online:27 april 2008
modified: 27 april 2008

1 april 2008 old/new


...at about noon today, in a continuing search for the legitimate whole of reality (insofar as we may perceive it) I seem to be finding more than I previously encountered...

...for out of an attempted listing of recent resolves (and obstacles) comes a new view of both realism and idealism, united... thus regarding both natural science and theology (the exact and the inexact sciences?) as incomplete ways of studying existence... (or 'everything')...

...and remembering that All Fool's Day is supposed to end at noon, I venture to note some words of W Y Evans-Wentz from his first book (described as his first love) The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, 1911, Citadel Press, New York. 1990...

...what follows are the last words in his book, a final footnote:
Darwin never considered or attempted to suggest what it is that of itself really evolves, for it cannot be the physical body which only grows from immaturity to maturity and then dissolves. Darwin thus overlooked the essential factor in his whole doctrine ; while the Druids and other ancients, wiser than we have been willing to admit, seem not only to have anticipated Darwin by thousands of years but also to have quite surpassed him, in setting up their doctrine of re-birth, which explains both the physical and psychical evolution of man.
W Y Evans-Wentz is best known for his compilation and editing of The Tibetan Book of the Dead or The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samsup's English Rendering, 1927, Oxford University Press, Oxford and London 1960...


...and now, rather surprised by these April words, I remember the many resolves and obstacles from which they emerged... words which together imply a greater connectiveness... and a calmer if more modest existence, if we are able to let go, without worry... and cease to divide...


18:32 looking northward, towards Hampstead Garden Suburb... moderate gusts of dry wind from the north... a few large grey and white clouds beneath pale blue sky... this scene is so English: playing fields between tree-lined hedges surrounded by pseudo medieval and pseudo Georgian houses inhabited by the wealthier people in conditions of comfort and thoughtfulness... yet it's a utopian attempt, partly successful, at providing good conditions for all... and it's become the model and norm for most people in the housing estates now existing throughout Britain, imitating superficially these forms ... but lacking their serenity, spaciousness, and mixing of houses for richer and poorer classes...

19:10
...walking through a forest of bare trees, a good many with dead branches, I speak briefly with three young people with dogs who are occupying the seat where I intended to write this... instead I am sitting on a fallen tree trunk without any bark... it's riven with cracks that run from end to end... and as I write of it while sitting on it I rejoice, at last, in this new and intelligent handheld that corrects the writing as I tap or mistap the letters. (I actually tapped 'lrtters' but the program corrected it)...

...viva! it's alive to what I am doing and even to what I intend...

...but now i see that it has changed my lower case 'i' back to 'I' - perhaps the semi-intelligent spelling software will eventually learn to accept the unconventional?



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