TAO TE CHING II

The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly; the whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad.

            Thus Something and Nothing produce each other;

            The difficult and the easy complement each other;

            The long and the short offset each other;

            The high and the low incline towards each other;

            Note and sound harmonize with each other;

            Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the sage keeps to the deed that consists in taking no action and practices the teaching that uses no words.

            The myriad creatures rise from it yet it claims no authority;

            It gives them life yet claims no possession;

            It benefits them yet exacts no gratitude;

            It accomplishes its task yet lays claim to no merit.

It is because it lays claim to no merit

            That its merit never deserts it.

If desire is the orthodox energy—our grid and outlets—beauty is the orthodox appliance.  We plug beauty into desire and feel a strange utility.  We purchase beauty in sleek packaging, according to the prerogatives of marketing and merchandising, from and for desire.  If one lives in a forest of iPods and food processors, a new gadget may be beautiful; but if one lives in a forest of sequoias and brooks, that same gadget may be ugly.

The Tao doesn’t care much for interpretations that grow from the soil of only one forest.  The Tao’s soil is the world—its myriad forests, its diverse ecologies.  What’s beautiful in one environment is ugly in another; what thrives in one system dies in another.  The one given to the Tao sees that all things lead to their opposites, and all opposites are bound to what they aren’t.  How then does such a one affirm anything?  It’s quite simple.  Such a one affirms any thing because it affirms everything.

But whereas most people affirm things and draw the strength of those affirmations from the things they negate—thus depending as much if not more on their hidden negations than their overt affirmations—the one given to the Tao draws her affirmation from the fact of the thing’s existence in the context of all other things.  The former affirmation feels total to the one affirming, for the one affirming stakes his existence and subsequent claims—the very justification of his being—on the rightness of his affirmations over his negations.  But the latter affirmation is never total; the only totality is the sum total of all affirmations—neither an affirmation nor a negation, neither both, but something else.  This is the Tao and the one who lives in such diffused and contradictory ambiguity one given to the Tao.

Opposites do not simply produce each other, they are each other.  They are not each other identically or analogously, but contain each other within themselves as lovers contain each other.  The separation of values—beautiful from ugly, good from evil—is a mental exercise designed to make the intellectual gymnast (though he is often fat) increase his comfort in the face of life’s overwhelming discomforts.  And—let’s face it—the miracle is that the exercise often works.  Who would not then perform it in the armchair of his mind?  The one given to the Tao.  Why?  Because neither comfort nor miracles, beauty nor ugliness, good nor evil, particularly depress or enchant him.  He sees them as children on opposing seats of a seesaw, in endless play and vacillation.

The sage is not the sage because she wishes to be a sage … or, more likely, wishes to be perceived as a sage.  The sage is a sage because she’s a sage.  She was born on the non-action side of the seesaw, looking across the fulcrum of nothingness to the bulging seat of action.  How does one who is born from action and gives birth to it—but is non-action herself—cause her end of the seesaw to rise then?  Ah!  That is the mystery.

The sage describes the great stage of action because that is what she sees before her.  But does she see yet refrain from describing the backstage of non-action because that is what she is?  Ah!  That is a question.

The sage does not become better than others because of her sagacity; she does not become better than others at all; she simply becomes a sage because she is not inclined to act—a lack of inclination not from indolence or fear, but from vision and inclination.  This inclination hardly precludes action but places it in spaces of sensation that affirm and in this affirming multiply action into all things. Others, then, from envy or lack of understanding, equate sagacity and superiority, but if the sage is truly a sage, she denies this equation.  Indeed, she tends to deny or at least sidestep all equations.

Of Merdia I

I am deeply in love with Merdia, goddess of first creations.  She shows me my true destiny; she, more than any of the millions in the teeming pantheon, smells of truth.  She, not my mother, was my first love.  My mother I cannot help but resent; I am her creation, not she mine.  We both know this, and this is her eternal power over me.  How do I transcend this knowledge?  To whom do I turn to draw power to combat my mother's supernatural strength?  Merdia, she is the goddess of my first creation and the power of my once and future combats.

TAO TE CHING I

The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way.

The name that can be named is not the constant name.

The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth;

the named was the mother of the myriad creatures.

Therefore always rid yourself of desires that you may observe its secrets.

But always allow yourself to have desires that you may observe its manifestations.

These two are the same,

but diverge in name as they issue forth.

Being the same, they are called mystery.

Mystery upon mystery—

the gateway of the manifold secrets.

There is a thing, there is its opposite, and there is a space—a feeling, perhaps—of something—we have no name for it really—behind or above or in those things and their opposites.  The preposition doesn’t particularly matter; what matters is the feeling (or desire) that there is a third thing behind (or below or through) every pair, and that this third thing is somehow the same thing that is of (or beside or out from) every pair.

Not everything has an opposite, but everything contains something or belongs to something that has an opposite.  Opposites may be constructs of human perception, but that does not stop them from being opposites; human perception is what we live within.  The Tao is what we live within and the sense of what we don’t live within and what we don’t live within.

We can think of these three aspects of existence—a thing, its opposite, and the thing throughout the thing and its opposite—as a relationship.  In a relationship there is, say, a woman, her lover, and the relation between them.  The relation between them is both in each of them, albeit differently, and something else, while still not entirely separate from either of them.  If you seek to understand this intellectually, you won’t.  The intellect divides; it thrives on distinctions and systems.  These three aspects emerge from the experience of life, which includes the intellect, but refuse its attempted tyranny.

Life itself, which has its opposite, Death, and that third thing, that relation between them (a relation we might call the human) is neither an easy mentor nor a systematic friend.  Indeed, it may be no friend at all.  But friend or not, it teaches even those who claim to be teachers; it teaches the teachers partially because it does not claim to teach.

The Tao is nothing less than all things, their opposites (whether they exist in fact or fantasy), and that thing that is no-thing that is in everything.  Because it is absence and presence, root and manifestation—as well as whatever is beyond these words and the objects, feelings, and experiences related to these words—it is a totality without being a system, a fullness without being full.

We are reduced to speaking about the Tao by using opposition and contradiction, by using negation and absurdity, because only by understanding—not thinking—this way do we slip through the bars of the mind’s routines into life’s sprays and bubbles.

How do I live without and with desire?  Desire, which seems the marrow and lineaments of life?  Simply, I desire everything, which is nothing other than to desire life.  I desire wealth and poverty, orgies and chastity, fame and obscurity, chaos and calm, melancholy and joy, cruelty and compassion, desire and vision.  How then can I pursue satiation when deprivation holds equal appeal?  I allow the river I am placed in to decide what I am granted and withheld, and whatever happens to me is good.

Christianity, as most systems and individuals, limits desire to particular objects.  Good is better than evil, one lover or structure better than another, restraint better than promiscuity, caution than excess.  Opposite systems—whether hedonism, paganism, or Satanism—may differ superficially (by preferring promiscuity to restrain, excess to caution) but are identical in nature, by preferring certain portions of life to other portions.  The Tao does not prefer and the one who aligns herself with the Tao is subsumed not by any portion of life, but life.  Thus, while the CEO and plebian may be treated differently superficially, according to the requirements society demands of each role, the one who aligns herself with the Tao sees both as essentially the same:  both are necessary, both perform a required role, both are subject to laws—some distinct to their specific roles, some common to the culture they both belong to, some generic to humanity.

We don’t really know why or how things are created.  We can claw our way back to the very border of creation, but never fully enter.  Second zero is always just beyond our grasp.  It is certainly beyond our grasp technically and strangely beyond our grasp spiritually.  The scientists, like the philanderers and artists, crave it, but use improper means.  The mystics may see it—the best we can hope for—and the best scientists, philanderers and artists are mystics.  Creation—particularly human creation (the creation of the human, the human drive to create)—is the gateway and the mystery of the human.  We cannot hope to solve it, for that would mean stepping outside of ourselves … an act that would destroy the object of investigation.  Indeed, we may very well not want to solve it, for the incessant and futile investigation of why and how we are the way we are may be the center of what we are.

THE BOWL AND THE QUILT

The Sadoo wishes in his blog to weave a strange quilt.  Not—it should be obvious—one that records his having omelets for breakfast and his little thoughts about the NFL.  He does not wish to post pictures of the breasts of Supermodels or discuss the relationship between the Canadian psyche and its suburban literature.  No, he has other little threads to weave.  He wishes to keep you suspended over the ultimate design of his comfy canopy.  What is the Vision he dreamt 20 years ago?  How shall it integrate or not with his Group Names and those additions of Others?  Will his Group Names ever be complete or are they, like desire, infinite?

Now that my method is clear (or methodology, as the academics prefer), allow me to foreshadow two of the imminent threads.

One is a meditation on the Tao Te Ching, a book which has fascinated The Sadoo with its natural polarity to the bulk of Christian texts and its this-worldly orientation.  Sadoo has taken to memorizing the DC Lau translation and, after each vignette is racing comfortably around with his blood, he allows it to speak itself through him.

Two is a more comic (or is it?) meditation on one of The Sadoo’s most excellent activities—scatting.  Sadoo has long noticed a distinct lack of adequate homage to the Noble Scat in literature.  Certainly Chaucer and Shakespeare exploited the fart and Bloom's lingering Pprrpffrrppffff in Ulysses does modern justice.  And a not incorrect interpretation of art in its entirety is that it's humanity's flatulence directed toward the heavens.  We wish for a voice to be heard, "Whoa ... my beloved species ... my Divine Nose! ... in whom I am ... phew! ... well pleased" ... it won't happen, of course, but we're genetically predisposed to keep trying.  He has also noticed that the traditional divine pantheons lack an adequate Holy Member to receive our praise and distress for what happens in The Bowl.

Being not just a taxonomist, but a scatologist, The Sadoo conjured with his hapless sadooic colleagues and, in a terribly joyous and volcanic moment, encountered Merdia—goddess of ribald smells and steaming coils.  All beauty is born in the toilet, all art crawls from mud and—as Yeats taught us—love itself has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement.  The Sadoo lives, as he must, in the source and origin of things, laughing at how others despise that source and yet depend on it for life and culture.  The Scat is where all things begin. Merdia must receive her due.

Weaving patterns in ways the loom directs, with a nidus of mothers and Tao and merde, the quilt begins.  I wish it to cover the earth with sleepy exuberant tones and the down of gods.

GROUP NAMES G - P

geeks	usurpation
geriatrics	complaint, olfactory, swallow
glass blowers	cunnilingus
gravediggers	descent, jukebox
guests	confusion, misunderstanding
heterosexuals	domination, constipation, despondency
husbands	cornucopia, temerity
impaired drivers	incarceration, spiritus, secretion, fumbling
janitors	doubt
journalists	despair, vomit, gall
kibitzers	deal, gratuity
lawyers	pomposity, jargon, bile
lepers	testament
lesbians	domesticity, lapidary
magicians	trace
mausoleum attendants	drawer, immobility, dearth
mayors	erection
mediums	acephalous
menstruators	funhouse
middle managers	mush, tenement
midwives	caesura
mistresses	codification, excess, levy, competition
mothers	album, query, blindness, sentimentality
mystics	eternity, negation
narcissists	reflection, kaleidoscope
neighbours	voyeurism, comparison, envy
newlyweds	shutter
nuns	beatitude, regress, murmur, hymen
nurses	fantasy, formaldehyde
nursing mothers	bouquet, areolae, murmur
ovulators	funhouse
perjurers	deception
philosophers	asomatous, labyrinth, consolation
piano tuners	intuition
piccoloists	fellatio
pimps	meanness
poets	preponderance, neglect, tedium
politicians	irrelevance
post-menopausals	historicity
preachers	deception, incinerator
presidents	repetition, cliché, forgettability
priests	consolation, pederasty
principals	grumpy
professionals	sorrow, pride, indistinction
professors	pretence, verbosity, abstruseness, tenure
programmers	carbonation, simulacrum, acronym
prostitutes	detachment, junction, diffusion
protestors	indignation, perturbation

GROUP NAMES A - F

We're all animals and if animals deserve anything, they deserve names. I've got a name - Sadoo.  You've got a name - Thanatos, Mooty-Socks, Wee Willie Wilbur, Alice Nd Çurap Mazlum ... whatever moved your mother in the weird reaches of the night.  But when you see a pack of chefs sauntering down the street, you don't (or shouldn't) say, "Hey, look at that pack of chefs."  You say (or should say), "Hey,  look at that arrogance of chefs."  And just as a pack of cats can be called a clowder, clutter, pounce, dout, nuisance, glorying, or glare (but not a pack) and kittens can be called a kindle, litter, or intrigue and cats wearing glasses can be called a geek, surprise, or impossibility and wild cats are simply a destruction, so those chefs can be many-named.


We'll do this in segments (beginning with A-F), interspersed with thoughts about pants, no-pants, underpants, uberpants, and--of course--farting.  Add your own names, your own groups.  Disagree with me.  Share the names with your friends and enemies.  Start using them in public.  Let's get them in the dictionary before we die.

adulterers	transgress, alibi, caprice
accountants	deceit, morgue, receipt, conceit
agents	veiling, unveiling
anarchists	constitution, vacancy, non-existence
architects	erection, fenestration
baptismal candidates	cowardice, wetness, confession
bastards	stew, confusion
believers	lobotomy, earnestness, syllogism
bums	query, emancipation
cashiers	catastrophe, mausoleum, flirtation
chefs	competition, arrogance, suicide
children	amorality
consultants	semiotics, jealousy
couriers	illegality
cowards	comfort, tradition, omnipresence
crossword addicts	cabal
cuckolds	camaraderie, barnyard, greenhouse, serenity
dancers	anorexia, diet
doctors	obfuscation
donut-lovers	cancer, exegesis
dropouts	icharus
engineers	balustrade, catapult, kingdom, input, euphemism (sanitation)
entrepreneurs	resurrection, hummer
epileptics	unpredictability
executives	clone, treason
farmers	reduction, irrelevance
fashion students	aggression
fathers	memory, poverty, absence
fornicators	ingress, confession, condom
freshmen	syphilis

A PEJORATIVE OF TAXONOMISTS

It was 20 years ago today not that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play but that I received a vision.  Like any normal sadoo, I’ve had visions of everything from braless angels descending countless ladders in fluttery bliss from heaven onto my priapic bed … to vermiculous apocalypses so horrific the very retelling of them would kill you.  But on January 25 1990, shortly before my final son was born, three de-wombed children sweetly farting in their sleep, in the happy desolate hours of the night, after an evening of far too many Brussels sprouts, I received a vision that united time, myth, nature, technology, humanity, art, and god; in the morning, over a breakfast of vast toddler demands and oatmeal, I determined that the vision was conceptually sound and imaginatively potent.

It was, I confess, a taxonomic vision.  Which sounds less healthy than it should.

The sadoo—a human type I do not advocate but only describe in a shadowy attempt to name what I seem to be—is, among other things, a competent taxonomist.  There are those, naturally, who despise taxonomists.  Back in the days I mingled with the named, I met with Eric McLuhan—one of Marshall’s many Catholic-spawned children.  More ignorant than I should have been about the politics of such a statement, I referred to Northrop Frye in a vaguely positive way; this provoked a terse dismissive response, of which academics seem to be particularly fond.

Frye, McLuhan said with religious and contemptuous finality, was a taxonomist.

What a vile tribe I belong to! I thought, pained and bleeding.  How despised and rejected of men, men of sorrows and acquainted with grief, are we taxonomists!  I went home and built Lego fairies with my children to escape the horror of the new knowledge of what I was.

Even now, recalling that trauma, I find myself slightly weepy and realize I may not have the strength today to share my taxonomic vision with you.  Please believe me:  I so want to tell you what makes a beautiful taxonomy—one so magnificent politicians become poets and the Fortune 500 forget how to count.  I so very very much want to tell you … when I’m ready for it, when you’re ready for it, when the world’s ready for it … what my perfect taxonomic vision is.  But I must wait, Dearly Beloved, until the proper time.

It’s all about waiting.  It’s all about the proper time.

In the meantime … to wet your pants … here’s what’s coming next in The Secular Sadoo … something you need, something you’ve been waiting for—a desperate lacuna in the very miasmic fabric of language:  group names for groups that don’t have names.  That is:  if a bunch of crows is called a murder and a bunch of waterfowl is called a knob, what should a bunch of lawyers be called? A bunch of administrative assistants? Pimps? Desperados?  Should they all be called a bunch?  No.  Oh no no no.

I have been given the names for such bunches, people.  In another vision.  And I shall share these names with you.  I shall share them with you soon.  And your lives shall be changed.

THE SECULAR SADOO

I am a sadoo—not a sadhu—and this blog is the imaginative wandering of this particular sadoo.  Let me explain.

I am not a sadhu because:

• I was born a Jesus-thumping Christian near the epicenter of the West, not a Hindu in poop-mad India;
• I do not believe in liberation, renunciation, or asceticism;
• I experience yoga’s practitioners as gummi worms thrashing in a sea of processed sugar.

I am a sadhu because:

• I am a mystic;
• I am a wandering monk—attached to no cause but wandering—which in the language of the West might be called a flâneur;
• I am adept at curses.

This condition I-am-not-I-am I name a sadoo—vile, sensuous, amoral and apolitical, cosmopolitan, aesthetic, religious, skeptical, gleefully intelligent, verbal, and witty, detached, happily and acutely judgmental, raunchy.  I name this combination of attributes holy, for it sets the sadoo apart both from the common fawning hordes overtly or covertly seeking money, fame, power, reputation, security, admiration, and pleasure and the sadhus—and their spiritual relatives across the religious world—who strive (or pretend to strive) to transcend (or pretend to transcend) the bloody, schizophrenic, bound condition of flesh.

As a sadoo, I do not believe in striving, for there is nothing to strive for.  The world is perfect in its imperfection and this thought—that there is no other world—is the one thought that is anathema to civilized humanity.

So I wander in the world, watching its possible demise through the human clambering for progress, and blow bubbles of words in the greater bubble of blog.