[NetBehaviour] conquest of the countryside

[Max Herman]

I like these images of labyrinths from the air!

Maybe our material history is a learning machine in which we are the learning (or the failing to learn, as the case may be).

I never knew till today (or else forgot) that DH Lawrence's last book was called Apocalypse, by which perhaps he meant that his last book of his new testament paralleled the last book of the New Testament?

In some circles consciousness is sometimes understood as "a complex anticipatory system."  Breezing through the KJV for no good reason I noticed a reference to "the spirit of prophecy."  By this does this part of the book mean to suggest, or can it be read to suggest, the existence of a realizable but as yet not fully realized living potential for our species to develop communicative natural-intelligence flows which can achieve redemptive consciousness of the matrix of past, present, and future, and that this is what our consciousness has always been from the start, its alpha and omega, a creative force or set of forces of perception, cognition, and expression which played a part in our evolution, a potential yet remaining at grave risk on multiple levels from our other abilities, choices, and actions?

Over the weekend I attended a memorial service for a local high school teacher of literature and classics.  In the display of his works and history was a poem he wrote called "Crown of Stars," words for a musical piece around the winter holidays of birth, of which he said in a review also displayed that he wanted to integrate Buddhism with the traditional framework.  I saw the term "Crown of Stars" also in my quick re-read of KJV today.  It's not a published poem which I know how to find anywhere, but it included some latin, though the teacher was memorialized as mainly secular in his beliefs.  I'm not sure how it related to Buddhism.

One of the teacher's methods was to have every class in his Western Literature course memorize the prologue to the Canterbury Tales.  So, at the service we were all asked to stand and read it aloud from our programs in unison to close the service:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

The teacher was also remembered as a leading advocate for LGBT rights, having co-founded one of the regions top college preparatory schools and written its anti-discrimination policy for LGBT staff and students in 1983.

________________________________
From: NetBehaviour <netbehaviour-bounces at lists.netbehaviour.org> on behalf of Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com>
Sent: Monday, October 7, 2019 2:41 AM
To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org>
Subject: [NetBehaviour] conquest of the countryside



conquest of the countryside

the same same

http://www.alansondheim.org/lon11.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/lon1.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/lon2.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/lon6.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/lon10.jpg

it leaves me breathless, worn with jetlag and the
neoliberal landscapes of one and another conquest
and the breathing plane and its ribald exhaustion
its exhaustion of carnival and debris
its exhaustion of banking, flipping, bartered and divided lands

the lands were always divided, the corporate ecosystem
waiting in the wings
this could be anywhere usa, aurora colorado, everywhere idaho
on the way, rhode island lending itself to borrowers be

and here as if britain were always subdivisions, henges and fences
who am i to talk, waiting for the plane to plunge
contrails marking the handwriting of the apocalypse

i am waiting to outlast myself, i am waiting to breathe
no breathing in amerikkka, no breathing antarctica
waiting for the last breath aurora colorado
waiting for the first, everglades fertilizer remnants

i have a lie and I can hardly breathe I'm not able to breathe
and have a life here, can hardly breathe I'm not able to
hardly breathe able legs hurting slightly on the move no one with
You say, "I could hardly breathe in the Zone."
You say, "I could hardly breathe in the Zone."
and we're filled with disease, can hardly breathe -

eyes - your foot in my mouth, danger - can hardly breathe - covered
with the cover-up, up, your desire covers him, your desire takes
him, i can hardly breathe, you're riding empty air, you can hardly
breathe, you're riding vacuum, can hardly breathe and sometimes
hardly see. when you were young, you had lungs and I can hardly
breathe and I can hardly breathe

can you
can you

and you can say, I could hardly breathe in the breathless zone,
in the plateau plateau i can hardly breathe -
without making a sound i'm suffocating, worn, tattered
and then I could hardly breathe and then I'm not able to breathe
not to beggar a life not to breathe I'm not able to
I'm not able to
with my breathable legs and arms

and the despairing misery of jetlag and the whisper of armies
marching in the night

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