Tale of Gnomes.

The dream involved a tiny village that resembled Kopenhagen that was inpopulated by dwarfish gnome – like people. The parallels to Kierkegaard’s life are not lost on me one bit, nor the significance of this village’s location. It was at the center of a building whose interior re-

sembled the corridors of a college campus: Specifically, the one in Escondido. Wherein I  had my film writing class. ‘Creative’ writing. (I.A.L.)

THESE corridors were in the shape of a ring that encircled the enclosed village. This leaves me to

suspect THAT the deep blue sky, I think turquoise when I first appeared, was faux – merely the product of a cleverly crafted set.

I have re-told this story so many times all ready (once to Anthony,

once to Zac and Mike, once to Blake and Blake’s girl (was it ‘Shelley’?),

and once to Scott.) that I might all most be tempted to forget my self and thus to forget how many times it was that I have told this story. But that the reasoning may be circular no longer bothers me; that I hope to escape Utilitarianism is my entire

thesis. What concerns me NOW is my own mental well-being. And my spiritual well-being beyond that.

I came to that village, as I re-

call, with two companions: A close friend of the same gender who appeared, at least in de-

meanour, to be akin to a family member. The other was my dog.

(Pumpkin. My  innocence. My love.)

At first I trusted the gnomes.

I should remember my discipline in spontaneous action. At times like these it can only be the mark of Highest Culture to surrender the flow of the piece

to write to you, Alanna. But is it too soon? I do not imagine that I burden you with these relatable cares. That you might once have shot down my plaints is a distant past; the movie is over. I feel that I OWE you these reflections. That you might grow. But per chance it would be best to adhere to a ‘selfish’ path, if only for some time, that it might serve the altruism I shall gain when you return. It simply drives me mad, though. Do you not feel the same? Even that idiom – to ‘gain an altruism’ –

appears blatantly Utilitarian to a

jeering crowd. Though they them-

selves so unabashedly and un-

blushingly push their Utilitarianism!

But then I found a beautiful maiden: A damsel in distress!

I think that she was bound up in the captains quarters of what once had been a sailing vessel and what now had been trans-

muted into a restaurant and/or meeting hall of some sort. She was hiding from the gnomes and plotting her escape. She co-*

rroborated my suspicions that the gnomes meant not well.

In FACT: They were man-

*<3                                         eaters.

You have figured it out by now.

Professor Cess-mat rejected my scrypt. He took one look at it,

flipped through it, lecturing me upon how it was (though not WHY,

or very feebly and unbelievably)

that Format (Cess-mat, four-mat,

floor-mat) accounted for one third of the class. That ass. He is pre-

cisely the patriarchal ‘white liberal’ man that he preaches against; that he would generalise upon all who bear a kinship of appearance to him only evidences his own narcissism (do believe me: It is exhausting to write this, if only so at the moment that I say

‘exhausting’) and now that I have made that parenthetical digression I forget the next clause. We labored to make our escape.

We had to play along and to pretend that we had not yet caught on to the gnomes, so that the gnomes would not have ‘caught on’ to us. I must confess that I do not re-

member yet if it was I just remembered: He was no less guilty of it for admitting to it,

but MORE so. that the girl followed us around or re-

mained in a mobile hiding.

Camus warns that when we have ac-

Knowledged a situation as Absurd there is the temptation to take a ‘leap into Absurdity’: To sell out, to deny the absurdity of things. Suicide is an example of such faulty coping mechanisms. I am reminded of a Story told by Tyrone, the Palomar custodian at the San Marcos campus, about a student he knew at Berkeley who got into an argument with a professor. The professor gave the young man a ‘C’.

The dispute was intellectual. The student took up the issue with the clock tower. He appealed to the ground.

Now they have bars on that tower.

So yeah. Suicide is not the answer.

Remember that if nothing else; it is the sole resin I write these with such desperation and unrest.

Were I so easily seduced

By format and

structure you would not be

Reading this

now.

Art must be a form of revealing.

I explained to Anthony that this was not ‘contrarian’; it was simply post-structuralist.

If I am contrarian at present it

Is only as a preventative measure.

Lance was right: Some people are in life for what they can ‘get out of it’. But others want to understand it. Still others wish to ‘over-stand it’. My break-down began really when he first told me that it needed to be formatted. You might recall. At that moment my Fate was sealed, for I Could Not Corrupt my Work. We snuck under cover of twi-light up to the gates. I had my dog, if not at my side, then in my arms.

And Anthony asked, after having been so contrarian as to call me a contrarian,

(do keep in mind that this was the kid who

would leap over fences just to prove a point; please do not fall in Love with him for that) what it was that I had to GAIN by ‘not’ (gain by not. What a phrase. Gain by nought. [sic and naughty.] Gain by night? Gain by knight!) formatting it. And it even pains me to inscribe it NOW as a possibility!  It simply could never have OCCURRED to me to do such as thing! Tony had the gall to imply that I was an egoist.

But GAIN was nowhere on my mind!

I had no estimations for an ideal ‘future’; at present I all ready knew that I could edit the piece no further.

But the girl was some where LAGGING behind. We had to make our escape swiftly. It was not by a firm sense of necessity but with a scattered trepidation that we passed into the air-lock that was the security entrance. Its white tile reminds me of the air-locks of some In-N-Out restaurants, and its bleak over-HEAD lighting reminds me, most palpably, of the narrow corridors that had so fascinated me with my photographic eye the night that I met Alanna.

The alternative to leaping is PROTEST. This was Camus’ solution. He based an entire book upon it: The Rebel. Format is so dubious and criminally arbitrary and privileged

that it is impossible to delude my self that it would have made any ‘difference’, nor that I might even have FOUND it! Every thing is Structure; the Universe its self is geometrical; how was this NEWS to physicists only so RECENTLY?

I still do not know if the damsel escaped. I barely Know if my male cohort had escaped! What seems without doubt though was that I got out with my dog. Yet how far did we get? How far into the darkness did we penetrate? It was not the darkness that bothered us. Only the people we were running from.

Form is substance. Substance is form. I had no way of KNOWING that the ‘format’ would decide a third of my grade. You have seen the Absurdity by now, even if it was at this point in the reasoning that Tony expressed his im-

patience more explicitly.

I could only INTUIT that the professor would be entirely arbitrary, dismissive, and dogmatic, out of only Resentiment for my talent. How could a professor expect me to trust a ‘syllabus’, a set of mere words and numbers in a LIST, as any sort of guarantee? How could he try to fool me by insisting that he needed to create a ‘level playing field’ for the students?

Kierkegaard versus the People of Kopenhagen would have been a stirring court case trial to witness. The Public On Trial.

Was it not OBVIOUS? Did he think I had not READ Kierkegaard?!? That I did not remember how it was that Lisa Cecere nearly lost her job when She told JAKE, in the wake of his Traumatic Episode, that she had to be ‘fair to the other students’? How dare this cess-

mat educator dispossess his self of his own responsibility – to facilitate CREATIVE writing – by pre-

tending that he did not create the rules? It is such a blatant cession of responsibility to the MASS! And it was so typically Utilitarian! I spoke with him for a bit after the fact. An awkward silence, electric with energy, hung betwixt us as we stood outside the campus building upon the cement strip be-

twixt the corridor and the parking lot. And so I ventured to give birth from the pregnant pause.

I mentioned Derrida’s entire analysis of how typically Utilitarian Americans are, and that cinema is haunted by this problem. And the

cock-sucker called Derrida a LANGUAGE theorist! I guess that makes Cesmat a Languish Theorist. As though we do not all have to answer to the challenge that reality is made of Language! Both Ali and T.

McKenna insisted upon this;

what in hell is Cesmat playing at dismissing him as Kresten once had?!? And to think that either of these men had once implied that I was LAZY!!

And of course then I mentioned Joyce (it had really been before then), and all he could produce

was that Joyce was an ex-patriate from  in from France! As though I had fore-

gotten what Deleuze had said about intellectuals. Watch out. The Sith have sent their best-researched Nazi to shut us down. We must have

And it was DELEUZE then that I mentioned as a FILM THEORIST!

And Cesmat could only grapple at the word ‘theorist’, as though to dis-

miss it as ‘less than fact’. Well:

Apparently he thinks he knows better than Deleuze. But that is but a theory.

I hate telling people what to do. I hate being told what to do. Cesmat wanted me to surrender my own sense

of autonomy and RESPONSIBILITY for my script, for the role of writer as unadulterated prophet,

in service to the same system that destroyed Orson Welles’ work, as well as that passionate painting of the Native that had found its home in the San Diego State class room before that P.C. Fascist removed it.

We tried to return, for the girl, I think. Since the dog was under my supervision,

the operation was cumbersome.

He wanted me to PRESUME upon his authority and upon the

authority of THAT system! Even though he had the nerve to use the names of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung! And he wanted me to become Utilitarian. Not only would I have become a clone trooper marching in the crowd: A clone of my professor, echoing ‘I do not make the rules’, that olde cliché. He wanted me to take HIS order by giving OTHERS orders! THAT was what it mean to FORMAT.

As though I could Not TRUST directors and cinematographers to interpret my work according to their own imaginations! It DOES

take a village to raise a brain-

child, you know. And I had thought that tiny, cozy, un-

intimidating village of GNOMES to have been the place.

Anthony’s criticisms mean little.

He could only ask what it was that I had to GAIN by ‘not conforming’. Why not ask the obverse? what to gain by con-

forming? There is no Mass.

There is no ‘way it’s done’ at work here. There is no format.

There is only the relationship with the professor, and Tony’s indirect relationship to it. YOUR

indirect relationship to them both!

The relationship of course. Not the people.

But how could I so insult my teacher by attempting to flatter him at the expense of my authenticity? Surely HE would read my work care fully,

labouring to understand it, if it is his intent to learn from his students.

The LEAST that he could do is to live up to the name of Jung that he so casually drops and not to interfere in the name of his ‘own bourgeois ideas about what is ‘normal’.’ (von Franz, Jungian Analyst. Though less anal than Freud.) I mean: What?

Does he want me to go through life

and have a mental break-down every time that I must commit the written word to print? If Derrida is ‘MERELY’ a language theorist, then what relation does PAPER have to Computers?? I might have begun typing this letter directly to phone long ago,

but NO! Writing is not a daring POKE into a miss-

understood and volatile abyss!

It is a BUSINESS! Spirits do not Guide us through this treacherous jungle! Only CRITICS who chop down the trees

we are so eager to write upon!

And he would have me re-print it all,

wasting the hide of those once glorious trees, just on the OFF chance that I would stumble upon the ghost of FORMAT! HIS ghost! The Cesmat Format.

Obviously, I expected better of him. It could not have been much to ex-

pect. Very RARELY must he have a student whose avant-garde Stabs so wound him and whose wounds are so worth nursing. And I KNOW that mine are worthit. [sick.] I really poured my heart directly into that screen play. How could he regard it as

but one of a number? Had I not demonstrated my COMPETENCE enough that I might ALTER if not Transcend the dualistic illusion of a Norm?? Do under-

stand, and over stand: I would not tell you this if not that I KNEW that you feel my plight and HOPE that this might help you.

There was nothing ever to ‘gain’. We approached this day with Fear and

Trembling. For we had seen our SELVES and had the courage to clothe them.

So the same reason that I refused to besmirch my piece with crude instructions and belaboured descriptions and directions was the reason it did not even occur to me to think of ‘gain’. Whether it is to tell the camera man what to do or to be told how to write (and here the one cannot be extricated from the other), the temptation is the same:

Utilitarianism!!!

Deleuze said that what is original never follows a TREND.

HE ALL so said that writing is pure.

Talking is seductive. As much as I would

love to seduce you, it is well that I took the pains to write this.

Let us keep writing pure and not fall into dogmatism. That my own frustrations sound dogmatic is only to serve the utilitarian purpose that I might re-

member the next thing,

moment by moment, that I wish to berate. And that Utilitarianism is a ghost I shall exorcise soon. With push-ups curls and a fresh run per chance. I have not run for a while. I pray that this will be help full to you.

Remember: Do not take the Leap.

I could have told my self that next time I shall Know better,

that he’s the boss. I could have submitted to an impersonal social order. But every one Knows the Emperor wears no clothes. This class was between me and the professor, and he did not hold up his end of the relationship. I wrote. He did not read. What did he think I came to school for? To kiss his ass? No. To LEARN. And not to ‘learn format’. There is no such thing as an ‘unstructured piece’. What is learning if it has been learnt before? Do I look five?

Creativity is all ways NEW, and as Campbell said we enter the wood where there is no path.

The dictation of the time has no proper dominion over our personal eternity, and so Campbell was not a mere man of his time. Circular as that is it probably saved my life. I hope it saves yours.

Karl and I once came to the joint conclusion that Schools are no longer academic institutions and think-tanks. They are trade-

schools. And that is very, VERY dangerous. I hope to find you again.

To deliver you from the gnomes. [Dm.

Malice of the Equalist:

You little bitch. What do you hope to GAIN by leveling with me? That a man might have to answer not only for his OWN sins but for those of every man who wronged him? That it would not be SUFFICIENT that he criticise the man who wronged him? That he could not LEARN from the wrong doing of his assailant and crusade against it, watch full of its each appearance lest he permit the wrong to be committed again by any other. What malice you must possess to suspect the VICTIM of this, as though to add insult to injury and to salt the wounds! Is there no refuge from evil? Now you mean to tell me that the poison from the wound has spread to the Heart! MUST the victim be vigilant now of his self, at a moment when he needs most to be confident of his self and vigilant of others? MUST he turn his keenest eye inward as still other rascals take advantage of him? NO! What do you hope to GAIN by this? What am *I* to gain? What are WE to gain? And most importantly: What will THEY? Do you think honestly that I would bewail my own agony were it not the agony of watching an other suffer? What does it bother you that YOU suffer that I might my self heal? Would you have to watch one of your own suffer? Until you do you shall not fathom my pain; you only have enough room in your heart for one. IMAGINE the pain of two! And when the heart was most open!!

Dm.A.A. 

Dialogue.

Ahh. Typically American. But you see I did not ASK about what MIGHT happen. *I* was asking about what is TOTALLY IMPERATIVE at THIS VERY MOMENT. Now you speak to me of women getting raped, and the necessity of self defense. But you failed to provide one ostensibly crucial warrant. I mean: Can you PROVE to me that rape is bad? Now, now. No need to get violent yet. A simple warrant will do. Now you seem to EXPECT that I know the answer to this question. That’s a bit TOTALITARIAN, is it not? To EXPECT such an answer. Seems contrary to your motto. Allow me if you will to venture again. It was YOU that suggested that women need guns to protect their selves. But I of course filled in the details with my own imagination. You simply said: But what about women who get raped? Well: what ABOUT them? Or is it possible that you wanted to PRESERVE this fine tradition? After all: Surely many of their ASSAILANTS TOO were armed. Now I have done the work FOR you. Now haven’t I? And you turn to me like I have tricked you. You DEMAND that I be clearer next time with my claims. But I only thought to ask questions. I was curious about you. I wanted to give you that space to set the standards. Turns out you had NO standards to set. My views were secondary. But now I must supplement them for your own. Nature abhors a vacuum, you know.

Allow me to refresh. You SEEM to have suggested, by threat of violence, that ANY man should know the answer to this question that I asked OF YOU. And yet it seems you did not even think to ask the question first! Were the last men to have beaten you not kind enough to TELL you the answer, that you might not be beaten again for asking it? How is it that YOU cannot prove EITHER why rape is bad? Now come on. Must *I* educate YOU? I have all ready hinted at the answer twice before. But I wanted to get to know you before I did the work for you. Clarity IS the enemy of Depth, now isn’t it, and I would INSULT your depth by my Being-Too-Clear!

Here is the answer: That rape is a form of VIOLENCE. Now that we have established VIOLENCE, as the problem, go ahead. If you will pardon my use of the imperative. EXPLAIN to me how guns are necessary. SHOW me how you might sit next to your WIFE and not feel AWKWARD at the fact that you have a gun at your other side. Does that not HAUNT you? Does it not BOTHER you? Now, now. I did not EXPECT you to know the answer. Say what you will of my being manipulative. But at least I am consistent; I my self don’t have Totalitarian Expectations. Is it not YOU who seeks to manipulate me by leveling with me, that you might escape responsibility in the mere moments it takes for me to justify my self?

But was the burden not upon YOU? After all: It was to YOU that the thought of sexual violence occurred. No surprises, since you seem to value violence as a human right. But surely it can’t be that YOU are the apologist. Only for the violence that you your self deem justified. But my good man! What about the women who do not WANT to carry a gun! Bless their souls. And you would RATHER that they be raped by any MISCREANT who thinks to bear one? After all: Are they not usually found out LATER to have been “mentally unstable”? Are many of them not so DIAGNOSED only a posteriori?

The burden was of course upon you to answer my question. And you tried to dispossess your self of THAT responsibility as well, reversing the burden upon me as you have done [by] Leveling more recently. Yes, even as you have done by labeling me the manipulator. But is it not IRONIC that since the burden of the question rested upon YOU to begin with, you could only parrot it back to me with the EXPECTATION that *I* know it? Why would you EXPECT that I know the answer to an innocent question? Were you biased against me to begin with? How DARE you call me manipulative then! That is surely WORSE than the fact that I did not EXPECT you to know the question either. I mean, sure: May be I have confessed that the question was not so much innocent as interrogatory, more Rhetorical than Socratic. But what does it say that you JUMPED to that same conclusion without EVIDENCE?

Or was my evidence merely a matter of tone, of intentionality? Would you not EASILY have exposed it by simply answering? Would that not at LEAST have lay my planned advocacy to waste? Or were you afraid that it would not? You only compel me to sound manipulative for you your self are. How else am I to answer to the accusation that I too had had Totalitarian Expectations? Either I did, or my question was rhetorical, for I did not expect you to know the answer. It is not nice to try to corner people. Nor is it accurate. For it was YOUR last argument that would have led me to believe one of two things: That either you knew or you were bluffing. So I ask one more time: Is it not IRONIC that since the burden of the question rested upon YOU to begin with, for it was YOU who mentioned rape to start with, that you expected ME to know the answer to a question you did not ostensibly expect? After all: if you expected the QUESTION, was it not you who lay the trap? How could you claim that I had tricked you if the question its self was expected?

Now, now. But no need to get violent. And no need to level. We heard every thing.

Dm.A.A.

Marxism and Assault. III:

Marxism and Assault. III.

The confusion of theft and rape can only be committed by the neurotic ego. If one's locus of attention is upon the Other, then there can be no confusion. The Other NEEDS food, and similarly the Other has a Need NOT to be violently abused. There can be no conflict of interest here. In the same way as we must honor the Other's space we must honor the Other's nutrition and general well being. Only the Self can imagine this latter obligation is an infringement upon its OWN former rights. The Self, if it is sufficiently conniving, will hold the altruist to altruistic standards. But the egoist is exposed at the moment that the altruist sees that the egoist neither holds its self nor other others to these altruistic expectations. This hypocrisy can get SO egregious that, when the altruist rages that they are not being held to the same standards, the egoist simply says to the altruist: think of others. But it is merely an absurd parroting of the altruist's own indignation -- a re-direction of resentiment. At this moment the offense must be seen not as revelatory of the altruist's contradictions but rather of the egoist. The egoist fucks up; he thinks that he is simply perpetuating the ruse. In fact he had blown his cover, for were thought of Other his own goal then he would join in his altruistic friend's tirade against the selfishness of these others.

That this seems to contradict the principle of Tolerance for the Intolerant is a fact that I can tolerate. After all: consistency belongs to the self. Inconsistency is the province of the Other. Yet I do not espouse a surrender of consistency. There can BE consistency underlying an apparent inconsistency, and for a balance betwixt self and other to exist we must honor it. The consistency here is that we still tolerate those whom we criticise; we try to ignore those we do not see any positive potential in.

The effect of Political Correctness is that we repress the Otherness of the Other and our own tendency to Otherise in favour of including the Other in the Self. So it is that, as tends to be the case with repression, the repressed instinct becomes VILE. When we DO Otherise, it is with unconscious aversion. And this is not said to haunt you with fear of your own unconscious; my intent is quite the opposite. The moment that we express this aversion we become conscious of it. But what we forget is that it was not justified to begin with. So it is not as though at this moment you must ask your self: am I secretly racist? You are not. There is no such thing. But rather when you say: I AM racist, but I cannot help it! you are lying. When the notion of racism its self is seen to be a projection of the unconscious then it loses all meaning except as a slur. But what we must be vigilant of here is the investment we make in the psyche. If we spend days being politically correct, by the time that we order a drone strike on the phantom projection that is I.S.I.S. it is all ready too late to convince the well meaning, politically correct ego that this is blatant xenocide. The ego has done every thing RIGHT, but it is still wrong, to use a cynical expression. And this is, again, NOT to say that the egoist is 'unconsciously racist' and that he can atone by becoming 'conscious' of that 'fact'. There never WAS a fact, just like there never WAS any sort of Racism nor any sort of I.S.I.S. The naivete here is on the part of the realist. What there WAS were the Muslim people, but because they were excluded under threat of exclusion their Otherness was repressed, forgotten, corrupted, and re-projected upon the Middle East. The non-realist does not deny an actual crisis, so he is not naiive; HIS whole argument is that the crisis is perpetuated by the people trying to stop it. And whilst it is in man's nature to act, to cite Watts, we should act in such a way that does not act against Nature.

Dm.A.A.

Marxism and Assault. II.

Marxism and Assault. II:

The central flaw with contemporary progressive thought is the nihilation of the Other. To be regarded as Other is established as the most unfavourable sort of Hell because to regard an other AS Other (to Otherise) is seen as a vile sin. And if one man's sin is an other man's hell, the default for cynical atheists who disbelieve in cosmic and karmic justice, then the former necessitates the latter and vice versa: to the degree we are afraid to exclude to that same degree we fear being excluded. And the moment that exclusion is justified in order to exclude the exclusionary -- when we feel entitled to be Intolerant of the Intolerant -- at that moment conformism and fear become a synthesis more dangerous than State and Corporate power.

Dm.A.A.

Marxism and Assault:

I wonder how many of you have seen this psychedelic film from 1977 called the Holy Mountain. In the closing monologue this sort of Plutonian character, concluding your journey through the Under World, tells you to surrender your body. It is not yours, he says: it was a loan.

Admittedly, I have had enough problems with trickster gurus in my day to be vigilant of such rhetoric. But all that cultists have shown me is to be mind full of the Intent Of The Speaker. The words them selves are unequivocal. It is simply that their meaning is skewed in favour of the person saying them.

The claim that Marxism justifies rape does not phase me. It does so only in theory. Not in practice. It was never PUT into practice. The co-claim that rape can never be justified does not support the primary claim; it is simply a counter-claim because the primary claim PROVES that rape can be justified. We simply should not do some thing simply because Reason tells us it's okay. And to escape Rationalisation we must weigh it against Experience. The moderate suspicion of Marxism is that it works in theory and yet not in practice. Yet in truth it was never PUT into practice. So all we have to say against it is purely theoretical. And we must prepare for the possibility that, IN practice, it might be our only alternative TO a coercive and violent society, much rather than a step 'towards' it (as though such a society could not be said, however naiive conventional realism may be, to exist within the status quo.). To ignore this gap between lucid reason and Experience is in fact to engender the Same kind of Rationalism that can justify any thing and presupposes that thing to be "good" because it is "justified", without consulting Experience and, most importantly, the Intuitions that help us learn from past experiences in such a way that we have more than simply to 'test our hypotheses' that rape is a good thing empirically if we wish to Prove that it is not.

Dm.A.A.

A Tale of Blame.

I read one of Lynne Floto’s quotes from the list that she dis-

tributes to her high school students.

The quote seemed to follow the lines of: ‘asking her whether or not she was wearing a seat-belt is like asking a rape victim what she was wearing.’ The simile is of course null and void in terms of evaluative impact, and ironically in the absence of such an impact the objectivity of the analogy looms dubious as well. Either question would of course occur to me.

Along with many others? Why was she on the road? Why did she

seek out that peculiar path to walk down at night? Why did she do what she did, or, to put it an other way, have happen what she had? How did it occur to her? I love that idiom, for its meaning seems even more en-

ticing than the literal meaning. To say: It occurs to me, is to say: I recognise.

I THINK. I question.

But it is no surprise that a quote used by Lynne would repress what if not the ASKING of Questions.

In debate, my response would be:

So do you mean to suggest that the latter woman is just as responsible for HER tragedy as the former is responsible for hers? And when my opponent tries to insist that I had heard the meaning of the analogy in reverse, I would reply:

Does the one meaning not imply the other?

Sartre said that we are totally responsible for what happens to us.

So does yoga. I disagree, but with one qualification: Regret. Nothing is more beautiful than to gaze upon

Claire Boucher of Grimes and to say: All that has happened to this Goddess was her own doing.

For nothing do I hate more than the thought of a female victim.

I have come to the conclusion that Americans are those people who love to blame the Other. Why should I be afraid to ask what she was wearing? Would others not learn from her missed take? Or is prevention of secondary import to punishment? Why should I hesitate?

For fear of being labeled a rape apologist? So long as the Other – the rapist – is blamed, the ‘victim’ is not.

And so she is power-less.    Dm.A.A.

A Tale of Giving Thanks;

For Thanks-giving, I am thank full for the opportunity to sit down with my family and enjoy a home cooked meal, go jogging in the frigid air when all the restaurants are closed, experience satori out side my favourite pizzeria, and get caught in the rain, listening to Christmas music, and chatting with my friend’s neighbor who plays guitar. Oh. And living in a country where at least for the time being I do not have to listen to b.s. propaganda about how I am not supposed to be here because I an immigrant/white person. But can choose to. Just like you can choose which side you wish to hate from. Dm.

Critique of Pragmatism. One.

One of the advantages of idealism is actually the cession of individual, isolated responsibility to DUTY. No longer is the question one of “what I chose to do” or “what I did not choose to do”, but rather “What was NEEDED of me” and “whether or not I succeeded”. What was the duty? What was the requirement? Fear can never totally conquer the idealistic deontologist, for one all ways knows that one has refuge in only one haven, and one only REQUIRES refuge in that: “It felt like the right thing to do.” NOT “it felt right at the time”, though that idiom may just as well be used to express the idea that only the former idiom can express*. But the latter idiom has an other meaning: “It felt like it would make me happy, and what bad consequences came of it would not affect me detrimentally.”  This is quite obviously a self-defeating strategy, which is ironic given that it is so self-aggrandising. When the strategist tries to advantage his self, the strategy destroys its self.

If you were suicidal and I called you, it would be on the authority of this critical intuition: I think that you are in danger. And I HOPE that you are okay. but beyond that hope there is the anxiety that the hope may not be realised without action. Were you to reprimand me later for the act, I could never be blamed. If the call its self were to intrude upon your psyche and push you into the act, I at least had meant well. And if you know this you know better than to distrust me, for you’d know that you owed me your allegiance at least for my good will.

But a pragmatist would never see it as “what needed to be done” but “what was arbitrarily chosen”. And now each of the players is held EQUALLY responsible. Yet of course this dis-incentivises any one from ever being a player. In stead, every one becomes isolated and begins to pursue one’s own dubious “self-interest”. And this is totally anti-social. Now rather than thanking me for caring you meet me with suspicion and lead me to carve out my own spiritual innerds until I cannot distinguish my self from the villain. And then what can I rely upon? There is no moral scalpel to discern my concerns from mere whims, and on your own whims you may condemn me not as caring but as over-bearing and tyrannical. And so no question arises as to how one might identify the difference between the friend and the tyrant. For, you see, to arrive at that sort of assessment of virtue one must first make the theoretical DISTINCTION. No experiments, mental or other wise, can be performed without theory.

 *obviously, I mean to say: only the former idiom can express it without question as to another meaning. Or: The former idiom ONLY expresses THIS meaning (the meaning that both the former and the latter idiom share in common).

Dm.A.A.

A Tale of Spouses. CONCLUDED.

A Tale of Spouses.

Once there were a woman and a man who lived together. They were engaged in a monogamous relationship. The woman daily left their home to go to work at her place of employment. The husband mean while stayed at home to watch the dog.

One day, after a considerable day at work and a rough happy-hour, the woman of the house returned home in a rage. She screamed at her husband, throwing pot and pans, denigrating him as a loafer and a free-loader and sloth.

“Why don’t you ever DO any thing?” she proclaimed.

The husband replied: “I WOULD, but who will watch the dog?”

And at the thought of being compelled to surrender her career as her husband worked, the offended lady divorced him.

Whose fault was it? Before you make your assessment, note this: The husband was a minority. Not simply by being a male. But by being an introvert.

The woman sought an other mate. But her pride had been so irrevocably bruised that she could not tolerate the thought of dating an other loafer. In every photograph she saw, every feminist poster, depicting a bruised woman, her ego found solace and rage.

So she decided to embrace what was called Equity Theory. She had heard rumour of a thing called Gender Norms. APPARENTLY, men who slept with many women were applauded by “society” as “alpha males”, whilst women who slept with many men were deplored as “sluts”.

The origin of this mentality apparently originated in the Bible, though only certain Christian sects really professed the “alpha male” idea.

Fancying this unfair, the woman decided that she would settle the score. She did this by sleeping with an alpha male. Yet to do this she had to use the alpha male’s best friend, an introvert and a virgin.

Apparently, the way to settle the score was to up the alpha male’s game. For every point that she gained with him he gained one with her. But in her mind the situation was reversed: For every point that HE gained with HER SHE gained one with HIM.

In this way at least she felt that she had the last word. Even if the last word that she had was HIM.

Mean while, the alpha male’s friend remained at zero. This way, equity was achieved and the woman was no longer a SLUT.

Obviously, the alpha male was still one-up on the girl. No matter what she tried. So she moved on. She found a young man to stay with who was AVERAGE. So she went drinking with him one night. His best friend drove them to the bar and drove them home.

As the new boy-friend was asleep, past out from drinking, the best friend made a move on the girl. She consented to sex, and in the boy-friends dreams he could hear their love-work.

In the morn, the best friend had left. The boy-friend came to, awaking, and he exclaimed: “I had the most awe full night-mare! I dreamt that you slept with my best friend!”

And to which the girl replied: “Do not worry. He is not your best friend any more.”

The woman ended up suing the best friend and imprisoning him for having been sobre at the time of seduction. This helped her to pay for her divorce, for she had all ready married the cuckolded young man.

Finally she decided just to start talking to a nice boy that she met one fortuitous night in the parking garage of her University.

The young boy was an introvert. He was a charmer and a gentleman with very stern but malleable morals. He saw the best in most people, including his troubled extraverted friend. So he and the girl related in respect to their own troubled, extraverted friends. At least SHE related with the stories of the troubled extravert.

The introverted young man had long lived in the shadow of his extraverted brother. He did not mind to too great a degree. He admired his friend despite his absence of envy for the extravert’s polyamorous life-style. When ever the two attended a party, social gathering or drum circle, the extravert managed to attract the attention of every young lady that the introvert tried talking to. But the introvert did not mind. He knew that one day he would find a girl who would love the introvert for who he really was. Monogamy was the name of the introvert’s game.

One day, the introvert FOUND such a person. She is the heroine of this story. He courted her for a month in writing, finally daring to say that the time was ripe for the two to meet. A few times they missed their appointments, chiefly owing to emotional distress either on the part of the boy or the girl’s extraverted friends having mental break-downs.

Finally, they met again, at a concert that the introvert and the extravert were both playing in. And yet again the extravert got the girl. This time, the introvert did mind. He told him self: “That man is a douche,” and he refused to ever speak to the extravert again.

Do you remember what I said about the virgin’s tally remaining at zero?

So it remained. Yet the introvert got his hopes up when the young woman told him that she wanted to meet with him again.

To the introvert’s chagrin and travail, the young woman was in a rage. “How dare you hurt him by betraying him like that? What gave you the right to abandon him? I LOVED him.”

And to this the man replied: “What gave you the right to love him? HE betrayed ME. And YOU abandoned ME.”

To this she fumed: “He made me HAPPY!” Of course, this was only literally true. The extravert had made her happy until she realised that he did not love her. This came around the time that he forgot her birthday, for despite his being an extravert he was trying to develop his introversion by ignoring her systematically.

And the introvert replied: “Be that as it may, *I* was left UNHAPPY. And surely he expected me to be happy FOR him and for YOU. Yet allow me to explain what had gone wrong.

“I would have expected him to say: I am sorry. But this is my best friend. He will be devastated to learn that you do not love him as he had so hoped for so long. I must stand beside him at this difficult time. It would drive him MAD to learn it by seeing his own best friend with his imagined lover.

“And I would have expected you to say: I am sorry. I cannot allow you to betray your own best friend. I was wrong to have led him on and thought to use him and the opportunities he provided by his hospitality in order to GET to some one like you.

“And I thought both of you would say: He deserves better.”

And the woman simply gave the introvert the finger and stormed off.

Dm.A.A.

A Tale of Spouses. EXTENDED:

A Tale of Spouses.

Once there were a woman and a man who lived together. They were engaged in a monogamous relationship. The woman daily left their home to go to work at her place of employment. The husband mean while stayed at home to watch the dog.

One day, after a considerable day at work and a rough happy-hour, the woman of the house returned home in a rage. She screamed at her husband, throwing pot and pans, denigrating him as a loafer and a free-loader and sloth.

“Why don’t you ever DO any thing?” she proclaimed.

The husband replied: “I WOULD, but who will watch the dog?”

And at the thought of being compelled to surrender her career as her husband worked, the offended lady divorced him.

Whose fault was it? Before you make your assessment, note this: The husband was a minority. Not simply by being a male. But by being an introvert.

The woman sought an other mate. But her pride had been so irrevocably bruised that she could not tolerate the thought of dating an other loafer. In every photograph she saw, every feminist poster, depicting a bruised woman, her ego found solace and rage.

So she decided to embrace what was called Equity Theory. She had heard rumour of a thing called Gender Norms. APPARENTLY, men who slept with many women were applauded by “society” as “alpha males”, whilst women who slept with many men were deplored as “sluts”.

The origin of this mentality apparently originated in the Bible, though only certain Christian sects really professed the “alpha male” idea.

Fancying this unfair, the woman decided that she would settle the score. She did this by sleeping with an alpha male. Yet to do this she had to use the alpha male’s best friend, an introvert and a virgin.

Apparently, the way to settle the score was to up the alpha male’s game. For every point that she gained with him he gained one with her. But in her mind the situation was reversed: For every point that HE gained with HER SHE gained one with HIM.

In this way at least she felt that she had the last word. Even if the last word that she had was HIM.

Mean while, the alpha male’s friend remained at zero. This way, equity was achieved and the woman was no longer a SLUT.

Obviously, the alpha male was still one-up on the girl. No matter what she tried. So she moved on. She found a young man to stay with who was AVERAGE. So she went drinking with him one night. His best friend drove them to the bar and drove them home.

As the new boy-friend was asleep, past out from drinking, the best friend made a move on the girl. She consented to sex, and in the boy-friends dreams he could hear their love-work.

In the morn, the best friend had left. The boy-friend came to, awaking, and he exclaimed: “I had the most awe full night-mare! I dreamt that you slept with my best friend!”

And to which the girl replied: “Do not worry. He is not your best friend any more.”

The woman ended up suing the best friend and imprisoning him for having been sobre at the time of seduction. This helped her to pay for her divorce, for she had all ready married the cuckolded young man.

Dm.A.A.

A Tale of Spouses.

A Tale of Spouses.

Once there were a woman and a man who lived together. They were engaged in a monogamous relationship. The woman daily left their home to go to work at her place of employment. The husband mean while stayed at home to watch the dog.

One day, after a considerable day at work and a rough happy-hour, the woman of the house returned home in a rage. She screamed at her husband, throwing pot and pans, denigrating him as a loafer and a free-loader and sloth.

“Why don’t you ever DO any thing?” she proclaimed.

The husband replied: “I WOULD, but who will watch the dog?”

And at the thought of being compelled to surrender her career as her husband worked, the offended lady divorced him.

Whose fault was it? Before you make your assessment, note this: The husband was a minority. Not simply by being a male. But by being an introvert.

Dm.A.A.

Aphorizm. (II.)

That I am right and that it hurts me to be right does not prove YOU right. You presume of course that you have cornered me. For now that I am right and unhappy it evidences how silly my project of being right was to begin with. But in fact my being unhappy does not disprove my being right. Rather if any thing it proves that I was right all along, for I had no vested interest in being right. It never brought me joy. And this disappointment in being right is of course familiar to me.

Dm.A.A.

Aphorizm:

It is not as though finding the best in people is a form of self-love because it promises an accommodation, however fickle and unwarranted the promise. Rather it is that one can preserve one’s own dignity more easily from accusations of hypocrisy if one is not all too judge/mental.

Dm.A.A.

The Aesthetics of Analogy:

When ever we relate ideas, it is usually based upon an aesthetic semblance -- a 'nostalgia for the unity' of these disparate ideas, instances, and the ideas and signs used to describe those instances.

So often analogy is a function of aesthetic preference. But aesthetics depend upon character. How we fill in the details depends upon the quality of the imagination in individuals. And a sadistic individual, for instance, is invariably drawn to different aesthetics than is an asadistic individual.

Dm.

GNOSIS AND THE AGE OF (INTUITIVE) POST-SKEPTICISM.

GNOSIS AND THE AGE OF (INTUITIVE) POST-SKEPTICISM.

A Return to Eden.

There are principally two schools of thought in the world: That of Gnosis and that of Agnosis.

The agnostics believe that truth belongs to a selected few.

But the Gnostics believe it to be ubiquitous. The only issue is that there are so few of them with the tenacity to assert the truth that they too become elitists. And naive man confuses the one elitist with the other.

The agnostics are traditional Christians. They are all so Confucianists, Orthodox Jews, orthodox Muslims, Shintoists, and members of any religious group that lends authority to an organization with the HOPE that that authority will trickle down to their selves. They are all so thus the atheists, the dogmatic empiricists, the reductionists, the patriots, the consumers of trickle down economic theory, and the so-called scientists. What they all have in common is a preference for the security of collective opinion. There is a fetish for structure that is raised over their heads like a roof-beam to protect them from the forces of nature. Yet it is bound to be stultifying to those intellectual giants who like Ares scrape the ceiling when they try to enter into discussion in the cushioned and dismissive home of a dogmatic agnostic.

Among agnostics there is all ways an appeal to tradition, the mire of the past. And so it is that communal agreement is necessary to complete the cross. Communal agreement appeals horizontal, yet it is supported vertically by history. And it comes in the forms of both communion and peer review.

By contrast the Gnostics understand most of the epistemological pretensions of the agnostics to be not merely arbitrary but to be traps. No structuralist, for instance, can fully imagine the frustration that a post-structuralist feels in trying to decide whether or not to break up a paragraph HALF-WAY THROUGH the depiction of a given group. The distinction is made difficult because it is so arbitrary; why try to align the proverbial “reader’s” notion of what a “group” is with the breaking of a paragraph in two? must one invisible and imagined boundary line up with another imminent one? (imminent here is of course meant to refer to the opposite of invisible and imagined.) Even a parenthetical phrase is much too stifling, yet in its absence the arrogant structuralist DEMANDS clarity and presumes upon it even in its absence. The parallels to rape are not entirely exaggerated, just miss attributed.

And of course because to write means to choose some thing from innumerable possibilities, not innumerable so much because of quantity so much as there is no time in which to count them, for they are constantly moving, what is left out is just as important as what is included. At least at the moment that one chooses one remembers that one is not driven ENtiRELY by necessity; the nature of CHOICE at least lends one room to be SOME what arbitrary. But the structuralist agnostic sees only what is imminent and not what is transcendent. Again he DEMANDS clarity and INSISTS upon the authority of what ever text he likes, or other wise he insists on its total absence of authority because he has “gotten the gist of it”. And while certain things are stupid at first blush, without a doubt, it is funny to note that agnostic, authoritarian people, whilst demanding attention for their favourite works, still are prone to dismiss any threat to their dogmae with infantile aggression.

Dm.A.A.

Reminiscence: Once the public was stupid.

Once the public was stupid. And it relied upon a few sages to be guarded against tyrants. Now the public is just wise ENOUGH that they cannot tell sages FROM tyrants.

So the sages have been fore-gotten. Their wisdom does not surpass that of their own well-being. They can collaborate and conspire towards the good of the community, but no special privileges are afforded them. They must all ways express their selves in the language of the public in order to be understood. And never are they granted power, lest they become the tyrants they are miss-taken for. Yet in this way the most ardent of public figures, the manipulators, the politicians, gain access in the same way as the sages do, and the two compete under the table.

The advent of the internet was a necessary evil and a precarious stepping stone. In the past the people relied upon a few to help defend them from the other few, and the people who could gain direct admittance to this wisdom were their selves few.

Now the people cannot tell one minority from the other, and secrets can no longer be kept. All are available to have their carcasses picked apart until only the bones remain, and no witch doctors specializing in bones are to be availed in order that the bones’ origin be determined. So we live in the shadow of false prophets. The clever manipulators know enough history to recall those who had abused the Word of the Spirit to their own worldly ends. The few who are born gifted can barely tell even how these charlatans were confused for sages, or worse how sages ARE now confused for these charlatans. But that is because those who are privileged by nature, perhaps old souls, were all ways few. And usually and tragically they never spoke the common language of surface appearances. Semblance never haunted them, but what did haunt them was the tendency for their worldly rooted peers to be miss-led by semblance.

At an earlier time these few, under the tutelage of seasoned shamans, and driven by nerve and a bleeding heart, would grow to transmute their suffering pity into an instrument for change. But our temples are ransacked by profit. The stones remain but they have lost their mystical resonance. The words remain but they no longer retain their mythological reference. And the sages still walk the earth, but in the public’s blind eye they have lost their relevance.

And I should note that all was obscured by SEMBLANCE. In so far as I condemn the spiritually blind I bear a false kinship to those who condemn the materially blind. So the progressives have inherited the confusion of the Nazis, and I am charged with the same stupidity. In fact, I am not only coerced to accept it but to Adopt it. Yet I refuse.

Dm.A.A.

The Broken Heart:

The Broken Heart:

How does one break a heart? The notion seems like a fantasy to a mind that has become nearly entirely jaded and mechanical. But this is how: by saying, oh. I am sorry that you want that. that you have a vision in your mind of things being a certain way. Or per chance a dim hope on the horizon. Or worse an inkling that SOME thing special – some thing of which many have spoken, some thing that felt promised, that felt DESERVED and not arbitrary, either morally or in terms of taste – would happen. Worst of all: It was not an inkling but an overwhelming sense of Fate. It felt PRESSING and IMPERATIVE, primordial and deep. There was no reason to suspect that it would not work, and one was totally open to what ever it was. One had not looked to it to fill an imagined hole in one’s heart, but rather one carved out a NEW hole that one might accommodate the New Hope. And what happens? Too bad. You shall witness all that you desire. But YOU shall not be involved in it but as a spectator. And it shall haunt you. For the more you see it the more deeply will grow the thirst. The more intense the sense of TRAGEDY that that thirst is not assuaged. And one will know that the Human Will is *SINGULARLY* to blame for the loss. And worst of all is the gain to the other. For one would not become the other even if given the choice. That other’s actions ought NEVER to be so rewarded; he deserves no stake in YOUR reward and birth-right. So what is most torturous and hellish about watching some one else live your life is not only that you cannot share in it but that you would not WANT to TAKE it. You would only want your life to be YOUR life, and you would not consent to switching bodies with so depraved a person as who would take YOUR life. Some one who all ways felt threatened by any insight that came to you because HE had not thought of it. Some one who made you feel silly each time you raised your voice. And some one who could stare you down with malicious cowardice, as though he were predator and you were prey, though you were really all ways the stronger Beast and he were but a parasite.

And one would have to watch what one valued consumed by the parasite. For the entitlement had emanated from one singular source: That one KNEW one’s self to be the best possible suitor for that cause. Were it not for that assurance the situation would be unbearable. But it is not in the nature of God to make missed takes, only people. Relativism is a child’s escape; to deny the disparity between right and wrong is to escape all wrongs by forgetting them. Morality guarantees, if the means justify the ends, that one would be the Better Choice, and no greater insult can exist than to be denied that. For so long as one KNOWS then one knows that God at least loves one with courage and commitment. The capitalist pretends that life is determined by the playing out of might, and in this skewed view the individual imagines his rival penetrating his beloved, as he stands by and watches it happen in his mind and forgets that the images do not correspond to the reality; they are mere burns from earlier sightings of a lurid intimacy. Yet the moment that one acknowledges one’s own LOVE to be divinely sanctioned and approved by the Earth one leaves one’s tortured body. One sees what is REALLY at stake: One’s beloved is being taken ADVANTAGE of, and through no fault of one’s own one must watch. Yet in that is retained the dignity of the viewer; in the other narrative the viewer is equally guilty and yet punished by the other’s reward. Not only is this unfair because the other is rewarded; the reward ITS SELF is the punishment. And the mind cannot tolerate that.

This alone entitles me to a chance. For a chance is all ready reward enough; at any moment it can be made reference to as tipping the scales in my favour. And without a chance no claim can be made that one was ever NOT deserving, for no test was administered. So by default one at least DESERVES a chance. And the simpl[e] knowledge that one deserves a chance cures the broken heart. For a heart cannot truly break, only our conception of it. A heart that is truly rooted in love will all ways circulate that blood which carries the life-blood of the Universe.

Dm.A.A.