Year One

Aesthetic Exercises to Accept the Body and Mirror the Body of the World

Presuppositions

The body is the basis and end of all, our origin and limit.  While many in the past and some still in the present have seen spirits existent without bodies and often named these spirits gods¾or when viewed as a collective unity, God¾our understanding is that such spirits are the various expressions of the human soul, housed in and dependent on the body.  God, then, is now the limen of collective possibility of the human soul¾actualized possibility and potential possibility:  the actualized being visible and known, the potential being invisible and unknown.

The Aesthetic Exercises are designed to help the artist unite body and soul, to extend nature to the limits of the human soul while still maintaining the soul’s roots in the body; for once the roots are severed, we still may have art, but it is art with roots in the air, and this is not the art of which we speak or that which we strive for.

Thus we must begin our Exercises with the body, for this is where we begin and end, and what we live within between our origins and ends.  As our aim is to accept the body and not deny it or a portion of it, the acts in this section are diverse in nature, for the body itself is diverse according to temperament, mood and stage of life.  We recommend that the Exercises are begun before 30, for physical energy naturally diminishes with age, and the Exercises are structured with the most physically demanding acts¾those requiring the least discernment¾in the first two sections.

Notes

We can view the human body as nature, for most of us now live in the city, and the human body is the only nature remaining to us.

We have many instances of maintaining the soul’s roots in the air in our history, an option that is attractive for it neglects the truth and responsibility of the mortality and diversity of the body.  All ideas and deeds that attempt to overcome rather than accept death have their roots in the air.  This is true whether this overcoming is through spiritual or physical means:  spiritual overcomings posit a world other than this world, existing outside of time, in another time or space; physical overcomings attempt, typically with the aid of science and technology, to extend individual life eternally.  Both of these have in common their rejection of the limits of physical life, a rejection that diminishes the life we are given; this rejection is rooted in fear.

The relationship between the structure of the acts of the body and individual temperament and mood is complex and will be explored further in later sections.

Meditations

The meditations should be reflected on before, during and after the acts of the body, according to one’s inclinations and ability.  For some, such meditations will occur naturally, even as one is giving oneself over to the body; for others, the physical activities will be too distracting, particularly in the first and second years, to adequately meditate on what is occurring.  Still for others, they will need to wait until the acts of the mind or even later, when they have gained sufficient experience to be able to reflect on what took place years before in their lives.

When you look at the thoughts and actions that have arisen from instances of the body, we find two common themes.  Firstly, we find an attempt to reduce the diversity of the body to a portion of that diversity.  These descriptions make it sound as if only the head exists, or only the heart or the skin.  They are often systems¾not systems emulating the body¾diverse and contradictory¾but ones born of the mind’s desire for control¾similar and consistent.  Secondly, we find an attempt to deny mortality and thus construct a world somehow apart from this world (mental, spiritual, physical, emotional); think of the relationship between the attempt to deny mortality and the degree to which various forms of death enter into these attempts.  think from there into the inevitability of death and how suppressing it in its one real form¾the end of our existence¾simply channels it into new more complex forms.

Meditate on our human need for the body and how our migration from living in nature to living in technology has affected this need.

Meditate on the body’s various and opposing states (e.g. the desire for touch, the desire for cloister).  List all the primary states and mark which ones are opposed¾that is, which ones cannot be satisfied at the same time.  Don’t restrict yourself solely to your own inclinations, but the inclinations of all bodies.

Meditate on the democracy and aristocracy of flesh.  How are these two in tension?  How do they cooperate?  How are they similar?  Apply these questions to the body individually and the body collectively¾all bodies in relation to one another.

Meditate on the body’s cruelty and compassion.  How are these tendencies related to the democracy and aristocracy of flesh?  In your meditation, attempt to stay away from the cruelty and compassion of the will, mind and soul and focus solely on the cruelty and compassion of the body itself.

Meditate on the body’s lawlessness, its amorality.  Reflect on the relationship between this characteristic of the body and language.

Meditate on the body’s desire to bring things unto itself¾to gather the world into its orbit¾and the body’s desire to sacrifice itself to other things, to the world.  Are these desires truly desires of the body?

Meditate on the body in relation to light and darkness.  How is the body light?  How is it dark?

Meditate on the body’s relation to deprivation and excess.  How are these relations linked to survival¾of the individual? of the collective?

Meditate on the geometry of the body¾both on the physicality of its form and on the shapes inherent in the movement of the body from its origin to its end.

Meditate on three versions of human origins:  that flesh came from spirit, the spirit came from flesh, that they arose together as different manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon or from no foundation.  What is the nature of and what might be the motivations for each version?  Do the versions differ in terms of their implications for human life in the past? present? future?

Meditate on the body’s role as impersonal ritual.  For our bodies move through life weaving shapes into the future and the patterns of their resting and thrashing are rituals that have never known and will not know us.

Rationale

The Aesthetic Exercises begin with the body because art is the body stretched to its furthest circumference; this stretched circumference is unseen, yet its substance is the body and the body’s centre is its energy.  The artist cannot create unless he or she is rooted in the body.

We begin with the body as it is, without the layers of will, mind, soul and judgement on it.  We begin by accepting the body on its own terms.

We experience the body on its own terms best by exploring the extreme states of the body; such experience accentuates the body’s diverse modes.  If the reader objects by saying that we also know the body in non-extreme states¾states of rest, calm, indolence¾and that these states are part of the body’s diverse modes and are arguably far more common than the extreme states, we will agree with you in terms of assessing the body’s states from a mere quantitative perspective over time; but quantitative measurement as a sole or even primary measure is the mode of machines, not humans, and we feel no compulsion to be like machines, particularly in these Exercises, which are committed to improving the realm of art, and art, let it be known, is the opposite of the machine.  Yet, even from a quantitative point of view, our approach can be justified, for during all the Exercises¾even the ones that are more physically strenuous and extreme¾the body still is in a more dormant state the majority of the time.  When we speak of exploring the extreme states of the body, we mean that in this phase of the Exercises, certain states should be entered which will not necessarily be experienced again and, as extreme states are intense and in their intensity burn into the memory more forcefully than the far more frequent and routine states our bodies must normally be in, these states will rouse in many feelings disproportionate to their quantitative worth.

The reader may object that it is not unknown for artists to be sickly, thus making it difficult or impossible for some to adequately perform or complete the acts.  First of all, let it be said on a general note that these Exercises are meant to be difficult¾not as an act of caprice or cruelty, but as a test.  For how can the artist stretch herself to the circumference of the human soul unless she survive fire?  Some do not; such is the nature of the test.  More than a test though, the difficulty of these Exercises arises from the body itself:  the body is difficult and exercises that are not difficult cannot be exercises of the body, but are rather mind exercises in what the mind wants the body to be.  Secondly, let it be said that impossibility is a difficult word.  What is one person’s impossibility is another person’s routine; what was once considered impossible becomes possible.  Furthermore, the human soul is oriented toward the impossible, always craving what does not exist.

Nevertheless, while awe is a property commensurate with knowledge, magic is not, thus, whatever might exist in the future, we accept certain obvious limits that exist in the present.  Thus, if the artist truly has limitations which preclude the enactment of some of these Exercises, and these limitations are not those that can be overcome through due application, then she should use other means¾inevitably vicarious¾to explore the states aroused by these acts; these means may be external, by participating in another’s acts through word and/or observation, or they may be internal, by participating in the acts through imagination.

We should note here that the limitations of which we speak may not simply and obviously be physical.  Limitations of will, intellect, soul and judgement exist and are, in a very real sense, also physical, although extended from the obviously physical.  We acknowledge that certain limitations may preclude the enactment of certain acts within these Exercises, but that a fundamental weakness in the later phases will likely inhibit the initiate from satisfactorily completing the Exercises.  Such a one may produce art, but not the art which mirrors well and fully the collective human soul.  Nevertheless, we often do not know until we try, and much is beyond our control.

Method

The Acts of the Body are divided into three years and move from excess to restraint, beginning with positive excess, changing to negative excess and ending with restraint.  In each of these years, the acts are designed to expose the initiate to the major manifestations of the body and so provide a suitable physical foundation for further exploration.

Acts:  First Year

There are those who argue against ways of life even though they have had no direct experience of those ways of life.  While the artist is subject to finitude and so can only actualize very limited possibilities, there are limited modes of life that these infinite possibilities reside in, and the artist is called to know these modes, even though temperamentally she will inevitably be inclined more to one than the others.

The first year of the Exercises are devoted to positive excess of the body.  In the age during which these Exercises are being written, positive excess of the body is, in most circles, not only socially acceptable, but encouraged.  This is what William Blake adumbrated in his memorable fancy.  During other ages, of course, different situations may be favored.  There are peculiar challenges both to having an age favor or disfavor a particular mode:  in the former case, it is easy to assume the mode as one’s own, even though it is not naturally one’s own; in the latter case, it is difficult to even place oneself in that mode for an evening, let alone for a year, unless one takes special precautions, due to the social prohibitions that have grown and become like steel chains around a society, inhibiting movement in particular areas.

By excess, we mean as we have stated:  that the body is stretched to its limits and indulges itself, in this case in the positive mode.  By positive, we mean that the body seeks pleasure rather than pain.

In this first year, the initiate is required to expose herself to the primary manifestations of the mode of physical excess; these primary manifestations are comforts, food, sex, image.  Note that while the acts are described specifically, the initiate can actualize specific acts according to opportunity.  Note, however, that opportunity must be facilitated; this is a year during which the initiate should live with the priority of facilitating opportunity for positive excess.  This is easily done through the choice of friends, the spaces one frequents, the manner of language and fashion.  All these should be carefully chosen and mastered.  While certain acts, then, can be occasional, the general demeanor and lifestyle during this first year should be wholly devoted to the mode of positive excess of the body.

Comforts

When we speak of comforts, we exclude the subsequent categories of food and sex, which we will deal with at length later in our discussion, and instead focus on the environment in which the initiate lives.

The initiate should attempt to surround herself with as many creaturely comforts as possible.  This primarily includes a home that many others would envy, as well as inside and outside furnishings that would likewise cause envy.

Such recommended action should not be interpreted as a promotion of envy, but rather a recognition that envy is one of the primary powers of the common person and is inspired easily by such things as a nice house and furnishings.  The primary powers of the common person are:  envy, sex, fantasy, and photographs.  Envy and sex are the powers of the present, related to possession of what another has.  Fantasy is the power of the future, representing reality as one hopes it would be.  Photographs are the power of the past, representing reality as one hopes it might have been.

The reader should understand that by sex as a primary power, we mean not simply the act of sex, but the apparatus surrounding sex:  the possibility of sex.  This apparatus requires far more energy than the sex act itself, and one wonders whether the human race may evolve to the point whereby, due to technological factors, the sex act is no longer necessary, and all sexual pleasures are obtained from the possibility of the sex act, which itself is never consummated; this eternal not-consummating actually increasing pleasure, for we all know the inevitable decline of pleasure upon having (temporarily) obtained our object.  But we digress.

This first year explores the primary powers of the common person, for to venture into the uncommon, one must first know the common, and the common is the base for every great thing.  While most humans never evolve beyond the common, it is the artist’s calling to evolve beyond; yet this evolution must be a true evolution, and not one that pretends to be evolved but simply mimics those who have suffered at the hungry hands of life.  The artist must live each aspect of evolution and by living and suffering and overcoming know the primary domains of life and death and in this successive knowing actually evolve¾starting from the common, and moving beyond.

So the initiate begins with common envy¾again, not because these Exercises promote envy as a worthy goal, but because the artist must be acquainted with envy¾in this case, with the envy of others toward her.  This envy will inevitably be inspired by surrounding herself with desirable creaturely comforts; this should be objectively recognized as comforts desirable in the time and space the artist herself is within, or else envy will not be effectively evoked.

The initiate should limit her extravagance only by the bounds of the possible, not by any imposition, whether from within her soul, if these limits be placed there by temperament or upbringing, or from without, if these limits be pressured upon the initiate by an individual or individuals specifically articulating them or by social mores at large.

These comforts should include servants to effect, if possible, a complete removal of labour.  These servants should include:  1) cooks, to ensure food is prepared according to the standards outlined below and to ensure the proper maintenance and growth of the kitchen; 2) waiters and waitresses, to look after the serving of the food whenever desired; 3) busboys and girls, to look after the clearing of the tables, the cleaning of the dishes and their being put away; 4) maids and manservants, to ensure the ongoing cleanliness and tidiness of the house and furnishings, including the external patios, and to take care of the initiate’s person, including the making and unmaking of the bed, the dressing and undressing of the person, the bathing and grooming of the body, and the overall tending to whatever needs the initiate might have; 5) gardeners, to ensure the external grounds and internal flora are kept alive and grow according to their tendencies and all non-sentient life conform to healthy standards; 6) pet-keepers, to care for the animals, including their bodily needs, from walking to cleaning, their emotional needs, from play and care, and their maturation needs:  their training and discipline.

In short, the initiate should not have to do any manual labour during this year; all bodily energies should be devoted to the pursuit of pleasure.

The initiate may wonder what overall context is best for establishing this habitat; particularly, we refer to whether an urban or rural context is best for the pursuit of pleasure and, if a choice can be made between these two alternatives, whether further specificity can be made¾for many different urban and rural environments exist.  If rural, for example, should it be town, village, farm, in the New World or Old, east or west, south or north, foreign or familiar, tropical or temperate?  Many of the same issues apply to the urban environment, but with the additional question of the size and orientation of the city:   degree and mix of industry, culture, religion, corruption, entertainment, safety, business.

We strongly recommend that the place of positive excess be in the urban environment, and one that is very large and has a thriving cultural industry.  If it is very large, inevitably it will have not only a thriving cultural industry, but also industry, religion, corruption, and so on.  Such cities are not many, but they are easily accessible and exist on every inhabited continent, with the exception of Australia, which, because of its relative isolation, has some interesting cities, but no truly large and cosmopolitan ones; examples of possibilities include New York, Paris, Buenos Aires, Cairo, London, Mexico City, Tokyo.  The question remains as to whether the initiate should take up residence in a foreign or familiar place, but we think this decision unimportant at this stage of her development and it should be subject to more pressing considerations such as are discussed below.

The initiate may wonder how such a lifestyle can be funded.  Admittedly, this issue presents certain distinctive challenges.  To reiterate an earlier point, however, the road to becoming the kind of artist of which we speak cannot be easy, even when we are discussing pleasure.  For the person who thinks that pleasure is only easy is a fool and understands nothing; as much pain exists in the pursuit of pleasure as pleasure in a life of suffering and only the wise, if any still exist, are able to see both.  Admittedly, the nature of the pains and pleasures in each opposed path is qualitatively different.  But no path, whether that of the roue or the ascetic, is one-sided; though it may appear so to those who judge only by appearances, the actual life lived by the individual is complex, varied, contradictory and mixed.  How much more the life of the artist, who knows experientially both the way of the debauchee and the way of the penitent.  How to create such a lifestyle in a year¾what many cannot accomplish in a lifetime though it be their deepest and recurring dream¾is part of the challenge of this early portion of the Exercises.

Having articulated this challenge and this warning, we nevertheless suggest that the initiate take creative measures to accomplish her goal in this early stage.  Full of youthful vigor and audacity, the initiate may need to live off the fruits of one who has spent a lifetime accumulating the envy of others.  This has the obvious merit of saving huge reservoirs of energy, as well as potentially substantially reducing the amount of time required to establish a proper enviable home and devote oneself to the sole task of this first year:   excessive positive pleasure.

Finally, we speak of what was once called clothing, but is now called fashion:  the raiment and statement of the body.  The initiate should take every effort to surround herself with beautiful articles, from undergarments, both comfortable and salacious, to layers above, suggestive, discrete, bold, revealing, outrageous, to paraphernalia for every occasion, whether of nature (temperature, precipitation, heat) or location (ball, beach, barnyard, boudoir, bar, boardroom, bordello) or social (aristocratic, suburban, old or new wealth, impoverished, homeless).  Shoes, hats and undergarments should be the most numerous, for they will often be revealed and remembered, long after the initiate has progressed through other modes toward her consummation.

Food

The pleasures of the palate are intensely variegated, and historically one of the greatest, most accessible delights.  These delights increase in proportion with the size and cosmopolitan nature of one’s habitat¾a further argument in favor of spending the first year of these Exercises, so fully devoted to positive excess, in one of the earth’s chief metropolises¾and have increased with time, owing to human ingenuity in the creation of new species and in the preparation and serving of these species, and to the free, rapid and hygienically safe movement of food and drink between the furthest reaches of the globe. 

In the pleasures of the palate we include both food and drink, in all their variety.  Furthermore, we include in this category other substances, ingested not for any dietary purpose, but solely for pleasure, substances that have contact with the mouth but are not ingested into the stomach although they may be inhaled, and substances that are injected into the body through means other than the mouth, whether this be nose or ears or eyes or the epidermis in any of its stretches:  in the first category of other substances, we include psilocybes, lysergic acid, MDMA, methamphetamine, Phencyclidine, Dimethoxyphenethylamine, Gamma hydroxybutyrate, piperazine monhydrochloride, ephedra, qat, GHB, Destromethorphan Hydrobromide, Isobutyl nitrate or other ingestible hallucinogenics; in the second category, we include cigarettes, cigars, cannabis sativa, Nitrous Oxide; in the final category, we include diacetylmorphine, Erythroxylon coca, methamphetamine, ketamine hydrochloride, and any alkyl nitrite.  One of the strengths of the human species is its ability to discover or create new hallucinogenics, the scientific revolution aiding our ability to do so.  Thus, new experiences and variations of experience are continually being introduced, and this first year is devoted to including these experiences in one’s life.

Let us discuss each of the chief food pleasures in turn, beginning with food itself.  As discussed in the preceding section, the initiate should have no responsibility for food shopping, preparation, serving or cleaning.  At most, the initiate can, if she desires, tell the appropriate person what menu she desires for a particular meal.  Other than that, her only duties are saying what she wants, and enjoying the resultant smells, textures, sounds, smells and tastes.

Drink is the second major category of food, and wine and spirits are the zenith of drink.  The initiate should pursue the finest of the zenith of drink liberally.

Other substances, enumerated at some length above, are the third major category of food, and these also should be explored.

The challenges the initiate faces during this year are those that anyone faces when living a life of positive excess, although inevitably these challenges differ depending on one’s ability to tolerate and adapt to this particular lifestyle.  Indeed, each year is a different major mode of human existence, with its particular pleasures, exigencies and challenges.  Some inevitably think that pleasure is without challenges, but, as we have already argued, these people are blind¾not with the blindness of the prophet or the sagacious fool, but with the blindness of the average idiot.

So the challenges in the excess of food include addiction, psychosis, unconsciousness and even death.  The initiate should beware and so simultaneously pursue these pleasures and take care to survive the first year in such a way as to be able to vigorously continue with the Exercises, keeping in mind at all times that the purpose of the Exercises are not the completion of the Exercises themselves, but the molding of an artist¾and not even this, for the artist is irrelevant other than to produce a work of art.  This simultaneous pursuit of pleasure and care to avoid death is a core challenge not only in this food section, but in the following sections of sex and image.

Inevitably, because of the peculiar nature of these difficulties, some will die.  We can only reiterate that easy exercises are not exercises worthy of the name.

Sex

By sex, we mean self-touch, touch between two or more people, touch in both cases where desire is aroused or where desire is desired to be aroused on the part of at least one person, or we mean situations in which the possibility of sex exists or the situation where the desire to have the possibility of sex exist exists.

As history has progressed, the human has gradually surrounded himself with apparatuses, to extend his body in time and space¾an extension both of power and substance.  So the human at the time of this writing moves most often surrounded by metal, thinks and acts and writes only with the aid of machines; even his copulation is abetted by many apparatuses, not only for the prevention of pregnancy and disease, but for the enhancement of pleasure.  So sex has evolved from its simple copulative origins to a complex of signs and symbols, which may or may not point or lead to the original act itself.  This apparatus includes language as a significant sexual act in itself.  It may in fact be the case that sex is gradually being rearranged in terms of its composition, that whereas it began as a copulative nucleus and extended to such a nucleus surrounding and increasingly complex apparatuses, such as language, possibility, soul, image, technique, will, media, mind, technology, variation, emotion, spirit, gender, judgement, fashion, status, theme, power, and hope, it now is being transformed by tectonic forces at the world’s foundations such that each apparatus is itself becoming a centre around which all the other apparatuses can potentially orbit, the copulative nucleus simply being one nucleus among many.  But we digress.

The point here that the initiate should keep in mind is that she should understand both the original core of sex and¾as, if not more, important¾the apparatus surrounding it.  By understand we mean know and by know we mean experience and by experience we mean pursue.

Important to keep in mind are the variegated manifestations of sex, for without both variety and obscurity, sex loses much of its vigor.  Thus during this year, the initiate should plunge into the pullulative expression of flesh and plunge into flesh’s darkness.  In both are severe pleasures, which many have argued are the severest of all and the root of all excess.  This argument has merit, as we spring from flesh and spawn it and are helplessly contained within it, this ministrant of pain and excess, food being necessary to sustain it, habitation being necessary to protect it, image having become necessary to project it, but flesh’s spasmodic arching scream the centre and limen of the manifold and swarming whole.

The dual nature of sex¾a revealing and a hiding¾is what an obscure philosopher said also applied to technology, defining technology as αληθεια.  So sex also can be seen to be αληθεια.  Let the initiate keep this duality in mind¾for it is an essential duality of life and we will find it clothed in different forms in many different spheres as we progress¾and, keeping this duality in mind, neither reveal too much nor hide too much.  Yet, even so, let her do so in excess.

(Let, in fact, the contemplation of this duality and the similarity between sex and technology in this regard be added to the body meditations, for these are worthy thoughts and ripe with potency.)

In terms of variety, then, the initiate should explore as many forms in as many ways as possible.  Obviously, the world offers up what is practically a limitless smorgasbord for sampling, and the initiate, in her state of intentional excess, should explore this by focusing on types.  For example:  at least one member of each major race; at least one member of the two sexes, preferably including gender varieties within each sex  (e.g. male gender, female sex; female gender, female sex; mixed gender, female sex; male gender, male sex; etc.); selections from the spectrum of education (from uneducated to highly educated); selections from the spectrum of intelligence; selections from the spectrum of emotionality; selections from the spectrum of dependence, independence, codependence, antidependence; selections from the spectrum of addiction; selections from societal orientation (business, entertainment, industry, labor, sport, academic, politics, communication, automotive, etc.); selections from religious persuasion; talipeds; selections from sexual orientation, despite the challenges involved in this; selections from age range, paying attention to consent and curiosity rather than legality, not avoiding the geriatric segment; selections from timidity and boldness, both in the sexual arena as well as others; couth and uncouth; brutal and compassionate; polygamous and not; diseased and healthy; rural and urban; of the major hair colours, with due disregard to the reputation of redheads, a reputation found consistently throughout historical erotic records; criminals and abiding citizens; pompous and simple; paid and unpaid; corpulent and gaunt; famous and obscure; war veterans; democratic, autocratic and dictatorial; the carious; sagacious and foolish; beasts, if willing; priests and laypeople; deans, chairs and provosts; carls; bricklayers.

Not only should the initiate pursue experiences with the wide variety of humanity, but these experiences should be themselves explored with variety and this variety should be of two kinds:  manner and location.

Manner of congress is inevitably more limited in its scope than the preceding¾the variety of bodies and personalities and life situations¾and the following¾the location and physical surroundings of the congress, subject as it is to the physicality of a body, or two together, or a group.  Nevertheless, all manners of congress should be explored, with aids and without.  One of the benefits the initiate has, living as she does not in ancient times but in the present, with its developed technology, is that the manners of congress have increased beyond the merely biological available to members of early civilizations.  Now, with images and music, techniques, words and devices, where the imagination has been effectively copied and packaged, its goodness made available for the benefit of many, the pursuer of sexual pleasure has a much larger and more complex range, which has in fact been extended from simple physicality by means of technology to a richer world, providing us, as it were, with more and diverse limbs, further eyes.  Not only this, but enabling us to live more lives than otherwise we would be able to, inhabiting, as we can, other minds and perspectives, gaining emotions not usually ours, even if these be but temporary.  So the initiate should use every available means and device to explore the pleasures of the body both with herself and with others, while not, however, restricting herself exclusively to the use of means and devices of extension; she should also be well acquainted with all the standard positions available simply to bodies on their own.

In addition to the variety of humanity and the stations in which they find themselves in life, and in addition to the manner of joining, both natural and technological, the initiate should heartily explore an extensive variety of location.  Naturally, such locations will include the common home of intercourse¾the bed¾but the initiate should take care to couple in as many beds as possible, of as many types:  from soft to hard; narrow to wide; short to long; made of many substances; with finery and not; clean and dirty; old and new; expensive and cheap; secluded and public; watched and unwatched; posted, not; with headboards, not; canopied, not; of every colour and fabric; lumpy and smooth; with bugs assorted, homogeneous, absent; painted, plain; sofas.  The beds the initiate explores should be in as many bedrooms of as many sorts in as many homes of as many sorts as possible.  Yet beds, despite their well earned reputation as the natural home of congress, can simply be seen as the core habitation of copulation, with ripples extending infinitely out.  The artist should thus pursue sexual activity on all continents and in as many countries and landscapes as possible.  This pursuit itself will greatly increase the variety of beds, bedrooms and homes, as these vary substantially according to custom and climate.  For, despite the cliché that no two rooms are alike, one can frolic in a thousand beds in one country and yet they will all appear to be the same once one travels halfway around the world into a strange and exotic realm.

The initiate should couple not just in manifold beds in manifold ways in manifold lands, but also in manifold places.  The world in its abundance has much to offer, both naturally and technologically.  As the initiate finds herself in an overwhelmingly urban environment, the latter locations will obviously be more accessible and she will have to make some effort to couple in sandstorms; extreme heat and cold; deserts; barns; on, beside and under animals; lighthouses; outhouses; campspots; trees; rills and swamps; fens and plateaus; crags; where once there was a battle; motley rifts; jequirities; surrounded by carpenter moths; the Carpathian Mountains; reefs; observed by animals, threatening and timid; a place Pausanias has been; patulous subterranes; grabens; under eclipses of all sorts; by bustics.

Despite the joys and challenges of a natural setting, the urban environment also offers diverse opportunities, often without the effort required in untamed nature.

We suggest that the initiate minimally pursue positive excess in offices; washrooms; parks; arenas; alleys; concerts; playgrounds; classrooms; closets, broom or otherwise; elevators; tennis courts; benches; malls; change rooms, sport or retail; swimming pools; saunas; coolers; cafes; Ikea; zoo exhibits; churches, including pews, balconies, baptismal tanks, altars, confessional booths; greenhouses; secret societies; movie theatres; go-kart tracks; sewers; petting zoos; bicycle rental booths; cafeterias; filtration plants; factories; abandoned buildings; condominium squash courts; subdivisions being built; opera houses; illegal betting houses; synagogues, temples, mosques; places of ill repute; public transit; hotel kitchens; telephone switching habitations; supermarkets, in the baked good section; escalators; printing presses; fast food restaurants, in the lineup; atmospheres of mistrust; retreats, convents and monasteries; all venues judicial; cheap lingerie stores where no one speaks the native language; barbershops; garages, residential, parking, above and below ground, attended and not; Hyde Park; postal sorting stations; unnamed recesses; animal shelters; NGOs; cemeteries and mausoleums; circus tents; artist dens; bookstores and libraries; city halls; construction sites; nuclear plants; conference rooms; piazzas; foyers; projection rooms; composts and dumps; forbidden zones; stairways and wells; beer stores; government-funded ethnic gatherings; deleterious garden sheds; asylums; recycling centres; hospitals and convalescent homes; jejune colleges; union and legion halls; verandahs; diva auras; seminaries.

We should emphasize here that the aforementioned list is woefully partial, not only in terms of the members of the list, but also in terms of how each member is minimally explored.  Elevators, for example, exist in infinite variety:  freight, passenger; express, local; manual, automatic; rickety, smooth; crowded, solitary; stuck, stationary, moving; ascending, descending; business, industrial, non-profit, academic, governmental; fenestrated, not; having just contained famous people; with signs of various languages; referred to in a work of literature; with strangers, friends, acquaintances; mirrored, wooded, metalled; with doors on two sides¾and this but just an infinitesimal portion of all available elevators.  Indeed, the initiate could devote this first year¾yea, even her lifetime!¾to only exploring elevator love.  It is our sadness, the melancholy of our species, that so little time has been given.  So even in this early stage of the Exercises, the initiate may glimpse the limitations imposed by mortality and begin to feel the grief at the heart of the human soul.

It almost goes without mention that all modes of transportation should be explored¾from the well known car to planes, trains and submarines; carriages; tractors, and all manner of farm instruments including wagons; jinrikshas; taxis; battleships, including aircraft carrier; motored two-wheel vehicles; submarines; air balloons and blimps; roller coasters; schooners; paddle boats; hydrofoils and ferries; chariots.

In terms of this year of adventure, with its buffet of bodies, its modes and devices, and its myriad locations, this hullabaloo of union, the initiate will inevitably expose herself to risk, both externally, in terms of the elements and the derangement and cruelty of people generally, as well as internally, in terms of disease¾if she does not, she is not performing these Exercises but some others¾however, she should so perform them in such a way as to not unduly endanger her life.  Inevitably, though, some will die.

Up to this point, we have explored congress itself:  the act of coupling, and its minimal contexts:  the partners, the methods and devices, the immediate physical environment.  Finally, however, we explore the equally important sphere of possibility.  The initiate should develop the ability to walk into a room and immediately have everyone in the room desire her.  She should develop the ability to not simply create this energy, but sustain and grow it, according to her will.  She should use every tool imaginable and make every tool imaginable at her disposal:  word, fashion, image, reputation, power.  This pursuit of possibility is separate from the pursuit of union itself and should not be confused with it.  The initiate should pursue possibility only with the intent of creating possibility and desire, not with the intent of consummation.  While consummation may of course occur, the initiate should be able to create possibility without consummation inevitably occurring; that is, she should find pleasure¾and excessive pleasure¾in creating possibility; she should work toward finding as much pleasure¾albeit of a different kind¾in creating desire as in fulfilling it.  For this ability to create desire, as we will discover as we progress through these Exercises, is fundamental to the creation of a work of art.  A work of art¾at least the kind of which we speak here¾can be thought of as desire incarnate; this is what the artist aims for, and this is ultimately why this skill must be mastered.  But we get ahead of ourselves; at the present stage, the initiate should focus on creating and enjoying the possibility of sexual pleasure, with the enjoyment coming both from the possibility and the creation of the possibility.

Image

Image, in its crass form, is fame; or, rather, as image is popularly understood.  However, it is the perspective of these Exercises that fame is a possible, if not likely, by-product of image, although image in its transience often leads to transient fame.  Regardless, the initiate should keep in mind that fame itself should not be pursued, but image, and if fame should appear for a brief time, then that is good within the confines of this first year, for fame, like comforts and like sex, is desired by the commoner, and it inspires envy when it occurs.  Envy breeds petty imitations, which are more risible than that which they imitate only because they heap pettiness onto commonness.

By image, we mean that the initiate should copy herself as often as possible, into as many forms as possible.  The basic forms, however, are two:  word, in terms of replicated names; and pictures, either static or moving of the initiate’s face and possibly face and body.  On rare occasions, the initiate may be recognizable through other forms, such as symbols, signs, sounds, smells, even tastes.

Consideration should not be given to quality at this stage; the emphasis in these early years is on the accumulation of experience and an exposure to the world which has both breadth and depth.  Quantity should be the only consideration, which is image’s nature:  to propagate itself endlessly, meaninglessly, infinitely.

Although the basic forms of exposure are two¾word and picture¾the forms within these forms are many.  Simply, the initiate’s objective is to be spoken about by as many people as possible as often as possible, and be seen by as many people as possible as often as possible.  By seen, of course, we mean in copied form.  The initiate may very well choose to minimize her actual exposure, other than for purposes outlined in the previous sections.  For the purposes of these Exercises, and for the purposes of much of the world, the copy is as good, and often better, than the original.  This also is a principle that should be kept in mind as we proceed.