All of value is impermanent

RIP


It has come to my attention through the excellent Laughing Bone blog that the blog which for me meant the absolute summum in weblogging, the encyclopedic and sublime Giornale Nuovo has come to an end.
This comes as a blow. For years now Mr H , the visionary archiver behind the blog, has enchanted me with the biggest marvels online. Not only did he manage to find the most rare and bizarre pieces of art, spanning the entire history of mankind, but he was able to distill his critical thoughts into a very pleasant reading. And he had a great addendum to this apogee of curiosities: he put Isaac D'israeli's "Curiosities of literature" online as well, a treasure well for a fan of 'fous littéraires' or 'kooks' as myself.
As I'm used from the writer, an very casual note appears on top of the homepage:
"A weblog was updated here between October 2002 and October 2007. Although now closed, its archives will be kept on-line until further notice"
In my opinion, this entire site should be kept as a time-capsule and protected as a monument by the United Nations. And for once I'm not being sarcastic: visit the site and if you have some decency you'll admit there's some truth in what I claim. Giornale Nuovo offered an interlinked overview of hermetic engraving, outsider art, bizarre children's books, hidden masterpieces and much more. I shall miss it dearly.

Who am I?

A question I finally decided to ask myself using one of the most advanced tools available. So I googled 'Borsky'.
Here I discovered my animus is a painter, my anima a writer (influenced by the moon), my id is an actor from Prague in the thirties, my ego a photographer from Sao Paulo, my superego's a researcher on the psychological effects of aircraft noise no less. Oh and my family probably comes from Russia. And I directed a masterpiece of experimental cinema putting all perspectives upside-down.

I finally realize some questions remain better in the shadows of a doubt.

The smile of Schrödinger's cat

"According to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle one can either acknowledge the spin or the exact location of a quantum particle. This strange idea resulted in the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, which basically said if two particles were separated over a long distance and one was measured, information about the other could arrive at a speed faster than light, which according the the general relativity is impossible. Now Aspect used this as a model to design an experiment in which he proved the EPR was wrong. Het took apart two spinning particles, send them to two different directions, measured the spin on the first and intantaneously knew the spin on the second. According to some, information is not a physical resource and as such might travel faster than light."

The professor put down his glasses, and suddenly said: "But… if you measure the spin of a particle, don't you first have to localize it?"

Universe collapsed.
And god took the dice and gave them to the professor. "Your turn", said a hoovering voice.

Shift

Suddenly he realized he felt like a ragged empty shell of worn-out meat.

Trying to keep the shape he had formed his entire life into until then, he started to shiver.
The combustion was gone, all that was left was the memory of heat.
There was, however, no pain.
He wanted to feel the pain, real bad, but it had left with all his other lodgers.
Like if it had had its importance while it longed, sheltering him, revealing itself to him when it was gone.
His pain had been working as an essential organ all that time and he had been convinced, more, certain, that he had to soothe it to have a worthwile life.
Not so.
Pain had kept him in shape.
Pain had kept his engine running.

And now he floated surrounding emptyness, surrounded by noise.
He was quite convinced there was still some spark in him; according to his actions outside in the world of apparences it certainly seemed so, even more, much more than before.
All his innards were projected outside and he didn't have clue if that was a good thing or not.
The emptyness he used to feel at his edges had moved to the inside, and the richness he had felt at his core had shifted to his surface.

It dawned on him.
That was the spark:
Everything was reversed.
He had no idea whatsoever who he was.
And he had never been so sure about what he would become.

a small one

As an answer to the question "Who’s your favourite actor?", I’d say the guy who played the lost trapper in the movie 'Dreamcatcher' written by Stephen King, who was completely off the map, and then in the course of the movie started meticulously to shit himself until he died with his bowels all over the place. I cannot imagine the poor guy ever had the opportunity to work for the film industry again.

Mostly Harmless

It is said the tradition we received from the Templars originated from Adam through Salomon. It was kept through the Roman Mystery cults (Eleusis), the school of Pythagoras, the Essenes (the Red Sea Scrolls), the Kabbalists, the Rosicrucians. One of the brotherhoods that passed on the knowledge (gnosis) was said to be a strange group of naked men walking from village to village in India.
When the army of the Macedonian Alexander the Great reached the Indian sub-continent in the fourth century before the Christian era, they dubbed them Gymnosophists (the naked philosophers). Macedonian philosopher Onesicritus was dispatched to try to understand their belief system. The founder of scepticism, Pyrrho, also researched their ideas. As a result, nudity became accepted in some Greek subcultures, among which the Spartans.
Most probably those wandering men were Jains, an offshoot of Hinduism from the 5th century BC, known for promoting non-violence and veganism. Another group called the Ajivikas has similar ideas, but believes we should accept whatever fate throws at us. Both cults give up worldly goods, symbolized by their nakedness.
Further on, the jains themselves separated into two factions, in the North the Svetambar Jains and in the South the Digambar Jains. The former holds the - in hinduist circles - progressive view that women are spiritually equal to men. Also because of the colder climate in the North, they found it impractical to remain naked and started to wear white cloths (hence their name). In contrast, Digambar means ‘clothed with the sky'.

Today in India the Jains still walk the earth, sweeping the ground before their feet to be sure not to kill insects.
And the New Gymnosophist Society in the Western world promotes naturism. Their most famous member was Gerald Gardner, the founder of modern day wicca…

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Pull my finger

Once you'll stop
deciding
from the bottom of your being

and start the action
from your non-being

then
and only then
will you be able to make a new choice

this is the teaching our deaths offer