To ourselves unknown

The march, or, if you will, the long, slow unfolding, of historical process over the last three or four thousand years, has been the anguished revelation of ourselves, to ourselves, of what we sexually dimorphic anthropoid apes with hypertrophied prefrontal cortices and out-sized penises actually are. We have, for example, but lately (say, the last twenty years) re-discovered, after a couple of millennia of officially not knowing, that we are, for the most part, bisexual--dimorphically bisexual in fact; but that does not mean, please you or no, that gay men are anything at all like Lesbians, except perhaps in politic and for political purposes. Gay Marriage is a hoot.

Apparently, the view from the top reveals, that, oddly, Aristophanes, for a joke, and Alfred Kinsey, by divine insight, had approximately the same perspective on and understanding of male sexuality--which is totally different from female sexuality, if, in the same sense, there can be said to be such a thing. Hail testosterone.

Cancel Culture Isn't A Thing, You Snowflakes - Some More News

Truthfully, even with this to help me, I cannot and do not understand what is meant by "cancel culture." It is with some smug satisfaction that I note the veering into utter, fatuous unmeaning of our hip new jargon. Which, be it wonderingly acknowledged however, is the lingua franca--bizarre spelling and all--of the whole damn world.

2018 Acrobatic Worlds, Antwerp (BEL) - Highlights MEN'S GROUP FINAL - We...

No girls whatsoever...and sooo much the better for it.

Taïwan, le trésor caché d'Asie - Échappées belles

You see, if you take a bunch of Han Chinese people and put them somewhere, like on a big, potentially self-sufficient island, where they have to make everything (government, laws, social structure) up from scratch, according to their own basic instincts and innate intelligence--they just naturally will evolve into this hyper-civilized techno-paradise, with graceful skyscrapers and tea plantations as immaculate as drawing rooms. So what if they eat puppies and kittens?

Rubbishy Nonsense

God. Gods. 'Being.' In general, concepts for which I find neither reason nor empirical evidence to believe in. Abrahamic religions are first to be thrown onto the vast trash heap of dimwit improbabilities; but they are followed closely into oblivion by all other particular 'gods' and 'goddesses,' from Shiva to the Easter Bunny; from Coatlicue to Kali Durga. Utterly stupid, though sometimes appalling, nonentities. In that sense, I guess, I'm an atheist. But, hey, I'm also a Buddhist and an American Transcendentalist: I can disbelieve (or try on for size) anything I damn want to.

40 Miles Alone on the Timberline Trail

Mozartean.

With a Stent in my Heart

(in my upper left ventricular artery actually) Having taken an around-the-block stroll for my evening exercise last night, I sat for a few moments afterwards in the lanai of this little apartment complex, sniffing the evening air--noting with astonishment that my sense of smell has been restored to me along with my lung-capacity and mental acuity, as a result of the increased oxygenated arterial blood supply to my heart and brain. Amazing.
 

Parmi les français

I've never had a problem living among the French people with their thorny unwritten interpersonal etiquette. I don't, normally, say hi to people I don't know, or smile directly at them.  I always say bonjour to the proprietor when I enter a shop. Nobody told me to behave this way, it just seemed like the thing to do at the time. Anyway, I've never got my feelings hurt by a rude Frenchman.

Little by little...

I rose before seven this morning, shaved, and showered; called the Banco-by-phone, and within five minutes had my debit card unrestricted; walked at moderate pace to the grocery store, where, calmly and cheerfully, I shopped for the day's sustenance (including my favorite hard cider). And so the day has gone, pleasantly, moderately, with a wonderful feeling of lightness and expansion in my chest.  

The Hawai'ian language has no verb which means "to be."

Think 'bout that, ye Indo-European ontologists. No word for "essence," no word for "being." Yet they who speak the Hawai'ian language have different distinct pronouns for possession by nature and possession by right or fiat--which seems a fairly subtle discernment of underlying self. Make of it what you will. Probably Polynesians have as little sense of the "isness" of things as your dog. Would that make them inferior to Georg Hegel? That and the fact that Polynesians are, or were, almost by definition, cannibals.

Architecture du chateau de Chantilly

Just to know about. I had no knowledge of Le Nôtre's prodigious accomplishments at Chantilly--wonderful to behold.

Les Secrets du Chateau de Vaux le Vicomte

Perfect beyond perfection. Either you know what Vaux-le-Vicomte is,  in absolute cultural (story of history historical) terms--and in architectural and esthetic terms--or you don't. But those of you who don't, yet, appreciate the vision of Nicholas Fouquet, should maybe begin by reading that delicious letter of Mme. de Sévigné, where she describes, as one of the invitees, Fouquet's fateful, enchanting, mid-Virgo mistake-party. The biggest, or at least the most sensationally beautiful, blow-out of its kind in the history of the world.

But if Trump, why not Bloomberg?

La Vie...presque la Mort

Et bien, je viens de passer--je ne me souviens  plus combien--quelque jours à l'hôpital, ayant eu une crise cardiaque. C'est bizarre  donc, ce que je ne puis me rappeller le nombre de jours exacte...ça ressent la grande Fâtalité.  Boy, it's easy to say stupendously silly things in French. Anyway, yes, I almost died--and with a double whammy of bacterial (!?) pneumonia, turned septicimia, and the occlusion of (I think) the upper left ventricular artery, whose paint-like (by mano e mano) accretion had been gradual. A stent (tiny, bitty woven  wire tube driven through th'occluding clot of mostly cholesterol--plaque--put in during catheterization) has miracolossamente assai fuckin saved me from what was (though I knew it not) an impending, very unpleasant death.

But instead--and, yes, though I am a Hippy in my Soul, with Gratitude to the Beneficent Universe--My heart rejoices with arterial bloodflow like it hasn't seen, or been suffused with, for thirty or forty years. And you know what's weird is I'm actually (I think) hearing my heart, dumb muscle, thinking. And not just thinking, having a holiday.