Cupiditas

I'm too cupidinous right now to write anything of great import though I wish I wish I could. Chopin. I'm listening to Chopin. And somehow I want the music of Chopin to be the blue of this ink on the white of this paper. I wish all beautiful or true things could change mediums into something we could touch, feel, taste, see, and know. Oh and hear. I wish all of it were rolled into one strange, magnificent thing and we were strange, magnificent beings who ate those things and let them slowly work their way through us as we broke them apart and transformed them without effort into what we needed and what was good for us and then let out the rest.

Gravity or (as I leave Texas)

He that moved ungracefully past me

Lord, you gave him an extra dose of gravity.

For though he is not as beautiful as some

Though his wandering walk is less than winsome

Though his mouth squirrels up to his eyes

And there is no space between his thighs

Though his manner decays with his pride

And his natural state is no more than a lie,

Though he has proven himself untrue

Or maybe just scared of all we’d accrue

Though he is too forward and fast

Still always in my thoughts his image is cast

Lord, you gave him an extra dose of gravity

For I’m stuck in his wake since he walked past me.

Funghus

Funghus grows
the fear to fail

your tail they say is
square between your knees

which knock a beat too beautiful still
for a hollow hearted coward

the perfect bell

they hear the beat all around
it guilds them in rhythm divine

even as it shakes up yellow’s pine
unto the neck, bird like thin

to mushroom brain, poison
shooting like neurons into thoughts

of falling, of smalling,
of boring whole crowds

of wearing frowns like death shrouds
imagining funeral drums before you’ve died

of silencing whole tables,
of ruining love’s sacrament- a wedding.

Of ever knowing nothing,
Of growing not at all,

Of reversing a river by repulsion,
Of selfishly sucking whole oceans,

oh funghus growing
fear me yet

look at these feats my fear imagines
and know the glory of this mind

creating worlds next to worlds
and nightmares next to life

a shaper of dark things,
a weight on the sun to encourage the moon

am i. am i.

this music you make with a body
it’s mine!

Hear! You crowds, awake to my sound
It’s fear, yes, it’s funghus.

But it’s alive. And it’s growing.
Showing.
Glowing.

In you.

ad inferos

ad inferos: to hell with it! or more literally- to the dead/ to the underworld.

Basically, to hell with having to start each blog with a latin word. it's boring, to me atleast.

I was just reading a dear friend's blog. This friend is known for being snappy and rude and a brick wall. He's a steel trap. A venus fly-trap. It's hard to get in there and sometimes it makes you think that even if somehow you could stare hard enough to turn his eye into a door knob and then you were to open his forehead with the door knob and you were to look into his mind- even then, there would not be anything that took flight or soared to heights or moved.

And then, I just read his blog and remembered what is ALWAYS TRUE. There is more than you can sense. It just takes time, courage, patience, and like he said- vulnerability to find that place of more within others. So to hell with proud invulnerability! Dimittamus pusillanimitem ad inferos! Let's send it to the land of the shadows!

Here is a poem I wrote the other day:

It's called- The World of Words. and it's not done. but let's be honest, i don't go back and edit. anything.

Rush my fingers

Into warm, dirty earth,

like a stampeed of horses

Like individual strands of streams

Tumbling down and through

Urging, frothing down and forward

Fingers fingering damp world

The realm of real

You can feel

Grime and gross

Then cool and close

Then under and in my finger nails

Like shells cover snails.

The pages of those books

Grounded in a bed of letters

That flower forth into words

My eyes, my mind, my heart, my thighs

Burn as they blow through worlds of ideals

And cling deep inside the realm

Of different reals

Places and spaces that fingers can’t go

But where the mind is free

To live and to grow

To be and to breathe

To create and fill its infinite need.

To paint with brush straight onto the air,

Create leaves on a tree,

With a flick of hand, head, or hair

And all will appear, in an instant appear

A world imagined,

Don’t you dare say it’s not there.

I see it. I’ve said it.

You’ve heard it. Now see it.

An explosion, a flair,

Two-time creation and counting,

Mine, now yours-

Worlds based on words, our minds are founting,

Like rivers, like fiords, like fire, like air

Like earth,

This other world is there.

hyparchein

Hyparchein is a Greek word that means "to be." But it does not just mean "to exist." It ambiguously means "to obtain" or "to belong." I am trying to write a paper about it but honestly do not understand it. But there is something very special about it. I've caught scent of it and am now on the trail to find out what exactly is so wonderful and so mysterious about the phrase. Where to begin this little adventure? I can atleast help you out with the context in which it is used.

So "einai" is the most basic word for "to be" and it can mean "to exist" or it can relate a subject to a verb. So- Annakin Skywalker exists. or Annakin Skywalker is a cat.

Now, hyparchein is different. It means 'obtain' or 'belong.'

The Stoics (the blessed, amazing Stoics) used hyparchein in special instances-- Let me explain--

So for them, Something can be something without existing. This makes sense if we think a little bit. A centaur does not exist, but it has being in some other way. The community that Steinbeck describes in Sweet Thursday does not exist but it has being in some other way. After all, how could I think about or talk about a Chiron or about Doc if this wasn't so? Being is a much fuller than just 'existence.' It can signify so much more.

The Stoics believe that anything that has a body (or matter) exists. But, they also believe there are things without bodies that do not exist but still have being. In other words, they still are something. Some of these things that do not have bodies and do not exist are time, place, void, and sayables (sentences...etc).

Now even within these non-existent things there are different levels of being (which is where the word hyparchein comes in- twice!). Think of time. It (arguably) does not really exist. It just structures our world- it's a measure of day and night, light and dark, movement, rotation of planets, pull of the tide... etc. It does not "exist." But we are tempted to say that the present 'exists' more than the future or the past. The present moment is the only one that we experience NOW. But we cannot say that it 'exists' more because it doesn't 'exist.'

So the stoics use the word 'hyparchein.' The present is the only part of time that 'hyparchein' (belongs or obtains).

Same thing with 'sayables' or sentences. I can say a million different things- some true or some false. But if I say, Laine is walking down the street staring at the sky- it is only true (it only obtains or belongs) if Laine is actually doing it.

There is something powerful and glorious about moments and sentences that have this elite status of obtaining or belonging separate from existing even. There is more to being than existing or not existing. There is a way 'to obtain.'

Of course the phrase 'obtain' is still ambiguous- but there is something grand about it. And I'm still trying to find out what exactly it is.

I intuitively think that a piece of art that obtained or belonged would somehow have stated or communicated some sort of content that made logical sense but only obtained or belonged because it emerged at exactly the right time in exactly the right place for exactly the right people. This convergence made it true, made it hyparchein.

Somehow the particular time in the particular place in which an artist finds himself becomes a sanctuary, a holy ground- set apart for him, from which emerges something that belongs and can be communicated as true.

Anyway, hyparchein.... interesting.

Morbus

'Morbus' is the Latin word for disease. The Stoic philosopher- Chryssipus used the word 'Pathos' (affection/emotion) interchangeably with 'morbus.' Of course, from most modern philosophers, he has gotten quite a bit of flack for this interchange. Having a bad day and saying "I'm so ill right now" rather than "I'm so emotional right now" seems a little counter intuitive and, quite frankly, wrong.

The Stoics thought the entirety of the human soul was rational. We usually think of it colloquially as being a bit more complicated than that. We think of our desires, our thoughts, our will, our emotions, our instincts, our intuitions... etc There are quite a few words we use to describe our states of being. The stoics thought all of these stemmed from our rational faculty. Another way to say this, was that all of these states of being stemmed from our beliefs or judgements about things.

Actually i can't finish this post... unfortunate timing

Quid

Quid means why in Latin- and as far as I am concerned it is the most pesky question. It's always hanging about and the farther your follow it, the harder it gets to answer. But, thanks to the powers at be for making the human mind the way it is, human reason is equipped with machinery that does not ask you if you want to ask why, it just assumes you do. The why seems to be tied inextricably to the process of thought. It generates the premise that everything has a because. I think the why hangs some people up more than others or actually maybe just in different ways. Maybe some people are more obsessed with the theoretical why; others with the practical. Our mind is designed to begin at a premise and proceed from it to another and then to another. The why is most pesky when it rears its head at the premise. Why start here? Why is this so? And we just have to answer. Because.

An easier 'why' has reared its head at the start of this blog. It's simple and, like all why's, it must be asked- Quid blogare volo? (Why do I want to blog- and yes, I do in fact believe that the Romans used 'blogare' as the infinitive 'to blog'). Well, the answer is complicated as are most- but to put it simply- I think I want to talk consistently in a way that comes more naturally to me i.e. writing rather than talking. I want to see what it is that I think about practical and non-practical things. In the mind of a (7), movement from one idea to the next is faster than mental apparatus can grasp and remember each idea. The only way to hold onto things thought, for me, is to write them down and reread them, or have them fortuitously (or not so fortuitously) re-occur. This is an attempt at helping recurrence. Also, you cannot lose a blog (but you can lose a journal or 7). (Unless you forget the password, which unfortunately, in Peru, happened to us).

Also, another reason could be that here, in Scotland, I feel less of myself because I am less with like-minded people whom I love and by whom I am loved. This is an attempt to be known far away. I appreciate everyone who has blogs to let me see what they would be telling me over coffee or just sitting on their bed talking.

Well, If this was a ship I would christen her (the word christen is amazing) but since it's not, let's pretend it is (because that makes the most sense).

"I name this ship Over Iris and may she bring fair winds and good fortune to all who sail on her." Or

"I name this ship Over Iris may God bless her and all who sail in her."

Now, standard procedure would be to break champagne over her (or wine). Which I will act out now.

Well, that business is done! And here we go!

(Interestingly, the Titanic was never christened and the USS Arizona was only christened with water... superstitious? maybe. but, what's wrong with erring on the side of caution)