the pleasurist

THE PLEASURIST 13jun01 0254 Much of pleasure is memory or in memory. Do computers have pleasure? I mean the memory of people, not computers---so you really know what I mean. But what about non-people (animals, so called)? The pleasure of remembering. But what about infant amnesia (infantile amnesia)? If something happened before the period one remembers but one dreamed about it a bit later, and remembers that dream, what then? We distinguish between memory short-term and long-term, and these have different capacity resources, including hormones which click in in scedules. The infant remembers people learned during the period of infant amnesia (does not have to meet them again etc ), so not all is forgotten. So what are events? and events as remembered? For example, as distinct from a face. There is also the pleasure of sitting in a skin, with all these internal organs, especially now that we can learn about them. But some people in some parts of their lives lack that capability, and reside in insensibility. Sometimes they try to survive in a world of mere symbols, refering all to permission or rebellion, and trying to know about instead of knowing directly. They often become plague people and afflict anyone they can reach with their own pseudo-reality, and all the more so as their problem is programmed into them diguised as MORALITY (the conceptualization in one´s mind of how others (including one´s self) must behave in order to be real). There is also the pleasure of listening to music while reading or writing etc. After all, to listen to a Beethoven symphony takes the time it takes; sometimes one wants to concentrate (a relative and unconcentrated term) “on” the works being listened to, but sometimes not. But how canone enjoy event A at the same time one also enjoys event B and at the same time even shunts (shifts to the side) the horrid noise of a moped , refusing to pay attention to it? And how did you know i meant can one when you redd canone (not actually a rare Italian delicacy )??? But I am constantly annoyed that I am forced to reread a phrase because people refuse to spell the past tense of the verb “to read” redd. But i do get a pleasurable satisfaction from knowing I am right and everyone else (so to speak) is wrong---this is the same pleasure one gets in tragic situations like not becoming President of USA. Altho, I only know what I am missing when I stand in my kitchen or sit elsewhere and adress Congress or tell General McArthur where to get off. “Adress” should have only one “d”. It is also a pleasure to not have to remember everything, i e, being able to talk to a tape recorder instead. There is also the pleasure of not writing the unnecessary phrase “of course”. I love the profound pleasure of the friendship called love. and i relish distinguishing meanings of words, based on my understanding thru experience and maturity (including hormonal maturity). I like remembering that the book “Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary” by Wilfred Funk and Norman Lewis, which I redd when I was about 13, pointed out that some words could not truly be understood until one had certain life experiences etc. Also an introduction to psychology, that bit. I enjoy relieving fatigue and my sphincters etc. Observe cats, how they relieve parts of the body discretely and separately in sequence stretchingly distinguishing the rested from the now to be rested in the sure knowledge directly in memory their satisfaction is secure in Newtonian time altho indiscreet to gravity. I like some things not having to be immediately pellucid (clear). But the word “thing” does not mean something you can touch all the time. Indeed, reification is the curse on philosophy. I mean folks wrongly make ideas into objects in their minds unchangeable. I love the discussion of the split infinitive, in the book “Modern English Usage” by Fowler; and it is wonderful when he writes, “The great thing is to distinguish”. DISTINGUISH. Learn to distinguish different performances of classical music etc. 270601 0510 Apart from the sound of the computer and backup device, there is no noticeable noise, not birds, not dogs, not cats, not cars, and neither yet church-bells nor muezzins, or crying children, nor those who laugh or trot above; my body moves to type, and I hear my breath.

130701 19:50 I really like some food that is of the least expensive, like tuna with bread and oil and pepper and mayonaisse (sp?)(hereinafter called “mayo”).

Paradoxically, one of my favorite places is in my home town (Malden, mass.(near Boston)) altho Malden is a dumpy town (altho home of the first American best seller (#The Day of Doom” by Maldenite Michael Wigglesworth---1700))---it is a hill there called Wait`s Mount (sp?) from where one can see almost all of Metropolitan Boston to the south and to the north and west the woods, and to the east the Atlantic Ocean rolling in depressed tones into the town named Revere (after the fabled Italian-American Paul Revere)(On whom I based the greatest short poem in the American Language in the 20th Century: “Paul Revere, an intrepid man, made as much silver as ever he could.”)

140701 02:22 It is quiet.

250701 16:23 My dear friend has a hut thru her ancestral family and loves it and invited me but there are ticks which give serious illness. I do not like sunshine or beach or garden or hut anyway, so it is a compound problem, as I do want to share with her her sharing with me the hut of her family. and I certainly do not want to insult her.

23:51 I love seeing on TV the very smart, like CIA´s disguise experts on Discovery.

010801 22:08 A LIST OF PLEASURES ETC: in no particular order, and throwing together major delights, happinesses, joys, minor pleasures, commonly occuriong pleasures, extraordinary ecstacies (exstacies)(extacies), including what one must wait for necessarily, and due to the way the world is---

of course pissing and shitting sleeping waking up when one wants to or automatically, including turning off an alarm-clock and going back to sleep while others have to go to job not having to build edifices avoiding victimization by accidents or malices the absence of bad people the absnce (relatively) of interruption, by my mother or by barking dogs or construction noises or trash yelling by neighbors or tooting of horns or car-alarms being able to stay in bed and take an hour or so to think after waking (and maybe going to sleep again) extraordinary delights like great music, performances remembered by Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Munch, and hearing his recordings (the greatest conductor recorded): also the literature of Edgar Poe and Paul Bowles; also the paintings of Edvard Munch, Diego Velasquez, and others, including many ancient Egyptians; also the compositions by J S Bach and by Tschaikovski and by F J Haydn, and Puccini etc, and being able to hear great music (altho usually bad performances) on radio, as well as by other electronic means --- being able to see, and to hear. listening to my heart beat and feeling my breathing and trying to imagine the corsing of my blood and the working of my internal organs the overwhelming happiness of having descendants, and of feeling their presence and remembering being with them recently the unique ecstasy of being with my dear friend of opposite gender, enjoying her as miracle nice weather the feeling of comfort, warm but not too warm, a solid bed customized by me, good hi-fi and acoustics in my room, not starving and not thirsting, being relatively healthy and expecting fairly good health and medical care not being maimed, and my dear ones not being maimed, and all of us happy and in Barker´s four satisfactions; Health, Wealth, Love, and Self-expressin; and in well in Maslow´s hierarchy of fulfillments and gratifications being able to deal with frustration and exasperation, including knowing the human race is constantly doing evil by killing the good and exterminating species gourmet delights, and having excess without succumbing to it not having to go to war and not having war come to me or mine having a beautiful language the electronic media generally, like lying in bed and by pushing buttons seeing Tibet and/or hearing Beethoven I like to see and hear very smart people on TV or radio and remember them, like Mark Van Doren discussing Shakespear when I was a teen remembering and combining and creating and discovering and being very smart and controlling my arrogance and judging other people and pitying religions and bad beliefs and folly generally and looking forward to distant evolution, when in ten thousand years folks then will look at us like we look at the chimpanzees and orangutangs I note that the electronic media (even pre-internet etc) constitutes altogether a de facto evolutionary step, as a feature of mind I enjoy mind vis a vis brain (mind as whatever is and does) I am thrilled to have just now done that (defined mind). I love astronomy, and the humolity of astronomers vs the arrogance of psychologists (these latter afflict people generally via crap theories given power or influence, e g via law; wheras astronomers know that today´s wisdom is tomorrow´s rejected, and today´s rejected may be tomorrow´s wisdom) I enjoy contemplating subatomics, and relishing the difference between heavenly bodies being peered for, and subatomic factors being imagined (i e, imagined in the sense of valid thought) I love my own capacity to theorize and to remember and to make notes some of which I cna later understand, and especially now with The Computer and Internet and all you imagined co-atomic particular folks out there in Outernet, and of course I adore my own theories, especially my Great Theory of Abstract Relationship Caveat; there is an unreasonable lust To Be Right (or to seem to oneself to not be wrong)---this motivates much religion (as vs spirituality) and bigotted viciousness---also, I believe some people die if proven (to themselves) that they are wrong Furthermore, manipulation of folks generally is often a matter of giving them a cheap sense of being not only right, but also smart (but the relationship between smart and right is vexed: there is what I may be allowed to call The Henchman Effect, i which folks jump on the band-wagon of someone manifestly smarter, but who does not rub their noses in it; a contract is surreptitiously arrived at by pseudo-rhetoric, to put peple under the wing of the demagogue or any media mogul) I confess to like being superior and up higher than others; but I am comforted by seeing others superior to me in other ways---it is a relief to see strong athletes and skilled technicians etc---areas not of my own achievement (achievement in my own view); and I enjoy contending against giants of intellect in history, like famous philosophers, whom I regard with pity and/or friendly condescension, or at best comradely patronizing. I cherish the ability to say “No”: we can strive mightily to achieve ends, but in one area we must (especially) know how to give up: that is when one receives a definite “No” from another person---failure in this results sometimes in what is called “staliking”, and that is not the only tragic result. One must be allowed the power of saying and effecting “No”. It is basic to what I call Territory in Everyday Life. We live in territoriality not only in space, but also in time:we teach the upcoming generations and procreate integrally with this impulse to control (reasonably,hopefully) the future, and visible in this is the ubiquitous struggles of parochial schools and wars over the vexed question of The Best For The Child. With some understanding of “No”, we can limit our territorial lust, and achieve a wise social condition which promotes reasonable relationships among each child and her/his genetic father and mother---parameters and limits to conduct need foundation in understanding of WHY each is needed; by focusing on the fundamentality of “No”, we can see the paradox of obligation in basic relationship, transcending in certain prime situations (the child/genetic parents relationship) the liberty to say “No” --- I hope to emphasize a perspective showing the pleasure and health and happiness for individuals as well as for society generally, of livng in creative responsiveness to that basic relationship. Of course, as in every relationship, reasonableness is essential: if an individual honestly (having given a chance to an adult relationship) dislikes and/or fears another individual, the prerogative to avoid must be acknowledged ---but the bias of society must be to improve chances of good contact (study is requiored by professionals). 020801 01:45 By enjoying, we are able to move forward to other enjoyment as well, or different enjoyment. But if we reject enjoyment of what we actually have, then we are lost. It is important to give people (e g, children etc), so they can have and so they can enjoy.

060801 22:32 Currently cutting currants in Corinth.

140801 07:30 I remember with great , nay, more than great, primal, rather, delight, reading atomic physics at age ten years at summer camp in a magazine I brought, and separate from the other people, alone on a rise, feeling superior in the refreshing ice of the clarity of the thought of the people in the magazine like myself not pigs or fools like the majority of the youngster rabble at that foul camp run by ignorant egotists. And it is a pleasure to remember that camp and realize that I am not there. One should survive with circumspection so as to learn what it is one detests and later relishes the absence of. It is not necessary to confront the rabble, whoever they are---and the commonest occurance of trash in one´s life is one´s own family as a child, from whom the only escapes are not worth considering; far better to learn how to exploit their folly, turn their own strength against them. Good parents encourage this.

150801 16:06 I like hearing admonitions and other advice in my memory (as long as i ignore them) said by those who are no longer in my life, and are foolish so. What a relief to be through with them, except in perhaps affectionate memory, like expensive mistakes of bygone times. The friends of my childhood, kept there, so i can have an adulthood.

150801 15:09 I develop my ability to enjoy, as Stradivarius his violins, making myelf a better instrument as time goes by.

200801 1811 The delight of building nostalgia upon nostalgia, as reminded of Greenwich Village by park in Oslo and remembering remembering both and planting for later pleasure of recollection.

290801 0711 A Monday of pleasant wanting.

0718 The avarice of dreams.

131001 1745 I am selfishly relieved that I am not in NYC. Feel free to relish not being in line of fire when not --- one is in line of fire oneself quite enough .

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