"Don't break my heart - my achey-breaky heart!!" >:oP~~ !!!



"So THAI-erd, so SLEE-pee!"
(So LAY-see too!)



"No mayo?!? This's bullshit!"



Killing is my business - and business is good!



One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
- Oscar Wilde




"The other day I was thinking about the world without me. There is the world going on doing what it does. And I'm not there. Very odd. Think of the garbage truck coming by and picking up the garbage and I'm not there. Or the newspaper sits in the drive and I'm not here to pick it up. Impossible. And worse, some time after I'm dead, I'm going to be truly discovered. All those who were afraid of me or hated me when I was alive will suddenly embrace me. My words will be everywhere. Clubs and societies will be formed. It will be sickening. A movie will be made of my life. I will be made a much more courageous and talented man than I am. Much more. IT WILL BE ENOUGH TO MAKE THE GODS PUKE. The human race exaggerates everything: its heroes, its enemies, its importance.

The fuckers. There, I feel better. God-damned human race. There, I feel better." (p.107)


"... Whoever the writers were, they were magic to me. They opened doors differently. They needed a stiff drink upon awakening. Life was too god-damned much for them. Each day was like walking in wet concrete. I made them my heroes. I fed upon them. My ideas of them supported me in my nowhere. Thinking about them was much better than reading them. Like D.H. Lawrence. What a wicked little guy. He knew so much that it just kept him pissed-off all the time. Lovely, lovely. And Aldous Huxley ... brain power to spare. He knew so much it gave him headaches." (p. 91-92)


"I am not in a contest with anybody, have no thoughts about immortality, don't give a damn about it. It's the ACTION while you're alive. The gate springing open in the sunlight, the horses plunging through the light, all the jocks, brave little devils in their bright silks, going for it, doing it. The glory is in the motion and the dare. Death be damned. It's today and today and today. Yes." (p. 75)

- "The Captain is Out to Lunch and The Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship", By Charles Bukoswki - 1998




"You're afraid of my Guatamaleness - my natural HEAT!"



"Jumping Jehosaphat - I'm a hunk!"



"The main thing is to know how to set about it, to be able to concentrate your attention on a single detail, to forget yourself sufficiently to bring about the desired hallucination and so substitute the vision of a reality for the reality itself."
"AGAINST NATURE" - by J.K. Huysmans, 1884



"Is there anything of yours that we can keep as a memento of this visit?"
"TAKE CALIFORNI-AIE-YAY!!"



"Without Jews, fags, and Gypsies, there is no theater!" - from the movie "To Be or Not to Be"



"Can I offer you a cigarette?"
- "No, thank you."
"Cigar?"
- "No, thank you."
"Chocolate covered NOU-GATS?"
- "Chocolate covered what?"
"NOU-GATS!!" (*squish*)



"Bathe her... and BRING HER TO ME!!!"



"I been hyp-mo-tize!"

"Drink up, baby, stay up all night
With the things you could do, you won't but you might
The potential you'll be, that you'll never see
The promises you'll only make

Drink up with me now, forget all about
The pressure of days, do what I say
And I'll make it okay, drive them away
The images stuck in your head

People you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will -
I'll keep them still

Drink up baby, look at the stars
I'll kiss you again between the bars
Well I'm seeing you there with your hands in the air
Waiting to finally be caught

Drink up one more time, and I'll make you mine
Keep you apart - deep in my heart
Separate from the rest, where I like you the best
Keep the things you forgot

People you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will -
I'll keep them still"


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


"Waking you up to close the bar
Street's wet - you can tell by the sound of the cars
The bartender's singing 'Clementine'
As he's turning around the 'Open' sign -
Dreadful sorry, Clementine!

Though you still hurt bad,
Seems a long time gone
Maybe the whole thing's wrong
What if she thinks so,
But just didn't say so?

Drank yourself into slo-mo
Made an angel in the snow
Anything to pass the time
Keep that song out of your mind:

Oh - oh my darling,
Oh - oh my darling,
Oh my darling, Clementine -
Dreadful sorry, Clementine!
Dreadful sorry, Clementine!"


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


"Someone's always coming 'round here trailing some new kill
Says I seen your picture on a hundred dollar bill -
What's a game of chance to you, to him is one of real skill
So glad to meet you, Angeles

Picking up the ticket shows there's money to be made
Go on and lose the gamble, that's the history of the trade
You add up all the cards left to play to zero -
And sign up with evil, Angeles

Don't start me trying now,
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
Uh-huh...
'Cause I'm all over it, Angeles

I could make you satisfied in everything you do
All your secret wishes could right now be coming true -
You'll be forever with my poison arms around you
No one's gonna fool around with us
No one's gonna fool around with us
So glad to meet you, Angeles"


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


“You walk down Alameda shuffling your deck of trick cards over everyone
Like some precious only son
Face down, bow to the champion

You walk down Alameda looking at the cracks in the sidewalk, thinking about your friends
How you maintain all them in
A constant state of suspense

For your own protection, over their affection
Nobody broke your heart
You broke your own 'cause you can't finish what you start

Walk down Alameda brushing off the nightmares you wish could plague me when I'm awake
So now you see your first mistake was thinking that you could relate
For one or two minutes she liked you
But the fix is in

You're all pretension, I never pay attention
Nobody broke your heart
You broke your own 'cause you can't finish what you start...

Nobody broke your heart
If you're alone, it must be you that wants to be apart”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


"Start stop and start
Stupid acting smart
Flirting with the flicks
You say it's just for kicks -
You'll be the victim of your own dirty tricks,
You've got yourself to tease and displease

Doors swinging wide
You walked in to hide -
Looking at your feet
Failure's complete;
Saw you and me on the coin-op tv,
Frozen in fear every time we appear

I'm not surprised at all and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Completely wrong
Totally wrong

Go walking by
Here come another guy
Jailer who sells personal hells
Who'd like to see me down on my fucking knees
Everybody's dying just to get the disease

I'm not surprised at all and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Completely wrong
Totally wrong

I'm not surprised and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Oh - everybody's dying just to get the disease
Everybody's dying just to get the disease"


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


"Throwing candy out to the crowd, dragging down the main
The helpless little thing with the dirty mouth who's always got something to say
You're sitting around at home now waiting for your brother to call
I saw him down in the alley, having had enough of it all

So you can do what you want to whenever you want to
You can do what you want to, there's no one to stop you

All spit and spite, you're up all night and down every day
A tired man with only hours to go, just waiting to be taken away
Getting into the back of a car for candy from some stranger
Watching the parade with pinpoint eyes full of smoldering anger

You can do what you want to whenever you want to
You can do what you want to, there's no one to stop you
Now you can do what you want to whenever you want to
Do what you want to whenever you want to
Do what you want to whenever you want to - oh it doesn't mean a thing -
Big nothing..."


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


I'm a color reporter
(Rose City on the 409)
But the city's been bled white
(White city on the yellow line)
And the doctor orders
(Drinking to distraction's just a waste of time)
Drinks all night to take away this curse
But it makes me feel much worse
Bled white

So I wait for the F-Train
(White city on the yellow line)
And connect with a friend of mine
(White city to a friend of mine)
To a yesterday dream
(Yesterday a dream was just a waste of time)
'Cause I'd have to be high to track the sunset down
And paint this paling town
Bled white

So here it comes with a blank expression
Especially for me, 'cause you know, I feel the same
'Cause happy and sad come in quick succession
I'm never gonna become what you became

Don't you dare disturb me
(Don't complicate my peace of mind)
While I'm balancing my past
(Don't complicate my peace of mind)
'Cause you can't help or hurt me
(The anger, being mean was just a waste of time)
Like it already has - I may not seem quite right
But I'm not fucked, not quite
Bled white

Bled white..."


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


"Let me put you in the play
Down all the days
Cast for your time

A sucker in the line
To be told you're so fine
You deserve the hire

Well some folks cannot be satisfied
And they just want somebody to ride

(Here it comes)
And you're the one they want
To have and have
And never have not

Oh!
So take what you expect and put it in reverse
See which one of us bangs the cymbals first

They're taking you to pieces
They're taking you to pieces
They're taking you to pieces -
Get lucky!

You're never gonna touch me with your curse
Get inside their minds, before they get to yours

They're taking you to pieces
They're taking you to pieces
They're taking you to pieces -
Get lucky!"


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


"You're everybody's second home
Always trying to get me alone
An easy way to lose it all
Always there when all else fails
Over by the west side rails

But I don't really need that now
I never really did anyhow
I only really needed alcohol
Something that'll treat me okay
And wouldn't say the things you say

Please turn out the light
I get a sick confusion headache trying to figure out who's right

Dreaming of the silver strand
Waking up to plainclothes man
You little bastard, little boy in blue
Someone's gonna get to you
Fuck up everything you do

He's so unhappy inside
He's serious with everyone
And thinks he'll win you with his angry kiss
Acting like he has no needs
Wanting you to watch him bleed

Made for each other bet you pay me any mind
Just goes to show my continual decline
They say that I'll recover my love of her once in a while
I don't know,
I don't think so...

There's something that I'll tell you now
Now that no one else is around
The sort of lesson that I learned from you
Not quite the way you planned
But I think you'll understand

Someone takes a photograph
A picture while their sweetheart laughs
A perfect moment in a flash of light
Counting back from 3 to 1
That's exactly what you've done

And I'm so unsurprised
I remember, I remember why I dream in black & white
Goes to show my continual decline
They say that I'll recover my love of her once in a while
I don't know,
I don't think so
I don't think so... "


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*


"No you shouldn't talk to your yourself
Well I pictured somebody else
Someone that looks like
What I look like

Would you say that one of your dreams
Got in you and ripped out the seams
That's what I'd say
That's what I'd say

He was a sucker for your double dose
Motherfucker turned white as a ghost
Don't you say hi
Don't you say hi

With a broken sink for a face
And a head that just takes up space
He's not half right
He's not half right

It's already half past
And it won't last

I was sticking up for my friend
When there's nothing much to defend
It's a lost fight
It's a lost fight

Cause when I talk to you on the phone
Well it's just like being alone
It's not half right
It's not half right"

It is commonly said that the root of most human unhappiness is the sense that one’s life has no meaning. I suppose this is most frequently said in circles interested in psychotherapy because the feeling of meaninglessness is often equated with the existence of neurosis. So many activities into which one is encouraged to enter, including philosophies one is encouraged to believe and religions one is encouraged to join, are commended on the basis of the fact that they give life a meaning. It is very interesting to try and figure out what this idea itself means, or what is intended when it is said that life has to have a purpose. I remember so well as a child listening to sermons in church in which the preacher would constantly refer to God’s purpose “for you and for me.” Yet, I could never make out what it was because the reverend gentleman seemed to be evasive when asked, “What is the purpose of God for the world?” We used to sing a hymn that “God is working His purpose out as the year succeeds the year,” and when one questioned this, the nearest clue one found was in the refrain of the hymn: “Nearer and nearer draws the time, the time that shall surely be, when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea.” Now of course, that realises the question, “What is the glory of God?”

…What do we want to feel, or what would satisfy us as being the meaning behind this word? It is so often said that we do not follow our ideas and our desires through. Most of the things that we want very fervently are things that we have only half-glimpsed. Our ideals are very often suggestions or hints, and we do not really know exactly what we mean when we think about it. However, there is an obscure sense in which we feel that life ought to have significance…

Perhaps it also may mean that life is meaningful. An individual feels that his life amounts to something when he belongs and fits in with the execution of some group enterprise and he feels he belongs in a plan. This seems to give people a sense of great satisfaction, but we have to pursue that question further. Why is it that a plan and that fellowship with other people gives the sense of meaning? Does it perhaps come to another sense of meaning in which life is felt to be meaningful when one is fully satisfying one’s biological urges, including the sense of hunger, the desire for love, and the need for self-expression in activity? But we have to push that inquiry further. What do our biological urges really point towards? Are they always projected towards a future? Are biology and its processes nothing but “going on towards going on towards going on”?

However, there is a fourth and more theological sense of the meaning of life. In all theistic religions the meaning of life is God himself. In other words, all this world means a person, it means a heart, it means an intelligence, and the relationship of love between God and man is the meaning of the world. The site of God is the glory of God, and so on, but again here is something to be further pursued. What is it that we want in sharing love with a person, and even with a person in the sense of the Lord God? What is the content of it? What is it that we are really yearning after? If we go back to the first point, taking Goethe’s words that all that is transitory is but a symbol and that we want to feel that all things have significance, it does seem to me that there is a sense in which we often use the word “significance” where the word seems to be chosen quite naturally, and yet at the same time it is not quite the right word. When we say, for example, in reference to a musical composition, that we feel it to be significant, we do not mean that it expresses some particular kind of concretely realizable emotion, and certainly it is not imitating the noises of nature. Indeed, a musical program that deliberately sets out to express sadness or joy by simply imitating something else is not the kind of thing I mean. So often when one listens to the beautiful arabesque character of the Baroque composers, Bach or Vivaldi, it is felt to be significant not because it means something other than itself, but because it is so satisfying as it is. We use the word “significance” so often in moments when our impetuous seeking-for-fulfillment cools down, and we can give ourselves a little space to watch ordinary things.

In those moments when our inner turmoil has really quieted, we find significance in things we would not expect to find significant at all. This is, after all, the art of those modern photographers who have shown genius in turning the camera towards peeling paint on a old door, or sand and stones on a dirt road, showing us that if we look at it in a certain way these things are significant. However, we cannot say they are significant “of what” so much as significant “of themselves.” Perhaps significance then is the quality of a state of mind in which we notice that we are overlooking the significance of the world by our constant quest for it later. All this language is of course quite naturally vague and imprecise because, I think, “significance” is the wrong word to use although it comes so naturally to us.

It was Clive Bell, the great aesthetician, who said that the characteristic of art, and especially the characteristic of aesthetic success in painting, was the creation of significant form. Again, this is a very vague, imprecise expression. However, it certainly is an attribute not only of those moments in which we are tranquil inside, but also of those moments of deep, spiritual experience that would be called “moksha” in Hinduism (meaning “release”) or “satori” in Zen. In those moments the significance of the world seems to be the world, and what is going on now. We do not look any further, because the scheme of things seems to justify itself at every moment of its unfoldment. I pointed out that this was particular characteristic of music, of dancing, of belonging with one’s fellow man, and of the carrying out of some significant pattern of life which I mentioned as a second sense of the world being meaningful. The character of this feeling is again something that is fulfilled in itself. In singing the music with other people, we find that even though the pattern does not point to anything else outside itself we get the sense of meaning, and this is also obviously the case so often in the satisfaction of the biological urges. Does one live to eat or eat to live? I am not at all sure about this. Very often I am sure I live to eat because, although I do not like eating alone, sitting around a table and enjoying food with people is absolutely delightful. Generally when we do this we are not thinking that we have to eat because it is good for us, and that we have to “throw something down the hatch,” as Henry Miller said, and swallow a dozen vitamins just because our system needs nourishment.

I remember reading an article in “Consumer Reports” about bread. It seems there had been some correspondence in protest of the white bread one buys in the stores saying it is perfectly inedible and lacking in nutrition, and that it was much better to eat peasant-type bread like rough pumpernickel and loaves of that kind. The experts replied that our white bread is perfectly full of nutrients and there is nothing really the matter with it at all. Well, I felt that it is not a matter of the bread being deficient in the essential vitamins. Bread is not medicine, it is food, and one’s complaint against it is that it is bad cookery. It tastes of nothing. However, so often we do tend to look upon food for what it will do for us, rather than the delight of eating it. Yet, if the satisfaction of biological urges is to mean anything, surely the point of these urges is not mere survival. We might say the point of the individual is simply that he contributes to the welfare of the race, and the point of the race is that it “reproduces itself to reproduce itself to reproduce itself” and just to keep on going. But of course that is not really a point at all; thas is just fatuous. Surely the human race keeps going because going on is great fun. If it is not and never will be, then there is obviously no point in going on from the most hedonistic standpoint. Then we come to the question “What is the fun?” or, in other words, “What is the joy of it?” Again we come to something that cannot very well be explained in the ordinary language of meaning in the sense of one thing leading to something else. This becomes preeminently true if we think of the question in theological language. In any of the theistic religions the meaning of life is God, but then what is God doing? What is the meaning of God? Why does He create the universe? What is the content of the love of God for His creation? Well, we have the frank answer of the Hindus that the godhead manifests the world because of “lila”, which is Sanskrit for “play.” Likewise, this is said in the Hebrew scriptures and in the Christian Old Testament in the Book of Proverbs where there is a marvelous speech by the divine wisdom, Sophia. In describing the function of the divine wisdom in the creation of the world we find that the world is seen as a manifestation of the wisdom of God. In producing men and animals and all the creatures of the earth, wisdom is playing, and it was the delight of wisdom to play before the presence of God. When it is likewise said in the scriptures that the Lord God created the world for His pleasure, this again means, in a sense, for play. Certainly this seems to be what the angels in Heaven are doing according to the traditional symbolic descriptions of Heaven when they are ringed around the presence of the Almighty, calling out “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” through all eternity. Well, “alleluia” may have meant something originally, but as it is used now it does not mean anything, except perhaps “whoopee!” It is an exclamation of nonsensical delight, and it was Dante in “The Paradiso” who described the song of the angels as the laughter of the universe.

Now this sense of nonsense as the theme of the divine activity also comes across very strongly in the Book of Job. I always think that the Book of Job is the most profound book in the whole Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. Here is the problem of the righteous man who has suffered and all his friends try to rationalize it and say, “Well, you must have suffered because you really had a secret sin after all, and you deserve the punishment of God.” So after they had their say, the Lord God appeared and said, “Who is this that darkeneth counsel with words without knowledge?” He then proceeded to ask Job and his friends a series of absolutely unanswerable conundrums, pointing out all the apparent irrationality and nonsense of His creation. For example, He said, “Why do I send rain upon the desert where no man is?” Most commentators on the Book of Job end with the remark that, “This poses the problem of suffering and the problem of evil, but does not really resolve it.” Yet in the end Job himself seems to be satisfied. He somehow surrenders to the apparent unreasonableness of the Lord God, and this is not, I think, because Job is beaten down and becomes unduly impressed with the royal, monarchical, and paternalistic authority of the deity and does not dare to answer back. Instead, he realizes that somehow these very questions *are* the answer. Of all the commentators on the Book of Job, I think the person who came closest to this point was G.K. Chesterton. He once made the glorious remark that it is one thing to look with amazement at a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist, but it is quite another thing to look at a hippopotamus, a creature who does exist, but looks as if he dos not. In other words, when you see this strange world with its weird forms like hippopotami, do not take them for granted. Stones and trees and water and clouds and stars are as weird as any hippopotamus, or any imagination of fabulous beasts of gorgons and griffins. They are just plain improbable, and it is in this sense that they are the “alleluia,” as it were, or the nonsense song of the universe.

Why do we love nonsense? Why do we love Lewis Carroll with his “’Twas brillig, and the lithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, all mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe…”? Why is it that all those old English songs are full of “Fal-de-riddle-eye-do” and “Hey-nonny-nonny” and all those babbling choruses? Why is it that when we get “hep” with jazz we just go “Boody-boody-bop-de-boo” and so on, and enjoy ourselves *swinging* with it? It is this participation in the essential glorious nonsense that is at the heart of the world, not necessarily going anywhere. It seems that only in moments of unusual insight and illumination that we get the point of this, and find that the true meaning of life is no meaning, that its purpose is no purpose, and that its sense is non-sense. Still, we want to use the word “significant.” Is this significant nonsense? Is this a kind of nonsense that is not just chaos, that is not just blathering balderdash, but rather has in it rhythm, fascinating complexity, and a kind of artistry? It is in this kind of meaninglessness that we come to the profoundest meaning.

…The next aspect of our metaphysical introduction must be about games. I think there are really four questions that all philosophers have discussed from the beginning of recorded time. The first is: Who started it? The second is: Are we going to make it? The third is: Where are we going to put it? And the fourth is: Who is going to clean up? When you think these questions over it poses a fifth question: Is it serious? And that is the one I want to discuss. Is existence serious, as when you say to the doctor after he has looked at your X-ray, “Is it serous?” Now, what does that mean? It means, “Am I in danger of not continuing to survive?” However, the real question is “Ought I to continue to survive?” In other words, “Must I survive?” If life is serious, then of course I must survive. If it is not serious, it really does not matter whether I do or not. Now, in Western culture it is practically a basic assumption that existence is serous, and this is particularly true among people who call themselves existentialists. When they talk about a person who exists authentically they mean that he takes his life seriously and other people’s lives seriously. However, the poet and essayist, G.K. Chesterton, once observed that “angels fly because they take themselves lightly.” And if I may venture into mythology, if the angels take themselves lightly, how much more would the lord of the angels? But of course we have been brought up in a mythological context where the Lord God definitely does take Himself seriously and is indeed, *the* serious person. So, when we go into church, laughter is discouraged in the same way as it is discouraged in court. This is a serious matter and everybody has to have the right expression on their faces because this is the great authority figure. This is Grandpa, and we do not realize that he has a twinkle in his eye. So the basis of it all is this: If we say, “You must survive” or “I must survive,” and “Life is earnest and I have got to go on,” then your life is a drag and not a game.

Now it is my contention and my basic metaphysical axiom that existence – the physical universe – is basically playful. There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It is not going anywhere; that is to say, it does not have some destination at which it ought to arrive. It is best understood by analogy with music because music as an art form is essentially playful. We say, “You play the piano.” You do not work the piano. Why? For instance, music differs from travel because when you travel you are trying to get somewhere and, being a very compulsive and purposive culture, we are busy going everywhere faster and faster in an attempt to eliminate the distance between places. With modern jet travel you can arrive anywhere almost instantaneously, and what happens as a result is that the two ends of your journey become the same place. So you eliminate the distance and you eliminate the journey, and you forget that the fun of the journey is to *travel*, not to obliterate travel. In music, though, one does not make the end of a composition the point of the composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest, and there would be composers who wrote only finales. People would go to a concert just to hear one crashing chord because that is the end. The same is true of dancing because the point of dancing is to *dance*.

However, we do not understand this because it is not something brought by our education into our everyday conduct. We have a system of schooling which gives a completely different impression. Everything we do is graded, and we put the child into the corridor at one end of this grade system, with a kind of “Come on, kitty-kitty-kitty.” So you go to kindergarten, and that is a great thing, because when you finish that you will get into first grade; then “Come on!” First grade leads to second grade, and so on. When you get out of grade school you go on to high school, and the whole thing is “revving up,” and coming closer. Then you go on to college, and then by Jove, you get into graduate school, and when you are through with graduate school you go out to join the world. You get into some racket in which you are selling insurance and everyone has their quota to make, and you are going to make it. All the time that great thing is coming and coming, and it is the success you are working toward. Then one day when you wake up, and you are forty years old, you say, “My God, I have arrived! I am there.” However, you do not feel very different from what you always felt, and there is a slight let-down because you feel there was a hoax. Of course there was a hoax, a dreadful hoax, because they made you miss everything by expectation. People live to retire and they put those savings away, but then when they are sixty-five they do not have any energy left to enjoy it, and they end up in a senior citizens’ community.

We have simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line. We thought of life by analogy - as a journey or a pilgrimage - which had a serious purpose at the end. The thing was to get to that end, success, or whatever it is, or maybe Heaven after you are dead, but we missed the point along the whole way. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or dance while the music was being played. Instead you had to do “that thing” and you did not let it happen. So this is why the human being sometimes becomes an organism for self-frustration. Alfred Korzybski called man a “time binder,” which means that he is the animal peculiarly aware of the time sequence. As a result of this he is able to do some very remarkable things. He can predict: he studies what has happened in the past and he says the chances are so-and-so of that happening again. Well, to be able to predict is very useful because that has survival value, but at the same time it creates anxiety. You pay for the increased survivability gained in prediction by knowing that in the end you will not succeed. Everyone is going to fall apart by one way or another; it might happen tomorrow, it might happen fifty years from now, but it all comes apart in the end. So people get worried about that and they become anxious, and what they gain on the roundabout, they lose on the swings.

On the other hand, if you see that existence is musical in nature, you will understand my basic metaphysical assumption that life is not serious. It is a play of all kinds of patterns and we can look upon different creatures as we look at different games. There is the human game, the tree game, the grass game, etc. All down the line there are all these different things doing their dance…

Now, although it has distinctive patterns, existence is something that is spontaneous. The Chinese word for nature is “tzu-jan”, that which happens of itself. Your hair grows by itself, your heart beats by itself, and your breath happens pretty much by itself. Your glands secrete the essences by themselves and you do not have voluntary control over these things, and so we say they happen spontaneously. So, when you go to bed and *try* to go to sleep you interfere with the spontaneous process of going to sleep. If you try to breathe real hard you will find you get balled-up in your breathing. So if you are to be human, you just have to trust yourself to go to sleep, to digest your food, and to have bowel movements. Of course if something goes seriously wrong and you need a surgeon that is another matter, but by and large the healthy human being does not from the start of life need surgical interference. One lets it happen by itself, and so with the whole picture that is fundamental to it. You have to let go and let it happen, because if you don’t then you are constantly going to be trying to do what happens easily only if you do *not* try. When you think a bit about what people really want to do with their time, and you ask what they do when they are not being pushed around or somebody is telling them what to do, you find they like to make rhythms. They listen to music and they dance or they sing, or perhaps they do something of a rhythmic nature like playing cards, bowling, or raising their elbows. Given the chance, everybody wants to spend their time *swinging*.

- by Oscar Wilde

"The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely any one at all escapes.

Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet like Keats; a fine critical spirit like M. Renan; a supreme artist like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamourous claims of others, to stand, 'under the shelter of the wall,' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, are exceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easily to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease - they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution; it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulse of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralizes. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.

Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings. The security of society will not depend, as it does now, on the state of the weather. If a frost comes we shall not have a hundred thousand men out of work, tramping about the streets in a state of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours, for alms, or crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch of bread and a night’s unclean lodging. Each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse.

Upon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to Individualism, Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it , by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and ensure the material well-being of each member of the community. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its proper environment. But, for the full development of life to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed. What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first. At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism. They are either under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them pleasure. These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture – in a word, the real men, the men who have realized themselves and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realization. Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor; and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in himself, absolutely of no importance. He is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more obedient.

Of course it might be said that the Individualism generated under conditions of private property is not always, or even as a rule, of a fine or wonderful type, and that the poor, if they have not culture and charm, have still many virtues. Both these statements would be quite true. The possession of private property is very often extremely demoralising, and that is, of course, one of the reasons why Socialism wants to get rid of the institution. In fact, property is really a nuisance. Some years ago people went about the country saying hat property has duties. They said it so often and so tediously that,at last, the Church has began to say it. One hears it now from every pulpit. It is perfectly true. Property not merely has duties, but has so many duties that its possession at any large extent is a bore. It involves endless claims upon one, endless attention to business, endless bother. If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it. The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyranise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer at take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.

However, the explanation is not really difficult to find. It is simply this. Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralyzing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. What is said by great employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down on some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state., there would be no advance towards civilisation. Slavery was put down in America, not in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves or even any express desire on their part that they should be free. It was put down entirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of slaves, nor had anything to do with the question really. It was, undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the whole thing. And it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves they received, not merely very little assistance, but hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close of the war the slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely free that they were free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted the new state of things. To the thinker, the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the Vendee voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism.

It is clear, then, that no Authoritarian Socialism will do. For while under the present system a very large number of people can lead lives of a certain amount of freedom and expression and happiness, under an industrial-barrack system, or a system of economic tyranny, nobody would be able to have any such freedom at all. It is to be regretted that a portion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to propose to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is childish. Every man must be left quite free to choose his on work. No form of compulsion must be exercised over him. If there is, his work will not be good for him, will not be good in itself, and will not be good for others. And by work I simply mean activity of any kind.

I hardly think than any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours. Humanity has got beyond that stage, and reserves such a form of life for the people whom, in a very arbitrary manner, it chooses to call criminals. But I confess that many of the socialistic views that I have come across seem to me to be tainted with ideas of authority, if not of actual compulsion. Of course authority and compulsion are out of the question. All association must be quite voluntary. It is only in voluntary associations that man is fine.

But it may be asked how Individualism, which is now more or less dependent on the existence of private property for its development, will benefit by the abolition of such private property. The answer is very simple. It is true that, under existing conditions, a few men who have had private means of their own, such as Byron, Shelley, Browning, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, and others, have been able to realise their personality, more or less completely. Not one of these men ever did a single day’s work for hire. They were relieved from poverty, They had an immense advantage. The question is whether it would be for the good of Individualism that such an advantage should be taken away. Let us suppose that it is taken away. what happens then to Individualism? How will it benefit?

It will benefit in this way. Under the new conditions Individualism will be far freer, far finer, and far more intensified than it is now. I am not talking of the great imaginatively realized Individualism of such poets as I have mentioned but of the great actual Individualism latent and potential in mankind generally. For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain, not growth, its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road, and encumbering them. Indeed, so completely has man’s personality been absorbed by his possessions that the English law has always treated offences against a man’s property with far more severity than offences against his person, and property is still the test of complete citizenship. The industry necessary for the making of money is also very demoralising. In a community like ours, where property confers immense distinction, social position, honour, respect, titles, and other pleasant things of the kind, man, being naturally ambitious, makes it has aim to accumulate this property, and goes on wearily and tediously accumulating it long after he has got far mare than he wants, or can use, or enjoy, or perhaps even know of. Man will kill himself by overwork in order to secure property, and really, considering the enormous advantages that property brings, one is hardly surprised. One’s regret is that society should be constructed on such a basis that man has been forced into a groove in which he cannot freely develop what is wonderful, and fascinating, and delightful in him – in which , in fact, he misses the true pleasure and joy of living. He is also, under existing conditions, very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be – often is,- at every moment of his life at the mercy of things that are not under his control. If the wind blows an extra point or so, or the weather suddenly changes, or some trivial thing happens, his ship may go down, his speculations may go wrong, and he finds himself a poor man, with his social position quite gone. Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist – that is all.

It is a question whether we have ever seen the full expression of a personality, except on the imaginative plane of art. In action, we never have. Caesar, says Mommsen, was the complete and perfect man. But how tragically insecure was Caesar! Where there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority. Caesar was very perfect, but his perfection traveled by too dangerous a road. Marcus Aurelius was the perfect man, says Renan. Yes, the great emperor was a perfect man. But how intolerable were the endless claims upon him! He staggered under the burden of the empire. He was conscious how inadequate one man was to bear the weight of that Titan and too vast orb. What I mean by a perfect man is one who develops under perfect conditions; one who is not wounded, or worried, or maimed, or in danger. Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction. Byron’s personality, for instance, was terribly wasted in its battle with the stupidity and hypocrisy and Philistinism of the English. Such battles do not always intensify strength; they often exaggerate weakness. Byron was never able to give us what he might have given us. Shelley escaped better. Like Byron, he got out of England as soon as possible. Bet he was not so well known. If the English had realized what a great poet he really was, they would have fallen on him with tooth and nail, and made his life as unbearable to him as they possibly could. But he was not a remarkable figure in society, and consequently he escaped, to a certain degree. Still, even in Shelley the note of rebellion is sometimes too strong. The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.

It will be a marvelous thing – the true personality of man – when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.

In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop note the less surely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether things happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws but its own law; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love those who sought to intensify it, and speak often of them. And of these, Christ was one.

‘Know thyself!’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written. And the message of Christ to man was simply “Be thyself.’ That is the secret of Christ.”

When Jesus talks about the poor he simply means personalities, just as when he talks about the rich the simply means people who have not developed their personalities. Jesus moved in a community that allowed the accumulation of private property just as ours does, and the gospel that he preached was, not that in such a community it is an advantage for a man to live on scanty, unwholesome food, to wear ragged, unwholesome clothes, to sleep in horrid, unwholesome dwellings, and a disadvantage for a man to live under healthy, pleasant, and decent conditions. Such a view would have been wrong there and then, and would, of course, be still more wrong now and in England; for as man moves northward the material necessities of life become of more vital importance, and our society is infinitely more complex, and displays far greater extremes of luxury and pauperism than any society of the antique world. What Jesus meant was this. he said to man, “You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. be yourself. don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. An so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also, to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step.’ It is to be noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true. Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor. What Jesus does say, is that man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is. And so the wealthy young man who comes to Jesus is presented as a thoroughly good citizen, who has broken none of the laws of his state, none of the commandments of his religion. He is quite respectable, in the ordinary sense of that extraordinary word. Jesus says to him, ‘You should give up private property. It hinders you from realizing your perfection. It is a drag upon you. It is a burden. Your personality does not need it. It is within you, and not outside of you, that you will find what you really are, and what you really want.” To his own friends he says the same thing. He tells them to be themselves, and not to be always worrying about other things. What do other things matter? Man is complete in himself. when they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. the world hates Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, the yare to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. what does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. he is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actually violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same law level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. his personality can be untroubled. he can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. he may keep the law, and yet be worthless. he may break the law, and yet be fine. he may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. he may commit a sin against society, and yet realize through that sin his true perfection.”

…

“And so he who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of science ,or a young student at a university, or one what watches sheep upon a moor; or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about god, like Spinoza… or a child who plays in a garden, or afisherman who throws his net into the sea. It does not matter what he is, as long as he realises the perfection of the soul that is within him. All imitation in morals and in life is wrong.

Individualism, then, is what through Socialism we are to attain. As a natural result the State must give up all idea of government. It must give it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries before Christ, there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such thing as governing mankind. All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect, by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and Individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other people's standards, wearing practically what one may call other people's second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. 'He who would be free,' says a fine thinker, 'must not conform.' And authority, by bribing people to conform, produces a very gross kind of overfed barbarism amongst us.

Now as the State is not to govern, it may be asked what the State is to do. The State is to be a voluntary manufacturer and distributor of necessary commodities. The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful. And as I have mentioned the word labour, I cannot help saying that a great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour. there is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading. It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. to sweep slushy crossing for eight hours on a day when the east wind is blowing is a disgusting occupation. to sweep it with mental, moral, or physical dignity seems to me to be impossible. to sweep it with joy would be appalling. man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. All word of that kind should be done by a machine.

And I have no doubt that it will be so. Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is , of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in the coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this is the future of machinery; and just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure - which, and not labour, is the aim of man - or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that civilisation require slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. And when scientific men are no longer called upon te go down to a depressing East End and distribute bad cocoa and worse blankets to starving people, they will have delightful leisure in which to devise wonderful and marvelous things for their own joy and the joy of every one else. There will be great storages of force for every city, and for every house if required, and this force man will convert into heat, light, or motion, according to his needs. Ist this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

sexy time



"The only trouble is, gee whiz, I'm dreamin' my life away..."



"Life made him tough. Love made him strong. Music made him hard."



"Goddamn sauce!"



William Shatner at his own roast on Comedy Central: "If you were any drier, you'd be in Betty White's underpants."
Jeffrey Ross at the same roast: "Anyway, speaking of Shatner - Betty White just Shatner pants."

IF CHARLES BUKOWSKI WROTE "PEANUTS":
progressiveboink.com/archive...ukowski/

PROGRESSIVE PSYTRANCE "ONLINE RADIO": www.last.fm/listen/globa...e%20psytrance

AN OLDER PATTI SMITH DOES ACOUSTIC "BECAUSE THE NIGHT":
www.youtube.com/watch
(for some reason, i can't paste the entire link. I love how she is so commanding and passionate that she can sing lustfully about women and I buy it).

www.commondreams.org/archive...21/7808/