Even the image has text. But don't worry: I'll place a bonus image in the postscript, which will also have text.
Dear diary,
Think about it: We’re all sitting in our houses right now, all the people in the world, each in her own individual little room. All of us, alone and separated from one another, staring at our computer’s screen and mulling over what to write in our blog. “This one’s gonna be good,” we say to ourselves; and we believe it. But none of us is cognizant of the fact that everyone else is thinking the same thot, writing the same text, intending the same outcome…
So, every single soul on the whole planet, after finishing her entry, clicks the “Publish” button, at the very same time; and all the billions of blog entries become publicly available: now anyone can visit everyone’s words & read them. But here’s the problem: Nobody reads anyone else’s words. Each soul navigates to her own published blog, and re-reads only what she herself recently finished writing.
Now, after admiring her own craftsmanship, each individual checks her blog-stats page, frowns, and cries out in complaint: “Why is no one else perusing my entry? This is my best work yet!”
And the sad fact is that we’re all correct: Every single post is indeed a masterpiece:
Even if all but one of these countless offerings were to get destroyed in some celestial cataclysm, so that when the intergalactic police come & cordon off the scene, they only discover a single composition among the detritus, out of all the entries that had been published till then, this sole surviving blog would faithfully represent the intensest genius of which humankind was capable. The aliens might think they’d just gotten lucky, that by pure chance the very best possible instance of our art had been preserved for their perusal; but they would be wrong. If only they could see all the other posts that were erased by the apocalypse, they’d declare that humankind in general remained remarkably consistent in delivering the highest quality of blogs.
No one doubts that carpenter ants are good at carpentry: that’s why Science put the darn word in their name! And, for similar reasons, the alien police that happen upon our civilization’s remains will refer to us, in their sacred historical record, not as “humankind” but as “blogging beings”. For no other type of creature has been discovered in all the fauna of the universe that can blog like us earthlings. The people on Mars — “martians”, as legend has it — are really good fighters; the people from Venus are sexy as hell and have mastered the “quickie” (the art of rapid lovemaking among consensual adults); while the beings on Jupiter can do fire-breathing, sword swallowing, and synchronized jellyfishing; but ONLY terrestrial anthropoids mastered the blog.
Now, as a proud member of this blogging species, I possess a natural curiosity about words. For words make up 99% of each blog post. (Bloggers who’ve managed to eliminate the obligatory images from their creations can advertise their work as “pure textual filler”, but I’m not that good yet.) Thus, being word-obsessed, I couldn’t help thinking about that pretty term “anthropoid”, after employing it above. It reminded me of “anthropology”, which was on my mind because, just yesterday, I quoted a lengthy passage of speech from an interview with the anthropologist David Graeber.
I’m looking at my dictionary now: I see that the prefix “anthropo–” means “human being”; very simple. It comes from a Greek word that means exactly the same thing. And the suffix “–logy” means “science; theory; study” also “discourse; expression”. Its roots can be traced back thru Middle English past Old French and Latin to the Greek word logos, which means “speech, language”. That’s the same word that is translated as “Word” in the famous first verse of Saint John’s gospel, in the King James Bible:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Incidentally I myself translated this very same passage as well, in the third section of my textbook The Permanent Modes:
Our story begins inside of an unborn ellipsis, where lounges a bride, Red Red the Song, with her future Scientist. They were twain, yet they were one item altogether.
So, to review, “anthropo–” means “human”, and “–logy” means “study of”; thus anthropology means “the study of human beings”. That sounds like fun.
Anthropocentric = human-centered.
Anthropomorphic Yahweh = humanlike stormgod (or, if you prefer, as I myself do: volcanogod).
And then we have the “logies” — for instance...
Psychology = study of the psyche or mind.
Biology = study of bio, which prefix relates to life & living beings.
And my favorite, Philology = the study of language itself. So it’s basically navel-gazing... that is, if the navel were a word which became God and then took on mortal flesh so that it could read and write itself; in other words: flux up its ur-form, or revise its own parentage so as to achieve an improved infancy. (I steal that last phrase from Hart Crane’s “Passage”.)
But the word Philology is weird, because the prefix “philo–” (like the suffix “–phile”) signifies “loving”:
Philosophy = love of wisdom (sophia = wisdom).
Cinephile = lover of cinema.
Pedophile = lover of children (pedo = child).
By the way, here’s something funny: I noted the other day that the word “sanction” serves as its own antonym, since it can mean both penalty as well as permission. Similarly, the concept “lover of children” is either the best OR the worst thing that a person can be. Jesus loves the little children – that’s the good example: “Suffer the little children to come unto me” (Matthew 19:14). But also there is nothing more heinous than a pedophile, literally a lover of children. And it’s extra perplexing that the Christian Church, which is illogical and inconsistent on almost everything that has to do with its own savior Christ, is yet both logical and consistent on this one single issue: so much that its complacence has rendered the word “priest” a synonym for “pedophile”.
You’re right, tho: the whole thing turns upon the confusion of “love vs. love”; for the best words and the most powerful concepts are often switch-hitters: they swing both ways. Like God. For consider: in the Hebrew Scriptures, Yahweh is the LORD (Adonai); whereas Baal, Yahweh’s nemesis, also simply means LORD; moreover, Christ, the son of Yahweh and Baal (and arch-nemesis to both) has a bumper-sticker proclaiming Jesus is LORD. So, three LORDS in heaven but not one LADY. And the only true friend of Yahweh is his prosecutorial attorney, who remains nameless in the scriptures and is only called by the title Ha-Satan, which means “The Accuser (of sin)” or “Adversary”, like your opponent on the tennis court or the law court. So basically that portmanteau frenemy, which combines the terms friend and enemy, is what one might label every item in this empyrean.
Likewise, there are multifarious loves, even antonymous loves; and thus, “love vs. love” might be restated as:
generosity, altruism, compassion, friendship, humanity
VERSUS
lust, rutting, humping, sexual congress, fornication.
But back to philology. I said it’s a weird word, cuz I’d expect it to mean “the study of love”, but instead it means “the love of language”. That’s because, in this case, the suffix “–logy” takes its alternate meaning of “words; discourse; expression” rather than “science; theory”. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, if Baal would have allowed ME to be the inventor of American English, I’d have chosen the word “logophile” to mean what we currently mean by “philologist”.
But I can tell I’m boring my reader with all this pettifoggery...
“Don't piss around with all your technical crap. Just play the song.”
—Officer Duke, to Officer Rough; from the film Wrong Cops (2013)
...so instead I’ll reveal why I called philology “my favorite” among all other logos-suffixed terms. Of course it’s cuz I love language (I AM language), but it’s also becuz this branch of study is the one that I remember my hero Nietzsche embracing. He doesn’t refer to himself as a philosopher but rather as a philologist. I think that’s why he centers his attention (as I try to follow suit in doing) upon Shakespeare, Emerson, Goethe; rather than stupid fucking Aristotle. (The Church centers itself on Aristotle; that’s why it’s so stupid. Or I should say “tedious” rather than stupid, cuz stupid is admirable. I myself am rather stupid.) Anyway, I often think that there’s no soul more important to me than Nietzsche. He means a great deal to me. And I’m well aware of the misunderstanding that plagues his name. That’s one thing I hate, and I run into it everywhere: the assumption that Nietzsche is the fool that his sister portrayed him as being, when she wrought havoc on his memory by fiddling with his unpublished manuscripts (when he could no longer speak for himself) and forcefully aligning him with her own close-minded views.
What I just said is an understatement; I put it very mildly, because I know that you’re easily frightened. By the way, am I wrong about this?—this whole predicament with his sister? I’m drawing on my memories of reading about Nietzsche, mainly from Walter Kaufmann’s notes in his translations, also his book Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. (I like what Kaufmann does for Nietzsche, as much as I like what Tomkins does for Duchamp.) Maybe Kaufmann’s contributions to the study of Nietzsche are so well known, among academics, that my mentioning of him comes off as laughable, because I’m stressing the obvious; but I don’t live in or even near the academy; I’m a self-educated member of the working class, and, down here, these types of things (the correction of erroneous anti-Nietzsche propaganda) need to be stressed, and stressed hard, cuz I see how common usage of the name Nietzsche tends toward a shorthand for the opposite of what he was: a hater of humankind; no: Nietzsche, like his Zarathustra, was a LOVER of humankind, an anthropo-phile, just like Jesus; which is why he tried so desperately to help us all improve, expand, sublimate, transcend, evolve: this is the superman; not some overbearing jerk: that would be your average capitalistic manager.
But I think that Nietzsche even loved “the herd”, altho it got on his nerves sometimes. How could it not!? Think about it: he lived in Germany at exactly the time when it began to mirror the 21-century U.S.A.
But I don’t wanna descend into hardcore reality; I’m simply trying to record my morning thots. The point is that I value Nietzsche. I value him so much that an author’s attitude towards him can either make or break my respect for their book. When I first read Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, I was won over by his treatment of Nietzsche. (Also Wittgenstein, who is similarly important.) And recently the close reading and refreshingly clear understanding of Nietzsche that I found sprinkled throughout David Graeber’s book Debt pleased me intensely. But the warped Nietzsche, the willful misunderstanding, the travesty that is really a Nietzsche-contra-Nietzsche, still prevails, even among scholars I respect.
Thomas Frank’s book Listen, Liberal! utterly augmented & informed my understanding of modern U.S. politics – I can’t recommend it strongly enough, as well as his other books – but the remarks that Frank allows himself to make about Nietzsche, and the way he uses the contra-man’s unfortunate legend (which is false), shows a lack of understanding in this specific area, which causes my respect to drop three point fourteen notches.
Historians, do not neglect to earn the respect of Bryan Ray. For if what you say or do seems wrong to me, I will take you to task viciously, in my blog. And this blog is PUBLIC, and it is being shipped to the FUTURE; therefore beware: you don’t wanna be the one I’m lambasting in the only article that survives our common doom (and thus serves to represent humankind to the alien police).
O! and I almost forgot to tell you: Last night was the end of my Netflix free trial period (YAY! I get to cancel now), so my sweetheart and I decided to watch one last thing from their poor assortment. There was very little to choose from – Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2012 film The Master was there; which is maybe the best movie ever made; but I already own a copy of that, which I watch all the time – so I selected Scorsese’s 1991 remake of Cape Fear, and it was better than I remembered it, but I still dislike the ending: all that camera-twirling and water whirling… all that sound and fury… it’s the unattractive side of visceral. But what was a very bad instant, among the otherwise excellent opening sequences, was how the ex-con Max Cady is introduced: there’s a shot of him working out, lifting weights or whatever, and on his wall are a bunch of photographs and other visuals that are intended to convey the personality of his character to the audience: so, as he’s supposed to be a “bad hombre”, they stuck a picture of Nietzsche up there next to wretched jerks like asshole dictators and whatnot. As if Nietzsche helps men become thugs. Now I love Scorsese, but that was just lazy of him to do. My respect for him dropped half a notch, for that malfeasance alone.
But on a recommendation from the historian Howard Zinn, whose own books I’ve just begun to look into (already I’m in awe: I recommend him to anyone who wants to comprehend the U.S.), I started reading the autobiography of Emma Goldman, called Living My Life. It’s a big thick book, in two large volumes; and it’s fascinating — tho more for the harsh adventures it depicts than for its writing style (if you understand this before approaching it, you’ll like it more). I’ve read a little about Ms. Goldman in the past, so I already idolized her (I repeat: the reason I come off like a hero-worshipper who idolizes everyone is that I choose to write mostly about the things that I love; for I hate the things that I hate, I don’t even wanna THINK about them); by the way, Emma’s a self-styled anarchist and anti-capitalist, just like my man David Graeber, whom I’ve been mentioning frequently of late cuz I just learned of him.
OK so now, after only a couple days, I’m already about halfway thru the first volume of Emma’s life story — here, I’ll set up the one big quotation that I want to excerpt by copying a few tiny snippets, like appetizers just to whet your palate… here’s a passage from page 89:
Sasha finished his preparatory work and went to Staten Island to test the bomb. When he returned, I could tell by his expression that something terrible had happened. I learned soon enough; the bomb had not gone off.
In my own autobiography, I’d consider it “something terrible” if I learned that a bomb successfully exploded. Where else but in Emma Goldman’s autobiography would the “terrible thing” be that a bomb DID NOT explode!
I’ll give two more snippets; again, just to show how different HER life is from, say, the life of a humdrum blogger. This is from page 90:
He would require at least another twenty dollars for a gun and a suit of clothes.
And one page later, on 91:
My main concern now was whether I could make myself attractive enough to men who seek out girls on the street.
So she’s not just sitting indoors, in the comfort of her house in Minnesota, watching old Hollywood “film noir” DVDs – no: she’s basically living a film-noir LIFE.
Here now, however, I’m leaving out all the ideas and mental fight that led me to admire Emma so intensely; so I’m actually working at cross-purposes against my better nature, by portraying what seem like seedy sordid circumstances, or at least those that, when isolated as fragments, cause the petite bourgeoisie (like my sad suburban self) to assume an unsavory existence; but you’ll have to just trust me that ALL these predicaments are, when properly contextualized, the trappings of a most distinguished soul who is attempting to navigate with utmost humanity a broken world. In other words, the seedy, sordid, unsavory elements are the handiwork of the state, not Emma Goldman. To presume that Ms. Goldman was, in any way, an underhanded actor, is like concluding that Jesus must have been a criminal because he died on the cross.
Now, in light of all that I said above about my good friend Nietzsche, imagine how overjoyed I was to encounter, in Emma’s own autobio, THIS passage:
In Vienna one could hear interesting lectures on modern German prose and poetry. One could read the works of the young iconoclasts in art and letters, the most daring among them being Nietzsche. The magic of his language, the beauty of his vision, carried me to undreamed-of heights. I longed to devour every line of his writings, but I was too poor to buy them. Fortunately Grossmann had a supply of Nietzsche and other moderns.
I had to do my reading at the expense of much-needed sleep; but what was physical strain in view of my raptures over Nietzsche? The fire of his soul, the rhythm of his song, made life richer, fuller, and more wonderful for me.
Emma goes on to say how, when she wrote to her beloved—who, at the time, was Edward Brady—about her Nietzsche-philia, he was evasive and equivocal in his response. Eventually (no joke) Emma breaks up with Brady—a fellow whom she seriously considered having children with—and even leaves the fellow, on account of his inability to appreciate our Good European! (Nietzsche desired to be remembered in this way, as a Good European, in contradistinction to his Mere German fellowcountrymen.) It turns out that Brady is only interested in so-called classics, the tried-&-true literature that has stood the test of time (which is the best stuff, we agree: neither I nor Emma mean to disparage the proven greats – only the inability to perceive the worth of present and future genius is regrettable). Thus a man for whom Nietzsche seems too newfangled (also sprach Mister Brady, one century ago: “Nietzsche will be forgotten in less than a decade, and so will all those other pseudo-moderns!”) in consequence of a failure to appreciate genius, LOSES THE FINEST SOUL OF HIS AGE.
P.S.
I wanna keep telling you about Emma Goldman, but I gotta go eat now; so: T.T.Y.L. (contemporary acronym: “Talk To You Later”)...!
Bonus image:
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