Ignavus

Ignavus satrapam dedecet inclytum
Somnus qui populo multifido præest.
Dum Dauni veteris filius armiger
Stratus purpureo procubuit strato
Audax Euryalus, Nisus et impiger
Invasere cati nocte sub horrida
Torpentes Rutilos castraque Volscia
Hinc codes oritur clamor et absonus

---

Indolence dishonors the renowned ruler
Who commands the many concerns of the people.
While the warrior son of old Daunus lay on purple
Sheets, bold Euryalus and nimble Nisus
Artfully entered the Volscian camp
Of the torpid Rutilians at midnight.
Thus made fools, they arose crying in discord . . . - Milton
Jean-Baptiste Roman, "Nisus and Euryalus" (1827)

Passing On

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

-Lord Byron (1788--1824)

Capturing the "others" Attention

Responsibility for My Desire

What we encounter here is the properly perverse attitude of adopting the position of the pure instrument of the big Other's Will: it's not my responsibility, it's not me who is effectively doing it, I am merely an instrument of the higher Historical Necessity… The obscene jouissance of this situation is generated by the fact that I conceive of myself as exculpated for what I am doing: isn't it nice to be able to inflict pain on others with the full awareness that I'm not responsible for it, that I merely fulfill the Other's Will…this is what Kantian ethics prohibits. This position of the sadist pervert provides the answer to the question: How can the subject be guilty when he merely realizes an "objective", externally imposed necessity? By subjectively assuming this "objective necessity," i.e. by finding enjoyment in what is imposed on him. So, at its most radical, Kantian ethics is NOT "sadist," but precisely what prohibits assuming the position of a Sadean executioner.

- Slavoj Zizek, "Kant and Sade: The Ideal Couple"

De-Manned or De-Sired

Either Kill your Father or Cut Off Your Own Balls!

Patricide?

Visual Associative Agnosia vs Neglect

1024 Hz Clock

Consciousness is the last and latest development of the organic and hence also what is most unfinished and unstrong. Consciousness gives rise to countless errors that lead an animal or man to perish sooner than necessary, "exceeding destiny," as Homer puts it. If the conserving association of the instincts were not so very much more powerful, and if it did not serve on the whole as a regulator, humanity would have to perish of its misjudgments and its fantasies with open eyes, of its lack of thoroughness and its credulity—in short, of its consciousness; rather, without the former, humanity would long have disappeared.

Before a function is fully developed and mature it constitutes a danger for the organism, and it is good if during the interval it is subjected to some tyranny. Thus consciousness is tyrannized—not least by our pride in it. One thinks that it constitutes the kernel of man; what is abiding, eternal, ultimate, and most original in him. One takes consciousness for a determinate magnitude. One denies it growth and its intermittences. One takes it for the "unity of the organism."

This ridiculous overestimation and misunderstanding of consciousness has the very useful consequence that it prevents an all too fast development of consciousness. Believing that they possess consciousness, men have not exerted themselves very much to acquire it; and things haven't changed much in this respect. To this day the task of incorporating knowledge and making it instinctive is only beginning to dawn on the human eye and is not yet clearly discernible; it is a task that is seen only by those who have comprehended that so far we have incorporated only our errors and that all our consciousness relates to errors.

- Nietzsche, "The Gay Science"

Puccini, "Tosca"

I think I'm in love, again!

Palazzo Farnese - The Master Signifier

Visual-Verbal Associative Agnosia

Fear AND Delight!

You fall in love. And it’s crucial [to know] that in English and in French we use this expression; you “fall” in love. You lose control. I claim that love, the experience of passionate love, is the most elementary metaphysical experience, it’s a platonic experience. In the sense of, you lead your easy, daily life, you meet [up with] friends, go to parties and whatever, everything is normal, maybe here and there a one-night stand, and then you passionately fall in love, [and] everything is ruined. The entire balance of your life is lost. Everything is subordinated to this one person. I almost cannot imagine in normal daily life, outside war and so on, a more violent experience than that of love. And I think [this is] which is why all the “advisers” that we [supposedly] need today are trying precisely to domesticate or erase this excess of love. It’s as if love is too poisonous and then they, [i.e.] all the marriage and dating agencies, tell you that the trick is how to find yourself in love without falling in love. This idea came to me when on one of my Transatlantic flights I read one of those stupid airline journals and there was a text in there, in big letters, claiming: “We will enable you to find yourself in love, without the fall”, without this dangerous exposure. And I think this fits perfectly to our daily narcissistic metaphysics. You know the old story that I repeat all the time; we want coffee without caffeine, we want beer without alcohol, and we want love without its dangerous moment, where you get lost.

- Slavoj Zizek, "Love as a Political Category"

What's Your Hemispheric Dominant Functional Specialty? The Overall Whole? Or the Detailed Part?

He has blue eyes
She has brown.
He lives in the country
She lives in town.
He runs
She walks.
He listens
She talks.
He is flighty
She is faithful.
He likes coffee
She likes tea.
He likes you...

But not me.

-Ellen Ryder, "Opposites"

Left - Audition; Right - Vision
Now "share" your dominant results... across the corpus callosum... or NOT!

More Songs of Innocence and Experience

But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?

Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.

Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: its own will, willeth now the spirit; his own world winneth the world's outcast.

Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child. Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is called The Pied Cow.

-Nietzsche, "Zarathustra"

A Song of Innocence
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep,
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lambs back was shav'd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair

And so he was quiet. & that very night.
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black,

And by came an Angel who had a bright key
And he open'd the coffins & set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind.
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
---
A Song of Experience
A little black thing in the snow,
Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"--
"They are both gone up to the church to pray.

"Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smiled among the winter's snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

"And because I am happy and dance and sing,
They think they have done me no injury,
And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,
Who make up a heaven of our misery."

-William Blake , "The Chimney Sweeper"

Counting Blessings

Home at Last