Stone and Shadow, John Bonanno photograph, 2008

Anubis gives strength to my legs and I lift myself up,
Sekhet clears the way to heaven,
My wishes are known in the house of the Ka of Ptah,
I know my own heart, having mastered its passions,
My hands and arms are returned transformed and deft,
I can move with speed my feet and legs that I may go.
I do what is pleasing to my Ka.
My soul is free of the rotting corpse recently bequeathed to Anubis.
The Gates of Amenta burst open, I depart in Peace.

-a paraphrase by John Bonanno from the Egyptian Book of the Dead

This passage is about getting out of Hell, a valuable piece of knowledge.

Papaver Somniferum, John Bonanno photograph, 2009

Cushing In The Sun, Beth Bonanno photograph, 2009

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."-Karl Marx, Capital

I believe Marx saw the varied phenomena of do-gooders as futile manifestations of a guilt complex. Conservatives usually insist on a similar analysis, which, of course, is a kind of atheistic nihilism.

"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere."-Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

Marx saw the fallacy of globalism before almost anyone else. Unfortunately his solution (Global Communism confronting Global Capitalism) compounded the problem. Perhaps that was the plan all along. In this case the call to arms of one global movement for battle against another global movement presents little choice at all since the desired result, hidden in plain sight and occult to the many, is Globalism. Communism and Capitalism are irrelevant distractions.

"The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."-Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction

At the head of this entry, Cushing, my Boston Terrier is contemplating Marx. And so am I. Marx has been so demonized by the prevailing, recently triumphant, but rapidly declining Capitalist mode one can instantly marginalize himself by the mere admission of having perused and analyzed Marx' thinking and writing. As spiritually and functionally dead as Marxism in practice has proven itself to be, one may garner knowledge from the man Karl Marx. I have long stated that Capitalism and Communism are two sides of the same materialist coin. And this coin has been absolutely debased and its plated dross desperately attempts to simulate spiritual gold. On reading Karl's famous statement that religion 'is the opium of the people' in context, one is led by him to conclude that religion, in practice, in an oppressed world cannot provide true spirituality. (Whether Marx entertains the possibility that such a thing exists is glossed over.) This passage implies that only in a liberated world may one properly pursue what is the object of religion. I disagree, the object of religion must be attained to liberate the world; but this much repeated, truncated, and mangled quote simplifies in a most banal way Marx' essential argument: organized religion provides comfort in misery by indefinitely delaying a possibly fantastic and certainly untestable reward for the common man's endless struggles and serves the masters of the world in so doing. Opium and religion are both incredibly good at what they do to those who are susceptible. It is error to confound the goals of establishment religion and the longings of men and women for the sublime other.

A case in point:

"A Christian man is the most free lord of all and subject to none"-Martin Luther 1520

"And should the peasants prevail (which God forbid!), -- for all things are possible to God, and we know not but that he is preparing for the judgment day, which cannot be far distant, and may purpose to destroy, by means of the devil, all order and authority and throw the world into wild chaos, -- yet surely they who are found, sword in hand, shall perish in the wreck with clear consciences, leaving to the devil the kingdom of this world and receiving instead the eternal kingdom. For we are come upon such strange times that a prince may more easily win heaven by the shedding of blood than others by prayers."-Martin Luther, Against the Rioting Peasants, retitled by its publisher as Against The Murderous Thieving Hordes of Peasants, 1525

Luther admitted that the goals of his movement were now identical with the interests of those who possessed political power and that the peasants whom he had previously championed and had supported him, were shit out of luck. The peasants had the choice between Rome's Catholicism and the local nobles' Protestantism, both of which would screw them into the ground. It was a false dilemma, not even a modicum of freedom was an option for the masses, and the 'reformed' Protestant nobility of Germany killed at least a hundred thousand revolting peasants. Luther's freedom was only the freedom to be Lutheran instead of Catholic. Political freedom was out of the question.

"--People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarme but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians."-James Joyce, Ulysses

Coming Soon: Marx and Hegel! The Dialectic!

"The Very Last Thing You Will Ever See" -Beth Bonanno photograph of John Bonanno in character as Frater S.V.S.

Random Scribbles
(Or, Am I Now Channeling Larry King?)

The principal job of any intelligence agency is not to gather intelligence. It is rather to make everyone too ignorant and too stupid to ask the right questions and to foment the disturbances that make it too difficult and too painful to be intelligent. It must create muddy water.
The NFL draft should be replaced by an auction system. Each team would have a fixed amount with which too bid for all the players who make themselves eligible. The money spent would go into a pot which is then used to pay the initial one year contract of the players reflecting the amount bid. (Pay beyond that point could not be negotiated until the first season was complete. Unbid upon players become free agents.) I think it would be much more exciting, require more skill, and provide more interest than the boring thing they do now.
I would like to write a book listing all the popular dances of the last hundred years. Included in this encyclopedia would be descriptions of the dance, the localities in which the dance originated, photographs, and lore.
I need to write a long article about Japanese Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum). I admire its tenaciousness.
Where have all the whippersnappers gone?
Corporate capitalism's goal is to create a virtual state of anarchy for itself so that its most powerful entities can roam the earth unchallenged. Corporate capitalism works to create exactly the opposite environment for individuals who are not in their club: repressive laws by many layers of authority, and assorted modes of taxation by those layers, confusion and fear of the policing entities that enforce those practices.
The greatest parasites on society have convinced themselves that they are the driving engines of it, and in so doing, have convinced those on whom they feed that the weakness they feel is their own fault or the fault of innocent scapegoats.
How long has it been since you were as happy as a shithouse spider?
Any magickal system, impeccably performed, is effective.
Are people whose names indicate a quality, e.g. 'Goode' or 'Goodman' any better than those whose names indicate something else, Mr. Wolfe?
If you have a large fixed interest debt, then big time inflation is good for you. You get to pay off all those dollars with much cheaper ones. You can be assured that as long as the banks are controlling the government (Hello Mr. Geithner, Mr. Paulson , Mr. Bernanke etc.) pay will fall, credit will be tight (unless you are a favored bank), and, inflation will be moderate. But, they can only keep the plates spinning for so long.
How can stock prices stay so (relatively) high? Is TARP money being used to prop up the market? It wouldn't take much in the low volume game we see on Wall Street now.
Prediction: By next year the UN will begin to take over countries designated "failed states".

"Half An Hour"-C.P. Cavafy

I never had you, nor will I ever have you
I suppose. A few words, an approach
as in the bar yesterday, and nothing more.
It is, undeniably, a pity. But we who serve Art
sometimes with intensity of mind, and of course only
for a short while, we create pleasure
which almost seems real.
So in the bar the day before yesterday -- the merciful alcohol
was also helping much --
I had a perfectly erotic half-hour.
And it seems to me that you understood,
and stayed somewhat longer on purpose.
This was very necessary. Because
for all the imagination and the wizard alcohol,
I needed to see your lips as well,
I needed to have your body close.

Polyphemus, Hellenistic head, 160 B.C.E., Boston Museum of Fine Arts, John Bonanno photograph. Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, was the man-eating cyclops of the Odyssey who was blinded by the clever Odysseus; his name means "famous" in Greek.

Charles Darwin, Monster and Racist (or, Polyphemus Long Ago)

Whatever one may think of evolutionary theory, there can be no doubt that Charles Darwin was troubled by the fecundity of the 'very poor' sorts of men and his ideas on natural selection (applied to social economics and termed by Herbert Spencer as "survival of the fittest" or "social darwinism") seemed to conflict with his Malthusian influenced notion that the 'superior' types might be overwhelmed by billions and billions of the immoral 'degraded' types. But is it really surprising that Darwin would worry about the "descent" of men and the danger of inferior types when his father was a financier and medical doctor to the upper class and his mother was a Wedgewood and he married his cousin, another Wedgewood of the fabulous porcelain fortune begun when Josiah Wedgewood was allowed by the crown to call his state of the art product, "Queen's Ware"? Darwin was concerned that his poor health was connected with inbreeding yet this and his Malthusian fear of overpopulation didn't prevent him and Emma Wedgewood from having ten children, a brood that in a lower class, non-Saxon family would have horrified him. Let Darwin's words speak for themselves:

"A most important obstacle in civilised countries to an increase in the number of men of a superior class has been strongly insisted on by Mr. Greg and Mr. Galton (19. 'Fraser's Magazine,' Sept. 1868, p. 353. 'Macmillan's Magazine,' Aug. 1865, p. 318. The Rev. F.W. Farrar ('Fraser's Magazine,' Aug. 1870, p. 264) takes a different view.), namely, the fact that the very poor and reckless, who are often degraded by vice, almost invariably marry early, whilst the careful and frugal, who are generally otherwise virtuous, marry late in life, so that they may be able to support themselves and their children in comfort. Those who marry early produce within a given period not only a greater number of generations, but, as shewn by Dr. Duncan (20. 'On the Laws of the Fertility of Women,' in 'Transactions of the Royal Society,' Edinburgh, vol. xxiv. p. 287; now published separately under the title of 'Fecundity, Fertility, and Sterility,' 1871. See, also, Mr. Galton, 'Hereditary Genius,' pp. 352-357, for observations to the above effect.), they produce many more children. The children, moreover, that are borne by mothers during the prime of life are heavier and larger, and therefore probably more vigorous, than those born at other periods. Thus the reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members. Or as Mr. Greg puts the case: "The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him. Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts--and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but five- sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that remained. In the eternal 'struggle for existence,' it would be the inferior and LESS favoured race that had prevailed--and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults."-Charles Darwin 1809-1882, The Descent of Man, 1871

Yes, it is all about class.

"The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate and is sometimes equally convenient."-Charles Darwin

"Centaurea macrocephala, Great Golden Knapweed, Armenian Basketflower"
John Bonanno photograph, Hiram, Maine, July 11, 2009

Helios finally deigned to shine on Maine this morning displaying flora to great effect. Centaurea was the herb of Chiron, the centaur. This specimen is about to peak. The big flower heads of this species, hence macrocephala, can be seen here in all states of bud and bloom.

"Chloë the Flying Cat" Early 1990's photograph by Beth Bonanno

Chloë was an extremely slight and very furry cat with a tiny head. My former wife gave her to me after some unspecified outrage she had committed in her house. She (the cat) loved it when I tossed her in the air and caught her. Eventually I began to fling her up in the air higher and higher. I used to sing the Jackie Wilson song about that to her. Her light weight and fluffy long fur allowed her to glide like a flying squirrel back down to me. She was a sweet but very dimwitted cat and this was her only talent. She also exceeded in catching me by surprise when she had kittens at an absurdly young age before I could arrange to have her ovaries removed. (One night she ripped out a hole in the bottom of my box spring and gave birth inside it while I slept.) She was never harmed by her aerial antics and she died of old age, her flying days well behind her.
This picture is cropped from an old print. Some dirt was retouched out of the sky but the cat is really up there.


Higher and Higher

Your love, lifting me higher
Than I've ever been lifted before
So keep it it up
Quench my desire
And I'll be at your side, forever more

You know your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on lifting (love keeps lifting me)
Higher (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
I said your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on (love keeps lifting me)
Lifting me (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)

Now once I was down hearted
Disappointment was my closest friend
But then you came and it soon departed
And you know he never
Showed his face again

That's why
You know your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on lifting (love keeps lifting me)
Higher (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
I said your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on (love keeps lifting me)
Lifting me (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)

[Instrumental Interlude]

I'm so glad, I've finally found you
Yes, that one, in a million girl
And now with my loving arms around you
Honey, I can stand up and face the world

You know your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on lifting (love keeps lifting me)
Higher (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
I said your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on (love keeps lifting me)
Lifting me (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)

Now sock it me

Lyrics: First claimed by Gary Jackson and Carl Smith
later, Billy Davis and Raynard Miner of Motown claimed Jackson and Smith stole it from a briefcase there and successfully sued them for damages.

"Emma K II, Dismal Swamp Canal" 1980, John Bonanno photograph


"Lake Drummond, The Great Dismal Swamp" 1980, John Bonanno photograph

Swamp-1624 (first used by Capt. John Smith, in reference to Virginia), perhaps a dial. survival from an O.E. cognate of O.N. svoppr "sponge, fungus," from P.Gmc. *swampuz; but traditionally connected with M.E. sompe "morass, swamp," probably from M.Du. somp or M.L.G. sump "swamp." Related to O.N. svöppr "sponge." The verb sense of "overwhelm, sink (as if in a swamp)" is first recorded 1772; fig. sense is from 1818. Swamp Yankee "rural, rustic New Englander" is attested from 1941.-Online Etymology Dictionary

This is one of the fantastic places of the Earth. It straddles southeast Virginia into northeast North Carolina. The oval-shaped Lake Drummond may have been formed by a crashing meteoroid or a peat burn or a fire bird. The water of the swamp is unique in that the chemicals (primarily tannic acid) leached from decaying trees act as a germicide. Barrels of this amber water were once upon a time loaded on ships to take advantage of its famously persistent freshness. The dark color of the water is evident in the "Emma K" photograph above.
George Washington owned a 1/12 share in two syndicates called The Dismal Swamp Land Company and The Adventurers For Draining The Great Dismal Swamp to (obviously) drain it and build a canal from Chesapeake Bay to Albemarle Sound. Fortunately Washington and his successors failed in most of their efforts; a canal to Lake Drummond was dug but the great swamp could not be drained. It survives, less magnificently, today, as most of the original white cedar, cypress and gum has been logged. About half of the original swamp comprises the 107,000 acre Great Dismal Swamp National Refuge. Much was donated or sold by logging companies to the Nature Conservancy and transferred to the Department of the Interior after the last virgin forests were finally harvested by the 1950's and logging was discontinued in the early 1970's.
Runaway slaves hid here. There are bigfoot, ghost and ufo stories in a place like this, of course. One may see the eerie foxfire in the night. But it is not necessary to have heard the strange tales people tell to feel the magic when paddling utterly alone in its depths.

The Slave In The Dismal Swamp
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In dark fens of the Dismal Swamp
The hunted Negro lay;
He saw the fire of the midnight camp,
And heard at times a horse's tramp
And a bloodhound's distant bay.

Where will-o'-the-wisps and glow-worms shine,
In bulrush and in brake;
Where waving mosses shroud the pine,
And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine
Is spotted like the snake;

Where hardly a human foot could pass,
Or a human heart would dare,
On the quaking turf of the green morass
He crouched in the rank and tangled grass,
Like a wild beast in his lair.

A poor old slave, infirm and lame;
Great scars deformed his face;
On his forehead he bore the brand of shame,
And the rags, that hid his mangled frame,
Were the livery of disgrace.

All things above were bright and fair,
All things were glad and free;
Lithe squirrels darted here and there,
And wild birds filled the echoing air
With songs of Liberty!

On him alone was the doom of pain,
From the morning of his birth;
On him alone the curse of Cain
Fell, like a flail on the garnered grain,
And struck him to the earth!

Bloodroot (pauson, red puccoon, Indian paint, red paint) Papaveraceae Sanguinaria Canadensis, April 18, 2005, Hiram, Maine, John Bonanno photograph

Bloodroot, a hardy perennial, is a member of the poppy family and as such, it requires respect. It is a favorite spring plant in my garden and I recommend it as an essential plant in any Goth themed garden. The flowers come and go quickly. Its name (scientific and common) comes from the sticky red/orange sap which flows through the plant. Applied in sufficient quantity it is said to have the ability to destroy flesh! Bloodroot is poisonous in large doses, causing convulsions, vomiting, reduced blood pressure, profuse salivation, and, finally, respiratory failure. If you expand the photograph you can see the orange tint of the sap in the flower stems. Lately it has attracted attention for supposed anti-cancer effects; for what it's worth, it is FDA approved for use in toothpastes for gingivitis. Traditionally, native Americans drank the root tea as a remedy for fever, laryngitis and various lung ailments; also the root was employed as a love charm and the juice as skin paint. It makes an attractive natural dye. I have found that bloodroot will tolerate a surprising amount of sun (but not full sun) for a woodland plant. It is native, but not plentiful in my area of Maine and is grateful for copious organic material and a moist, light soil. It spreads when happy but will never become a nuisance. What a useful and beautiful ornament to the garden!

"My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect."-D.H. Lawrence 'The Letters of D.H. Lawrence', edited by Aldous Huxley, 1957

RIP Sky Saxon (Richard Elvern Marsh) born August 20, 1937, in Salt Lake City, Utah, died June 25, 2009 in Austin, Texas

Of all the high profile celebrity deaths last week, this passing of an obscure garage rocker was most significant to me.
This obituary in the Telegraph.uk tells the tale. I loved the Seeds when I was of that age when you could love bands with wonderful energy, a quirky lead singer, one fantastic mysterioso hypnotic riff which could come in myriad variations and a minimal technical competence which was totally appropriate.
In this video Bettie Page becomes a beautiful angel, dancing to 'I Can't Seem to Make You Mine' in an enchanting tribute to the man, and what I imagine as a sublime welcome to the afterlife.


Love and Peace to you Sky.

"The educated man tries to repress the inferior man in himself, not realizing that by so doing he forces the latter into revolt."-C.G. Jung

"I'm Cracking Up" Photobooth Polaroid Photograph, 1977, John Bonanno

I wish I could remember what was going through my head then. How many photobooths are still around? These cameras produced a unique color tone. But it does looks like I hunger for blood after rising from my coffin. Note the artifacts of time and the artifacts of photography left on the print. Yet I remain remarkably youthful.

"Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there."- Eric Hoffer, 'The Passionate State of Mind'

Graveyard, Hiram, Maine, John Bonanno photo
It was in this cemetery that I recorded, on a Halloween, an EVP (electronic voice phenomena) faintly but clearly and unmistakably, in an archaic accent demanding: "Live well."

"O.E. græf "grave, ditch," from P.Gmc. *graban (cf. O.S. graf, O.Fris. gref, O.H.G. grab "grave, tomb;" O.N. gröf "cave," Goth. graba "ditch"), from PIE base *ghrebh-/*ghrobh- "to dig, to scratch, to scrape" (cf. O.C.S. grobu "grave, tomb"); related to grafan "to dig" (see grave (v.)). From Middle Ages to 17c., they were temporary, crudely marked repositories from which the bones were removed to ossuaries after some years and the grave used for a fresh burial. "Perpetual graves" became common from c.1650. To make (someone) turn in his grave "behave in some way that would have offended the dead person" is first recorded 1888. Graveyard shift "late-night work" is c.1907, from earlier nautical term, in reference to the loneliness of after-hours work."- Online Etymology Dictionary

“Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All want to be on good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real good sort. Keys: like Keyes’s ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. _Habeas corpus_. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it’s not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That’s the first sign when the hairs come out grey. And temper getting cross. Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. Courting death... Shades of night hovering here with all the dead stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O’Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o’ the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they’d kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones.” Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to do it at the window. Eight children he has anyway.”-James Joyce, Ulysses

"Good Friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."-Shakespeare's gravestone

"Or to take another eminent example, in which not Puritanism only, but, one may say, the whole religious world, by their mechanical use of St. Paul's writings, can be shown to miss or change his real meaning. The whole religious world, one may say, use now the word resurrection,--a word which is so often in their thoughts and on their lips, and which they find so often in St. Paul's writings,--in one sense only. They use it to mean a rising again after the physical death of the body. Now it is quite true that St. Paul speaks of resurrection in this sense, that he tries to describe and explain it, and that he condemns those who doubt and deny it. But it is true, also, that in nine cases out of ten where St. Paul thinks and speaks of resurrection, he thinks and speaks of it in a sense different from this; in the sense of a rising to a new life before the physical death of the body, and not after it. The idea on which we have already touched, the profound idea of being baptized into the death of the great exemplar of self-devotion and self- annulment, of repeating in our own person, by virtue of identification with our exemplar, his course of self-devotion and self-annulment, and of thus coming, within the limits of our present life, to a new life, in which, as in the death going before it, we are identified with our exemplar,--this is the fruitful and original conception of being risen with Christ which possesses the mind of St. Paul, and this is the central point round which, with such incomparable emotion and eloquence, all his teaching moves. For him, the life after our physical death is really in the main but a consequence and continuation of the inexhaustible energy of the new life thus originated on this side the grave."-Matthew Arnold, Culture And Anarchy

"Gloved Dance" John Bonanno, watercolor, 1990, $150

"Glove-O.E. glof "covering for the hand," also "palm of the hand," from P.Gmc. *galofo (cf. O.N. glofi), probably from *ga- collective prefix + *lofi "hand" (cf. O.N. lofi, M.E. love, Goth. lofa "flat of the hand"). Ger. Handschuh, the usual word for "glove," lit. "hand-shoe" (O.H.G. hantscuoh; also Dan., Swed. hantsche) is represented by O.E. Handscio, but this is only attested as a proper name. To fit like a glove is first recorded 1771."-Online Etymology Dictionary

"A pure hand needs no glove to cover it." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

“See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!”-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

"It was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite Father Conmee had finished explaining and looked down. His wife, Father Conmee supposed. A tiny yawn opened the mouth of the wife of the gentleman with the glasses. She raised her small gloved fist, yawned ever so gently, tiptapping her small gloved fist on her opening mouth and smiled tinily, sweetly."-James Joyce, Ulysses

The following glove references, in this order, appear in Ulysses:

"I want puce gloves and green boots."
puce gloves
kid gloves
gloved hand
rich gloved hand
"Never put a dress on her back like it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips."
canary gloves
"one plump kid glove"
"his other plump glovepalm"
small gloved fist
small gloved fist
"Father Conmee drew off his gloves"
violet gloves
"It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns."
kid gloves
"Cigary gloves long John had on his desk the other day."
"Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track."
"elbowlength ivory gloves"
glovers
"doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet"
"fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc"
warmgloved
"lovely ladies saling gloves"
canary gloves
"Clipclaps glovesilent hands"
"a pair of long yellow ladies' gloves"
"the present of Byron's poems and the three pairs of gloves"
"touch him with my veil and gloves on going out I kiss then would send them all spinning"
"I did I forgot my suede gloves on the seat behind"
"he kissed me in the eye of my glove and I had to take it off"
"he pestered me to say yes till I took off my glove slowly watching him"
"when I put on my gloves and hat at the window to show I was going out"
"when I put the chair against the door just as I was washing myself there below with the glove"

“It's a pretty sure thing that the player's bat is what speaks loudest when it's contract time, but there are moments when the glove has the last word.”-Brooks Robinson

"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."-Johnnie Cochran

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14

A Door To Huxley
Tonight Keith Hansen (Vyzygoth) and I had a free ranging discussion (Part II) on Aldous Huxley. We covered the Orwell/Huxley dialectic, our early exposures to Orwell and Huxley, where we are in the predictive programming scenarios of the two, Crowley and Huxley, Huxley on drugs and lots more. When the show is posted it will be available here: Think Or Be Eaten Radio . Here is the Link.

Quotes of interest:

Who is the real enemy?

"The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word—these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals." -Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

Huxley was skeptical about the religion of progress and the belief in the inevitable benefits deriving from science.

"Science has 'explained' nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness." -Aldous Huxley, Views of Holland, 1925

Huxley on Beer:

Yes!... if you stop before it's too late.

"From the nonverbal world of culturally uncontaminated consciousness we pass to the subverbal world of physiology and biochemistry. A human being is a temperament and a product of cultural conditioning; he is also, and primarily, an extremely complex and delicate biochemical system, whose inwardness, as the system changes from one state of equilibrium to another, is changing consciousness. It is because each one of us is a biochemical system that (according to Housman)

Malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.

Beer achieves its theological triumphs because, in William James' words, "Drunkenness is the great exciter of the Yes function in man." And he adds that "It is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what, in its totality, is so degrading a poisoning." The tree is known by its fruits, and the fruits of too much reliance upon ethyl alcohol as an exciter of the Yes function are bitter indeed. No less bitter are the fruits of reliance upon such habit-forming sedatives, hallucinogens and mood elevators as opium and its derivatives, as cocaine (once so blithely recommended to his friends and patients by Dr. Freud), as the barbiturates and amphetamine. But in recent years the pharmacologists have extracted or synthesized several compounds that powerfully affect the mind without doing any harm to the body, either at the time of ingestion or, through addiction, later on. Through these new psychedelics, the subject's normal waking consciousness may be modified in many different ways. It is as though, for each individual, his deeper self decides which kind of experience will be most advantageous."- Aldous Huxley, Culture and the Individual, originally published in Playboy Magazine, 1963

Huxley felt it was important that some, if not all, people learn to look at the universe as if looking at it anew, for the first time. It is essential to the artist or any seeker to escape the cultural prison which has been our dwelling place since birth. This selective filter through which we process reality has been the primary weapon of human ascendance. Where would we be without language, written and oral? How valuable is the transmission of knowledge necessary to the making of a sword; or a plow? Disputes are controlled by myriad rules surrounding such human activities as courtship, food sharing, and religious practices. Yet the inherently conservative nature of culture can stifle necessary change and stunt the ability to adapt to new conditions. Yes, knowledge may be transmitted through culture but understanding and the wisdom which flows from it may not. Huxley's proposed solution to free us from the blinding effect of culture involved training youth in what he called a "methodology of non-verbal education." This would prepare them for the use of drugs and other methods, which "tear a hole" in the curtain of culture and allow them to experience truth directly. The most commonly accepted drugs in our society operate via front brain sedation and lead to addiction. LSD, a drug that requires training to use, in fact has no physically negative effects and does not lead to addiction. Any negative effects are the result of the lack of "non-verbal methodological" skills on the part of the untrained individual.
LSD's argument is NON-VERBAL. LSD is profoundly Non-ironic. It means what it (non-verbally) says. Huxley's LSD progression of consciousness goes through these stages: Normal [or perhaps more accurately, cultural consciousness] *!Ingestion of LSD!*~Aesthetic consciousness (Beauty)~Visionary consciousness (Infinity)~Mystical consciousness (Unity).

"It was quite an experience, but it did make one feel extraordinarily clean." Aldous Huxley to Anita Loos after a fire destroyed his home, library, letters, and manuscripts in 1961.

Antiglobalism?

"It is at this point [when food and natural resources become scarce with the industrialization of the third world-JB] that internationally organized scientists and technicians might contribute greatly to the cause of peace by planning a world-wide campaign, not merely for greater food production, but also (and this is the really important point) for regional self-sufficiency in food production."-Aldous Huxley, The Scientist's Role

Here we infer Huxley's animus for the politically powerful.

[After discussing the desirablility of the advent of efficient solar power-JB] "For the peoples of such tropical countries as India and Africa the new device for directly harnessing solar power should be of enormous and enduring benefit-unless, of course, those at present possessing economic and political power should choose to build mass-producing factories around enormous mirrors, thus perverting the invention to their own centralistic purposes, instead of encouraging its small scale use for the benefit of individuals and village communities. The technicians of solar power will be confronted with a clear-cut choice. They can work either for the completer enslavement of the industrially backward peoples of the tropics, or for their progressive liberation from the twin curses of poverty and servitude to political and economic bosses."-Aldous Huxley, The Scientist's Role

“After the Age of Utopias came what we may call the American Age, lasting as long as the Boom. Men like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social riddle and made capitalism the common good. But it was not native to us; it went with a buoyant, not to say blatant optimism, which is not our negligent or negative optimism. Much more than Victorian righteousness, or even Victorian self-righteousness, that optimism has driven people into pessimism. For the Slump brought even more disillusionment than the War. A new bitterness, and a new bewilderment, ran through all social life, and was reflected in all literature and art. It was contemptuous, not only of the old Capitalism, but of the old Socialism. Brave New World is more of a revolt against Utopia than against Victoria.”-G.K. Chesterton

Goya, Inquisition Scene, 1816

"Si bene calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est."-Petronius (All in all, an objective consideration of life leads one to conclude that shipwreck is everywhere. -My translation)

"Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it."-- John Adams, letter to his son, John Quincy Adams, November 13, 1816

Real Rules of the Inquisition

...a list I prepared mostly using the article "The Inquisition", from the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition

1. The Inquisition is not bound by ordinary rules.
2. Acts of piety and professions of faith have no value as evidence.
3. Suspicion is enough for imprisonment.
4. The accuser is the judge.
5. The accused are presumed guilty.
6. Contumacy is expressed by flight and increases presumption of guilt.
   
7. Names of witnesses against the accused are withheld from him. (Bulls of Innocent IV: Cumnegocium & Licet Sicut Accepimus)
8. The accused is kept in ignorance of who denounced him.
9. Heretics or infames are admitted as witnesses.
10. Women, children & slaves could be witnesses.
11. If a witness retracted hostile evidence he could be punished for false witness, but his evidence should be retained with full effect.
12. A witness who refuses to give evidence is guilty of heresy.
    
13. Prosecution is carried out in secrecy.
14. The accused must swear to tell the truth and denounce all partners in heresy or any other heretics known to him. [I would denounce my Inquisitor.]
15. The accused may be "reconciled" to the Church only by so denouncing others.
16. Further "examination" is continued by various methods including moral subterfuge. (The Dominican Bernardus Guidonis enumerates weakening physical strength, perhaps through withholding water or food, and as a last resort, torture.)
17. Canon Law condemned torture but Innocent IV in his Bull, Ad Extirpanda, May 15, 1252, allowed its use to discover heresy. (This was later confirmed by Urban IV. Remember, the Inquisition is not bound by ordinary rules.)
18. At the discretion of the Inquisitor, torture of witnesses is allowed.
19. All evidence or confessions obtained in the torture chamber must be freely confirmed. (How liberal! But one would remember that the torture chamber is still there.)
20. Any lawyer defending the accused is guilty of heresy.
21. The inquiry may last as long as necessary.
22. Those who confess as minor heretics are punished by penance, fasting, scourges, markings or fines, but full acquittal should never be allowed. More serious punishments are imprisonments of various degrees of severity. Obstinate heretics are turned over to the secular arm for punishment debita animadversione usually death by fire. Such property of heretics so remanded is turned over to the ecclesiastic and secular authorities. (In Spain all went to the Church, in France, Italy and Germany church and state divided the spoils.)
23. Sorcery and magic as well as doctrinal heresy are objects of inquisition.
24. Confiscation of the property of an 'enemy of the state' (hostis) was found in ancient Roman Law. The dictator Sulla, his early mentor and later opponent Marius, and the Second Triumvirate were infamous for long proscription lists. Julius Caesar famously disapproved proscription, perhaps to his ultimate regret. The Church and the Princes of the Inquisition could not resist the temptation to apply the precedent of this law to enemies of God. Today, enemies of the state in the "War On Drugs" can expect to lose their property in a modern variation of proscription. I predict that the state will find new innovations implementing this concept as its various forms tumble into bankruptcy in our brave new world.
    
25. Thus church and state happily colluded to rid the world of "heretics" and pocket their wealth and property.
    

"Glamour", John Bonanno, 1999, 4" X 6", acrylic on card paper, $150

Some Simple Suggestions to Instantly Reform Government

If I were in a position to issue the ukaz (указ, any proclamation of the tsar in imperial Russia had the force of law) these would be my first:

1. Henceforth, all representatives to Congress will be chosen by lot.

Candidates would have to apply. Only adult citizens may apply. Convicted felons may not apply.
I am certain we would end up with a more honest and representative Congress.

2. The Size of Congress shall be increased to 7,000 members.

A large Congress would ensure a costly effort to buy it; and it would be impossible to keep such a project secret. Punishment would be harsh if discovered. (See ukaz 6) And each congressman would represent less than 50,000 people. I would entertain the notion of more, not fewer representatives than this. But in no way shall a congressman represent more than 50,000 people.

3. The Term of a Representative to Congress shall be increased to four years.

It takes a while to learn a job.

4. Half of the standing members of Congress shall be chosen by lot to remain in Congress at the end of each term.

No representative should be assured of tenure. But, institutional memory is a good thing. And, new blood is a good thing. We shall have half and half. With this many representatives a few lucky ones may remain a long time.

5. Congress must abolish an old law before a new law may be passed. All old laws shall be reviewed by a committee of all the new Representatives at the beginning of each term who shall produce a list of at least a hundred laws to be presented to Congress for a vote on abolition.

This, my most brilliant innovation will eventually limit the great waste of human talent that goes into lawyering.

6. Corruption of a Member of Congress shall be punishable by death to all guilty parties involved.

7. Only legal residents of the district of a member of Congress shall be allowed to lobby that member.

Violation is evidence of corruption. See ukaz 6.

Some Quotes of the Bloomsbury Group

"At its simplest, the Bloomsbury Group was the circle round Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. When the Victorian man of letters Sir Leslie Stephen died in 1904, his daughters, Virginia and Vanessa, being determined to put their constrained middle-class girlhoods behind them, set up house at 46 Gordon Square in the then-shabby district of Bloomsbury with their two brothers, Thoby and Adrian. Thoby brought home his Cambridge friends Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey and Saxon Sydney-Turner, inviting them for social evenings with his sisters, the scene being set of earnest youths sitting around the room sipping cocoa and whisky and discussing intently such matters as the ‘meaning of truth’. Most of these young men had been elected to the Apostles, a secret society of intellectually notable undergraduates from Trinity and King’s Colleges. Through the link with the Apostles the Group widened to include E.M. Forster, Roger Fry, Desmond MacCarthy and John Maynard Keynes who had left Cambridge earlier. The Group also included Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey’s cousin.

Apart from Saxon Sydney-Turner, who remained an obscure Treasury official, all of the Bloomsbury Group made a very significant contribution to British intellectual and artistic life in the first part of the twentieth century. The two giants, famed internationally, are Virginia Woolf, who broke new ground with her ‘stream of consciousness’ writing; and the economist, Maynard Keynes, whose revolutionary economic theories and significant efforts to build new economic orders after the traumas of two world wars remain an abiding legacy."- Tony Bradshaw, Introduction, "A Bloomsbury Canvas"

Do I have to say this? I do not necessarily endorse or condemn any of these quotes or the activities of these people. But, familiarity with the works and ideas of these undeniably brilliant men and women is essential to understanding the early twentieth century; their influence persists.

"A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind."- Clive Bell (art critic, husband in a very open marriage of Vanessa Stephen Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf)

"As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world."-Virginia (Stephen) Woolf (writer, a suicide)

"I read the book of Job last night, I don't think God comes out well in it." -Virginia Woolf

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency." -Virginia Woolf


"Capitalism did not arise because capitalists stole the land or the workmen's tools but because it was more efficient than feudalism. It will perish because it is not merely less efficient than socialism, but actually self-destructive." J.B.S. Haldane (biochemist, geneticist)

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."- John Maynard Keynes (economist)

"Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent."- John Maynard Keynes

"I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal."- John Maynard Keynes

"But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."- John Maynard Keynes

“The whole of art is an appeal to a reality which is not without us but in our minds”-Desmond MacCarthy (journalist, editor)

''Relations we may be: have them, we may not''- Duncan Grant, artist, to his older cousin Lytton Strachey in the midst of an ultimately unsuccessful effort to rebuff multiple attempts at seduction, later, Grant became a lover of John Maynard Keynes

"Discretion is not the better part of biography." - Lytton Strachey, historian, (and friend of Thoby Stephen, "the Goth", brother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell; Thoby died at 26 of typhoid) Strachey loved Ralph Partridge who married Dora Carrington; Dora loved Lytton Strachey and performed a suicide after Strachey died

"Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well-deceived."- Lytton Strachey

Jack-In-The-Pulpit, Arisaema triphyllum, Hiram, Maine
John Bonanno photo, June 21,2009

"When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees."-Abraham Lincoln

It has been much more than less damp and gray for weeks in Maine so it was a perfect time for a wet walk in the woods. These plants had to grow through over two feet of the packed twigs from heaped branches left after logging three years ago.
Euell Gibbons, in Stalking the Healthful Herbs, informs us that the root (or more accurately, the corm) is full of burning calcium oxalate crystals when fresh, but becomes pleasingly palatable after slicing and leaving it to dry for at least five months to break down the poison. Perhaps in a prolonged period of want I would give it a try; but for now I'll just enjoy the beauty of these arums and let those corms lie beneath the forest trash.

Broken plate found in an old farm midden, Hiram, Maine
John Bonanno photo, June 21, 2009

Midden: "dung hill," c.1340, of Scand. origin, cf. Dan. mødding, from møg "muck" + dynge "heap, dung." Modern archaeological sense of "kitchen midden" is from Danish excavations.-Online Etymology Dictionary

"What is the ape to man? A ridicule, or a grievous shame. And that is just what man is to be to the Superman- a ridicule, or a grievous shame."-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

"Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"- George Taylor, The Planet of the Apes

"Mrs. Briggs, I've known and respected your husband Alky for many years. And what's good enough for him is good enough for me." [He suddenly grabs her and pulls her down onto a couch] -Groucho, Monkey Business, 1931

"Astrum Perpetuum" John Bonanno, 1996, acrylic, paper card, 4 1/4" X 6 3/8", $200

"Varium et mutabile semper
Femina."

Virgil, The Aeneid, (Orator per Mercurius)

The Larch, photo by John Bonanno, Hiram, Maine 2003

Clouds Without Water III/IX

As one entranced by dint of cannabis,
Whose sense of time is changed past recognition,
Whether he suffer woe or taste of bliss,
He loses both his reason and volition.
He says one word -- what countless ages pass !
He walks across the room -- a voyage as far
As the astronomer's who turns his glass
On faintest star-webs past the farthest star
And travels thither in the spirit. So
It seems impossible to me that ever
The sands of our ill luck should run so low
That splendidly success should match endeavour ;
Yet it must be, and very soon must be :
For I believe in you, and you in me.-Rev. C. Verey (Aleister Crowley)

This sonnet is from Crowley's collection, Clouds Without Water. Crowley wrote to Israel Regardie, his personal secretary in 1930 as follows:

"Please send a copy of "Clouds Without Water" to Aldous Huxley Esq., Athenaeum Club, Pall Mall (with prospectuses etc.) with my compliments-we had a gorgeous 3 days with him in Berlin. Also please set up a figure [astrological chart] for him. Goldalming 4 A.M., July 26 '94"

In my Think Or Be Eaten Radio discussion with Vyzygoth on Huxley I stated that I could find no evidence that Huxley and Crowley had met. The above quote is from Richard Kaczynski's formidable biography of Crowley, Perdurabo, The Life of Aleister Crowley, New Falcon, 2002. AC may have been exaggerating his association with Huxley to polish the apple for Regardie, but this is indeed evidence that they had been in contact. If anyone can provide citations from Huxley's works mentioning Crowley, I would appreciate the information.