[Image: excerpt from Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons (“Dancing”); you can see the whole thing over on Salon. The caption to panel #3 not only appeared at whiskey river over the last week (see below), but has been widely quoted elsewhere around the Web in the 20 years since Barry’s comic appeared at Salon.]
From whiskey river:
The Mystery of the Hunt
It’s the mystery of the hunt that intrigues me,
That drives us like lemmings, but cautiously—
The search for a bright square cloud—the scent of lemon verbena—
Or to learn rules for the game the sea otters
Play in the surf.
It is these small things—and the secret behind them
That fill the heart.
The pattern, the spirit, the fiery demon
That link them together
And pull their freedom into our senses,
The smell of a shrub, a cloud, the action of animals
—The rising, the exuberance, when the mystery is unveiled.
It is these small things
That when brought into vision become an inferno.
(Michael McClure [source])
…and (last two stanzas):
Clouds
The clouds moved in another hundred feet
during the night, just as they have done
each night for the past two weeks.
Now they hang barely above the range
of thrown stones. The sun is someone else’s story,
the rich relation of a slight aquaintance.Bending over us, the clouds have the texture
of faces seen through smoke.
Thoughts in a confused mind look like that.
Tell me again that they are not hostile,
that they have come merely out of curiosity
to see again that we are possible.If so, then why are doors more difficult to open,
as if some sadness were leaning against them?
Why do windows darken and trees bend
when there is no wind? You call that occasional
roar the roar of a plane and I imagine
a time when I might have believed that.But now the darkness has been going on
for too long, and I have accustomed myself
to the pleasure of thinking that soon
there will be no reason to hold on in this place
where rocks are like water and it’s so difficult
to find something solid to hold on to.
(Stephen Dobyns [source])
…and:
The groove is so mysterious. We’re born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away.
I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.
(Lynda Barry [source])
Not from whiskey river:
Philosophers, scientists, psychologists, and poets alike have spent lifetimes trying to describe and define consciousness…
Here are a few of the main camps. Some people believe that consciousness is an essence given to humans by a deity and includes a supernatural entity like a soul; since it’s not physical, science can’t understand it. Some believe consciousness is completely physical, a mental state emerging from the neurons, and wonder how and why a biological system gives rise to conscious experience. In this second group, there are those who think a host of separate brain systems (vision, taste, hearing, etc.) build our sense of consciousness brick by brick; those who believe synchronized neurons, acting in unison, reach a critical mass that creates consciousness; those who believe consciousness springs from one specific area (a frontal lobe system?) rather than multiple areas; and those who blend approaches. Some people believe it’s a mental state that our sort of brain inevitably creates. Some believe it arises from quantum changes in the structure of the neuron, at the level of subatomic particles, where paradox reigns. Some believe consciousness is physical but that we’ll never understand it because a system can’t observe itself (how can you be objective about subjectivity? and, anyway, which neural activities produce subjective experience?). Some believe consciousness is physical and knowable but that we’re not intelligent enough to figure the brain out, though smarter beings probably could. Separate groups believe consciousness can best be understood through philosophy or psychology or science or literature. Some believe consciousness is physical but we’ll only understand it if we can find a way to blend the truths of science, psychology, philosophy, and subjective experiences such as art.
I may have left out a few camps.
(Diane Ackerman [source])
…and:
Fictional Characters
Do they ever want to escape?
Climb out of the white pages
and enter our world?Holden Caulfield slipping in the movie theater
to catch the two o’clock
Anna Karenina sitting in a diner,
reading the paper as the waitress
serves up a cheeseburger.Even Hector, on break from the Iliad,
takes a stroll through the park,
admires the tulips.Maybe they grew tired
of the author’s mind,
all its twists and turns.Or were finally weary
of stumbling around Pamplona,
a bottle in each fist,
eating lotuses on the banks of the Nile.For others, it was just too hot
in the small California town
where they’d been written into
a lifetime of plowing fields.Whatever the reason,
here they are, roaming the city streets
rain falling on their phantasmal shoulders.Wouldn’t you, if you could?
Step out of your own story,
to lean against a doorway
of the Five & Dime, sipping your coffee,your life, somewhere far behind you,
all its heat and toil nothing but a tale
resting in the hands of a stranger,
the sidewalk ahead wet and glistening.
(Danusha Laméris [source])
…and:
Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey
Scrambled eggs and whiskey
in the false-dawn light. Chicago,
a sweet town, bleak, God knows,
but sweet. Sometimes. And
weren’t we fine tonight?
When Hank set up that limping
treble roll behind me
my horn just growled and I
thought my heart would burst.
And Brad M. pressing with the
soft stick, and Joe-Anne
singing low. Here we are now
in the White Tower, leaning
on one another, too tired
to go home. But don’t say a word,
don’t tell a soul, they wouldn’t
understand, they couldn’t, never
in a million years, how fine,
how magnificent we were
in that old club tonight.
(Hayden Carruth [source])
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