Life is a setup

A joke, life is a setup and words just a bunch of syllables, entering the bar, any words, they are all entering a bar. Anything you say, it's a setup. What can this mean? Are these words now, a setup? Well yes. They all have a punch line. They all have a period. They all have a sense of a completed picture. The period is just another word for edge, ending, for -- punchline.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

YOU know who's there. A period, an edge, a sense of closure, a line, a division. 

Life is not just a joke, life is a - good -- joke; these sentences, all, of them,  are funny as heck. For these punchlines---they believe they have an accuracy.  The joke, is that life is nothing like that -- life has no abrupt edges, no sharp parts. Life has no periods. Oh it is -- hilarious. 

Taming wolves

Jan Cox used to laugh at how the media (and policy makers) would tout education as the solution to human ills. This came together for me with something else he said, when I read this etymology of the word 'lyceum.' :

1. A lecture hall or an institution that provides public lectures, discussions, concerts, etc....

From Latin lyceum, from Greek Lykeion, an epithet of Apollo meaning wolf-slayer, from lykos (wolf) which also gave us words such as lupine (like a wolf) and lycanthropy (the delusion of being a wolf). In ancient Greece lyceum was a gymnasium so named because it was near a temple of Apollo. Aristotle established his school here. Earliest documented use: 1579.

'Wolf-slayer' which gave us a glance at human progress, also. 

I just put in the whole thing (from Anu Garg's word newsletter) for fun. What caught my attention was that lyceum comes from a word meaning wolf-slayer. Wolf slayer---that which, let us gloss, subdues the beast, the body. Some have called it 'the red circuit.' The point though is that we have here etymological evidence for the growth of Humanity. That continuous growth which is not perceptible normally within one generation, and for ends we cannot intellectually encompass in totality. We have in the etymology of lyceum a perspective for the growth of the intellect from the more simplistically hormonal body.

So the Greeks saw education as a means of civilizing man, as we do. The interesting thing, though, is how this shows multiple meanings. For while over a short span, the proposal of education is misleading as a solution, in the long run, education IS, part of the growth, the growth of Humanity -- though, and I stress this, my words do not mean the lyceum is an answer, rather part of a mystery to investigate. In this case, and recalling Jan's words, I realized he had two sides of this complexity, because he also mentioned, that morality began when men realized they had to protect their women from other men.  Morality is just another word for education, for slaying the wolf, for human progress. What is a joke viewed from the perspective of the ordinary intellect, is a real gear in a larger and dynamic pattern. There is of course, at least another side, and that is part of the mystery that beckons. 

Notes for a History of Mysticism

The mystical experience, that which as students of Jan Cox know, cannot be discussed, may be likened to the universe's black holes. So critical do the universe's black holes seem, at the center of most galaxies, that I expect any day, to read the physicists contend black holes play a crucial role in the formation of galaxies. They'll figure it out, never suspecting the physical world to be, possibly, and whatever else it is, a mirror of the real.  My words, light, on an event horizon. 

Science Tales

Science Fiction stories may be the fairy tales of our contemporary times. Instead of talking animals and wee folk we now have talking animals and green men. There is a story from the fifties I think, by one of the great sci fi writers, and the plot of the several pages length can be summarized in several sentences. A man finds that bugs are taking over the world. Somehow the spiders jump into the battle on the side of the humans. The narrator of the story talks to the leader of the spiders and asks, who is winning. The spider replies that you will be saved. The man is so relieved that the spider hastily adds, oh I mean, you the species, not you the individual. So all this I knew before I even met Jan Cox. Remembering it of course is the trick. 

A machinery of clouds

Funny to think that the whole edifice of humanity, everything we think and know and kick might be just -- clouds in the sky. Wonderful clouds, oh yes, wonderful clouds. Jan Cox spoke of humanity as a great machine. This of course does not connote that we do or can know ALL the levers and levels of this machine. But it occurred to me that one could make a case that the oil, allowing the gears of this machinery of Humanity, to move, the functionality of motor oil,  might be labeled, in this context : the way we, people, do not even glimpse -- that which we do not know. The machinery depends on ignorance, to continue, to grow; ignorance and ......

A Kind of Survey

If you are walking on a sidewalk, you need to know where the holes are. Holes could be a change of level, like one section of cement shifting a bit. It could be a crack where a truck had an intimate off road adventure. You need to know where the holes are, but you do not walk looking down, that way, you would see nothing. Jan Cox spoke about how people do not look up, as an aspect of mechanical behavior. You must look around, at least internally, as much as possible. That's your best chance to predict, the unpredictable -- sinkhole. Knowing where the holes are is one major distinction between the natural sciences and the mystical. The former do not even see the need to know, where the holes are.  

What the books said---

quoting an AP story By MIKE SCHNEIDER, about a January 29, 2012 traffic incident on I-75, south of Gainesville, Florida: 

 A long line of cars and trucks collided one after another early Sunday on a dark Florida highway so shrouded in haze and smoke that drivers were instantly blinded. At least 10 people were killed.....

Steven R. Camps of Gainesville said he and some friends were driving home several hours before dawn when they were drawn into the pileup.

"You could hear cars hitting each other. People were crying. People were screaming. It was crazy," he said. "If I could give you an idea of what it looked like, I would say it looked like the end of the world.".... Some cars were crushed beneath the heavier trucks.

Reporters who were allowed to view the site saw bodies still inside a burned-out Grand Prix. One tractor-trailer was burned down to its skeleton, 

charred pages of books and magazines in its cargo area. 

And the tires of every vehicle had burned away, leaving only steel belts....

It was not clear when the highway would fully reopen because part of the road melted, police said.....

End quote. 

How could the Mayan calendar be wrong---the world ends every minute. It's an easy prediction.