My last post

Time to tie up some lose ends from this semester:

My presentation today:

Sometimes I feel like life is one big, mean-spirited joke, and I'm the only one in on it. Life is so redundant and pointless. But I keep on getting up every morning and coming back like the cat that would go away, the cat came back the very next day. I mean, do I really have to deal with the same girl who has a conversation on her damn cellphone so loud everyone can hear? Or that idiot with the stupid clothes, I mean really who wears that stuff? I want to punch him in the back of the head. Or this damn cold that hovers around me like a rain storm? So I started asking myself where I could find answers to this mess, and the Slave and Ecclesiastes seemed reasonable. However, all I got from it was that I need to realize life is pointless and enjoy it while I still have it which is hard to do some days because of the likes of you people. And that's what really my paper is about, why I do anything at all because it would be a lot easier to do nothing.

There was a philosopher named Albert Camus who said the most important philosophical question we can ask ourselves is whether we should kill ourselves. This is morbidly depressing, but it does beg the question: why bother with life?



Most of us live our lives chasing after things to distract ourselves from our eventual Death. The fact is, we take life way too seriously. Jacob (from the Slave) also lived this way, and like many of us, he was miserable. The Book of Eclesiastes, according to Frye, tells us, "we should relax and our real energies begin to flow into the soul", and "the secret to wisdom is detachment without withdrawal". We should all take a step back from our chaotic lives and remember life is short, don't et caught up in the "vanity" as Koheleth would call it. If you get too focused on the "vanity" your life will be miserable.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Here's something that I wrote concerning Jonah, but I never finished it:

Jonah was a pious man, gregarious, generally happy, and in good health. He lived a simple life as the Lord intended. Pray, sacrifice, worship, any religious term you name, he did it. He did it well. When God first came and told him that He was going to blow up Ninevah. Jonah said, "Blow up? Like Rambo?" God said, "You bet your ass, Jonah, you bet your ass." Jonah was a tad horrified. He didn't sign up to be a terrorist. He didn't sign up to be a crusader. He didn't sign up to be a repetitious asshole. No, he signed up for the God of sex, be fruitful and multiply. He wanted a God that would give him women. Jonah knew that was shallow, but sheol, he was a shallow f**k. He liked giving into the simpler, lustful pleasures of his existence. Didn't Solomon say, "Oh vanities of vanities, all it vanity"? Life is in vain, and Jonah reckoned, he might as well enjoy getting down and dirty with his sinful self.

Socially speaking, Jonah may put on good show, but he didn't like people in a recreational sense. In truth, he hated almost everybody, not excluding himself, whom he held a particular distaste for. That is why Jonah didn't want to inform the sinful lot in Ninevah that they would all die in a very painful way. He didn't like dealing with people, plus God would make it really painful. God didn't do not painful. He told Jonah all about the pain and the suffering and agony and the sun that could be blocked out by gourds but it wasn't and that pissed Jonah off, because honestly, he sunburned easily, and well, f**k off. And so it went, and so it went, and so it went, that Jonah felt morally ablidged to warn the people of Ninevah that they were all going to die, amen. However, though he may have been guilt tripped into being morally ablidged, he had no intention of carrying out the morally ablidging of it all.

Jonah snuck off in secret at midnight, cloak wrapped around his body. No God could surely see him fleeing away this late into the night? Jonah hopped aboard a ship, and he cast his lots that God was completely oblivious to the whole affair. Finally relaxing, enjoying the solitude from this Michael Bay like God, he fell asleep and dreamt of happier things not involving Rambo. Bunnies were hopping on a grassy hill, a metallic door opened in the side of the hill and out came a vacuum cleaner. This confused Jonah on a number of levels, mainly on a personal level because he had just shared a cleaning experience with a similar vacuum. Ah crap, now things took a bizarre turn. Monsters emerged, one purple, one green, one yellow, and one red, all with antennas on their bulbous bloated heads. They shrieked and giggled with what could only be a demonic possession. Television screens lit their sick bellies full of fat and girth, ick. Jonah screamed in disgust, grabbed an uzi, and did what was best. Then he woke up in a sweat, and some sailor with a cigar growled about tourists, and left him alone in peace. The days past slowly and with a calmness about them that reassured Jonah that God had been aptly fooled. He was sure he had seen the last of that omniscient deity. Taking out an ornate pipe, Jonah smoked and blew rings. He was merry. Smile plastered on his face like the smiley face head from Wal-mart, he relaxed for what he was sure was eternity. The gentiles on board the ship gave him nervous glances. Surely this jew had lost his mind? Then the sky turned black, and the gentiles looked up nervously. With a bang, the sky lit up. Jonah smirked. "You found me." He was sure he had given the Greatness the slip. Banging with what could only be righteous anger, the heavens let their waters fall upon his restless head, burning his ample sun burns.

The sailors screamed with the typical sea-faring storm lingo. The whole affair confused Jonah, who had not read Moby Dick and was therefore completely oblivious to anything having to do with sailing. Men ran to and fro, and Jonah sank into the background. For awhile things seemed like they would work themselves out. The storm was letting up and the ship stopped swaying back and forth like a maraca. However, that was simply God building suspense, and He wailed on the crew like Poseidon. God had truly forsaken his poor servant. Jonah wiped away tears and shouted above the nonsense, "It is me! Kill me! Throw me overboard! I am unsightly before He that is good and great and all in between! Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!" The sailors looked at each other with "that crazy jew" look.

"Sorry dude, you aren't going no where. Keep yourself safe now and don't do anything rash," one of them said.

"So be it, but you will certainly die."

The sailor gave another a knowing glance, pulled straws out of his pocket. "Here, take one, if you get a short one, we'll throw you over." Jonah clenched his tongue between his teeth, grabbed one. "Well, you got it." The sailor kicked Jonah in the chest and he plummeted overboard, greeting the sea like a dead mule.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Here's something else, concerning my feelings at the time (Nov 20th, it appears by the marker). It also has to deal somewhat with my paper and "vanity" I suppose:

I wish nobody died, and I wish nothing went away. I don't want to miss anything, and I don't want my family to die, and I don't want to leave school. I want to feel either everything or nothing, and I want to love somebody so much it hurts. Stare into her eyes until the universe falls away, and wax philosophy late into the night when the infomercials are on and Billy Mays lives. I want to watch childhood movies until I die, and I want to play make believe in that empty field across the street. Long, dried up grass stretched forever, and the grasshoppers chirped, and Everyday was an adventure, and everyday I was someone new: a jedi, a transformer, a pokemon trainer, a grasshopper hunter, a podracer pilot, Link searching for the triforce, getting married at the alter, staring at the sky and imagining God was giving me signs in the clouds, collecting ants in a tin can, and believing I would never grow up. I would whisper all this, that Fern Gully terrified me, that I would cry in daycare everyday when my mom was late in picking me up, that I always dreamed of leaving this planet behind like Levon's Jesus, that the world seemed too small for me, that I would never be the person I always wanted to be and my predictions came true, that I cried myself to sleep more than one night because I knew I was growing older and it would some day all end. She would smile and tell me everything is going to be okay. Then I would smile back and tell her she is lying. I would tell her about the romantic mountains, how they represent the earth's harshness. We're not supposed to live here, I would say, on such a hostile world. Then I would tell her they are the most beautiful damn things I have ever seen, that they made the earth a romantic place and I would never do away with them. I would tell her about accounting, economics, politics, pop culture, science fiction, movies, television, books, poems, history, Say Anything, Animal Collective, Sunset Rubdown, Star Wars, and all the stupid crap that I think about that nobody else thinks about because it is stupid. And she would listen to it all and judge me like at the end of days. God, Moses, and Jesus will sit on their golden thrones, rubies sparkling in the ceiling, and they will shake their heads and call me unfit for their kingdom and be deemed inadequate. The gates will shut. But she won't do that, and I shall be set be free.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I also promised a nude painting, so I searched and searched, but nothing satisfied me. If I'm going to do this it has to be great. Then I found a pretty good one with Zeus and two naked people. I think they are getting married because it's called "nuptials". Anyway, here it is:



Edit: image seems to have gone to heaven, sorry

Have a good winter break, you crazy kids.

second to last post

I learned nothing in Biblical Lit this semester, which is actually flattery, because Dr. Sexson helped me "remember" what I had forgotten. This is sounding a little vain (and not the Ecclesiastical vain; vain, vain), but I'm trying to go for an anamnesis moment... I only have two modes: extreme social phobia or egotistical ramblings... Oh the times we've had, the thing I'll remember the most: Every blog in this class has had at least one nude painting on it at some point in the semester. I haven't used up mine yet (one is the limit), I'll save it for my last post.

On a different note, I was listening to Coast to Coast AM last night. Apparently John Lennon made a pact with the devil for 20 years of success, but on the 20th year he would die. "Here's another clue for you all, the walrus was Paul". There's a picture of John Lennon from the Magical Mystery Tour album where in the background it says THe Best Way to Die is By MDC. MDC= Mark David Chapman is the guy who shot him. The only reason I bring this up is because I remembered the Robert Johnson story from last semester. He made a deal with devil to play the guitar. You know, I don't think making a deal with the devil has turned out good for anybody. Now, off to bed, but first watch some Golden Girls.

My Paper

My unedited paper with errors and no work cited:

I wake up like always: in the most comfortable damn position ever. My legs are in the perfect spot; the pillow is like a soft bunny under my fat head; and my arms are awkwardly placed, yes, but still pretty okay. I'm warm, happy, with a hazy, sleepy, morning high, and prancing puppy dogs float away from some grand dream. How can it get any better than this? Why bother with this whole "life" thing? I'm perfectly awesome right here, thank you very much. But I stand anyway and sway from side to side. Whispering disgusting profanities under my breath that would make Penn Jillette blush, I stumble onward to the shower. My eyes are closed. I wish I could stay inside this hyperbolic time chamber (a.k.a. shower) forever, forgetting about the evil outside world. But I head to class in the dreary cold and plague. The horribly romantic mountains are in the distance, and all the people laugh around me in their horribly hip clothes. I would probably mock them to my friends, but inside I secretly want to be like them. The mountains fade away, thank God, and I sit in class, wondering where my life will end up after all this. I don't want to do anything really except read, watch movies, and generally avoid most other people. In "Office Space", when Peter is asked what he would do if he won a million dollars, he says, "Nothing [...] I would relax. I would sit on my ass all day. I would do nothing." The man says back, "Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit." I will return to this later, but Peter raises a good point. Is life really worth all this stress? Albert Camus said the most important philosophical question is whether a person should commit suicide or not. And in many ways, both The Book of Ecclesiastes and The Slave by Isaac Bashevis Singer ask this question. Why continue on with this life thing?

"Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 1:2) says the opening lines of Ecclesiastes. In the tradition it is Solomon who wrote these words, but to many experts, this man or woman is named Koheleth. Koheleth continues on, "A generation goes, but the earth remains forever " (Ecclesiastes 1:4). In an almost melodramatic tone, the writer poetically lists through the ever present earth's processes. The sun will always rise and set. The wind will always blow. The streams will always run to the sea. The eye will never be satisfied with what it is seeing, and the ear never satisfied with what it is hearing. Koheleth says, "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done," and then laments that "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Koheleth seems to be having a mid-life crisis. However, unlike most middle-aged men, he doesn't buy an expensive car and start wearing cool comb-overs. No, he (or she) writes his struggles down, and what he (or she) particularly appears to be struggling with is life's futility. Nothing a person does will last or be remembered, it will all eventually be washed away in the sands of time. We fool ourselves with illusions of importance, but these are "vanity". According to Northrop Frye, this vanity shouldn't be understood as a form of narcissism, but instead should be translated as fog. Frye describes it as such:

This word (hebel) has a metaphorical kernel of fog, mist, or vapor, a metaphor that recurs in the New Testament (James 4:14). It thus acquires a derived sense of "emptiness," [...] To put Koheleth's central intuition into the form of its essential paradox: all things are full of emptiness. (Frye 123)

Like Frye says, this image of emptiness recurs in the New Testament in Philippians 2:7 (something Frye calls Typology). The New American Standard Bible says Jesus, "emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men". What does the Bible mean when it tells us Jesus (in the words of the Weymouth New Testament) "strips Himself of His glory"? It is implying that there is something very different between the divine and mortals, and I would argue that thing is being able to die. Death makes what time we have very beautiful, but at the same time tragic, and it also reminds us that everything we see, feel, taste, smell, or hear are distractions on our march to death. Every person you meet, every mountain you see, every sidewalk you walk down are filled with "emptiness". Everything is empty, everything is in vain, because some day you will die, and there is nothing you can do about that. This is what Jesus means when he "makes himself nothing", he enters into a world of death and constant sorrow. Nobody leaves this place unscathed and nobody can die for you. The Gospels show us this in Jesus' ultimate sacrifice to men, and he does this by dying. Wallace Stevens wrote, "Death is the mother of beauty". Dying makes every moment precious, but it also makes every moment pointless. This is the problem Koheleth is dealing with.

Stretching this concept to the story of Jacob and Wanda-Sara in Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Slave, we see a man, Jacob, struggling with these same things. Jacob applies laws and rules to his life that appear to limit him. He is forbidden from all carnal pleasures. He cannot indulge himself in non-kosher foods and later even restricts himself to a strictly vegetarian diet. Most of all, he cannot marry the women he loves. Finally, when he does ease off his strict rules and marries Wanda, he doesn't find peace, but instead finds further pain. Now Jacob is a slave to something else: Wanda. He becomes a social outcast and disguises his wife as a mute. The threat of her discovery terrifies him, now he not only has to look after himself but Wanda and the coming baby too. When their ruse is finally uncovered, and Wanda dies in childbirth, Jacob is still a slave. He cannot escape her, he cannot escape their child, and he most of all cannot escape his laws. A ferryman, Waclaw, explains to Jacob (and the theme of the book), "You own a cow or a horse and you're its slave. Marry and you're the slave of your wife, her bastards, and her mother" (Singer 260). Jacob considers what he says, and reminds the ferryman not every one can be free. Who would raise children and grow food? Besides that, who would have had have him if his mother didn't? He answers back, "I didn't ask for it. She wanted to have a man, so she did" (Singer 260). Jacob discovers that the ferryman is right. He has been a slave all his life.

Waclaw is a very Koheleth-esque figure. He actively questions God and gets rid of all responsibilities because he realizes life's futility. In a very powerful moment, Waclaw tells Jacob:

What does anyone know? In India they worship snakes. The Jews put little black boxes on their heads, and shawls. I know. A lot of them used to use this ferry. But along gallops Chmielnicki; there were so many corpses floating in the Vistual the river stank. That's what their God did for them. (Singer 258)

Jacob tells him "the evildoers will be punished", and Waclaw has an answer for him right out of the Book of Ecclesiastes:

Where? There was a brute of a count in Parchev who flogged I don't know how many hundreds of peasants to death but he lived to be ninety-eight. His serfs set his castle on fire, and down came the rain and saved it. He died peacefully sipping a glass of wine. I say: the worms get everyone, good and bad. (Singer 258)

In the end, Jacob dies like everyone else. None of his sacrifices, laws, wives, friends, children, or respect can put off its inevitable embrace. This might not be the ultimate message Singer is trying to convey, but to me, it's just as important. Even the most pious, good, men die.

Like Jacob, we also focus on getting places, pointless goals, and the stress of the day. These things are, in the end, not important. Jacob lived this way and was miserable. He focused on goals and systems he believed would some day make him happy, but they didn't. He found the same old pain he had always had and was living in the way that Koheleth would call "vanity", pointless endeavors that distract us from our eventual death. Alan Watts offers a similar comparison to today's modern educational system. In kindergarten, children are prepared for First Grade, and the kindergartner rests his entire mind on the progression forward. When the child gets to First Grade, it's the same thing, but First Grade is now replaced with Second. And it continues with Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, middle school, college, and then into the job world with promotions. However, when it's over and the person reach as far as he or she can go, there will be a huge disappointment. He or she will realize they have forgotten to enjoy life, and instead, wasted their lives away on "vanity". Like most old men and women on their death beds, they will wish they would have focused on "important" things, and not the "trivial" ones. We are all like Jacob, slaves to our "vanities", distractions, and other such things. It is critical to step back from the madness. Sometimes we get so into the game, the "vanity", that we forget that it is just "vanity". This form of thinking will lead to a similar fate that Jacob fell.

I said earlier I felt Koheleth was having a mid-life crisis, and if he was alive today he would be driving around town in a fancy car with a goofy comb-over. However, Frye respectfully disagrees. Instead, what he suggests is that Koheleth knew exactly what he was doing and stumbled on something far more profound. I agree with his assessment, and take back my erroneous ways. If we instead realize that most of our activities are "trivial" and that in the future it will all end, then we can "relax and our real energies being to flow into the soul" (Frye 124). Frye says, "the secret of wisdom is detachment without withdrawal" (Frye 123). Life is ultimately a series of hardships, sorrows, hang-ups, break-ups, happy drunk nights, sad drunk nights, weddings, deaths, children, friends, old men and women, first kisses, last kisses, drunk kisses, kisses that are huge mistakes, weeping because you are so happy, weeping because you are so sad, disaster after disaster, and love after love. Some days you will hate it, some days you will love it, and hopefully in your heart you will never want it to end, but you know it will. The Book of Ecclesiastes seems to be telling us to enjoy it while we are still here, but also don't get too attached. Your mother will die, your father will die, everyone you love will die, and you won't be remembered. Realize these facts today and your soul will be at peace, but if you forget sorrow will follow your every step. Finally, how would I respond to Peter in "Office Space" who simply wants to do nothing and flee from life? Frye reminds us, "All goals and aims may cheat us, but if we run away from them we shall find ourselves bumping into them" (Frye 123). It is impossible to run away from our distractions like Waclaw tries. It will always catch up to us (like Jonah found). Life is too beautiful a thing to pass up.

...

Well, well, well, I really wanted to write something good tonight. Don't think it's going to happen. To be honest I haven't touched by bible for months and Northrop Frye has dust on his cover (hyperbole, I opened it recently in search of good stuff for my paper), so I present myself before you today a ill-prepared man. Okay, now that's out of the way, thanks for continuing to read. I'm totally burnt out and am lacking any cohesive thoughts on anything. All my energy is in my paper, and since I don't have any reserves, this blog will suffer the results.

Biblical Post

I have tried to post a blog consistently between each class, but as time goes on I am getting worser and worser at it! (You say worser isn't a word?) However, I'll continue doing what I am doing until I reach the point of complete irrelevance not only to this class, but the rest of humanity in general. It's a long way to fall, but hell, this late in the semester who cares anymore? Seriously, I am exhausted with all the tests, quizzes, sentence diagramming, reading, debit and credit, demand and supply, equilibrium, monopolies, excise and sales taxes, it goes on and on and on and never really ends until you're dead or senile. Quoting the song, Make Mistakes, by the Infadels, "Life was easy before the numbers came". But thank God I am majoring in Finance, because I really don't want to be teaching English some day but would rather make money investing in something then retiring at a crisp age of 50 (with all this technology, I'll be living to like 5 billion anyway). Mmmmkay, biblical stuff. I'm sure I got something interesting under the hood. Engine is revving up, vroooom, vrooom, vrroooom. Okay, I got nothing of interest to say to anybody whose name's don't begin with N and end in K (I'm the only Nick in the world right?). I admit I am extremely narcissistic, but so are the best writers ever, and also drunks. Hey, I could corner both markets pretty soon.

I've realized from my group project thing that I am extremely melodramatic. I ladle up the melodrama like soup from a big bowl of soup. I think it is a distinctly Jewish "woe is me" sense of humor, and I've also developed a thick layer of cynicism on top of it. (You see, I'm like an onion, I got layers.) My fears were confirmed this weekend when I starting channeling an old Jewish woman's accent after a few too many alcoholic beverages. I really like our Jonah presentation script. What I enjoy most is the each writer adding something different to it. Tai is a naturally funny guy, and his humor tends to be filled with references and wordplay. Jamie tends to make funny faces and has more character driven sort of comedy (with gestures and all). I guess I would call my contributions extremely melodramatic, even falling on the depressing and violent (the work of an extremely psychotic mind!). My hope is that you will be able to see where the different authors come in. I don't suppose it will be that hard, since most of the significant dialogue for each character comes from the person acting it. Anyway, I know this was a highly unorganized sort of rambling, speaking out loud kinda brouhaha, but blogging is important.

Bleh

Bleh, that's all I can say about this week from hell. I now have to do the stuff about what I liked about the Slave. It was tragic, depressing, and surprisingly haunting. It bites at your interior for awhile like any good art will, and left me feeling hollow. I liked it, related to it, felt Jacob's pain and suffering. Because the Slave left me sad and futile and caught in a mystifying world, I will probably do my paper on how the Slave relates to the Book of Ecclesiastes. O vanity of f**king vanities, right, right? Today Biblical lit helped me decide what I wanted to do. I had forgotten about the hobo jew, and I'm surprised because he was one interesting dude (What with his very Buddhist philosophy, slave to things, blah, blah, blah, interesting yes, yes). And it relates well with the "woe is me, life is vain" attitude I am currently possessing, or is it possessing me? The tricks I play. I have no high-brow goal in writing this paper, sorry. Nope, my goal is make this thing so depressing that you will weep; you will bend down over yourself, fall on the ground in a fetal position, and you will cry. But I'll end it with a happy ending, because that's funny.

Revelation, Part 2

"I wonder, I wonder, what you would do if you had the power to dream at night any dream you wanted to dream? And you would of course be able to alter your time sense, and slip seventy-five years of subjective time into eight hours of sleep. You would I suppose start out by fulfilling all your wishes. You could design for yourself what would be the most ecstatic life: love affairs, banquets, dancing girls, wonderful journeys, gardens, and music beyond belief. And then after a couple of months of this sort of thing at seventy-five years a night, you’d be getting a little taste for something different, and you’d move over to an adventurous dimension, where there were certain dangers involved, and the thrill of dealing with dangers. And you could rescue princesses from dragons, and go on dangerous journeys, and eventually get into contests with enemies. And after you had done that for awhile, you’d think up a new wrinkle, to forget that you were dreaming, and think that is was all for real." - Alan Watts

In ages past, the civilized and the uncivilized alike seemed to have accepted the presence of the enlightened as something of a necessity. The bible is fraught with these men and women who received visions in hallucinogenic dreams; in many ways, they were an extension of shamanism. Examples include the major and minor prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zecharaiah, Malachi), Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, John of Patmos, and many, many others, but perhaps most intriguingly suggested by Northrop Frye, our pal Moses (The Great Code 126) (Deuteronomy 34:10). Aaron's priestly functions, Frye says, are distinct and separate from Moses' prophetic ones. Left alone, "Aaron goes wrong and makes human mistakes, the voice of prophecy in itself is conventionally regarded as infallible [that is, Moses]" (Frye 126). According to Frye, the difference between Aaron and Moses is this:

"The wise man thinks of the human situation as a kind of horizontal line, formed by precedent and tradition and extended by prudence: the prophet sees man in a state of alienation caused by his own distractions, at the bottom of the U-shaped curve." (Frye 128)

In class, we discussed the difference between prudential and skeptical wisdom. The wise man Frye describes has prudential wisdom (Proverbs, for example), but the prophet suffers from skeptical wisdom (Book of Ecclesiastes). This is an important distinction. Instead of relying on history, the prophet's main goal isn't to pacify us with words, but to wake us up. James Joyce said, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake". Clearly Joyce liked prudential wisdom as much as Sid Vicious did. Today, we have an overabundance of prudence, but a shortage of prophets. Like Polonius told Laertes to avoid "... wine, women, and songs", we are distracted by television, sports, politics, and consumerism/debt, but these are all merely diversions from the truth. There is a blanket (a fog, if you will) placed over our eyes by a group of people trying to control us, and they accomplish this by pacifying us with distractions. We forget who we are, what we are doing, and why we are doing it. By getting rid of the prophet, we have done a way with our only protection against the ruling class. There is few trying to wake up the citizens of America. Much like Aaron wavered from his duties when Moses went away, so has society. We need the prophet's return. We need to be waken up and the sooner the better. Frye describes metanoia as a "change of outlook or spiritual metamorphosis, an enlarged vision of the dimensions of human life" (Frye 130). We are suffering from a lack of this metanoia.

But where did the prophet go? Northrop Frye describes:

"In the post-Biblical period both Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism seem to have accepted the principle that the age of prophecy had ceased, and to have accepted it with a good deal of relief. Medieval Europe had a High King and a High Priest, an Emperor and a Pope, but the distinctively prophetic third force was not recognized." (Frye 128)

From what we can see from modern examples and artifacts from the past, prophets were accepted by the community uneasily. They made predictions, good and bad omens, had the ability to heal, and 'saw' visions. They were also associated with evil spirits and other foreboding things (as we can see from the Biblical example of the Witch of Endor). However, no matter what society felt about them, the enlightened prophets were an important counter-balance to the ruling class. They were advisers to kings and princes, and though their prophecies were often angrily received (or rejected), the elite realized the importance to their kingdom and court. However, as history progressed, slowly the prophet died away. They were to be replaced by bureaucratic clergy and royalty. Without the prophet, the ruling class and organized religion easily become parasitic, and their only way to continue ruling is by making us believe we need them. One doesn't have to look far in today's society to identify these blood suckers. They are the people that create nothing, yet lord themselves over mankind. Just like religious institutions need to make their followers believe they need them to speak to God, the US government needs to make the citizens believe it needs "it" for protection. If the bible is any guiding point, government is to be looked upon with suspicion. The Kings of Israel weren't established until much later then the prophet and the priest, and even after that, only David and a few later kings seem to exemplify good leaders. In almost every other example, the king is incompetent or unfaithful, and the prophet needs to call him out (the story of Elijah and King Ahab for example). Even David did wrong, including sending Uriah to die in battle so he could steal his wife, Bathsheba.

Ultimately, without the prophets' presence, we have no voice. The religious institutions and the ruling class surely don't want us to wake up, that would endanger their position of power. The genius of the Constitution was that it gave the American citizens the power to fill this void. However, we have become so pacified by our rulers that we are berated for standing up. We are pushed back down. We are laughed at, spit at, scorned. There is no room for the prophet anymore in America. We no longer have great art, but corporate-funded explosion orgies. We no longer have great poetry, great literature, great anything, at least none that is read by the masses. We are blind, and when we are told to do something by our masters, we do it without thinking (poor man or woman who says any differently). Again, this gets back to the main theme of Revelation. The only way to receive a revelation and "see" the world as it really is for the first time is through the prophet.


Northrop Frye describes Apocalypse as "the way the world looks after the ego has disappeared" (Frye 138). Seeing as this is a biblical class, I would like to refer to a movie with a biblical name, "Jacob's Ladder". The film, directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Tim Robbins in the title role of Jacob, deals with a returning Vietnam vet. He sees increasingly bizarre visions as he struggles to deal with the aftermath of war and the death of his son. Some of the more colorful examples include a woman dancing at a party sprouting a slimey tale, and a hospital being filled with the grotesque: a rusty bicycle, men and women in straight jackets, a man banging his head on a wall, strange mutant creatures on the ceiling, blood stained walls, piles of bodiless arms, and perhaps most horrifying of all, the crazed man Jacob has seen throughout the movie violently shaking his head. Jacob's chiropractor, Lewis, is often interpreted as Jacob's guardian angel. According to wikipedia, he cites the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, when he tells Jacob, "Eckhart saw Hell too; he said: 'the only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you,' he said. 'They're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and... and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.'" At the end of the movie, we learn it all was a dying vision. Jacob approaches his son Gabe on a stair case and ascends up it. The credits role.

James Joyce's quote, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" is again palpable. Jacob, like all of us, is caught in a dying hallucination. We are trapped in a dream that we cannot awake. The movie is very similar to a short story I read by Ambrose Bierce named "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". The man is going to be hanged, but miraculously escapes into the river below, he swims to safety and narrowly avoids bullets. However, as he tries to return home, he reaches the end of the rope and his neck breaks. The entire escape was his dying vision. Wikipedia has also found another familiar connection, "The film [Jacob's Ladder] is also viewed by many, including the screenwriter, as a modern interpretation of Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead." Frye describes the Tibetan Book of the Dead as such:

"... where the soul is assumed immediately after death to be going through a series of visions, first of peaceful and then of wrathful deities. A priest reads the book of the dead into the ear of the corpse, who is also assumed to hear the reader's voice telling him that all these visions are simply his own repressed mental forms now released by death and coming to the surface. If he could realize that, he would immediately be delivered from their power, because it is his own power" (Frye 137).

We are prisoners not of some terrible force or devil, but our own inner demons and visions. Yes, there is many who love to keep us there, but it is our dream, no one else's. Once we finally come to the terms that we are dead, we will be finally without ego. We will receive Frye's apocalypse; it was there all along. We will wake from the nightmare; we will be free of the world's distractions; we will see the world as it really is; we will have a revelation. "Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32).

Revelation, Part 1 (Updated)

"So in the drama, somebody has to be the villain, and the hero plays against him. If you go to the theater for a good cry, then you let the villain win and you call it a tragedy. If you go for a thrill then you let the hero win. If you go for a laugh then you call it a comedy. There are different arrangements between the hero and the villain, but in all cases when the curtain goes down at the end of the drama, the hero and the villain step out hand and hand and the audience applaud both. They don't boo the villain at the end of the play, they applaud him for acting the part of the villain so well, and they applaud the hero for acting the part of the hero so well, because they know the villain role and the hero role are only masks. And you see behind the stage there is the green room, where after the play is over and before it begins the mask is taken off. So the Hindus feel behind the scene, that is to say in reality, under the surface, you are all the actor marvelously skilled at playing many parts, and getting lost in the mazes in your own minds and the entanglements of your own affairs as if this was the most urgent thing going on, but behind the scenes, in the green room, you might say in the back of your mind in the very depths of your soul, you always have a very tiny sneaking suspicion that you might not be the you you think you are." - Alan Watts

Yesterday I was laying in bed. The sun was peaking through the blanket I have hung over the window. Frankly it sucked. I was comfortable, and my eyes were all merrily shut, and generally I was happy doing nothing. I didn't want to move. The pillow was perfectly placed under my head, the blankets, oh my God, it was perfect. I didn't want to get up, and I especially didn't feel like getting in the shower. But the day beckoned, so I got in the shower, and that was nice so I didn't want to leave the shower. I didn't want to go to class, but then I went, but I was comfortable, and I had a lot of homework that night so I didn't want to leave class. Later that night I didn't want to go to bed because I wasn't tired, but I did anyway. Then I realized it was all some stupid circle spinning around everyday, and I was forgetting why I was even doing all this. Then I remembered: it's for a career and money and prestige, but mostly for my own mental stability, because I don't know what I would be doing but this. I had a revelation, an unveiling, a seeing through the "vanity" moment, an Apocalyptic moment, a moment where I realized that I was thinking about thinking.

I would now like to reexamine the Genesis creation myth. The gospel of John tells us, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). God speaks the world into existence. He divides lightness from darkness, "God separated the light from the darkness" (Genesis 1:4), He creates the sky by separating waters, "And God said, 'Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters'" (Genesis 1:6), He creates land, and from the land plants, and He separates the day from the night by creating lights in the heavens, "God said, 'Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separates the day from the night" (Genesis 1:14), He creates animals of all kinds, water creatures, birds, and creatures, and finally He creates dude and dudette in his own image. From the Priestly account, God divides up the universe (divvies it up for the peeps if you want) from nothing to something. He takes an axe and chops up matter, making darkness and lightness (which are one and the same), He makes the universe perceivable to a human mind, and therefore blinds us. Because we see sections of what He created and not the whole picture of what he created, every single one of us tends to get lost in the tinier pieces. We tend to focus too much on the light without focusing on the dark, too much on the ups and not the downs. We look too much on the front side and not on the backside, too much on the uphill and not on the downhill. The world is a series of distractions, because we lose sight of the bigger pictures, and this is ultimately a result of God separating the universe.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and
about death.)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd
by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Part 48

If one is to understand the greatness of God, one must understand that God is not only the good and the beautiful, but also the bad and the wretched. "I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil:I the Lord do all these things" (Isaiah 45:7). The tree of knowledge was the beginning of man's awareness of the division. When man (and woman) ate of the tree they received a revelation. They became aware of themselves and forgot about the "wholeness". They forgot that they were "one". Man and woman realized they were naked and had to clothe themselves. They were banished from the garden and man had to work and die, and woman had to bare the pain of childbirth and die. In this sense the Garden of Eden was not an actual place, but instead a state of mind. After the garden was only distractions ("vanity") which were needed to ease the pain and provide some essence of purpose. In these distractions man and woman forgot who they were. They forgot they were divine themselves.

There are many ways to interpret the Garden of Eden and the fall of man story. One way is to look at it as a metaphor for man's loss of nature as he moved from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic world. Instead of roaming the forest and the fields in search of food, he and she were now shoved inside cities or planted crops. He and she were leaving this "oneness" with nature behind. It reminds me of what Treebeard laments in the Lord of the Rings, "Nobody cares for the woods anymore." Instead, we destroy the nature around us. I will link this back to an ancient epic near the end. Another way to see the fall of man is a metaphor for a man growing out of childhood. Where once the world was innocent--he was protected, he could run naked with out a care, he saw and named things for the first time--now he is corrupted. He is aware of himself and his appearance, he has to work for a living, he realizes that some day he will die. And why does this happen? Because of women, of course! Women force him to grow up and make something of himself. The longing for nature and childhood is the same as longing for innocence and solitude, but it is also another way of longing to die. How is this so?

Everyone longs to die, to return to a non-chaotic state. We can find this in many of the writings of Robert Frost: The man lingers in nature not wanting to return , or the boy tries to climb out to space on the top of a birch tree. I often have a similar feeling, not to die, but to return to a place with as few distractions as possible. Go by myself to some lonely part of the world and sit and just feel the universe sink into me. I read an article recently that said low income families are less likely to be depressed if they have a window that look out on greenery. Another article that explores similar healing properties of nature is this one. The researchers discovered that people, "who watched the nature images scored significantly lower on extrinsic life aspirations, and significantly higher on intrinsic life aspirations, [...] like deep and enduring relationships, or working toward the betterment of society." Any sort of natural setting seems to help stressed minds. Why is this? It is nature's ability to remind us that we can just exist, that some day we will leave this chaotic condition, that we we were once in the Garden of Eden, that we were once whole. It is much easier to be a rock than a human.

Walt Whitman described his affection for animals in his opus, The Song of Myself:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Part 32

Last year when I read The Epic of Gilgamesh, I was surprised how the origin story of Enkidu related to the tale of Eden. Enkidu was a wild boy, he ran with the animals in nature, he ran quick and briskly, he was peaceful and whole and had long hair. Enkidu is the animal that Walt Whitman described. He was happy and blissful. But then Gilgamesh orders him civilized by sending in a prostitute to sleep with him. The prostitute, much like Eve to Adam, corrupts him, and he slows down and no longer wants to be with the animals and nature. Later on, Enkidu kills a Forest Spirit with Gilgamesh without thinking. What has happened to Enkidu? He no longer cares for nature and kills it. He is just as bad as the rash Gilgamesh.

Enkidu has forgotten.

Alan Watts describes myth as stories that try to describe this dilemma.

"Myth doesn't mean something untrue, but it means an image. In terms of which make sense of life and the world. Supposing for example you don't understand the technicalities of electricity, and somebody wants to explain them to you, he wants to explain about the flow of currents, well to do that he compares electricity to water, and because you understand water you get some idea about the behavior of electricity. Or if an astronomer wants to explain to you what he means by expanding space, he'll use the metaphor of a balloon, a black balloon with white spots on it. The white spots represent the galaxies, and if you blow up the balloon they all get further away from each other at the same speed as the balloon blows up. In neither case are we saying that electricity is water or that the universe is a balloon with white spots on it, we are saying it's something like it. So in the same way the human being has always used images to represent his deepest of ideas about how the universe works and what man's place in it is." - Alan Watts

I know this doesn't seem to relate, but it does. The tale of Adam and Eve and Enkidu tell us something deeper than they appear to at first. They tell us that we have forgotten something important. We have eaten from the tree of knowledge and lost something in the process.

Richard Dawkins is lame

edit - Most of this post comes from a conversation (if you want to call it that) in the youtube comments. Sorry for the very Staccato sentence structure.

I was confronted with a terrible Richard Dawkins video the other day. It makes me sick looking at him. His face is vile like a reptile, and his teeth are yellow hiding what surely is a flickering lizard tongue. He spews hate, venom, and all the things he claims to stand against. He is most importantly a hypocrite, showering the world with black and white images. It's pathetic and the product of a shallow mind. The bible was written thousands of years of go. It's a primitive text, of course there is going to be bizarre stuff in there. But there is also beautiful stories, yes stories. The bible is not a history book, no matter how much you want it to be. Would anybody call Gilgamesh disgusting? No. Gilgamesh and much of the Old Testament comes from a similar time period. Many of the stories in the bible are similar to the Epic of Gilgamesh. And yes, the gods try to wipe out man with a flood. Women are generally marginalized. Gilgamesh is a terrible king. Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill an old forest spirit. And the Gods are all around mean, evil things. The bible is a story book laying out law for an ancient people. Yes, you can find echoes of today in there, but read it to gain knowledge, not to mock it for its primitiveness. Almost all of our great artists were inspired by the power of the bible's words. Is Richard Dawkins the one too primitive, too backward to understand it? Yes. Grow up, and get out of your black and white fantasy world. For me, it's not about the truth of the history, it's about the truth of the story. The truth will set you free. Do I believe that Jesus lived? Does it matter? Sure, history is against whether it even happened, but is it insane to find solace in the bible's words? Is it insane to say everybody who is a Christian is "silly"? Yes. I'll say that. It is foolish to call the bible disgusting. It is as bad as right wing evangelicals.

The bible is disgusting in the sense of Deliverance, the Saw movies maybe, Hostel, Jaws, like all horror stories, um... what ever gruesome things you can think of. Yeah, it's gross, there's definitely some weird stuff in there. It's also almost three thousand years old. But it's a story. Look at as a story, a literary critic, not as if God wrote it. Yeah, that's silly, I agree with that. But you cannot say their isn't also beautiful stuff in it. That's plain idiotic. There is some absolutely disgusting things in the bible, and children should maybe be sheltered from certain sections. However, my overall point is that the bible in itself is not evil. Some of the people who follow it are crazy people, but the book itself is old, old, old. Judge it, I guess, research it, it's an artifact from the past with some amazing words, and some terrible words. It would be stupid to follow it's words to a 'T' for most modern people. Mostly it just makes me angry to see so many ignoramuses on the youtube comments being black and white and agreeing with everything your God Richard Dawkins says, and not thinking for yourself. There is hardly anything black and white in this world. No group of people are completely evil. The bible should not be judged as evil, it's old, and sections are quite beautiful. It's just plain old tiring to see all these idiots stuck in some fantasy world. I used to be like them, most adults will grow out of it.

I agree that there is many that blindly follow the bible. Blindly following anything is wrong. However, people who openly say the bible is disgusting and taunt the material inside are just baiting their Christian adversaries. Yes, some terrible things came from the bible, some terrible things came from a lot of books. And people have been openly criticizing the bible for centuries before Richard Dawkins. It's not a new phenomenon. The book of Job criticizes God, and it's in the bible! Same with the Book of Ecclesiastes (and if you want an atheist rallying cry, look no further than this book in the bible!) And if you really think questioning God is a recent thing you aren't very familiar with literature or philosophy. Just look at your friend "God is Dead" Nietzsche. Dawkins just pisses me off. Let him be an atheist and stop making books called the God Delusion. He's just as bad as the people he hates.

And how would Christians ever tell their kids what Dawkins' wants? You really think it's in their best interest to bend little Billy or Sally on their knee and tell them God is evil. That's laughable. How bout you bend your little kid on your knee and tell them the evil of American and Nazi eugenics in the name of Social Darwinism or about justified racism proven by "science"? That would be a laugh. Many characterize all Christians as planned parenthood bombers. How would you like it if I characterized all evolutionists (which I count myself as one) as eugenicists? Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was indeed both a eugenicist and a racist. She founded Planned Parenthood as a way to get rid of undesirable races. If you don't believe me, look it up. Forced sterilizations weren't that uncommon in early 1900's America either. And Hitler, can't forget about him. One of my favorite episodes of South Park is the two parter Go God Go. The episode perfectly spells out what I feel about Richard Dawkins. After religion was annihilated by Dawkins and Garrison, the future is just as bleak. Now humanity just rages war over what they should call themselves. Humans do bad things with or without religion. And Bob's your uncle, that's it.

freethinking

Asking a person to read a book is a very cruel thing. Tragic story after tragic story, despair, humiliation, disaster after disaster, disease, suffering, I have to carry poor Jacob and Wanda around with me for the rest of my life! And one could argue that by reading The Slave you are making the characters real. Yes, those sad people are now stuck in at least 20 more people's heads. And they never get to die and rest in peace either, no, they will be alive for... wait, the Apocalypse is just around the corner right? Who cares then. But seriously? You do know the world will end in 2012? The Mayan calendar will end, the nephilim will return to earth, the reptoids will make themselves visible, the antichrist will be strolling around, and the stargates will be opened up. Oh yes, enjoy what little time you have left.

But, cough, all serious aside, cough, cough, cough, I have been getting a kick out of reading Tom Horn's Apollyon Rising 2012. If you want a real zany look at end of times, 2012, and America as the new Atlantis, look no further. What he writes is completely off the wall, but who doesn't love that? Giants, aliens, crop circles, free masons, sign me up! I don't pretend to be completely above the material, I do love complaining about the banking elite as much as the next conspiracy theorist, but read for laugh, hate, analysis, all of it.

I haven't really thought about what I want to do with my paper. Hate, hate, hate, comparing two texts together. It's exhausting, opposite of fun, and I suppose that's why teachers like it. I can already picture myself scanning through text I read a month ago trying to find something that's related to the bible. It's all over the place, that's a given, but I hate over-analysis of anything. It ruins it for me. Take a great movie like Zombieland. You know what would kill it? Analysis. Enjoy it, don't spend hours thinking about why it was great or not, if something meant this or that, because honestly the author probably didn't know when he or she wrote it. So, might do the second option. How I am going to stretch that into a full paper... God knows. Seriously, He does in a biblical lit class. Most classes He doesn't care about.

I have learned a lot, but nothing I could conceivably write a paper on, in less you like hearing about how much I liked David. I could do a paper comparing Samson with Brock Samson, or the South Park Job episode, or any other inane thing about the bible. I could write about how much I piss off my religious roommate now (I memorized the first part of psalm 23, and I can tell it makes him angry that an unbeliever would just enjoy the bible for the stories). Sounds like a lot of fun, but somewhat lacking in a concept. I could tell how much I despise politicians (well, most) with their idiotic reverence for the holy scripture without having read it (among many other things). I could tell you how much I hate men like Richard Dawkins. I could tell you what I feel about God now. I went from a self-imposed unbeliever (in a Walt Whitman, Alan Watts-sense), a heretic, a gentile, to a believer in the power of God's Word. A believer in how stories can shape our world for the better, and the power of faith can have on a man. If I was going to relate The Slave with the bible, I would stay on that topic. The power of Jacob's faith and how faith can affect us. That is all for now.

A Magician Named GOB

Now to ramble on about something. I finally finished Job, which really shouldn't be done in one sitting. It's really a drag to read straight through. One guy is bitching about this and that, and all the three other dudes can do is look at each other and shrug. "Hey, this guy just might be right". They're the Larry, Curly, and Moe from the biblical world. In fact, this whole event was probably just an interlude from throwing pies at each other and hyucking. When the three defuses do get the cojones to speak, all they can really say is, "You're wrong, God is good, you're lame Job, what do you know anyway?"

Finally God answers Job, saying he can't understand how awesome He is. Don't even try silly mortal, you are nothing to me! Job replies he has seen the errors of his ways, hallelujah, amen. Then to top this rather large boring cake with more nonsense, God says Job was right all along and gives him his stuff back.

I know that last paragraph is basically nonsense, but I'm tired.

I also finished The Slave this weekend. It's a pretty great book. I can't conjure up any real analysis right now. Maybe tomorrow.

Now for the real Gob:

The Gospel of John

Having just finished the Gospel of John, I am left in what some would call a loss for words. John's account is packed with miracles, lots of I am the Lord and He is me talk, torture, traitors, Peter denouncing Jesus, and crazy resurrections. Today in American Lit II we discussed a poem by T.S. Eliot called The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It reads, "...To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'--If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say; 'That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.'" T.S. Eliot seems to have a God-complex here (which I admittedly might have myself). However, when the name Lazarus popped up again in the Gospel of John I was amused. I didn't pick up on the Biblical connections simply because I didn't know who Lazarus was. I suppose this is just one more example of reading the Bible makes me, gasp, a better reader? The horror.

At first glance, the Gospel of John does appear to have a lot of jew bashing. "They" not only renounce Jesus at every chance, they also throw stones at him on many occasions. Afterward Jesus reminds us that by not believing in his divenhood you do not believe in God, and you are therefore the child of Satan. It only gets worse for the jews reputation after that. Pontius Pilate is shown in a kind light. He tries to save Jesus over and over again (who doesn't want to be saved), but the jews don't want none of that noise, they want Jesus killed. (Gruesomely, I might add. But what death wasn't gruesome in those days?) "They" mock Jesus by trying to change what was written on his cross from "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews," to "Jesus of Nazareth, this man said, I am the King of the Jews." It's easy to find a hint of antisemitism in this Gospel, but I think Dr. Sexson is right in reminding us that Jesus is in fact a jew (though other jews might not have thought him that at the end), Jesus' followers were jews, Jesus' mother and father were jews, everyone Jesus knew were jews. They are certainly not to blame in a world that is filled with sin. In fact, by dying, Jesus was saving the jews from their own sin. Besides that fact, there is another important lesson to get across: we are all capable of hanging Jesus on that cross. The band, Brand New, lyrics also speak to this. From their song, Jesus Christ, the lead singer, Jesse Lacey, fears death, but more than that, fears what he might do to Jesus if he sees him in person:

Well Jesus Christ, I'm not scared to die,
I'm a little bit scared of what comes after
Do I get the gold chariot?
Do I float through the ceiling?

Do I divide and fall apart?
Cause my pride is too sly to hold back all my dark
And the ship went down in sight of land
And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands

I know you'll come in the night like a thief
But I've had some time alone to hold my lies inside me
I know you think that I'm someone you can trust
But I'm scared I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up

So do you think that we could work out a sign
So I'll know it's you and that it's over so I won't even try

I know you'll come for the people like me
But we all got wood and nails
Tongue tied to a hating factory

But we all got wood and nails
Your tortured (and hanging) factory
Yeah, we all got wood and nails
Your tortured (and hanging) factory
Yeah, we all got wood and nails
And we sleep inside of this machine

The Meaning of Life (according to me)

The Book of Ecclesiastes is deeply troubling. Of course, everyone has a moment, where they sit, eyes troubled, and think, "What is the point?" As my depressing suite-mate likes to put it, "No hope". And I like to put it, while shaking my head at the astrocities of life, "Disaster". You're just going to die some day, and no one is going to remember you, and who cares? I've thought about the meaning of life alot (who hasn't?) and came to several conclusions: 1. Life is what you make it out to be. 2. Life isn't about getting somewhere, it's about the journey. Both points are terribly important. What is the point of life without goals? It's up to you to create some worthy ones for yourself. Good, now that you have one, stop worrying about the end, but enjoy the chase. If you live like that, you probably will be happy. The Buddha said suffering comes from longing, but what the hell are you if don't have desires? You might as well not exist at all, cover yourself in a tarp and pretend you're a rock. I wrote a paper last year on this subject that worked around the movie, "Fight Club" and a short story about Chris McCandless. But I believe I covered it much more elegantly in another blog I wrote:

This year has been full of stories about great men. People journeying off into the wilderness, trying to find themselves, either inside others or in themselves. I am in love with Chris McCandless' story. About a man who tried to find his place in the world by rejecting all the rules. Throwing himself into the wild, blue yonder. Ultimately paying for it in death. The real question: what is the relationship between chaos and order? Order is just an illusion; just like our world is built on top of quantum randomness. Chris was trying to find meaning out of chaos. 9/11 was just another random event, meaningless, little ants scurrying around on a rocky sphere. Earth is covered in marbles bashing in to each other and making noise. What is utterly fascinating is how -- we, as humans -- deal with it. Try to bring some order from chaos, try to make sense of all the meaningless stuff that happens all around us. That's what Chris was trying to do, by becoming it, rejecting order, finding the meaning by living it.

And what are dreams but chaos? Random images from the day splashing around in our skulls, bright spattering of paint hitting the walls, people's faces zooming by, big show tune melodies blaring in the background. In a word: chaos. What brought about this newly acquired spat of awakening? It's really been a mixture between recent readings and recent dreams. I'll delve into both more deeply, and I'll start with my night time hauntings. Thanksgiving night was fraught with nightmares like I have never experienced before. In my head, increasingly bizarre Satanists were speaking fast, heretics, things I couldn't stand to hear. Finally, the devil emerged on the scene, and I couldn't take it anymore. Realizing I was dreaming, I kept on trying to get out of it, wake up and stop. So terrified, my body suddenly became warm and I couldn't move. Inside my mind, a constantly repeating phrase: "I am the devil. I am the devil. I am the devil." Tearing my eyes open, a man stood over my bed, arm stretched before him, pointing at me. He flung himself back, disappearing into the darkness. As you can imagine, I was terrified, shivering, I raced up stairs and got a drink of water. I could barely get myself to go back to bed. At the time, though, I still recognized it for what it was, A sleep paralysis dream, more affectionately called, "An old hag dream". My mind is capable of some pretty amazing leaps, but to have dreams appear in reality is something I had not been expecting.

The dreams surrounding that one the previous days were vivid as well. I particular remember freaking out in one because I had signed up for classes but had forgot to go to them. Stupid me couldn't drop them because it was past the date, and my weekly schedule didn't show them because they were after 4 O'clock. In another, everyone I knew was leaving on a boat to go to different parts of the world. However, I was just going to Wisconsin. Oddly enough, the dream morphed into a musical on top of a glacier. And just last night I had another, reminding me of bad moments in my past that still make my heart beat fast. So what is the point of telling you this? The real question on the back of my head is this: what is the relationship between dreams and what we see in waking? The question is this: what if someone didn't know whether they were dreaming or awake? What kind of powers would they yield? Here is a section, a boy named Morgan being tempted by Jacob:

"The Big Thing is everything, Morgan. It is the universe. You, me, your family, my family, everyone we know, every piece of sand on a beach, every tree in the forest, every flittering butterfly, every flower blooming in the prairie, rabbit, dog, cat, mouse, demon, berserker, and decaying body. And like the great Alan Watts said, 'the clammy foreign-feeling world of the ocean’s depths, the wastes of ice, the reptiles of the swamp, the spiders and scorpions, the deserts of lifeless planets... Our feelings about the crawling world of the wasps’ nest and the snake pit are feelings about hidden aspects of our own bodies and brains, and all of their potentialities for unfamiliar creeps and shivers, for unsightly diseases, and unimaginable pains.' Everything is one Morgan, the good and the bad, black and white, death and life, woman and man, light and dark, happy and sad. You are not a soul encaged inside a flesh prison. You weren't thrown into an alien world. An alien universe. You are part of this universe. You are this universe. Look around you Morgan, everything, everything in this room, it all came from earth, from you, the sun, the galaxy, the universe. Stars, black holes, nebula clouds, exploding super novas and dying white dwarves, all you. All you. You didn't spring from no where. No. You are materials made of this planet. We all are. And that's what makes you special, Morgan. Your ability to influence it."

In my English class this year we have been reading up on different men. How they tried to change the world, how to make themselves happy. The first example was, of course, Chris McCandless. There were others, Ted Kaczynski, the 9/11 high jackers, Descartes, among others, but the other major one was Paul Farmer in Tracy Kidder's book, Mountains Beyond Mountains. He is the polar opposite of McCandless except in one crucial way: his extremeness in what he is doing, the way he seams to be the only human in his world that he is equal to, to set out on his own to accomplish his desires. Paul Farmer is a doctor who went to Haiti to help the poor, the sick, the diseased. But the man I really want to talk about is Tim Treadwell.



Upon returning to the dorms yesterday, one of the first things I did was watch the documentary, Grizzly Man, by Werner Herzog. It's about another man who wandered into the Alaska wilderness in search of himself, and also lost his life. This man is Timothy Treadwell, someone I find deeply disturbing, but at the same time fascinating. A creepy dude, he was obsessed with bears which he rambunctiously nicknamed Rowdy, Mr. Chocolate, among other names. In early fall 2003, he and his girlfriend, were attacked and devoured by a grizzly bear. Timothy was flamboyant, the Steve Irwin of Grizzly Bears but not as cool. He claimed to be in love with the bears, picking up their shit as if it was holy, saying "I love you, I love you, I love you". His footage was amazing, and bears are fucking terrifying, but at the same time awesomely beautiful. But I think Timothy was just exploiting the bears, making his documentary in several different bandanas, constantly playing with his blond hair. He didn't have the animal’s best interest at heart at all, he had his own selfish needs to be a celebrity. Timothy Treadwell was using them.



A reply by "cupwithhandles" said it perfectly: "He was warned and was well aware that if bears harmed him, bears would be killed, and that is exactly what happened. I think its safe to assume the guy was just opportunistic and that he exploited bears for fame, ego, money - who knows? In the end he was directly responsible for bears getting whacked. It is correct and good to laugh at such people and their reckless, selfish actions. The bears were hungry and it was their right to eat him." Timothy and his girlfriend were the first people ever killed by the bears in the park. His life was for nothing. When he died, the camera was still going. The lens protector was still on or perhaps it was in a duffle bag, but you can hear his death screams.
The Anchorage Daily News said this about the footage: "In this case, Wilkinson said, troopers are confident a bear was also responsible for killing the Malibu couple. Troopers are also convinced, he added, that the bear seen feeding on their bodies was the bear killed by Park Service rangers. There is no way, however, of knowing whether that bear or another shot by troopers at the scene did the actual killing.
The tape full of screams and rustling sounds details the attack, Wilkinson said, but adds little to explain exactly what happened or why. The tape, he said, lasts about three minutes. Scratching and dragging noises on it have led troopers to believe Treadwell might have been wearing a body mike when the attack began.
After Treadwell calls for help, Wilkinson said, Huguenard can be heard shouting "play dead.'' That is the recommended response to being grabbed by a brown or grizzly bear, but authorities stress the idea of playing dead should be abandoned if the bear continues to press the attack.
On the tape, shortly after the warning to "play dead,'' Wilkinson said, "Huguenard is heard to scream "fight back.'' Treadwell later yells "hit him with a pan,'' Wilkinson said."
You can hear the audio on youtube, and it one of the most disturbing things I have ever heard in my life. I won't post it hear to keep a little bit of decency, but the simple fact that is out there will haunt me. The man is truly insane; it's hard to get him out of my head. What is life meaning? Did Timothy's death mean anything? No. We are all trying to make sense of the universe, but the universe just doesn't make sense. At least not like that. The world is a scary, scary place, and you never know when you are going to die, get hurt, who your friends are going to be. There is so little comfort; you have to find it yourself. Sometimes it feels useless, hopeless, like nothing makes sense. But that's when you got to hold on your tightest, and really find out who the hell you are. You have to make you own meaning.

Job and September 11

The last blog I wrote had to do with music. I talked about how everything was a vibration and everything was a song. I listed off countless, ad nauseum, examples about happy butterflies and skipping Keebler elves. Then I really started thinking. I really started thinking, really, really, really started thinking. Everything I listed was happy, merry, dreadfully cheery with a big ol' fat grin on its stupid face. But what about Job? What terrible song would his life echo? This great tragedy of a life. House destroyed, family dead, and a sad old Job, saying, "Why me?"


"Why me?" (Book of Job) by Einar Hákonarson

I can only imagine out of tune keys, a hunchback slamming on the piano, a violinist destroying his instrument on the asphalt. Everyone has had or will have something terrible happen. Everyone has out of tune keys, ugly pianos, and smashed violins in their lives.

Story. God seems to like these stories, no matter how terrible they are. If there ever was a tale of Job, it would be September 11, when our nation had a collective Job experience. Passions, hatred, sorrow, denial, it all came together that day. And we as a people either were led closer to God, or farther away from him. It makes you question Him. Does He exist? If He does exist, why does He let these terrible things happen? Why did so many people have to die (in the name of God, no less)? We shouted out collectively, like Job, "Why me?" One video I ran into is a perfect example of what most of us felt. The shock, the denial, the hate. It ends with, "Does God's Light Guide or Blind Us?" written in Arabic and English. You can feel the music in this, the tribal murmurings, the seething rage, the finishing serenade. Be aware, it's definitely not for the weak of heart.



This clip is from the Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu. He is known in America for directing another movie, Babel.

Susanna and Wallace

I have often heard from scholars' words that truly the universe is vibrations. That tree is a vibration. That flower is a vibration. That baboon jumping on a pogo stick is a vibration. That epic battle between a burly hammer-wielding dwarf and a fair-skinned graceful elf-folk is a vibration. That bad hair day is a vibration. That Tom Cruise is a vibration. That Mel Gibson is a vibration. That overweight poodle with the long pink tongue and the kinda weird looking eyes is a vibration. That crow with the broken wing is a vibration. That dude picking his nose, finding something lovely, then eating it is a vibration. That wild rave with the coke and LSD and ecstasy is a vibration. Everything is a tightened rubber band strung between two sticks that someone is flicking over and over again and different rates and strengths. Bong! Bong! Bong! (Perhaps that poor soul is God.) Or maybe everything is a puddle that someone keeps dropping rocks in, enjoying the chaos that it creates. Or maybe everything is the rhythmic movement of Jesus' toga as he dances to the groove of the Bee Gees (John Travolta style). Or maybe there is a mysterious "force" that flows through everything and can levitate X-Wings out of dirty Dagobah swamps. Matter is, in a sense, a great melody. Some say there is music in the word. I agree, and go on to say that there is music in damn well everything. Even that is a lie, everything IS music. It's hard to express in words, which I guess shows the inadequacy of the "dude" level of language I have been born in. Constantly in a wheel circling the truth, but never able to reach the non-moving axle. Again, like I stated in an earlier blog, nouns are nice, but in the end they are fallacies concocted by man craving order. When in reality, truth is verbs (which are vibrations) and nouns give the speaker a sense of power that he might not necessarily deserve (debatable yes?). Alan Watts liked to say you should see your life as a song or a dance: stop trying to race to the end, but enjoy it (life's not something you can win at). Walt Whitman was close to the truth when he wrote, "A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books." But I think this could also apply to any meaningless occupation one might find himself him. You can discover more from staring an ass in the eye than you can by reading an entire book, spending a day in the office, or arguing with a man about who's going to win the world series. Again, this relates back to the inadequacy of language. Books try as hard as they can to get to the truth, but they will never get as close as a wilted flower, or dragonfly, or I don't know, Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash. Man tries to achieve these things by writing stories, hence they repeat over and over and over and over and over again in books, movies, tv shows, poetry, lyrics, shadowing the truth, but never truly ever being it. Here is a scene from my favorite television show this year. I can re-watch this scene over and over like a song. Feeeeeeel the music in this scene. It's beautiful.



So this was a long build-up to the Story of Susanna. Pretty fun story. I don't have much to say about it besides: FEMALE EMPOWERMENT! Wallace Stevens is putting the entire story to a musical beat (I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote the poem to music). Music (and dance) are the closest a person can get to the truth, and I think (I always misread) this is what Wallace Stevens is getting at here. Trying to echo the beginning, the truth, that no one can really put into words as hard as they might try, but the closest one can is with music and in language, poetry.

Fox reimagines Moses as Leonidas from "300"

Did you know Fox is planning to "300"-dise Moses? Check it out: Fox Reimagines Moses!!. I got to admit, I think it would be pretty sweet. Moses with a bad-ass attitude taking down Egyptians like Rambo. "If you liked that Pharaoh, well you gonna love what's coming next." Overlooking the Nile valley, smile on his face, "That was toooooo easy," Moses smirks. "You must be a slave cuz I just whipped your ass." "Do you understand, if you do this, if you do this unspeakable thing, it will be civil war." "So be it. You evil tyrant, so be it." The Hebrews whisper among themselves, "He will betray us like all the others..." "No, there is something different about this one."

Sheer brilliance.

Also, I found an interesting quote by Mark Twain pertaining to the Jews that ties into what we were talking about in class:

”...If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.

The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

- Mark Twain
(“Concerning The Jews,” Harper’s Magazine, 1899
see The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, Doubleday [1963] pg. 249)

Plotz is smartish man

Hello, I am extremely drugged right now, having come down with a mysterious illness. It's like being really dizzy after a carnival ride. Swirling, swirling, swirling, weeeeeee! People's faces, cotton candy eating mouths, big fat carnie types with grease stains down the front of their shirts, screaming children, swirling, swirling, swirling, STOP! Okay, I'm doing good... I think... hope. Okay, I'm good. (Forgive me if I don't show up for class tomorrow, but, you know, the spinning.) Hagrin. I have read the book of Joshua, and half way through Judges. Now that's a carnival ride in itself. Massacres, trickery, death, death, death, lots of death, guy getting a stake through his skull, a guy getting his head crushed by a lady from above, old men trampled to death, Sarah Palin shooting moose out of a helicopter... wait, that didn't happen. If the swirling stops for a second, I'll come to a conclusion I have been biting at with my mouth teeth: it's just as foolish to read too much into the violence, sex, and massacres as it is to read the Bible like a history book. (Ha! After rereading this sentence a few times, I found many spelling errors, not really spelling errors, more like I'm typing the wrong word I think I am thinking. Hagrin.) Plotz is a good guy, passionate, critical, modern, but he just doesn't get it. He's too full of himself, loves the smell of his own farts too much, to truly appreciate the absurdity, irony, and all those big words that I can't think of at the moment. Okay, I'll get off my soap box (however flimsy it may be) and ground myself so I'm not struck by lightning. Hagrin.

And yes, Hagrin is a word I made up right now.

Manifestation

I don't really know if I believe in God; not really agnostic, because I don't feel like I am trying to actively choose what I believe. I just choose not to pick any side. I just "am" like God said. I am who I am. I'm not a person, an individual, a place, a mountain, I just "am". Nouns are man-made contraptions, what we are is verbs. I'm not Nick. I'm typing, breathing, sitting, doing, screaming, crying, running, tripping, all manifestations of something greater than myself. In that I see God. The greater body of clergy, Church hierarchy, priests, priechaman, whatever, whatever, whatever, are there to try and stop you from "seeing" the truth: that we are all manifestations of God. Everything in the whole universe is a manifestation of something that is happening inside yourself. You are a manifestation of everything inside the universe. It's all connected. We are all connected.

Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and other things

The hardest part of writing a blog is starting. I always have an idea of what I want to do with it, but it's hard to put it into words. (As I write this, I think about erasing it and starting over.) Part of my problem is that I'm a perfectionist. Not in real life, I'm easy to accept B's and C's if I don't understand the material, my bed is rarely ever made, and I've been known to wear the same pair of pants for two days in a row. But writing is different. I have this incredible urge to make the words perfect; not to mention that I can barely ever stand reading anything I've just finished writing. It's too fresh, too new, and sometimes I can convince myself not to publish it at all. So I've went on for awhile about my issues, now on to something relevant.

I finally finished reading through Deuteronomy (a very long, boring book), Numbers, and Leviticus. They are pretty drab when compared to Genesis, but I liked all three more than Exodus. (Oh my God, why did you list through all that ark building nonsense! Couldn't you, in all your eternal wisdom, just have asked your chosen people to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark?) My favorite was Numbers. I can't explain why, all I know was after reading it, I was like: yeaaaaaahhhh. My mood perhaps? Maybe. I know this sounds off topic, but I saw a lot of really good television shows this year: Battlestar Galactica, The Big Bang Theory, Lost, True Blood, Supernatural, Dollhouse, Breaking Bad on and on and on and on. What draws me to the nerdy side of life? Was I written into God's Book of Nerd at the beginning of time? Is time just an illusion, and I am stuck in an eternal nerdy loop over and over and over, and into infinity, and I'm swirling... okay, back to Numbers. Call me crazy, but I sorta enjoyed the census. Things that interest me about the censuses:

1. It's intriguing to see where these people come from. Levi is the ancestor of the priests. Rueben's clan is dwindling. Joseph's is the biggest clan, because his descendents compromise two tribes. Judah, oh Judah, you are my favorite. Actually, Benjamin, you are. I choose you.

2. History speaking, it's also fun to see which tribes survived. The 10 northern tribes split off and became Israel, meanwhile the Judah and Benjamin tribes compromised the Southern kingdom of Judah. When Assyria came in and destroyed the northern Israel, Judah barely survived, but the 10 northern tribes became the fabled 10 lost tribes of Israel. So again, my favorite tribe is Benjamin, the little tribe that could. (Oh yeah, and the Levites survived too, because they had no land, but were dispersed throughout.) Anyway, you know how I said I was obscessed with television shows? Well, hell, LOST seems to have built allusions to this story into its own. Jacob being the figurative father of John and Benjamin (perhaps the rest of the cast are the "other tribes of Israel"). Some day I'm going to write an entire blog about the theology of LOST. Wouldn't that be fun?

I'm taking a scattershot approach to this blog writing process today. I really should have started with Leviticus and not Numbers. Is their method to my madness? Absolutely not. This is just a rambling, blah, blah, blah. To a reader it may look like I'm talking out loud, except in blog form. Well, that's absolutely true, and I promise a blog with substance next time. You are not getting one today. Surprise!

I also ran into a new Pat Condell video today, my favorite raging athiest:



Awesome, isn't he? I love him. Attacking hypocrisy left and right. What a genius! In this video he lambasts mega preachers (Ted Haggard types) for living in mansions and palaces, and other facilities like the Vatican for capitalizing on faith. It's a constant struggle for the Church to hold onto their power, because they preach it is through them that a person can speak with God. This echoes the story in Numbers about the revolt of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Apparently this struggle for who has the right to speak with God has been around since the beginning. Korah (along with Dathan and Abiram) confronts Moses, asking him why he is the only one who may speak with God. This pisses God off, and He opens the ground under their feet (and all their families' feet) and they fall into "sheol". Plotz mentions that the Jews generally believe they have no version of hell in their religion. However, the mention of "sheol" may say otherwise. Back to the story, God makes his opinion quite clear. Only the Levites may speak with him. This sets up the first sense of priesthood, but unlike many modern Churches, these men lived as bums. The only way they could obtain food was from sacrifices and charity of others. Again, this conflicts with many capitalistic churches these days. However, God also sets up the first Jewish institution. As any one knows (in less you are a dumb Socialist) institutions will lead to corruption (absolute power corrupts absolutely). Again, God shows his penchant for stories and classes. Marx was right in this sense, class is one of the fundamental struggles that we all deal with (man vs woman, age vs youth, individual vs state, mortals vs gods, or should I add it to the list?).

I think Ms. Sexson was wrong when she said the Bible preaches social justice. That is reading into the material just as much as the "Bible Thumpers" she claims to disregard as stupid. Instead, the Bible talks about CHARITY not social justice. Charity is a pillar (if Christians had pillars like Muslims do) of Christian faith. In fact, the states that give the most to charity (percentage wise) are the 25 poorest states and also tend to be the most religious. What I despise about most liberals is the snooty way they present themselves, "No-it-alls". The two most important things one needs to remember about liberals: 1. One who knows all knows nothing. 2. The road to hell is paved in good intentions.

I side with no one here. I hate the Religious Right for preaching about Christianity. I hate them for their out-of-date ideals about religion, history, and science (specifically evolution). I hate them because they are fiscally more socialist than capitalistic. I hate them just as much or more than the liberals. It's time to start realizing both parties are working for the same people, bought out by corporate interests. We have a two-party dictatorship. The "left-right paradigm" as Alex Jones so arrogantly puts it. There is no difference between the two parties besides Planned Parenthood (which was formed by Margaret Sanger, a racist and a eugenist ), health care (which is a social justice joke anyway, the whole thing is being funded by big Pharma interests), gay marriage (which is clearly discrimination against one group of people), and stem cell research.

Well, I got into weird territory there. Back to relevant stuff (how many times do I have to say that). Speaking of relevant, Korah's story is as much so back then as it is today. These days, it is generally accepted that anyone has the right to speak with God. This is a consequence of the Jews' time as captives in Babylon. There, they were forced to form a personal relation with God, because they were separated from their ancestral land. Judaism was initially a very regional religion, based entirely around a land and a people. In this respect, one can see the birth pangs of modern monotheism. As the Jewish captives became the Jewish Diaspora, this view of a personal God would only continue to develop. Christianity adopted this reform as well, and today most Monotheists believe in a personal God. A God they can pray to before they go to bed, a God that is there to speak to man-to-God, and not through a priestly second party. This is a Individualistic God. This is a God that gives people freedom, a Constitutional God, if you will. In this system, everyone has a right to their own God. In fact, it's not only a right, but unstoppable. No two people have the same relation with the holy. No two people think about God in the same way. God became bigger, as was the necessity.

This automatically creates tension between the clergy and the masses. If one finds themselves confused on which side God falls on: look no further. God in Numbers doesn't like your Individualistic God. He likes the Levitical God, the God of the priests, the Elitist God. Almost without exception, God speaks with either the Patriarchs, or the Levites. We never see him speaking to your average Jew on the street, chewing 'bacco and living the normal life. Nope, he's hanging with the elites. The only time we don't see Him chillin' with His peeps is with Balaam. I love Balaam. He seems to have more faith than the Israelites combined. He does what he says he'll do, no matter what God orders, and he does without convincing and with constant faith. The only time he wavers in God's eyes is when he leaves to see Balak (even though God ordered him to). He is stopped by an angel, and we are reminded even asses have feelings. After this, he goes against Balak and blesses the Israelites instead. What a great dude! And how does God reward his bravery, his faith, his chutzpah, he allows the Israelites to kill him. And you don't even learn how, no he's just a name listed off in the names killed. Poor old Balaam, God may not respect your sacrifice but I do, I do.

It's actually a theme throughout the whole Exodus story arc, God punishes his most faithful. Moses and Aaron are told they cannot enter the promised land by God. You would think such a banishment would be because they did something terrible: they blew up a building in the name of Moloch or sacrificed a child in the middle of a grove. No, it's something simple and unmeditated, probably an accident. Moses is told to show the Israelites a miracle by making a rock create water. Moses does, but instead of speaking to the rock like God commanded, he hit it with his stick. Now, to most sane people, this would be one accident during a long, 40 year period exemplified by faith, obedience, and sacrifice, but to God this act is practically heresy. He punishes his servant by denying him the thing he wants most! How cruel. How mean. How terrible, terrible, mean, so sad, want to cry. God is a vicious son of a bitch. I look behind me now, making sure he isn't about to smite me. (If I die before next class you know why...)

However, this time, I don't agree with myself. Dr. Sexson talked about the descension of language--the age of gods, the age of heroes, the age of "men", and the age of "dude"--where the beginning was identified by the metaphor, and we slowly lost the metaphor, falling, falling into the abyss where we can't describe anything properly. Moses' banishment is not only good story, but also good metaphor. When have you not been striving for something only to be denied it in the end? The people writing this (or perhaps, Yahweh) is telling something about our lives. Isn't that what life is really about in the first place? Striving, longing, needing something. Goals. Money. Job. Relationships. Or is God Buddhist? Is he telling us that longing for things is the cause of our suffering? God makes Moses' goals not for himself, but for his people. Moses becomes his people. That's now how he identifies himself: he is his people entirely. However, in Deuteronomy, Moses appears to be rather bitter, angry, and hates himself and his people. Did Moses not learn the lesson that God was trying to teach him?

This may come as a surprise to you, but I'm writing this blog over a three day period. Last night, I went to a bbq for upper class-men still living on campus. I didn't want to go, but I was convinced by fellow suite mates (always trying to get me to do something). Around a camp fire, I listened to other men talk "man talk" (I didn't participate in it because I'm shy). It seems "man talk" is identified by its down-to-earth feel, cars, football, boobs, unafraid of bawdy humor, sex, violence, all the great things of the world. What it is not about: feelings. Honestly, my world revolves around a mix of pop culture, constant and up-to-date news, and references to old obscure things that nobody but me cares about, but NOT many of things "man talk" is usually identified by. I seem to exist in an alternate sphere, obscessed with my own workings and doings, but often find myself bored by others, small talk, and generally social things that everyone else is so amused by. What it did get me thinking about was women. Yes, women, specifically about Ms. Sexson's lecture.

What every intellectual thinker around the globes seems to be getting at is this: men are afraid of the power women have over them. This influences their need to, instead, have power over women. This patriarchal world that the Hebrews inhabited appears at first glance unfair, cruel, and not that pleasant. Why does God prefer men, especially men with power? A friend of mine once told me it was because God had to relate with a primitive culture. He had to get down on their terms or else they never would have followed him. My preferred stance? Men are, and will always be, afraid of women's power. It is the natural state of things. We think different. We act different. We have different sort of conversations. We have different body parts. Different. Different. Different. Like I said, it's natural both sexes should have a fear of one another.



But unlike other things we are afraid of, men need women. No, not only that, want women. How can you be afraid of something and want it at the same time?

Women also hold the power of life. For early men, this must have seemed like a slave system. They worked hard to get food, died while hunting, while the women got to stay back, safe and sound. Think of the anger they must have felt. However, the dynamics changed when humanity adapted to an agricultural way of life. Now men could be in charge, and women could officially take a back seat. And I believe this is where Ms. Sexson came in, and what's the point of me continuing on when you can listen to Rio's live blog thing-y? Not that I truly expected anybody to read through all of this. I certainly wouldn't have.

I have no conclusion. It is what it is.