The murder
The murder
The sin
The hate
The rape
The crime
That undid your philosophy
and showed everybody
where you really were.
It had been
a nice idea.
BW / AMW
Another one bites the dust
Keep in mind
that I’ll die.
I used to suppose,
and who can blame me?,
that the gods would make something of an exception
in my case.
Not so much that I’d never die;
I want to die eventually–
so I can go to the next level.
But I thought,
well,
all things considered:
the extreme violence in my soul,
the laughter all through my thought,
the slowness of the my head-turn;
I thought the gods
and blessed influences
such as they are,
which isn’t to say
that I can enumerate them.
Would go ahead
and let me turn to magic energy,
and change from form to form,
skipping from body to body,
from joke to joke,
but all the while
keeping these memories,
even the childhood in the snow
and the scraggle dry air sunlight overlook between vans with a cousin and some wooden guns
by my side.
Maybe–maybe!
Hard to say,
the future being what it is;
but it also seems likely enough
that,
well,
I’ll just inhabit this body
and it will collapse,
and I’ll go down with
the sinking
ship.
Oh dear!
Oh no!
Still,
we do all rise again.
But I didn’t want to forget anything.
And the way it usually goes
is that you forget everything
except the memory of the soul–
before idea,
before feeling,
before perception.
The memory of the soul.
It’s not that big a deal;
after all,
I don’t remember that much of my life anyway.
So I may as well let these
you know
intellectual
and emotional
memories
go
and
sure, whatever,
start fresh.
I guess.
AMW / BW
The Loneliest Boys in the room
That’s their thing.
That’s their distinction.
Having swallowed the razor.
And forgotten the story.
Having sank to the bottom
and looked up through
layers of waters.
I suppose it is true,
what they say,
that after this life
you live again
in a new body
in a new way
with a new mind
but still holding
the essential
wisdom
learned
this time around
which slowly builds up on the back of your soul like light
building up on the back of a slow exposure camera
that you make out of a shoe box with a pinhole.
Surging forward,
but ah yes
my friends
Surging forward,
like energy pushes up into a wave,
filling the wave,
being that moment.
Again and again.
From before through now to after.
These lives,
these deaths,
over and over,
easy as that,
easy as waking up,
falling asleep,
waking up;
forgetting everything
but the most essential thing,
which you don’t forget,
which keeps on growing,
on the backlights,
getting brighter,
overtaking you.
You say no way,
can’t be,
so many souls
is too many,
and even each cockroach
has a little flash of
awareness within
its panic stream.
But it can be done;
it is done;
there’s no problem here;
it keeps surging forward;
and the Light overtakes the darkness.
BW / AMW
Memo from the Otherside
What is it like to be dead?
Your body turned to wood then mush then bones then dust?
What is it like to be just a soul up in the great heaven?
It’s fine.
I was worried I wouldn’t have any thoughts or feelings because I’d be without my brain and my body. I’d thought that the brain/body did reasoning and feelings. So that left me with pure awareness. I thought maybe I’d have that, and I’d just be like a goldfish: always watching but not remembering anything, just watching but not holding any experiences. Or actually, worse than a goldfish–at least they get to see the watery wonderworld. Without senses and without ideas and feelings, I thought I’d be just watching emptiness. Doubtless–I figured–it would be great enlightenment because without all the distractions of ideas, feelings, and perceptions, I’d be constantly aware of what really is: that everything/nothing at the back of one’s conscious experience that–like water to an ocean-going goldfish–holds all experience and yet you can’t quite stand back and notice. I was worried–can you believe it!?–that it would be boring to sit all day in the bliss of pure awareness of the True Good that exists prior to all specifics, that creates them and shines through them and rescues them from themselves.
But it isn’t like that at all anyway.
I have no physical form, but there are other ways to think and feel, and my naked soul hooks easily into them. I am smarter, more deep-feelinged; gentler; calmer; more at ease as I drift through the years always still and yet casting my mind anywhere I please so long as it pleases God, who turns out to be rather lenient with us dead people.
Born again?
Into another body on the old world or a new one?
Well, yes–I’ve been putting off those offers for some time. I just can’t see the point.
Granted, it would allow me to work on faith better. Here it is obvious. Here I clearly perceive that honest joyful creative kindless is the only way to go. Once in possession of a body/brain that truism becomes less obvious, so you’re forced to either realize it deep within better and better each day, or slouch around town with a yucky taste in your mouth. Here it is I suppose a little too easy, a little too pleasant, a little too obvious. I guess I really should go to earth again. Hmmm, well–
I could just wait for the endtimes, when all souls melt back into God, which is a happy ending anyway. Of course, one endtimes just hiccups up into another reality, and in the deepest sense, there’s no time anyway and all happens at once. I’m pretty sure no matter what I do, all will be well with my soul and all other souls. Because God’s all set no matter what and just creates and sustains realities as a joyful little bonus. Not that God can choose to do otherwise; God must follow God’s way, which includes infinite creation and caring. But it also includes the knowledge that that’s just for fun, for delight, for the sparkle on the water mirrored in the gull’s eye.
Still, I should make the most out of my existence. I should push myself to become as wise and good as possible. That’s my calling, as a soul afloat in God, which of course I am with or without a body/brain.
Ah well, let it pass, let it pass; I’ll stop in on some old friends and talk about the good old days, maybe even remembering wine so well that we seem to have a couple glasses around an old oak table in a well-lit tavern a thousand years ago.
BW / AMW
On the couch
My biggest problem?
It’s gotta be that I already have a girlfriend.
When a man–especially a relatively youngish-looking man with a tidy haircut and clothes that hang well–is single, he always has a brighter future to look forward to. Every time he sees an attractive young woman, he can feel like she just may be the girl for him, that he just may be about to land. A man–at least as far as I can tell–always feels like an old space ship that’s journeyed for a million years and is falling apart at the seams but that is desperately keeping it together to rattle just a little bit further so that it can finally reach its destination: a rich, lush, green, watery, fecund world where he can start fresh. The wager will have paid off! He gave up everything to hold the ship together and push it forward to the end; now he’s old and exhausted and he’s long been bored and depressed and disappointed and lonely and ashamed and confused; but it is all OK, because now he’s touching down and soon he’ll be the infinite expansion of joyful thriving that he always knew he should be, could be–if he could just settle himself into the right woman.
All well and good, all plausible enough: a likely enough story and a workable enough path to salvation–as long as you’re single. But the existence of a significant other seriously vexes the storyline. You see a pretty woman, and the hope-hope motor kicks in, but then you remember you’ve already got a girlfriend.
Do I love my girlfriend?
That’s beside the point.
The point is that I cannot be just about to find my girlfriend, and from this point of view my girlfriend–charming though she may be–has ruined my happiness. Though it would be reductionist and cruel to say she is nothing more than a reminder that I’m not about to enter into infinite pleasure and joy, nonetheless she is such a reminder, and that reminder is enough to shut my life down.
BW / AMW
Game Over?
Looking down at his thick gold, diamond-studded watch with tired eyes, he understands the silver hands and thinks patiently downward.
A man with no real chance–not really.
Thin, pale, 50, balding, unmarried, childless, partnerless, he keeps in touch with a few old friends and relatives, but his mouth is dry and head shrouded in a hazy thud. He smokes the same cigarettes that he set great hopes upon in his early twenties. Watch him shuffle aimless over to the tall windowframe and, entering into the chill near the pane, gaze–his green-tatooed arms crossed over the white V-neck T-shirt–down at the street.
He is tired. His life has been like one long day that gradually wears an energetic family man working man pub regular family man loverboy completely out. I can’t really hope for his future. The green-tinted visor of his hat obscures his eyes as it points down towards Columbus Circle fully occupied in the noonday summer sun.
They say that the trick of the wise is to really believe that other people experience reality from the inside-out just like you do. Perhaps he is trying to wrap his mind and heart around that insight, but mostly he just wishes vaguely for a cigarette and the health to enjoy it. Not that he’s sick–just tired, very tired, like a piece of chalk worn down to a tiny nub on the sidewalk so that the fingers holding it start to get a little sore with the drawing, which–for reasons unknown (it isn’t as if they are drawing anything memorable)–will not stop drawing.
He tries to rally: He thinks of a nice cool glass of fresh brewed iced tea with a full quarter lemon and the ice cubes clinking while the sun lights the whole cylinder to a nice bright redwood. In vain! In vain. The trick that he always figured he’d be catching hold of pretty soon, and which he’d use to vault himself over the grand canyon never showed. For thirty years now, he’s felt a slight confusion: where is the grandeur that he’s just about to grasp, the victory he’s felt prickling on his skin since as far as he can recall–all the way back to when he tramped through the dry leaves, beneath the dry, shaggy-barked pines, looking for fallen branches to stack together for a fort, a great fort, an awesome fort, a fort that surely would–. What was the fort supposed to do?
AMW / BW
I want to go / man in rut / A pathetic freewrite
I want to go now.
I don’t know where.
Somewhere relaxing.
If you had money, not needing to work and yet enjoying a gourmet life–
That would be nice.
Then you’d wake up, stretch, and take a long walk or perhaps grab a plane and float over to Paris, where you could wake up, stretch, and stroll around town practicing your French, whiling in cafes, bars, restaurants, parks.
Unless it was winter in New York–then it’d be more practical to float to Buenos Aires, or perhaps Sydney, or maybe just take a road trip down through the Old South, spending a week or two in New Orleans before making your way to Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Prescott, Phoenix, Tuscon, LA, San Diego, Mexico City–gradually building up your tan as you progressed.
But I’m lonely, so who will be my wife?
You can travel with me and have sex with me and hang out with me.
But what will we talk about? And how will we keep the sex both loving and exciting?
Clearly we’ll need a lot of women’s magazines, and a few men’s magazines, and maybe a couple on pop psychology.
And yet that comment is even painful as a joke; even just trying to be cool and toss of an ironic grin makes me feel the cockroaches eating me from the inside out, their little brown grasshopper heads whirring maniacally from side to side.
Who will be my wife and keep me company while I skate through on my daydreamed riches?
Who can I find that will complete me as a human being?
Not in a tawdry, run-in-my-yellow-stockings kind of way; but wholesome:
I want a love that isn’t cheating, that is actually both fulfilling and decent– to feel good and not feel terrible about it.
Or do I just grab a couple pairs of old jeans, white Ts, hiking sneakers, cowboy boots, snap-button western shirts, a sweater and a jacket and hop into some reliable, fuel-efficient sedan? It is the information age now, so even if there’s no one to talk to, there’s still always a lot to focus on.
Who remembers the RV Age?
I watched it up close when I was a child.
Grandpa retires at 62, buys a small RV and him and grandma tour the US, visiting kids and grandkids on the way. A retirement that lasts forever. Unless you get hit by a stray stroke or something.
Never mind.
It doesn’t matter.
Which raises another interesting question. Pardon me if you don’t think it is interesting. I’d write “which raises another interesting question, at least from my point of view” to avoid controversy. I hate controversy and I’d be willing to accept even more awkward formulations in order to keep people from snarling towards me, swatting their big soft paws at my little unprotected head. But I honestly don’t think anyone cares what I say or do, so I just stuck to the shorter formulation. And yet I then explained myself in a long convoluted and not completely spleenless passage where I managed to communicate all that I claimed to not bother communicating and then some.
Never mind–it doesn’t matter.
Which raises another interesting question:
When do you hang it up?
At some point you realize that your dream isn’t tenable. Maybe it isn’t what you want so much as what you wish you both had and wanted to have. Maybe you just realize you’re not going to attain it, or that you’d rather just skip it and attain something else. At some point the best thing to do is to give up, to quit. Your parents told you it is always best to stick it out; as a general guideline that has some merit, but it is not an eternal truth. So when do you hang in the towel?
What about everybody else?
Do they even exist for you?
All you can see is the sunlight glinting on a desert road where you never were in a time before you, beckoning you on, calling you into the glint and the dry heat that smells like stillness.
What about the existence of others? It has a place in your philosophy, why not your heart?
Desperado–!
but as an abstraction:
All the self-involvement and self-indulgence,
but without the riding chaps, the stetson, the infallible six-shooter, whistful woman in every port–
Sour hurt in the stomach, squishing you down, squishing you in; imploding like suddenly deep in the ocean, squished into a long string with some other long strings dangling off it. If I could just explode outward instead of inward! Then I’d get past this glitch.
For sure.
BW / AMW
The hurt that runs through it
Like a river
slow and sure
piddling itself out
yet always with a little more
in store.
Walking down the street,
round the bends,
up the alleys,
remembering
nothing.
Oh well.
BW/AMW
A New, Improved Manhattan Project: Pt 2: The Proposal
[Anti-Weapon / New Manhattan Project]
And so I began to work on the problem:
Now that the world is wobbling, our weapons too fierce and goodwill and political, cultural/societal, economic and environmental solidity all too strained: what we need now is an anti-weapon. A weapon that undoes the effects of dangerous substances including but not limited to weapons.
My first thought was a Cloud Of Protection (COP — an unintentional acropun) that would immediately rush to, envelope, and implode a nuclear explosion as it began or a poison gas as it started to expand. I thought I’d combine that technology with anti-diseases that people could catch and which would fight off all possible plagues. But the science keeps beating me, and I fear I’ll not manage anything more than a damp fog in my bathroom — a sluggish, lazy, rather weak fog hovering over my porcelain tub and encouraging mildew right up until the blast that melts everything.
So I’ve decided to try another tack:
A wisdom meme. A short koan that’s very easy to solve. As I understand it, meditating on koans can help the minds of devoted practitioners skip their normal tracks and jump into a complete, whole-being insight of what is actually most fundamentally going on. I think they work because the Truth is all there really is and It shines through each conscious moment, so to the extent one’s thoughts escape the heuristic loops and background assumptions used to navigate and/or slumber-through the perceived realities, those thoughts will immediately find themselves centered around and radiating off the Truth with clarity and passion — with the compassionate delighted laughter of wisdom, which the Truth, I suppose, possesses infinitely and shares freely to the degree a body (well, the interwoven flow of feels/notions/ideas within a body) stops yammering, holds still, and listens clear.
[Why don’t drugs work? Don’t they cause us to skip our normal tracks? Hmmm. We need to jump the tracks but not slip into any other tracks. And we need to also come gently back into focus so our ideas and feelings can get a good poetic hold on what exceeds them. We need to oscillate between far-out and sharp. We need to let go of everything, even pure pleasure and the delight of salvation and insight; and then gently bring everything into a more mundane focus; and then expand out again into the infinite giggle; and then focus again; … .]
The problem with traditional koans is that they’re pretty difficult to use and pretty much never work on their own: they take a great deal of prayerful consideration, meditation, devotion to the search, etc — goods that most people frankly aren’t inclined to develop. Obviously, discipline’s commendable and we can’t fault a spiritual leader for telling their flock that they really oughtta get to work, really really should put and keep Truth first! Still, time is of the essence, and at this point we can’t afford to be sticklers for formalities. Furthermore, the difficulty inherent in traditional enlightenment techniques coupled with the glory associated with wisdom can encourage one to put on wisdom-airs — which causes trouble. I therefore propose that we formulate a koan that’s as effective as the best ones, but that’s also much much easier to crack, that in fact one couldn’t help but immediately solve.
But how? How to come up with a phrase or sentence or two that cuts the reader or listener in half, slicing straight through all the blah blah blah and bringing the conscious mind into a full (or adequately full) experience of the Truth within — that deepest widest sense-of-things that lines the back of a person’s conscious moment, gradually building up on the back of their thought like slowly developing film gathering more and more light — ? While most people do get wiser as they get older, we don’t usually ever get nearly wise enough. We need to speed the process up exponentially. However, it must also be perfectly safe: quick revelations may be only partial (or even completely illusory), but the violence of speedy insights tempts one to believe them complete — which can help unwise impulses do what they love to do: co-opt bits of goodness and wisdom, mix them up in a confusion cocktail, and use the resultant perversion to justify and aggrandize folly.
Hmmmm.
And so I call for a new Manhattan project: Let’s put a bunch of spiritual geniuses together with wordsmiths, psychologists, linguists, and other pertinent wunderkinder and have them come up with an irresistible enlightenment meme.
The meme written, translated into all possible languages and cultures, and released into the info-aether, there will be several pleasant days watching enlightenment sweep the world: a plague of blessedness. And then — the otherwise inevitable game-over disaster thus prevented by a new world that now really does want what’s best and really does know how to get it — we can all settle into exploring, playing, creating in thought: we can get down to business: laugh-dancing through the possibilities, which are infinite, which overflow, which contain and are ultimately burst asunder by the most charming, playful, kindly giggle that, as it turns out, more fundamentally contains than is contained by them.
Thank you,
Signed:
The Drafter of the Proposal
And many others who sign with a flippant shrug and “totally, man!”, little suspecting how the Truth will flood their world, overtake them, become them, make them new and carry and keep them always home.
And some who sign with a taunting “hah! this’ll show ’em!”, scarcely aware (in the back and sides of their thought) that it will show them as well, that it will show everyone — all of us.
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[Anti-Weapon / New Manhattan Project]
[Something Deeperism Institute]
Previous Version:
From A New, Improved Manhattan Project: Pt 1: Preliminary Worries
I am worried that we lack the clarity and shared purpose required to pull it together and put joyful-justice/just-joyfulness first when faced by something awful–or maybe even when merely faced by something that particularly reminds us of awfulness.
I am concerned. But what can I do about it?, that’s what I’d like to know. Or rather: what should I do, and am I allowed to go take a walk?
……
And so I began to work on the problem:
Now that the world is wobbling, our weapons too fierce and good will, political/cultural-organization/communication, and economic- and environmental-basis all too strained–what we need now is an anti-weapon. A weapon that undoes the effects of dangerous substances including but not limited to weapons.
My first thought was a Cloud Of Protection (COP–an unintentional acropun) that would immediately rush to, envelope, and implode a nuclear explosion as it began or a poison gas as it started to expand. I thought I’d combine that technology with anti-diseases that people could catch and which would fight off all possible plagues. But the science keeps beating me, and I fear I’ll not manage anything more than a damp fog in my bathroom–a sluggish, lazy, rather weak fog hovering over my porcelain tub and causing mildew right up until the blast that melts everything.
So I’ve decided to try another tact:
A wisdom meme. A short koan that is very easy to solve. As I understand it, by meditating on koans, they help your mind skip its normal tracks and jump into a complete, whole-being insight. I think they work because the Truth is already all there really is, so if you can just get your thoughts to find a groove that allow them to escape the heuristic loops used to navigate the day-to-day perceived reality, they will immediately find themselves centered around and radiating off the Truth with clarity and passion. The problem with traditional koans is that they’re pretty difficult to use and pretty much never work on their own: they take a great deal of prayerful consideration, meditation, devotion to the search, etc–goods that most people frankly aren’t inclined to develop. Obviously, discipline’s commendable and we can’t fault a spiritual leader for telling their flock to really get to work, to put and keep Truth first! Still, time is of the essence, and I think at this point we can’t afford to be sticklers for formalities. Furthermore, the difficulty inherent in traditional approaches to enlightenment coupled with the glory associated with such grand wisdom tempts one to imagine oneself to be wiser than one actually is–which causes trouble. I therefore propose that we formulate a koan that’s as effective as the best ones, but that’s also much much easier to crack, that in fact one couldn’t help but immediately solve.
But how? How to come up with a phrase or sentence or two that cuts the reader or listener in half, slicing straight through all the blah blah blah and forcing the conscious mind to fully experience the Truth within–that deepest widest sense-of-things that lines the back of a person’s thought, gradually building up on the back of their thought like slowly developing film gathering more and more light. While most people do get wiser as they get older, we don’t tend to ever get nearly wise enough, and our youths are full of dangerous folly. So we need something that works exceedingly fast. However, it must also be perfectly safe–a problem with quick revelations is that they may be partial but the violence of speedy insights tempts one to believe them complete, which can help unwise impulses do what they love to do: co-opt bits of goodness and wisdom, mix them up in a confusion cocktail, and use them to justify and aggrandize folly.
Hmmmm.
And so I call for a new Manhattan project: Let’s put a bunch of spiritual geniuses together with wordsmiths, psychologists, linguists, and other pertinent wunderkinder and have them come up with a an irresistible enlightenment meme.
The meme written, translated into all possible languages and cultures, and released into the info-aether, there will be several pleasant days of watching enlightenment sweep the world like a blessed plague. And then, the otherwise inevitable game-over disaster thus prevented by a new world that now really does want what’s best and really does know how to get it, we can all settle into exploring, playing, creating in thought–we can get down to business: laugh-dancing through the possibilities, which are infinite, which overflow, which contain and are ultimately burst asunder by the most charming, playful, kindly giggle that, as it turns out, more fundamentally contained them than it was contained within them.
Thank you,
Signed:
The Drafter of the Proposal
And many others who sign with a flippant shrug and “totally, man!”, little suspecting how the Truth will flood their world, overtake them, become them, make them new and carry and keep them always home.
And some who sign with a secret “hah! this’ll show ’em!”, scarcely aware (in the back and sides of their thought) that it will show them as well, it will show everyone–all of us.
Authors: BW, AMW
….
What is this?
A three essay series called “A New, Improved Manhattan Project”
Part 1: Preliminary Worries
Pt. 2: The Proposal
Pt. 3: Some Tips for the Geniuses
Whatever happened to selling evolving ebooks on the world-wide web?
Well, nothing’s being posted, but the somewhat-begun books are still available:
Love at a Reasonable Price are listed and linked-to here:
Intro to Love at a Reasonable Price
Intro to Diary of an Adamant Lover for sale here:
Buy the Books
We also are still selling cat totes and epistemologically controversial baby onsies:
Buy Cat Totes!
&/or Objectively Cute Baby Onepieces! (advertised here: An ad for an “Objectively Cute” baby wrap
But what are we really up to?
I dunno, Bartleby and Andy are writing something once in a while and then sometimes going back and editing things. I think they’ll go back to the ebooks before too long. We’ll see.
Flashiness these days
He wore a leopard hide coat, had payments on that.
Platform boots with black patent leather tops.
He rocked a loose lipped wag–kept the women in scud.
Bow down daint–sweep’in longbrim marquis ‘cross the ground.
Goddamn plum velvet tight-leg pants.
Goddamn sweet violet ruffle-front shirt.
Flashy–
And not a paycheck behind.
Together–
Working nine to five.
Classy–
right smooth as the jam.
I knew him,
when I’s just a lad.
I heard his
cool tumbledown talk.
I watched him
strut across the yard.
I knew him,
when I didn’t know.
Your block is well-lit on this sunshiny day.
You ride it–old arch-frame bike shake and sway.
You own it, ’cause your out to play.
But now you’re older and the time’s clip-clop.
AMW