Drinking

Abraham Cowley (1618-67)

The thirsty Earth soaks up the Rain,

And drinks, and gapes for drink again.

The Plants suck in the Earth, and are

With constant drinking fresh and fair.

The Sea itself, which one would think

Should have but little need of Drink

Drinks ten thousand Rivers up,
So fill'd that they or'eflow the Cup.

The busie Sun (and one would guess

By's drunken fiery face no less)

Drinks up the Sea, and when h'as done,

The Moon and Stars drink up the Sun.

They drink and dance by thier own light,

They drink and revel all the night.

Nothing in Nature's Sober found,

But an eternal Health goes around.

Fill up the Bowl then, fill it high,

Fill all the Glasses there, for why

Should every creature drink but I,

Why, Man of Mortals, tell me why?

[After the Greek of Anacreon]

Ah so. where am I. the idea of this is that I'm going to release my mind from thoughts it has, and then I'll be able to sleep. I liked this poem. I thought it was a good metaphor for some of the things I think about, one side of my thoughts. It's like... like before really, like down bellow (every thing's the same). Becuase humans have consiousness, and all that jazz, more than anything else in the world, they are detached from it. They think about it, consider it, map it, plan it, analayse etc. etc. etc. right. and but the world, the world doesn't do that. it just is. it just buzzes. it doesn't have life or death or any of those human definition things. it just is. you know that idea. anyway I think that's buddhist thinking. you know, and you let go of life and death, you pantheistically embrace the buzzing world, and try and sink into its drunkenness? This is also the philosophy (theology? haha) of quality druggies. Quality like, they've got a goal there like that, they're not just smoking etc. to ingnore thier problems and that. My god this is terrible. I just need to write untill I sleep. but you know. I want to quote at random and then go on:

From my english text book:

"the first [the truth of fiction is not neccessarily true] is actually a venerable insight. Aristolte's teacher, Plato, banned most fiction from his republic becuase, he claimed, it enevitably distorted the truth. Plato beleived that absolubte truth did exist, yet in another world from our own. the things of our world for plato were shadows of that other one, and, accordingly, the things of the worlds of representational fiction were shadows of shadows. In this view, anyone who says of a novel "How true!" is decieved. For some time now, and especially since Neitzche, much theorising about representation (though not all) has had to do without Plato's idea of Absolute Truth. In this view, the world we seek to get to with no hope of finally arriving, is, paradoxically, the actual world we inhabit and the life that goes on in it. to put this in narrative terms... if narative discourse always mediates story, both story and discourse in turn mediate how we view the world. Narrative, with all its powerful and distorting rehotric, comes between us and the world. -- H.Porter Abbott.

Replace 'narrative' with 'consiousness' or 'language' or 'thinking' (all are one in the same and interlinked, of course) when it makes sense to do so.

I wrote along side this: "the sober human's inability to get inside his drunk world. He thinks too much. Alchol, drugs are bad in a sense, they impair rationality. but X is irrational. Moby Dick is irrational."

that's what I do in english, which is why I do philosophy. anyway everyone knows these ideas a thousand times over, but I'm just setting them out for myself in my head, straight, and digging deeper into ME.

Anyway so yes. On National radio the other day there was a BBC documentary on silence. and they went to monastaries, christian and buddhist and other religions like them. and the idea of silence, and that silence is penetrating into the world/god (/ they are the same thing, depending on where you sit -- the christian god is in another world, a distinct and higher one, the buddhist one is as I understand just, you know, it's pantheistic) and removing language, and thought, and consiousness, and narrative (thank you text book on narrative) to crawl inside the drunk world and huddle up, and just hum.

It was intresting though, of course, becuase then they talked to people who were'nt monks, but still religious. And the buddhists, they were all for as much sitting around being silent as possible, but Christians, of course, well Jesus talked to people. The Word is also rather importiant to Chirstianity. you know, just a bit. And they were like, Jesus found silence importiant, he went off into the desert to say Hi to God etc. but he also went amoung people and had a few chats and told them a few tales and that. and there was good and God and beauty there too.

anyway fuck I'm totally out of it. i can't bring together ANY OF MY THOUGHTS. it hurts. I'm just tired. I'm not truely inspired. but I want to get everything out. out out out out.

to continue. Nietsche and art. Art is to neitsche the combination of that drunken dionysian oneness with the world(/God) and the appolonian. Which is the human consiousness. He talks about something like the 'dream' side, which is like, humanity's ability to envsion, to plan, to map out, to have a wider image of how one can bring disperate things together into one, which is art. to utilize the buzzing force of the world and unify it, or was it to be inspired by the dionysian drunken world, and unify our perceptions of it. it's something like that. Anyway you see fuck, this is why I need to finish his book on the matter, and read so many other books. Do you know how many books, how many ideas there are out there! I loved loved loved how Dostoyevsky explains that in the Russian Orthodox tradition, people aren't said to have 'died' they are said to have 'fallen asleep in God'. Isn't that beautiful! doesn't it just fit perfectly! I think it's great. these are the only ideas that exite me anymore. I was thinking that you know I mean, you read that stuff all the time "all you can do is live life to the full" or "take every opportunity you get, make the most of life", but that stuff has never ever worked for me. And I like like Dostoyevsky sort of says, it's all christianity for atheists. it's all a cult around man, not god. but it's whack i reckon.

anyway to continue neitsche, neitsche's claims about art are part of what make humans better than being plants of animals. becuase they, as Cowley's poem indicate, live within and totally emersed in the buzzing drunkenness. And we don't. we can know it, come to experience it temporarily, maybe for longer periods of time though drug use, or meditation, silence, etc. etc. but not fully be there, be can't just be it, just like I said, know it, which is a typically human thing, right, to know things. But on the otherside we have this other power, the ability to unify, to bring together, to, you know, to THINK. and I'm not sure what I think about thinking yet, but it seems to be quite intresting powerful etc. etc. gives us a bit of an advantage. it ddoes lead to ART for example, which is rather powerful/intresting thing. and I think it's what D., or at least his Elder Zosima, talk about when they recognise the specialness of humanity. the ability to think, the ability to think FREELY (to the extent that it is possible) may lead to great sin, and great evil even, but also to great good, and greater, greater something, than can be had without it. and thinking brings trouble, but it's a trade off. Did Jesus (in christian tradtion) give people free thought? Ivan argues he did, or at least that he rejected the idea of bringing them under some sort of control.

And humans have all sorts of things that other things don't. They go wandering for instance. what a beautiful idea. and oh fuck, we don't even have to start considering how this all links to KEROUAC, becuase of course it's ALL kerouac. crazy wandering buddhist/catholic art creating apoloinan/dionysian human. too influential in my life and thinking. at the same time mad though, far on the dionysian side. there's alot to say there. Neal, Neal, was too much of the dionyisian, too much in communion with the Gods, that he would never have enough of the appolonian to create truely great ART. to be truely human (for maybe to be the truest human is to create the truest art) but Kerouac, kerouac could always pull it back. right on the brink of the abysis of dionysis, and having Neal shout up things from its depths, he did a good job. And there are men far more on the applonian side too. and the greats, the greats, the true greats, maybe they're somewhere in the centre. Shakespeare, Goethe, Mozart.those guys. just, maginifficent. no words even, right? limitless powers, almost limitless powers. Dylan is highly dionysian, he moves over too, the first ablums, espc. that disgusting times they are a'changin', are v. appolonian. he swings alot. he's a mad man. he drove himself wayward too, drugs etc.

I want to end with R.A.K. Mason, who is finally someone from New Zealand who I do actually love. he's mainly a 1920s fellow. didn't write alot, wrote alot of crap, but what's good, i like. Here the metaphors/similies/illusions have changed... but the message sis similar. the earth for example here is not drunk and godly, but is the human realm. obviously this is becuase it's strongly located within the christian sense of the way the world is. but anyway:

Old Memories of Earth

I think I have no other home than this
I have forgotten much remember much
but I have never any memories such
as these make out they have of lands of bliss.

Perhaps they have done, will again do what
they say they have, drunk as gods on godly drink,
but I have not communed with gods I think
and even though I live past death shall not.

I am rather forever bondaged fast
to earth and have been: so much untaught I know.
slow like great ships often I have seen go
ten priests ten each time round a grave long past

And I recall I think I can recall
back even past the time I started school
or went a-crusoeing in the corner pool
that I was present at a city’s fall

And I am positive that yesterday,
walking past One Tree Hill and quite alone
to me there came a fellow I have known
in some old times, but when I cannot say:

Though we must have been great friends, I and he,
otherwise I should not remember him
for everything of the old life seems dim
as last year’s deeds recalled by friends to me.

Okay so, there's stuff there that doesn't even fit what's above. but alot of it does. but hey, the world is so complex and everythnig is so complex but everything is so simple but at the same time complex and so you know. I just like that poem.

I also have a note here that I want to write down:
-an interpretation of romeo and juliet related to the above -- R&J youthful buzzing dionysisian agents, as such, with the friar App.+Dion., with the perfect (near perfect) balance and as the central character and the one with the greatest understanding of the world as it is
-things about WB Yeats
-60s as a base culture as the Greco-Roman one was.
-ideas on creation
-etc. etc.

sleep.