“You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those people as yourself and your friends.” - Robert Anton Wilson
As it happens I have a real love for Chinese poetry - mostly through Arthur Waley's translations.
He seemed to have a feel for it, even though he never went to China, just sat in the British Library, with a sick wife at home, and an unrequited love for Alison - only when his wife died did he and Alison get together - for six months until he died!
She wrote a book "A half of two lives" - about the tragedy and strangeness of such a thing - which reminded me how rigid and formal and Confucian the old British system had felt for those who lived under it - but at least the Brits had their 'Taoist' eccentric mystics, too.
I was reading him only last night, so, i'll quote my favourite slice. Yes Bogus, Alan Watts! The voice of refreshing change:
"The highest positive expression of metaphysical Reality is religious and mythological symbolism, which is interior and spiritual truth projected or extraverted into the forms of phantasy and fact. Prior to any metaphysical knowledge, we have no direct consciousness of interior truth, and can know it only as it is clothed in external forms. - Involution and Evolution, Alan Watts
I see lightening bugs powered by Alan Watts, Flitting round my room
4 comments:
Oh man, what a flash! I only ever saw fireflies (LuciƩrnagas) once - many years ago in Mexico. Went a long journey to see a site way off the tourist routes - got stranded without a penny (peso) for the bus (which only went in the morning anyway), so to keep warm I walked back (60 kilometres) out over the mountains through the night, and suddenly the air filled with flashing lights. Only once I found one walking on the ground, so I could see the silhouette of this delightful beetle. I didn't put him in a matchbox...
Thanks for the memory.
Your welcome Bogus,
i had to use my imagination, an alarm clock and
my laptop to bring these critters into my room.
As it happens I have a real love for Chinese poetry - mostly through Arthur Waley's translations.
He seemed to have a feel for it, even though he never went to China, just sat in the British Library, with a sick wife at home, and an unrequited love for Alison - only when his wife died did he and Alison get together - for six months until he died!
She wrote a book "A half of two lives" - about the tragedy and strangeness of such a thing - which reminded me how rigid and formal and Confucian the old British system had felt for those who lived under it - but at least the Brits had their 'Taoist' eccentric mystics, too.
Ah, Alan Watts, the voice of them all...
"Ah, Alan Watts, the voice of them all..."
I was reading him only last night, so, i'll quote my favourite slice. Yes Bogus, Alan Watts! The voice of refreshing change:
"The highest positive expression of metaphysical Reality is religious and mythological symbolism, which is interior and spiritual truth projected or extraverted into the forms of phantasy and fact. Prior to any metaphysical knowledge, we have no direct consciousness of interior truth, and can know it only as it is clothed in external forms. - Involution and Evolution, Alan Watts
I see lightening bugs powered by Alan Watts,
Flitting round my room
acrillic
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