austin_tycho | (no subject)

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synesis posted this. Dunno him, he's a friend of a friend, but this bears saving]

Corpus

Go out into a wood and close your eyes; imagine you are in a wood…

This instruction is everywhere; it is an almost universal error. Close your eyes and visualise your body. Not know your body, not feel your body, not understand your body. Visualise it, define it as distinct, limited and separate; an imaginary thing, unextended but truer than the body itself.

To see a thing with the mind’s eye is to create a simulacrum – a phantom, a shadow, a distorted reflection of what is real. “A ghost-lover he was” – and so all his children! So deeper into mirrors we go, pursuing reflections and ignoring the real.

Go out into a wood and close your eyes; that is, make yourself blind. The mind sees what it wants to see. “Distrust the senses! They can deceive you!” Distrust the mind more, for it has created distrust, and it has told you that your body lies.

Do not see nature, you are told, but read it. There is Mystery there, hidden just beyond the visible. Close your eyes and you will see! The secrets enciphered in nature are worthless, the Mystery is nature itself, outgrown, flourishing, blossoming. Creating death, subsuming life within itself.

A Greek man sundered the mind from the body, creating millennia of ghosts, who, whispering among themselves, convinced themselves that they were real. I come with balm to heal the wound – there is no mind which is not the body! There is no body which is not the mind!

The imagined is only a reflection of the real, which is greater. Taste the soil, breathe the air. Do not commune with nature! You cannot commune with nature, you are nature, and you cannot condescend to greet her.

Go out into a wood and close your eyes; that is, do not trust the body, for it is hateful and deceitful. It lies to you and overcomes you in tides. No! Go out into a wood and open your eyes. The body is one, adore it. Do not visualise, but see. See it, know it for what it is, let it cause you to sing.

I say ‘your body’, but this is a lie in our language. Your body is not owned, nor can it be property. It is you, you are it; you may be greater than the body, but the body is you entirely. Will you eat? Eat! Will you sing? Sing! Will you fuck? Fuck! There is no other possible sacrament.

The world is fallen and changeable; all things are imperfect. Glory in them! Glory to them! Glory to the body that grows old and changes! Glory to the body, which wants and has and will be satisfied! Glory to the body, imperfect, earthy, aspiring, revolving wondrous flesh!

Glory that I can eat!
Glory that I can drink!
Glory that I can walk!
Glory that I can touch!
Glory that I can fuck!
Glory that I can speak!
Glory that I can love!
Glory that I can hate!
Glory that I can dance!
Glory that I can sing!
Glory that I can be!

Glory, glory, that I tell you this, which is true only for those who need to hear it.

(This scrawled letter was found on the desk of the infamous though now obscure mid-20th century existentialist and prophetess Anna Dallardin, interleaved in her copy of The Collected Works of Herbert Quain, with a Critical Introduction by WB Yeats. Her biography is an interesting one, but, alas, I fear there is no time for it now.)