There has been a recommodification of what had been decommodified. —Leigh Phillips, Austerity Ecology & the Collapse-Porn Addicts

Aztec Metaphysics, Lao Tzu, and the Flow of Thought: Exploring Rheomode in Everyday Language

I’m reading James Maffie’s Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, and the two books complement each other nicely. As much as I love Le Guin, I must admit that I prefer John Ching Hsiung Wu’s version of Tao Te Ching because it feels more natural to my Western ears. In any case, these books remind me of David Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicated Order, specifically his rheomode - an experimental language based on verbs, and wondering how I can incorporate it into everyday conversation and thought.

In rheomode, the above might go something like this:

Reading-occurring James Maffie’s Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion interweaves with Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, complementing-flowing harmoniously. Loving-Le Guin persists, yet preferring John Ching Hsiung Wu’s Tao Te Ching arises, resonating more naturally with Western-hearing. Reminding-happening through these books occurs, flowing into David Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order, particularly rheomoding—experimenting with verbing-language. Wondering unfolds on incorporating rheomoding into every-day conversing and thinking-flowing.

It’s a real humdinger.

We have to take responsibility for what we’re not responsible for. —Robert Moore and Doug Gillette, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover

This morning, I dreamt of the first Bondi blue iMac.

When you come to see things in a broader perspective, taking no-thing-ness to be the truth, you will see truth as no-thing. —Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

Walk at Dawn

Blossom, my old and faithful hound, and I have our morning routine. The dawn cracks, and I rise. We tread our path to the park to play ball. She’s getting on in years, and now the throws are shorter, the chase slower. The walk to the park is pleasant, but by the time we hit the street, I’ve been awake for 10 minutes, so I’m largely oblivious to my surroundings. Today, I was more alert than usual and came across this owl while walking to the park. Later, we wandered back beneath the beautiful palms; I found something at the base of one—a magazine, its pages curled with dampness. Blossom sniffed at the thing once and moved on, but I lingered as if the world offered some inscrutable symbol meant only for me.

You are farther from yourself than an undiscovered planet. —Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay

Today I took to X-Twitter and erased it all. Every tweet, every retweet, every DM. The lists, the people I’d followed. All of it gone like smoke in a hard wind. Then I deleted the app itself, a fixture on my phone for fourteen long years. Done.

Teatro Grottesco was my introduction to Thomas Ligotti, so I was eager to listen to this episode of the Hermitix podcast.

The mortal riddle posed by the nihilist is that he’s a child of privilege. He’s healthy, fit, long-lived, university-educated, articulate, fashionably attired, widely traveled, well-informed. He lives in his own place or at worst in his parents’ home, never in a cave. He probably has a good job and he certainly has money in his pocket. In sum, he’s the pampered poster boy of a system that labors desperately to make him happy, yet his feelings about his life, his country, democracy—the system—seethe with a virulent unhappiness. —Martin Gurri, The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

Nondigital surveillance is weaponized boredom. —William Gibson, Agency

A Tale of Two Hells

I finished Alan Moore’s From Hell, a grim and sprawling tale set in the fog-choked streets of Whitechapel. A graphic novel but something more, it lays bare the sinews of the Victorian age, peeling back its skin to speculate on the identity and motives of Jack the Ripper. Afterward, I re-watched the Hughes Brothers’ film, the one with Johnny Depp. I’d seen it once, years ago, when the century was still young. It left little behind but the faint impression of Depp as some kind of junkie psychic. I lasted fifteen minutes. Turned it off.

It’s not a bad film, not exactly. But it’s a shadow of something greater. Watching it now, I remembered why it slipped so easily from my mind. The late, great Ian Holm was there, and Heather Graham, whose presence in pop culture has largely evaporated—failed to anchor it in recollection.

Do yourself a kindness. Pick up Moore’s work instead. From Hell in its truest form is not a thing you forget. It stays with you. The film? It tries, but it pails in comparison.

From Hell

Finished reading: From Hell by Alan Moore 📚

Emil Cioran would be proud.

We are a temporary infection smeared across an unremarkable rock hurtling through the blackness. —Warren Ellis, Cunning Plans

You should be only a little wise, never too wise. A wise man’s heart is seldom glad if he’s truly wise. —Jackson Crawford, The Wanderer’s Hávamál

I reckon humans were never fashioned to bear witness to so much beauty, if beauty is what you’d call it. Too much of it is like staring too long into a sun.

Think of cocaine. In its natural form, as coca leaves, it’s appealing, but not to an extent that it usually becomes a problem. But refine it, purify it, and you get a compound that hits your pleasure receptors with an unnatural intensity. That’s when it becomes addictive. Beauty has undergone a similar process, thanks to advertisers. —Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

I’ve been stuck on this quote, like really stuck, running it over and over in my head these past few weeks while listening to Killing Joke almost exclusively. Loud as hell!

Any language screamed with the amps at eleven became a universal language. —Bruce Sterling, Zeitgeist

Chocolate Pecan Pie Recipe

I’m making chocolate pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Super easy and everyone loves it.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
  2. Put the butter in a large bowl and stir in the sugar with a wooden spoon until smooth, about three minutes. Beat the eggs in one at a time, until each is incorporated. Add the remaining ingredients. Pour the filling into the crust.
  3. Bake on the center rack of the oven for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350°F and bake for 30 to 35 minutes more, until the pie is set and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool before serving.

Finished reading: Killing Joke on track by Nic Ransome 📚

How I Ended Up with 40 Ursula K. Le Guin Books for a Pittance

I did not wake this morning intending to acquire near forty volumes by Ursula K. Le Guin, but there it is. A humble bundle laid out by @toddgrotenhuis, tempting as sin and priced to move. One dollar for riches worth $363, though I’d urge you to pay a bit more, for it goes to the keeping of the Literary Arts. One book I wanted didn’t make the list, Le Guin ’s Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way. No matter. Amazon offered it for a mere 49¢.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Humble Bundle