient egyptian book of the dead in which a deceased person’s heartagainst the feather of truth is about all that can be said

you can and can’t extricate intelligence from experience

people’s intelligence varies because their experience varies

it folds into different types

you can’t extricate intelligence from expereince

people’s intelligence varies because their experience varies

it folds into different types

jason supplied the first two lines, i finished it

ultra sane

comically insane

the world a fake

a real

a laugh

a cry

ordered

a mess

let the earth

touch

the sky

from theof july the 29th, 2019

“ the plaintiff's memorandum demands millions in settlement, while the defendants have said they will pay nothing, demanding in fact to be paid quite a large sum by the plaintiff. additionally, one of the memoranda begins with an expression of difficulty in "finding the appropriate tone for the settlement letter" because it supposedly is "so disingenuous and contradicted by the evidence"

of course, the lawyers for each side can assert these polar positions if they choose. and perhaps the expressions of annoyance may be merited in the appropriate case. they often are. but when we examine the polar positions of the parties, it does not seem that at this point in time a settlement conference is likely to have any chance of success ”

akiane, but i think the root cause is she has lost the "prodigy status" and its just bad or mediocre art like anything else of that nature and the money dried up leaving a lot of resentment with the business partners

you’ll never get a cent back, the whole matter is too ambiguous to get a favourable resolution in court and even the judge is saying its a waste of time, and that's not just reading between the lines, he as good as says that

how many proverbs are there to the effect the righteous do not prevail ?

well, that’s what they mean, the righteous do not prevail, when the money dries up, so do the agreements

genius requires a lot of traversing through the wastelands of schizophrenia, better done as an observer than a participant

what we call language is just a particularization of a genetic cognitive construct

no one language has any particular supremacy over another, they are just various verbal embodiments

,

if they know the grammarthen its already there in the brain, there’s no way a very plastic learning process could give that sort of language sophistication so quickly

,

mexico is athere’s no law and order

just shows what happens if gangs run things, the "cartel" is just another "gang"

brad warner is really depressed

his

my reply

lol, i was able to visualise you giving a vlog looking miserable from having the actual virus and saying how it wasn’t so bad, but was really quite bad but were able to survive this because of the practice

happy corona virus !

you are actually really depressed, i don’t know that’s its a good idea to vlog when you are that depressed from the public image point of view, a bit real for all the fakes reading here for their entertainment and "fluffy pillow" comfort

anti-depressant

exercise is the bestand sitting down for too long is a depressant, i actually wouldn’t sit zazen while you are like this, but do, say a walking meditation or just "move"

ed. i didn’t post this but i think brad is suffering to some degree from the neural imprint of huntington’s, the rigidity and non adaptability

anti-depressant

exercise is the bestand sitting down for too long is a depressant

religion

a literary farce

projected

into

the real

results vary

from

tragedy

to humour

to

murder

to the asinine

how can people spend their lives

gluing scraps of paper together to make meaningless ?

“ it can take a year to go through one sheet of paper ”

che guevara was a scion of the middle class, how he ended up a feared guerilla is beyond me, except he moved well outside his sphere of competence with the

to be a successful or competent artist or writer you have to produce enough work to get the "statistical effect" to come into play

the problem is one can never tell what work one does will really take with others because in terms of one’s own perspective, they are all sort of the same

but if you produce a lot of work, a few will really take and you can’t tell ahead what they will be

there’s a lot of areas of life this holds for as a general principle, even the raising of children and why one should be so careful not to favour one over another

"re-interpreted"

re-interpreted

"re-interpreted"

apparently ramana maharshi isby his "disciples" rather than translated and i think dogen is substantiallytoo and japanese "zen" itself is to a degreeaccording to western philosophical ideas as a result of its "reforming" in the meiji era

no-one

its an outstanding example of the narrow minded stupidity of soto thatreads the tsurezuregusa, almost contemporary to dogen and written by a buddhist monk in kyoto, you get a feel for how strange and different the culture was

i think the trouble with soto is they never grow out of meditation, its useful to a certain point, but beyond that is the road to crazy and boy, real life observation says that happens in spades

its hard to find a more hackneyed and overworked cliché than the "i don’t know" on the spiritual circuit

in fact what seems to define the "spiritual circuit" is stupidity, pomposity and institutionalised plagiarism

MMA

,

because of the induced brain damage,is a form of truea partial killing of the person

very different

we are constantly exposed to clouds of infectious aerosols, in fact doctors waiting rooms are particularly bad

a different context for the coronavirus

south-west

in taiz, in yemen’s

children needexposure to stop becoming short sighted

that coupled with circadian rhythm synchronisation makes "blue blocking" a more complex issue than appears

you know its a good play when you can’t bear to see the end, it is

lasik as i understand it is not permanent, like you are doing well if it lasts eight years and i think it increases the "fragility" of the eye

you can be miscast in terms of the novel, but its not miscast in termswhich is its own story

i think what everyone misses about jane austen’s stories, are the extent to which they are drawn from her life and the people in them are relatives and people she knew

she was also a socially constructed celibate, that’s where the intensity comes from

uv protection from optical media is beneficial, the problem is when the cutoff moves too far into the circadian rhythm signalling blue or actually even

existance is no mystery

there is something else

that

is

a mystery

a quiet evening

past midnight

two cats

going berserk

climbing a tree

we are all on the tip of an improbability

so extreme

it undermines our existance

everybody so full of themsleves

despite the disasters

how many full moons have i seen ?

how many more will i see ?

tonight i wondered

people differ in their views of nursing homes, probably age and need reduces one’s skepticism

inverse‐occlusion

“ oursuggest a noninvasive training strategy for adult human amblyopia based on anprocedure combined with physical exercise ”

,

here’s another onemovie viewing

just in the last couple of years, there are several new strategies for amblyopia, the general thrust appears to be the emphasis on cortical plasticity

“ it is now well established that amblyopia is associated with cortical dysfunction at monocular and binocular sites ed. in the brain ”

,

"jack-up"

the art worldi bet no money changed hands, its afor publicity

everybody will be in on it, the supposed buyer, the gallery, the artist, the article writer

74

if you are overand male, have coronary or lung problems, or smoke you have a statisically hugely greater chance of dying from the coronavirus

its just nature’s way of clearing out the "rest homes"

1936

adolf hitlerat theolympics

,

that was before he gotmore like an "autistic rock"

1936

pervertin wasn’t developed until a year after theolympics

bill gates rocks too

ed. this seems to have been misunderstood, the point being that hitler and bill weren’t on meth but do an autistic behavior, something on occasion i have noticed myself doing

,

i am so critical of other peoplebut i am, myself a great lotus eater

its taken a long time for me to get a bead on brad warner, but i think he suffers an intellectual downsizing from his very poor vegetarian diet

that is, poor, even in terms of vegetarian restrictions

zen, is of course for the intellectually "downsized"

rowan farrow is almost certainly woody allen’s son, look at the ears and nose and actually, ability

its an interestingmess

you can tell a golum

he’s a golum

he’s not going to stop being a golum

indeed he thinks it admirable

jason’s latestis in the right direction, denser and more complex images

an artwork has to be constructed to the artist’s meaning, yet able to convey it to "outsiders"

the point of a poem

is not to resolve

into "meaning"

the trouble with people

is you

lose

yourself

sometimes i think such nonsense

i catch myself at it

it blows my mind

droplets collisions

anne sexton’s suicide was chilling, planned over six months right down to getting her daughter to agree to be her literary executor

self-execution

a very determined, she pretty well told everyone she was going to do it too

if you want to understand existance, its at the end of a long chain of very low probabilities, but looking from the end of the chain is not surprising because one can only look from that end

j.m. daughter of the hurunui, rangiora and the wild west sea

they do earn their money on "reality" shows

nation-wide

they go in a fool and come out with areputation as a fool

religion is just intellectual "slumming", by the "slum dwellers" as it happens

i quite likebecause its saying the universe is in a relative state of order so there is a slope for it to flow down the gradient to disorder, in the same way biological life does

there’s this very successful mechanistic explantion of the "why" of life and consciousness so no supernatural notions of external cause are necessary, but there is something else going on and i wouldn’t say it is entirely unrelated to the mechanistic explanation, perhaps in abstract principle like observation affecting outcomes and uncertainty

another

i think a good poem is quite densely packed with a multitude of meanings and when you unpack it to give a meaning, you are only giving part of the story

self-publishing

self-editing

i think if you are writing andlike me, you have to have a definiteprocess to be "healthy", which in the end, if done properly comes out to be much more effective than another person editing

i begrudge the time i spend "editing" and "laying up" my "suitcase" pages and not the writing, but that’s the healthy balance

or like fernando pessoa and emily dickinson i could just toss it in a trunk and in emily’s case, ask for the writing to be burnt, fortunately her "friends" had more sense, i don’t think her immediate family would have had the same sense

years ago i read the account of nikolai gogol being persuaded to burn the second volume of "dead souls" by an idiot priest, that account made a big impact on me, i never destroy any of what i write and even some photos taken years ago of my time in springwater, i have regretted my chucking them away in the grip of some confused thinking

the world lost a masterpiece with that burning by nikolai and the priest

an italian complaining about a depressed mood following getting new eyeglasses with zeiss duravsion

my reply

its not the uv being blocked that causes mood changes, but blue which the brain uses to synchronise the circadian rhythm

digital devices do not have a significant amount of blue in terms of "eye damage", but they do in terms of the brains synchronising of the circadian rhythm which is beneficial from morning to evening, but needs to be shut off several hours before bed

thefor the zeiss duravsion blue protect which definitely takes out significant chunks of blue, appropriate for areas for bright sunlight, but not low light conditions

the insane can’t change

that’s

why

they are insane

brad warner, in my view you are showing mental health problems from vegetarian nutritional insufficiencies, you are in some really crazy space that the net and your reading audience validate somehow

another way of putting it, is you are intellectually "slumming"

as regards your "mental health" i don’t have the slightest expectation you will take what i am saying "on board", but this is friendly advice and not a put down or disparagement

the weirdness of the royal family

the media

this strange distorting mirror

you couldn’t pay me

the day burns time

burns burns

the night softens it a bit

the day burns time

burn burn

the night softens it a bit

supermarkets have their

own hours

days

and seasons

the swamp of humanity

passes

through

ed. rather than "swamp" i was going to list "the varieties", but the list got too long and politically incorrect the solitary, families,the harassed, deformed, robust, frial, fragile, sane, not quite sane, gregarious, impaired, functional, children, adults, the very old, handsome, bueatiful, ugly, non-descript , hopeful, hopeless, manic, depressed, the fat, the thin, the skeletal, the obese, girls, men, women, boys, adolescent (actually not so many of those, some form of self-selection out i’d say, not short at the KFC after school though), the solitary, families,the harassed, deformed, robust, frial, fragile, sane, not quite sane, gregarious, impaired, functional, children, adults, the very old, handsome, bueatiful, ugly,, hopeful, hopeless, manic, depressed, the fat, the thin, the skeletal, the obese, girls, men, women, boys, adolescent (actually not so many of those, some form ofout i’d say, not short at theafter school though), trans, not quite trans, heterosexual, not sure of hetero, the lame, the wobbly, the walkers, the striders, children running, demanding, asking, adults tired, deflated, the sick, the crippled, the athletic trans, not quite trans, heterosexual, not sure of hetero, the lame, the wobbly, the walkers, the striders, children running, demanding, asking, adults tired, deflated, the sick, the crippled, the athletic

women’s magazines

scratchy females

bitching

ed. i was admiring the way the british female and even ex-colonial press is sticking it to megan markel because she is out of class, out of race and out of "britishness" and most dangerously, has "charisma", it all sorta glares at you as you glance at the magazine rack in the supermarket

pompeii, herculaneum, boscoreale, stabiae

middle class worlds

disrupted

pompeii

a middle class world

disrupted

vesuvius

a middle class world

disrupted

dozing in the car

surf in the distance

a family passes

give me the surf

“ i marvelled at a shoreless ocean

and a shore with no ocean

the breaking of dawn without darkness

and a night that never ended ”

that is not from the koran, butand you can see that islam would have issues with it

,

,

islam is surprisingly or perhaps not so surprisingly hostile to the sufi which isin a wayits mystical poetic branch

maybe that last line could have been

and the night that never ended ”

you can explain the universe and brain mechanistically, though you can never fully explain either, but this is itself explainable by the target being destroyed by the approach to the target which is recursion and actually the limitation of explanation since what is explained is part of the explanation and ultimately not mechanistic

aging and its certain maladies

the shrinking of the vitreous

“ i can’t understand what you are saying ”

wherein lies the fault ?

“ i can’t understand what you are saying ”

where lies the fault ?

hurunui mechatronics

one’s feet

in the sadness

of

the

world

juliet mclachlan

a child poet

writes

gifted

yet there’s something i can’t quite put my finger on

the door to the north

is to look through a window

but to step

through

the

door

is different

the words twine of themselves

and a different sea and sky show

nike knows how to spendin the universe

mid-sixties

i knew some-one who lived in kenya as a child in the early and, she and her brother had the most wonderful time, africa in its benign years, well post the mau mau uprising anyway

there’s no comfort in the bad familiar

why do we bridle so

at the novel ?

if i can’t write poetry

i can write prose

and i can always write prose

if poetry is about "truth" then mental illness is important because people who are mentally ill are outside the boundaries of "normality" and you have to go outside the normal to see "truth"

"normality" from the point of view of truth is actually mentally ill, but of course the "normal" will never see this, its their nature in being normal and of course are very punishing to any hint of abnormality

i think successful poetry crosses both the normal and abnormal in a more or less functional way, always the challenge with abnormality and mental illness is to function and you need to appear normal to some extent, even though you are not

"cross-over"

perhaps the best example ofis virginia woolf who transited in and out and finally out of mental illness (an excpetionally strong swimmer who had to load her coat with stones to be sure she would drown, too sad for words)

syliva plath’s poetry does not come from mental illness, but the functional occupation of all territories of being and in the end she got spread too thin with its inevitable consequence

why the university system is such a disaster with literature and the cloned idiots it is producing is because you can’t corset the abnormal to look like normal they way they do

to me, mini-monovision with a low glistening iol is the most robust option for cataract

1D

i’ve gone withof myopia for a while and sorta liked it, but settled back to .75D, but if you’re comfortable with one, the vision is better, it may cause more eye strain, i’m not sure

the golden rule however is to put the operation off for as long as possible, the technology is always improving

full monovision can give problems with

1D

all i can say i have never noticed this effect at

i think the "sweet spot" for mini-monovision varies with the individual and really the only way to tell is wear glasses with the extra myopia for six months

this is the problem with drugs, skew insight leading to craziness, how people can spend their lives stuck in this sort of bullshit is beyond me, but they do

“ what have i learned about zen ? well, the most significant moment for me was honestly. boring, but there you go. the experience i had showed me first hand that the mind is not what i thought it was, thought is not what i thought it was. i saw my human perspective melt like hot cheese, revealing a vast, intimidating existence that has been running like a well oiled machine since time immemorial without our help. we arise from it. it is us. we can’t break it, and we can’t fix it. its like a lightning flash ”

what i have noticed is people with a lot of difficult life experiences don’t necessarily learn from them, you have to process and learn which some never do, alcohol and drugs of course are anesthetics that facilitate this blind ignorance, if only the druggies weren’t so missionary about screwing everyone else up

interestingly, though charles bukowski was alcoholic, he did learn, i think the writing processed it for him and he went through so many unpleasant extremes things had to be clearer

but all the same he would have been a better and more interesting poet if he had not drunk, he was a true genius and could have had the stature of shakespeare/sir henry neville

victorian and edwardian england

a writers and artists tableaux

the like of which

has not been seen again

victorian england

a writers and artists tableaux

the like of which

has not been seen again

“ the ink dark moon ”

yet it sounds better to say

the dark ink moon

its ok

its not ok

you might as well spin a coin

what is the reality ?

some say its ok

some says its not ok

you might as well spin a coin

what is the reality ?

vegetarianism always runs into the problem of "invisible culling" which is the downsizing of various feral populations to stop "herbivation" of plant crops

i have to do it myself to keep my less than stellar vegetable garden out of various mouths

,

on a broader scope there’s a surprising number of animals(elephants, killer whales, whales, dolphins) who have a sufficiently similar consciousness to humans for their killing to be literal murder, and then you have humans in wars being literally murdered or starved etc

i just think the whole thing sounds unresolvable to me, beyond my control and i am under no obligation to compromise my health, digestion and cognitive function by the restricted diet of vegan or vegetarian

the mystical solipsist view actually requires the opposite, that you eat to maximise your long term health

i think there’s always a degree of schizophrenia associated with vegetarianism because it ignores the human context that prioritises the human and yourself over other species, though i don’t prioritise humans over other clearly equivalent species like elephants or killer whales

zen — the religion

of the stupid

a story made real

they do not understand this

ken wilber

the non-thinking man’s

thinking man

dying of some disease

he passes it around

a door sill

how worn ?

back and forth

we miss what this is saying to us

a salutary lesson about ezra’s pound’s later life is the extreme extent to which he manufactured his troubles

the italians weren’t keen on him broadcasting, nor was wartime italy friendly to him, and yet he stepped out against the current into what ruined his reputation and put him in danger of the death penalty

his fame worked against him, yet also saved him because of his supporters who were able to get him incarcerated in a mental asylum rather than face charges of treachery

how much simpler to have made a rational assessment of his beliefs and the likely outcome of any war, but of course he was quite schizophrenic by that point and had made the mistake of migrating from the much more interesting "literary schizophrenia" into the dull moronacy of "state and politcal belief sanctioned schizophrenia"

writers, poets and philosophers engage with politics at their peril, its too strong a brew

there’s an interesting story about marie curie, a young polish man who would have married her except his wealthy family objected and he acquiesced, in later years he would go and sit and look at a statue erected to her for hours

i think she would have been happier in that alternate life, he of course had become aware of his mistake

X -ray

she literally created the mobileservice for wounded french soldiers and it was a significant help in reducing fatalities from surgery compared to the british

spring

blossoms everywhere

the sterile sea

flaunts its whitecaps

ER

" would have to be the most toxic show ever, the mindset of pretending cretins

i likeby ōtomo no yakamochi about a guard leaving for a frontier post

a poem by ōtomo no yakamochi

meeting in dreams

is painful indeed

starting awake

and reaching out

the questing hand finds nothing

my reply

who i met in a dream

i never know

because of course

they are me

who are you fooling with your missionizing ? another day, another crap artist

you can’t take a drug that interferes with dopamine levels without long term serious side effects, you want to do a bit of research if you are taking adderall or its equivalents, there’s some real horror stories out there

each breath, i was thinking how fucked up meditation is from a health point of view with its restricted leg circulation, damaging the hip and knee joints and neurologically insane practices like following or counting the breath

if you are thinking of taking legal action, just remember that law is always half scam, that’s across the board and every aspect of it

only crazies read boring twaddle like ken wilber

the really insane think it has value

you don’t have to ask "what do women think ?"

all you have to do is listen to poetesses

its there in spades

“ is there any established tradition that comes close to your own ideal of ‘ mystical inquiry ’ ? ”

that’s an interesting question because what i notice about how i differ from others is i recognise that all the mystical religious traditions must have their validities and literature does as well

,

,

99%

howeverhistorically very very few people ever get truly "enlightened"likeof zen is crap so across the entire historical records you only get a very few people that ever understand, the sixth patriarch and joshu for instance in zen (eihei dogen is sort of half and half, he should have lived longer), john of the cross and st teresa of avila, catherine of sienna, emily dickinson, the sufis sa'di and rabia of basra, there are more but its not a large list

so basically any religion (zen is a religion) is largely crap and plain wrong, but within them there’s a few over large expanses of time who actually understand what it is all about

of course these religions had their heyday in medieval times where people were compelled to follow them, now these days with no compulsion its senseless to belong to whatever nonsense they push

eihei-ji

i think medieval times, between wars and diseases had genuine questions about death, like only a third of children ever made it to adolescence and people mostly never seem to live beyond their fifties so you got huge resources (witness the cathedrals) put into religions, or more modestly eihei dogen getting funding for his china trip and

but the core of it is there’s very few people who "understand", and all we know of them is their writing or writing about them (joshu’s case for instance, could he even write ? )

its like anything else that is effective, its a craft and what you do, you need to read quality and do a lot of "contemplative" work, its real slog and requires a lifetime

what i notice is that people just read junk and don’t do any contemplative work and/or just entrench their brain default circuitry in meditation, a form of schizophrenia actually

drug users just look for fancy wallpaper to justify the way they so destructively use their time

,

it so simple, but only a very few ever read quality and do the requisite "contemplation"there’s millions and millions of "pretenders" out there, its hard to get used to, but that’s the way it is

you stand above religion effectively and religion is just material you have to sift through

at some point explanations fail

and people have to deliver

when they can’t or don’t deliver

then

you

know

the explanations

are

worthless

evening has a sacred zone

the light unearthly, yellow

it exists for not too long

like us

my reply to warsan shire’s“ women who are ‘ difficult ’ to love ”

strange and beautiful is not what we want

homely and familiar checks the box for most

those with sense anyway

the others find themselves on a different planet

hostile and full of unknowns

a precipice one constantly has to pay attention to

lest one slip

cast one

into

the abyss

everything is endless, yet we ourselves have an end

what does this mean ?

what happens when we die ?

does that question have any meaning ?

we run into the walls of meaning itself when we ask that

my "style" has a cast

it reveals who you are

some people

are better

concealed

the net

people with alcohol problems

people with drug problems

people with personality problems

all wanting to waste your time

,

i’ve had plenty of people try to imitate my "style"they all fail because they can only "burble"

the undercurrents of insight and well worked out conceptualisation are utterly beyond them

“ can the gut microbiome recover on it own after antibiotics, how many months can this take ? ”

a lactobacillus acidophilus only yogurt will be helpful

jason writes

sometimes i have dreams that give a feeling, its not all visual

it probably happens to most people where you have these dreams that when you wake up you know are sort of different

well i was walking around the house the other day and this feeling from this dream just hit me, i must’ve had the dream at least ten years ago, maybe eight

i remembered some scenes from the dream, but i’m writing this a day later and its already pretty much forgotten

the road of grief is one we travel by ourselves

grief is a road we are the only traveller on

everybody has their griefs

you can’t share them

anger at the world

a burning meaninglessness

that goes nowehere

if you have two languages and one can be translated into another, then obviously there is a deeper structure common to both

what is that deeper structure ?

its staring you in the face, its the sense and you can have the sense traverse across an infinite multitude of languages

interestingly if you look at the boundaries of what can and can’t be translated you run into the fact the quality poetry cannot be fully translated and therefore is not constrained to sense, but in some mystical way is superior

people who smoke pot when they get traumatized

never feel their trauma fully

and

so

their

life

goes

in

circle

its important to distinguish between micro or mini monovision and full monovision, this is because full monovision creates too much stress in the eyes from the large difference in magnification between them and also is dangerous from altered depth perception when driving

75D

on the other hand a "mini/micro" monovision of -.seems not to have these problems and gives good depth perception and enough magnification for anything except close reading

.5

1.5

1

.75

1

1

.75

the micro/mini nomenclature is not that consistent, you could probably take it as from abouttoof myopia, my personal view is you shouldn't go aboveand i havein my left eye which has worked well for me, possibly going towould give better close vision, but having had, i am happier with

.1

.25

i think adding sayof myopia to the other eye might also be useful, but they no longer manufacture in such a fine gradient,is the minimum

1.5

3

full monovision or just plain monovision i think goes from aboutto up to say

"why shouldn’t drugs be one part of a spiritual path"

because they damage the brain and give the wrong sort of insight

my reply to sylvia plath’s poem "elm"

the bottom

turns out to be

a fall

endless opening out

or closing

too

much

to

live

i have figured a lot of people on the net have personality disorders, you have to be more than careful

of course real life is like this to

when reality goes sour

fantasies become sickening

on reddit, you bail them into a corner and they run away with a downvote to signal their resignation

"jostaberry" i think is a rhyming slang form of the whimsical "just a berry"

,

ah

,

“ the name jostaberry was created via combining the german words for blackcurrant and gooseberry, namely johannisbeere ("jo") and stachelbeere ("sta"). following german pronunciation of "j"it may be pronounced "yostaberry" in english ”

"mysticism" or what zen is really about is almost entirely cognitive and experiential, it is a craft and the work of a lifetime

,

drugs are the classic pilgrim’s progress,the avenue of entry excludes authenticity

all the effects of drugs are to put a spanner in the works of the brain and you always get a degree of permanent damage

LSD

self-righteous morons

to me the only thing against a drug is "does it do permanent brain damage ?" and i don’t know one that doesn’t and the much vaunted "" seems to make for

what i also feel and as eihei dogen came to understand, is that the cognitive work is so difficult and time consuming, that short of celibacy and a life long involvement, you are just wasting your time

i know entry into a celibate priesthood before or around adolescence is no longer culturally applicable, but there may be events in your childhood that set you on a road of inquiry

,

DMT

,

obviously "harm" is a "spectrum"psychoactive chemicals likealready being made by the brain are no guarantee of "harmlessness"how it would rate comparatively to say several glasses of wine i would have no idea

LSD

i used to be prepared to give ayahuasca the benefit of the doubt, but likethe people that claim some sort of "mystical" understanding are the usual idiots, but as to the degree of harm its difficult to assess, its "users" are so sneaky in their presentation of effects

my primary point is the failure of these psychedelic type drugs users to be anything but misguided pests in terms of understanding what the mystical is about and this is exactly what you would expect since chemicals with random brain effects are never going to even slightly simulate a lifetime of intelligent and searching enquiry and "craft" development

far from seeing the inadequacy however, these people just "pretend" and as i say make pests of themselves trying to "sell" whatever "cognitive failures" they are pushing

what i am saying is the concern that a drug may cause permanent brain damage, you can look at alcohol as a brain damaging drug, some "recreational" drugs perhaps have a use for ptsd or say migraine in the case of microdose LSD and some psychiatric drugs are known for being particularly harmful

its all a complex moil, but for me, if it damages the brain i don’t take it, for instance i don’t drink alcohol

that’s just a practical side from the point of view of health and keeping one’s brain intact for "mystical inquiry"

i really have no beef with people anaesthetising themselves from reality with alcohol or drugs except they seem to make a pain in the arse of themselves on message boards and in life being very needy from curtailed functionality

that is all by the way

the real issue is that drugs do not give correct insights into "reality" and are counterproductive in terms of "mystical inquiry"

you have to do the work and get the "craft" of that "inquiry" to make that call though

an interesting case is konrad ryushin marchaj, erstwhile abbot of the zen monastery at mt tremper who was obviously getting very dissatisfied with all the bullshit going on there, yet was unable to see and say the crap for what it was and did ayahuasca and left (was pushed out for heterodoxy)

it was helpful to some extent, even a large extent but he’s still far from thinking straight in terms of mystical inquiry

maybe steven batchelor is the same, with drugs he saw buddhism as the crap it was, but he’s still not on track

yes, i know your type

anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot

in reality

you are unpleasant and incapable of grasping an argument

the strangeness of

seeing the wetness on the floor

the towel is damp

yet i have

absolutely

no memory

of

taking a shower

ed. it amazed me, a complete blank to the extent that except for the evidence i had no idea i had taken a shower

the clone thinks

thinks like clones

the clone thinks

think like clones

the talentless patronising

repulse

i don’t think knowing the maori language is helpful to the promulgation of maori culture

no-one

a language thatunderstands and will eventually die is alienating

bi-linguals

knowing two languages are a burden and hurts the, not the conventional view, but observation from life has left me with this opinion

of course knowing two languages is sometimes essential, then the benefits outweigh the costs

just about everybody could have done with useful advice at certain points in their life they never had

and so the world goes on

sounds at night

a dog barking at wallabies in the distance

a frog with quite a loud chirp

cats chewing on a wallaby carcass

wind in the gums further up the hill

soundless a meteorite

flashes across the sky

the fence rattles

the education system

is turning out

clones of their memes

there is nothing new about pandemics

the roman and byzantine empires

were brought down by a succession of pandemics

and one particular plague

in the case of the byzantine empire

our loss

the world is a whirlpool of contrariness

difficult to deal with

everybody comes up against the same thing

you can’t change the past an inch

buy

don’t build

your own antenna

there’s a lifetime’s work there

he married her for her money

he fucked up the money

and now he’s off

a beautiful man

she had to have him

despite the red flags

now

many

years

later

a disaster

and

divorce

now a divorce

blinded by male beauty

he always was "unusual"

god, a hoarse throat

and

i think

i’ve got

the

corona

virus

jamelle’s reply

don’t reckon you have. when we were travelling n singing every week i often git crook with a hoarse throat. two old auctioneers came to see us one day at camp and i could hardly talk. they told me chocolate is the best cure and that’s what the do if crook before an auction. it worked for me andy

my reply

its ok this morning, the poem is satirical and i think prophetic of what is to come

re-written

some idiot continues to take umbrage at my saying"two mothers remembered" by joann snow duncanson can’t beeffectively in the male voice

quite a goodof the poem

my reply

wrong-minded

you can’t seem to understand what you read and continue in your, abusive and patronising way and i assume you are like this in real life

POV

,

to go from female to male is more than changing a "it is as i say "cataclysmic"

supra-sexual

non-identity

there is not male and female on a background of some, there is only male and female and if you read the plays (in fact by sir henry neville) he modulates between the two and never falls back into the mistake of "supra"

not understanding you attempt to ridicule and beat down, what can i say ?

the travesty of alzheimer’s

they are and aren’t

we both bleed

o l d e r

there, that’s the male voice

it

looks

nothing

like

“ the microscopic toner nanoparticles that waft from laser printers may change our genetic and metabolic profiles in ways thatmore likely ”

there’syou should a mobile phone against the ear/brain

the di mateo and gagliano each suited different types of music and i thought the stradivarius was off tone a bit, but you can’t expect the sound to be the same as when it was made, the resonant characteristics of the wood will be quite different now, so much time has passed

lol, even the violins change on you

$100

$10

interesting price scaling :tomillion, a factor of one hundred thousand, only normal by astronomical standards

$10,000

5

$100,000

,

no. 1 (di mateo) and no.gagliano)each for different types of music and i didn’t think much of the stradivarius (no. 4)

you can’t expect the stradivarius to be any good, the woods resonant characteristics will be totally different from the original, so much time has passed, this example is off tone

so the best quality, like a lot of things is not at the very high or low price ends, but often r mid range or a tad higher or lower

i don’t get as panicked about things as i used to, but investigate further and accept the way the world occurs more and understand the huge energetic costs of swimming against the current, which actually is often necessary to survive

the symptoms of a viral illness are in fact part of the bodies immune response to it so if you suppress the symptoms, you suppress the immune response, the most classic case is south sea islanders going into the sea to cool off from the high temperatures of newly introduced european diseases and dying from that cooling

people seem to have a differing response to the corona virus which it sounds like we will all inevitably get, but pneumonia is likely, pandemics destroyed the roman and byzantine empires, we can just be thankful the corona virus is so mild in effect which it may not necessarily remain so, harmful mutations are possible

there’s a current stupidity where male versus female is viewed as minor differences, i regard them as cataclysmic

for funeral eulogies, just go down memory lane a bit, that’s all that’s required, wanted and fit for purpose

the flowers unpicked

the plums ungathered

their fragrance no longer brought into the world

it withers away with her loss

re-translation of a poem by alphonsus de guimaraens ed. this was inspired by, and is somewhat aof a poem by alphonsus de guimaraens the cinnamomums shall cry for her being not the cinnamomums shall cry for her being not as their flowers wither at the fall of the day as their flowers wither at the fall of the day off the orange groves plums shall drop off the orange groves plums shall drop reminiscing her who would reap them away reminiscing her who would reap them away the stars will say : alas ! we are no more for she perished, silent and cold as the winter the stars will say : alas ! we are no more for she perished, silent and cold as the winter and laying their eyes on her as we have before they shall mourn for their smiling sister and laying their eyes on her as we have before they shall mourn for their smiling sister the moon, as the caring mother she was, who watched her grow and cherish, shall wrap her in lillies and petals of rose the moon, as the caring mother she was, who watched her grow and cherish, shall wrap her in lillies and petals of rose my dreams of love will be expired my dreams of love will be expired and archangels will say in the blue, upon seeing her, thinking of me : why did they not come together ? and archangels will say in the blue, upon seeing her, thinking of me : why did they not come together ?

i don’t know that mathematics is a language in its own right, rather its some sort of subset of language, exactly what, i don’t know

my comment on a brad warner

i do think an involvement in any sort of religious group teaches social skills and "oversharing" is simply a social skills problem, its always a line everyone walks and some people are too concealing, you need to discuss stuff about yourself occasionally and so you can be harmed by being too reticent

likewise you can be too revealing to people who can or will use that information against you

its an ongoing skill development and i really feel my involvement in zen dramatically improved that for me

i notice that a lot of the "net only" zennnists have very poor social and dialogue skills, totally unable to have a productive discussion, just aggressive missionizing of whatever craziness and unable to look at something rationally

i think what andrei tarkovsky does is trythe meaning of the past, something beautiful that is gone

i think what andrei tarkovsky does is try to bring back the meaning of the past, something that is gone

i don’t know why people have such trouble with noam chompsky’s theory of "universal grammar"

its like perception, its an inherent construct of the brain

this seems to offend some, why is hard to see

what is there to say ?

there’s no relief from the pain and failings of old age

well, there is a relief and it comes like the dawn sun limning the hills

why should such a glory be so painful ?

what is there to say ?

there’s no relief from the pain and insufficiencies of old age

well, there is a relief and it comes like the dawn sun limning the hills

why should such a glory be so painful ?

the natural world

everything eating everything else

with no apologies

they too

need to breed

tattoo-ees

the inks are toxic and carcinogenic, they have nanoparticles in, mess the immune system and create social barriers, the art is always bad, all you have to do is not get it done,are in some respects crazy, its actually a form of self harm of which body modification is a stronger extreme

if you have ever seen any serious body modifcation and understood its a continuum you would never touch a tattoo in your life

its amazing what sticks in memory, i remember a poem by wang wei who was lost in the woods on his way to a hermitage with evening falling and he was worried about tigers

he just sat down for a while and his panic passed

well as it happens tiger’s peak activity is during the day and noon andin the evening

men and women

thrust together

by evolutionary necessity

neither particularly likes the other

its designed

to look

more

than

it

is

which

is

happenstance

men and women

thrust together

by evolution

neither particularly likes the other

its designed

to look

more

than

it

is

which

is

happenstance

we have the genetic coding for the deep structure of language, we don’t have it for a specfic implementation, wars are born from this, i won’t call it a failure

one of the primary reasons for a religion which is no longer understood in the western world because of the separation of state and church was a belief in the afterlife making men ready to die for their country or cause

this goes right back to the ancient egyptians

its interesting that the soviet union was so brutal to retreating soldiers in the battlefield or even just their own men being taken prisoner and returning was necessary because of this lack of belief in the afterlife and extreme force was required to coerce men to put their own lives in danger

ISIS

plays up the afterlife (one particularly appealing to young men) heavily, but its dissonant in today’s world and a reason it only exists as a fringe minority

we are less than rational creatures, underlying beliefs, however wrong still can have strong influences on behavior

beware of circular stories

your own life, books, the lives of others, religion

perhaps what a novel really is, is a story that endlessly repeats

it runs through, then when you pick up the book again to reread it, it just runs through again to return to where it started

— jane austen and all the film versions ofand pride and prejudice

this really conveysof an elephant in relation to our own

poets

pretend versus the real

1

1

million to

,

the net sometimes seems very strange, ann sexton’sstill alive, well and "consulting"

she has that "manic look" her mother has for sure, not quite the same intensity though and perhaps just as well for her

some sort of refugee from the hurricane that was her mother, but alas, lacking the talent

the dreaming poets

their trash

validated

by

journal publishing

i got a miffed reply

my reply

stung huh ?

why

well

you

know

um

X

Y

Z

huh,is jean conrad hottinguer,is pierre bellamy is andis lucien hauteval

the

some of the planetary formation processes are surprisingly quick compared to the biological

100

there are insects in amber going backmillion years and earlier, yet the earthout of the protoplantary disc in five million

to those that think straight

live straight

the world crucifies

traumatised by its own

dysfunction

if something can occur and does

why

should

we

be

surprised ?

if something can occur and does

why should we be surprised ?

my brain is far more elegant than my thoughts

i don’t know how this can be

writing is like a drawing or painting

you can scribble anything

that doesn’t make it a dali, monet, chagall, picasso or vermeer

the net morons with their tomes of barf

reject any notion of skill or craft

that they say it – is enough

in their eyes

narcissistic validation is what they seek

of necessity their product must reek

you don’t even need the universe

all you need are the four walls of a kitchen

to know

something odd is happening

what’s in the fine print

IOP

collomer lensesby a mm of Hg, that raises a red flag imo

100%

they have never beensafe

the evening star

seems to be falling

through the tree’s branches

appearing

disappearing

appearing

the evening star

seems to be falling

through the tree’s branches

i was driving through a back way to a town a bit further up the coast than i usually travel

so many years since i had done that

a trip through memory lane

farms and their houses pass leisurely by

some-one had up signage for suicide prevention resources on the side of the road

facebook even

i took a double take

it

used

to

be

taboo

subject

if you always go the same way

it will crimp you

when i drive

the landscape

informs me

is really quite interesting, looks like an accountant, but he’s certainly not

what i notice is that bad as some drugs like cocaine are, they don’t fuck up your health like serious alcohol use does

eihei dogen is the most unabashedly mystical of all the famous zen "masters"

if you think that what it is about

is day in day out contemplation

well

you are right

and wrong

the gums in an unearthly

reflected light

along the horizon

an

intense orange

a long distant sunset

not red

but an intense orange

a long distant sunset

not red

but orange

i look once

i look twice

the world still holds together

how deceitful

i look once

i look again

the world still holds together

how deceitful

an anne sexton quote

the boys and girls are one tonight

they unbutton blouses. they unzip flies

they take off shoes. they turn off the light

the glimmering creatures are full of lies

they are eating each other. they are overfed

at night, alone, i marry the bed

what i dislike about "dharma talks" or "teishos" is they take advantage of the suggestibility and plasticity induced by the meditation and retreat to shove complete nonsense down your throats

it has taken me decades to walk that bullshit back, the problem with zen is the "transmission system" has meant that only the most dull morons become zen masters so its all swamped with complete idiocy

it takes ten years to start to become good at something

it really does

anya taylor-joy

if there’s an oscar for actress with the least intellectual depthwould

make-up

“ the biggest beauty mistake i have ever made i think potentially is not learning how to apply

my mother’s poem

cat-mint

the bumble bees are bouncing on theplants

each slender stalk weighted for a moment

then released, trembling, like lilac flowered springs

her comment : i’ve been watching the bumble bees, they love our cat-mint its quite a strong smell but they don’t seem to mind, little black bodies busy at work i’ve been watching the bumble bees, they love ourits quite a strong smell but they don’t seem to mind, little black bodies busy at work hot and dry here, keep moving the hose hot and dry here, keep moving the hose

a benefit of "kinhin" from an old chinese source describing it as done in indiabrad warner

“ first it cures diseases and second it helps digestion ”

monasteries have always been notorious for infectious disease, the strangest, yet most unappreciated thing about the modern world is our long life expectancies, there seems to be some prohibition against mentioning that eihei dogen died of tuberculosis, why is that ?

the stench of decay and disability is too much for our sensitive noses ?

too much reality for all today’s fakes chained up in their pretending

the yasutani lineage does a slow walk followed by a fast walk

jason writes

what really clicked for me today is realizing that going to a scenic place on my own and doing my own sort of retreat would be better than going to someone else’s

my comment

i don’t think i could go on a group retreat or meditate again, they are things left in the now distant past

the question i have is whether they were necessary stages or not

but guess what, its not my problem to sort out

the basic difficulty is the level of indoctrination with the retreat

that takes decades to unwind

its hard to believe that just about everybody in the "spiritual circuit" is a stupid moron pretending to understand something they are clueless about, but that’s the fact which eventually leaves you rather alone

that’s not to say you won’t benefit from some dealing with these types

the internet is not your local experience, remember that and be cautious

sometimes the most extreme person on the planet is facing you

in rare cases

the

universe

the internet is not your local experience, remember that and be cautious

one of the problems with fantasies is they tend to be "inverted" compared to real life

entertainment fiction is particularly prone to this, star crossed lovers becoming uncrossed where irl they become more crossed

high levels of violence causing no damage to the participants

one wins against many, i don’t have to say much about that one do i ?

women with unlimited shelf life and socially sophisticated men with good verbal skills

the inversions are endless

the inks are toxic/carcinogenic, they mess the immune system and have high levels of nanoparticles

ever wonder why heavily tattooed people are so off the planet ?

its prevalence in the recidivist prison population is not an accident

keratinocytes formconnections with melanocytes, the skin is an organ, you wouldn’t tattoo your heart would you ?

there’s no answer in terms of place, its just a dream

jason writes

50°F/10°C

arriving at the beach i’m not feeling too well, there are a lot of beach goers for the middle of february but its an uncommonly nice day of almost

anyway i walk on the sand to the water and once i get to the ocean there’s a breeze that washes away my worries

i keep walking along the water, the smell of the ocean brings good memories

at first it seems like there’s a lot of crazy people walking along the water, i wonder if the sane people are walking on the boardwalk one hundred yards away

forty-five

i walk forminutes and turn around, i now notice couples dressed nicely

my shoulder isn’t feeling well so i decide to pack it up after an hour and a half

walking back i think i just want to stay longer !

my comment

,

this is really what 'spiritual work' is about, why there is a trillion dollar industry called "religion"self improvement, new age, whatever is beyond me, except its intrinsic to existance

all the zillions of man hours by the frauds are nothing compared to a single drop of this "washing away" or fugue

i can’t post anywhere without being harassed by these bad tempered "wastrels" seeking to beat my authenticity down

veryon being an electrical apprentice, but is generally applicable

some of the comments are good too

micro- B USB

man i did a dumb thing last night, got my first mobile phone and thinking thereceptacle had a little internal flange to press to remove the back, put a very small screwdriver in to lever it

,

looking at the flange under the magnifying glass, i have messed the contactsbut it still seems to charge

i’m gonna get a bluetooth headset i think to keep the radiation intensity at the head down

aaagh, well it has messed the contacts a bit, but it still charges

a correspondent writes

andrew i don’t know why i worry so much

conventionally i might be a failure but unconventionally i’m not

i went to the beach today for an hour and a half and once i got to the ocean i felt like a lot of worries just ‘ washed’ away, as i was leaving i just felt that i should stay longer

my reply

yeah i do that too and usually i stay longer

its a sorta "fugue state" and that’s what it’s all about, usually it generates some writing too

the meaning of a good poem transcends the language used to express it

the meaning of a good poem transcends the language used to write it

jason writes

its pretty simple if you want a better life

don’t drink or do drugs

i’m no saint but i know its the truth

“ are you enlightened yet ? ”

to the extent pot and games are not my life

can you say the same ?

these twits who piss their lives away and get shitty with anyone who shows there’s more

a great reading by rachel mckibbens of her"after the siamese twins made a scene at the airport security"

women

cows looking to breed

why do you think they have milk ?

call me misogynist ?

men

dogs

not looking to breed

but it happens

call me

androgynist

women

cows looking to breed

why do you think they have milk ?

call me misogynist ?

men

dogs

not looking to breed

but it happens

call me

misandrist

its many, many years since i have read attar, so long i can’t remember any of it

sholeh wolpefrom her translation of "the conference of the birds"

it makes a lot more sense to me now than it did then, but i think something must have filtered through at the time i first read it

people react bady to facial tattoos, the stupidity is unbelievable

do they think it will just wash off ?

we are hardwired to search the face for behavior cues and signs of illness or disease

do they think they can beat a million years of evolution ?

i think some women can have too strong a sense of a child being entirely their own and not half their father

present pain

outweighs

previous gain

its not what we are that is so interesting

its what we are not

at least to ourselves

always walking down the wrong road

to what effect ?

it wraps up

nullifying

i begin again

this

is

my

life

life is strife

today mutates yesterday

yesterday mutates tomorrow

and the end comes to the beginning and the beginning comes to an end

life is strife

today mutates yesterday

yesterday mutates tomorrow

the ends come to the beginning and the beginning comes to an end

life is strife

today mutates yesterday

yesterday mutates today

the ends come to the beginning and the beginning comes to an end

taylor-joy

the new emma (2020) looks startlinglywith anyain the titular role

i think there’s something with the younger generations, they expect things to be immediate when it takes a decade of work

its a criticism i make because i am so familiar with endlessly making that mistake myself

basically i have a daily regimen of supplements i take with the occasional extras

i never drop everything entirely, though i do try to work out what suits me best on an ongoing basis and this has held me and my health in good stead

there is no fixed point in life; health, home, family, relationships, children, some resonance with a geographical place

when we die, we could be anywhere

blue light protection for prescription glasses is just a marketing gimmick, any realistic level of blue blocking would mean the glasses had a strong orange tint

also blue is used by the body and brain to set circadian rhythm signals, so short of bright sunlight, you don’t want to exclude it at all

self-publish

one of the interesting things and benefits of the net if youon it, is if you post on a few message boards, you can create an editing function on your work

i find the problem with retreats is the way you get indoctrinated

they may open up avenues, but they also close off avenues

the only place i ever came across with retreats that had no indoctrination was the springwater center which is basically zen without the religious belief system, there was a schedule , but i never found the retreats onerous and of course it was in beautiful countryside you could wander about in, you didn’t have to sit at all, though you could if you wanted to, but i never did

,

i also went to a retreat at a cistercian monastery where they left you alone with the option of talking to a priest (catholicism is very hierarchical, you had to talk to a priest and not a monk)it was actually a free retreat and the monks were not a bad lot with a lot of women around which opened my eyes a bit about the celibacy business

unitarianism has a surprisingly similar theology to islam, perhaps due to its roots in eastern europe and the islamic influence there

if you are considering lasik or lens replacement, remember that our eyes are delicate mechanisms we are so dependent on for our quality of life, there’s a lot to go wrong, benefit needs to balance risk

if you look back over your life

anyway

you can’t change it an inch

if you look back over your life anyway

you can’t change it an inch

the "spiritual path" involves a lot of looking back at your life and adding up the "open sums", this is not a process that can be rushed

a religion

does not ask what it is about

it is preoccupied with its own forms

and meanings

if you try to figure things out

will - o' - the - wisp

you are chasing a

if you don’t figure things out

you are dangerously stranded

on

an

insane

shore

,

there are whole worldsuniverses gone

before we came on the scene

there are whole worlds universes to come

after we have gone from the scene

what does this mean ?

night fell

clunk

498 pages later

the sun rose

the ungreat american novel

recently discovered

in my brain

i’m not going to try russia

i can’t speak the language and there’s real competiton

наступила ночь

комиссар поморщился

взошло солнце

с лицом Сталина

you can’t write other than what you write

if you could write other than what you write

you

would

be

a different

person

lens replacement elevates the risk of some eye diseases, its not as benign as made out

during the viral season you have to be careful of supplements like fish or krill oil which suppress the immune system

K2

D

vitaminboosts the immune system and is needed to balance up vitamin

anne sexton reading her poem

scary as shit from the male perspective

,

if you are educating yourself on something i find if you look at a lot of different videosyou just take a bit from each, they don’t have to be perfect, just teach you something

,

when i started sitting zen, the group i was with was "leaderless"the remnants of a group interested in joshu sasaki who never visited, i got lucky because for a few years this was the best group i was ever involved with, then it all went to hell as several competing adherences to different "roshis" caused schisms

there’s something in the authoritarian structure of zen that leads everyone to want to be a "roshi" and this apparently means you are required to make the group into your version or start a new group

those were the days, everyone was equal and kept their views mostly to themselves and there was just a weekly sit with the occasional retreat, then "the machine" started to take over

i have never ever come across this "free zen" again, its all dominated by institutions now

endless meta about things

when

you

actually

do

the

work

it

looks

different

endless meta about things

when

you

actually

do the work

it

looks

different

endless meta about things

when you actually do the work

it

looks

different

the external world

a mire of complexity

the internal world

simple patterns

re-occur -

inverted image

a spider on the window pane

i put a card edge up to it to walk onto so i could flick it outside the house

it was on the other side of the pane

turns out to have been joni mitchell’s with boyfriend graham nash living there with her

workman-like

one trap for the inexperienced with the arts is it looks like there is an unending blob out there, but once you narrow it down to spheres of competence, there’s very few and their views areand predictable

,

what is confusing is the vast bulk of the craftless all shouting"i’m the one" whereas competence sits back and lets its work speak for itself

sylvia’s mother

brad warner baring

its interesting that she/he wants to appear as a male, concern with appearance is a very female trait though, men don’t really care and this actually i think is why "trans" seems to be a schizophrenic bolt hole, there’s no such thing as black and white male and female in these cases, the developmental nature means that you necessarily have a strong mix of male and female traits

the intense focus on appearing to be the opposite sex is a female trait which cuts both ways, women wanting to appear as men and men wanting to appear as women

no-man’s

operations and hormones, except in a few childhood cases are just a further excursion into a difficultland with strong negative health consequences

the most interesting thing about "gender blurring" by which i mean brains that are not distinctly male or female is the huge intellectual power its gives, leonardo da vinci, sir henry neville/shakespeare, sir isaac newton, a lot of great artists and thinkers, if you scratch the surface, it starts to all look very "blurred" which does not necessarily mean homosexuality at all

somethings you can’t rush

inspiration for a poem for instance

it turns up

when it turns up

falsehood is true

and the true is false

what a world

trying to makes sense

of

this

a bit of a riff on ain marianne faithfull’s apartment

“ i was abused as a child by my father, and i remember being able to relate towhen this song came out

87

i was sixteen years old in'. i am now the father of five, and i did not abuse my kids

i couldn’t forget how it felt to be a small weak child with no way to stop being hit, and not understanding what i did that caused me to be hurt

thanks suzanne for your poignant song about child abuse ”

suzanne vega singingand she also gives the "backstory"

something is not wrong for being what it is

its wrong

because its wrong

something is not wrong for being itself

its wrong

because its wrong

co-ordination

monkeys have a degree of speed,and dextrousthat humans can only marvel at

with poetry

why is there so much rubbish around

and very little that makes sense to oneself ?

dandilions

a ball of fluff

i blow it to the wind

it doesn’t really disperse

transmission and zen truths

until you experience transmission you won’t believe it and what’s more since hardly any zen masters have had the real thing and are stupid arseholes, they will try and decoy you off it

you actually need quite a few transmission events to get a real bead on what is happening and life

until then you will gabble putridly or do as some do, take the road of ignorant silence called "grunt zen"

when you have had a series of "transmissions" you will write, think and speak as a patriarch and feel contempt for the usual bad translations and garbled nonsense of the so called zen records

keep your distance from the pretenders, they are toxic

like anything else its a craft and you have to do a lot of work to get facility, so much so that its easy to understand why the only decent zen comes from celibacy and in the historical case of ch’an, from a very young age with a lot of travelling

zen requires a long life span, there’s no other way

“ cataract surgery is an independent risk factor fordue to postsurgical anatomical and biochemical alterations in the vitreous

anatomically, following the removal of the native lens, there are changes in the vitreous volume possibly affecting its mobility

in addition, critical biochemical changes including differences in proteome, viscosity, and macromolecules in the vitreous humour were found and may lead to a posterior vitreous detachment, a known risk factor for RD ”

1.5–2.3

the period for this happening is surprisingly long with the average beingyears

its the association of poetry journals with the academic literary world which has become unspeakably toxic that attracts my ire

its a world of mistakes, if you don’t see that, blindness does not begin to describe it

in criticising the very low standard of contemporary poerty, its just an observation and in making it, i know what to avoid being sucked in by

self-certainty

the pompous inaneof the untalented

social skills go a long way, self righteous indignation goes nowhere

376

,

thisfoot long "yacht" is completelymakes the same mistake as steve jobs’s boat, not capable of handling heavy seas

a swimming pool for god’s sake, what’s the point of being on the sea ?

religion

the fiction

of the communal

communion

with

infinity

its

fiction

marriage -

marr-iage

its actually a partnership for the raising of children

masked

by

love

you want it darker

hineni for what ?

the light bleeds

as badly as dark

you want it darker

hineni for what ?

the light bleeds

as badly as the dark

a response to leonard cohen’s

this world

a cycling from infancy to prime to senescence

it thinks there is something going on

there is

but what can you learn from it ?

the joy of birth is drowned in the tears of senescence

i walked out the door

there was a purple light

i haven’t seen it before

it was like walking in velvet

“ journal (ed. poetry) publication has long been, and continues to be, the best way . . . ”

to be part of an unctuous, untalented clique

to insta-movement,

less-oily

“ no, mostly because it sounds like you know almost nothing about publication. there are so many unaffiliated small presses that calling it a "clique" is stretching the definition to the breaking point. there are thousands of journals out there, and i can say with relative certainty that whatever style of poetry interests you, from identity poetry,to formal, to absurdist, to metapoetic, is represented by some journal somewhere. where are you reading your poetry where all the talented,poets are sharing their work ? ”

the marvellous thing about writing is you can read across the ages from a generation ago to sappho and heraclitus

to insta-movement,

"from identity poetry,to formal, to absurdist, to metapoetic, is represented by some journal somewhere"

you don’t consider these cliques ? the present generation is too intellectually downsized by pot and a bad diet

i’m just after interesting and original ideas and expression, and there’s very little of that around in contemporary poetry, the scene is just swamped by worse than the mediocre

the wannabe literati

chasing no money

wonder why

the piggybank

is

dry

non-exploratory-ness

mediocrity is doomed to itself by its

you are doing the right thing by investigating the options and not rushing into it if you are facing a cataract operation

ophthalmologists are not gods, but the usual flawed humans and given the cost structure of the industry they work in, only have a very limited amount of time and attention to give you

there is a lot of very good research available on the net in this area

the cornea is an inflatable dome, i really would avoid doing anything in the way of lasik or incisions to it, long term its just not that stable

its always a big help to being familiar with the life of the author to get the flavour or character of their poems

i wonder what the "backstory" of william wordsworth’s poem "the solitary reaper" was ?

your comfort with your level of ignorance is astounding

i feel videos of poems read aloud need to expand the meaning of the poem, and not be some rather senseless wallpaper

i think in my entire viewing experience i might have seen only a small few that have done this, the rest are bad wallpaper

in making such a video, you are offering an interpretation of the poem, so its needs to be coherent and on target

i think poetry has to use sound to amplify the intensity of meaning

forced rhymes don’t do this

some bullshit reply to me (below) on r|poetry, it beats me why they do this

“ that’s the inherent beauty of the ‘artistry’ of language, isn’t it ? great masters — shakespeare, frost, dylan — never “forced” a rhyme . . . they didn’t have to, did they ? ”

the notion of "great masters" is a somewhat passive and depressive view, if you write yourself then you take a more functional approach

"shakespeare" makes more sense if its really "sir henry neville"

poetry takes you into other worlds

the poem is the thing itself

the other world

reading boring people

being boring and stupid

today’s

intellectuals

perhaps the uncertainty of quantum mechanics is a reflection of the "arrow of time" and the crossover between reversible physical laws and this irreve