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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Copper Kettle's LiveJournal:

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    Monday, March 8th, 2004
    1:39 pm
    A different point of view may enter into consideration regarding the scientific method itself. Modern science in no way reveals the essence of the world, and has nothing to do with real knowledge, but more often puts the seal on its dissolution. Still, scientific activity has an ideal of clarity, impersonality, objectivity, rigor, and the exclusion of personal sentiments, impulses and preferences. The scientist thinks that he can exclude himself and let objects speak for themselves; he is concerned with "objective" laws that have no respect for what pleases or does not please the individual, and nothing to do with morality. Now, these are also traits of the realism that I have included among the elements valid for the integrated man. In classical antiquity, after all, mathematics was recognized as a discipline for cultivating intellectual clarity. the practical character with which I have reproached modern science does not prejudice this: I am speaking of the orientation or basic formula of every science of the modern type, and not of the direct and arbitrary interventions of individuals in the course of research that proceeds on this basis, and that will not tolerate them.

    -Julius Evola
    from Ride the Tiger
    Sunday, March 7th, 2004
    4:19 pm
    Ox & mosquito
    Upon returning home one night, a man is surprised to find it empty, abandoned by his wife. On the table he finds an envelope with his name on it and a note inside. He feverishly opens it and reads the following message: “Christian, I’ve had it with you and your filthy face. I’m leaving with your friend Leon. For dinner, you’ll find a plate of cold veal in the fridge.”

    “Oh no!” cries the poor wretch, “that can’t be... not veal again!”


    This joke is similar to one of Aesop’s Fables, the one about the ox and the mosquito:


    A mosquito lands on an ox’s ear and tells him, “I’ve come to live here.”

    The ox continues to work and to lead exactly the same life as before without worrying too much about his new tenant.

    One day, the mosquito announces matter-of-factly, “I’m tired of you! I’m leaving!”

    Impassive, the ox listens to this new declaration and continues to lead exactly the same life without changing his habits at all.


    The above remind me of those people who choose someone else according to the projections they make about that person. That person is doing their work and we show up and announce we’ve arrived in their life, that we want to follow their teachings, etc. Then there comes a moment when we’re overcome by a crisis… the mosquito doesn’t manage to divert the ox from his work. We spitefully tell them, “I’m leaving,” … and the ox just keeps on working.

    This also reminds me of meditation. In that instance, I’m the ox working, not exactly sure where he’s going. The ox trudges ahead, inch by inch in order to polish his pearl, to arrive at the essence of himself, but then suddenly the mosquitoes arrive. They’re thoughts that perturb the silence of meditation: “bzzz bzzz buzz… I’m going to the movies tonight… buzz buzz buzz, the elections, the world crisis… my dad… my mom… money… taxes… etc.” Despite everything, the ox keeps on working… and upon seeing that he doesn’t pay any attention to them, the mosquitoes get fed up and leave. Once they’ve gone, you just keep on as before. Their passing didn’t affect you in the least.

    The same thing happens in life. We’re like the ox. We work on ourselves. We try to find ourselves. We go through life. We make progress. We do whatever we need to do and the annoyances, like the mosquitoes, arrive from all over and provoke a continuous negativity.

    If we persist on our long progression, the mosquitoes will just get tired. This requires an infinite patience, inseparable from our love for our work. Self-improvement is a great work that deserves all our love.

    “You talk about self-improvement, but what about everybody else?” someone asks me.

    “Don’t worry about everybody else,” I reply, “let’s talk about the other! All the work I do to perfect myself is directed toward the other and the desired end result is to get to that person… to arrive at the being that I am not, despite the fact that it is I myself.

    It’s the same as the work of a raindrop. Once it arrives at the summit, it lets itself fall, fighting all the air currents and other obstacles, to finally arrive at the original ocean where it will submerge itself completely.

    Such is the work that the conscious mind effects to submerge itself, without fear, in the unconscious. To penetrate into the unconscious isn’t an irrational act. It doesn’t consist of becoming a fascist or destructive. In the unconscious, there are dark forces, but there are also immensely luminous forces that frighten us just as much as the darkness. We must force ourselves to find our own light, because a priori we don’t want to. We struggle. We’re opposed. We can’t. But we keep on working and we commit ourselves profoundly. It’s an obstinate, perseverant search.

    -Alejandro Jodorowsky
    Monday, March 1st, 2004
    10:21 pm
    Attention
    “Master, what do we need to learn the art of the sword?”

    “We need attention.”

    “That’s all?”

    “No. We need attention and attention.”

    “Nothing more?”

    “No, we need attention, attention, and attention.”

    Constant attention. Like a tiger lying in wait, on constant guard, you watch, you observe your being. You observe your values. You observe your reality, with the insatiable desire of nurturing yourself of yourself. You don’t do so selfishly. You seek to nurture yourself of your true being, because that’s where the true being of the Universe is found.

    In the observation of every instant, discovering the slightest fault gives you pleasure. You weep for joy with the idea of being able to correct it. You will be able to overcome it. It’s the task your essential being induces you to perform. You discover your faults, but you also discover your values.

    -Alejandro Jodorowsky

    Current Music: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds -Hey Joe
    Sunday, February 29th, 2004
    12:40 pm
    "One law for the lion and the ox is tyranny."
    -St. Wm. Blake
    Friday, February 27th, 2004
    9:23 pm
    trendy
    And then she said: What these cultural trend-followers are proudly announcing is that "I conformed before you did."
    Wednesday, February 18th, 2004
    8:45 pm
    New EN CD
    This is the public release funded in part by the EN supporters (like yours truly).

    Perpetuum Mobile

    Current Music: Einsturzende Neubauten -Ein seltener Vogel
    Saturday, February 14th, 2004
    8:51 am
    If for the bourgeois generation nature was a kind of idyllic Sunday interlude of small-town life, and if for the latest generation it is the stage for acting out its vacuous, invasive, and contaminating vulgarity, it is for the differentiated man a school of objectivity and distance; it is something fundamental in his sense of existence, exhibiting an absolute character. At this point one can clearly speak of a nature that in its elementarity is the greatest world where the stone and steel panoramas of the metropolis, the endless avenues, the functional complexes of industrial areas are on the same level, for example, as great, solitary forests as symbols of a fundamental austerity, objectivity, and impersonality.

    With regard to the problems of inner orientation in our epoch, I have always valued ideas present in traditional esoteric doctrines. This also applies to what I have just said. The liberation of nature from the human, the access to it through the language of silence and the inanimate seems congenial to one who would turn the objective, destructive process of the modern world to his own advantage. But the direction is no different from that which schools of traditional wisdom, like Zen, knew through a real cleansing and transparency of the glance or an opening of the eye, an enlightening revelation of the consciousness that has overcome the fetters of the physical I, of the person, and his values.

    -Julius Evola
    from Ride the Tiger

    Current Music: Tor Lundvall -Alone
    Wednesday, February 11th, 2004
    2:01 pm
    Labora
    "We have all we want. We don't need to work. Ergo, we should be all right." Or, as the modern person prefers to say "quite all right!" And enquiries regarding the origins of any malaise cease on the medical specialist's doorstep.

    But if all this is true, and it is hardly possible to deny its truth, we must take the existence of these higher impulses into account in facing the whole problem of unemployment, and the increased application of mechanised energy to human industry.

    Is there any further evidence of the existence of these higher impulses in Man?

    There is abundant further evidence.
    (1) It is notorious that no sane healthy man is really lazy. Find him the task that appeals to him and stimulates his particular endowments, and he will be active.

    (2) It is a well known fact among modern psychologists and physiologists, that intellectual power is a development of muscular sense and that the connexion between hand and brain in man may be regarded as the source of a large proportion of what we know as the higher mental faculties. The arms with their terminals, the hands and the fingers, are the oldest thoroughfare of thought and of the higher cerebral activities. To cut handicraft from the daily occupation of the majority, therefore, is tantamount to blocking or damning this oldest thoroughfare of cerebral expression. Hence Ruskin's belief that "foul or mechanical work is always reduced by a noble race to the minimum in quantity; and even then, performed and endured not without a sense of degradation." 1

    (3) It is a fact, suggested first poetically by Nietzsche, and then scientifically established by Alfred Adler, that the universal spring of human action is the Will to Power. Consequently it is clear that a conscious extention of individuality through productivity of some kind is one of the most profoundly satisfying activities of the human species.

    (4) It is a matter of common experience that every sane and healthy man who happens to be engaged in some non-productive activity, or an activity depriving him of the natural spiritual rewards of his industry, always tries, if he has not been wholly besotted by the modern system, to redeem his self-esteem and to indulge his higher impulses by pursuing some productive or creative hobby at home. It may be gardening, carpentry, wood-carving, modelling, ceramic work, or merely photography; but it is certain he will do something of the kind. On the other hand, among those whose life-work gives them the opportunity every day of producing or creating something, we do not find this same eagerness for hobbies or productive pastimes in leisure hours. Neither my grandfather nor my father, both of whom were artists, had any hobbies. As far as I know — and I knew both men well — neither Rodin nor Whistler had any hobbies. No artist I have ever known, and I was brought up among painters, gravers and sculptors, ever had a productive pastime apart from his daily artistic activity.

    (5) Finally, if you turn your attention on yourselves, you will know how few of you can survive for long in happiness and contentment unless you are productive — unless, that is to say, you can demonstrate to yourself and your fellows that your life is enriching Life, no matter how small your contribution may be.

    Furthermore, how many of you, who are wholly intellectual workers, do not repeatedly feel impelled to gratify the proud craving to produce something with your hands? And how infinitely satisfying is such production! How different, more wholesome, and more invigorating is the secret satisfaction of such an activity than the secret satisfaction resulting from intellectual labours!

    If it is difficult to deny what I have here contended, the conclusion must be that the problem of the future is not, as certain superficial thinkers, like Professor Jacks, declare, to contrive and establish Colleges of Leisurecraft and Schools of Play.

    1 Munera Pulveris (London, 1899, p. 133).

    -Anthony Ludovici, 1934
    from Creation or Recreation p. 23-25
    Monday, February 2nd, 2004
    1:29 pm
    Destino
    Went to a screening of the 6-minute Dali movie yesterday and I am duly impressed by its splendor. Although Destino is not receiving good billing, it can likely be found as the intro feature to the current run of The Triplets of Belleville, which was also great fun.

    Destino is very much a whirlwind tour through a series of animated technicolor Dali paintings. Some reviews claimed the non-linear storyline was indecipherable, but I maintain that one needs to be familiar with the vocabulary of the dream world and of Dali's particular "paranoid-critical" method. I had long imagined from the stills what this movie might be like and played it over in my head occasionally. And although I had a vague idea of what to expect, it not only surprised me but never disappointed. In short, everything I could have hoped for.




    It is a brief vignette of human yearnings lost in the enigmatic process which brings the lover and beloved closer together. This is set off by the lover's struggle within the melancholic elements of time & space that conspire to separate them. Truly a work of great beauty that cannot fail to touch the heart of longing for some absolute pinnacle of Love. I think Dali would be pleased.
    Sunday, February 1st, 2004
    1:34 pm
    When one brings artistic feeling to the study of the nature of speech, one finds that the individual sounds form themselves, as it were, into imaginative pictures. It is necessary, however, entirely to free oneself from the abstract character which language has taken during the so-called advanced civilisation of the present day. For it is an undeniable fact that modern man, when speaking, in no way brings his whole human being into activity.

    True speech, however, is born from the whole human being. Let us take any one of the vowels. A vowel sound is always the expression of some aspect of the feeling life of the soul. The human being wishes to express what lives in his soul as wonder — Ah. Or the holding himself upright against opposition — A; or the assertion of self, the consciousness of ego-existence in the world — E. Or again he wishes to express wonder, but now with a more intimate, caressing shade of feeling — I.
    ( towards visible language )
    10:33 am
    "In this the shrouding gloom of winter
    The soul feels ardently impelled
    To manifest its innate strength,
    To guide itself to realms of darkness,
    Anticipating thus
    Through warmth of heart the sense-world's
    revelation."

    -RS
    COTS, Jan 31 - Feb. 6
    Saturday, January 31st, 2004
    6:04 pm
    CYNIC, n.

    "A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision. "

    -Ambrose Bierce
    The Devil's Dictionary
    Friday, January 30th, 2004
    10:05 am
    Dali & Disney
    Salvador Dali's original six-minute animated short titled Destino was made in 1946 for Disney studios. The stills from this project have been around for many years but I had no idea Disney had actually decided to release the film finally!

    I assumed Destino was another of those ill-fated projects which would forever be consigned to the dusty archive shelves and forgotten. It is very exciting to see its emergence again. I will be eagerly looking for the DVD release to add to my Dali collection.

    Update: Destino was completed after advice from Disney's lawyers that under the contract signed with Dali, his artwork could not be claimed by the studio until the film was completed & released. The artwork of the late master surrealist painter is now valued at several million dollars. Surprise surprise...

    Current Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto -Chasin' the Air
    Thursday, January 22nd, 2004
    1:00 pm
    "...As yet, however, the country was not yet irretrievably doomed. A system of intrigue and blackmail, elaborated by the governing classes to the highest degree of efficiency, acted as a powerful counterpoise. In theory all were equal; in practice the permanent officials, the real rulers of the country, were a distinguished and trustworthy body of men. Their interest was to govern well, for any civil or foreign disturbance would undoubtedly have fanned the sparks of discontent into the roaring flame of revolution.
    ( And discontent there was... )
    Saturday, January 17th, 2004
    6:21 pm
    Evening
    The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
    held for it by a row of ancient trees;
    you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
    one journeying to heaven, one that falls.

    and leave you, not at home in either one,
    not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
    not calling to eternity with the passion
    of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

    and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
    your life, with its immensity and fear,
    so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
    it is alternately stone in you and star.

    -RMR
    Thursday, January 15th, 2004
    10:39 am
    Jarts
    ( public enemy No.1? )
    Tuesday, January 13th, 2004
    11:40 am
    "Here the great obstacles are these; firstly, the misunderstanding of Self; and secondly, the resistance of the rational mind against its own conclusions. Men must cast off these two restrictions; they must begin to realise that Self is hidden behind, and independent of, the mental and material instrument in which they apprehend their Point-of-View; and they must seek an instrument other than that which insists (with every single observation) on impressing on them what is merely its own most hateful flaw and error, the idea of duality."

    -AC,
    Little Essays Towards Truth
    Mastery

    ( instruments )
    Sunday, January 11th, 2004
    5:17 pm
    "Nevertheless, those who accept a law have the right to inquire the origin of the law which they accept. Before men submit to a law hitherto accepted, they have the right not only to search its cause but, above all, to study its effect."

    -Max Theon

    Thanks to [info]keith418 for this useful quote.
    Friday, January 9th, 2004
    2:15 pm
    Thursday, January 8th, 2004
    8:49 pm
    To All Who Would Know
    To speak what is ON your MIND. . . FROM your HEART, THAT is communication.
    To let whatever you are feeling SHOW on your FACE, THAT is courage.
    To forfeit what you WANT to do and accept what you HAVE to do, THAT is humility.
    To read these three lines and think of yourself with satisfaction, THAT is folly.
    To read these three lines and doubt you could ever possess such virtue, THAT is wisdom.
    To fulfill what has been set forth in these three lines, THAT is your destiny.
    To seek to AVOID fulfilling what has been set forth in these three lines, THAT is the end of life.
    To seek to FULFILL what has been set forth in these three lines, THAT is the BEGINNING of life.
    To not recognize the TRUTH in these three lines, THAT is limbo.
    To be in limbo is to be without spirit,
    to be without spirit is to not recognize the truth,
    to not recognize that which CREATED you,
    to be alone in darkness,
    to be a vegetable with little arms and legs.
    To be able to smile at this point is your only salvation.
    To feel like singing at this point would be evidence of true spirit.
    To SING at this point would be Godliness.
    To sing BEAUTIFULLY at this point you would have to be God.
    Why AREN'T you?

    -Mel Lyman
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