Perils of Santer-Bub

That thing where there is a secret part of the US government that identifies and tracks aliens is a real thing and I used to work for it.  One interesting case was the case of Santer-Bub who was an extra-dimensional organism who landed on Earth in 1961 and embodied itself in a common centipede, and it’s m.o. was to inspire a creator of wooden puzzles to create puzzles and put them in diners.  They were called “Genius Testers” and involved pegs jumping and if you had only one peg left in the center hole you were a “genius” and they would give you another game from behind the counter, and if you solved that game another game, and then another game and at that point your brain chemistry and the software of your cognition would have been altered and you’d be basically an alien in thrall to Santer-Bub.  So we tracked him down and drug him out of his underground lair — btw he was not a giant centipede he was a regular centipede. And we didn’t kill him — at the moment we were going to put him in the chamber his  wife came and rescued him!  So there’s that which is an interesting story about those time.  We didn’t play the game either because you know aliens.

It’s Not a Bad Idea to Be Innocent

The smart money is on not being too clever.

If you can be humble, and really truly believe in your humility, potential employers will recognize that and give you a good job.

Don’t be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. If you can, be a sheep in sheep’s clothing.

I discussed this with the magic dragonfly who lives in the pond behind my house very early in the morning, when you can’t see the sun, but the sky is such a light grey as to be esentially white, and the air is actually a part of the sky, and both both are so full of light it puffs out your eye, your skull, your body.  And I asked, is it possible for us, human beings to be in no clothing at all?  Sure we can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing in wolf’s clothing, or the reverse, the sheep in wolf’s clothing in sheep’s clothing, but can we be naked — and just be what we are?  Or is this way of thinking about things, that we are either naked or in some sort of clothing, the distinction that we wear to pose as what we are to ourselves or to others?  Or is this way of thinking about things, that we have clothing that we remove in order to reveal who we really are, itself the sort of nakedness that belongs to human beings as our special nature, as wool does to the sheep, or as a certain innocent cunning belongs to the wolf?

Something like that, said the dragonfly.

Rudgie, Pajji, Widgee, Fodgee

 

DISCOVERED IN THE PAPERS OF MY FATHER AFTER HIS DEATH:

Rujji, padgie, wijji, fojdi!  BURN THIS without reading it — if you wish who I truly was to remain a secret forever.  I pray you WHOEVER IS READING THIS (and obviously he knew the only one reading this would be me) LET MY SECRET DIE WITH ME!   Please, please, please, please, PLEASE, PO-LEEZ!, I have been a good man and everybody knows me to have been such, I have followed through on my promises, and foreswore earthly happiness — SO FAR AS ANYBODY KNOWS — as long as no one will read this paper — MY POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION IS IN YOUR HANDS.  DO NOT READ WHAT IS WRITTEN ON THIS PAPER. AND IF YOU DO READ IT, DO NOT TELL A SOUL!

Yeah, right, you old attention-seeking old whore man.

I READ IT!  I PUT IT ON THE INTERNET!

Rudgee

Podgee

Widgee

Fozgi

4all2c

ii

My brother Tyrone whom we call T-BONE calls me up on the TELEPHONE to complain about the internet post about the R-P-W-F.  “Eric, I read your post.  I did not agree with it. You made a series of mistakes.  If you had made just one of those mistakes it would have been a mistake.  But you made several mistakes.  So it was several mistakes.”

-what were the mistakes?

“Okay.” he consulted his notes.  “First those were our fathers secret papers and you shared them with other people and you should not have.”

-k

“Second it is not very clear about what Rudgie Podgie Widgie Fodgie MEANS.  So you have to ask yourself — do you want to tell people what Dad was up to or don’t you?  Because if you DO want to tell people what was his secret shame you have to actually explain it.  You understand?”

-I understand.

“You have to say is Rudgie his secret underage lover, is Podgie the political party he belonged to which said that Albanians should all be slaves –”

-Dad would never say Albanians should be slaved.  He loved Albania.

“You are missing the point.  I’m asking you did you ask yourself what you wanted to do before you posted that?”

-?

“You didn’t, did you.  You see that’s always been your problem and that is why your writing doesn’t work.  You need to ask yourself what you’re trying to do before you do it.  That way you can know when you do it, if you did it.  Because if you write something and you don’t know what you’re trying to do or if you want different things which are impossible to get all those things and then you write it and you get lost…”

“What was the other mistake?  You said there were three mistakes.”

“Oh right.” Consults notes.  “You spelled “Rozzy” wrong.”

THREE

the spirit medium’s eyes go up into her head, the coffee grounds poured out on the floor of the dusty apartment in Hollywood, blinds are drawn, the mind-baffling odor of the San Pedro Cactus penetrating my walnut-sized brain, the chanting of the two immense sweaty eunuchs, the squealing of the cat “SPIRIT OF ERIC’S MOTHER!  WE SUMMON YOU!  WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY?”

“What about me?” said my mommy’s ghost “When do you pay attention to me.”

“You have the floor” said Miss Bahara, the spirit medium  “Speak.  Speak.  What do you have to say.”

the quiver of our soul’s of the supernal presence, the being from beyond.  She speaks…

“Fidgee”

“Wallee”

“Asee”

“Pwopee.”

“

Oh, the Mistaken Forgetters!

A TYPE ONE error is when you believe something you shouldn’t.  A TYPE TWO error is when you fail to believe something you should.  If you think homeopathy cures the common cold, you are committing a type one error.  If you don’t believe that fluorides guards against dental caries, you are committing a Type Two error.

You could say that a dog has evolved to avoid Type Two errors — the dog wants above all to avoid failing to eat something that could be food.  A cat has evolved to avoid Type One errors — the cat is concerned to avoid eating something that could be non-food.  You might think that certain men are concerned with avoiding type two errors — they want to avoid failing to sleep with someone whom they should sleep with, while certain women are more concerned with avoiding type one errors — they want to avoid sleeping with someone whom they shouldn’t sleep with.   It doesn’t matter what you think about men, women, dogs, or cats — they may not even exist in your world by the time you are reading this.  I just want to get clear on the difference between Errors of Type One (believing the lie) and those of Type Two (disbelieving the truth).

As we fall off to sleep we are faced with memories, records of the events of the day.   Can we remember everything that happened today, tomorrow?   No we cannot, for an interesting reason.  If the past was as present to our minds as the present is, we would not be able to respond to the present.  Imagine that I ate the bread in the cupboard today.  Tomorrow when I wake up and the cupboard is bare, I must set off in search of new bread.   But if my brain makes my memory of today’s bread a present experience tomorrow then I will not seek out bread tomorrow.  Sated with memories I will starve.

So my brain (and its buddies my peripheral nerves and sense organs) must make a choice: what to remember and what to forget?  I met so many people today — real people, people I read about and people I imagined, people I glimpsed in a crowd.  Who will pile into the rowboat that is my continuing life.  Who will be left behind on the shore?  My brain must choose of all the people and all the facts that it encountered.  Who will join me.

Sometimes I will make a Type One Mistake — I will remember a fact or person whom I would do well to forget.

Sometimes as I lay me, I will make a Type Two Mistake — I will forget a fact or person I should have remembered!

This is a prayer for forgiveness against my High True Self whom I have offended by my false forgetting!

And not just at the moment of sleep!  Because, remember, remember!  I am spread out across the world, and messengers come from all sides, from all locations, racing inwards with the news (the knews!) of what I Must Know, What I Must Feel, What must hurt me and what from which I feel pleasure, all these dispatches and warnings and presentiments and letters and emails and pronunciamentos in the languages of Flowers and Bees, tales and poems and philosophies and allegories and data — all trying to get into the courtyard where I converse in quietness with myself — they are all trying to get to me and most of them I keep out with good reason, and some of them I let in with good reason, but some of them horribly are what I need to hear and they never make it to me.

Forgive me, forgive me!

Masculine and Feminine Strategies for Intimacy

I’m assuming what people want is intimacy — knowing and being known — and it’s also what people are most afraid of.  So I am concluding that masculine and feminine roles are ways to navigate and negotiate that ambivalence.  You could also think of them as bargains we strike with the other, or starting positions for a negotiation.  But an interesting thing that I’ve been thinking of lately comes from the idea that although they are inherited roles they are not unified.  Masculine and feminine roles are bundle of strategies.  Masculine for example includes — I’ll fight for you if you love me — and also — I’ll be your guide into the world of nature if you view me as part of nature — and also I’ll be the representative of the transcendent G-d if you worship me — I’ll be your ruler — I’ll be your little boy if you care for me — I’ll break the rules and you’ll forgive me.  A whole bunch of criss-crossing strategies, some of which are self-defeating, some of which are ok but limited, others of which fight against themselves or exist uneasily,  or just in unrelated forms like plumbing and dentistry.

Right?

R

The Hundralica Foul-Up

the popular idea that sexual desire stems from an original unified man who was split due to the jealous of the GODS so each one is a half-man, man seeking woman, woman seeking man, suggests another equally good idea for ART, which is there was an original unity CREATOR-CREATION and this was also SPLIT! and now we have creators and creations, poets and poems, writers and novels, separate and split off, chasing each other through the evolving NOOSPHERE (call it the ASTRAL PLANE why don’t you?) and sometimes it’s a bad thing, like when the poor old janitor is discovered to have written that shocking book “THE HUNDRALICA FOUL-UP” about a world in the future where his particularly unacceptable SEXUAL TASTES are the basis of a utopian society and they read the book and they look at the janitor and they say “THIS MAN CANNOT BE AROUND CHILDREN!” dreaming as he does dreams where WHAT IS UNACCEPTABLE is actually lauded and praised (alongside his fully worked out system of yeast farming to support a society of billions thanks to fully worked-out diagrams of the submerged underground YEAST CHAMBERS) and of course he’s punished, of course to quote BLIND BLAKE “He’s in the Jailhouse now” but really he can say — it’s not my fault — whose fault is it you perv — it’s the fault of whoever made that original unity that I am fighting so shamefully, so poignantly to regain