What I have presented in the essays is neither wrong-viewed nor right-viewed. It is but one’s viewing. It is open to criticism, alteration of intent, changing of purpose, and laughter at my try at them all. My views are not fixed in stone because I am not. They are attempts at outposts as I keep on the move. For myself, I am hopeful of an outpouring of other essays because essays are to help me stripping away deliberate exaggerations alongside of clever plotlines with an intent to alter the trivia of daily life into grander possibilities for the reader when not confined by what the limitations are to what is real. The essays presented, including the poetic forms dropped in here and there as I perceive as super-concentrated essays, is my way to search out some of the underlying meanings I believe to be worth pulling up for a scrutiny and examination.
What is a word? I mean to that brain of ours, a sound distinctly different from tree branches in motion or those of leaves hanging down uncertain what to do next. We get simple instructions from tree noises except for getting out of the way should one of them collapse. Not much information was gathered after a life of staring up at trees in awe, not even a smile. The reason is obvious. We have to be told what a word is when struck on the ears for the first time, generally intended to identify some object that can bring danger or caring or usefulness. After that identification, its clear sailing. The word grows like the tree does, with additional information tacked on to get you to laugh or cry or shrug or wonder or turn away unconcerned. Unless the word is attached to other words, words lurking about that can be hooked up with ease. Something new will happen. The mind can become busy directing the body to cause something to come about. Something to come about comes in two sizes. The one size we know the best is an action to change what is around our body, directed by needs and wants. It is the second one coming about that has no outward change of body direction but does something special to the mind as to be carried around by that mind for a lifetime, if not longer. It is an amazing sense of ones feelings without motion to the body, rising out of words clustered together in certain ways that words can come together. This miracle of the human animal creates the feelings of a satisfaction never to be known to any other of the animals also fighting for survival. This sensation strikes deeply within oneself and is called by names we all recognize. There is poetry, prose, and plays to mention the few that bring me to a sense of emotion that otherwise would lie forever dormant in the rush through lifes practical requiring needs to keep oneself available for more gathering up of practical needs. My break with that cycle, as life permitted, is what is expressed, as best as I could, in this book as I wandered in and out of one act, plays, poems, and essays, all discoveries I had a chance to taste while the tasting was good.
Why does poetry continue to exist? It does not deliver information to solve problems or assist in helping with problems. Facts have no usefulness for rhyming couplets. We live our lives in comfort when we solve tangible problems effectively. Facts usually have some built into it reward system. That is, until we seek a closer communion with ourselves living in a world made to be separate from us. It is a world where not seeking of competitive advantages, that emotional world within, leads to being struck by some indefinable satisfaction to be trusted. It brings approval for the arts in their many forms. For me, the most beautiful of them is poetry, making words, when read, into sounds equal to the power of singing by using much the same rhythmic repeats but to be accomplished without need of voice or ears and to be more easily remembered ever after throughout a lifetime with the same emotional impact, and, sometimes more so as deeper understanding evolves with time.
Anything Goes is a compilation of my feelings and observations of the world around me by the use of poems, plays, and essays. It expresses my personal views of what is, what should be, and what is wished for to come about.
In a very different direction, wanting to measure a cherished love between two people, I chose a setting, in ‘Death Is Blind’, where Death is an equal protagonist. For the action of those people who are at their best in observing others as much inferior to them in quality of thoughtfulness, I chose the interfacing of a self satisfied, ‘good’ person up against an airy, somewhat confused seeker of a spiritual connection to reality, when it is just the opposite that lies at the base of each of their souls in ‘The Long Fall From Grace’. In the play, ‘The Last Great Fantasy’, I would imagine that our highest wishes for ourselves could still come about when we no longer have chance to make an impact upon humanity and yet still wishing to remain determined to make our mark before we are to disappear forever.
We all live in a world to be seen from the eyes of a layman searching out the wonders that surround each of us. In the end, we are all a layman to what has been compiled and collected and discovered and analyzed for the opportunity to grasp whatever possible between a confused birth arrival and the awaiting departure. “The Layman Speaks” is composed of the three art forms intended for the creation, predominately, of feelings through poems, essays and plays.
Unlike words of a novel where the author may wish to inform the reader of unspoken but intended feelings for the reader, the author adds an aside with additional lines. Such asides in a play will cause the listener’s building emotional connection to get diminished. But it is the double purpose with the words spoken that produce both information and emotion, each with their separate purposeful existences struggling with each other at the very same moment. That is so fascinating in plays and makes me want to try my best at this art form.
When Maurice Nicholl was studying in Zurich, he met Jung, and Ouspensky. He went on to study with Gurdjieff, and from 1931 to his death in 1953, he began at Ouspensky's request, a programme of work devoted to passing on the ideas he had received. Reissued in hard cover, these five unedited commentaries are taken from the weekly lectures and talks Nicoll gave to his students in England and which were recorded verbatim; the sixth volume is an index produced by the Gurdjieff society Washington DC. These differ from Nicholl's more polished works - they are more concerned with directly applying certain deep ideas to daily life.
How do we use our mental images of the present to reconstruct our past? Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) addressed this question for the first time in his work on collective memory, which established him as a major figure in the history of sociology. This volume, the first comprehensive English-language translation of Halbwach's writings on the social construction of memory, fills a major gap in the literature on the sociology of knowledge. Halbwachs' primary thesis is that human memory can only function within a collective context. Collective memory, Halbwachs asserts, is always selective; various groups of people have different collective memories, which in turn give rise to different modes of behavior. Halbwachs shows, for example, how pilgrims to the Holy Land over the centuries evoked very different images of the events of Jesus' life; how wealthy old families in France have a memory of the past that diverges sharply from that of the nouveaux riches; and how working class construction of reality differ from those of their middle-class counterparts. With a detailed introduction by Lewis A. Coser, this translation will be an indispensable source for new research in historical sociology and cultural memory. Lewis A. Coser is Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the State University of New York and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at Boston College.
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