{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

Holden,

Thank you for your response. Yes, breathing is pointless and yet it is necessary. We also need to sshhit, to drink water, to sleep, to eat, etc. Our bodies are fragile.

I write of death constantly and yet I fear it much. Survival is hardwired into our brain’s hypothalamus. One may believe that there is an afterlife but even so our human bodies are not very eager to find out exactly what that could be. Death is something that only happens to others until you experience it when someone close to you departs.

There is nothing much I can say about Cioran and Van Gogh. Many years ago I read a biography about Vincent by an author called Irving Stone. I also wrote your comments about this tormented man.

Yes, the Desert Fathers left the towns and went to the desert. I suppose it must have much easier for somebody to go to a retreat and meditate in those times.You have to kill your senses in order to be an ascetic. You have to have abstinence from sex, from pleasures, from food, from human companion, above all, abstinence from life.

I suppose I would not be able to endure a life as a monk in Mount Athos. There women and female animals are banned (except for cats, which are useful for controlling the rat population). The monks eat little dairy and cheese and fish sometimes. Prayers take up most of their time. They clean the guesthouses, make wine and renovate the Orthodox monastery.

I read that in the state of Kerala there exists the Sabarimala temple. Women between the ages of 10 and 50 are banned.

The Gnostic teacher, Basilides, said that Christ didn’t really suffer on the cross. He switched places with Simon of Cyrene and stood aside, laughing at the folly of those who believed the world was real, while the unlucky Simon died in his stead. The Bogomils hated the cross because Christ died on it and in their eyes the cross was the symbol of his torment. They rejected procreation and marriage. They despised work, riches, honors, social distinctions.

Below there is a story you and the readers of this blog may find interesting. It is about Sayragul Sauytbay, an Uyghur woman who was jailed in China´s gulags and her escape.

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-million-people-are-jailed-at-china-s-gulags-i-escaped-here-s-what-goes-on-inside-1.7994216

Stay safe.

Ibra,

Thank you for your words. I hope the cease fire lasts longer where your people are. As you say there is no end to the horror.

Yes, like you I watch ppoorn to stimulate my member. The body has urges that are impossible to contain. Even if one becomes a eunuch the urges are still there. Yes, the truth is in the stomach and in the dddicck too. We are not to blame for having these sexual urges. We were made this way. Made to suffer in this madhouse called Earth.

Holden once mentioned the Manichaeans. They believed that sparks of light dwell in plants, stones, and dirt, as well as animals and humans. As a result sexual intercourse was forbidden because it perpetuated the imprisonment of the light in matter; they could not eat meat or drink alcohol. They could not engage in agriculture, because the acts of plowing and reaping were believed to injure the tiny sparks of light that were embedded in the soil and plants. Even bathing was forbidden because it would hurt the light imprisoned in the water. For the Cathars, with their Manichaean heritage, sex imprisoned the sparks of light in the darkness of matter.

Stay safe.

Holden,

Thank you for your response. Your posts are worth reading many times. I am sure there are many who read these posts without writing in the board.

In this so-calle age of eternal optimism someone saying that life is not worth having will be viewed with suspicion. If we, you, were in the army of life, we would be court-martialled. Insubordination to life is severely punished. I read that in the army of India a lieutenant has an insignia with two five-pointed stars. So Liutenant Holden, all the fake medals (career, marriage, money, etc.) will be taken away from you and you will be discharged with dishonor, as they say in the military.

Like you I breathe and I masturbate. My imagination is filled with lust. The drama is in the mind. I read that the Desert Fathers digged up the corpses of old girlfriends and hugged them to free themselves from the desires of the flesh. In these modern times that measure would not be effective.

I mention some basic things I read about the Gnostics. They felt that the body is born of pain and it will die in the same way. It hungers, thirsts, needs shelter, craves sex, power, possessions, comfort, excitement, and can be a tyrant. Indeed we are slaves. The Gnostics believed that fasting, physical endurance and restricting the hours of sleep were the methods to discipline body. To them sexuality resulted in pregnancy and childbirth, and another being would be brought into the world. The baby would be a prison for a seed of light from the divine realm called the Pleroma.

Some say that life in the countryside is better than in the city. You have a better mood or a better disposition. I doubt it but I think life in a city makes you think that there is something deeply wrong with life and the entire universe. In the cities you see civilization as it truly is. Existential or philosophical issues thrive in the towns or countryside.

Take care.

Holden,

Thank you for sharing these words by Cioran. I read them before but his words are worth reading again.

Today it is very hot. More than 40 degrees Celsius in the city. I suppose it must be hotter there.

 Those who constantly think of suicide were already born dead, with a tragic death awaiting in some part of his routine, awaiting patiently and silently as a she-wolf to take what is hers. These are the words I read somewhere.

I read also that author Stefan Zweig was deeply affected when on his visit to Soviet Russia in 1928 he saw two things in Leo Tolstoi´s  house. Zweig saw two objects: a big rope with a letter addressed to him by a woman, unable to endure Tolstoi´s gloomy views on life, and inviting him to use that rope in order to end his torment.
I think I exist just by inertia.

Stay watchful.

Senor Raul,

Thanks for the response. You mention the Russian writer Tolstoy, I have read most of his short stories, at least the prominent ones and also his novel,War and Peace. I would like to read his Confessions wherein he is said to have written something to the effect that he might wanted to end it all but finally he did not go through with it because he ,in some fashion, found "God".

In one of my recent posts, I mentioned the desert fathers who led secluded lives in the desert and just thought about existence the whole day long.As Cioran, says, existence counts on us on not thinking too much or too deeply upon it,that is the only way it could perpetuate itself.

I remember when I must have been around 17, waking up in the middle of the night and reading War and Peace.That was quite an experience.At that point of time I was not ready to meet you and Herr Kaspar, that was to come later, much later. Perhaps I would not even have appreciated what the two of you have to say, back then. But I still remember writing in a note-book, some melancholy lines,from the novel. There are quite a few of them in fact,in there, if memory serves. There is this one fellow called Pierre who is ,on the one hand trying to kill Napoleon on his own and on the other hand is having some strange and weird mystical experiences.Thanks for reminding me about this.

I just looked it up and I think I might have found the very lines I wrote in my little note book circa 2003.
"Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."
" On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:

*Death gives relief and death is peaceful.

Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge."


Well,take care and I hope your eyes are better now.

Senor Raul,

For the last week or so I feel very tired.I keep a piece of cloth next to me to spit my mucus.Then I run to the wash room to vomit whatever I eat or drink.Cannot seem to hold down anything.
Yet for the company work I run all over the city, spitting, coughing,vomiting.(Not a drop of alcohol involved)
It got so bad that my parents took me the doctor.They ran a few tests- blood works,chest x-ray,they collected the muck I puke out.
That's why I couldn't write.Coughing all the time,spitting and vomiting.

Tomorrow I will get the test results and doctor's interpretation.

It's a tropical city where I live and must have all kind of bugs.
Anyway,having read Schopenhauer and some of Cioran is really helpful in such situations.
I always kept all the windows closed and while it worked while I was in rural areas ,in my city it does not work.
I just started keeping the windows open.It helps me breath.

Take care.

There is a great deal of similarity between the primordial slime which threw me out ,to the vomit I throw out.

I have seen the hyneas and the scavengers who look for a sick animal.
No bed rest allowed.Phone allows buzzing with work related demands.
I am drinking cranberry juice.It seems to help me with my coughing a little bit.