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A Word or Two
by evo Monday, Dec 4 2006, 10:17am
international /
prose/poetry /
literature
The word assassin comes to us from the hashish eaters who were commissioned to dispatch/eliminate enemy leaders – an interesting tactic that survives today in Iraq and other Muslim regions. Target the presented puppet leadership and force the faceless powers to reveal their real intentions to the world. Who would lament the elimination of those who would do the bidding of slave masters? Are they not worse than their masters? Theirs is the work of traitors – for thirteen pieces of dung they sell their OWN people to slave merchants. Slave masters do not hide their intentions, they manipulate as the need arises, but who would sell one’s brethren for a few crumbs if not those deserving of the most extreme solution? The clinical or surgical removal of the cancerous tissue that infects the general population becomes a necessity, not an option, AN IMPERATIVE!
Beware the poets, jesters, jugglers, bards and clowns for they on honey-dew still feed and drink the ambrosia of paradise; it is they who have written and continue to write ALL your religious narratives, heroic epics and modern mind-shaping slogans. The proof of infinite creation issues from the pens of ‘intoxicated’ other–worldly travellers and is offered in times of despair; the vaults of unreason are breached by the words of beggars.
On the wings of chaos perception fractures 'realities' and extends beyond reason and unreason; bravery is rewarded with visions of renewal and the food of paradise. From ecstasy to perpetual bliss, those who dare achieve the prize.
What would YOU, the nectar of paradise or the shit sandwiches on offer from conservatives?
KUBLA KHAN by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
TYGER by William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
---------------------------------------
“I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by the birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan
Then we take Beijing!”
Leonard Cohen
----------------------------------------
“Something is happening but you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?”
Bob Dylan
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look again, Socrates!
by evo Tuesday, Dec 5 2006, 7:39am
Take another look at the ad men and spin doctors, you may be surprised to learn that their nostrils are heavily abused, not to mention the booze -- I hear that's a favourite of journos too!
The original Soma, with which Aldous was familiar, was a psychedelic mushroom -- fly agaric, is the strongest contender -- the reference to Soma in his novel was based on his knowledge of the Rig Veda. I hear he was also partial to psychedelics!
It's hard to deny the genius that results from the 'nectar of the Gods'. Notwithstanding it is a two-edged sword. Its 'holy' status ("true vine") excludes it from recreational use or abuse. Pitiful ad men and burnt out journos beware!
However, your observations are cogent regarding televsion and other forms of mind manipulation/social control. Who owns the mass media, Socrates, and why is it so blatantly biased?
The commentary refers to an irrepressible quality in the human species -- that no one, conservative or otherwise, could ever hope to extinguish.
Reality check
by Socrates Tuesday, Dec 5 2006, 6:40am
"Beware the poets, jesters, jugglers, bards and clowns for they on honey-dew still feed and drink the ambrosia of paradise; it is they who have written and continue to write ALL your religious narratives, heroic epics and modern mind-shaping slogans."
But ALL the "modern mind-shaping slogans" are written by advertising agencies and political spin doctors!!!
As for "Soma" (the drug used to control the population in Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World") -- it already exists... it's called television!!!
bathos anyone?
by pharma via rialator Monday, Dec 4 2006, 9:49pm
"shit sandwich", indeed!
You are aware that Coleridge wrote that piece under the influence of Laudanum and that the English Romantic Poets virtually fuelled on the stuff (that dreams are made of).
If your allusion is intentional, a strong argument can be made in support of the huge effect that drugs played on forming enlightened societies.
One of the earliest recorded was the 'Aryans of the Indus valley who brought their Soma drinking habit with them to found a civilisation that ruled most of S. E Asia for three thousand years. The earliest account of soma drinking was in the Rig Veda -- a core Hindu text -- the rest is history.
Patanjali in 600 BC states clearly in one of his classical aphorisms that (two translations):
4:1. The powers are attained by birth, chemical means, power of words, mortification, or concentration.
4:1 Powers arise by birth, drugs, incantations, purificatory acts or concentrated insight.
Then we have the Christian example, Christ transforming water into wine and that wine was described as high quality!
Dionysus or Bacchus and the religion of the vine is well known.
The body of literature and the social manifestations that result from consciousness altering substances far exceeds the drab attempts of straights.
Kubla Khan is perhaps one of the most striking and awe inspiring examples, it never fails to blow me away.
From Soma to Leary (LSD) the effects of psychotropics has left deep impressions on the history of most civilisations.
Indeed, the political use of drugs was exemplified by the assassins, are you trying to revive something?
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