I once thought to myself, in one of those moments of passing lucidity: Is the point of life to remember how to enjoy breathing? Is it the most basic pleasure?
Breath.
Breathe.
Breather.
Breathers.
Did you know the word “panic” does derive from Pan? Look it up, might be buried deeper than a single dictionary.
Did you know that Freud posited that the idiosyncratic, neuroses afflicting individuals in society are a result of human civilization itself, not some inherent biology deficiency?
Involuntary loss of control over voluntary processes. Inability to breath.
Breathless. Is that not the quintessence of smoking, smoking anything, inhaling anything?
Taking in the air around you seems inane or futile. Breathing reaffirms life.
Music and speech force breath and leave breathless. Breathing through your nose,
closing your throat to prevent air slipping through
renders speechless.
Ineffable
Here are the things I’ve been thinking/reading over the last few years:
iPagan. Edited by Trevor Greenfield, 2018. Textbook for learning organizational & historical of “naturalist” sects.
The Glass Bead Game (Master Ludi). Hermann Hesse, 1990. Henry Holt
Foucault’s Pendulum. Umberto Eco, 1988. “A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”
On Literature. Umberto Eco.
The Confessions of St. Augustine. find the Oxford version. Read it as though your narrator is being completely ironic.
Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
Kantian Reason
Bertrand Russell’s efforts to formalize systems
Sartre’s Being and Non-Being
Consider: Euclidean/Non-Euclidean Space ; Gödel’s sentence G ; a priori methods formalizing almost axiomatically ; the difference between linear/non-linear equations ; consider the different types of numbers and the number line ; consider the difference between permutations and combinations
Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel. Rebecca Goldstein 2005.
Gödel Escher Bach ; Metamathematical Themas ; Mind’sI. Douglas R. Hofstadter
Gödel’s Proof. Ernest Nagel, James R. Hofstadter, 2001
A Mathematician’s Apology. G.H. Hardy, 1940
Introduction to Logic. Patrick Suppes, 1957
Short Stories: The Circular Ruins (Jorges Borges) ; The Beautiful Dream (Hermann Hesse) ; The Dream of Poliphilius ; The Great God Pan Arthur Machen
Consider and draw the Sephirotic Tree.
Consider the nature of words and language: Use Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements as introduction
Consider Parzifal (A.T. Hatto’s translation of Wolfram Von Eschenbach)
Danse Macabre. Stephen King.
Plato-Socrates: The Apology, Phaedo, Swan’s Song,
Random Rabbit Holes: the concept of godess/godheads, female and male sexuality/Hesperus is Phosphorus/a book’s copyright page, Odysseus, Ajax.
The Ecstasy Beyond Knowing: A Manual of Meditation. Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, 2014.
The most interesting question that comes from all this reading, in my opinion: What is the subliminal symbolism of sexuality?
WrittenCasey 