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Ode to Man
Tho’ many are the terrors,
not one more terrible than man goes.
This one beyond the grizzled sea
in winter storming to the south
He crosses, all-engulfed,
cutting through, up from under swells.
& of the gods She the Eldest, Earth
un-withering, un-toiling, is worn down,
As the Twisting Plough’s year
into Twisting Plough’s year,
Through the breeding of horse, he turns.
& the lighthearted race of birds
all-snaring he drives them
& savage beasts, their clan, & of the sea,
marine in kind
With tightly-wound meshes spun
from all-seeing is Man.
Yet too, he masters by means of pastoral
beast, mountain-trodding,
The unruly-maned horse holding fast,
‘round the neck yoked,
& the mountain’s
ceaseless bull.
& the voice & wind-fast thought
& the passion for civic ways
He has taught, so from crag’s poor court
from under the ether’s hard-tossed arrows
To flee, this all-crossing one. Blocked, he comes
upon nothing so fated.
From Hades alone escape he’ll not bring.
Tho’ from sickness impossible
Flight he has pondered.
A skilled one, devising of arts beyond hope,
Holding at times an evil,
But then to the noble he crawls,
honoring the laws of the Earth, &
Of gods the oath so just,
high-citied.
Citiless is the one who with the un-beautiful
dwells, boldly in grace.
Never for me a hearth-mate
may he have been, never equal in mind
He who offers this.
Ode to Man
A BwO is made in such a way that it can be occupied, populated only by intensities. Only intensities pass and circulate. Still, the BwO is not a scene, a place, or even a support upon which something comes to pass. It has nothing to do with phantasy, there is nothing to interpret. The BwO causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space, nor is it in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree—to the degree corresponding to
the intensities produced. It is nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0; but there is nothing negative about that zero, there are no negative or opposite intensities. Matter equals energy. Production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at zero. That is why we treat the BwO as the full egg before the extension of the organism and the organization of the organs, before the formation of the strata; as the intense egg defined by axes and vectors, gradients and thresholds, by dynamic tendencies involving energy transformation and kinematic movements involving group displacement, by migrations: all independent
of accessory forms because the organs appear and function here only as pure intensities. The organ changes when it crosses a threshold, when it
changes gradient. "No organ is constant as regards either function or position, . . . sex organs sprout anywhere,... rectums open, defecate and close, . . . the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments." The tantric egg. After all, is not Spinoza's Ethics the great book of the BwO?
Ode to Man
But human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power of shaping to our use those things which are without us. Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist. For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield absolute acquiescence to anything, save to that which is true: wherefore, in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the endeavour of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole.
Cannot wax poetic as I like
with so much burried in attic/basement boxes.
And a candle burnt-out into stalagmites which,
even fully searchable, return only a torrent of radiation!
This can condense only a bit of the soup
in the stew of things cooked in human rationales:
* “Man-Made DNA Makes Counting as easy as 1, 2, 3”
monitoring toxins and reporting to central control.
* “Chancy Climate Inspires Song”
“sexual selection on measures of intelligence”
* Chimpanzee tool-kit found to be trichotomic:
3 categories of implements: pounders, enlargers, collectors.
* “Europium Shows Its Superpowers:
Rare earth is 53rd element to conduct with no resistance”
* “No Brainer Behavior”: “This motion-free, intent-free
concept of behavior [embraces] an activity at which plants excel: releasing chemical bursts”.
* Why is there this note in the margin here?
(cannabilistic indica vs bodhi sativa ; )
Sorry for the broken symmetry… Mark
* All this from one issue of SCIENCE NEWS (June 20, 2009, almost lost in this mounting ring of unfinished articles (where is something comparable for philosophy & art ?(
wonderful mark.
I suspect that art and philosophy well have to make due with the fact that neither is recognized in its day…or, that science is both an art and a philosophy, and that these are all of a family.
I seem to see art and philosophy everywhere, rather than nowhere. But I do see your point.
No, philosophy is both an art and science!
No, art is both a science and philosophy!
. . .
Ah, recovered from the unconscious network,
the references from the margin for cannibalistic indica & bodhi sativa:
“As for the prisoners, their fate, once brought back to the Iroquois homeland, could be either surprisingly benign or utterly horrendous. All prisoners were formally adopted into the local family that had suffered a recent loss. It was up to family members whether they would then be tortured to death or kept as a replacement for the deceased. European observers saw the choice as a matter of whim, almost entirely unpredictable. Those to be killed were first feasted, then tied to a stake where they were systematically cut, gouged, and most of all, burned with firebrands and red-hot metal, often over the course of an entire night before dying – ceremonies that, apparently sometimes did end with a communal feast on parts of the body of the dead … [but] The vast majority of women and children captured on raids, and a very good proportion – probably the majority – of the men were not, however, killed but permanently adopted”.
(David Graeber, “Wampum and Social Creativity among the Iroquois”, TOWARD AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY OF VALUE, p123).
Not quite sure how wonderful this is; but, it helps to put it in a place far away, long ago, right? … Mark (adjusting? to the alien ethos of Nihilism of Being without Thought..)
Ah, glad you are reading the Graeber book. An imperfect work (I really want to condense and sharpen it!), but I hope you get good things out of it like I have. Not only are the anthropological evidences memorable and evocative(as you point out), but I really liked the treatment of Fetish (if I recall that it is in that book), to which I have returned often.
On your quoted above. It certainly gives a different meaning to “exchange value”…