Earthgirl and I hiked beloved Sugarloaf Thursday. There, like everywhere we've hiked the past two weeks, the acorniest either of us remember in recent years. Millions, they carpet the trails, the woods, in as many shapes, sizes, and colors as I've ever since the last until the next. Gems, gorgeous. Will break your ankles if you lose focus, boots spinning out. Mast for fattening deer and squirrel before a hard winter. Bodes boom for KABOOM foliage.
All I want to do is hike with Earthgirl, and I'm going to! today! soon!
UPDATE! Today's hike.
Nick Cave was sixty yesterday. If it's not love it's as close to love without being love I can get.
- In the pelting villages.
- Frances' latest: need an antidote to Trump's UN speech?
- The correct way to be a cannibal.
- Reminder: the NFL isn't afraid Kaepernick will be a failure and a distraction, the NFL is afraid he'll be a success and a distraction.
- Motherfucking Helmetball is motherfucking America.
- Garden of smurfly delights test prints.
- Cruising 99.
- Remembering Cohen.
- There's a new Colleen album! Bought! Here's the first released song!
- That time John Ashbery did a screen test for Andy Warhol.
INSTANCES OF WASTED INGENUITY
Dara Wier
Falling off a triangle.
Putting two fighting fish in one bowl.
Talking yourself into a headcold.
Falling off a rectangle.
Putting insects in ice cubes.
Talking yourself out of doorways.
Falling off a parallelogram.
Talking into a microphone.
Falling off a footstool.
Putting earplugs in acorns.
Looking into a teacup for trouble.
Talking yourself out of breathing.
Taking a nap on a drum set.
Eating a peach with an air filter.
Wearing a dress made of hand grenades.
Talking a mudslide back up a mountain.
Lighting a camp fire in a taxi stand.
Launching a boat on a horse trail.
Hiking in an elevator.
Falling into an envelope.
Discussing smuggling with customs officers.
Taking a cat to a dog show.
Falling in love with a toothache,
Questioning your thumbprint.
Looking for milk in a gas tank.
Kissing hydraulic acid.
Blindfolding a parking meter.
Falling over a water tower.
Reasoning with a baby.
ReplyDeleteAbout acorns:
In his memoir Boyhood with Gurdjieff (1964), Fritz Peters recalls experiences he had growing up in association with the teacher and master G. I. Gurdjieff. In the 1920’s, Gurdjieff had established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at a chateau outside of Paris, France. Peters was a young boy of eleven and served as a houseboy to this enigmatic man.
On one occasion, Gurdjieff told Fritz to look out of the window, where there was an oak tree, and asked him how many acorns there were on the tree. Peters responded that there were likely thousands. Gurdjieff then inquired as to how many of those acorns were likely to become oak trees. The boy guessed that perhaps five or six might, or maybe not even that many.
Gurdjieff then explained the essential nature of his teaching by comparing it to the possibilities that Nature provides:
“Perhaps only one, perhaps not even one. Must learn from Nature. Man is also organism. Nature makes many acorns, but possibility to become tree exist for only few acorns. Same with man – many men born, but only few grow. People think this waste, think Nature waste. Not so. Rest become fertilizer, go back into earth and create possibility for more acorns, more men, once in while more tree – more real man. Nature always give – but only give possibility. To become real oak, or real man, must make effort. You understand this, my work, this Institute, not for fertilizer. For real man, only. But must also understand fertilizer necessary to Nature. …”
“In west – your world – is belief that man have soul, given by God. Not so. Nothing given by God, only Nature give. And Nature only give possibility for soul, not give soul. Must acquire soul through work. … Even your religion – western religion – have this phrase ‘Know thyself.’ This phrase most important in all religions. When begin know self already begin have possibility become genuine man. So first thing must learn is know self …. If not do this, then will be like acorn that not become tree–fertilizer. Fertilizer which go back in ground and become possibility for future man.”
[end of quote from Peters quoting G]
ReplyDeleteTo say a bit more about G’s “many men born, very few grow” – this reality is expressed in the fact that in Yiddish the term for “adult human” is used, not as a neutral descriptive word, which would apply to all the members of the human race over a certain age, but as a term of praise – to quote Wikipedia:
Mensch (Yiddish: מענטש mentsh, from German: Mensch “human being”) means “a person of integrity and honor”.
…In Yiddish, from which the word has migrated as a loanword into American English, mensch roughly means “a good person.” A mensch is a particularly good person, like “a stand-up guy”, a person with the qualities one would hope for in a dear friend or trusted colleague….
During the Age of Enlightenment in Germany the term Humanität, in the philosophical sense of compassion, was used to describe what characterizes a “better human being” in Humanism. The concept goes back to Cicero’s Humanitas and was literally translated into the German word Menschlichkeit and then adapted into mentsh in Yiddish language use. In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the phrase Ben Adam “Son of Adam” (בן אדם) is used as an exact translation of Mensch.
[end of quote from wikipedia]