Nasruddin and the Banquet

One day Nasruddin went to a banquet. As he was dressed rather shabbily, no one let him in. So he ran home, put on his best robe and fur coat and returned. Immediately, the host came over, greeted him and ushered him to the head of an elaborate banquet table. When the food was served, Nasruddin took some soup with spoon and pushed it to the his fur coat and said,

"Eat my fur coat, eat! It's obvious that you're the real guest of honor today, not me!"

Film Recommendations

Movies to see (in arbitary order):

1. The Double Life of Veronica
2. The Wreckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr)
3. The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky)
4. Sans Soleil (Chris Marker) / La Jettee
5. Mouchette (Bresson)
6. Un Chien Andalou (Bunuel)
7. Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein)
8. Notre Musique (Godard)
9. Blue Velvet (Lynch)
10. Visitor Q (Takashii Miike)
11. Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller)
12. The Idiots (Lars Von Trier)
13. Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki)
14. Intentions of Murder (Shohei Immamura)

Fanny Och Alexander

A young man journeys down an endless road in the company of many others. The road leads across rocky plains where nothing grows and the sun's fire burns from morning to evening. Nowhere is there shade or coolness to be found. And huge dust clouds are stirred all around by a harrowing wind. The youth is driven forward by an incomprehensible frenzy and tormented by a scorthing thirst. Sometimes he asks himself or one of his campnions about the goal of their journey. But the answer is uncertain and tentative. He himself has forgotten whey he ever set out on his journey. He's also forgotten his native land and the journey's final destination.

Suddenly one evening he finds himself standing in a forest. Dusk sets in and all is quiet. Only the evening wind sighs through the tall trees. He stands amazed but also anxious and suspicous. He's all alone and he discovers his hearing is weak, since his ears are inflamed from the merciless light of day. His mouth and throat are parched from the long pilgrimmage. His lips are cracked, pressed together around curses and harsh words. So he doesn't hear the ripple of flowing water and doesn't notice its reflection in the dusk. He stands deaf and blind at the edge of the spring unaware of its existence. Like a sleepwalker he wanders unaware between the sparkling pools. His blind skill is remarkable and soon he's back onto the road in the burning shadowless light.

One night, by the camp fire, he's seated by an old man who is telling some children about the forest and the springs. The youth recalls what he's been through but faintly and indistinctly as in a dream.

He turns to the old man skeptical yet courteous and asks, "Where does all this water come from?"

"It comes from a mountain whose peak is covered by a mighty cloud."

"What kind of cloud?", the youth asks.

The old man answers, "Every man carries within him hopes fears and longings. Every man shouts out his despair or bears it in his mind. Some pray to a particular god. Others address their cries to the void. This despair, this hope, this dream of deliverance, all these cries, all these tears are gathered over thousands and thousands of years and condense into an unmeasurable cloud around a high mountain. Out of the cloud rain flows down the mountain forming the streams and rivers that flow through the great forests. That's how the springs are formed where you can quench your thirst, wash your badly burnt face, cool your blistered feet. Every body has at sometime heard of the mountain, the cloud, and the springs, but most people anxiously remain on the dusty road in the blazing light."

"Why do they stay there? ", asks the youth in great astonishment.

"I certainly don't know.", replies the old man. "Perhaps they've convinced themselves and each other that they'll reach their unknown destination by evening."

"What unknown destination?", begs the young man.

The old man shrugs his shoulders. "In all probability the destination does not exist. It's deception or imagination. I myself am on my way to the forests and the springs. I was there once when I was young, and now I'm trying to find my way back. It's not easy, let me tell you."

The next morning the youth set out with the old man to seek the mountain, the cloud, the forests, and the rippling springs.

A Square Asylum

Two nights ago I had a nightmare. The little square hole in the wall adjacent to my bed began to emit an orangish light. I had known that there were no lights on in the hallway, and the intensity of the color convinced me it could not be reflective light from outside.
I sat and I watched this light pulse, and a fear began to grow inside me. I looked at the clock and it was 2:00. I knew I was in a dream, but I couldn't bring myself to wake up. The intensity of the light became stronger, and I knew that something was in the hall.
The rest I do not remember, but I realized that my nightmares are very different from what most peoples. They are never images of physical violence, being done to my person or an other. It is always a quality of light, a movement of time, or a sound that arouses an anxiety and fear inside me.

Tales of Genji

The sailing moon that disappears into the heavens knows naught of the mountains heart. Lured from my above by this moon, it seems that I too am disappearing into the heavens.

Four Quarters Excerpt

And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to
conquer
By strenght and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several tiems, by men whom one cannot
hope
To emlate--but there is no competition--
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under
conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Khalil Gibran Giver

For in truth it is life that gives unto life--while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and silences of the night.

Nasruddin's Donkey

One day a couple of local mapmakers came to Mullah Nasruddin to ask if he could tell them the exact location of the center of the world?

"Yes," he replied. "It is just under the left hind of my donkey"

"Well, maybe! But do you have any proof", they responded.

"If you doubt my word, just measure and see."

Twelve Thesis on the Economy of the Dead

Twelve Thesis on the Economy of the Dead
by John Berger

1. The dead surround the living. The living are the core of the dead.
In this core are the dimensions of time and space.
What surrounds the core is timelessness.

2. Between the core and its surrundings there are exchanges, which are not
usually clear. All religions have been concerned with making them clearer.
The credibility of religion depends upon the clarity of certain unusual exchanges.
The mystifications of religion are the result of trying to systematically produce such exchanges.

3. The rarity of clear exchange is due to the rarity of what can cross intact the frontier between timelessness and time.

4. To see the dead as the individuals they once were tends to obscure their nature.
Try to consider the living as we might assume the dead to do:
collectively.
The collective would accrue not only across space but also throughout time.
It would include all those who had ever lived. And so we would also be thnking of the dead.
The living reduce the dead to those who have lived, yet the dead already include the living in their own great collective.

5. The dead inhabit a timeless moment of construction continually rebegun.
The construction is the state of the universe at any instant.

6. According to their memory of life, the dead know the moment of construction as, also, a moment of collapse.
Having lived, the dead can never be inert.

7. If the dead live in a timeless moment, how can they have a memory?
They remember no more than being thrown into time, as does everything which existed or exists.

8. The difference between the dead and the unborn is that the dead have this memory.
As the number of dead increases, the memory enlarges.

9. The memory of the dead existing in timelessness may be thought of as a form of imagination concerning the possible.
This imagination is close to (resides in) God, but I do not know how.

10. In the world of the living there is an equivalent but contrary phenomenon.
The living sometimes experience timelessness, as revealed in sleep, ecstasy,
instants of extreme danger, orgasm, and perhaps in the experience of dying itself.
During these instants the living imagination covers the entire field of experience
and overruns the contours of the individual life or death. It touches the waiting imagination of the dead.

11. What is the relation of the dead to what has not yet happened, to the future?
All the future is the construction in which their “imagination” is engaged.

12. How do the living lie with the dead? Until the dehumanisation of society by capitalism,
all the living awaited the experience of the dead. It was their ultimate future. By themselves the living were incomplete.
Thus living and dead were inter-dependent. Always. Only a uniquely modern form of egotism has broken this inter-dependence.
With disastrous results for the living, who now think of the dead as eliminated.

Gurdjieff on War

"Those who dislike war have been trying to do so [prevent war] since the creation of the world," said G. "And yet there has never been such a war as the present [WWI]. Wars are not decreasing, they are increasing and war cannot be stopped by ordinary means. All these theories about universal peace, about peace conferences, and so on, are again simply laziness and hypocrisy. Men do not want to think about themselves, do not want to work on themselves, but think of how to make other people do what they want. If a sufficient number of people who wanted to stop war really did gather together they would first of all begin by making war upon those who disagreed with them. And it is still more certain that they would make war on people who also want to stop wars but in another way. And so they would fight. Men are what they are and they cannot be different. War has many causes that are unknown to us. Some causes are in men themselves, others are outside them. One must begin with the causes that are in man himself. How can he be independent of the external influences of great cosmic forces when he is the slave of everything that surrounds him? He is controlled by everything around him. If he becomes free from things, he may then become free from planetary influences."

"The reason first reason for man's inner slavery is his ignorance, and above all, his ignorance of himself. Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave, and the plaything of the forces acting upon him."

"This is why in all ancient teachings the first demand at the beginning of the way of liberation was: 'Know thyself.'"

Automatic Dances

There is nothing to illustrate
Simply Life's Movement's
Eternal Currents leaping
Across tangents of Desire and Regret
And Dismissive Rejoinders at Change
Incomprehensible. Overwhelming.
Automatic.

Bhagavad Gita

When Passion Increases, Arjuna
Greed and Activity
Involvement in Actions
Disquiet, and Longing Arise.


When Dark Intertia Increases
Obscurity and Inactivity
Negligence
And Delusion Arise.

When Lucidity Prevails
The Self Whose Body Dies
Enters the Untainted Worlds
Of Those Who Know Reality.

Fate and Chance

It's most likely not so much fate, as much as chance, she said.

Control

Q. If Control's Control is Absolute, why does Control need to Control?

A. Control needs Time.

-William Burroughs

Errors

Any error can be an unrecognizable bearer of truth.

White Dwarf

The white dwarf lies dormant until it comes in contact with a neighboring star's hydrogen, which ignites a thermonuclear explosion.

The Three Paths of Vindiction

Three ways are open to her," he thought, "to throw herself into the canal, to go to the madhouse, or . . . or, finally, to throw herself into a depravity that stupefies reason and petrifies the heart.

Dostoevsky, "Crime and Punishment"

Silence and The Mental Emptiness

And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence,
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen.

TS Eliot Four Quarters

Buckminster Fuller

There is nothing in the chemistry of a toenail that predicts the existence of a human being.

-Buckminster Fuller "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth"

Guilt

In those days the Gods took what was nobler, not the punishment, but the guilt.

Pushkin

Even if you lead me
This land is unknown
The devil is probably leading
Going round and round in circles

Rabbi Cansino

It was only the first night, but already a number of centuries had already preceded it.

Dead Man

Abimelech, King of Gerra, took Sarah, but God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, "Behold you are a dead man, because of the woman you have taken, for she is a man's wife.

Doi ya Doi

Doi ya doi, I am the doi of the doi ya doi!

The Sumerian After Life

The House where they sit in darkness, where dust is their food and clay their meat, they are clothed like birds with wings for garments, over bolt and door lie dust and silence.

Herodotus

He besought them to return and used every argument to dissuade them from abandoning their wives and children and gods of their country. One of their number in reply, pointed to his private parts and said that wherever those were, there would be no lack of wives and children.

Les Trois Faces Dans Le Glace

Ainsi j'appris d'un coup que ces avex reçus de trois femmes ne cachaient qu'un homme et que cet homme c'etait lui.

Popul Vuh

This is the account, here it is:

Now it still ripples, now it still murmurs, ripples, still sighs, still hums, and it is empty under the sky.
There is not yet one person, one animal, bird, fish crab, tree, rock, hollow, canyon, meadow, forest. Only the sky alone is there; the face of the earth is not clear. only the sea alone is pooled under all the sky; there is nothing whatever gathered together. It is at rest, not a single thing stirs. it is held back, kept at rest under the stars.