They say we can all climb the ladder
to get closer to the top
to be alone
maybe if you are inside
but the towers grow
your ladder fails
and the mist they reach engulfs
gets thicker
and thus
from the outside you can no longer see the top
from the top you can not see no longer
the bottom
1. All passions have a phase when they are merely disastrous, when they drag down their victim with the weight of stupidity–and a later, very much later phase when they wed the spirit, when they “spiritualize” themselves. Formerly, in view of the element of stupidity in passion, war was declared on passion itself, its destruction was plotted; all the old moral monsters are agreed on this: il faut tuer les passions. The most famous formula for this is to be found in the New Testament, in that Sermon on the Mount, where, incidentally, things are by no means looked at from a height. There it is said, for example, with particular reference to sexuality: “If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out.” Fortunately, no Christian acts in accordance with this precept. Destroying the passions and cravings, merely as a preventive measure against their stupidity and the unpleasant consequences of this stupidity–today this itself strikes us as merely another acute form of stupidity. We no longer admire dentists who “pluck out” teeth so that they will not hurt any more.
To be fair, it should be admitted, however, that on the ground out of which Christianity grew, the concept of the “spiritualization of passion” could never have been formed. After all, the first church, as is well known, fought against the “intelligent” in favor of the “poor in spirit.” How could one expect from it an intelligent war against passion? The church fights passion with excision in every sense: its practice, its “cure,” is castratism. It never asks: “How can one spiritualize, beautify, deify a craving?” It has at all times laid the stress of discipline on extirpation (of sensuality, of pride, of the lust to rule, of avarice, of vengefulness). But an attack on the roots of passion means an attack on the roots of life: the practice of the church is hostile to life.
I still remember running to the last tree on the street
it was the autumn of my youth
still young
I saw no other trees
then these lining the street
not far from where you were
Memories sometimes rush into me
carried by a smell
a glance
a word
today one rushed forwards
helped by a movement
an old tool I saw
its movement
I remember it
it was from the days when I played
played on the floor
fantasy worlds with plastic toys
I saw it there
it was in my mind
I do remember
when I think about it
I have many memories of things
things that happened in my fantasy
maybe I spend most of my time there
I don’t remember
One of my memories
from when I was young
was that I liked to go to the last wagon on the train
and look through the window
at the track passing by
from underneath my feet
and seeing it disappear in the distance
on the rhythm of all the sounds
like the track
history seems to end also
in a point far way
but in silence
Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by: they do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. This is a hard sight for man to see; for, though he thinks himself better than the animals because he is human, he cannot help envying them their happiness – what they have, a life neither bored nor painful, is precisely what he wants, yet he cannot have it because he refuses to be like an animal. A human being may well ask an animal: ‘Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze at me?’ The animal would like to answer, and say: ‘The reason is I always forget what I was going to say’ -but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent: so that the human being was left wondering.
A mysterious fog hung over the sea today, and I took this lousy phone picture of it, but I guess you get the idea. Like a nice sunset or landscape, most of us also like a good mist hanging In a valley. I don’t know why we evolved this way, but at least it is something we all appreciate.