The story renders it incumbent upon the reader to engage a very active imaginative capacity. As such pictures help. Pictures also bias.
Category: Book List
Poly-sal’ went acourtin’: Orientation Day
The tradition of Courtly Love in literature comes in three types: allegories, lyricals, and romance (aka færy tales).
In prudence of full disclosure, be aware that Richard Wagner’s opera was tentatively titled Parzifal (just as WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH had titled the protagonist) until 1877, when he switched to the handle Parsifal. This change was informed by one theory about the origin and etymology of the name (Perceval > Parzifal > Parsifal).
Vidēre licet the name as of Persian order Fal (Pure) Parsi (Fool).
At this time, your historian has been unable to validate any other origin theories for the name.
Though we shall encounter, virtually, every story ever told within Parzifal, a breakdown of the tradition of Courtly Love and Chivalry during the High Middle Ages as Eschebach tells it is justly prudent.
We concern ourselves, as the reader, with (1) Provençal troubadours, (2) French trovères, and (3) minnesänger.
I’m Wolfram von Eschenbach. I’m a bit of a minnesänger.
Note that Eschenbach states that a Provençal called Kyot (my research suggest Pyot to be a correspondant name in other texts) sent ” the book” to him.
Of keen interest to your historian is the patron enabling Eschenbach to afford the luxury of his composition. Wolfram was under the patronage of Medieval German Mæcenas Herman Landgrave of Thuringia.
The tradition of Courtly Love and Chivalry during the High Middle Ages as seen from the Critical perspective:
The overall gist, to be concisely reductive) of works concerned with courtly love seems to be the romance of self-perfection in knighthood, where both the chivalric and the spiritual receive their due as part of Love and Sensualism.
Parzifal had the knowledge of chivalry concealed from him until he was of an age able to think for himself.
In C.S. Lewis’ Allegory of Love, he presents the literary tradition of courtly love to include four basic characteristics: humility ; courtesy ; adultery ; Religion of Love.
A feudalization of love.
We will consider the meaning of the above shortly.
The genius of the above description will be revealed in history of words.
Shiny new Par/z/sifal Reasearch: dictionaried
The above is incorrect. Just my opinion, in light of the below.
By/Hiways
Trestles tower above, criss-crossing the distribution of mass.
Edified in engineering.
Precipice and Edge. High-sided to deep – plummet.
Span bridging here-to-there.
Anchored in shallow waves.
A shunt by-passing the river below, a detour for red blood celled cars.
Highways criss-crossing
Varicose veins over dirt legs.
Dusty and bumpy.
Tiring transport.
Arterial jams, backed-up traffic
Clotting main veins.
Blood pressure from cellular vehicular road-rage.
Prettification per Parcigal
Parcigal learned the powers of personal appearance, nearly two decades past. She learned its ability to exploit and/or to be exploited, nearly a decade ago. Hell, all gals did where she was from, Alabam, the Dirty South. Personal appearance stood as the primary source of feminine efficacy (next to blood kin).
The place where they raised her never addressed that which she regularly pondered: the long game for pretty lady face.
This type of prettification during youth resulted in an aged-self prettifying to remain relevant, as a new generation of beautiful gals arose.
The true Tao seemed to be finding Beauty unmasked.
Bare face.
No jewelry.
Unadorned.
She started to let her face be as it is. Washed it, moisturized it, but that was all.
She became the appearance of the female she was.
She did this, going about daily public interactions, until she knew her face,
Became the female she is.
Then she wields the power of makeup’s masking properly. Not defensively.
Parcigal lived her dream of Art. She reinterpreted Myshkin anew, unbound to previous ties made.
Allegory.
Of course now, books are more often quoted than read.
The once enumerable is now innumerable.
Hypertextuality.
Parcigal recoils from monastic traditions. It is being one a crowd, faceless.
Initiation required heavy control over the individual’s entire life. Gives very little free will. They seperate sexes, assuming gals are even allowed at all. It imparts a tacit intent to shame the sexual nature of the h. sapien mammal. She does not doubt the resiliency of these traditions. But, her energy does not run properly in their circuits.
She recoils from secret societies and erudite traditions, because she distrusts agendas she agrees to but cannot fully see. It feels, in her mind, like blindly giving away power.
But she is wary. She is also extremely lovesome.
A lovesome nature required diligence.
What was the use of sensualism with a resonant partner?
Why was this primal magic so hidden?
Magnetism and electricity.
Conductors.
Conductive bodies are conducive to utilizing each resonant body.
By nature.
So, in her Fool way, she left her Ewer the note below.
The morning after she spent her first night in the handmade.
Before she snuck out (after two minutes of hard doting on his sky-eyes) without rousing him.
Parsifal: PreFace
When we last left off the Great Work of story, Parsifal went it alone on the quest shared by all. Parsifal was unaware, unsure of the quest itself, of that being sought.
The first secret herein reveals the Green Knight and Parsifal are one and the same; or, perhaps these are the two faces comprising our protagonist. Two lives lived in parallel.
You have heard the name ‘Knight Templar’ and assumed it referred to a man,
The second, open secret: Parsifal is a broad. A simple wench, to use the modern subtext. A gal.
A gal questing but for what holy grail? She worried about it not. Journeys become. Destinations are a drag. She spun infinity effortlessly. She worked her method. Her method was the achievement not the means to achievement.
This was her Tao, her manner and way of being:
learned from Elder Brother in secret;
thanks to Knecht;
apologies to his Shadow, still wandering alone;
And no regrets coyote.
[Verticies. Ways of being. (Berger’s Ways of Seeing).
Multiple levels of discourse take time to discern.]
But our Parsigal remains.
Our Parsigal is a tangential elaborator.
(S)he is something new: the contention made (here), at least.
One is left to presume.
Hurumph and hazaa.
Herald this return from the heavens and hells.
Ringing in the peals of bells and pounded from the skins covering drum heads.
Issuing forth in the drone of electric strings plucked and amplified
In stereo.
The return may come before the end of next summer.
It is not good when it is done.
It is done when it is good.
Parsigal struggles here, locked in the struggle box. Feeling like an empty empath.
Some comment: that is okay, she is pretty (enough).
Never. Pretty is never enough. Work. Absurd. Always.
Multiple primary sources note her propensity for laughter and love of comedy.
“No one laughs like….”
“Genuinely funny…”
Multiple romantic partners:
“You are comfortable,” whispered with serious gravity.
Well, the pretense of gravity. They needed something basic. Parsigal was simple but never basic. Basic exists in limited misery. Simple is elegant methodology.
Stars are everywhere.
Most come out during the day.
It is hard to see the stars of the day.
And hard to understand the night stars so easily seen in the dark.
Two stars become a planet with the application of the function of a
Goddess/Godhead. One : another.
So came Ae.
S(he). Cloaked. Parsifal.
Oft confused.
Jade eyes that turn amber and brown when upon looked.
Only the Grail knows this:
Morning and nightly star.
She is a knight hand-made from a handmaid.
She will sow. Sew.
A she-chevalier for he.
True amateur. Feminine anew. With masculinity imbued.
She wears all the colors of Joseph’s coat. The one the Argonauts eventually obtain, no?
Ha, some dummy thought her a witch who turned the men to swine like legion running off some cliff, like clumsy wildabeasts rushing in a herd towards their own demise.
The lesson she meant to impart in these old epics is: never cast your pearls before swine. Never haggle over the price of an irregular pearl, either. Is it more valuable in its uniqueness? A snowflake impeccability of form. Or is it grotesque? Ill in uniform. From an uninformed maker? A non- artisan oyster? What crass and craven questions could one scratch if not these?
Circular questions.
Improperly tangled loops.
Emergent, epiphenomenon of complex systems.
The third law of thermodynamics misinterpreted.
Her name has been spelled too many ways.
She cannot rightly recall her writeful name;
Her dexter handle;
The a droite moniker (not the a gauche one).
All titles have power. And to have is to hold.
All titles can be reduced to words of language.
Not all titles can be expressed with words of language.
Collared without collaring. Maverick whose brand is a lack of brand.
Feral gal child, spirit undomesticated.
No tags.
This is our Parsigal.
This is the story.
“How different really are atheists and believers?” (Costica Bradatan)
Thank you Costica Bradatan and John Gray.
Interesting piece very relevant to the cultural elephant in the room (at least in America). This elephant also relates to the popular perception that a scientific and a religous belief perspective are mutually exclusive.
Lots to unpack but highlights include:
“[Grey] uses paradox not just for rhetorical effect but to a philosophical end.”
<thank you. rhetoric abounds already.>
Voltaire and Nietzeche, as perceived atheists, are rexamined.
“no such thing as secularism”
The idea that religion is born from a fundamental need to make meaning.
The author suggests religion is irreplacable in our meaning making process.
I propose extending this more broadly: culture is irreplacable and religion is a social structure of culture. This is consistent with the authors’ arguements.
While categorization is reductionist at times, the breakdown of ‘types’ of atheists is appropriate and beneficial to the big picture “layman” discussion.
“Atheist” and “scientist” have become confused as synonomous. “Atheist” is largely a stigma in many local American communities. If you believe this is irrelevant to the endeavor of science, please consider public school textbooks and science. Evolution is less frequently taught (in the South, at least), then cited as theory and then discredited.
Why? Because text book order demand stems from state boards of education.
Please check The Revisionaries, a documentary demonstratig this process.
HARTZ. American Exceptionalism (pt3).
Because American industrial development generally resembled Europe’s, Hartz cast his exceptionalism thesis in strongly political and cultural terms.
What has differentiated politics in the U.S. are limits that have been imposed on economically induced political change by the agreement on liberal beliefs and practices.
Standard Critiques of Liberal Consensus Theory
The most common critique argues that the thesis seriously understated the extent and variability of class conflict and governmental interventions in the economy,
Hartz and Tocqueville did, after all, take for granted that widespread economic wealth was involved in sustaining the liberal character of American political thought.
Social pluralism and seperation of residence and workplace can be attributed at least in part to the openess and fluidity of a liberal society.
Implicit Metatheory of the Consensus Thesis
The consensus thesis is mainly concerned with the years near after the original settlement of America and there are three reasons why the thesis cannot be a causal explanation over the more extensive period.
1. The decisive causal factors took place in Europe and the thesis has little to say about these events or the causes that brought them about.
2. The thesis emphasizes continuity; it does not seek to explain political development nor is it concerned with the way one set of changes produced another set of changes.
3. Causal explanations must clearly distinguish between dependent and independent variables. The thesis attributes America’s persisting liberal culture to the liberal beliefs and practices of the original settlers. Beliefs and practices make up a culture, and the original liberalism of a culture cannot be a cause of its liberalism later on.
The Problem of Nothingness-Selected Tracks from Jean Paul Sartre
An abstraction is made when something not capable of existing in isolation is thought of as in an isolated state. Consciousness is an abstraction. The concrete can be only the synthetic totality of which consciousness, like the phenomenon, constitutes only moments. Effecting a phenomenological reduction will not succeed in restoring the concrete (of consciousness) by the summation or organization of the elements which we abstracted from it. The relation of the regions of being is an original emergence and is a part of the very structure of these beings. “Is there any conduct which can reveal to me the relation of man with the world?”
We have established a parallelism between the types of conduct man adopts in the face of Being & Non-Being. We’re tempted to consider Being & Non-Being as two complimentary components of the real -like dark and light. Two contemporary notions which would somehow be united in the production of existents and which it would be useless to consider in isolation. Pure Being & pure Non-Being would be two abstractions which could be reunited only on the basis of concrete realities~There is nothing in heaven or on Earth which does not contain in itself Being & Non-Being,
Things in general “are”, but their being consists in manifesting their essence. Being passes into essence. One can express this by saying, ‘Being presupposes essence.’
Being is prior to nothingness and establishes the ground for it. Being has a logical precedence over nothingness and it is from Being that Nothingness derives its efficacy. Nothingness haunts Being. Nothingness can have only a borrowed existence. Non-Being exists only on the surface of Being.
*this is just Sartre’s opinion, yo. Dissent? Thoughts?
Watch “John Irving on why The World According to Garp is more relevant now than he ever imagined” on YouTube
The Confessions-St. Augustine
The Problem of Sciences (one more old a** quote to discover from a great book)
Classical mechanics uses space and time but never questions itself about time, space, or motion. And, Social Sciences do not question themselves about man. We cannot take it for granted that experience will give us the facts of a group or that anthropology will bind these facts by means of objectivity, strictly defined relations, if we want to access “human reality.”
The problem is our research is aimed at constituting laws and at bringing to light functional relations/processes.
By indirect knowledge, I mean the result of reflection on existence. It is indirect in this sense-that it is presupposed by all the concepts of anthropology without being itself made the object of concepts.
The Problem of Nothingness (bonus pts if you guess the source-it should go without saying.)
An abstraction is made when something not capable of existing in isolation is thought of as in an isolated state.
Consciousness is an abstraction.
The concrete can be only the synthetic totality of which consciousness, like the phenomenon, constitutes only moments. Effecting a phenomenological reduction will not succeed in restoring the concrete (of consciousness) by the summation or organization of the elements which we abstracted from it. The relation of the regions of being is an original emergence and is a part of the very structure of the beings.
“Is there any conduct which can reveal to me the relation not man with the world?”
We have established a Parallelism between the types of conduct man adopts in the face of Being and Non-Being. We’re tempted to consider being and non-being as two complementary components of the real: like dark and light.
Two contemporary notions which would somehow be united in the production of existents and which it would be useless to consider in isolation. Pure being and pure non-being would be two abstractions which could be reunited only on the basis of concrete realities.
There is nothing in heaven or on earth which does not contain in itself Being and Nothingness.
Foucault’s Pendulum (Quotes from 1st reading)
Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum is DENSE and cryptic. Will not be through this one anytime soon.
Had to stop by page 18! mainly because my brain exploded when I read that last quote.
The Pendulum told me that, as everything moved-earth, solar system, nebulae and black holes, all the children of the great cosmic expansion-one single point stood still: a pivot, bolt, or hook around which the universe could move.
It proves the rotation of the earth. Since the point of suspension doesn’t move. p5
By fleeing to another; you cannot escape the revelation of the identical by takeing refuge in the illusion of the multiple.p7
It is as if the progeny of Reason and Enlightenment had been condemned to stand guard forever over the ultimate symbol of Tradition and Wisdom.p8
This catoptric theater was only contrived to take away your identity and make you feel unsure not only of the very objects standing between you and the mirrors.
Then suddenly I saw myself upside down in a mirror.
Intolerable.p13
I was penetrating to the heart of a secret message in the form of a rationalist theatrum.p15
The first Sefirah is Keter, the Crown, the beginning, the primal void. In the beginning He created a point, which became Thought, where all the figures were drawn. He was and was not, He was encompassed in the name yet not encompassed in the name, having as yet no name other than the desire to be called by a name.p18
And so it goes. Great Vonnegut Quote
There was still plenty of food and fuel and so on for all the the human beings on the planet, as numerous as they had become, but millions upon milions of them were starving to death now.
And this famine was as purely a product of oversized brains as Beethoven’s Symphony.
It was all in people’s heads. People had simply changed their opinions of paper wealth, but, for all practical purposes, the planet might as well have been knocked out of orbit by a meteor the size of Luxembourg.
The financial crisis was simply the latest in a series of murderous 21st century catastrophes which had originated entirely in human brains.
More and more humans were saying that their brains were irresponsible, unreliable, hideously dangerous, wholly unrealistic— were simply no damn good.
Kurt Vonnegut. Galàpagos. 1999
Time to Revive Hartz & rexamine American Exceptionalism?
Embodying an absolute moral ethos, “Americanism,” once it is driven onto the world stage by events, is inspired willy-nilly to reconstruct the very alien things it tries to avoid. Its Messianism is the polar counterpart of its isolation. Americans seem to oscillate between fleeing from the rest of the world and embracing it with too ardent a passion. An absolute national morality is inspired to withdraw from “alien” things or to transform them-It cannot live in comfort constantly by their side.
Louis Hartz. American Exceptionalism. 1955.
Thoughts are with those hurting tonight after the violent events.
Let’s try harder to do better.
Still Life With Woodpecker. Tom Robbins. 1980
America is full of metaphysical outlaws.
Inessential insanities get one in trouble with oneself.
Essential insanities get one in trouble with others.
It’s always preferable to be in trouble with others.
In fact, it may be essential.
Tunnelvision is a disease in which perception is restricted by ignorance and distorted by vested interests. Tunnelvision is caused by an optic fungus that multiplies when the brain is less energetic than the ego.
Equality is not in regarding things similarly.
Equality is regarding things differently.
People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve.
Pt2 Steppenwolf
A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this torreless, flat, normal, and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something. P 27
It is remarkable all that men can swallow… Steppenwolves could sipalittle heart and courage from their glasses. p34
Of all the things that pleased and charmed me about her, the prettiest and most characteristic was her rapid changes from the deepest seriousness to the drollest merriment, and this without doing herself the least violence, with the facility of a gifted child. P107
[Hemine to the steppenwolf/Harry] the reason why I please you and mean so much to you is because I’m a kind of looking glass for you, because there’s something in me that answers to you? Really, we ought all to be such looking glasses to each other and answer and correspond to each other, but such owls as you are a bit particular. P108
I felt my partner’s taut hips, her quick and pliant knees, and looking in her radiantface I owned that this was the first time in my life that I had really danced. Harry quote P122.
I am going to teach you to dance and play and smile, and still not be happy. And you are going to teach me to think and to know and yet not be happy… We have fallen out of nature and hang suspended in space… Every human being it says, consists of ten, or a hundred, or a thousand souls. P126
You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. P151
“…the laughter of the immortals. It was a laughter without an object. It was simply light and lucidity…and eternity was nothing else than the redemption of true, its return to innocence, so to speak, and its transformation again into space. P154
Never did sinner show more haste to get to hell. P164
Such contrasts, seen from a little distance, always tend to show their increasing similarity. P206
How math talks? In statements.
Euclid was the dude who gave us (Euclidean) geometry.
He included the postulate below.
Given any straight line and a point not on it, there “exists one and only one straight line which passes” through that point and never never intersects the first line, no matter how far they are extended.
Well, this was later replaced with the assumption that more than one parallel can be drawn to a given line through a given point. One could also make the assumption no parallels can be drawn thusly. This led to a new type of geometry.
It was after this shift in thought that mathematics was recognized to be much more abstract than traditionally supposed:
- Because math statements can be construed in principle to be about anything, rather than some inherently circumscribed set of objects or traits of objects.
- Because the validity of math statements is grounded in the structure of statements rather than in the nature of a particular subject matter.
- Because any special meaning that may be associated with the terms in the postulates plays no essential role in deriving the theorems.
*Clumsily articulated from readings by Douglas Hofstadter as well as Roger Penrose
Steppenwolf. Hermann Hesse. Notes from reread. Updates ongoing
A wolf of the Steppes that had lost it’s way and strayed into the towns and the life of the herd. p17
[Regarding Haller’s left behind manuscript] They are rather the deeply loved spiritual events which he has attempted to express by giving them the form of tangible experiences….I see them as a document of the times, for Haller’s sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs……They are an attempt to present the sickness itself in its actual manifestation. p20-21
Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap…Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence p22
I feel our contemporary world is existing between two ages and modes of life.
Those who remember before the internet and those who never lived in a world without the internet. Those who remember not having a cell phone. Those who learned cursive and those who didn’t.
I was in high school when our family ‘got internet.’ It was dialup and played very specific noises when connecting. I can still ‘sing’ those noises from memory. We would lose the connection if someone called our family landline. After one and a half hours, our connection would kick us off and we’d have to re-connect.
I remember high school research involving physical libraries.
At 35, I never wrote an academic paper without a word processor on a personal computer. In fact, I’m still in awe at my parents who did scholarly work without this benefit.
WrittenCasey 