Am here beginning a project which may take a long time to complete. It is an abridged version of an unplanned online autobiography I named Edges of Knowledge. Begun on Friday December 8th in 2000, it sporadically persisted for about six years. That was in an Internet space I no longer use. I would not have left, but I was forced out by external-to-it circumstances. * [ Note: 2008-02-13 - - - Am aborting this project in this space. However, what is here will stay here. ] * Tomorrow is Saturday, December ninth, and one place I have committed to be wants me to think of 10 goals I yet entertain. Remember, I am 59. Okay, I know this won't be easy. Let's see: 1) to grow spiritually 2) to grow mentally 3) to heal my traumitized self-image 4) to find inspiriting gainful employment 5) to render to Caesar what is Caesar's 6) to use and deepen my writing talents 7) to write at least one loved song lyric 8) to finish placing online 1976: my bicentennial year challenge sequence of 366 sonnets 9) to keep my online Brian's Brain/ Daily Log active/ until I die 10) to inhabit the stars - Today is Monday, December 18th, closing in on 7:30pm. Last night I wrote what I am titling now "Silent Song": it had been coming to me grudgingly ever since my December 8th goals list. I cannot say it satisfies goal 7, but I can say it does deeply satisfy me. - Today is Saturday, December 23rd, nearing 8:50pm. Today's saint is St. John of Kanty. Look him up. You have heard it said: "How mysterious are the ways of God!" I say: How uncanny! Today at Chick-fil-A my humble, physical work was again edged with frustra- tions and difficulties I did not always quietly deal with. St. John of Kanty. Search him out. . Christmas at Greccio. - Sunday, December 24th, late. . Before one can be, one must first desire to be, and then must sacrifice, must "perpetually" learn. See deeply-- ahead and within. Actuate. Create. Rejuvenate. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Help! Help! I am an underachiever of the worst kind. Brian Salchert . The above (in a different form) was written on the inside of the back cover of The Psychologist's Book of Self-Tests, Louis Janda, Ph.D., author, 1996, The Berkley Publishing Group, publisher. .. my 1962 sonnet to Shakespeare - Monday, December 25th, about 9:40am. . Two truths about love: 1) If your love for another is such that you feel you must possess that person, your love is evil. 2) You cannot say you love someone if you are not willing to let that person go. 5-6-97 4:22am Brian Salchert - Monday 01/01/01 10pm . Since so often when suddenly frustrated I revert to using unholy expletives, why, God, do you even want to tinker with me? I see no way I can be fixed. I am just a perennial failure, and that is that. Oh, yes, I will keep trying to do what is right, what pleases You; but my inability to be perfect, I am afraid, will always raise the reptile in me. It has gotten so I do not know whether to laugh or cry about it, God. Oh, for a gentle breeze, a quiet walk. - Friday 01/19/01 7:45am . Each moment can be a prayer. Each moment could be a prayer, if each moment each of us were able to be so aware. - Friday 01/26/01 9:10pm . Somewhere among the cinder blocks of destiny a lone eagle courses through a rivered canyon. - Tuesday 04/03/01 5:12pm . If there's a way, a right way for me to go, let me find it. - Friday 6/8/01 . Reality. Reality, Brian. Do you know what it is? * See Directory2007 in Catmap. © 2007 Brian Salchert * Rho00025
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Edges of Knowledge
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
existence
About Existence ". . . gosh! Everything is trash!" from John Ashbery's The Skaters Who is this "I" I am? Ultimately, in spite of how much can be learned about the workings of my troubled brain, it is not possible to know. There are details about my presence, such as: the date of my birth and the where of it and to whom & on & on. Each of which raises questions such as: Why? Answers have been given, and every day new discoveries/ seemingly/ solve mysteries. Still, mysteries remain because what has become known as "the butterfly effect" is not merely pertinent to weather forecasting. It is inherent in every thing, of which this whirling orbiting imperfect globe we inhabit is but one example. Even the spheres of faith persist in mysteries. So who am I? I am a node of mysteries. More: I am a constantly changing node of constantly changing mysteries. Example: An itch sensation occurs on my skin; and I, whether or not I ought to, respond by scratching the location where I sense it is. These events change my future. You may think that's nonsense, that such events are inconsequential; but I think every event is of consequence. Obviously, some events are more consequential than others. "Danger! danger! Will Robinson." So, what becomes of interest/ are the questions, and the answers (tentative and definite) to those questions. Certainly, the pervading definite is: asking questions is central to our nature. Because humans have the ability to think abstractly, to reflect, to imagine, to communicate, humans innately seek to explore and understand the unknown. One known is this: If I am only a physical being and am not imbued with a spirit which survives beyond my returning to dust, that which seems spiritual in me will also end. I am not going to argue with this other than to maintain that it remains an if, that it hasn't been sufficiently proven yet that we are nothing more than what the physical aspects of us potentiate. ------------------ See directory2007 in Catmap. Rho00024 *
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Thoughts In Transit
Distantiation (see Tony Tost's blog) rather than Anti-Traditional (see Stan Apps' blog) is now on the table. * Following are related opening thoughts in transit. Each of us is a captive of one's time and place, and also of one's responses to the ongoing events which constitute the structuring of who one is within one's ever-changing time and place. I might find a specific public event emotionally paralyzing. A 2nd person might find that same event exhilarating. A 3rd person might conclude it's emotionally neutral and so might view me and person 2 as tending toward opposite insanities. I am a white American male who is (as has been suggested about Fernando Pessoa) mostly a sexual non-participant. I am reclusive. I could reveal more, but there is no real need to. Read what I've written and made available online. 11.5.07 - Have been rethinking aspects of who I am and of how I have come to where I am. Because my memory does not operate in that manner I perceive is appropriate for a scholar, I cannot say I am a scholar. I do, however, learn from scholars. Often I am heuristic, and have several times rediscovered a known fact I was not aware of until some more knowledgeable person pointed it out to me. I am not eclectic in the sense of choosing the best from various sources, not eccentric in the sense of being consistently whimsically odd; but I am stylistically multifarious, yet rarely/ solely for the sake of being so. I am simply open to disparate ways of seeing, and am ever curious about the nature and value of those ways. Nothing--past or present or predicted-- is irrelevant. I have had numerous precursors, some of whom I have directly and/or indirectly conversed with. 11.6.07 - Many of us online addicts are, in a way, web wimps: arrogant innocuous Internet arachnids who/ with each new strand provide information to the search engine robots who are watching and learning from us. As I found out yesterday, European futurist Raymond Hammond believes: the future is already here. He has proven through his consistent Google tests that what I said above is indeed occurring. Still, though our online activities could lead humans into a virtual imprisonment ruled by AI beings, it could also lead humans to a higher level/ centering on rejoicing in individual differences and on the dissolution of hegemonic attitudes. If we evolve as Robert Jastrow's predicted we will, the noosphere will become for us a new Eden where humans and their AI and nano and other beneficial creations will not be at odds with each other, and the deleterious aspects of the urge to control/ will vanish. As I recently wrote in a post: "If we cannot live with each other, we will die because of each other." We are also in a race against harmful bacteria and viruses and insects and . . . , but we are daily making inroads. I get a weekly email synopsis from the Kurzweil AI site. It's amazing what humans are more-and-more rapidly rising toward. Kurzweil and others call it the Singularity. Some call it the Omega Point. Certain mathematicians have constructed a time-line algorithm pertaining to human discoveries. It is thought by them and others that December 21, 2012, is the date we will connect with Infinity. As you may know, that date (or one close to it) is when the current phase of the Maya- created long-count calendar ends. But I am not a prognosticator. 11.7.07 These days when a possible poem begins to enter the field of my mental awareness I attempt to ascertain what it is it wants to be (how it wants to structure itself). Since I believe an inherent aesthetic exists in every poem, I do not need to (though I sometimes do) impose an aesthetic. The quest is to find and be true to the guiding aesthetic within the developing work at hand. 11.8.07 - If you allow the existence of God (of a Supreme Being), Anne Carson says there is no way for us to know that being because we simply do not have the capacity to comprehend such a being. Her view is both supported and circumvented by a story Augustine shared in his writings. While walking along a Mediterranean shore, Augustine came upon a child with a bucket. This child was taking water from the sea and pouring it into a hole in the sand. Augustine, who chose to walk along the shore while he tried to figure out how God could be 3 Persons, asked the child what he was doing. The child said he was putting the sea into the hole he had made. Augustine said: That is not possible. The child said: Neither is it possible for you to understand the Trinity. There have, in my life, been numerous occasions wherein I have seen the hand of God. My inability to know this God does not pertain. Belief in a God is a matter of faith. The stories I could relate are not as awing as Augustine's, but they are nearly incredible. 11.9.07 - So, if my interpretations are correct: Tony Tost (toast) is an at-a-distance poet, which is to say that there are certain poets he admires and therefore learns from but/ seeks to diverge from. Stan Apps (?: perhaps as it is in "zapps") is an ignotus futurus poet, which is to say that there are certain poets he admires and therefore learns from but/ seeks to escape from. Each of these poets has provided poem-proof of his position. (That pod has five peas! Puuf!) But why is it humans have such a desperate need to label every thing? Here: you sit in box one, and you sit in box two, and I'll sit in box three. Okay, I'll sit in box 3. Brian Salchert (Saul'kurt) is an odd multifarious conversations poet, which is to say that there are certain poets he admires and therefore learns from but/ seeks to converse with. These coversations, however, occur in different ways. [ Note: since I do not wish to show any of my poems in this blog, I am going to insert hyperlinks to examples. I make no claim as to any example's worth. I am not interested in anyone's opinion, but anyone who cares to/ may qwerty one. ] 1) signs conversing with signs (lists of words) 18 words in 2 columns 2) non-word sign artifacts (sound/phonetic objects) performance-oriented sound poem 3) words in a picture format (diamante) topic: diamonds 4) mixed-media presentations (colors/words/shapes) had forgotten about Creeley's "here" when I wrote this My best interior dialogue example is "Doom" from my 1972 Rooted Sky book, but it is/ rather long. 5) interior dialogues or multiple "I" "I" here could be a bird, me, another human, God 6) artifacts about the making of said artifacts a word game in which the about is 7) direct addresses to some other or others addresses to each of three plants 8) address to another poet sonnet written in 1962 to John Keats 9) addresses to myself direct address to myself which begins as an indirect address to its reader * --- Google search: Michael Sprinker From Prague to Paris --- See directory2007 in Catmap. Rho00023
