Happy New Year!

last night, i stayed up late,

reading french intellectual thoughts, and having them:

He couldn't accept himself, and he was fully justified.

Help them when they believe they can do anything, console them when they find out they can't.

If we didn't believe, would we be?

The world is always new to someone. 

He couldn't tell if it were a symbol, or a chimera.

Only what you re-discover is new. 

We each cast the shadow of our nervous system on the world. 

Today was new. Too bad you missed it. 

Poetry: the nanotechnology of language. 

Children should be protected from finding themselves too soon.

No adult can make sense of childhood. 

The thought there might be might be another myself out there frightens me. 

When they have no thoughts, they cry for new forms. 

Some people come to resemble their ideas.

They couldn't see the truth for the psychology. 

The 20th century spent too much time trying to find the contents of the unconscious.

Desire is the first rule.

Madness? Merely an adult acting like a child. 

Begin again? When did you ever start?

Civilizations die as easily as flies. 

Beware! What you learn you can't unlearn. 

His fate was bigger than he was. 

Once you lose faith in the myth of yourself, you're finished. 

made a trip to a neighboring town: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/oro 

WE'D ALL BE HANGED IF ALL OUR THOUGHTS WERE KNOWN

i am alarmed by the end of the world coming tomorrow. not by the predicted physical destruction, rather by all the new age talk. here's an example from an address to the united nations by the president of bolivia:

December 21, 2012 marks the end of non-time and the beginning of time. It is the end of the Macha and the beginning of the Pacha. It is the end of selfishness and the beginning of brotherhood. It is the end of individualism and the beginning of collectivism...

o boy, i can't wait. all my problems solved, no more terrible tension of being an individual. i'll think like everyone else - without knowing it. what a godsend!! the final communist paradise at last. 

hey, wait a minute. doesn't all positive residue of culture derive from independent thought. the psychologist c.g. jung claimed all innovation and progress arrived at by one person at a time. i guess it doesn't really matter, if we're all floating in bliss. i had a long conversation with my nephrologist (kidney doctor) several weeks ago. raised and educated in Romania under a dictatorship, she could gotten thrown in jail for telling a joke like this:

what's the difference between a pessimist and an optimist? the pessimist says, "things are terrible, they couldn't get worse." and the optimist says, "o yes they can!"

on the other hand, no drugs, free education, no crime (except by the state), everybody felt equal. alas, she said, with the fall, the true nature of human beings coming out and it isn't pretty. she herself, living and working here, no doubt, wouldn't really go back to experience the fruits of corruption. that said, her mother, a professor, really misses the old days. this doctor's seven year old son now has to navigate the shark-infested waters of america.

a tough row to hoe, the u.s.a. you have to create and defend your own territory. with the coming happy classlessness and divine togetherness, we'll lose this frightful condition. what was born with me, a consciousness of the universe, will delightfully disappear. if the end of the world came, would we know it? we'd all live in the now, powerless to act, only respond. actually, that's not bad for a samurai swordsman who has to survive moment. certainly it won't help him carve out a future for the species. 

so, let's raise our glasses and toast with the dew from the land of the lotus eaters. can we really miss what we can't remember?

took class photos yesterday in the meso-american history class, end of the semester projects. interesting timing:

http://www.pbase.com/wwp/mexo12 

a country's economy depends upon the freedom of its women

i sometimes feel totally crazy (well, not just sometimes), when i see the obvious and nobody else seems to. this is one of those times. i can rate the economic health of a country by the status of its women. look at those on top: china, the u.s., europe. without oil many societies would be completely destitute. only this source of energy supports the subjugation of women, a false economy. this the tragedy of iraq, iran, and presently, egypt. 

the increase of female students in the professional schools in the united states staggering. one friend's son, about to go to optometry school, says he'll wait to find the wife he wants, that institution 70% female. the rise of women in the forest service almost unbelievable, compared to what it was fifty years ago, many forest supervisors women, with almost every firefighting crew including girls.(i say girls cause they have to be young for most of these jobs, and boy, are they looking younger to me every season.)

personally, i think this absolutely necessary for the kind of world we're moving into. it requires much more cooperation. i like to watch women's sports for this reason. men look like well-oiled machines by comparison. actually, i've always wondered why women need men. even procreation can be handled with a test-tube. the only answer i've come up with: men shake women up and allow them to have fun, since the males not so concerned with personal appearance. 

i know i've gone where angels fear to tread. hopefully, the age of political correctness is beginning to fade. the world does need to be tidied up, and i think the distaff side the one to do it. this doesn't mean my masculine input not necessary. everybody needs to learn to play by the rules of the game. a mother will commit murder to preserve her children. when she becomes an executive, she can't simply go with that psychology, women in sports what has truly liberated. 

i do regret i won't be around to see what happens. getting off oil must, must, must be the first goal. 

how the puritans created the modern world

as a long-time theater guy, i've been struck by the radical difference between how playing the elizabethan characters differs from the way they must be played after the puritan revolution (the culmination of the protestant reformation). shakespeare hated the new sectarians and mocked them brutally. in measure for measure he showed the underlying sexual hypocrisy. and what's important for me, everything with him lay on the table: no internal dialogue not matching the said, no wicked masturbatory thoughts sensed for satisfaction in the privacy of one's own home. 

yes, freud right, sex makes the difference. the protestants threw individuals back upon themselves. i'm obsessed with self-examination. well, that's where it  came from. damn, i have to think about everything: who i am, what's acceptable to others, can i successfully hide my seductive maneuvers and still acquire satisfaction of my 'evil' desires? this split between inner and outer exploded the atom of thought and science, a tremendous energy released. suddenly, all answers were up for grabs.

i do thank the puritans for inventing pornography. i'd explode and everybody else in the world without it. the visual splendor captures all our lo0se electrons and channels into an area where they dissipate into fantasy. and they created the big bang. why else would we conceive the universe as the result of a giant orgasm? 

and maybe the discovery of sexual repression limited crime in a satisfying way. i once read about the number of murders in a small community, oxford, england, during the middle ages. if washington d.c. produces more murders than any other city in the world, i think without oliver cromwell the numbers would be even more staggering. and i'm not sure we've more rapes than in the pagan world. as i said, we've the lightning-rod of pornography. in fact i've heard 80% of the traffic on the web due to it, perhaps an apocryphal tale, and yet not as devastating as richard III. 

so, if the world's grown lighter since the bard's time, i can give credit to electricity. without the intensity of the scarlet letter i wouldn't be able to use my e-reader in the middle of the night. and i'm eternally grateful for the excitement of political scandals gracing the pages of our newspapers, almost always a transgression against physical decency. 

yes, i can think only as myself once the puritans landed on the planet. they did come from mars, of course, without our knowing it. alien extra-sensory perception did not exist before them. let's drink to the quantum leap!! if it weren't for the break-up of the perfect universe, we wouldn't all be walking around with cell-phones, attempting to communicate with each other. here's to nanotechnology and the brave light-waves, particle-beams of the future, the enlightenment leading to a different form of eternal life.