Letters to you

Every so often I go back and look at the Illuminatus! Trilogy, and I find something in there that has spread like a viral meme through populations since the writing of that book - and is now accepted by a subset of those populations as fact. Take a look at the second stoned man... This was written long before "low-carb" diets were semi-popular and then ridiculed and then popular again and then fading again..

Start Illuminatus! Trilogy Quote:
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"Five stoned men were in a courtyard when an elephant entered.

The first man was stoned on sleep, and he saw not the elephant but dreamed instead of things unreal to those awake.

The second man was stoned on nicotine, caffeine, DDT, carbohydrate excess, protein deficiency and the other chemicals in the diet which the Illuminati have enforced upon the half-awake to keep them from fully waking. “Hey”, he said, “there’s a big, smelly beast in our courtyard.”

The third stoned man was on grass, and he said, “No, dads, that’s the
Ghostly Old Party in its’ true nature, the Dark Nix on the Soul”, and he
giggled in a silly way.

The fourth stoned man was tripping on peyote, and he said, “You see
not the mystery, for the elephant is a poem written in tons instead of
words”, and his eyes danced.

The fifth stoned man was on acid, and he said nothing, merely worshipping
the elephant in silence as the Father of Buddha.

And then the Heirophant entered and drove a nail of mystery into all
their hearts, saying, “You are all elephants!”

Nobody understood him."

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End Illuminatus! Trilogy Quote

"The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them"
-- Albert Einstein

Maybe we're forcing ourselves into a quantum leap in thinking. Jump Time... I wonder what form it'll take!

Something someone told me a few days ago, really made me feel better, so posting it here... (you know who you are :)

( Read more... )

Yeah... I think I need to do that.

One of the things I liked about this planet was that there were places you could go where things were really different - you couldn't get TV, there was no daylight savings time, and nobody knew what McDonald's was. Laws saying that farmers couldn't save their seeds or collect rainwater didn't exist anywhere, and the mere concept would have caused jaws to drop everywhere.

Gradually, the world has become such that no matter where you go, the same aluminum cans litter everything, the same ugly ads appear everywhere, the same hideously mundane architecture enslaves the ground and sky, and the same gods are worshipped.

And recently, I've been waking up feeling like my heart is in a jail cell of iron bars, because I see bars crisscrossing the entire planet. I see the world being put into a jail cell, and being chained and enslaved by the quest to own, to leave one's mark, to make all "otherness" similar to one's self, traits that would be dealt with by natural means if the species were few in numbers, but which are lethal in large doses.

Someone's mix of favorite serious and humorous quotes: http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~stefan/html/quotes.html

Such gems as:

"Never knock on Death's door: ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that!"
Matt Frewer, as Dr. Mike Stratford in "Doctor, Doctor"

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
Bill Watterson (1958 - ), cartoonist, "Calvin and Hobbes"

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways."
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 9

I took the "What Mathematical Symbol Are You" quiz, and got "Phi". "What the heck is Phi", I thought to myself, and then promptly forgot about it. The next day (today) I went to a bookstore for lunch and while randomly browsing through various shelves, I came across "The Golden Ratio: The story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number", by Mario Livio. I read a few pages and found out that Phi is equal to (1 + the square root of 5) / 2 -- or approximately

1.61803398874989484820458683436563811772030917980576.

I say approximately, because it's irrational and keeps progressing forever. It was found when a line was segmented into two pieces so that the whole line divided by the longer piece equals the longer piece divided by the shorter piece. Once this is done, then the length of the longer piece is divided by the length of the shorter piece. It always turns out to be the above number...

Apparently the Pythagoreans thought this was some sort of horrifying cosmic error... If someone insisted on talking about irrational numbers, they were in the habit of constructing a tomb for them and declaring them dead...

Not sure I can live up to this!

I just read this on a website with Lovecraft's works on it (now defunct), and was impressed with his prophetic talent...

"When age fell upon the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning stripped the Earth of her mantle of beauty and poets sang no more of twisted phantoms seen with bleared and inward looking eyes; when these things had come to pass, and childish hopes had gone forever, there was a man who traveled out of life on a quest into spaces whither the world's dreams had fled.

Of the name and abode of this man little is written, for they were of the waking world only; yet it is said that both were obscure. It is enough to say that he dwelt in a city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening to a room whose one window opened not to open fields and groves but on to a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. From that casement one might see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the small stars that passed. And because mere walls and windows must soon drive a man to madness who dreams and reads much, the dweller in that ro0m used night after night to lean out and peer aloft to glimpse some fragment of things beyond the waking world and the tall cities. After years he began to call the slow sailing stars by name, and to follow them in fancy when they glided regretfully out of sight; till at length his vision opened to many secret vistas whose existance no common eye suspected. And one night a mighty gulf was bridged, and the dream haunted skies swelled down to the lonely watcher's window to merge with the close air of his room and to make him a part of their fabulous wonder.

There came to that room wild streams of violet midnight glittering with dust of gold, vortices of dust and fire, swirling out of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the worlds. Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the eye may never behold and having in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. Noiseless infinity eddied around the dreamer and wafted him away without touching the body that leaned stiffly from the lonely window; and for days not counted in men's calandars the tides of far spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left him sleeping on a green sunrise shore, a green shore fragrant with lotus blossums and starred by red camalotes... "

Me: So, Speak to me of origins again. I'm still exploring that.

Me too: Think back to the first thought you ever had.

Me: You're joking, of course.

Me too: No, seriously – what's the first thing you ever thought.

Me: They tell me that my first word was "Light". Does that count?

Me too: That's odd – most people think "mama" first. What's wrong with you.

Me: I don't know that this is the first thing I ever thought of. All I know is that this is the first word I ever said according to reports.

Me too: Ah. So think back. Get into the way-back machine and go back. What are you thinking of now?

Me: Me and a group of my little 4-year-old friends are running round and round a tree. They've kidnapped my old vinyl doll Aphrodite and are running around the tree yelling "Aphrodite, Aphrodite" in a Greek accent (that's the way my parents taught me to say the name, so they picked it up).

Me too: My but you were a strange kid.

Me: Not really. But that's not the first thing. Maybe before that was Timmy Turtle. I could pull him along by a string and he'd play a little tune that you could sing "Timmy Turtle, Timmy Turtle" to.

Me too: Both memories involve some sort of chant or tune... Who gave you those toys?

Me: Oh, daddy of course. We'd play "Me After You, Running Game" when he came home from work. I'd step up on one of his shoes and he'd walk me around the room with me standing on his shoe. He bought me Aphrodite and Timmy Turtle.

Me too: Farther back. What is the first thing you remember?

Me: Alone. Remember Alone. Black. Cry. Mommy play piano. Peace.

Me too: Music. The first thought you had was Music?

Me: After Alone, then Music, then Peace. Maybe the Origin of my particular Peace/Silence is Music?

Me too: Ah, so… You are one who entered Peace through Music and then expressed "light". Perhaps it is still so. Your Doorway to stepping Outside of the Disk, then, is Music?

Me: Perhaps it is so. I will make some music and see what happens.