The Precept of Happy Hour

Time is a circus always packing up and moving away

Numerous happy hours have been spent writing commentaries upon humor and philosophy, the art of writing and the finer arts, but the ageless truths of life, like many of the world's greatest thinkers, have usually been clothed in shabby garments or wild displays of ostentatious attire. This blog is an attempt to supply a tome worthy of those insights and the individuals whose thoughts are the substance of these virtual pages. 

To bring about a coalescence of Beauty, Truth and Humor has been my absolute pleasure, and I hope that the result will produce a positive effect upon the minds of the many readers who have found their way here, and especially those who return. 

Work upon this blog was begun on the 17th of April, 2011, and has continued mostly uninterruptedly for over six years. The last few years other professional activities and personal hobbies occupied my time and my writing waned, but I continue to return, time permitting, for the sake of clarity, for the sheer joy of writing, and for the pleasure of sharing with an audience - which at Google+ Classic's heyday reached an astonishing forty million pageviews. 

Scholars with specificity on the topics herein will immediately note the lack of quotations and references. There is no bibliography nor collections of reference materials upon which to examine the authorities dealing with philosophy and symbolism. Instead my goal was to make accessible the deeper and/or superficial sentiments expressed in abstruse philosphical information, with a rich, visual, or otherwise playful mode of creative expression. Given the one million or so direct pageviews (beyond Google+), arriving via Blogger, I see that my penning and the images chosen to enhance the aesthetic value are working. Not that I would have changed my mode of writing had my blog not received pageviews, but it is nice to know that people appreciate the intuitive sensibilities involved in researching pleasing images, in addition to the independent thinking that serves as the cornerstone of my writing. 

Writing for any extended period of time produces patterns. There are over a thousand articles herein. The patterns produced are aesthetic, playful, philosophical, exploratory, light-hearted, and family-oriented. That tells me to which thought continents my brain travels and the subjects readers find illuminating, enjoyable, or simply visually appealing. 

I make no claim for the infallibility of any statement herein contained, but I do lay claim to most of the originality. As an individual who read over 4000 books by my 30th birthday, I have a lightening-fast ability to digest copious amounts of information and a large working memory. This enables my prolificacy. While there are over a thousand articles posted on HTTF, I have responded to at least three thousand or so sincere notes from people from all around the world, from a variety of diverse backgrounds and cultures. Because I am a professional and maintain a career, I haven't always the luxury of time necessary to respond to all the responses this blog generates, but I do try to incorporate my responses in actual posts, if only to address the topics that people bring to my attention. 

Academically I have studied the complete and also fragmentary writings of the ancients sufficiently to realize that dogmatic utterances concerning any of their tenets are worse than foolhardy. Traditionalism is the curse of modern society, particularly that of academic institutions. While many of the statements contained in this blogesque treatise may appear at first wildly fantastic, I have sincerely endeavored to refrain from haphazard metaphysical speculation, presenting material for pleasure and consideration, and whenever possible, in the spirit of the original authors rather than the letter. 

By assuming responsibility only for the mistakes which may appear herein, I hope to escape the accusation of plagiarism which has been directed against nearly every writer since the beginning of written documents. Having no particular ism of my own to promulgate, I do not try to twist the original concepts to substantiate preconceived notions, but I do tweek it a bit, playfully engaging with or painting doctrines in fresh new packaging in an effort to reconcile the often irreconcilable differences present in what passes for humorous, philosophical thinking, or even sound thinking. 

The entire theory of this blog is that humor is a healthy device for expressing the myriad of human sentiment. Sarcasm is diametrically opposed to my mode of thinking, for this reason the humor contained herein mostly falls into the "laugh-at-life" category - though, I do have a tendency to poke fun at those who market themselves as paths to enlightenment. But that is only because they get on my last nerve with their holier-than-thou "I have the answer for all of you" attitude and self-promulgation. Yes, it is a personal bias. 

Rich as language is in media of expression, it is woefully lacking in terms suitable to the conveyance of abstract philosophical or humorous premises. Therefore, a certain intuitive grasp of the subtler meanings concealed within tales of Pacmanien migration and UFO spotting for fun is necessary therefore to a deeper understanding of what makes people laugh. 

Although a thousand or so of the thinkers I reference are in my own library, I wish to acknowledge gratefully the access given to me by international archival institutions and the collections of private individuals. Without referencing by name those books and or patrons, I have endeavored to do justice by writing in a way that appeals to a very exclusive audience. In this sense a number of my posts are eclectic-sounding. That suits me fine because life itself is a hodgepodge of eclectic experiences, with the familiar ones categorized as personal or subjective. 

The editorial work in this blog is virtually non-existent. I simply don't have time for it. I write from the top of my head and whatever emerges is what you read here. As it is, I have no distinct plans for the point I wish to make herein, other than the knowledge that the Reader's patience grew thin after the first paragraph and maybe only two or three people are still reading, and would be most appreciative if I drew this post to a natural conclusion - which I shall do, soon. 

But not without acknowledging gratefully my daughter to whom I am indebted for many of the articles, which she has read or asked that I read aloud to her. My son is not as interested in his mother's fleeting literary contributions to the world, but will no doubt someday make his way through a few of my favorites; if only because I have stipulated it in my estate that he do so in order to receive his inheritance. [Insert wicked laughter] 

I do sincerely hope that each reader who visits Happy Thoughts Travel Fast, if they read not a single word of the many articles herein, at least read the title. Therein lies my premise that happy thoughts do travel fast. If any of the concepts herein bring additional joy or even illumination, then that is sprinkles upon my already nicely frosted cake. 

The Joys of Outdated Language

Fuddy-duddy

A Fuddy-duddy is a Stick-in-the-mud. A real wanker. For those who have never heard this word uttered in common parlance, it implies that the individual upon whom the label is hoist, is someone very old fashioned, indeed - or, someone who enjoys novel parlance. Of course, if one grew up in a time when this expression was common, say in the 1950s or 1960s, it is more nostalgic than novel. For those born in later years, discovering the word for the first time, it sounds avant-guard. In this way, calling one's parent a fuddy-duddy has a certain appeal, though from the parents' side, not so much. 

Web-surfing 

If you are surprised to see this word appear on a list of outdated language, you probably remember the days when the internet was new. You may still suffer from nightmares from this sound, as you clicked your way around (and waited F O R E V E R  for a page to load in). This was called web-surfing (such as that displayed by this adorable little hamster in brightly colored trunks and sunglasses). Since the internet is no longer considered novel, it does not require its own extreme sports reference. 

The "Dear John" Letter

The "Dear John" letter isn't merely a letter written to a man named John. Despite Nicolas Sparks' revival of the term, this expression was actually coined by Americans in World War II. It was the letter every soldier dreaded; a note from his sweetheart saying their romance was coming to an end. John was the most popular name for boys 1880 through 1923, so whoever coined the phrase clearly gave it some thought. Occasionally a rapper or pop singer might shout out the let-down letter, but that is rare, and usually because they were raised in a multi-generational family, with influences from older relatives. Today the term could be updated to a "Dear Josh text" - or, a simple heartbreak emoji. 

How's tricks? 

The vinyl record (above) by The Jack Bruce Band references the 1950s and '60s expression for, "What's up?" This was an expression uttered by men when they wanted to know what their buddies were "up to" - women did not say it. No doubt this is because of its earlier reference, dating back to the 1930s, or according to some sources, to the beginning of time. In Latin "trick" is tricae, meaning "trifles, toys." You do the math. 

Davenport & Chesterfield 

If you refer to your "sofa" or "couch" as a davenport or chesterfield you're either (1) From England; (2) A parent of a Baby Boomer; (3) An antique dealer. These expressions were popular in the early and mid-20th century, and both are eponyms, chesterfield after the 19th century Earl of Chesterfield (the fourth), who commissioned the first leather sofa, and davenport, after the late 19th century furniture maker Alfred H. Davenport of Boston. Now that you know these words, you might also drop into casual conversation: baccarat crystal & *chippendale furniture. 

Long Distance Call

The advent of mobile phone technology and apps like WhatsApp and WeChat has made "long distance call" a meaningless phrase. If you still have a landline, no matter your excuse - "it's connected to my alarm system" - you've already given away your age. 

VCR and Videotape

Even Millennial Hipsters find this habit hard to break. Watching Little Nemo and Toy Story on "tape" in the 90s and early 2000s makes this nostalgic expression something difficult to let go of. This format is obsolete in a digital world. Simply put, it's time to break the habit. 

Little Black Book

Today's "Little Black Book" is the fact that you have to Bing your way to troubleshooting forums to figure out how to delete a contact from your messenger app. The actual expression pushed up daisies the day smartphones took over. Prior to that, a little black book was an actual paper notebook with names and phone numbers of current and potential dating candidates. One interesting addition to the Chicago History Museum is Playboy magazine powerhouse Hugh Hefner's "little black book" - filled with codes and secret phone numbers. 

Wet Blanket

A wet blanket - named for the very thing that might smother a flame - was an expression previously associated with a concern with decorum or consequences when others were not, putting a "damper" on a party. This expression was used in the 1800s as a verb: "She would often wet-blanket her friend's proposals to swim au naturel." Not to be confused with a wet sock, which is like saying that someone is basically useless, and who probably wouldn't get invited to the party in the first place. If someone calls you a wet blanket, they are a) probably older than your chippendale grandparents' chippendale furniture, and, b) not very nice. 

Making whoopee

As much fun as it might be to say it, making whoopee will raise many eyebrows. It refers to romantic intimacy, and was sprung onto an unsuspecting public in the 1920s by Eddie Cantor's frisky tune, "Makin' Whoopee!" Today the expression is "hook up" - but beware, using this expression may indeed ensure that "makin' whoopee' is the last thing you'll get in return. 

*My sincere apologies for painting the chippendale furniture placed in our weekend get-away condo. I did not particularly resonate with the style at the time, but now have a much grander appreciation for its craftsmanship - and cost! Mea culpa. 

In the beginning there was the stillness. The stillness was boring. There was no cake and no sunshine; there was no traffic, nor loud neighbors. Then one day a big party broke out and a magnificent reverberating brilliant BOOM exploded! Naturally, the stillness, which had no form, looked toward the giant radiant boom, which was not unlike a sun on fire. And like binge watching a television series on Netflix, the stillness was sucked into the drama, into which it dove head first. But the stillness still remembered the quietude. Not wishing to return anytime soon to the boringness, the stillness eventually sought out springtime, a charming refuge. Spring accepted its presence and said: “If you want to hang out with nature, you have to do your part.” So, the stillness got to work, watering plants and trees and shrubs; or, rather, dumping a big bucket of ice on them, hoping that over time it would melt, providing a continuous watering, while the Stillness, now alert, explored other exciting locations in the garden. 

The stillness felt honored to explore the garden, which it approached carefully out of naturally inclined respect. Home for the stillness was just a reference point. The stillness was fascinated by the popping up of daisies and other lovelies, the word it used to describe all of nature’s unfolding. It was not so fixated on from whence or why they came into being, but rather on the delightful fact that they existed.

The stillness had no fraternity to perpetuate, no doctrine to teach. But it did have a preference for pleasure. Pleasure inspired solidarity. With the growth of social consciousness, the stillness became custodian of nature’s concepts. There were no initiation rites to inspire veneration for anything other than enjoyment and appreciation. There was admiration for all existence, but not as a literal or elaborate theory or legendry. 

Other beings tamed nature for their own purpose, inspiring scholars, sages, and poets to flourish. Each grew in comprehension of a specific direction, which they called truth. They associated with men and women bound together by oaths and obligations, and into their own fraternities bore witness to those ideas that perpetuate concepts they considered good. 

Each being found itself in one location or another. From this space a unique comprehension of truth blossomed, and with it knowledge as a responsibility to the whole; or, an opportunity for personal ambitions to advance; or, both. Flowers rose above foliage, bushes rose over ground, trees hovered high, atmosphere reached further, and conditions flowed through it all. The proverbial fire and its potent latent abilities was discovered, and so, came into conscious communication with the land. 

Initiates of these early societies came to be regarded as possessing extraordinary faculties and powers. They enjoyed the special favor of those who gazed toward the domain in which they dwelt. New knowledge inspired a duality between nature, as a starting point, and the other places further afield. But scholarship was always the means, never the end. 

The end of scholarship was the contemplation of the abstraction. A latent desire to explore the garden without impediment. To receive within itself the light of vast truths. Some were naturally suited for such learning for they possessed the integrity of motive, the patience of effort, and the vision of ends - they labored toward their own improvement, and championed translucent progress above other considerations. Those of different opinion favored their unique time/place/location. 

And so it was inevitable that the initiates of what would later be called Mysteries should unite themselves against that which tainted their unique luminosity. Be it more or less openly in society, or privately, in secret, men and women continued to explore multitudes of directional thought. Some thoughts passed from public view, while others faded and reemerged. This circumstance was not a decline of plan or purpose. 

The world of discovery remains as a powerful force for the creation of human institutions, be them public or private. Those who do not concern themselves with the domain of intuitive metaphysical judgment question the use of symbols, myths, and figures employed to conceal essential explanation. Like Aristophanes’ Clouds, these concepts and symbols merely lampoon intellectual fashions. Rarely are clouds part of any original doctrine. They are put there to softly protect the entrance to a given journey, made necessary by intolerance and bias. The use of indirect communication was entirely practical. To remain unknown or unspoken was the best way to divert disaster. With soft, fluffy clouds, esoteric arcana was concealed. Clouds were not meant to inspire ignorance, but to protect generations of wisdom garnered from traveling along a specific thought trajectory. 

Discipleship ends in the attainment of an inner capacity suitable for the realization of the fullness of a given trajectory. The disciples, by harnessing conscious awareness, embrace practical mastery, putting it to proper use in relation to the given space. 

At various times scholars came together to form academies, where they imparted scientific, intellectual, ethical or cultural doctrines. The initiates of this tradition were not necessarily regarded as brilliant intellectuals, but rather honored individuals practicing higher dimensions of knowledge they considered essential. History preserves the records of numerous persons, from different ages and places, who exhibited knowledge and skill which cannot be explained according to today’s erudition. We can reject, but we cannot ignore entirely the testimonies of Pythagoras or Buddha. Many of the most noblest members of our planet’s history have expressed their profound admiration for figures such as Mother Theresa or Gandhi. Not to recognize a specific esoteric teaching, but in recognition of their contribution to the advancement and improvement of the human state. 

Adeptness is a state of maturity so far as this is possible. Deficient in nothing necessary to a life spent in a specific direction, the adept individual is capable of determining a course of personal action most likely to contribute to their own elucidation. This state inspires a full release of learned faculties and powers. Accordingly, these individuals align with global solidarity, as citizens of a larger invisible empire of the philosophical elect, the custodians and protectors of nature and its offspring: humanity. They are considered true educators and illuminators. Their expression is powerful, creative and direct. 

Others study these individuals, systematically notating thoughts and actions into a system or method, which later becomes a science. It is the art of living, the finest of the arts. Here truth-seekers gravitate. Willing to accept the sovereignty of the eternal over the temporal, they dedicate themselves to the mastery of a given science, mythology, or concept. This body of knowledge becomes their tradition. The institutions that perpetuate these traditions are their schools, and the graduates are their disciples or practitioners. 

As for the stillness, it discovered Spotify and was never heard from again ... 

Jamaica 🇯🇲 Time ⏰

 

Jamaica had its own ideas about how a day should go… 

I could start the morning believing I knew where I was headed, then find myself halfway through the day following somebody’s recommendation for food, music, a beach, or a place that was “right nearby” in the most generous possible sense of the word. Nobody seemed worried about the time. The clock, in fact, appeared to have been politely removed from the conversation.

That suited me just fine. 

The island was bright, hot, loud, colorful, and completely committed to being itself. Nothing felt halfhearted. The sun came down with purpose. The water looked pristine in its beauty. The trees grew as though they had been told there was a prize 🏆 for growing the tallest. Somewhere, music was always playing, and even when I could not see where it was coming from, it made perfect sense that the air had decided to provide a soundtrack.

Travel does something useful to me. It shakes loose the part of my brain that thinks routine is reality. 🧳 

At home, a day can become crowded with errands, calls, deadlines, and all the little things that arrive wearing very serious faces. 

In Jamaica, the same day starts paying attention to who is laughing nearby, where the road bends, what smells good, whether the water is warm, and how long lunch can reasonably last before becoming dinner.

The answer, apparently, is quite a while.

I also loved how quickly strangers became part of the day. A conversation could begin with directions and end with a story. A recommendation could turn into an adventure. Somebody always knew the best place for something, and they usually delivered this information with such confidence that it would have been disrespectful not to investigate. 👀

Looking at this photograph now, I remember the feeling more than the details. I remember being happy, curious, sun-warmed, and ready to see what happened next. I remember how easy it felt to let the day unfold without forcing it into shape.

That may be what Jamaica gave me. A reminder that a good day does not always need to be managed. Sometimes it needs to be entered.

And in my case: with sunscreen.🧴 

An Ode to the Romans of Decadence

Romans in the Decadence of the Empire, 1847

Thomas Couture

The Spirit of Decadence 

It is natural to dream of ascent toward the Heavens, in which the noble soul ascends by means of the "noble" ... winged horses ... of the gods ... soaring upward, as is the rule of the universe. 

Our imagination working like the light of the sun on Icarus's wings ... we droop in our flight and at last settle on solid ground, but this descent to earth is an imaginative eidos, essential in the sense of "essence" and also as an idealization of other worlds. 

Here is our "heaven" ... the pastoral retreat, the ideal Republic, the Golden Age. 

Necessarily imagined as departures from other worldly experiences to higher spheres or manifest spheres in the absence of matter. The essential and the accidental are mixed in formal concepts like objects of logic and a whole series of conditions that essence reveals. 

Above and beyond the intuition, "essences" concern their conditions into existence. The pursuit of essences involves the consideration of paradoxical instincts in the notion of ideality of all, the cosmic symphony. 

It is no wonder the Romans were so decadent 

The Devolution 

In an acceptance of the conditions of earth, the sensual and intellectual possibilities of life and poetry, the possibility of transcending, of touching another human being, and of letting go of time-bound existence, death, and the limits knowing enables, an essential condition of being becomes "event" ... 

In extremis the affirmation occurs in a world proud and strong and also in the withdrawal to stellar pallor. To touch this poverty is to know autumnal space between words complete and essential to being on earth, and touching that which one is and which one is not. 

Vivid expressions of the conditions of earth's aesthetics mirror divine harmonies. Historically, or mythically, the descent plummets "essence" to earth. Exalted images of floods of white that burst from the clouds and the winds that blew life forth contort strength around the sky, until it swoops down in a notable fall. 

Here the world becomes noble even in its raucous sociability, as in Couture's Romans ... the poet is the earth's metaphysician in the dark, twanging a wiry string that gives Sound to passing rightnesses, the noises of Shakespeare and the sweet airs of New Caledonia that give delight and hurt not. Humming in our ears is an echo of instruments chosen as analogies to the modern mindset, arguing only with analogy and historical influence. 

The ideas alternate in movements toward heaven and earth and accessible in the light of eidos, without need for explanation, is the idea of the depreciated concept of being human, an essential element in Shakespeare's many plays. Pointing to our earthiness and our experiences of noises we create the accompaniment: 

The music

The Meditative of Earth

Our experience of earth's noises confuses and fuses our senses into what is natural and what is created and plays onward toward that which we create and that by which we are eluded. Beings are subjective and objective, internal and external. Self identity expresses earth's many harmonies and is experienced as "rightness" by both poet and actor. 

The impulse to soar, to rise above idealized otherness, is implicit in those that neglect worldly ends. Dedicated to closeness with the notion of "the One" in a perceived betterment of an already perfect existence is the mind, the dukedom's library large enough to fit legions of civilizations hoist one upon the other in a never ending symphony of ideas and tragedies. 

Our commonwealth is the knowledge that this is a shared experience. No need for magistrate, no riches, no poverty, no service, no occupation, no idleness and no purity or innocence. This is the dream of the golden age, of excelling and excellence giving way to delight and sensation. 

The primordial is antithetical to the ordered, controlled state of Plato. Rome rests comfortably and fruitfully in earthly harmony. The imposition of control and discipline in such a world cedes, and the scene is abandoned to its "natural" state, which is bountiful and providing. 

The decadent splendor

The Idyllic Pastoral 

The Platonic world of Ideas are reflected in common earthly realizations that rise upward toward the ideal, a soaring architecture of symbolic perfection realized in the social design of the city state. With the ascendancy raised to the forefront of our aspirations, the eternally true and geometric supreme, these essential exaltations of the ideal of humanity and of human nature in relation to the supreme world contribute to our education under Prospero's tutelage. In it we recognize a Platonian anamnesis: that the dream of the ideal is humanity's gift to itself. 

Humanity sees itself mirrored for the first time in the other's company, and after having intuitively recognized other as divine, declares 

"How beauteous mankind is! 

O brave new world

That has such people in't!" 

The Antithesis 

The insensate brute, paradoxically brutish and aesthetic. The clanging of a thousand pots and pans. The brute cannot hear the sounds of sweet air, the noises of earth instead imbue him with an unnatural strength, which he presents and supplants with impulse. 

When the brute sleeps, the natural world manifests a benevolent and generative appreciation of quietude, though his voracity hums like an aching wanton buzz. When awake it twangs, refuting and disappreciating the ennobling instinct, though he joins it in a paradoxical essence, such as in The Tempest. 

Inherent in this worldly brutish experience is a human recognizing experiences sympathetic to force and desire, both central to existence. Martin Heidegger's earthly path, a felicitous way of being human. 

Linking discordant or opposing impulses appears oxymoronic, a pitying of Prospero and Miranda in a "loving wrong" or "sacred orgy" of the Bacchantes, destructive as it is restorative. 

Pentheus's craving for a voyeur's watch is ripe in the imagery which is titillating and scandalous. Tales of ecstasies permeate and serve Aphrodite rather than any new god. Teiresias warns him from above, hand outstretched against villainous pestilence, but Pentheus cares not for wholesome remains. 

Revelry from which no good comes 

The Miracles

Women perform miracles in the natural world, causing milk, wine, water, and honey to rise from the earth. The messengers of surreality's effects, but also of their activities, until interrupted by intruders, including the ethical, law-abiding, faithfully devout and dutiful. Blame against idyllic and harmonious with nature-like activities drunk in abandonment taunt the righteous and in fierce opposition in the name of that which is praiseworthy they place judgment. 

Gratifying their lusts alone amid the woods, by wine and soft flute-music maddened, but resting on the ground, flung carelessly, they discover modesty. 

The new view of woman is echoed in the Golden Age, innocent and pure. Woman's idleness, unlike man's, is a reassurance of her virtuosity. What she hears is beauty, springing up from a strange, fair array of ordered ranks: a miracle of discipline to behold / a wondrous sight of grace and modesty. 

The messenger of miracles assures Pentheus that if he could see her honor god himself would appear and in his arrival grant him eternal and everlasting joy and the flowing of heaven's eternal bliss. 

Honoring the gods Penthesus aligns with righteousness and the brute, though terrifying in his subsequent deeds, does all in the name of this new and blessed state, in harmony as a group and at one with the notion of nature. 

In repose ...

The Transformation 

The character is transformed akin to the music of the spheres, the rise to heaven, the ennobled escape from the environs of earth, its boisterous noise, its danger, and its darkness. The music of Bacchantes, in its raucous affinity with earth, rises up. 

In the opening stasimon, the Chorus sings, not of the elevated image of the individual ego characterized by Pentheus in his arrogance, self-aggrandizement, self-assurance and certainty of things, but in the virtue of love, participation, and community - the highest dance of Dionysus and his followers, accompanied by the deep heartbeat of the drums and thunderous-kneeling of timbrels. 

The sound of the booming drums symbolize the "win" of victory, the maddening and ecstatic Satyr-band, winning favor from the mother-goddess for their participation in the festivities. Having been appropriated, the most unrefined of creatures are sweet in their crying breaths and Phrygian flutes. All dance at her festival. 

To snare the nimble marmoset

The Exalted World 

The idea of an exalted world is attached to the architecture of the city, represented in the painting. It is the city Pentheus rules. His sense of rightness and privilege essential to the protective and benevolent social design that is mimetic of cosmic logos. The duplication of ideal reality in the state. Plato's Republic is implicit in the painting's attitude of superiority and control as a safe harbor, even for chaos. 

The Dionysian principle literally demolishes and burns the palace in a fiery ecstasy, bringing it crashing down as the archangel pulls at Teiresias's robes (far right). The release of the sacred into this world is not an event of justice and order but a renewal of earth's power, the reaffirmation of earthly truth in the face of Cosmos, who asks "What is wisdom?" 

Man concludes that wisdom is found in he whose life day by day is happy and blessed: "Happy is he whose bliss from day to day doth grow". To accept being on the earth is to accept that which suffices in the essence's remembrance of joy, heard in mortal music. 

Echoed in a finite sky

The Affirmation 

The earth fosters a presence as sweet as noise, a counter- but also an alter-beauty, and the twang and drum noise of the Satyrs, with their raucous harmony. Not mere cacophony, nor meaningless sound, but truth: essential as the structures idealized in the painting, represented in the aboveness of the expansive sky and the belowness of the bacchanal scene. 

The primal truths speak like essence in self-discovery. The gaining of purity and an exactitude of knowledge in a recovery of purity and innocence. It is the return to the world that retains its virtú. 

If one must again become ignorant by the death of Phoebus and the death of the one god, then one must mirror the death of all, the certitude that is the ending of life. The first idea - and the last. 

This notion is not presumed escapable, even to childlike innocence. The past idealized condition makes way for disciplined achievement from pure perception: the new understanding. The precise awakening of knowledge not in ideas but about the thing itself - it's authenticity. 

Birds with their scrawny cries, appropriate to the earth, precede the choir and part of their knowledge becomes the earth's new reality. There is no romanticizing here. The past pays attention to the present in the concreteness of life while intentionality yields only to originality. 

Where art reveals

Nature's lack of design

The Drama 

The Romans reemerge, falsified and previously impoverished by the naturalistic tendencies of their time, only to overflow the world with nature, recapturing the contours and richness that life in its abundance deems interesting and boring, useful and useless, beautiful and ugly, ridiculous and anguishing.

The world of our time unlike in the painting has moved toward its center. Our time's naturalistic tendencies are countered by the noise a recovering world, the idealized image of beauty, the "desired," and those reborn Romans who recline in the warm basking temperatures of heaven, sleek in their natural nakedness.

Modern society attends the tranquil pastoral scene with wit and with intelligible twittering that substitutes for intelligible thought. Like the unpromising thickness of the Romans' robes, human thought, human language, and the accomplishment of regaining or reconstituting the world is exalted into what Levinas calls an

"Overflow of Nature" 

The New Generation 

The new generations currently populating the earth hear their own music and in response and participation, opposing Plato's view of the depreciative artist echoing braying asses and crowing cocks (noises of an inferior and contrary nature, sound effects of earth's crackles, moans and groans), share the assonance and dissonance of earth as an entity with its own justified and justifying music.

A capable human voice is but a mirror of earth's sound. Attuned to the creatures of earth, the sounds of the planet are echoed in ancient instruments and modern ones, too.

Distant cries of the sea-nymphs announce that the sea is changing. Revelers hear them and their companions create a religion of wine and worthy earthly sustenance to adore the unfolding. Untamed beasts are left to run wild. Trees adorned to press, the cries of nature's elite, a dance in unison for the Dionysus of the mountain top toward which the adventurous brazenly trek.

In response the hills are thrilled and join in bacchic worship. The devolvement is the newest voice of nature exalted into Earth Day, simultaneously elevating the language of Pentheus, who ostentatiously identifies his superiority as evident of his lineage: he is Pentheus, son of Agaue and Echion.

Par excellence among the newer tribes of pantomimic imitators is the high-toned, those jovial singers ode'ing to the spheres. The poetry of their verbal exuberance representing the onomatopoeic sound effects vital in their engendering of the world. The only satisfactory human existence is now imbued with that which has been undermined and overcome.

Perfection in the dream of Saints

The Renewal 

This condition establishes a necessary renewal or retrieval from one generation to the next. In the imagination of the ultimate horizon of being, beyond the last thought, the image of Rome's decadence reappears in the bird's song. Knowledge and happiness are placed as heroic icons with the human as center of the universe, among the gods. The abstracting power of the intellect makes this possible.

The bird's song has no human equivalent. It is in and of itself complete. The appearance of the winged creature on the horizon represents the transcendence of thought. Identifying with its essence humanity understands the essentiality of being human. This makes one happy or unhappy.

To know is not the reason.

The bird's feathers swoop down and then extend upward toward the fire-fangled cosmos. The effect is heard among the multitude of diverse voices expressing a mimesis of that which is considered an essentiality of becoming a fully realized human.

A richer experience

A finer susceptibility

A newer mode of thought,

acts or passions

The Notion of Truth 

The notion of truth makes us happy. Delight and sense sing of springtime while poems end in the imposing thickness of winter's austere hand. Both sing puissantly. Echoes of past songs are ransom for Willow's rebirth.

The ultimate meaningfulness negotiates regions of the earth and of the human psyche, from which the philosopher rises ambulatorily, joining in the song that is not primordially a logic of language but of the extravagance of the mind's intelligible twittering.

Together with the poet the philosopher participates in the transforming, transmogrifying celebrant appropriate to exalted worlds. Pentheus's image of himself takes center stage, and declares twice:

"O brave new world!"

The Comic and the Imp

Befittingly becomes comic, even grotesque. Opposed to the heroic stands comedy, natures balancing act. King Pentheus produces pictures of aged men dancing, paradoxically, the youthful dance of age. There is something foolish in the avowal that one should tire in old age, and remain repose all day and night long, striking the earth with nothing but a cane or walking stick.

Forgetting joy in age is the first assurance that one is old. Feeling young enough to dance is joy in costume, comedy in errors, arrivals in departure. The ridiculous trappings and their linking arms shame the modesty of grey hairs so sense-bereft. The only senility is shame.

Delivering a lecture in metaphoric pentameter, the Comic reveals Dionysus's truth and power. Teiresias warns Pentheus not to deem himself wise, nor laugh in scorn ... but instead to wreathe his head in leaves, grasses, flowers and branches to dance with Ivy.

Comedy is indignant, scoffing at its appearance, clad in dappled and worn-torn cloth. Greybeard cannot dance but at the same time he knows he must. Attuned to the forces of earth unleashed he seeks tribute to youthful celebrants found only in nature's imps. His reawakening is because he "must".

The grotesqueness of this image is repeated in the beast with four legs, under the cloak. It is Rome's only animal shape. Referred to as fish and monster, sometimes as both or amphibious: half a fish and half a monster. But this monstrous image is compounded by union with the Imp.

In a frenzied fright he lies with her wondering whether he is a man or a fish, and, as the storm approaches, decides to creep under his gaberdine, an action making for strange bedfellows.

Pleas for mercy are sung to the Imp in a most delicate and monstrous manner, to heal the monster she pours wine into its mouth and into her own. The comic antics of these types reiterate the comic figure that Pentheus and Teiresias make together, and the depreciation, like that of old men, brings them close to the mouth of earth.

Society declares the Comic not the victor but the fool, reassuring him that the noises and sweet airs of the Imp's voice are attuned to the intelligible twittering of birds, and when he protests, it is said that the two are one in the same in their absurdness.

But it matters not in this moment ... because the Comic also brings release. His voice grows ever mellifluous in appealing to his new Imp's senses. Mimetic in his stuttered song about his new freedom. He has a new master and he bows before her only.

Eternity, Fidelity, Affection

The New Poetry 

The Comic's ode becomes the poetry of positivity, of, "here and there, an old sailor / Drunk and asleep in his boots no more" ... he who catches tigers in red weather and the grotesqueness of his old figure stripped of illusory decrepitude in favor of virile robustness. A new nobility in poetic ennoblement. 

Imps delight in their fortune's twists of fate and the image of ourselves overcoming our demons paints a picture of nakedness newly clothed. The monster is to myself as two things are together as one. The self as Comic and Imp singing the heroic image of bearded bronze just because the singer must. 

Yet another form of renewal essential for the interdependence of those expressions embedded in the time and place of our collective being and becoming. The loss of despair the greatest beauty and clearest distinction between life and the premature death of living. 

The desire to go and see and explore the garden

The Scene is Set

What is repeated in the script is now only a souvenir. Life learned the speech of place and time and in it saw the face of the people reflected in war and that which suffices for peace. Poetry is once again ablaze, constructing a new stage upon which the world, a theater, in its construction of self exists. 

The intricate elicitings of language and being in the most delicates ear produces a meditation of satisfaction. The scene transcends, as Aristotle would argue into a new reality. Like the aged man whose intellectual gymnastics mesmerize an Imp, life is again an intrinsic image of contorted and contorting, the "eccentric" and the elemental participant in a decomposition and consequent fertility of earth. 

Yet the worm wins

The Worm-Poet is Speaking 

The worm battles with the Chieftan while the chicken clucks in a carefully construction illusion of himself as a ten-foot dinosaur among inchlings. The worm in its pretentiousness enlarges and exalts himself, creating an illusion of himself consistent with the exalted illusions of humanity's splendor. A laughable illusion crying in defiance to uncertainty. 

Affirming the inchling is smaller than he, the worm inches his way along the earth and aligns himself in the philosophy of being a comically diminutive worm-poet who makes fun of the world in which he performs. His "fear not" and his "all is well" transform his shape and the metamorphosis that occurs, orchestrated by the universe, that remarkable protean composer, and enables us to see that he is affinity expressing capability held in form. 

Now, that's a mouthful. 

The worm-poet knows that "he" and "it" are as inseparable as performance and activity. He might as a matter of taste prefer one over the other. So long as he does not exalt one and deny the other, taste is only a matter of taste, and also of being there and there-being. 

Such versatility from a worm-poet enamors the world and in their own bodily metamorphosis which produces mimicked sounds they shift the quality of the comic further toward the grotesque as they raise the Worm to Heaven's Gate. 

The worm-poet looks down upon the world and sees nothing but the idea of beauty. Instead of joyous experience relishing in itself judgment enters, which is an experience in itself. Being a worm the worm-poet knows that a decomposed object can be reconstructed as beauty, and that putting something back together is a metamorphosis. Conserving, preserving, restoring and reanimating for an audience a metamorphic act. 

The worm-poet creeps along the fallen jugs of wine in search of ideal-forms of distortion while composing his next ode. 

Here are their lips

one by one

the bundles of bodies

and the feet

The Eccentric 

The eccentric enters with her noisy distortion of standard form. Squawky sounds and high-tones in opposition to Poetry. Squiggling like saxophones, the Eccentric appears in devolutions. In doing so the "essences" are being retrieved, or discovered, made or found. 

Reconstruction of the awareness of need is awakened in the world, and in the idea of a fruitful earth, a world of belonging and possibility is realized. The worm-poet shares this impulse with the Eccentric, and both echo the Dionysian celebrants of a "new" religion, the religion of authenticity. 

Found here are those who preserve a recalcitrance to being uplifted by anything but their own bootstraps. Like Pentheus's Apollonian architecture, the Eccentric believes it is language that causes rebellion against civilizing. And in a rebellious tone she abdicates authority admitting her own thing of darkness and lightness. 

Essentially the world idealizes the blessed rage of order, as identifiable as it is elusive. A place of books and imposing high-minded values, provocative to balance against a paradoxical acceptance of earth as human beings cede to mother nature. The immanent image of nobility plunges to the ground. If transformation is to occur, the flower is to take the place of Narcissus's corpse. 

The forces of the earth, the danger and destruction, the withdrawal into darkness, the comic and the grotesque, regenerate in the losing of temporal power and beauty. The year ends. Spring has not yet come. Without renewal presence in the eccentric is absent.

While Orpheus plays the leading role

Spring Comes Forth

The music of the earth once again echoes across time. A new season opens with the pervasiveness of the paradoxical grounded in impish thought provoking monstrous appetites. The sense of dismay is replaced with childhood's harmony while nature while glory has passed away. 

Spring is the dialogues of business, of love, and of strife to which honeybees affix their tongues. Solitude is replaced with earthly delights and the tale repeats itself again. 

We return full circle to the blessedness that comes with knowledge and the belonging that comes with an earthly domain. The perpetual benediction sings sweet songs of thanks and praise for the achieved awareness of a previously obstinate questioning. 

Sense and outward things fall and vanish and that divine purpose, insomuch as it is intuited by humanity, necessitates an acceptance and identification with the meekest of flowers whose petals are also blown about by the wind. 

For one final instance we can trace the earths twists and turns in Couture's painting pressed down upon the canvas of the earth, and thereon setting our sights anew, pulling them in a lavishly upward direction toward an unattainable impulse. 

The Roman desire to apprehend cosmic design is dripping with spring in this painting which reflects a total sky without defect. The ephemerality of the frenzy appears as a pool of flowers, brief as they were, eternal as they are. 

The contingency of things in nature is not to be lamented but rather to be celebrated. The essence of being, in the progress of this ode, is from the pleasures of youth, and the sweetness and beauty that gratify because they satisfy the need for "ache" and they "sting" ... it is for a mature appreciation of only the most powerful of pleasures and pains of the senses, and aims to satisfy a craving for both with the stain of honey and of tears. 

The worm-poet becomes a moth while the poet transforms him into a butterfly. He flies alongside the winds of the cosmos, humanizing nature with his song. The old men in Euripides's play delight in their Bacchantes.  The birds sing and the lions are tamed. 

Apollo takes measure and smiles

A Curmudgeon and a Termagant Walk Into A Bar

Termagant: O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipp'd for not associating me with being a true vixen.

Crumudgeon: Swear thou art honest, Vixen! Heaven doth truly know thou art falsity jostling others for dominance, with brute power the final factor of your raging encounter.

T: It is the very error of your moon that brings you nearer to a state of lament, where you will most assuredly find your incredulous thinking!

C: Command you not of governing cosmic peculiarities. We lay traps for the likes of you.

T: Those may be your final words. 

Why have you grievance with me, surely the question of your own motivation is sufficient without quirk or injury to my blessed tragedy.

C: I refuse to be drawn into your inquiries. I shall remain steadfast to my impenetrable resolve.

T: So striking it is that you invite it here for examination?

C: Don't try to inquire further! Be content with the knowledge you have. 

T: Tush, never tell me. Mock me not. Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong. As proofs holy writ. 

C: As prime as goats or hot as monkeys! 

T: Just order the scotch, already.

A Fish in Love

I never met a metaphor I didn't like. Not only is this fish out of water, but it is riding a penny-farthing. Of fishes, Lynda Barry wrote:

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke. 

Dr. Mardy Grothe, a very clever and witty writer and author of treasures for the intellectually insatiable, wrote about the 1995 novel Corelli's Mandolin, where Louis de Bernieres tells the story of Pelagia Iannis, a young beauty who lives with her physician father on the small Greek island of Cephalonia. When the island is overtaken by Italian troops in the early days of World War II, Dr. Iannis and his daughter are forced to billet the officer in command, Captain Antonio Correlli, in their house. Corelli is a handsome and cultured man who always travels with his prized mandolin. His passion for music is matched by a disdain for military life, which he demonstrates by replying "Heil Puccini" whenever he is offered the Nazi greeting "Heil Hitler." The beautiful Pelagia soon falls for Corelli, even though she is betrothed to a young Greek fisherman who has left to fight in the war. The developing love affair gravely concerns her father, who sits her down one day and says:

Love is a kind of dementia

with very precise and oft-repeated

clinical symptoms.

After ticking off some of the "symptoms" that he has observed in the young lovers, Dr. Iannis launches into an extended analogy. 

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body ...

That is just being "in love," which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew toward each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we found that we were one tree and not two.

Ambrose Bierce wrote: Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. 

Returning to Dr. Iannis' lecture to his daughter, this is where Mardy and I take a divergent path. It is the path of awareness. Dr. Iannis speaks from his perspective, which is conventional love. Living in society this is perhaps one of the easiest loves to have. It is intimate and personal, but it is also illusory when two people deny their essence in the name of pragmatism or even altruism. If it is the first, it may be more authentic, with two individuals living in earnest. These are the people who claim to have met their soulmate. Another person with whom they are naturally inclined, with both sharing the preference for and ability to sustain a long lasting love affair. But if one is secretly languishing, denial and resentment can arise. These sentiments are formidable even for a well balanced mind, and require higher faculties to escape. These are the willingly chosen ideals that result in a very rich and creative inner reality - sometimes turning one into a phenomenologist. 

Although the sentence: "I never met a phenomenologist I didn't like" doesn't have the same ring as "I never met a metaphor I didn't like" - even if one could argue the structure renders these two concepts categorically equal. 

The next category is love for convenience. History and literature are filled with woeful unrequited ultimately loveless tales of this nature. When we read these stories, we feel instantaneous "compassion" and "anguish" for the main characters, those pour suffering souls living in secret torment, under the spell of insatiable love or the hope thereof. 

If this happens to a flat character, usually a fortunate or unfortunate impetus occurs, and the person follows an almost predestined path back to their senses or a more "suitable" suitor. Either that or the author kills them off creatively. 

If forbidden love happens to a dynamic character, a journey or odyssey begins. These characters are the Odysseuses of the world whom wanton readers will follow, sometimes to the scaffold. Where despite innate trembling imagine their hero or heroine (Joan of Arc, for example) step upon the scaffold with nothing but dignity and grace. Like Marie Antoinette and probably Anne Boleyn, they take one final breath, gaze up upon the morning sky, and let go of enough inner pretense to accept the harsh hand of fate. Their true natural eliteness (not elitistness) will not allow them to superimpose their ideals upon another, so their final word is conciliatory. If nothing happens that requires one final courtesy, such as apologizing for tripping over the executioner's foot; then their deepest hope and faithful desire is their last steadfast thought. In a single helplessly beautiful heroic act, they free their heart from their body, close their eyes, and wait. 

This is just one of many death scenes that history has imposed on some of its most dynamic characters. It is the tragic fate of those unyielding souls who can hear the sun set between perfect action in accordance with self and perfect action in accordance with other. 

Folklore describes these beings as cursed or solitary in nature, and in many ways they are. They may become beloved orators, steadfast to the great potential in every conceivable landscape. They are often educated by the best teachers of the day, but their autodidactical approach to living will seek knowledge from every conceivable source. 

Some are born into old and respectable families, others arrive into states of chaos. Most all turn to some form of writing or the arts, or toward physical experiences that are all-encompassing. Ultimately they set their sights on love and amorous intrigue. If the dynamics of love are not present in such a captivating way, they channel desire elsewhere. Devouring a sophisticated and pleasure-seeking society in perfectly unique ways that speak to them. They may be popular or unknown, but others are not necessarily unknown to them. 

Venus and Adonis - Abraham Bloemaert (Dutch, 1566 - 1651)
The Statens Museum for Kunst

Ovid was married three times, finally finding contentment in his third marriage. His first two marriages were short-lived and not particularly harmonious, giving special relevance to a line that appeared in the Art of Love: 

Love is a kind of warfare

Our penny-farthing riding fish out of water picks up the shattered pieces of Odyssey's heart and turns and twists them into metaphors or historical remedies, reminding us that Ovid was one of the first in history to say that love is war, a more powerful concept exposing the weakness of character behind Dr. Iannis'  love is a mental illness.

The timid would stop here, but a more insatiable being would ask: 

What about fire? 

That ancient flame - the flame of love - has been a central theme in world literature. In The Divine Comedy, Dante used the metaphor to suggest that a great passion can spring from a modest beginning: 

A great flame follows a little spark.

In Guardians of the Galaxy, baby Groot is ever more adorable and irresistible because he has the heart of Groot inside. In the seventeenth century, an English proverb commonly attributed to English cleric Jeremy Taylor continued the theme and became one of history's most popular observations: 

Love is a friendship set on fire 

Lord Byron saw love as a kind of celestial fire, calling it "a light from heaven, a spark of that immortal fire." Honoré de Balzac wrote that "Love is like the devil," adding "Whom it has in its clutches it surrounds with flames." 

Of One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Chicago Tribune Book World described García Márquez as taking one into a dream, where the reader emerges with their mind on fire. Not as twisted as Nabokov's enormous appetite and imagination, nor his fatalism either. Like rum calentano, these stories go down easily, leaving a rich, sweet burning flavor behind. 

If only it would stay gone. 

But it doesn't. 

It returns.

Again and again, fecund, savage and irresistible. 

In the words of Maya Angelou: 

Love is like a virus. 

It can happen to anybody at any time.

It may be a gift we give ourselves, it may be designed to catch a heart like a fish, it may be Anouilh's "one arch-enemy" ... it may be instinct, a way to find the way to one's own heart, or it may be a feeble insect in search of its next flower, with an innate will that nothing can dismay nor turn aside (Honoré de Balzac). It may be Nature's fairest gem or an exploding cigar. It may be a flowing wine held in existence or the wild card of existence. It may be wrapped or bare, savage or barbarous, dark, or so primal it purges vanity and leaves one with no other choice but to yield, if only to drag oneself from its torturous grasp. 

It may be fiction or reality or history. It may be the promise of an alliance of friendship taunted by lust. It may become pliable and overly yielding, or die of starvation. Whatever it is, love is a passion exalted and refined, gross and sensual. It is friendship set to music and the foundation of all civilization. 

It is an ocean of emotions, surrounded by apologies and personal expenses. For some it could prove to be more painful that being alive, a perpetual, relentless aching wound. Love is every ode willingly ascribed to it.

Of all it is and all it is not, love is always one thing above all else: Spelled correctly.