Temporary Generational Amnesia

I've always marveled at what I call temporary generational amnesia. A condition wherein people who absolutely hated their parents, society, and the world at age 20 reflect upon their parents, society, and the world at age 50 and believe that contemporary society, the current world, and their children (which they shaped) pale in comparison to the glory that was the world as it was when they were 20. It's always really unnerved me.

Then today I read this quote from Thomas Pynchon and temporary generational amnesia is all so clear:

Perhaps history this century, thought Eigenvalue, is rippled with gathers in its fabric such that if we are situated, as Stencil seemed to be, at the bottom of a fold, it's impossible to determine warp, woof, or pattern anywhere else. By virtue, however, of existing in one gather it is assumed there are others, compartmented off into sinuous cycles each of which had come to assume greater importance than the weave itself and destroy any continuity. Thus it is that we are charmed by the funny-looking automobiles of the '30's, the curious fashions of the '20's, the particular moral habits of our grandpaernts. We produce and attend musicval comedies about them and are conned into a false memory, a phony nostalgia about what they were. We are accordingly lost to any sense of continuous tradition. Perhaps if we lived on a crest, things would be different. We could at least see.
--V., Chapter Seven, Part I

link: Selected Quotations by Thomas Pynchon

GEMINI (May 21-June 20):

In his poem, "The Two Trees," William Butler Yeats says that one tree is holy and grows within the heart. Its branches and trembling flowers thrive on joy. The changing colors of its fruit please the stars, and its leaves give the waves their melody. The second tree has broken boughs and blackened leaves and is full of "the ravens of unresting thought." I bring this to your attention, Gemini, because in the coming week it really is up to you and your free will which of these two trees you spend most of your time with. The astrological configurations have nothing to say on that matter.

link: free will astrology
The Two Trees

a midsummer night

Press close, bare-bosomed Night!
Press close, magnetic,nourishing Night!
Night of south winds!
Night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding Night!
Mad, naked, Summer Night!

- Walt Whitman

The Book of Hopes and Dreams

Interlunar
Margaret Atwood
The Book of Hopes & Dreams

Trust me. This darkness
is a place you can enter and be
as safe in as you are anywhere;
you can put one foot in front of the other
and believe the sides of your eyes.
Memorize it. You will know it
again in your own time.
When the appearances of things have left you,
you will still have this darkness.
Something of your own you can carry with you.

We have come to the edge:
the lake gives off its hush;
in the outer night there is a barred owl
calling, like a moth
against the ear, from the far shore
which is invisible.
The lake, vast and dimensionless,
doubles everything, the stars,
the boulders, itself, even the darkness
that you can walk so long in
it becomes light.

link: ::: wood s lot ::: "the fitful tracing of a portal"

All of the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.

a very happy 75th birthday to Huxley's Brave New World.

six impossible things, an introduction

“Only it is so very lonely here!” Alice said in a meloncholy voice, and at the thought of her lonliness two large tears came rolling down her cheeks.

“Oh don’t go on like that!” cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. “Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you’ve come today. Consider what o’clock it is. Consider anything, only don’t cry!

Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. “Can you keep from crying by considering things?” She asked.

“That’s the way it’s done,” the Queen said with great decision: “nobody can do two things at once, you know. Let’s consider your age to begin with - how old are you?”

“I’m seven and a half exactly.”

“You needn’t say ‘exactually’,” the Queen remarked: “I can believe it without that. Now I’ll give you something to believe. I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.

“Can’t you?” THe Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use in trying,” she said: “One can’t believe in impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast…”

-Lewis Carrol: Through the Looking Glass