Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Tom Robbins
3/03
Switters is going to South America to put a bird into the wild.
On how the mind works, recalling things at odd times:
“That’s the way the mind works, the human brain is genetically disposed toward organization, yet if not tightly controlled, will link one imageral fragment to another on the flimsiest of pretense and in the most freewheeling manner, as if it takes a kind of organic pleasure in creative associations without regard for logic or chronologic sequence.”
On Lima, but would apply to anywhere:
“The sun dropped into the horizon line like a coin dropping into a slot. The Ocean bit it to make sure it wasn’t counterfeit. Twilight softened the city visually, but did not hush it.”
On Depression:
All depression has its roots in self pity, and all self pity is rotted in people taking themselves too seriously”
Meditation is Nothing
On Change:
Human beings were not well served by premaances or stasis. Obviously, if individuals were progressing, they were undergoing a series of presumably desirable alterations, but in a universe where flux is fundamental, it can be argued that even change for the worse is preferable to no change at all. Isn’t that fixivity the hallmark of the living dead?
Switters talking to a chimp in Bequichioes on Ethnographer (branch of anthropology that studies specific cultures”:
“Ain’t nothing to lose but our winnings and only the winners are lost”
Flapdoodle, codswallop, and balderdash are good words.
On Finnegan’s Wake, Stream of though writing to the max.
Look up “Unique”
Our words are limits, the syntax however is.
Switters discusses taboos with Bobby and suggests that taboos are society’s fears. The Greeks would break taboos to lose power but to “free” themselves.
Death eliminates options. Who knows what could come from a situation. What would be learned, etc?
Switters goes off on a great rand about Belief, Ho much the same idea as dogma.
Every on earth, unfortunately, is prepared for death, but a very damn few are prepared for life.
A both/and life instead of either/or. Perhaps both both/and and either/or, as Robbins mentions that may state a yin/yang complex.
Hermetic teaching, Corpus Hermetic, practical guide to a sane peaceful life of natural science, contemplation, and self refinement. And more, boarders on religion. Hermes, God of Transitions, runner of errands between world.
Hermetic logo (AMA)
“You only live twice: once after you’re born and once before you die” –Basho
The book flows as follows:
Switters gets Salon Boy and goes to Peru, meets today is tomorrow, cant touch the ground, moves back t Seattle, is depressed, goes on an Errand to Syria, enters Polomans Convent, stays, stays, much religious theory, goes to Vatican, can walk. The writing is fantastically eloquent. The story is good and the character, Switters, is fantastic. The books topic could best be described as describing yin and yang. Know the opposites and everything that is balanced on them, good vs. evil, light dark, funny serious. Perhaps Switters hopes to find the balance between the two and in that place he might find enlightenment.
Laughter is the key and one can find peace with anything if one can laugh. That’s perhaps the most important lesson, followed by Today is Tomorrow, that’s one to take to heart as well. Fantastic.
