Near the close of what I think is my eighth trip to Europe, I sweep some thoughts from my mind's messy floor and display them in that other dusty ether--the Internet (the Ethernet?):
1. Seen on a tombstone in Le Bourg d'Oisaris: The true tomb of death is the heart of the living.
2. It requires money to realize how unimportant money is; education to realize education's unimportance; art, success, knowledge, fame to realize ... Only love does one require to realize its importance.
3. Art is the sensuous expression of spirit, but also is refusing to indulge in this expression: the art of presence, the art of absence; the art of art, the art of god (mysticism).
4. The civilization of being able to drink, smoke, and talk about art in pubs. This, along with its transit and architecture, is the primary attraction to Europe for me. Who in the New World cares for art other than as an extension of Facebook? Who still can envision and risk art through the potency of a life? Smoking seems to help with this. The techno-purity irritation of the New World, which seems all metal and money to me now. How to use this feeling to subvert, exploit, transform, and transcend?
5. Two nights ago, after watching Vertigo for the first time in Germany, after absinthe and nicotine and marijuana, I dreamed I worked as some consultant of vague concerns for an unnamed police force, in which the officers sat on the Chief's lap like little boys on Santa Claus'. I thought--in the dream--"How pleasant! I am getting real money deposited in a real bank account in real life! Then I woke up and realized it wasn't true.
6. I travel not for the usual reasons (to evoke envy) or to entertain myself (when am I not entertained?), but to viscerally re-embody (or more deeply embody) detachment. That I have to physically travel to do this is a weakness, of course, a sign of certain spiritual incapacities on my part. I frequently and sufficiently maintain a kind of compassionate detachment while at home; traveling feels like refueling my spirit at an emptiness station.
7. The difference between French and German bread is that the French use bread to carry things, as a mode of transportation, whereas the Germans use bread as a substance, as a thing in itself.
8. One travels for the shifting surface magnetism of architecture and faces; underneath--the others, the self--everything remains the same. The greedy mediocre human spirit in all its global horror.
9. Sign in Bonn department store: Uhren and Schmuck Service.
10. Fleeing is an underrated form of power.
11. In the past, the powerful had money and the slaves were poor; now, in the First World only, the situation is reversed: the slaves possess money, social position; the powerful are those who step outside such possession. I shall choose to accept this as true and, by accepting, transform my world through the power of vision.
12. The Tao Te Ching presents a philosophy (of management) rooted in the Tree of Life. The ruler-managers (sages) have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, lived, and live now to secure (re-secure?) the Tree of Life (which is simultaneously older and newer in the West) and point people to it. The Tao Te Ching simultaneously as a pre-Christian and post-Christian (management) philosophy.
13. I must write a cultural analysis of the difference between Europe and North America based on the experience of pissing as a tourist.
14. Someone I meet here says I look like Catweazle, an odd creature from the Middle Ages who appears in modern Europe (some UK TV show that broadcast in Europe, Quebec and other places in the early 70s). After I research the thing, I want to shave my head again, as I realize my present persona presents me too much as I am: a medieval madman. Far better to use non-hair to reveal to others what they need to see to protect themselves from themselves.
15. I've never traveled for the usual touristy reasons--the museums and landmarks, the safety of the thing, the affirmation. I travel to feel uncomfortable, jarred, fucked over, anonymous, displaced, ignorant. Yet the experience this time of jostling from place to place irritates me, unproductively. I'm now more inclined to stay in one spot--in this instance Köln--and explore it randomly on foot, absorb its character. I wish to spend a month or six in every city in this way, to write a collection of psychic summaries of each city: and thereby, through the collection as a whole, describe the human soul through its habitational incarnation.
16. Always the bells of Europe, reminders that the Christian God once lived here. Always the presence of art, but frequently ossified. The young German artists I meet quietly criticize the art scene here, its associated psyche, as too intellectual, disembodied. Tempting to apply this to twentieth century European history, of course: the Cartesianism of a nation seeking unity through tragedy.
17. So many German cities 50 years old in architecture, centuries old in feeling. Wuppertal--which I visited to see Pina Bausch's 1980--an exception, magnificent in its spilled historicity. The Köln Cathedral spared only because it served as a landmark for Allied bombing.
18. The German flag: black, red, yellow: death, blood, piss. Death on top.
19. Exit sign for a town on a German autobahn: Bad Durkheim. Academic warfare even on the freeways here.
20. One can largely stop fearing death, but it's hard to stop being irritated by the body's decline. I handle the irritation through spiritual prosthetics.
21. Traveling in Europe: apes paying apes for packaged god.
22. Historic sign on French freeway: Les Poulets de Bresse. These poulets are everywhere: in the freeway gas stations, squawking at you from passing trucks and cars. Everyone must have something to be proud of.
2. It requires money to realize how unimportant money is; education to realize education's unimportance; art, success, knowledge, fame to realize ... Only love does one require to realize its importance.
3. Art is the sensuous expression of spirit, but also is refusing to indulge in this expression: the art of presence, the art of absence; the art of art, the art of god (mysticism).
4. The civilization of being able to drink, smoke, and talk about art in pubs. This, along with its transit and architecture, is the primary attraction to Europe for me. Who in the New World cares for art other than as an extension of Facebook? Who still can envision and risk art through the potency of a life? Smoking seems to help with this. The techno-purity irritation of the New World, which seems all metal and money to me now. How to use this feeling to subvert, exploit, transform, and transcend?
5. Two nights ago, after watching Vertigo for the first time in Germany, after absinthe and nicotine and marijuana, I dreamed I worked as some consultant of vague concerns for an unnamed police force, in which the officers sat on the Chief's lap like little boys on Santa Claus'. I thought--in the dream--"How pleasant! I am getting real money deposited in a real bank account in real life! Then I woke up and realized it wasn't true.
6. I travel not for the usual reasons (to evoke envy) or to entertain myself (when am I not entertained?), but to viscerally re-embody (or more deeply embody) detachment. That I have to physically travel to do this is a weakness, of course, a sign of certain spiritual incapacities on my part. I frequently and sufficiently maintain a kind of compassionate detachment while at home; traveling feels like refueling my spirit at an emptiness station.
7. The difference between French and German bread is that the French use bread to carry things, as a mode of transportation, whereas the Germans use bread as a substance, as a thing in itself.
8. One travels for the shifting surface magnetism of architecture and faces; underneath--the others, the self--everything remains the same. The greedy mediocre human spirit in all its global horror.
9. Sign in Bonn department store: Uhren and Schmuck Service.
10. Fleeing is an underrated form of power.
11. In the past, the powerful had money and the slaves were poor; now, in the First World only, the situation is reversed: the slaves possess money, social position; the powerful are those who step outside such possession. I shall choose to accept this as true and, by accepting, transform my world through the power of vision.
12. The Tao Te Ching presents a philosophy (of management) rooted in the Tree of Life. The ruler-managers (sages) have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, lived, and live now to secure (re-secure?) the Tree of Life (which is simultaneously older and newer in the West) and point people to it. The Tao Te Ching simultaneously as a pre-Christian and post-Christian (management) philosophy.
13. I must write a cultural analysis of the difference between Europe and North America based on the experience of pissing as a tourist.
14. Someone I meet here says I look like Catweazle, an odd creature from the Middle Ages who appears in modern Europe (some UK TV show that broadcast in Europe, Quebec and other places in the early 70s). After I research the thing, I want to shave my head again, as I realize my present persona presents me too much as I am: a medieval madman. Far better to use non-hair to reveal to others what they need to see to protect themselves from themselves.
15. I've never traveled for the usual touristy reasons--the museums and landmarks, the safety of the thing, the affirmation. I travel to feel uncomfortable, jarred, fucked over, anonymous, displaced, ignorant. Yet the experience this time of jostling from place to place irritates me, unproductively. I'm now more inclined to stay in one spot--in this instance Köln--and explore it randomly on foot, absorb its character. I wish to spend a month or six in every city in this way, to write a collection of psychic summaries of each city: and thereby, through the collection as a whole, describe the human soul through its habitational incarnation.
16. Always the bells of Europe, reminders that the Christian God once lived here. Always the presence of art, but frequently ossified. The young German artists I meet quietly criticize the art scene here, its associated psyche, as too intellectual, disembodied. Tempting to apply this to twentieth century European history, of course: the Cartesianism of a nation seeking unity through tragedy.
17. So many German cities 50 years old in architecture, centuries old in feeling. Wuppertal--which I visited to see Pina Bausch's 1980--an exception, magnificent in its spilled historicity. The Köln Cathedral spared only because it served as a landmark for Allied bombing.
18. The German flag: black, red, yellow: death, blood, piss. Death on top.
19. Exit sign for a town on a German autobahn: Bad Durkheim. Academic warfare even on the freeways here.
20. One can largely stop fearing death, but it's hard to stop being irritated by the body's decline. I handle the irritation through spiritual prosthetics.
21. Traveling in Europe: apes paying apes for packaged god.
22. Historic sign on French freeway: Les Poulets de Bresse. These poulets are everywhere: in the freeway gas stations, squawking at you from passing trucks and cars. Everyone must have something to be proud of.
awesome, awful, awe, aw
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