Voluntaries from the Invisibles
Douglas Milburn
Part the Fifth
Non est qui consoletur eam
ex omnibus charis ejus..
(She has no one to comfort her
from all her lovers.)
--Jeremiah.
1. Methodologies of proof in one universe are not necessarily valid in another.
Modes of gullibility are.
2. Both static and physical suffering vary inversely
with the prideful greed of early rising civilizations.
We are confused now because attainable values are dimly in
sight which appear to negate
so many of the behaviors and accomplishment
that have got us this far.
Confused and frightened because we dont understand
the nurturing effect of silent, patient contemplation of that which is.
3. You need look no farther than
sunlight,
starlight,
the nearest tree,
anyone's smile,
a helpful touch.
4. All miracles are constant; none are perfect.
5. Today's riddle: What wafts heavenward?
Hint: the first letter of the answer is not so or p. Or f.
Or a. b. c. d. e. g. h. i. j. k. l. m. n. o. q. r. t. u. v. w. x. y. z.
6. We early spawned a few great stand-up comedians.
At the time nobody got their jokes.
An occasional later commentator did.
Chuang-tze saw though Lao-tze' perfect dead-pan delivery.
Quite a few Jews saw through Moses's shtick,
though not a single goyim did (to tragic effect).
None of the gospel writers saw through Jesus's,
also with disastrous results.
The Muslims fared somewhat better with Nasrudin.
7. We'll know the world is changing for the better
the day the Missa Solemnis is performed more often
than the Ninth Symphony.
(For the music, not the words.)
8. Some gates have proximity locks.
They click shut when they sense not your presence
but your wrong thoughts.
Nor all your wit nor piety nor wealth nor power can force them open.
Unfortunately (fortunately?) they are the gates of paradise.
9. The road to wealth and power is simple:
Learn to speak as if you understand that which no one understands
(but get ready for a rough deathbed experience).
10. To repeat a monotonous task 10,000 times is difficult.
To do so is invaluable because one of the repetitions
may change the life of an observant passerby.
11. All sensory input conceals and implies mystery.
In media input the surface is so insistent and seductive
that what is deep below the surface is rarely glimpsed.
In nature, whether a quark, a tree, or a galaxy,
the union of surface and mystery is so intimate and compelling
that only the truly blindered fail to see it.
See of course is one thing, grasping is something else altogether.
12. Seemingly confined to this island of sapient consciousness,
how do I know there are other different island and other wholly different seas?
13. Climb Everest, go to Mars? No problem,
compared to escaping the Alcatraz of language.
14. Even delusional pathfinders can make valuable discoveries.
Columbus, Magellan, Blake, Novalis., Einstein, Freud.
15. The forced, brief, but warping effect of drugs
may provide respite and reminders,
but the path finally has to be walked wide awake one baby step at a time.
16. How primitive and piecemeal are our best maps of
consciousness?
As primitive and piecemeal as the best earth maps of 2,000 years ago.
17. The deaf Beethoven still used the piano as a composing tool.
18. Dont let your ego kid itself.
These voyages require not just patrons,
but loving patrons
with deep pockets
and infinite patience.
19. Not all islands have palm trees.
Some dont even have verbs.
20. "Fetch!" shouts the human, throwing a stick.
Delighted, the dog does, again and again,
but must finally rest from fetching.
21. Show me a human who doesn't desire and Ill show you a
corpse.
22. Who dares put the dunce's cap on the tyrant Kant?
23. Before looking in books,
consider the possibility that the best place
to start your search for wisdom is
your own ever-growing fingernail.
24. Beware the false succor of myth.
True succor comes only from words
of direct experience.
25. Wisdom echoes faster than the speed of light
across eons and parsecs without number.
Consider, please, the source
and learn then to listen.
26. Be careful not to assume
that neither the crest of a wave,
no matter how celebratory,
nor the trough between waves,
no matter how depressing,
is reality.
27. We inhabit a tree
whose roots we can not see,
ornaments whose nighttime glow
beckons those far below.
28. Childish wishes ought to vanish with childhood,
though, nurtured by organized religion, they often dont.
Other more mindful ones and carefully wrought,
may show the way to unexpected facts.
29. The cramped creativity of cowpen culture
thrives not where youd expect,
on the open prairie,
but in the hearts of cities.
30. Better perspective comes to those
who sit on the fringe,
whether of galaxies of cultures.
31. Whatever your disease or debility,
in addition to medication,
try to administer weekly, daily, momently
doses of joy,
no matter how brief.
31. The tree, the tree, consider the tree.
Dumbly rooted, flightily seasoned, blindly reproductive?
Yes.
And. So. Are. We.
But theres more.
32. The joy of learning? The joy of learning.
Beyond survival skills, to expect more is presumptuous,
sows seeds of arrogance
and sets a misleading example.
33. Is the quark happy?
Yes, happier than you know or maybe can know.
And sadder.
Just as I am happier than the quark knows or maybe can know.
And sadder.
34. As we are tossed about on the sea of experience,
to impute cause or motive or lack of cause or motive
is a poorly disguised and of course futile attempt
to master time, space, and causality.
35. Emerging self-consciousness for millennia rooted value in
money.
As a sufficiently large number of consciousnesses expand,
the gyre of self-interest turns
and we step toward a new understanding and practice
of work and reward, ownership and profit.
36. Some are born to tell stories by example, other by precept,
still others by metaphor.
37. Time is a given.
To say more is to start another fairy tale.
38. Nietzsche the poet got it right-side up.
Nietzsche the philosopher, upside down.
39. Which is more foolish, the thistle longing to be a rose
or the rose which thinks itself the crown of creation
because it has been so often told as much?
40. Healthwise you can do a lot worse
than sit regularly with your back to a tree.
41. If the purpose of the sabbath
is not to remind that every day is a sabbath,
then no day is a sabbath.
42. Reshaping the past requires practice
in the willingness to disbelieve
as well as communal mind.
As we are still a race of isolate thinkers
only the most minor personal readjustments can presently be made.
43. Dollops of grace. Forgetting why the first temples were
built,
we gather weekly in wonderfully evocative structures like pets
awaiting their regular feeding.
Music, art, architecture, words: yelp, yelp, meow, meow. Here we are. Feed Us.
Transcience doesnt work like that.
44. Gook fiction (Gibson, Stephenson, Stross) is like
the writings of early Christians (Augustine, Thomas, Dante).
Inheritors of a successful structure,
they extrapolate futures shaped by and limited to
the narrow assumptions underlying the structure.
45. Emerging with his tiny boats from the difficult passage
around Tierra del Fuego,
Magellan got that he was facing a new ocean.
The possibility of its actual enormity escape him completely.
By the time he got toward the middle of it,
turning back was no longer an option.
46. Every person a walking mystery.
47. The scientist is to the transcientist
as Paracelsus is to Einstein.
48. Transcience requires
a wise, willed, controlled, temporary suspension of disbelief.
A tricky business:
a survey of "New Age" books reveals
how easily such a suspension results
in self-delusion and gullibility.
49. The standard received belief system
produced powerful and efficient tools
and means of not just survival but enrichment of life.
We failed to realize that such a system
blocks access to vaster, and vastly richer,
areas of knowledge and creative action:
Call the approach to that knowledge transcience.
50. Trees and other unlikely entities are always calling.
We are at the place where our viability as a species depends
on whether we learn to hear them.
51. Weve been like a bunch of first-graders
who stumble onto an atomic power plant.
Some make careers of describing its external appearance
and pretending to know what it is theyre seeing.
Others find a way into the control room,
manage to push a few buttons,
and pretend to know
what the buttons and dials and pretty read-outs are all for.
A few get into the pile,
from which they emerge scathed
and then cant stop blabbering about what they saw.
52. To our progeny:
Your occasional humbling glimpses
of what you do not know
are like mine
of what you do know.
53. The scientist experiments.
The transcientist experiements.
54. New crops require new seeds.
Hence the neologisms.
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Sixth >>
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the
First
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Second
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Third
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Fourth
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Fifth
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Sixth
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Seventh
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Eighth
Leçons de Ténèbres Part the Ninth
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