lecture twelve:

"When one has expanded his consciousness, one’s thoughts enter the paraverbal. Then to communicate with others who have not yet crossed the bar requires parable, metaphor, satire, or nonsense. Indirection is then seen as guidance."

Arises again the question of originality; my question, though, is as follows: what if the grinding of the stars is the phenomenological moment? What if in dimly perceiving ethereal wheels is the source of all creation, if the sparks from the vessels are the momentary flashes of inspiration that allow us to breathe in the sound and perceive it in a way that the senses we have trained cannot? Is madness as fleeting as sanity? As creativity? What if, in reading and perceiving such moments, the spark is rereleased and is free to return to its vessel, to add its part in healing the world ever so infinitesimally? Perhaps this is why “literature is inexhaustible”; because it exhumes, rather than exhausts, exhales to make room for clean, fresh air...

lecture eleven:

“Games are nature’s most beautiful creation”; it is lucky, then, that humans fall under the category of Nature, and can partake in such ephemeral bursts of beauty. They can touch, breathe, feel, and dance like telephones in the rain.
Senses are sensational.

lecture ten:

i.

Is suffering the opiate of the individual? How else does one explain the addiction to faith? Perhaps this is the “true” nature of the addictive personality; an inability to self-soothe, a need for external opiate to alleviate life’s suffering.


ii.

Why can’t coincidence be profound? What is it about texts that despite characters such as Barthes and Foucault, despite revision of history, despite all evidence to the contrary (I suspect we may all be secret solipsists) that makes authorial intent still so sacred? I’m not sure it should matter whether the coincidental references to red are such or not. They are there, no? The red can be read!



iii.

Connect nothing, but the dots. Here lies isomorphism:


iv.

The screws holding the ground to the world are actually sprinklers for the lawn. This I cannot emotionally believe, despite all rational and ocular evidence to support it. I am certain that they are a ploy, a ruse, and that one day soon the warranty will expire and we will all be cast hurtling headlong into the black hole that waits patiently behind a mask of brilliant stars. I’ll be ready, Chicken Little. I’ll be ready. We will fall into the sky, ascending from Terran wheeling through the hearts of Luna and Sol.


v.

To suffer the madness of the muses, we must stick with odd numbers (from whither doth that phrase appear? the odd-numbered muses? she mused, and puzzled, and bowed out gracelessly). The novel may indeed have been one giant sunstroke, but perhaps so is life. To be punch drunk, we need substance (or at the very least, a substance).

lecture nine:

All of the losers are beautiful; beauty and terror intertwined, suffering and joy (not mere pleasure, mind you), coherence and chaos, self and Self.

Because the notes are so haywire, I thought they’d be worth transcribing in part for this particular journal entry:

Huxley – Doors of Perception
[my name crossed out] thatched roof sensibilities


Name; Student #
Class: Professor
Date

[center] Title: Subtitle

[insert paragraph symbol mentally here] essay



to try...essayer. en Francais? peut-etre, mais Frenglish is infinitely mieux quand on parles of Montreal.

MLA—modern? I suppose...or perhaps merely missive.

‘I’ve never loved a woman for herself alone.’
‘I’ve never thought of women as a remedy for loneliness.’
I don’t care if it’s real or not, it’s just a good memory [for some reason not in quotation marks].

‘Tomorrow you may have become pure light.’

drugs=religion?

Cohen’s approach to ‘matriarchy.’ I find it problematic, too.

Phew!