Consiliences
3-7-06 Consiliences
M2 sat next to me on bus this morning as I proceeded to Starbucks Camino Real Plaza in Goleta. She is a very reliable looking woman I often saw about 8 & 9 yrs ago when I took coffee & did my morning writing at McDonald's near my house. She & her husband & poodle used to sit in the patio. And the reason she appeared so miraculously as it were this a.m. I am certain is because yesterday I was thinking intimate thoughts concerning M1 who used to say very Personal unforgettable things to me. Now she is the mother of a son & not apt to respond to me on that intimate level. But it's funny she is now part of the structure of my psyche as it were. It's like incest. Somehow she has become part of The Greenfield Family without asking or giving me permission. These things just Evolve. Please note and study the title of today's notations: CONSILIENCES. First brought to my consciousness by Dr. Wilson a Harvard Biology Professor who wrote abook of that title. It covers a lot of psychological & physical ground. Throw in some magnetism & hypnotism & mythology & we are on our way.
M used to tell me that running (speed-walking) is good for my liver. (It's even better for my LIVER-----puts lead in my pencil). Last night after the rain I went to mail a letter & ended up taking a 90-minute speed-walk about the neighborhood & found myself floating all kinds of beautiful memories that were popping up all over the place I guess to remind me that LIFE is Right Now & Here! MY LIVER was starting to get SOUL! & not next year or last year but in THE HERE & NOW BODY-MIND! Well, M1, I hope youre listening, Reading me. Because you gave me some good permanent ideas that are eternally useful & you make great Leek Soup. Also good for the liver & all the body's organs that seek more Life. I want no other ideas than the practical. So I got home from my delicious Walk & ate some delicious celery & spinach & tomatoes & parsley & garlic ground in The Blender with water. And some split pea soup & a glass of hot non fat milk with loads of raw unheated Honey on the side & I praised my life for being so at least in this Instant unapologetically Sensual. Ok Ok Ok. No woman to sleep with. To bed alone again & all that. But better than being with the wrong woman as I have been a few too many times in the sack, no? O yes. Always better to sleep alone than with somebody you do not LOVE. I mean of course admire in some genuine way.
Dammit, didn't mean to let my guard slip & admit to The Omniscient Reader---You, O Holy Ones, that I am Mortal & ergo always have sex on my mind. Always a Woman trying to break through the Greenfield mental habitat. And largely succeeding inside my mind. But outside my mind? That is a totally different kettle of fish. Nothing happening except politeness & political charades.
As I was saying I got home from the dance & ate some good raw foods. 50 percent of your diet should be RAW FOODS. You can take that to the bank! And then I turned to Mr. Henry Thoreau that most odd American Writer & Dissenter (1817-1862). What a heroic man. The very best Writer America has ever produced with no exceptions. I happened last eve to turn to Thoreau's essay "Walking," which I first encountered as a ph d. student at the University of Texas Austin where I was studying American literature. Professor Joseph Moldenhauer assigned me the task of writing a term paper on "WALKING." Interestingly, I was by no means a Walker in those days. Let me give you the opening words of Thoreau's essay:
"I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,-----to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school-committee and every one of you will take care of that."
Here's what gets me. "There are enough champions of civilization." And: "Every one of you will take care of that."
I have felt that way about WRITING---My Whole Life its very Essence-----& university English professors. Sure, I have myself learned much from the professors. But THE WRITER must tend to his CRAFT 24-7-365. With no exceptions. Including death in the family. Let alone Christmas & New year's & 4th of July. This is not a 9 to 5 Monday through Friday affair. Who ever said it was?
But Thoreau & I differ on one thing. HDT got along without women. But then he never MET a woman except one who hit Henry in the solar plexus and knocked the wind out of him. And his brother fell in love with her at the same time. The woman it turned out was a Congregationalist & her father, a strict one, refused to allow her to have anything to do with those Transcendentalist Thoreau boys! Thus, Henry's love life ended in little Concord, Massachusetts and instead America inherited the greatest masterpiece of its poor up to that time literature. Women do not enter HDT's narrative even once. Yet he is the purest Writer America ever produced. He makes his contemporary & neighbor and of course much more Famous Emerson look pale by comparison. Read "WALDEN." Read "Life Without Principle." You cannot be the same after truly reading these masterpieces. They enter your blood stream if you have one that is working. And they change your life. Give me that! Give me only Authors that are capable of changing the course of my life. Yes, give me only Women capable of changing my Life and steering me away from the coma that is always theatening to settle in & capture my consciousness.
I began by metnioning a little miraculous incident on the bus this a.m. A form of Communication that comes down to me almost like those ancient goddesses appeared to mortals. But I prefer of course a more literal rendering. Yet, I am grateful for any signs of Love that occur. And this is no mere space-filling babble. I value love. In this greedy shabby world of liars & deceivers only Love can help us rise above the tide of absolute mediocrity. Only Beauty has the power to rehabilitate us and regenerate us. Nothing less. I got out of bed this morning & hauled out my old tattered copy of Keats. I wanted to find his famous declaration of Beauty & Truth as recorded in his letters. It is also stated in his poem "ODE ON A GRECIAN URN":
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-----that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
My dear friends, John Keats was born in England in 1795 & he died in Italy at the age of 25 in 1821.
He went to Italy to die so he could spare his beloved Fannie Brawne & his other dear friends the sight of his decaying body which was going to spoil from tuberculosis. This utterly brave & brilliant poet & great, truly Great Human Being! This Leader of Men & Women.
RLG
M2 sat next to me on bus this morning as I proceeded to Starbucks Camino Real Plaza in Goleta. She is a very reliable looking woman I often saw about 8 & 9 yrs ago when I took coffee & did my morning writing at McDonald's near my house. She & her husband & poodle used to sit in the patio. And the reason she appeared so miraculously as it were this a.m. I am certain is because yesterday I was thinking intimate thoughts concerning M1 who used to say very Personal unforgettable things to me. Now she is the mother of a son & not apt to respond to me on that intimate level. But it's funny she is now part of the structure of my psyche as it were. It's like incest. Somehow she has become part of The Greenfield Family without asking or giving me permission. These things just Evolve. Please note and study the title of today's notations: CONSILIENCES. First brought to my consciousness by Dr. Wilson a Harvard Biology Professor who wrote abook of that title. It covers a lot of psychological & physical ground. Throw in some magnetism & hypnotism & mythology & we are on our way.
M used to tell me that running (speed-walking) is good for my liver. (It's even better for my LIVER-----puts lead in my pencil). Last night after the rain I went to mail a letter & ended up taking a 90-minute speed-walk about the neighborhood & found myself floating all kinds of beautiful memories that were popping up all over the place I guess to remind me that LIFE is Right Now & Here! MY LIVER was starting to get SOUL! & not next year or last year but in THE HERE & NOW BODY-MIND! Well, M1, I hope youre listening, Reading me. Because you gave me some good permanent ideas that are eternally useful & you make great Leek Soup. Also good for the liver & all the body's organs that seek more Life. I want no other ideas than the practical. So I got home from my delicious Walk & ate some delicious celery & spinach & tomatoes & parsley & garlic ground in The Blender with water. And some split pea soup & a glass of hot non fat milk with loads of raw unheated Honey on the side & I praised my life for being so at least in this Instant unapologetically Sensual. Ok Ok Ok. No woman to sleep with. To bed alone again & all that. But better than being with the wrong woman as I have been a few too many times in the sack, no? O yes. Always better to sleep alone than with somebody you do not LOVE. I mean of course admire in some genuine way.
Dammit, didn't mean to let my guard slip & admit to The Omniscient Reader---You, O Holy Ones, that I am Mortal & ergo always have sex on my mind. Always a Woman trying to break through the Greenfield mental habitat. And largely succeeding inside my mind. But outside my mind? That is a totally different kettle of fish. Nothing happening except politeness & political charades.
As I was saying I got home from the dance & ate some good raw foods. 50 percent of your diet should be RAW FOODS. You can take that to the bank! And then I turned to Mr. Henry Thoreau that most odd American Writer & Dissenter (1817-1862). What a heroic man. The very best Writer America has ever produced with no exceptions. I happened last eve to turn to Thoreau's essay "Walking," which I first encountered as a ph d. student at the University of Texas Austin where I was studying American literature. Professor Joseph Moldenhauer assigned me the task of writing a term paper on "WALKING." Interestingly, I was by no means a Walker in those days. Let me give you the opening words of Thoreau's essay:
"I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,-----to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school-committee and every one of you will take care of that."
Here's what gets me. "There are enough champions of civilization." And: "Every one of you will take care of that."
I have felt that way about WRITING---My Whole Life its very Essence-----& university English professors. Sure, I have myself learned much from the professors. But THE WRITER must tend to his CRAFT 24-7-365. With no exceptions. Including death in the family. Let alone Christmas & New year's & 4th of July. This is not a 9 to 5 Monday through Friday affair. Who ever said it was?
But Thoreau & I differ on one thing. HDT got along without women. But then he never MET a woman except one who hit Henry in the solar plexus and knocked the wind out of him. And his brother fell in love with her at the same time. The woman it turned out was a Congregationalist & her father, a strict one, refused to allow her to have anything to do with those Transcendentalist Thoreau boys! Thus, Henry's love life ended in little Concord, Massachusetts and instead America inherited the greatest masterpiece of its poor up to that time literature. Women do not enter HDT's narrative even once. Yet he is the purest Writer America ever produced. He makes his contemporary & neighbor and of course much more Famous Emerson look pale by comparison. Read "WALDEN." Read "Life Without Principle." You cannot be the same after truly reading these masterpieces. They enter your blood stream if you have one that is working. And they change your life. Give me that! Give me only Authors that are capable of changing the course of my life. Yes, give me only Women capable of changing my Life and steering me away from the coma that is always theatening to settle in & capture my consciousness.
I began by metnioning a little miraculous incident on the bus this a.m. A form of Communication that comes down to me almost like those ancient goddesses appeared to mortals. But I prefer of course a more literal rendering. Yet, I am grateful for any signs of Love that occur. And this is no mere space-filling babble. I value love. In this greedy shabby world of liars & deceivers only Love can help us rise above the tide of absolute mediocrity. Only Beauty has the power to rehabilitate us and regenerate us. Nothing less. I got out of bed this morning & hauled out my old tattered copy of Keats. I wanted to find his famous declaration of Beauty & Truth as recorded in his letters. It is also stated in his poem "ODE ON A GRECIAN URN":
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-----that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
My dear friends, John Keats was born in England in 1795 & he died in Italy at the age of 25 in 1821.
He went to Italy to die so he could spare his beloved Fannie Brawne & his other dear friends the sight of his decaying body which was going to spoil from tuberculosis. This utterly brave & brilliant poet & great, truly Great Human Being! This Leader of Men & Women.
RLG
posted by rlg at 11:39 AM
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