Energy and the Object: Desire and Suffering

Karolus Cothraige Gonxha Arnulfo Ceuta Isayevich Forgione was a contemporary of Spinoza, but living in self-imposed exile in a Cretan cave.  While little is known of Forgione’s life, we do know that he despised Spinoza (in a manner reminiscent of Kierkegaard’s hate of Hegel), being temperamentally disinclined to systemization and being equally driven to adumbrate the philosophical fragmentation of the twentieth century.  Despite living as a severe hermit, he was known to develop close relationships with various members of some of the natural species which frequented his cave, they finding him to be a warm, receptive, and vaguely entertaining companion.  We use the Papyrus Stuttgart Linear C text, the most commonly accepted most reliable source for this fragment in Forgione studies.

“Desire,” the first part of Energy and the Object, was showcased here in July 2010.  The Secular Sadoo is pleased to continue Forgione’s odd—some would say deviant—exploration into matters usually best left unexplored.

2.      Desire and Suffering

2.1.   The Buddha correctly identified desire and suffering, but he incorrectly assumed the equation should and could be broken.

2.1.1.      The equation is life’s; to attempt to break it is to strive for death.

2.1.2.      The one who attempts to break the equation still has desire, but his desire is turned against his body as opposed to being against other bodies.

2.1.2.1.            Against and For are incestuous siblings in the Preposition family.

2.1.2.2.            Who hasn’t loved his body by rejecting it?  And who hasn’t hated others through consummation?  Only he who is an Adjective - that cloned genetically modified family of qualifiers.  Slip into his extended family’s picnic - anyone can if he qualifies; slip into the modifying swamp.

2.1.3.      The cessation of suffering has been made a consequence of the cessation of desire, but this is only true for the one who strives to feel desire’s circumference and only true for this one in those moments of feeling.  The world is larger than these feelings and if the world were to shrink to them, it would end.  There is one world which is comprised of infinite worlds¾a feeling of the cessation of desire and suffering is only one of these, a description of this feeling another.

2.1.4.      The nature of desire is to strive for what doesn’t exist.

2.1.4.1.            Suffering is the distance between the one who desires and what is desired.  The more impossible his desire, the greater his suffering.

2.1.4.1.1.      This is why Christ is the ultimate sufferer, for he desires God (perfection) - the truest impossibility.

2.1.4.1.2.      Christ suffers more than Buddha, for Buddha can achieve his desire through death, but Christ’s desire is frustrated by death - Christ desires perfection in life.

2.1.4.2.            The common sufferer, the shadow of Christ, does not reduce the distance between himself and what is desired, but places a veil of flesh between them.  It is this veil that makes him common, for the veil is society - desire’s commodity exchange.

2.1.4.2.1.      The one who knows the veil is a veil and yet maintains it possesses superior spiritual power over the one who believes the veil is the desired.

2.1.4.2.2.      The veil is common, but the relationship one maintains with the veil determines the desirer’s rarity or, in classical terms, beauty.

2.1.4.3.            All that is considered worthy in human history either attempts to remove the veil (what we call the spiritual) or believes in it only as a utility function (the political or sexual).  Buddha and Christ are symbols of the spiritual, Caesar of the political, Don Juan of the sexual.

2.1.4.3.1.      Political and sexual masters place the weight of suffering on others through desire, the spiritual on themselves.  Regardless of where suffering is placed, its weight is equal.

2.1.4.3.2.      The preexistent scales of the world have been formed to give more weight to each unit of spirit than each unit of utility.  This is what is meant, and the only true thing that is meant, by good’s superiority - all other meanings are sentimental.

2.1.4.3.3.      Spiritual mathematics follow formulae that mock the laws of physical mathematics, even as the latter mock the former and each fears each as each erects a world inimitable to the other, seen by the other only in that ultimate instrument of death, the mirror.

2.1.5.      In desire, non-desire is desired; in non-desire, desire.  But I speak again of centers and circumferences.

2.1.6.      Desire’s suffering has been shown through religion.  But with religion discredited, geriatric or subsidized and subsidiarized by business, where can it be shown now?

2.1.7.      The Buddha then was right and wrong (the more right and wrong, the greater the teacher, for the more he highlights tension, the only truth).

2.1.7.1.            He was wrong in thinking desire and suffering should and could be separated.

2.1.7.2.            He was right, however, in disbelieving in the veil, in that he was one driven to show the texture of a certain brand of disbelief and disbelief is a rare and legitimate relationship with the veil.

2.1.7.2.1.      The veil defines the one who disbelieves in it as much as that-which-is-behind-the-veil defines those who believe only in the veil.

2.1.7.2.2.      That which is not believed in (veil or that-behind) is the soil to the weeds and flowers of belief.

2.1.7.3.            Buddha was right in pointing to that-behind not as any that but as not-that¾the not-that behind the that.  Christ and Plato pointed to a That behind the that¾that greater impossibility.

2.1.7.4.            Shakespeare is great partially because he provided the first comprehensive secular description of the not-that behind the that.

2.2.   True humanity, and thus divinity, is granted only to those who fear neither desire nor suffering, neither do they crave them - they simply live them.

2.2.1.      The religious founders of East and West were such - early explorers of desire incarnate; their words may have played on desire’s surfaces advocating different laws, but they inhabited desire and by inhabiting became their habitation.

2.2.2.      Regardless of his words’ content, the great teacher is desire made incarnate in the realm of spirit.

2.2.2.1.            This is technically impossible, for desire should only be incarnationally possible in flesh, where it is expected and at home.

2.2.2.2.            But the realm of spirit doesn’t care for technical laws; it wanders where it wills.

2.2.2.3.            We see, we know, desire in the great teacher, but of a qualitatively different kind than when we desire flesh.  This difference is what makes this teacher great.

2.2.3.      In atmospheres of discourse of desire, where all is spoken and seen desire and the desire for desires of speech and sight, where can one flee to find a place where desire is silent?

2.3.   In the hard ambiguities of the world, justice is distributed through the courts of suffering.  Through desire, acclaimed judge and silent, humans receive not what is their due, but desire’s portion.

2.3.1.      Above religion’s horrible hopes and business’s cold securities, desire randomly determines the world’s oppressions.

2.3.2.      Desire is justice; there is no more unjust judge.

2.4.   Desire breeds desire, suffering breeds suffering.

2.4.1.      Desire in breeding adds texture to the veil, or in other words adds to humanity’s mask collection.  Thus in breeding desire adds mass to the world.

2.4.2.      Suffering in breeding is constant - it maintains the same mass now as it did at the beginning of time.  Suffering defies mathematics:  it multiplies but never increases.

2.5.   The human project is not to eliminate desire and suffering but to become them.

2.5.1.      We are destined to suffer and desire.

2.5.2.      Only by accepting desire and suffering (discomfort, loss, alienation, incompletion), do we stop fighting them and give ourselves over to their random rule.

2.5.3.      This becoming is the divine project.  If we, individually and collectively, become desire and suffering, we abdicate the need to enact our desire or seek vengeance for our suffering.

2.5.3.1.            Technology and art are the couple who can facilitate the appearance of progress toward completion.

2.5.3.1.1.      But while technology increases desire and suffering through its global and instantaneous mirror production, it equally ensures they remain infinitely distant by placing them within another skin, the skin of the machine.

2.5.3.1.2.      Meanwhile, art only facilitates such an appearance for those for whom art and names belong in the same metaphysical house (which, admittedly, are the physical majority).

2.5.3.2.            This becoming is impossible to complete.

2.5.3.2.1.      If it were completed, it would no longer be a becoming.

2.5.3.2.2.      If it were completed, we would not have become suffering, for we would not be alienated - that which simply is is not separate from itself.  Yet we are becoming more separate from ourselves or from what we feel is or was ourselves, our very definition being (or becoming) that which is separate.

2.5.3.2.2.1.            This separateness is a kind of holiness, and the only holiness we will be offered.

2.5.3.2.2.1.1.      In the ultimate ironic twist, alienation becomes holy.

2.5.3.2.2.1.2.      Against all philosophy, religion and psychology, all systems and yearnings of healing and wholeness, we become truest and best as we cast ourselves in the sea of sin.

2.5.3.2.2.1.2.1.            This casting cannot be active, for such is a rebellion against healing and wholeness, and all rebellions participate in the perpetuation of the rule they attempt to break.

2.5.3.2.2.1.2.2.            This casting must be passive, a falling, a union with our separation.

2.5.3.2.2.2.            What becomes possibility is never what was possibility.

2.5.3.3.            We cannot become desire and suffering, but only desire to become them.  This desire includes their absolute incarnation in us and their absolute eradication from us.

2.5.3.3.1.      While the religious past focused on their absolute eradication, the techno-aesthetic future focuses on their absolute incarnation.

2.5.3.3.2.      Both will fail, but both must be tried.

2.5.3.3.3.      At the end of both attempts, how will the new be defined?

2.5.4.      To accept may be to negate, to negate may be to accept.  If we were desire and suffering, we might know.

2.6.   True¾desire leads to suffering, but suffering also leads to desire.

2.6.1.      Desire and suffering are like two business partners who have formed an alliance in the world of spirit, but if the alliance is broken, life ends.

2.6.1.1.            Against all nature and science, spirit rules physics.

2.6.1.2.            Nature and spirit are like two parallel kingdoms - neither of which has heard of the other, neither of which has any knowledge of the other, but both of which utterly control the other’s destiny.

2.6.2.      Equally, the attempt to eliminate suffering or desire leads to suffering and desire.  All paths lead there, so one might as well accept them.

2.6.2.1.            Acceptance is dissimilar to seeking.

2.6.2.2.            Seeking fulfillment or removal is still seeking.

2.6.2.3.            Seeking. Accepting.  Is the difference between these the difference between society and nature?  Isn’t the human that which is both and neither?

2.7.   If one could experience desire as equally suffering and suffering as equally desire, names would become like art in a gallery of nature.

2.7.1.      But this would require the experiencing one to know nature in ways that have become impossible externally.

2.7.2.      The only remaining gallery of nature is the unseen one within.  To cultivate this garden and place art within it - who can do this?

2.7.3.      This union - of nature and art, desire and suffering, names and namelessness, striving and sacrifice - within the garden of oneself is to bring Buddha and Christ, East and West, together.

2.7.4.      Such a union does not eliminate desire and suffering, but brings their dimensions into mirrored life, the death-life we live and are, so we can see and groom them.

2.8.   I desire desire, certainly, but I also and equally desire suffering; isn’t this the truth humanity has hidden in the folds of history and each individual in the closets of his dreams?

2.8.1.      To pursue equally desire and suffering, primarily in oneself, secondarily in others, to pursue equally comfort and discomfort - surely this is the only spirituality, the one uncoded by the past.

2.8.1.1.            Any spirituality of the future, any sacred text that might appear through the holes in the webbed earth, must then include these tensions.  And not just these—but its own antithesis, its own negation.

2.8.1.2.            Uncoded because there was no language to negate language—or rather, in geometric terms, the surfaces available for the code were insufficiently large to begin appearing as a sphere.

2.8.2.      Primarily in oneself because the self must be the prime laboratory for the experimenter and adventurer of new forms of God.  One must feel directly the joys and agonies of suffering and desire.  Without this directness, one is a charlatan. 

Of Merdia 43 - 45

Cloa Denum closes Of Merdia, a piece that effected her recent elevation to sainthood by the Toilet God Consortium, presently led by Šulak, the Babylonian Lurker of the bathroom and demon of the privy.

43.         My jealousy of Merdia’s democratic graces has led me to open closets in the psyche best left shut.  I have been known to break laws which should not be broken and dine with people who should only eat alone.  I have no happy memory of these moments.  Shame is unleashed from its attic storehouse, runs down my soul’s corridors and wipes all joy away.  In those moments of unmitigated darkness, I seek ceramic, kneel, and leak feeble prayers onto the floor.  To love a goddess is always to love unrequitedly.  I have known this since my first diaper.  Yet, human as a turd, I fail, and fail again.  Merdia, forgive me.

44.        When I am old and about to lose Her grace, when the mastery I have devoted my life to begins to fade, when a dump is just a dump and not the Heavenly Chorus, when I am unable to fashion my creation into giants of mercy and nobility - my hands as my stools will be liquid, I will have become lesser than my mother once again - then I will relinquish my control.  I will have to satisfy myself with the pretty sound of the ice cream truck and the laughing farting children running toward it, imagining the tall swirls of pride they run for and how they adumbrate hours of similarly shaped happiness when they sit above their easeful kingdoms and Merdia deigns to point them to the way.

45.        Merdia's blessings are not for those who delude themselves that humanity is anything but merde, who prefer to think we are obelisks and satellites.  They will continue on their fluorescent mint-fresh metallic path, lacking the light of waste and the sewer’s joyous inspiration.  We lovers of Merdia know we exist by accident, we sit in heaps of ourselves and swirl down dark tunnels of unknowing to the sea.  We know the transience of Merdia's graces is our transience, the fleeting glimpse of her creations the glimpse of ours.  She reminds us daily that we toil to turn merde to merde, for no reward but the joy of turning.  Merdia, our pleasure, goddess, love.

Of Merdia 42

42.        A commonplace among Merdians is that their goddess is ascendant during waking hours, but sleeps alongside our sleeping.  I have found this not to be true.  Not only am I occasionally blessed with a serendipitous pearl when night raises high and I cruise that other land, a surprise pearl that imitates the dawn, not only do I have the knowledge that such occurrences can only increase as I advance in years and wisdom, but I often find that Merdia joins me in the shadow kingdom.  I dream of course, like others, of impossible copulations and labyrinths made of cheese.  I dream of the War of Ants and Sunflowers, of cabals of microscopic dogs.  Of demonic three-headed nuns and girly presidents.  But not just this.  When night's buttocks hang low and the sewers of Hell back up to meet them, I see headless scats on headless beasts with merde for eyes, merde-eyes floating in place of heads.  Scat rivers overflow and drink our cities dry.  I am a scat on the pinnacle of ruin, composing commandments for a legion of Spanish rats.  Diappo scats are served.  Scat lattes, shakes.  Scat cordon bleu.  Napoleon Scataparte approaches; we converse easily in Scatese.  He displays a scatograph to scry the catastrophes of man.  I reveal a door in my buttocks.  It opens, we descend.  A surging liquid sea of chunky scats rages to the tune of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, and in the middle my mother sunbathes naked on a float.  "Mudder, Mōdor," I cry.  But the sea consumes me and I wake.  I know then that Morpheus and Merdia are lovers.

Of Merdia 39 - 41

39.        Dead orators have given words to democracy’s nobility.  As have a mayhem of thinkers, a motley of confused poets.  Tomes of praise have been erected to its necessity and worth.  Olympian pools of blood have been filled to achieve it.  But I say to you a smaller pool achieves the same ends with much less effort.

Fellow citizens of Merdia’s kind kingdom, ideals aren’t actualized in words, philosophies, blood, books or bile, but only in the bowl of perfect excrement, in which we are all accepted, we all are made one.  The bowl of grace and unity, the golden bowl of proffered love.  We do not need to wait for an impossible time; rather, it is here with us, glorious, now.  We have entered the kingdom of Heaven; here it is, just below our voiding mounds.

40.        Consistency is a constant concern of any of Merdia’s children worthy of their ancestry.  Consistency of timing (who does not want her offerings to be regular and full?); consistency of texture (neither obstinate or stony or too similar to that other lesser yellow stream); consistency of spirit (given freely, in the sweet knowledge of donation).  These three consistencies:  these our desired attitude and product.  Merdia, be near; ah, fruity Merdia, be near.

41.        What peace our goddess gives us.  I think particularly of the moment upon entering her temple, when the preponderance of electronic and communicative noise ceases and I am left alone with Her pure natural sounds.  This peace is an increasingly rare gift:  music is pumped into almost every public space, indeed, even invading our homes; talk occurs everywhere in hallways and offices, bedrooms and boardrooms.  But.  No speakers yet in Merdia’s graceful domain.  No discourse there but the chocolate dumps of dreamy derrieres, the Dasein of our charm and timber.

Of Merdia 38

Cloan Denum gets around.

38.        Surely one of the most superlative joys of cosmopolitan travel is the cross-cultural mingling of the diverse jewels of our souls.  This is why I make it a requirement, when I travel and am blessed to inhabit our days’ great shared transience commonly called the hotel, to stay in guest rooms that lack their own privy, forcing me—although, as you, dearly beloved reader, might know, at least the intelligent and beautiful among you, the verb force might misrepresent the truth—to share the Noble Seat with other bifurcated charms.  I know—the knowledge even now generates vast shudders—that Our Lady’s shrine has been kissed by anxious asses, so willing to please, so fearful of an inability to perform, so ripe with blossoms of Merdia’s precious fruit; not only this, but these hot cracks of egress have originated from every nation, every great metropolis, are connected through immeasurable hidden passages to tongues that are bespoken in every language; every race, belief, color, complexion, texture, have worshipped here.  What wonder! What communion!

This latria exceeds excess when I enter and, there, greeting me so joyously, is a remnant turd, perhaps undigested due to technological complexities inherent in the Flushing System; perhaps, more mystically, left there for me, just for me.  My imagination accelerates.  Is it Romanian?  From New South Wales?  Did it speak, when encapsulated within a human form, a smattering of Gaelic?  Broken Portuguese?  Did it once belong to someone who had failed at football?

Ah, no matter.

Here, the festive fecalities of the swirling world swirl and sing.  Here, they glow and participate in the one and true great discourse.  Great duodenums of our day—this the converse of our true being.  This the reason for our travel.  This global communication and delight.

Of Merdia 37

Ms. Denum, in an extraordinary burst of worship, sings a song to Merdia.  The Committee for Such Things recommends to the appropriately minded to pray this prayer at the right times, in the right ways.

37.        Dear Merdia,

I have not loved Thee as I ought.

I have hoarded my steaming jewels, which are not truly mine, but Thine.

I have not been aesthetic in release, but sentimental, gushing, against all principles of adoration.

I have not sung while dumping, but been distracted; I have thought of mundane things and not concentrated on Your Glory.

I have been quick to perform Your Worship, in and out of Your Fine Temple, with only thoughts of lesser things, and those before me, after.

I have not seen my offering as the Highest Form of human love, but the lowest, shaming me before Your Throne.  Even so, you have not denied me, Graceful Lady of the Void.

I have disdained the offerings of others, whether by sight, sound, smell or texture, sitting in judgment I am not qualified to have.  Forgive me, dear Merdia.  Thine is the beginning and the end, the splash and gurgle, hot hierarchies of heat.

May I rise to your perfection, Sweet Steaming Sibyl.  May I give you my all, in earthy lumps of lower love.

Amen.

Of Merdia 34 - 36

34.        The Merdiawards are what we live for.  That annual event in Toilet City, when Merdia herself ascends the plumbing of dreams and through the latest fashions distributes the Golden Plops.  I have always secretly coveted, Most Distinctive Shape, but seem destined to be only a nominee for Most Odiferous, in 1971.  Yet, even so, the joy, the rank anticipation - yea, nearly akin to the most remembered moments on the golden bowl - before the package is ripped and the roll read.  The shivery thrill to see Her Herself, even at the great distance I was.  To be invited.

Yet still I dream.  Still I plan what I will wear when I will finally mount the stage and be within a kiss of my goddess’ beneficence.  I plan, I scheme, I diet … one day, I shall win.

35.       The multiplicity of techniques Merdia’s subjects use to contribute to Her exuberant chorus is astounding.  My favourite location for observing these is the end chorus booth, which in the vulgar tongue is called a cubicle.  I sometimes spend days in this privileged position (if I bring food, it is easy to do well and it provides me the tangential benefit of uniting input and output in a distinctly contained way).  I ask:  who are of such composition as to try the door of my chorus booth without first discreetly checking whether it’s inhabited with a singer; who enters a booth situated at the greatest possible distance; who sits next to me despite the availability of more private booths; among those so bold, how many sit themselves in this manner from ignorance, from pride of their particularly bold and raucous song, from aesthetic proclivities of a subtle nature?  Are they a collector of choruses, an afficionado of song?  Are they recording our composition for future research or pleasure?  These questions abound in the chorus booth of my delight; I enter into each moment of exploration and mutuality fully, contributing my humble notes to my anonymous partner's need in the service of art, cooperation and love.

36.        I lie on technological tufts of urban refuse and gaze through thick swabs of atmospheric grease at merde-clouds as delicate as death.  Such moments often move me to reflect on Merdia’s distant transcendence, her aloof glory - and isn’t all glory aloof!  But then, in the eternal bowels of this reflection, I feel a lack as potent as this glory, which, as I swirl into it, becomes apparent - Merdia's immanence is my equal longing.  Oh no - I am no shameful devotee of my grand goddess, I am no dilettante who only worships Her remotely.  Unhesitatingly, I shed the fashion of my flesh and deposit in that wired jungled circumstance long artifacts of praise.  Turd and cloud.

Of Merdia 33

Ms. Denum, obviously here of haute cuisine tastes and functioning as an uncannily vatic sommelier, whets the palate whettily.

33.        Merdia, sweet goddess of the other side, holds life in gilded mirror and reveals the golden bowl.  An example of such magic reversal is the rare grand feast - when thousands of dollars are spent on a culinary extravaganza of nine courses - succotash of grilled vegtables with polenta gnocchi, duck “ham” and basil in a corn cream; truffled potato perogies with fried cauliflower mushrooms in truffle jus with cabbage sprouts; “margarita” oyster shooters, bison tartare with argon oil and fennel slaw, blue fin tuna tartare with amaranth salad and cilantro pesto, duck proscuitto wrapping grilled cavaillion melon, smoked red river salmon on spun heirloom carrot, onion and fried caper salad, bay of fundy scallop ceviche, served with:  tortilla crisps, pompadom, gyoza and wontons; roast breast of squab with gratinéed bundles of white asparagus that have been wrapped with syrrano ham and topped with béchamel sauce and served with sesame crusted wild mushrooms; sage butter fried chestnuts and lobster mushrooms with chestnut gnocchi in crab apple sauce topped with shaved monarque cheese; roast fillet of carolina black bass on carrot and ginger soup with zucchini salad, cumin vinaigrette, chive cream and sweet onion rings; braised veal cheeks with roast testina on fig vicchy, corn bread croutons and warm frissée salad; langres washed rind cow’s milk cheese from france with arugula purée, fried chick pea and fennel salad verdi di fabrosa goat’s milk blue cheese from italy with penko crusted poached quail egg, marinated zuchinni salad and yuccateecan sauce, bouq’ emmisaire goat’s milk cheese from france on testina with corn soup and mint pesto, idiazabel sheep’s milk cheese from spain with meringue cookie, cassis sorbet, port soaked raisin and diced pomegranate; pear assiette with pear donut on anise chantilly cream and bitter chocolate sauce, caramalized pear atoms on coconut lime sauce, pear mousse with seshwan pepper on apple soup¾with paired wines (Terzetto, Tocai Friulano, Central Coast, California, U.S.A. 2000; Rolly Gassmann, Pinot Auxerrois, Alsace, France 1999; Tawse, Carly’s Block, Semi – Dry Riesling, Vineland, Canada 2002; Te Mata Estate, “Woodthorpe”, Sauvignon Blanc, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand 2004; Whale Haven, Pinot Noir, Eglin, South Africa 1999; Mount Langi Ghiran, Shiraz, Victoria, Australia 2000; Aranzo, Monastrell Reserva, Jumilla, Spain 1996; Chateau Megyer, 3 Puttonyos Tokaji Azsu, Hungary 2000; Pierre Peters, Blanc De Blancs, Brut, Le Mesnil-Sur-Oger, Champagne, France N.V.), consumed over hours, divesting one’s purse and accounts of all available monies and increasing debt to atmospheric turbulence.

Now the average person, those followers of Commonia, Dullic, Tedius, the standard and the like, focuses in past, present and future (time’s halitosis) on the delights of input:  the experience of the upper mouth is all.  But not so for Merdia’s minions; she reserves for them true ends’ delight.  When the finest cuisine, the world’s top grape, the incineration of all fiscal knowledge, are not diffused across confusing hours but compressed into two minutes, a quarter pound of brown, time and space flash perfect purity, the true prince of holes, the lower mouth, sings, Joy, and the world for something like a nano gasps in peace.  What delicate composition.  What streaks of exquisite craftsmanship.

Ah, holy merde.  Oh high haut turd.  How I live and save and debt for thee.