amateur go

(via)

"At first it was a group of poems. Then it was a set of dream notes, a collection of flash fiction, and, finally, a long-form narrative."

pascal on imagination

(via)

It is that deceitful part in man, that mistress of error and falsity, the more deceptive that she is not always so; for she would be an infallible rule of truth, if she were an infallible rule of falsehood. But being most generally false, she gives no sign of her nature, impressing the same character on the true and the false.

I do not speak of fools, I speak of the wisest men; and it is among them that the imagination has the great gift of persuasion. Reason protests in vain; it cannot set a true value on things.

This arrogant power, the enemy of reason, who likes to rule and dominate it, has established in man a second nature to show how all-powerful she is. She makes men happy and sad, healthy and sick, rich and poor; she compels reason to believe, doubt, and deny; she blunts the senses, or quickens them; she has her fools and sages; and nothing vexes us more than to see that she fills her devotees with a satisfaction far more full and entire than does reason. Those who have a lively imagination are a great deal more pleased with themselves than the wise can reasonably be. They look down upon men with haughtiness; they argue with boldness and confidence, others with fear and diffidence; and this gaiety of countenance often gives them the advantage in the opinion of the hearers, such favour have the imaginary wise in the eyes of judges of like nature. Imagination cannot make fools wise; but she can make them happy, to the envy of reason which can only make its friends miserable; the one covers them with glory, the other with shame.

What but this faculty of imagination dispenses reputation,[Pg 25] awards respect and veneration to persons, works, laws, and the great? How insufficient are all the riches of the earth without her consent!

Would you not say that this magistrate, whose venerable age commands the respect of a whole people, is governed by pure and lofty reason, and that he judges causes according to their true nature without considering those mere trifles which only affect the imagination of the weak? See him go to sermon, full of devout zeal, strengthening his reason with the ardour of his love. He is ready to listen with exemplary respect. Let the preacher appear, and let nature have given him a hoarse voice or a comical cast of countenance, or let his barber have given him a bad shave, or let by chance his dress be more dirtied than usual, then however great the truths he announces. I wager our senator loses his gravity.

If the greatest philosopher in the world find himself upon a plank wider than actually necessary, but hanging over a precipice, his imagination will prevail, though his reason convince him of his safety.[49] Many cannot bear the thought without a cold sweat. I will not state all its effects.

Every one knows that the sight of cats or rats, the crushing of a coal, etc. may unhinge the reason. The tone of voice affects the wisest, and changes the force of a discourse or a poem.

Love or hate alters the aspect of justice. How much greater confidence has an advocate, retained with a large fee, in the justice of his cause! How much better does his bold manner make his case appear to the judges, deceived as they are by appearances! How ludicrous is reason, blown with a breath in every direction!

I should have to enumerate almost every action of men who scarce waver save under her assaults. For reason has been obliged to yield, and the wisest reason takes as her own principles those which the imagination of man has everywhere rashly introduced. [He who would follow reason only would be deemed foolish by the generality of men. We must judge by the opinion of the majority of mankind. Because it has pleased them, we must work all day for pleasures seen to be imaginary; and after sleep has refreshed our tired reason, we must forthwith start up and rush after phantoms, and suffer the impressions of this mistress of the world.

--via Project Gutenberg, 78.

a game rout

(via)

"The lake that once nourished the original people of the valley becomes their grave. Then the water is taken to fuel the dreams of those who displaced them, before they are displaced in their turn, casualties of the continuing gold rush of Los Angeles."

at the birth of a new blue

"It’s certain to be the end of a world of mythic narratives, the one in which Man the Conqueror of Nature bestrides the planet on his way to his purported destiny out there among the stars, and we can ignore what we’re doing to the only planet we can live on because somebody will surely think of something to solve the problems we’re creating. For a great many people, that will be at least as traumatic as any of the other ends I’ve just mentioned; people very often find the loss of their lives, their wealth, and their social setting less difficult than the loss of the stories that give meaning to their existence."

a whirlwind strewn with eyes

washing the detectives

13.

as-if i-have-to
flame cupped
old chemical thought

now clarified
& the world

Clock of clocks.

pacific honor pun urn

(still from The Mephisto Waltz, via In Search of Pagan Hollywood on Fb)

Diaosi.

    "Fish

fish away
you like those long black
houses where her branches roll
where flowers hang bare
water there
for gold trees upon heaven
about some air
before thee an emerald
world among water but
her shadow there
like their bright
eye seems near"

by Deep Gimble II

the elephants of style

"Billows of darkness with a dirging roar" --Horne

Lightning in Japanese prints.

multiocular O

(via)

The mystic shaping Russia's future and bringing back the Dark Ages.

shekel karma tort

Who gets to write the Outsider?

"Over a restless sea of jasper fire" --Horne

Crowley on Dylan.

uncloudy

Xeno-futurism thread.

"I believe that a conscious affinity with Nature forms the shield of Perseus through which man can affront the Gorgon of his fate and that, in the termitaries of the future where humanity cements itself up from the light of the sun, this dragon-slaying mirror will rust and tarnish." --The Unquiet Grave

hojicha castle

"Whose echoes 'midst incumbent foliage died" --Horne

The Mushroom at the End of the World.

"...Nesselrode, rut, pursued oms, Asmodeus & mad." --Dr Awkward

The Handmaid's Tale in the age of Trump.

Dogs don't know they have a face. Humans don't know they have a group-mind.

aklo polka

Neave Planitarium.

"When I first thought I might have Alzheimer's, I got out my dragons. I'd had most of them in my closet for several years. I'd let them hide in the dark cave of my closet for as long as it took." --J R Comptom on ThEdblog.

Exorcism.

one thousand gifs

"Politicians do not understand much, but they do understand politics." --G K Chesterton

Euler-Diderot debunked. More.

" '...That Scott Joplin piece they are forging, is it the Sycamore Leaf Rag?' Constantine asked.

'Oh no, it's the Box-Elder Leaf Rag...' " --R A Lafferty, Apocalypses (1977)

Superhero Orixas.

(@tesoros_japon via @SHINKAN34721410)

Beginning of what looks to be an interesting series of blog-posts on philosophy.

"Every real artist lives within the lines of order, and a forger must live within them still more strictly than any other." --Lafferty, op cit

"Evolists view his ship as coming in..."

"Midnight tremendous, silence, and iron sleep" --Horne

(Orion Nebula via Nasa)

collectible cheetoh

(via @SHINKAN34721410)

Life under alternative facts. (via @JoyceCarolOates)

"So from faint nebulae bright worlds are born;
So worlds return to vapour..."

--Richard Horne, Orion (1843)

Balaclava boom. (via Todd Gitlin)

candle nub then

"Imagine being five or six years old in a town like that, not knowing what GPS is, looking out from the darkness of your bedroom over several weeks of late nights, and living through this season of burning trucks, those infernal visitors from further up the mountainside, tumbling down past houses, trailed by smoke, their fiery wheels reflecting bright red in the windows of parked cars..." --Bldblg

La lingvo de poezio.

"Paul Revere, Heartburn, Imbolc"

Go back to the unquiet grave we long
decided was a fable & desired
not even to grieve. Go back, & now be willing
to run that hazard.

The barest sliver of a moon at dawn.
The thing i said was not the thing i said.
Our house will soon be scrutinized for radon;
despair, pellucid,

breaks ranks with mild acceptance. I would remember
this life as something once we built to keep,
had kept mostly beautiful. Another caliber
of dream's vast upkeep

rises from the cold unquiet grave
& will not be content to break our sleep.

The Bowling Green Massacre.

"I always noticed that the chief features in the pantomime had nothing to do with the story." --G K Chesterton

Fascism Forever.

"A writer is in the end not his books, but his myth. And that myth is in the keeping of others." --V S Naipaul

(via @stevesilberman)

an arcane grimace

An Arcane Grimace

The Moon and the Yew Tree.

"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time." --James Thurber