Mwahahahaha! Just had to let the cosmic laughter resonate, no, reverberate in my body…
Everything is grace! Even when shit happens… Divine piss, holy shit!
I have always been wary of spirituality/religiosity that denied/denigrated the body. Non summus angeli! (We’re no angels!)
For Sharon (And All the Many Brave People in the World)
I stood
Like a statue
Unmoving, unseeing
Not speaking, not wanting
To break
The fragile silence that
Engulfed us like
A wall oppressing,
Suffocating, separating
Me… from you.
But I was dying to live!
And breathe, and see
The many things I haven’t seen
And move, and do
The many things I haven’t done.
How I longed to look at you
(Take a long and good look at you.)
To speak, and be, with you.
Oh how I yearned to touch,
Feel, and love you.
But then again, as always,
I was afraid
Of you, and me,
And the many things
I haven’t seen and done
(And of I-don’t-but-God-knows-what-else).
And then again, as always,
I had to hide
And be content
To peek from inside.
Suddenly, brave as an angel
Come down from heaven, you
Freed me from the chains
I myself forged
And wound around me.
You looked at, talked with, me
And with a smile, shattered
The walls of timidity and fear
That imprisoned and prevented
Me from loving you.
And then, I could breathe, though gasping
And so, I could see, though squinting
And more, I could move, though trembling
And yes, I could speak, though stammering
And now, I could feel, though numbing
At last, I could love, though wanting.
Err… This is to say
“Thank you”
For “I love you“?
From “The Book of Lights” by Chaim Potok:
“From the age of fifteen until the age of twenty-one he lived in the apartment world of his aunt’s whispery talking and his uncle’s coughs and brooding silence, and he did not know which was more frightening. For a while after his cousin’s death he thought his family had somehow been singled out for a special curse. But he talked to friends and found that throughout the neighborhood ran a twisting river of random events: parents died in slow or sudden ways, children were killed, relatives slipped young from life. The world seemed a strangely terrifying place when you really thought about it. He tried not to think about it too often.
“… Listen to Me in the truth of your soul. Listen to Me in the feelings of your heart. Listen to Me in the quiet of your mind.
“Hear Me, everywhere. Whenever you have a question, simply know that I have answered it already. Then open your eyes to your world. My response could be in an article already published. In the sermon already written and about to be delivered. In the movie now being made. In the song just yesterday composed. In the words about to be said by a loved one. In the heart of a new friend about to be made.
“My Truth is in the whisper of the wind, the babble of the brook, the crack of the thunder, the tap of the rain.
“It is the feel of the earth, the fragrance of the lily, the warmth of the sun, the pull of the moon.
“My Truth – and your surest help in time of need – is as awesome as the night sky, and as simply, incontrovertibly, trustful as a baby’s gurgle.
“It is as loud as a pounding heartbeat – and as quiet as a breath taken in unity with Me.
“I will not leave you, I cannot leave you, for you are My creation and My product, My daughter and My son, My purpose and My… ‘Self.’”
—
The above quotation is from the last portion of Neale Donald Walsch’s “Conversations with God, Book 1.” I’m quoting it at length because I think it gives a general idea of what pantheism is all about.
Pantheism is, simply put, the belief that God is everything, or conversely, that everything is God. Of course, some philosophers have pointed out that pantheism is virtually an atheism. To believe that everything is God is to make the idea of “God” profane. If God is immanent (to the universe) and not transcendent, then why use the word “God” at all? The very notion of “God,” they argue, presupposes the idea of “transcendence.” Pantheism, insofar as it denies the transcendence of God, is virtually an atheism.
A reaction on
Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag
Posted in autografitti@yahoogroups.com, August 5, 2003.
—
I can understand the dislike that Sontag has for hermeneuts and their penchant for reducing a work of art into its purported meaning, especially when such meaning is made to appear as esoteric and accessible only to initiates. I’m inclined to think that this is the same dislike that we have for so-called experts, academicians, philosophers, and intellectuals. These personages are supposed to illumine life but most of the time they only succeed in clouding and cluttering it with hot air, pollution and garbage.It is interesting to note that Michel Foucault argued for an “ars erotica” vis-a-vis the “scientia sexualis” in Volume I of The History of Sexuality. Of course, he was not talking about an “erotics of art” but an “art of erotics.” But he, like Sontag, is wary too of hermeneutics and its promise of getting into the “depth of things.” (The truth/meaning of things.)
* Off the top of my head, here is a random list of films I’ve seen and liked/loved:
1 Leolo (probably my all-time favorite; a Canadian film in French)
2 Splash (with Tom Hanks and Daryll Hannah, with a beautiful song – One Fine Day or Love
Came for Me? – by Lee Holdridge and Marvin Hamlisch)
3 Insiang, Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag, and Ora Pro Nobis (Lino Brocka)
4 Kakabakaba ka ba? (Mike de Leon?)
5 Alapaap (Tata Esteban)
6 Groundhog Day (with Bill Murray)
7 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar)
8 Carlito’s Way (with Al Pacino, and the beautiful Penelope Ann Miller)
9 Santa Sangre (Axwl Jodorowsky)
10 The Girl on the Bridge (a French film in black and white)
11 Immortal Beloved
… and many others…
the sequel to “reading with/and understanding”
from autograffiti@yahoogroups.com, may13, 2003
—
Is the concern for a reader/interpreter’s having the “right attitude” tantamount to a so-called “primacy of the reader”?
I don’t think so.
a post in autograffiti, may 9, 2003
I once gave a remark:
“Read and read, until you understand.”
Rather harsh?
But it wasn’t meant to be a slight on anyone’s intelligence. Understanding (a text) is not necessarily premised on one’s intelligence. Tama ba ‘yon?
My point is that you need more than intelligence to be able to read and understand. You need a sympathetic ear, a willingness to “hear” what the other has to “say.” More than intelligence, you have to have the right attitude for a better understanding.
Hermeneuts like Schleiermacher (a hermeneut is one who specializes in the philosophy of understanding/interpretation) began with the presumption that there is always the possibility of MIS-understanding. That is why there is a need for hermeneutics (the art of interpretation).
Gadamer, following Heidegger, turned this around and said that we always already understand. All of us come from a fore-knowledge/fore-understanding of things which become the very basis of any future understanding. In other words, we all have biases and prejudices which determine the way we look at and understand anything in the world.
But lest we say, “Ah, we don’t need to make the effort to understand, anyway we always already understand,” Gadamer didn’t stop there, one’s “prejudices” (literally “pre-judgments”) is corrected by hearkening/listening to the otherness of the text.
That’s why the injunction “to read and read until one understands” is meant for all of us, especially when difficulty in understanding comes.
Reading and understanding is always meant to be a dialogue, a dialectic, a to-and-fro motion between the familiarity of our own assumptions and the strangeness of the otherness of the text.
It is definitely not masturbation.
best regards,
ian
(lovingly dedicated to friends, romans, countrymen, lovers, philosophers, philosophasters, grecophiles, ichtyophiles, insomniacs, amnesiacs, maniacs, dionysiacs, alcoholics, addicts, narcoleptics, lunatics, etc… happy valiant times!)
Athena: Variations on a Theme
I
Deep in the night
I stared into the eyes of an owl
Not finding sleep
I sought love
And tripped on wisdom instead.
II
Deep in the night
Staring into the moonlit eyes of an owl
I fought love
Sought wisdom
And caught sleep instead.
III
Deep in the night
Staring at the moonlight
With the eyes of an owl
I sought, without finding
Sleep, wisdom, love.
- ian lomongo, september 2002
This was my first post in autograffiti@yahoogroups.com. May 6, 2003.
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Hi to everyone!
Thank you for joining Autograffiti.
As mentioned in the invitations you received and the description of the homepage of this new e-group, this is meant for artists and philosophers of all stripes, colors, and kinds.
Why Autograffiti?
Err… For want of a better name? =P
As I was thinking of possible names for the group, the following came up: essais, essaying_the_self, askesis, agon (greek for contest/battle), enkrateia (self-mastery), the_crucible, autography, and others which I now forget.
Where am I coming from?
From the belief that life, philosophy, and the arts are intricately connected. Our struggles to become the good/better/best artists that we can be cannot be divorced from the effort to philosophize. Being an artist necessarily involves creation, and perhaps the greatest artwork in progress that we all have is our very lives.
Thus, you will notice that the names aforementioned are all, in one way or another, connected with the idea of creation/trial/formation of oneself.