(Lazy collage made in 5 mins by taking the smiles from Monday's ads & drawing some arrows at the top. I call it "Pyramid Scheme".)
Dear diary,
The problem with these entries that I’m writing is that they’re all about ME, and they’re all from MY perspective. They should be about YOU, the reader — isn’t YOUR life and perspective important?
I’d say that your experience is even far more important than mine; for I’m long gone, whereas you must persist: it is you who must suffer each day and night as they pass.
But I don’t know what to write about as you, precisely because I’m not yet you. I’m only me, at the moment. So I know what my house is like but I don’t know what your house is like. — Come to think of it, you don’t even have a house, do you? You have either an alley or a cage. (I follow St. Paul in speaking of one’s flesh as one’s abode — “your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost” — I Corinthians 6:19.)
I try (fail) to follow the grand tradition of Montaigne and Ralph Waldo Emerson (to fill their footwear; to overflow the unfillable); those two assholes are my hero journalists; and they each adhered to the same principle, which was begun overtly by Montaigne who came first in clocktime: Write about what you know — & since you know nothing better than yourself, write about yourself. (That’s my paraphrase of his stance.) So here I am now in this present entry trying to break the primary rule of online blogging by writing an entry from the perspective of my reader. The unknown observer who’s trapped in futurity.
Do people really awake in the morning happy? Did you? I myself (I’m speaking as Bryan Ray now — I’ll return to your stupid reader’s life in a sec), I say, I myself awake every day with the same shocked outrage: “What!? THIS place again? I hate this world.”
. . . the Poem hastes into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his Angels now fallen into Hell, describ’d here, not in the Center (for Heaven and Earth may be suppos’d as yet not made, certainly not yet accurst) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest call’d Chaos: Here, Satan, with his Angels lying on the burning Lake, thunder-struck and astonisht, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion . . .
—from “The Argument” to Book I of Paradise Lost
OK so I’m well aware, from a rumor that had been floating around in Heaven, that a new creature will someday be created, and that this creature will take my place, and exist when I am gone, and read my words, and thus become me.
I am not the Christ, but I am sent before him... He must increase, but I must decrease.
—John the Baptizer (John 3:28, 30)Space may produce new Worlds; whereof so rife
There went a fame in Heav’n that he ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation, whom his choice regard
Should favour equal to the Sons of Heaven
—Satan (Paradise Lost, 1:650-654). . . There is a place
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heav’n
Err not) another World, the happy seat
Of some new Race call’d Man, about this time
To be created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favour’d more
Of him who rules above . . .
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn
What creatures there inhabit, of what mould,
Or substance, how endu’d, and what their Power . . .
—Beelzebub (Paradise Lost, 2:345-356)
So this is proof from the holy scriptures and all the great sages that YOU, my future reader, are reading this now. I do not apologize that Beelzebub named you Man, in light of the whole male-versus-female controversy: I’m well aware that the future holds only womankind, so there’s no offense taken — on the contrary: it’s an amusing curiosity, the evolution of divinity; that the Poetic Genius would have started out as primates and then progressed from thence to homo sapiens and beyond; hence the proverb: From ape to man to dame. (Incidentally that’s why I populated my book about your eon with damozels only; see The Radiator Girls at Strapontin Lodge.) Nevertheless I doubt that we have very many appendages in common. You possess more or less, or none at all; and they’re either flexible with suction cups or metallic and non-bendable. But as long as we’re this far afield, let me give another very helpful quotation, with regard to the enigma of our togetherness:
The one who sleeps is all of us, pre-reality. This is obvious from the way that she wanders thru the world of herself without knowing the beings of the world that she has become, and how she bars those beings from finding her while at once coaxing them to seek out her existence: she goes so far as to threaten that, because of their venturing thus, all shall end in a celestial conflict, which proves to be an awakening to a more lively death; for she is beguiled by limits. She ambles thru identities as walls.
—from p. 367 of my Collected Religious Writings (which contains Ch. XXIV of The Teller Chases Her Tale, being a commentary on my book Perchance to Sleep No More)
Again, I’m trying to say things that really matter to the actual MIND that’s perusing these entries, instead of klutzing around with outdated news (olds rather) from my own nonexistence. So, instead of boring us with lies about my daily routine, let us talk about yourn.
I imagine you as waking with a good-morning love for the world. You believe in the Devil, because you are a poet. You even kinda like your cage. The first thing you do is down half a bottle of wine; and then you kneel by your straw mat and thank your lucky stars that Hell has levels. “Dear stars,” you type; “Thank you for blessing me with money. Cuz Jesus Christ man holy cow this world is money-obsessed; it’s like a house built on the firmest foundation of waterbeds; and you left me swimming in an ocean of cash. Thank you so much for that. When neighbors approach me whispering ‘Can I help out with anything?’ it’s a pleasure to turn them away, to put my tentacles forward and physically push the banknotes that they’re offering right back themward, to prove that I am exclusively self-reliant. Because charity, in Moneyland, is not just being willing to accompany a fellowsufferer to the hospital, NO! it means paying the fellowsufferer’s hospital bill. And I’m glad that, when I get all my brain-balls busted, they can be fixed without recourse to the national dole. For the national dole is reserved for transnationals. Amen.”
Sorry, this is becoming too humorous & lefty-political. But it’s hard to speak of the life of the upcoming self without making it all about one’s present self.
We think that progress moves always upwards, like a line curving steadily into the sky. Well maybe progress does indeed look like that in photos; but HUMAN continuance is much more like a wave, cuz it goes up and down like the stock market. Boom and bust. And it’s not too important to know where the highs and lows reside, because nobody cares and you’ll never have power to change anything, but that’s why I like to pay attention to this type of stuff: I’m in favor of uselessness. So here’s the apex: Shakespeare. And I’m not saying that our present moment (the moment, which, for you, is the distant past) pinpoints the nadir, but it’s gotten pretty dire. One can discern whether mankind is rising or falling, in any given age, by noting where that generation’s finest art is centered. Shakespeare centers on the ways that humans change. Human relations. Iago; Othello. Already, just a single generation after Shakespeare, Milton begins the descent into non-human matters: religion. Justifying God’s ways to Man. Satan takes the place of Iago, and Othello is now played by Mr. Jehovah. Also note how much more relatable Satan is than Iago, and how superior Othello is to Jehovah: in other words, rebellion is gaining in attraction while the establishment is static. That’s a sign of decline. That’s cuz we’re all identifying more with the one who’s been wronged (the devil) than with the wronger (God). When you read Shakespeare’s play, you’d have to be a sicko to identify with its villain. You’re fascinated by Iago but you recoil and shudder when you consider that his fruition, Augustine, not only existed but continues to tyrannize our world. I mean Saint Augustine of Hippo — I’m thinking about that part in the second book of his Confessions where he questions why he stole many pearls of great price (the pears) from his own fellow countryfolk when he already possessed ample riches of his own; then he didn’t even sport this loot but cast the pearls to swine. Milton’s Satan is utterly relatable, on the other hand; as William Blake notes, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,
Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, because he was a true Poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.
The England of Blake; the Germany of Friedrich Nietzsche; and the United States of my current self Bryan Ray. We all occupy that same lousy moment in the waveform; that recurrence. I want OUT; but there’s nowhere to go. That’s why I’m addressing you directly, and sorta wondering if you might be able to give me a little oomph.
Maybe that’s what actually happens, behind the scenes, when poets attempt to summon the Muse — perhaps the poet’s reader, by engaging her fancy, is able someway to augment the poem’s content. As Duchamp always sez: The beholder completes the artwork.
So I’m requesting that you make all my efforts masterpieces. Is that too much to ask? I know that we planned on talking about the look of your cage and the surrounding alleyway in this entry, but I can’t get past that line (in truth, the whole poem, but let’s defer to style) that Wallace Stevens writes in “The Man Whose Pharynx Was Bad”:
I am too dumbly in my being pent.
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