The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

bonebrushing the edges of the res interna (upper transcend)

Category: word of the day

Word of the Day – Orthodox

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/orthodox

From the Greek, orth, meaning straight, and doxa, meaning opinion — straight or correct opinion — the central pillar of a society’s worldview — “don’t upset the orthodoxy” – at its most powerful, the orthodoxy is so prevailing, all-encompassing, and pervasive that individuals within the orthodoxy cannot even see its outlines, for it is the background for the way in which thoughts are constructed. Israel — the Wrestlers — become impossible in this context — and orthodoxy inevitably leads to intellectual ossification. Western culture, with its scientific method and liberal politics, is a new innovation, where the prevailing orthodoxy presumes fallibility, limits to knowledge, and encourages experiment, examination, interrogation — and yet a) this impulse ossifies into an orthodoxy of denial, skepticism, where because nothing is certain, nothing is believed and b) is relegated to its limited sphere because of the underlying power of orthodoxy to stifle dissent — leading to liberalism as a religion, free markets as a dogma, the struggle against socialism as a holy war — and now, to the unrelenting triumphalism of the Post-Cold War Era.

After the autumn, market orthodoxy has been shaken; the victors have been humbled by their hubris. Now, perhaps, during this moment of crisis, some Luther will come to nail his theses on the church door of Wittenberg, and reenact some new reformation that may in turn lead to a new protestant revival.

While the lobotomized sheep and the dull-eyed shepherds worry, and the shepherds begin to grudge the sheep its clothing, those with thought and those with memory may find some opportunity to free themselves, their neighbors, and the world from a metapysical justification that no longer serves —

what shall rise in its place? how long until this too feels the vigor leach from its veins, leaving a new idol for the masses.

A plague on you, Mr. Greenspan. A plague on you, Mr. Bernanke. You have failed us.

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Word of the Day

Castanets

word of the day — underwood

 1. Small trees or shrubs, coppice-wood or brush-wood, growing beneath higher timber trees.

used figuratively (B. Johnson: I am bold to entitle these lesser poems, of later growth, by this [name] of Underwood, out of the analogie they hold to the Forest in my former booke.” 1637)

Also, a typewriter.

Little trees, growing beneath tall timber casting long shadows, and yet protected by such greatness // our ‘tire civilization, this city ‘neath the treelimbs, exercise in underwood, some climbing to the tipeetops of redwoods to see farther and know, to read the world, others shelter ‘neath their branches and mistake woodsprites for great gods, great horned one, Cernunnos, Woden’s Wood, walk in bowers on Wednesday’s;

I make my bed in the underwood, little child of greater spirits, Old Tom O’Bedlam, that’s me, First Thomas came to this virgin shores (In the beginning, the whole world was America) , and he had a Thomas, who climbed atop his shoulders, and he had a Thomas, or Sarah with her two boys out of wedlock, descendants of Ballards, and others, Amos, Moses, John Ashley Boyett, Edward Jasper, Julius, Ovid, then Michael and Richard, and now me and my brother, Joshua and Daniel, underwood, shifting, turning, now Jewish, adopted into the Old Cabal, like Ruth —

Children of Khazar Princes — underwood, underhill, type, type, letters and numbers, signs and sigils, ancient ruins, come dance in dappled forest paths, find the path to secret cities, tell me a fairy tale of dwarves in wooded glens, who’s the fairest, screams the wallmirror, echoing old crones, we all live in bowers, our cities are temporary scarplaces against the arbor, primeval wood, and dryads and others remember the trueworld, waiting to bounce back and use us as sourcelogs, rotting logs, human to humus, while great mighty woody life stands silent and dreams green dreams.

word of the day — ‘furo’

furo, n.

In Japan: (originally) a steam bath or bathhouse (in later use) = ofuro

<< To every house of any pretension to respectability there is attached an apartment called a ‘Fro’, which is fitted up with vapour-baths, and with warm and cold baths. >>

<< The bath (furo) is a pretty deep wooden tub…At its sharper end projects a small sheet-iron flue, which is connected below with a small fire apparatus, and is employed to heat the surrounding water. >>

The bath or bathhouse is traditionally a place of relaxation or entertainment in Japanese culture; Western businessmen, coming in their wooden ships and laughing in their forbidden cities — taken to a beautiful wooden inn, with warm baths — East India Company Factors — smiling faces, inscrutable Easterners, swift sunrise, close your eyes and like it — water wet, eyes tightly closed — upside down and wrongways, but the lifeforce is strong and insatiable — unyielding compulsion / boy smiles, naturally / strangeness for me, normal for him // M. Butterfly. Business done above the table, business done below it // San Francisco a colony of the Sunrise Lands, but place of our sunclipse, where the world spins out of light’s gaze, hiding, darkness // no more darkness, Stonewall riots, is it anywonder that they, the Wildeans, the men who love men, soldier-brothers, is it any wonder they have gone to old stagehouses and playhouses, to put on masks and faces and wigs and dresses, to dance and sing of falsehoods learned through three thousand years of being called an aberration — Old Father John Wesley said it, called it Abomination, but clearly, just one dial out of many, paraphiliac velvet undergroundsome, come with me to the baths, they say, crazily, chemicle lustpaths lit up by fire, hunter becomes hunted, now I am pursued, curly haired and thin occassionally I get looks — it is not for me, I’m far to shy, happy with my S.Q.S.O. — but willnot cannot pass judgment, pleasure, fun and pleasure, secret rooms, secret baths, conversations over saki —

what, a girl then, a girl to conclude business with, whatever you wish whiteman from sunset lands, whistling while the world moves on, here, is she pretty, is she young, take her to the baths and let her clean you —

almost did it — denial of own humanity that — distance from myself, my mindself, driven mad by clean soap smells on lovely softflesh — slaves to the priapic tyrant, the urge, the itch, reminds us that we are not angels, but men, with knees that bend —