l'Ymagier du père borsky

Pound, Fuller, Korzybski… and Fenollosa

I read the French translation of Pound's interpretation of Fenolosa's text, "Le charactère écrit Chinois, matériau poétique"

Here's a brief and biased summary:
At first Fenollosa examines the absence of a true grammar (which he defines as the differenciation in a language of verbs, substantives etc.) in Chinese. He claims that basically, all words are born in verbs; more, he claims that in Sanscrit all words were verbs!
For example, the English statement "he who reads learns how to write"becomes in Chinese "Reading provokes writing". Here I see a connection with Buckminster Fuller's famous statement "I seem to be a verb".
Secondly F. feels the Chinese poetry to be closer to reality than ours, as it states actions, no abstract qualities. In fact according to him most verbs in Chinese are transitive and thus appear somehow a modulation of the verb 'to have' as opposed to the verb 'to be'. It seems that great British poetry, like Shakespeare's, seldom use the verb 'to be' (with the exception of the obvious Hamlet soliloquoy) , prefer transitive verbs, and as such appears closer to reality. F. claims the use of 'to be' brings forth abstraction in a language and should be kept to a minimum. Here of course there's an obvious connection with Kellog's (hence Korzybski in the title) e-prime, and maybe c-prime has a tautologic quality.
"The study of Shakespearian verbs should be at the base of every style exercize" - E. Fenolllosa

Hoo Fhasa

I was flyering in the neighborhood
about a week after that my cat had disappeared, thinking there was little point but what the heck
after half an hour went looking for a place to hang a flyer where there was no chance he could show up
and almost pasted a flyer on him jumping from a windowsill.

Excelsior
(I had to lie down on the pavement for a few minutes before he trusted me enough to jump in my arms)

No idea whatsoever if there is a god (and frankly I never cared)
but I thank him. Today life is really, really good.

Dove Sta Memoria

KIA
aka 'Krapuul In Actie'
1995 or 6 - 2009
Disappeared without a trace a week ago


God on the left, Kia on the right
The Yang out of the Tao, the Podge out of the Chao


Wherever you are I'm sure you're partaking in the great infinite cat

Your little friend God is looking for you everywhere (and so am I)
I've known many cats but you were the fifth angel (God isn't even close but trying), and the wisest

I'll allways miss you tiger - shitR I'll spend my days saying goodbye and godspeed as I couldn't . You were the closest to what I would call "my best friend."

Hexagram 16 'Balanced motion'
The wise man will not lose himself in short-lived pleasures.
When he notices that notion is jammed (and here my youngest cat Butsu drops the Yi King on the floor), his explosion will bring the multitude.

Changing lines

The blind man is entangled in short-lived gratification.

Events from the past have not yet been digested.

A favor is requested while self-delusion prevails.

Remain firm as a rock.


a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will

Law of fives, Hindu Cosmology, cyclic time and Kozmik Kow.

The Hindu cosmology considers time as endless and cyclic of nature, and divided into 5 ages:
Satya Yuga, The Golden Age of perfect Bliss (4800 divine years): Satya means "Truth"; also called Krta or "action".
Treta Yuga, The Silver Age of lesser Virtue (3600 divine years): Treta means "Three", the age in which the feelings and forces of good are as three parts, and those of evil as one.
Dwapara Yuga, The Bronze Age of Virtue and Vice (2400 divine years): Dwapara means "Two-sided", or the eon of doubt.
and the present Kali Yuga, the Iron Age of increasing Evil (1200 divine years).
Each and every divine year lasts for 360 earthly years, hence the present eon should last for 432.000 years. It shall be followed by total annihilation; and the, the primordial timeless ocean for a period equal to the whole length of the 4 previous ages. And of course, Kali is the Indian version of Eris, meaning "Discord". "As the teachings tell, Kali, the creator-destroyer Goddess, will appear at the end of Kali Yuga to sweep away the wasted detritus of a spirit-dead humanity".
And then it all starts again.
From Wikipedia:
"The life span of Lord Brahma, the creator, is 100 'Brahma-Years'. One day in the life of Brahma is called a Kalpa or 4.32 billion years (the approximate life span of the earth).(...)Every Kalpa (one day in the life of Brahma), Brahma creates 14 Manus one after the other, who in turn manifest and regulate this world.
Each Manu’s life (Manvantara) consists of 71 Chaturyugas (quartets of Yugas or eras).Each Chaturyuga is composed of four eras or Yugas: Satya, Treta, Dwapara and Kali. The cycle goes on for 100 'divine years' at the end of which Brahma perishes and is regenerated. Bramha's entire life equals 311 trillion, 40 billion years. Once Bramha dies there is an equal period of unmanifestation for 311 trillion, 40 billion years, until the next Bramha is created."
Oh and according to Hindu tradition, the current demiurge or Manu is said to be the seventh Manu and his name is Vaivasvat. The current Kali Yuga is only 5111 years old and started with the disappearance of Krishna (Lord Vishnu's last avatar).
We are currently believed to be in the 51st year of the present Brahmas life.
The cycle goes on forever.
Some scholars consider Brahma as the galactic center, starting from René Guénon to Yukteswar.

Lord Brahma is considered the creator, but as in kaballah the term 'god' is just a human way of dealing with the ineffable. Above any god there is the supreme transcendence called Brahman.

Alan Watts:
"To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, ( A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it."
From Hindu Wisdom:
"One of the oldest writings in Vedic literature comes from a pseudo-historical god-man called Manu. René Guénon pointed out that Manu belongs to a family of related archetypal figures, which include Melchezidek, Metatron, St Michael, Gabriel, and Enoch. (...) his laws were recorded in the extremely ancient Vedic text called the Laws of Manu. (...) there is a section that deals with the ancient Vedic doctrine of World Ages - the Yugas. Manu indicates that a period of 24,000 years — clearly a reference to precession — consists of a series of four yugas or ages, each shorter and spiritually darker than the last. In one story this process of increasing limitation is envisioned as a cosmic cow standing with each leg in one quarter of the world; with each age that passes a leg is lost, resulting in the absurd and unstable world we live in today—a cow balancing on one leg."

I haven't been able to find an image yet depicting this bizarre allegory.

Symboloclasty

Reading the seminal Hero with a thousand faces by Joseph Campbell in the last part of the chapter 'The ultimate boon' following biased transcription seemed quite enlightening to me:

The infantile fantasies which we all cherish in the unconscious appear continually into myth. This is helpful, for the mind feels at home with the images and seems to be remembering something already known. But the circumstance is obstructive too, for the feelings come to rest in the symbols and resist passionately every effort to go beyond. The gulf between the multitudes who fill the world with piety and the truly free breaks down at the line where the symbols give way and are transcended. The ineffable teaching of the beatitude beyond imagination comes to us clothed necessarily in figures reminiscent of the imagined beatitudes of infancy, hence the deceptive childishness of the tales. Hence, too, the inadequacy of any merely psychological reading.

I'd link these ideas to the three stages of sentience according to my kabbalah teacher, Joris De Brandt:
exoteric, meaning the part of knowledge we are able to understand, using the power of our thinking;
mesoteric, the vague no-man'sland between two worlds where thoughts are grasped but in ways beyond our true understanding;
and esoteric, that which is beyond all worlds (this term is usually abused for talking of exoteric and mesoteric insights).
I see the world of myths, allegories and symbols in the mesoteric realm; similarily, but in a simplifying manner of course, the four 'lower' circuits of consciousness seem exoteric to me, the next three mesoteric and the eighth esoteric.

As a 'pataphysician I feel compelled to translate the world into symbolism. But only after the images get shattered one is able to see through the mirror and accept the true reflection.

Big Brother and the Codex Alimentarius

I usually don't rant on social nor political subjects, but this one appears to me the European counterpart of what they're doing promoting genetically engineered vegetables and forbidding biofood in the states.
I'm talking of the insidious 'Codex Alimentarius' which should become effective in the European Union at the end of 2009. Some people in high places have decided for example that ayurvedic medicines should not be sold anymore because they haven't been tested - actually the sole reason is that they do not pay to the pharmaceutical racket, and the assholes who voted such a silly law are mere puppets in the hands of the industry.
I didn't vote for this insanity.
I and hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, prefer to use natural products instead of allopathic medicine which often comes with by-effects, and in reality often proves to be at best useless, at worst simply hazardous to use. I chose to trust medicinal systems that proved their value through 6000 years of Strange. use. Simply put I have Chrohn's disease and was supposed to keep on taking allopathic shit for the rest of my life. I got hooked on ayurvedic herbs and not only did I stop taking classic medicine for almost 8 months now, but I also was able to stop taking pills for my thyroid gland (half of which was removed a few years ago) which I normally would need to stay alive .
Some people in high places decided that I should not be able to survive without the use of pills.
Fuck them. I consider them criminals.

I signed the (Dutch) petition at Eliant, an antroposophical association which tried to promote the use of natural medicines even before this law was voted. Whoever feels this situation is not right might well do the same, one million signatures will probably get some news coverage and it might help things change for the better.

Strange. I intended to start reading "The Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick in a Maybe Logic Academy group study. In that book, Japan and Germany have won the war and the world is in the hands of Nazis. Luckily, that's just science-fiction.

Blogroll on this subject:
English
Snippits and slappits: Nutricide
NWO Observer: How The Global Elite Will Control Your Food Supply
Global Healing Center: a serious treat to your health
Dutch
De Volkskrant: de kruidenkiller