Blake of the Week #10
A Dream
Once a dream did weave a shade,
O’er my Angel-guarded bed,
That an Emmet lost it’s way
Where on grass methought I lay.
Troubled wilderd and forlorn
Dark benighted travel-worn,
Over many a tangled spray
All heart-broke I heard her say.
O my children! do they cry
Do they hear their father sigh.
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.
Pitying, I drop’d a tear;
But I saw a glow-worm near:
Who replied. What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night.
I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetles hum,
Little wanderer hie thee home.
Fuller, Not Richer
As the economic doom and gloom continues to pour out of the wires and airwaves, I’ve taken to skipping the morning news, preferring to deal with it in the evening, when I can do so with beer in hand. Frequently, the content of what I eventually do hear is remarkably absurd, given that it usually flies in the face of all the “sound” financial advice I’ve ever read (primarily in books written by people far smarter than me). My favorites:
- Americans are now saving money at the highest rate in years (which isn’t saying a lot, since last year the rate was still negative). This is terrible– we’ll never get the economy growing again if everyone doesn’t start spending again.
- U.S. car manufacturers are now traumatized by being forced to radically overhaul their business practices and vehicle designs in order to be able to compete with foreign manufacturers, who make smaller, more efficient cars more suited to higher oil prices and increased environmental concerns. Awful, just awful.
- Banks will no longer be able to put all their eggs in one make believe basket (or at the very least, there will be much greater controls on make believe trading). This is of course a terrible clampdown on the creative freedom of our most talented bank executives.
- The “invisible hand” still works, it’s just got, uh… bookkeeper’s cramp. That’s it. No worries, it will return as soon as the stimulus check clears.
This gets my contrarian streak going, and reminded me of an idea one of my contrarian heroes, R. Buckminster Fuller, put forward in “World Game” (Critical Path, 1981):
World Game finds that 60 percent of all the jobs in the USA are not producing any real wealth– i.e. real life support. They are in fear-underwriting industries or are checking-on-other-checkers, etc. The majority of the jobs occasion the individuals using three to four gallons per day in their automobiles to go to and from work– at true cosmic costing this means four million dollars per worker per day. Obviously the computer finds that it would save the planet Earth’s energy account $500 trillion a day to give all the non-wealth-producing workers their full pay to stay at home.
Now that’s a rescue package. No less absurd than investing billions in a major private insurance company that it immediately hands over to foreign banks in order to cover its business losses (which would be as hilarious as “The Money Hole” if it weren’t absolutely true). Of course Fuller’s idea leads to an important question: “well if they’re not producing wealth, what ARE those jobs producing?” Those jobs create consumers; they earn in order to be able to spend. Which is “good” for our economy. Witness how well that’s worked up to this point… and think how much writing, reading, gardening, exercising, community building, etc. you could get done if you didn’t have to punch the clock.
Fuller was also an architect and the creator of the poignant environmental image “Spaceship Earth.” He designed a rad damn car, too… one of my all-time favorite nuts, and a nut worth considering in these strange days.
Blake of the Week #9
From THE SONG OF LOS: ASIA
Shall not the King call for Famine from the heath?
Nor the Priest, for Pestilence from the fen?
To restrain! to dismay! to thin!
The inhabitants of mountain and plain;
In the day, of full-feeding prosperity;
And the night of delicious songs.
Shall not the Councellor throw his curb
Of Poverty on the laborious?
To fix the price of labour;
To invent allegoric riches:
And the privy admonishers of men
Call for fires in the City
For heaps of smoking ruins,
In the night of prosperity & wantonness
To turn man from his path,
To restrain the child from the womb,
To cut off the bread from the city,
That the remnant may learn to obey.
That the pride of the heart may fail;
That the lust of the eyes may be quench’d:
That the delicate ear in its infancy
May be dull’d; and the nostrils clos’d up;
To teach mortal worms the path
That leads from the gates of the Grave.
Blake of the Week #8
The Fly
Little Fly
Thy summer’s play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush’d away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink and sing:
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength & breath:
And the want
Of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
Blake of the Week #7
From
THE [FIRST] BOOK of URIZEN
Chap: 1
…
3. For he strove in battles dire
In unseen conflictions with shapes
Bred from his forsaken wilderness,
Of beast, bird, fish, serpent & element
Combustion, blast, vapour and cloud.
4. Dark revolving in silent activity:
Unseen in tormenting passions;
An activity unknown and horrible;
A self-contemplating shadow,
In enormous labours occupied
5. But Eternals beheld his vast forests
Age on ages he lay, clos’d, unknown
Brooding shut in the deep; all avoid
The petrific abominable chaos
6. His cold horrors silent, dark Urizen
Prepar’d: his ten thousands of thunders
Rang’d in gloom’d array stretch out across
The dread world, & the rolling of wheels
As of swelling seas, sound in his clouds
In his hills of stor’d snows, in his mountains
Of hail & ice; voices of terror,
Are heard, like thunders of autumn,
When the cloud blazes over the harvests
Blake of the Week #6
from
VISIONS of the Daughters of Albion
Tell me what is the night or day to one o’erflowd with woe?
Tell me what is a thought? & of what substance is it made?
Tell me what is a joy? & in what gardens do joys grow?
And in what rivers swim the sorrows? and upon what mountains
Wave shadows of discontent? and in what houses dwell the wretched
Drunken with woe forgotten. and shut up from cold despair.
Tell me where dwell the thoughts forgotten till thou call them forth
Tell me where dwell the joys of old! & where the ancient loves?
And when will they renew again & the night of oblivion past?
That I might traverse times & spaces far remote and bring
Comforts into a present sorrow and a night of pain
Where goest thou O thought? to what remote land is thy flight?
If thou returnest to the present moment of affliction
Wilt thou bring comforts on thy wings. and dews and honey and balm;
Or poison from the desart wilds, from the eyes of the envier.
Blake of the Week #5
THERE is NO NATURAL RELIGION
[b]
I Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception. he percieves more than sense (tho’ ever so acute) can discover.
II Reason or the ratio of all we have already known. is not the same that it shall be when we know more.
[III lacking]
IV The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round even of a univer[s]e would soon become a mill with complicated wheels.
V If the many become the same as the few, when possess’d, More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy Man.
VI If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be his eternal lot.
VII The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite & himself Infinite
Conclusion. If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic character. the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the ratio of all things & stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again
Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only.
Therefore
God becomes as we are,
that we may be as he
is
Blake of the Week #4
THERE is NO NATURAL RELIGION
[a]
The Argument Man has no notion of moral fitness but from Education. Naturally he is only a natural organ subject to Sense.
I Man cannot naturally Percieve. but through his natural or bodily organs
II Man by his reasoning power. can only compare & judge of what he has already perciev’d.
III From a perception of only 3 senses or 3 elements none could deduce a fourth or fifth
IV None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if he had none but organic perceptions
V Mans desires are limited by his perceptions. none can desire what he has not perciev’d
VI The desires & perceptions of man untaught by any thing but organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense.
Much love…
…to President Obama* and to our country, that we may come to meet the world with a very different kind of supreme power.
(* I love typing that.)
No pockets in a shroud.
The reason why cunts sell shit to fools is two-fold, with a third point– three elements– cunts, shit, and fools.
(1.) Because the fools behave like they are supposed to– like fools!
(2.) Because of (1.), then the cunts come out of the woodwork to make a killing!
But that’s not the whole of the story. This scenario, points (1.) and (2.) work together as a force
(3.) Which in turn creates a decline in quality. This is the ’shit’ in ‘why cunts sell shit to fools.’
Hopefully that will wrap the whole thing up for the hard of hearing and the infirm amongst you. It’s your own fault, stop buying it and they’ll stop sellin’ it. They might be cunts, but they’re into money! And if this rant feels too true, too close for comfort, and the irony don’t float your boat, and you’re the kind of person that needs hope, all I know is this: there are no pockets in a shroud!
The tragedy of the world is that the good can’t be bothered and the bad can.
–Damien Hirst
from “Why Cunts Sell Shit To Fools”
Damien Hirst, “For the Love of God,” platinum cast of skull encrusted with diamonds, 2007.
Is it me, or is that skull laughing?
