Daniel Christopher June to the Students of Life:
Greetings!
So just more of the same over here: kids back in school, a few hours in the day for a job. I've applied at Schuler's Book Store. I will talk to their hiring manager tomorrow (Wednesday).
Take Care Caretakers!
* 1018 *
Ordinary people delight in the extraordinary; the Sage delights in the ordinary. What but all our childhood stories of dragons and knights and women too-beautiful-to-compare mean the very mundane day-to-day struggles the adult faces in the workplace, in politics, at home? For those who have no eye for subtleties, we show them grand exaggerations, mountains out of molehills, gods out of excellent men, and heroes out of everyday folk. Each morning is a resurrection, and each evening a samsara – we lead many lives successively, many lives at the same time, all within a hundred-year span. To see infinity in the everyday marks the eye of the wise.
* 1019 *
The Hebrew Prophets sublimated the grossness of Mosaic Law, redefining principles, reinterpreting old commands, making over completely the religion while yet claiming fidelity to it, just as the Upanishadists metaphorized Vedic Laws and introduced the personal to what before was communal. The New Testament goes one step further, with Jesus reinterpreting the law, "Love your fellow Jew as yourself," as, "Love everybody in the world as yourself," and with Paul recommending, "circumcision of the heart," as opposed to literally cutting the foreskin -- just as Buddhism made the whole of religion only about ending suffering. Nobody civilized sacrifices animals anymore, though they all used to. It gets to be that in practice Christians and Buddhists, on the whole, can feel, believe, say, and do anything at all, and still take pride in their titles. The more sublimated, the more gassy. Most Buddhists don't even meditate – they leave that to the monks; Christians rarely leave father, mother, wife, son, daughter, and all wealth to follow the Way. Leave that to the saints. Religions are fashions. The only thing that keeps them vital, nevertheless, are the deep practitioners in the center, the hearts that pump blood even to something as remote as the flakiest skin.
* 1020 *
"Guard your manly power, your health and strength, from all hurts and violations – this is the most sacred charge you will ever have in your keeping." Thus said Whitman, and indeed, the only beauty in man is power, in the strength and health of his body, and in his body-trained will to attack, attack, attack all that offends one's vision of truth. Man proper is athlete, enduring the pain, and ever greater pain, of growth and overcoming, the training of sport, and vigorous recreation – and this speaks most of all to such book-nibblers as ourselves upon whom the whole spiritual health of the future depends – us posterity's darlings, god's darlings -- with our duty to our strength and health. The mind is the body, and all thoughts come from the body, the experiences of the body.
In the swarthy vitality of the Prophet Smith, we see an eager beamer, haughty and proud to triumph wrestling his friends and contenders to the ground. A farmer's boy, a lush bumpkin, he never despaired the primacy of the body. Know that the mind is by nature eternally embodied, and know that the mind finds its health and main in the body and its pluck. Health is beauty. What we find disgusting is the degeneration of our ideal type.
We fight, and serve, and play the game always for the success of our vision of the truth, the good, and the beautiful, and dare we not embody it in our flesh and mind? Nay, that is where we must embody, or let us drop the matter entirely! Either I honor myself, or my honoring lacks substance. What matters the praise of the weak or the appreciation of fools? Whatever another may say of me – and sometimes it's been rather flattering – none of that matters a mustard seed compared to how my reflection appears to me in the mirror. Act in such a way that you must respect yourself. Make your life your ultimate art. Health begets health, but never did a glorious soul inhabit a wretched body. Beauty is truth, so master yourself.
* 1021 *
Emerson put every penny of thought into the savings bank of his journals, which he fully indexed, indexing the indexes, developing themes and fields into full-fledged essays. All of Nietzsche's grand formulations in his mature works come from the swamp of his four aphoristic books, where he experimented, dared some first-figures, trialed around, fell into digressions, and let the mess simmer. His Eternal Recurrence, his Slave Morality, his Overman, and so much more find their first inklings in the aphoristic fertilizer. Freud, likewise, regarded his Interpretation of Dreams as his dung pile, rife with fertile thoughts he would develop in his mature works. So these allays I view and review, memorizing favorites, drawing parallels and finding rhymes, so that in this upcoming decade – here I hope! – my mature works will find germination. An intellectual molts his genius every ten years, so let us glut on the stuff of our growth.
* 1022 *
"He who writes to himself writes to an eternal audience," said Emerson, and Ama places before me the conundrum of the dual marriage – Turmoil and Ecstasy – two brides – the central gravity in my care and concern, or in other words, God Herself. I suppose the trope fountain for another would be different, yet this is my struggle, and the body of my heaven is this double marriage, this breaking of my love into Psyche and Niviana.
* 1023 *
Ever this scarlet A of Ama about my chest, ever this knit of silk for you my kin, my darling Pearl, skeined in skin of subtle turns. How I raise you up my children, granting you the universal education we all should have – Mother Goose as babes, Aesop's and Grimm's as children, the American Renaissance for high school, the great epics and world scripture upon adulthood – yet spinning a word for each your own story, for each of our adventures are a stitch in the robe of Mattria, who dances to life all that is and all that is not. Gnomic tropes I give unto you, subtle turn and wink, span and sweep – small moves to win the Game.
-- R ᴤ88s Я --
Perfection Is Easy
www.perfectidius.com
AMA LAUGHS!
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