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His Philosophy

The most relaxed moment in my life was at a saloon inside the Main Street Station Casino, Brewery and Hotel in Las Vegas, one evening around Christmas 1998. It was an old fashioned place with fancy hardwood and copper and all kinds of old odd woody brassy things hanging on the wall. It was quiet. There was no one else in the bar besides the three people I was with and the bartender, an old black man in a tux that made the best bourbon and coke I ever had. I was a mellow drunk that night. I spoke calmly. I sipped slowly. The Beast had been put to rest.

Quiet is a strange and rare thing in Las Vegas. Everywhere you go you run into those dinging donging beeping booping slot machines, and the sounds of quarters falling into metal trays or plastic casino cups, and singing "We're in the money, we're in the money". It's a great and wonderful place, Las Vegas, but after 2 weeks there it's like being trapped in a funhouse that you can't get out of. It's like being locked after hours in a toy store full of toys that make those monotonous sounds, only the toys are 100 feet tall. You know, just like real life, pretty much.

Not that I wasn't lovin every minute of it.

I read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas while I was in Las Vegas. It is a famous story about the journalist's experience in Las Vegas in 1972 while eating blotter paper soaked in particularly strong lysergic acid diethyl amide, inhaling a volatile solvent called diethyl ether of which the author wrote, "There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge," eating a derivative of the sacred peyote cactus called mescaline, smoking marijuana which contains tetrahydrocannabinol, drinking alcohol (molecular composition being C2H5OH), and consuming other miscellaneous drugs.

I was thinking this morning on the dumb bus about how inexpensive and efficient it'd be to be able to have a wood fire in my house, for heat. I was thinking about this because I just got my gas turned on in my "new" apartment that we painstakingly moved into in August. And then from there my thoughts turned to last night, when I felt like throwing some flammable stuff into my grill outside on my patio, some leftover firewood from camping and whatnot, and building a fire just to watch it. Of course you now think, "pyromaniac." No no, you fool! Do you realize the impact on humanity when fire was discovered?!? Well I've been reading some essays by the late mythologist Joseph Campbell (whose studies inspired (i)Star Wars(/I) ) and here's what:

"Let us once more recall: when that protohuman troglodyte Sinanthropus, in his dismal cave, responded to the fascination of fire, it was to the apparition of a power that was already present and operative in his own body: heat, temperature, oxidation; as also in the volcanic earth, in Jupiter and in the sun." - from Campbell, Joseph. "The Moon Walk - the Outward Journey." (u)Myths to Live By.(/u) The Viking Press, New York, 1972.

A glowing little god in the middle of the cave - a source of light glowing, warming, burning down the tree's limbs, dancing, illuminating, the Mother and the Destructor of life. See, not just for stupid cooking and stupid warmth. Now we worship our televisions, which were at one time a source of wholesome fascination, but now dull. I want a damn fire in the middle of my living room every night. Better yet, I should burn my damn TV. I have a cement patio and a window 2 floors up from my bedroom--- maybe I should pull a Rolling Stones on that TV's ass! I could sit and watch a fire for hours and come back relaxed, but TV makes me just want to drink more Jim Beam and Coca-Cola.

Well back to that "power that was already present and operative in his own body." Well, old Aldous Huxley (some of you recall he wrote The Doors of Perception about a mescaline experience), in an idea, pointed out by Joseph Campbell in another essay called "Envoy: No More Horizons," perceives the Mind as something that can perceive everything, everywhere in the universe at any given moment. But the reason the Mind does not is that the brain acts as a "reducing valve" so the human won't become confused by the vast amount of knowledge. Certain persons, claims Aldy, such as great artists and writers like Goethe and Dante and Bill Shakespeare, have a reducing valve that does not function on the level as we normal folk, and therefore are more capable of perceiving the All in their everyday lives. The rest of us have to rely on drugs, or meditation or religious practice or music or fishing or hunting or running or whatnot that puts us in a relaxed frame of mind.

Sounds a bit familiar huh? Read my first article. But Huxley's vision is clearer than mine, which was muddied by alcohol and an intense humility bordering on self-hatred. Basically what I was trying to express in article I, is at the bottom of our Minds we are all depraved beasts - I'm basically agreeing with Freud, who probably hated himself, and the West. What Huxley says is at the bottoms of our minds we are all christs, which is a concept from the East. Honestly, I believe it's a combination of both. Christ-like beasts, yes, but there's nothing depraved about it. There's nothing really faddish, or hip, or hippy, or any other fleeting bubble-gum yaya about it either. I hate to spend a day thinking about ways I can cling to or separate from the temporary. I LIKE thinking about that which is eternal. But there is no "that which" to put your finger on. What does your Mind see between thoughts?

Hi. How ya doin? How's the family? Okay, no more Zen koans.

Anyway it relaxes me to perceive that we are all Christly beasts, fire relaxes me, silence, bourbon, and reading authors that perceive the Christ like beastly atoms are the same as the Christ like beastly solar systems, the eternal humming spinning Ahhh...

In closing, here's some good shit from Wally Whitman's Leaves of Grass:

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun . . . . there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand . . . . nor look through the
  eyes of the dead . . . . nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

I have heard what the talkers were talking . . . . the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.