Letting Go of the Money Tree III & IV

sadoo deeply regrets that the technical limitations of booger or the technical ignorance or indolence of this sadoo or some combination of the two or some other factor or combinations of factors not herein mentioned, and/or herein mentioned, and/or not necessarily thought, herein or therein, prevent them from posting the third and final portions of Letting Go of the Money Tree, named, respectively, Quaternities and Emptiness:  the Sequel, at least in any form even vaguely resembling the incarnate aesthetic vision in which the sadoo received them

The Spleen of I

The dozen or so anti-abortionists at Yonge&Bloor yesterday, scattered around each corner.  Why are they always so horribly dressed … and ugly?  Their signs argue against abortion but their fashion and faces argue for it.

Recently I’m lounging around Nathan Phillips Square, somewhat slovenly.  A horde of Christians (over 80 of them) descend, offering brown bag lunches to the homeless, a group in which I seem to be temporarily included.  They all look as if they have just been bused in from Iowa or Alberta.  Scrubbed and stupid.  Hay still in their asses, James Dobson on their phones.  One line from Pascal would kill them.  I almost take a bag (I’m smoking a Montecristo for crissake) from spite (I’m offered 4 lunches, from various Scrubbies) but can’t even rouse enough emotion to extend my hand.  I watch my smoke curl up to heaven, like a prayer.

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS OF AN AESTHETIC KIND

The Christian’s antagonism toward evolution became clear to me recently ... and, in becoming clear, became necessary also.  For there are antagonisms built into the universe’s marrow that are so central to it if they were to go missing, our worlds would have no choice but to collapse.  There are a few antagonisms factory-woven into the wet towel of existence that they must become a meditation for those of us given to futilely care about what we seem to be.

What, then, is the Christian’s fatal objection to the migration of humans from simians?  Why the angst and spittle?  Why not laughter?

It is this.  The Christian objects to the visible expression of the negation of itself.  (It lacks the imagination to see its negation prior to its visible expression.)  This lack is one of the reasons for its objection and also for its being a Christian.

This visible expression could not become visible—at least to the Christian—until a certain mass had developed.  And what mass is required before the Christian can see!

The mass in this case is the widespread acceptance of science-based evolutionary theory which, at its spiritual core, reveals the possibility of the evolution of consciousness, which is also to say the evolution of god.  The Christian looks at the possibility of the human—even sees or reads about the partial incarnation of such possibility—and speedily retreats to its defense of creation … but a creation by an externalized other—breeding guilt and war on internalized creation (the internalized other):  most importantly, refusing the possibility of placing creation in its proper place:  a place without locus, neither external nor internal, without nameable or visible source—forcing the human into maintaining itself as creature.  (None of this is new of course:  20th and late 19th century [and before, in various modes] thought and art are riddled with variations of these themes.)

This is the crux, though:  the Christian opposes evolution in order to maintain its denial of the human and the advocacy of the simian.  Christianity is a gargantuan comic edifice erected to perpetuate the human as ape.  Religion, in this case, is the social and verbal construct necessary to maintain and grow the Christian’s fear of light—which is to say, of thought, imagination, and beauty.

The Christian, as that which strives to be the consummate ape, violently opposes any idea that might pull itself out of itself, that might suggest the possibility of being something other than ape, the reek and howl of nature, the limits of a puerile imagination.

So the Christian (and by Christian we must mean the majority of secularists today, who have taken on the deep values of the Christian while denying its superficial artifacts, who even assume the doctrine of evolution (as they have been effectively, dumbly, enculturated into its acceptance while opposing, in practice, evolution’s central mantras and orientations) and the artist have become opposed—the one devoted to maintenance and land, the other to vision and water.

But all this is saying nothing more than Baudelaire, Blake, or Kierkegaard.  Or, for that matter, Heraclitus, if he could have.

THE AGNOSTICISM OF SPIRIT & FLESH

So the day is here that artists are persecuted and die for art—which is to say, the vision of their psyches (collectively, the emerging vision of the human psyche, our aesthetic DNA, our mapping of the divine)—even as the religious once died for their god (and why psychology is religion’s paltry replacement).  Yet the present persecution is more subtle than the past one.  The persecutors have learned.  They no longer waste their time killing those they fear (they have learned that they prefer their killing virtual); rather, they structure the home in which the artists have to live (society) in such a way as to suffocate the artists, allowing some random ones to breathe long enough to produce sufficient current product to use for their amusement, even as the Coliseum’s slaughters were used for the Romans’ amusement.  They have learned.  And yet they haven’t.  (Naturally.  Always this dual movement.)  What they haven’t learned—what they never can—is the primordial power of the Spirit as it hovers on the waters,  perhaps present—and this is surely the base of human hope—even when what we presently call humans are not.

SYMBOLEZE

The aesthetic language is Symboleze.  It stands, distinctive, in its own family within the larger family of the groups of languages people speak.  It stands alone, but in a different dimension.  A Symboleze speaker does not need to translate Symboleze into other languages for internal understanding; she or he only needs to do so when communicating with non-Symboleze speakers (the majority).  But this translation can involve much effort.  (So, however, is building a country called Symbol, dominated by Symboleze speakers.  Wouldn’t this be the new Palestine, the new Jerusalem?  Could it be a physical republic?  Might this be the core war of the upcoming millennia?  Or will it fatefully be a virtual land, dispersed through time and space, almost disregarding them, its citizens united through their common exile.)

The dictionary of Symboleze is art itself.  Most of what is called art simply builds on and explores existing definitions.  But now and then a symbol is added, modified, removed.  This act of significant addition, subtraction, division, multiplication (the mathematics of Symboleze, the geometry of art) is what I call art.  The fiddling with what exists I call craft (including the reference to the cunning and politic inherent in the necessity of craft, which remains wedded to society in ways art cannot.  [Art rather flings and swoops.])

The artist’s desire is to communicate in Symboleze as much as possible; efforts in other languages (efforts which are unfortunately required to obtain money, to feed and clothe and shelter oneself, but these just to once again communicate in Symboleze) quickly become exhausting.

I greatly desire to speak Symboleze and speak about speaking Symboleze.  It is my first tongue.  My aesthetic work orbits around the seeking of a word, the word, word … a word to describe my condition of being a citizen of Symbol.  If I say Theodore Wallace has Asperger’s, people say, Ah!, and adapt (or don’t adapt, but have the opportunity to).  I would (perhaps) like to self-identify as having a condition also.  You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve been diagnosed with Existence.  There, see, see, it’s a real condition, it’s been validated by the experts, it’s on page 4,723 of DSM-17.

But.  My aesthetic work orbits equally around resisting the finding of a word, the word, word.  Around resisting a label, a condition.  For if the center is named, it falls apart.  The fish must not be allowed to leave the deep.  Symbol must not become a physical republic, must not be brought to earth.  Exile is the artist’s natural home.  The aesthetic diaspora is the same as the Fall.

Meanwhile, the insecure, afraid and inexperienced label me labels for their convenience, to enable them to proceed with the bolstering, the solidifying, of the name “normal” to their diseases, to enable them to mask their inability to speak Symboleze, to ennoble their pride in not being exiled, for belonging fully on earth.

RANDOM CHEESIES FOR THE URBAN SLUG

Švankmajer’s Spiklenci Slasti (Conspirators of Pleasure, 1996).  A riveting exuberant litany of human kink.  Fittingly filtered through the master’s peculiarly transcendent comic-horror lens.  A visual metaphor of our very individual absurd existential circumscriptions, which we inevitably take so seriously.

Apply a poetic principle to politics:  the good politician would minimize adjectives, using primarily verbs and nouns …

Emotional unintelligence.  Accessing my heart/emotions is no different in major respects than accessing my body.  I give permission to whomever I give permission to, based on their ability to possess and wield the right keys in combination with the present configuration of my doors and locks.  Some people are sexual sluts, sharing their bodies liberally; others are emotional sluts, liberally sharing their hearts.  At least I can receive certain pleasures from the sexual slut.  But the emotional slut is typically a bore, expecting me to join it in an orgy of tedious thought-splaying and heart-humping … though it has shown almost no tact, wit, intelligence, technique, or talent.  As for me, I shall be emotionally seduced by those who have the capacity to emotionally seduce me.  I shall not assume their paltry names or be swayed by their emotional tyrannies.

The tao:  seeming as being, fragmentation as health, detachment as compassion, no-action as action,    silence as communication, regress as progress, no-desire as desire.

[And, to conclude, as some other lunatic and liar said, there are also many other things which I did and thought that if they should all be written even the world itself could not contain the books.  Amen.]

Letting Go of the Money Tree II

The Normalization Thesis

So Dr. Tooty-freudy comes to me and says (something like), Hey Jude, want me to throw a couple of projections in with your next session? This one’s on the mouse.  And i say, Hey doc, never hurts.  And that’s the way it goes.  Squeak squeak.  That’s the way it goes, squeak squeak that’s the way it goes squeak squea ...

The people say choose choose the finite is all there is ... you have to be something you have to be something you have to be something ... be an adult be a man be an ape ... god is dead but he who said god is dead chose his not-choosing, no-chose his choosing, like a god ... you always want someone to crack through, to see the unseeable you think you see, to say it the way you think you do, that person with the key

            the one who jabs and jabs and fucks that narnian witch like what the froggies did

to the algerians, it’s all good, it’s all right, you’re gonna sleep tonight like a baby-o and dream

(Which dream is your cloud and chain?  Families of dreams, like languages:  the romantic, the germanic, the tectonic, the blondiebeastie, the indie-european, the fruttitutti, the fresh&wild, the lone&eddied, the khoi-san, the neetcheenatzhee, the burushaski, the langwij sanwich, the glossoh!lalia, the ...)

^{Here are the problems of identity.  If one wishes to maintain a cohesive identity, one has to sacrifice reality (though one calls this sacrifice something like maturity, responsibility, sanity).  If one wishes reality continuously, one dies.  If one wishes some compromise between reality and identity, between spirit and flesh, between consciousness and mortality, between dreams and potato chips, if one wishes some semblance of reality, one’s identity morphs, partially and at times seemingly wholly, into whatever objects present themselves to one’s so-called identity.  With such compromise, one either travels into undesirable places and has partial or little support for such travels, resulting generally and specifically in mayhem, or one fabricates (that is, one arts), which is the same as the aforementioned except for the fabrication.}

The problems of identity are not problems other than for those who require and/or acquire them as problems.^{in through the bonking glass, out through the viewing glass, abiit ad plures vixit mortuos plango cuntus obnoxicus prickus objectionicus fungi4allofus amen}

That’ll be $200 please.  And your kids and your gonads for the projections.

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Baudelaire's Bunions

A Redefinition of Hell

I draw on whatever aspects of my soul are required to accomplish any task that calls to me.  Once that task has stopped calling, i turn to other tasks that call, drawing on whatever aspects of my soul that are required to accomplish those tasks.  If you get confused—if you expect me to have a heavy soul:  unalterable, fixed, dumb, knowable—whose issue is that?  Isn’t this what you do anyway but slower?  You who change your mind once a decade and view it as a fault!  You who praise diversity in your mouth and shit on it with your other!  You celebrate olympic golds, you paw at the maserati, then accuse me of speed?  You stand-ovate Hamlet then accuse me of wit?  You object to the creationists and assume darwin, then accuse me of adaptability?  You celebrate madonna, then accuse me of … of? … of! … anonymity and poverty?  You practice your yoga, then accuse me of aum?  You blab classlessness then take classes!  Oh you lukewarm camels.  You who are crucified on time.  You who require a stage for intimacy.  Have you not heard of the dance?  Would you go to the hell mister wilde created for you?  Ah, dear wombats, you are already there.

No

I’m not taking the burden of 40 years of bad management.  I’m not taking the burden of three millennia of stupid men or the women who throw that burden at me to suit their own stupidities.  I’m not taking the burden of christianity’s puerility or leslie who in kindergarten called me toothpick.  I’m not taking the burden of all those who are too scared to adapt, who have ossified psyches, who talk about god or peace or knowledge or anything as if they haven’t almost died from it, who call fear love, who haven’t sweat entire nothingnesses over a misplaced elastic, who cover their lust for money and comfort—what spiritual insecurity!—with rhetorics of virtue paid for by others by their tongues and their brains and the very pit of their love and their lives … you know … their lives.  I’m not taking the burden of your lack of voice and the burden of whoever and everyone who gave it to you, including me, i’m not taking the burden of myself.  The 51 years of bad management and whoever wrote the training manual for me or you or the dna we’re all happily mapping&living (what’s the difference?), like michelin or nat’lgeog or google-in-your-bedroom.  Easy blood, i call it.  What we do in our cloudy cage.  Living in the womb of something else.  That whipping destiny.  The face that’s waiting in the mirror.  Freedom.  Sing it, liar.  Sing it to the end.

What Edgar Taught Us

One doesn’t watch the symbols or the mermaids show

What might be their downfall in those randy glances.

Banks and eagles, worms and ladders, snakes, their branches,

Would cast the die for watching if it weren’t for Poe,

Who said, more or poor, less or poorer, One doesn’t watch,

Except by virtue of the spell that faeries throw.

The one that makes mamas drool and dread, gently blow

Their sons and daddies to the grave.

Letting Go of the Money Tree I

War of Dreams

It’s not that you’re wrong.  In your aubergine nights.  Reading the Gita or Dworkin or whatever.  Whatever it is you do to separate light from darkness, to march forward with the onion of truth.  It’s not that you’re wrong.  That’s how you do it.  Live. Talk. Work. Love. (I think that’s your word for it).  I suppose those fighting for peace must be peaceful.  And those for justice must be just.  The methods must matter.  Whether you use a cucumber or an artichoke, a pomegranate or a pear.  And the kind of pear, eh?!  Opuntias ain’t pyrus pyrifolia (and don’t forget—or begin to remember—that opuntia’s an anagram of utopian:  that means something!!)  The velocity at which it’s been shot.  Whether it’s been freeze-dried, ossified, fossilized, rottenized, vilified, mystified, juicified, photographed, certified by a CMA, taxidermied, pedicured, been to La Mancha, all that jizz.  How high it’s gone to heaven, whether the academy’s done its thing to it, if it’s done the Mecca trek.  The words must matter.  Whether you say passport or pisspot, jesus or cheeses, progress or pagan, fuckme or love.  We’re all right, really.  That’s the beauty of it.  We’re all just vegetables with the misfortune of inescapably getting visions (from somewhere! Where? Isn’t that the question? The question?) that we’re not.  You’re an onion, i’m a fruitcake, he’s a radish, we’re a kiwi, they’re a stinkbomb, she’s a yellowstripedcauliflower, you’re a fruitcake you’re a fruitcake you’re a fruitcake too.  But i’m a god.  Really.  Those visions like those neatly stacked multicoloured icecream cornets in a super supermarket.  So happy.  So convincing.  Must be true.  But then when you think about it (which unfortunately has to come from time to time, petite ejaculations from the same place [?] as the visions or the veggies) so much truth gets a little weighty after a little history, like our garbage or a marriage or the carnage or some cabbage.  Yet.  There it is.  That’s how you do it.  Part of the mix, i suppose.  Fridgecrapstew i call it.  Others civilization.  Whatever, it’s a word.  Yam.  We yammed all night cause we were high like grapes.  Hey—wanna come home with me and make yam.  Better than yooboob i suppose.  But.  Back to the Gita or Dworkin or Oprah or yourpickorprick.  Toss it to me, baby.  Shoot it like a flower.  Redpath maybe.  In your pistons.  Yeah!  Tank me silly like a Yankee.  Sketch the future like a doodle.  Make war not war like a Christian.  Shoot love not love like an Oxfam.  Have your ideology and eat it too.  Oh yeah baby.  Oh yeah.  It’s not that you’re wrong.

THOSE GOLDEN SCRUBBY YEARS

Twas in the days of the dishwasher.  When they were high and lifted up and mighty as a wigwam.  In the days of the dishwasher.  Full of cockatoos and syllables of the gloaming.  Oh, in the days when seraphim sodomized god and Isaiah wrote his euphemisms on his chariot of clouds.  Things were scrubby then, and golden, in the days.

I entered the cathedral of wishy-washy song, without entrance ticket, mapless, hov’ring on myself, not inattuned to the squeaks and wooshes of the pot and pan.  (Pan’s pot. Good stuff. Organic shit. The original.)  Awed by the organ of knives and spooning, quivered by the crypt of thighs to come, recurring dust and slaughter, suds & laughter, little jetsams of our days.

It was then i saw the onset of the words, those circly things, replete with themselves, and dirty, dirty as disease.  I saw the futility of the window-cleaner, muttering his mutters in the horny heavens, firmament of muhammad and the condos (good band name), his bud lite mane whipping in the wind, eyes free and barred from all that petty privilege, 57^th floor and nowhere, like an amulet dangling from god’s ass.  The trees are grand, i’ve been told, and been there too, once upon a time.

Words are filthy monads, scrubbing, scrubbing, all that other filth.  (Like billiard balls sortof.)  What are we to do, i asked a word (which i had spent a lot for); it bit my nose & burst.  I was once a window-washer, wiping off the tears of god from human souls which we know are made of glass.  Inside—when i could see (rarely, blindly:  god’s tears are thick, relentless, my vision’s rather faulty)—i saw (i thought i saw) undressing, stretching, dissolving, copulating, semantic orgies undoing all and us for we are a bit of the all though all we mostly see is us as all or worse this me as all and that is that but not this and once upon an aum.

The dishwasher now of course is just another utility.  Like hydro or eco dry cleaning or the worldwideinterweb.  What the fuck.  Get a dishwasher.  Get 3 or 4.  4 for 3 or 3 for 4.  Give em away, like usbkeys.  To your mama, your girlorboyfriend, your bossywossy (though heorshe already has 2 or 3).  Stick your pansies in them.  And your cat.  And your girlorboyfriend, bossywossy, yourselfwhileyoureatit, and the amazonwhynot.  The world’s a dishwasher and all its minions dishes, we are being scrubbed my friends my friends, like itunes and iching and tickytocks ticyfocks talkytics falkytucks &

twas in the days of the dishwasher that i saw the dishwasher, it defeating words and everything not dirty but scrubbyclean scrubbyclean scrubbyclean again and time made new, the songs and the cathedrals having fallen down to dust and the windowwasher gone home to his little flat and his tv and his onanisms and himself or selves and that is time and that is time and that is time and this