Scot Herrigel

See the Driver Ants of Africa

Emerging like a smoke, a shade:

Voracity embodied; precise

As stingers snapping, scorpion

Extensions - running, gliding fluidly:

Decanted death and hunger streaming like

A furied vein.  It emanates

From hollow sockets, Earthly and

Unseeing eyes: apertures of darkness:

Mystery like Sphynxish riddles.  Strong,

Determined, it pursues its course

Beckoned by a hidden will:

Consume!  Consume! is the command.

Were memory evacuated: all

The stores of thought and category gone -

Science identities dissolved -

Then what would be perceived?

A naked, ancient truth:

Effusion of primality,

A vision of a current

That vivifies the universe:

A hidden king or queen stoic as stone.

Posted on February 22nd, 2010 by admin
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I had an interesting thought the other night about the formation of ideas and insights.  This occurred, I believe, because of a new book I am reading - a biography of Washington by Joseph J. Ellis.  The book has been quite enjoyable.  It is very interesting to me to learn about the conditions of life over 200 years ago, to witness, through literary portrayals, both direct and indirect, the content and form of such life and to subsequently compare these antiquated conditions to the present ones.  I experienced, because of this historical perspective, a sense of the immense age of the world, the tremendous changes that have occurred over the long road of time; how differently men and women lived two hundred years ago and how that time, so distant, is directly related to my present experience.  This insight was indubitably generated as a result of my reaction to the Washington biography but it also seemed to foment, to call forth, something I had read by Nietzsche a while back, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I believe.  This was the thought, or maybe more rightly, the imperative, that man must experience himself not as an isolated ego, but as the direct result or inheritor of a prodigious past and also as the benefactor of an unknown futurity.  It is a myth, a falsity, to view oneself as exclusively one’s property.  A person is the result of compounded and sustained human action.  I am not here because of myself: my existence is predicated on the multitude of humans, or individuals, or egos, that came before me and put in the work that allowed for me to exist.  It is selfish buffoonery, as such, to maintain that one’s actions are responsible for effects only within the sphere of one’s immediate individuality:  Being entails responsibility toward all that has been and all that is yet to be.   There is no escape from this truth, for the absence of action produces the absence of an effect, which in itself constitutes a negative contribution and therefore directly affects posterity.

In essence, the historical sense engendered by the Washington biography served to enhance the Nietzschean insight.  It was experienced as a profundity because of the immense disparity between the conditions in which Washington existed and the conditions in which I exist.  I am living in a mechanically heated house, enjoying the benefits of myriad electrically sustained appliances that provide me with different forms of sensory pleasure.  I am also able to travel great distances in relative comfort through automobiles and trains and planes.  Washington, on the other hand, at my age, was subsisting in a wilderness imbued with brutality and divided by warring factions, one in which tribal war parties would regularly raid isolated wilderness abodes and truculently and indiscriminately murder and scalp man, woman and child.  He encountered on a regular basis death, mutilation and hardship.  But it was not so much that Washington, himself, experienced these things, but really the ensuing inference that that was the world, that people endured such tribulations and that I am the result of their endurance.  The world of two hundred and fifty years ago is so different from the world of today, it is almost like and alien planet in the universe of time.  There is a shock inherent in confronting the past, in recognizing that what has been really has been.  And this, in my basically trivial opinion, constitutes one of the real benefits of studying history:  the attainment of the historical perspective, the enhancement and enlargement of context and the confrontation with wildly different realities.  By understanding the past not purely as the past, that is as something which has happened and is therefore immutable, but, instead, as something which happened dynamically and indeterminately, one gains an insight into the capacity of the present to affect the future.  The present ceases to represent the measure of reality but instead becomes one form, one manifestation of time:  history undermines the hubris of an age.  It forces one to confront their vital connection to the past and thereby also instructs one of their capacity and responsibility toward the future.

Posted on February 18th, 2010 by admin
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But perhaps this writing helps,

This stirring of water

Hands dipped lithely in search

Of fish spawned

By what demiurgic agency? -

The pregnant and mysterious mud

Like a fire in a cloud.

For what reason the translucent

Diamond scales

And the meaningfulness of a human

In quiet, clear waters seeking

Posted on February 4th, 2010 by admin
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-Ehh, morning.  Waking up is like a fight.

I am a lion roaring Peace and Peace!

-Maybe some breakfast - omelet or French toast?

I am the water that you float on:  Rise!

-When does the Charlie Rose show start?  I’ll see.

Just feel eternity - the might: Redeem!

-Ahh, sleepy - really have to fix this gut.

Go seek the mountains.  Look for glory.  Find!

-I wish the coffee was already made.

That glory’s nectar. Seek, become.  To war!

-That topmost button of my pants is tough.

Fool, fool:  Go seek and find.  I am a fire.

-The goddamn dog is waking me too soon.

Just hear the sound of the deep universe!

-Ohh, good dog, good dog, that’s a good, nice dog.

I am pure and eternal longing. Yes,

Akin to that which raised you from the dust,

Propelled man through the ages of  long time:

That flame that fuels the furnaces of life!

-Perhaps some music - Holy Ground is good.

A comet shoots from your dimly lit cell.

-

Ahh , waves of gratifying mirthful light.

-

The stormy waters seem to find repose

-

Light dappled, calm.  Hey, wait! Where did you go?

Posted on February 1st, 2010 by admin
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I stood imagining one Winter night

And saw the organ of a monster’s sight:

That ghostly orb, a serpent’s blinkless eye,

Was swimming through the ocean of the sky.

The world, submerged within surfaceless dark,

Seemed changed and transformed: it was then as stark

As any sea’s low floor, immune to rays

That bring illumination to the days.

The leafless trees were like anemone,

The swaths of dusty snow, shipwreck debris,

The burning taper of my breath sustained

Expiring cigarette, the single flame.

Reflections clear and hard as glass desired

To catch the silver and alien fire

While ponderously blowing wind was like

A crocodile that waits for prey to bite.

That sound, because it was so persistent,

Endless, eternal, never to be spent,

Became like silence to transfigured ears:

Some base of existence seemed to be near.

And then my mind, just like a scientist

That studies organisms, discontent

To view just one, but searches down the line,

Began to think of stars, to redefine;

For they seemed now to be so many eyes

All focused on this world, to my surprise,

As if they were the viewers of some show

That wait for a conclusion yet unknown.

Posted on January 31st, 2010 by admin
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Words were invented to prevent the explosion of human beings.

Posted on January 30th, 2010 by admin
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Life always happens faster in hindsight.   This, in fact, is one of the principle powers of memory:  its ability to function like a circus mirror of time, reflecting a warped and false image or idea, something which is inherently different than the experience of time as the present moment or as the impediment to some future reality.  Each member of the trinity is but a face engendered by a certain perspective or faculty: the truth of time’s nature is dependent on the eye which is observing.

Posted on January 30th, 2010 by admin
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The will is a force of spirit:  it is the sculptor of an idea - the stone being a life.

Posted on January 30th, 2010 by admin
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I never trusted schools:

Too much linoleum and metal -

No sense of the spirit.

-

Churches didn’t appeal much either.

A church doesn’t look very different

Than a CVS.

-

But there is, sometimes,

A wildness in the Spring air

Like a fire that can be caught

Breathed, smelled, tasted.

If that is not the Glory of God,

Then I don’t know what is.

Posted on January 30th, 2010 by admin
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Perhaps we should really treat life as if it were a prolonged celebration.

Posted on December 16th, 2009 by admin
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