“…for certainly no one has yet altogether escaped love, and none shall
so long as there is beauty and eyes to see.”
A ‘Greek author’ as quoted by Johannes de silentio.

Because I was lax and easy with myself, I came upon the summer and my thesis had yet not been finished. Too many nights at the bar, watching Syrah and Cabernet pass under my nose while I made the usual liberal political noise and the most trite of philosophical observations.

“There’s always tomorrow.” I would tell myself. “Give yourself some grace. Cut yourself some slack.”

In this way, my thesis examining history through a humanistic lens and borrowing heavily from Hegel and Marx was twenty pages behind schedule and even farther from conveying a single coherent thought. This gave me a whole other summer to live off loans, off the sweat of my presumed future brow.

Through my years at seminary, I was not the god hating type. I was the god apathetic type. I knew the week’s liturgy reading by mere glance at the calendar. I had sermons on jurisprudence, temperance, and constancy that I could tailor to fifteen minute to half hour installments memorized. The god to whom one would pray I knew only through Tillich, Bonhoeffer, Fosdick. I squirmed in my seat at the utterances of others from the pulpit. I knew their theologies were absolutely forty years old and I would scribble notes like “falsifiable? No! Gulp.” and “standard operating procedure of the patriarchal machine” in my sermon notes.

I had everything figured out with the one exception of how to make money over the summer.

There are some that are made for labor. I am not one. My hands are too weak, and my back too strong to bow to any work beneath me. I am a thinking man and the only career that I’ve considered honorable other than professorship, are those homeless philosophers in the park near my seminary’s coffee shop of choice. These Cynics, these heroes of resignation have their own great plaza there, replacing the Stoa of old, the open air markets where the free exchange of ideas and politics were cherished bulwarks of culture. Theirs is a philosophy fringed with madness (just as it always was and should be) and now meth, crack, Boone’s Farm Wine. I envy them. When they give up job, sanity, acceptance from family, culture, church, they do so boldly and never look back. I would walk by them after my Christology class and see them there, smoking the butts they’d found on the street and incarnating their own divine breech into the world. But I couldn’t join their number. I had a thesis to not think about. I had loans to defer. I was after all, a seminarian.

I went out into The City one weekend with my friend Verna who herself had just found philosophical credibility by dropping out of her Masters of Philosophy program. She of course had overdressed for either the occasion or for me. Or else I had underdressed, but in any case I felt uncomfortable. (This is most typically the case. How can one feel comfortable in a Post-Structuralist world?)

We found a table in the back of a dingy little place who’s inhabitants seemed to be that auspicious class known as hipsters. Their definition escapes me at the moment, but you know them when you see them: their public veganism wrapped around them in thinness, their convenient smoking habits displayed at the right moments, their drinking bordering on the obscene (even from my perspective!), and most usually sardonically happy.

Verna asked me about my summer plans.

“I’ve got to find something to supplement my income.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I’m expecting a tax return.”

“Okay.”

“And I sometimes sell blood.”

“Really?”

“Well, I did once. But I hate needles. So, hence the supplementing.”

“Yes. Well, have you thought about tutoring?”

I’d tried that before. Last summer. I’d posted on Craigslist:

“Learn Philosophy and Theology! Personal Tutor-15/Hr.”

But no responses came back even after two weeks. I later went back on and edited my add listing by adding:

“You don’t deserve to learn anything from me! You mouth breathing half wits! I curse you! I wouldn’t stoop to teaching you a thing for anything less than 30/hr. you cretins!”

Strangely enough, I got a response after that from a high schooler who instead of seeking my tutelage, left me a snarky message quoting C.S. Lewis and Rick Warren (whoever that is).

Verna’s presentation that night, apparently didn’t make other beaus in the bar uncomfortable, because they made a veritable queue when I left the table to smoke. I sat back down and glumly cleared my glass as the most recent suitor laid his best lines on Verna, who played along kindly enough.

“Lust is a Siren.” I said to neither in particular. “But worse yet is the lie of love.” The fellow tried to ignore me, but through his drunkenness and leering gazes, I knew that I was getting through to him. “At least lust understands that we live temporal lives. There is a narrative ‘curve’ to lust.” I flagged the waitress and she steered back to the bar to get another wine. “Love mocks us with its eternality. Entertaining its demonic thoughts, makes liars of ourselves.” The waitress set my Syrah on the table. “In wine there is truth. Its joy is fleeting, its recompense is headaches and fatness. For every night of wine there will be equal to or greater many nights of loneliness and dread. And I’d much prefer that that to the lie of ‘I love you’.”

Someone must have been listening to me, because the two of them agreed to go back to his place. I waited on the sidewalk with Verna for the cab while the fellow settled his long bill inside.

“How’d he know that we weren’t together?”

She laughed.

“What? Couldn’t we have been on a date together? How’d he know that we weren’t?”

“Oh, Ian. You’re no threat.”

I got the keys to Verna’s-since the train had stopped running I’d have to stay the night at her place. “Have a great night.” I said to the two of them as they got in the cab.

That night, I tooled around on Verna’s laptop over a bowl of her ice cream I’d poured some Bailey’s I’d found in the cupboard. I figured there was no better time than three in the morning to find a summer job, and I stopped at the usual sites before sifting through Craigslist again.

In The City’s service section, there was the entry that caught my eye.

“Seeking help. Tutor needed immediately. Soren Kierkegaard and other Theologians.”

It had listed a phone number believe it or not in place of the standard encrypted email reply, and I scribbled down the number. Two things struck me about the message: one, there was no mention of money. This would usually have caused me to pass right by it but the second thing that jumped out at me so piqued my interest that I had to find out more.

I looked up at Verna’s Pet Shop Boys poster on her wall. “Kierkegaard and other Theologians?” I asked the Pet Shop Boys. I’d not really looked into the Dane so much, but I knew that he had misrepresented my Hegel and had been largely a waifish misanthrope with a chip on his crooked shoulder.

Whatever the reason, whether the drink or the excitement of having a possible tutoring job in my future, I followed the internet rabbit hole into places that Verna would have objected to both on principle and fear of viruses.

She found me on the couch in the early morning, the birds doing their ‘shame on yous’ and the sun breaking the bad news of a new day to hungover drunks.

“How was it?” I asked but she ignored the question and set to work on her French press. “Coffee?” she asked.

I struck a cigarette and sat in the tiny kitchen.

Verna hustled off and showered as I watched the boiling water and poured it into the press. I poured her cup and handed it to her through the shower curtain.

I sat on the toilet lid. “So how was it?”

“We’re meeting for breakfast in an hour.” She gave a little peek through the curtain and smiled.

She put on some music that was fashionable enough for me not to recognize what it was and just loud enough to her neighbors to if not wake them, at least invade their dreams.

“What is it about this guy that deserves a breakfast?” I asked.

“He’s different.”

“Different in that the sex was actually okay?” I knew enough about Verna’s weekends to know that they were generally unspectacular.

“We didn’t have sex, smartypants.”

“Oh no!” I jumped up from the couch. “This is the kind of guy to watch out for. You’ve got to cancel this breakfast.”

“What are you talking about? He’s very nice.”

“I knew you were going to say that. ‘Very nice’. ‘Different’. No sex! Can’t you see what this guy is doing?” I had been grossly unimpressed by the fellow last night-his martini glass, fashionable pants, his hair mussed in just the right way, facial hair that was too ‘forgotten’ looking to be truly forgotten. He had all the markings of another City crawling scenester. But this new information exposed him for what he really was: an artist.

“Look, Verna. It’s like this. Either he’s playing towards the beauty of a romance or he’s a Romantic.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If he’s building up from lust, he’s a deceptive artist who’s looking to create a romance. You’ll know it if he brings to breakfast for you a flower he’s stolen from a yard or is playfully aloof. But it could be even worse! He could be building upon love which means he’s self deceived and could be so caught up in it that no behavior could ever give him away.”

“What about ‘we’re two people who had a good time together last night and want to have breakfast together’?”

“Where are you going?”

“To some vegan place.”

“Oh just great! Great! Did you suggest it or he?”

“I don’t remember, Ian. Why?”

“If he did, that’s better. That means he’s probably an artist who knows the right fashionable place to go. If you did and he agreed to it, that’s worse because it means that he’d be willing to sacrifice a good proper breakfast of sausage and eggs for a love interest. And that’s bad news, in that case.”

She threw on a tidy little coat and wrapped a scarf around her neck. “What’s so bad about love, I wonder.”

“Love? It’s an uncrossable sea! It’s a universally adored dream. If it was an idea proper, then I could get behind it. But ask people to explain it or define it and they get all misty eyed and start talking like William Blake or Kahlil Gibran or something! Its attraction lies in its untouchable nature.” I shook my head, “If this fellow,”

“His name is Sabastion.”

“If Sabastion means to provoke loving feelings, he is as dangerous as an asp.”

“An asp?”

“Who can question love? Mention it and you’re free to do whatever you want. Every ethical system will at one time or another appeal to it. It’s a sacred cow. In the Hindi sense of cow. Not the slaughtered sacrifice kind. The sacrifice will be you-your sanity, your dignity, your Self!”

“Lock up my apartment when you leave, will you?”

“No, I’m leaving with you. I’m going to head home.”

I walked her to the corner and turned to go to the bus station. As I was walking away, Verna asked, “Just for a moment imagine that…Well, it just sounds like you’ve been talking about ‘love’ abstractly. What if he loves me. And I love him. Isn’t that not really about some detached nebulous idea…”

“Dream. Remember, love is no idea proper.”

“Okay. But what of that anyway? What if I love him?”

“Who is he? Who are you? Are you anything more than a wisp? Or maybe you imagine that you are as constant as the number ‘three’. Or a Platonic Form. Either way you think of someone: a vaporous illusion or a constant substance, both are ridiculous and dangerous.”

“I’ll call you later this morning and tell you about our ridiculous and dangerous breakfast. I hope yours is more reasonable and safe.”

I held up my cigarette, “You’re looking at my breakfast.”

I pulled the morning paper off my sidewalk and read it on the porch where I found an article headline reading: “The Least Likely Happiest Place On Earth: Denmark Happiest Place You’d Never Want to Visit” which reminded me of the number crumpled in my pocket. Without thinking if it was rude to call on a Sunday morning before noon, I dialed the number.

“Hello.” A featureless voice said after one ring.

“Hi. I saw your listing about a tutor.”

“Yes.”

“And I uh wanted to know…” the voice on the other end had shaken me a bit and I wasn’t sure how to proceed. “Uh, how much are you offering?”

“Are you a minister?”

“…I currently attend seminary. I’m in training.” I conveniently neglected to say that I was in academic training, not ministerial. “I’m in my last year.”

“You’re in religious training?”

I figured that getting a Masters in religious studies counted. “Yes.”

“What do you know about Soren Kierkegaard?” The voice said it strangely: Searen Keergegor.

“I know him first through his criticisms of Hegel.” Silence. I continued, “And I like him a lot. There’s no better place to start in discussion of existentialism than Kierkegaard.” More silence. I was grasping now, “And his theological understanding of course.” I guessed that he was a Christian, “As far as his comments on Christianity…I just love him…and what he’s got to say…About Jesus.”

“Are you available today?”

“Well,” I gauged how hungover I was and how quickly I could recover. “I’m available after four this afternoon, yes.”

“Great. You live in The City?”

“East bay, yes.”

“Perfect. Are you familiar with….” The voice mentioned a beautiful white hotel resort in the hills.
“Yes, I live quite nearby, actually.”

“Go there at five o’clock. There is a fountain by the tennis courts that looks like the statue of Lady Justice. There will be a key in the fountain. Are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“I want you to speak to my father. Tell him everything you know about Kierkegaard. But listen. When you go in, just sit on the couch. That’s it. Just sit on the couch. How long will it take you to tell him everything you know about Kierkegaard?”

“Oh,” If I had answered honestly, I would have said ‘two minutes’. “About two or three hours, I guess.”

“Perfect. When you’re done, the money will be in the top drawer of the desk by the door. When you’re done, you can put the room key on the dresser and take the money. You understand? Tell me what you’re going to do.”

“Get the key from the fountain, tell your dad everything I know about Kierkegaard (Keergegor I said) and then when I’m done, put the key on the dresser and take the money.”

“And sit on the couch.”

“Right.”

“Thank you very much.” The voice intoned flatly. I got the sense that our conversation was over.

“And what is your dad’s name?”

“John. Thank you for doing this. Goodbye.”

I was going to say, ‘good day’ or something polite sounding but they’d hung up already. I popped a cigarette into my mouth and thought: “They’d better be at least forty bucks in that drawer.”

After brunch of a coffee and bearclaw, I stopped at my seminary’s library and checked out as many Soren Kierkegaard books as I could. I surprised to see that the ol’ curmudgeon had written about Christianity. In my survey courses we had mentioned him as a footnote to existentialism and though I knew that he was popular among fashionable ‘liberal and educated’ Christians, I always thought it was because he had coined the phrase “the leap of faith”. (It wasn’t until recently during my transfer to the state penitentiary-a long, hot, four hour drive-that I learned that he never actually wrote “leap of faith”.)

I filled up my backpack and bicycled over towards the ______ Hotel and Resort, an old landmark of a place in the hills which had strangely survived a fire some hundred years ago. Some had said that it survived ‘miraculously’ but the farm owners, from the viewpoint of their destroyed crops and barns thought otherwise. I always figured by the haunted look of the place that it had made some demonic pact with the Devil like Robert Johnson at the crossroads, Faust, or St. Theophilus. However it had survived that fire long ago, it now housed the rich and famous at times for an entire season while they relaxed and enjoyed the fresh bay air.

I parked my bike by the tennis courts and tried to look as though I belonged as I passed white clad tennis goers. I found the small fountain with a statue atop whose raised arm held a double edged sword and whose other arm held scales. The Lady’s head was down turned as though eyeing her target of her raised blade and she wore no blindfold. I liked this because what kind of judge allows oneself to be blinded? Shouldn’t Justice very much care to look, inspect, watch, and examine? I thought that it went back to the Myth of Scientific Objectivity. Or maybe it was just a patriarchal stamp disempowering a goddess of such strength and importance. How quickly the Goddess of Victory, Nike had been forgotten! The Queen of Gods, Hera now lost! The current age had bypassed blinding them and skipped straight ahead to their burial.

In the lily pad covered water, I found a hotel key with the number 237 on its tag. I sat in the shade of a spreading tree until my watch read five minutes to five.

Inside the hotel, everything was placed at an extravagant scale and had a pristine cleanliness of an upscale convalescent home. In the grand entrance, there were broad and low oak tables and leather chairs with the indents of many fat and important backsides. The concierge and her bell boy cronies eyed me suspiciously and I tried to walk with the same confidence I’d seen from my fellow seminarians in the M.Div. program.

I clicked open 237’s door and found the lightswitch. The room’s heavy curtains were drawn and none of the still strong sunlight found its way inside. Desk lamps and a ceiling light revealed a large and eloquent room whose décor was definitely in the style of “too rich for their own good and too old to know better”. At the far end of the room, I saw a small human frame under the heavy comforters of the king sized bed and near it was set medical looking equipment: a buzzing thing, a whirring thing, maybe a clear bag sending medicinal liquids racing through veins.

“Hello.” I said three times, consecutively and louder each time.

The small person didn’t respond. I closed the door and stepped into the room and made a lot of purposeful noise in case the old man only needed to be jostled from a nap. As I came a bit nearer, I could make out a prunish bald head propped on pillows and what may have been open eyes.

“I’m here for…” What was I there for? To ‘tutor’ this vegetable? The sheer ludicrousness of the task had at first been enticing but the prospect of teaching a geriatric who would be better served in an ER than by a wanna-be philosopher discussing a cranky Danish hermit was just too much for me to bear.

At that time, I almost reached into the drawer to withdraw the money promised me and thought “I’m out of here. I’ll tell him what I know, all two minutes of it, and I’ll get outta here.” But something wouldn’t let me. I know it wasn’t ‘honesty’ because I’ve never relied that to motivate me before. I think it was my own strange curiosity about Kierkegaard and figured what better way to learn that by teaching? So that was that. I sat on the not-so comfortable love seat at the front of the room, a fair distance from the bed and opened my backpack.

“Well, John: Here we go.” I said. His machines clicked and whirred as a response.

I read him passages from a number of sources, all seemingly under pseudonyms and I became quickly frustrated at figuring out exactly what Kierkegaard was trying to say through all the convoluted mess. I finally found one essay that he had had the courage to put his own name to called Works of Love.

“Here’s the answer to that old question, John: ‘who wrote the works of love’?” I sang. “Tell me tell me baby, oh, who wrote the works of love?” I scrutinized the bed to look for movement. “Better not sing too much.” I thought. “My singing’s so bad that for a fellow in his condition, it could be deadly!”

“Listen to this John!” I read,

“Something that in its total richness is essentially inexhaustible is also in its smallest work essentially indescribable just because essentially it is totally present everywhere and essentially cannot be described.”[1]

“This is exactly what I was saying to my friend this morning, John! What a buncha malarkey!” I thought malarkey might appeal to one from the older generation. “What’s the sense of talking about something ‘that’s all around but indefinable’?” I caught myself because that sounded like the same context that godtalk often occurred.

This is where my analytical philosophy training kicked in, seeking to understand clearly the definition of terms, only now its peering gaze was uncomfortably aimed at me. How was I thinking and using both ‘love’ and ‘god’? It was taking my mind down passages I didn’t want to go. Passages I had boarded up for good reasons long ago. Or at least what had seemed like good reasons.

I read on where it quoted Matthew 22:39 about loving your neighbor as yourself.

It was written in caps, “YOU SHALL LOVE”

“What’s the point of commanding someone to love? Can it really be love if its commanded? Then isn’t just a buncha brownnosing?” I caught myself. Such a term as ‘brownnosing’ probably wasn’t professional, and since I was a paid private tutor, I said, “Excuse me, I mean, isn’t it a bit silly to make a legalistic command something that should be freely given?”

There was written below,

“if one is to love the neighbor as oneself, then the commandment, as with a pick, wrenches open the lock of self-love and wrests it away from a person…Just as Jacob limped after having struggled with God, so will self-love be broken if it has struggled with this phrase that does not want to teach a person that he is not to love himself but rather wants to teach him proper self-love.”[2]

We have to make the choice of how we love, I thought.

“Choice.” I said aloud. “That sounds like Heidegger-constantly engaged with the proposition of choice.”

I felt that love wasn’t as far away as it had seemed a moment ago. As I related to my self as Subject, I could so meet others in the same way. But what struck me was that Kierkegaard (as far as I could tell from the picture I have always seen of him as a frail black-clad mope) himself was a depressive melancholic Dane (I would have thought that a tautology before that newspaper article I’d just read). I was awakening to relationship as an intimate Subject among Subjects; not among objects, not as shadowy imaginings of solipsism’s garish nightmares.

“John. Are you awake? I hope that you can read my mind over here, because there’s some great stuff happening. If I could only put to words half of it….half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.[3]” I quoted from John Lennon’s Julia.

I felt waves of interest, the purest drives of duty, and ecstasy wrack me in the swirl of thoughts. I needed a cigarette. I walked forward into the room towards John on his bed and opened a window in which I sat and ravished a delicious smoke. I thought of Verna, of my hidden love for her and in a moment of introspection wondered if my scheme to make her fall in love with me was working. It’s hard enough to love someone, harder still to entice them to love you, hardest still to not let on that that is exactly what you’re doing.

I was broken from my reverie by a new sound from the area of the bed. It was not a machine clicking or whirring, but the lightest moan. I snapped up, slammed the window shut and scurried back to the couch. Maybe I didn’t love Verna at all. Maybe I was too interested in the romancing of a perfect subject who would never want to be romanced by me and even deeper I wondered if I would ever really want her love. I felt the pang of self doubt-and more dangerous still (as through the back door of my mind) a doubt against doubt. It was only this last doubt against doubt that kept me from unraveling.

I read aloud,

“Even in Goethe’s understanding of Faust I miss a deeper psychological insight into the secret conversations which doubt has with itself…Only when one turns Faust back in on himself in this way-only then can the doubt appear poetically, only then does he himself genuinely discover in reality all its sufferings…Anyone with any idea of what it means to live on spirit knows also what the hunger of doubt means, and that the doubter hungers just as much for the daily bread of life as for the sustenance of spirit.”[4]

I looked at the body in the bed. Was there another whimper? Had I imagined it?

“John, what do you doubt? Are you questioning the love or absence thereof in your life? Had you played the fool? Attempting to tempt a smoke and vapor? Do you doubt your love? Or your destination after…”

I hadn’t thought of the ‘after life’ in the decade after my first receiving my driver’s license and it was difficult to even think in such terms.

“Do you doubt your destination once you…pass on?”

Again a machine clicked in response. I read to him,

“There was a time when the Gospel, grace, was changed into a new Law, more rigorous with people than the old Law…Through petty self torments, they had made God just as petty…”[5]

The wind howled about the ­­­­­­______ Hotel then, whipping along its stately eaves and its many wings. It was downright terrible and necessitated another cigarette. The wind of course blew all the smoke right back inside so I snuffed it out and closed the window again. The floors creaked and high whistles of wind found invisible cracks in walls. A feeling of haunted presence filled the place like opera box number five in the Phantom of the Opera-an unseen menace seemed to bear down on me. I was left with only a faint hope that it was only a loveless creep named Erik with a penchant for French opera.[6]

“What are we to do, John?” I asked without thinking.

From the bed, to my great surprise and horror, I saw a skeletal arm raise off the bed from the elbow. The hand was nothing more than bones, twisted and crippled with arthritis. The white death’s hand hung there and then just as slowly lowered back to the bed.

A change came in the air. The wind died, a crack of lightning afar sent a tremor in the electric lights and the room was momentarily dark. I repacked my bags, went to the dresser and in the top drawer found thirty two hundred dollars in worn fifties.

I left the room as I had found it and stepped into the now dark Resort grounds. That was the entirety of my time spent in the _____ Hotel and Resort.

And that is exactly what I never uttered a word of to the well groomed investigators when they had set me under the bare light bulb lit interrogation room. My bike’s tires, surveillance cameras and tennis playing witnesses made a quick trail for me to be found and before I even had the chance to return my library books, flashing lights lit my apartment.

How did I come to visit room 237? Well, when the cops tracked down Verna for questioning, the websites I’d visited the night at Verna’s had crashed it and there was no history showing any information about the Hotel and Resort. My phone did show that morning that I’d called a pay-phone located in Arcata but no one at the orphanage across the street was able to say they’d seen anyone ever use the phone.

The fact that I had such a large amount of money whose issue numbers had been recorded at the old man’s bank was perhaps a little strange, sure. “Mighty good pay for a couple hours, ‘tutoring’, I should think huh?” said one of the many suit-clad cops.

As I sat there on the first of many hard plastic chairs, facing alone the hours of questioning after denying my right to an attorney, I thought of some passages I had also seen that night.

“…because the human being is able to speak, the ability to be silent is an art, and a great art precisely because this advantage of his so easily tempts him. But this he can learn from the silent teachers, the lily and the bird.”[7]

The silence was the easiest part. There were other passages that came to me in the trial which I was allowed to ruminate on in the short proceedings which I declined to defend myself.

“-No! God is greater than your own heart! Ah! Whether it was a sickness of soul that so darkened your mind every night that finally in deadly anxiety, brought almost to the point of madness by the conception of God’s holiness, you thought you had to condemn yourself; whether it was something terrible that so weighed upon your conscience that your heart condemned itself-God is greater!”[8]

As I’ve been spending my days now in solitary, I have greater things to think about than any fear of justice and condemnation. I think back to that statue of Lady Justice and her raised double edged sword: wherever there is punishment, there is some sort of mercy, alleviation, and freedom. I think of that wasted away living corpse, John _____, the owner of the Hotel at the time of our meeting and what I taught him and what he taught me. There are some things that they cannot teach you in seminary and it is exactly those things that one must learn.

Something broke in me that night, and maybe there was a breaking outside of that which occurred in me. The ______ Hotel and Resort was swallowed up by the fires that fall, lost to time to be forgotten just a month after its owner.

Above my bunk I have written one passage that I first found that night, and there just as there is no escaping my prison, my solitary, there is no escaping it:

“…love’s judgment is the most severe judgment…Thus there comes a new sin, a new guilt, the gult of being forgiven only little, a guilt incurred not by the sins committed, but by the lack of love. If you want to learn to fear, then learn to fear-not the severity of justice, but the leniency of love!”[9]

Reader’s Note: As a seminarian once upon a time myself, I can assure you this is a piece of fictional literature in specific details only. This kind of thing happens to me all the time.  –Eric Hanson

[2] Kierkegaard, p. 279.

[3] S. is only partially right. Lennon did take and change this line for The White Album but as quoted here it is a line from Kahlil Gibran’s Sand and Foam. –Eric Hanson

[4] Soren Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling (New York: Penguin Books, 1985). p. 132-133.

[5] Soren Kierkegaard For Self Examination in The Essential Kierkegaard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). p. 394.

[6] Gaston Leroux’s ‘Phantom’ Erik seemingly adored alongside Verdi’s Othello, Gounod’s Faust.                   –Eric Hanson

[7] Soren Kierkegaard The Lily in The Field and The Bird of The Air in The Essential Kierkegaard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). p.333.

[8] Soren Kierkegaard Christian Discourses in The Essential Kierkegaard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). p. 330.

[9] Soren Kierkegaard Two Discourses at Friday Communion Discourses in The Essential Kierkegaard (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). p. 388.

I have been a ghost denier most my life.
But now I’m going to have to rethink everything I thought I knew.

These paranormal investigators are the real thing. I’ve seen a lot of real fakey “ghost hunting” shows but none reaches the bar set by the Westside Apparition & Paranormal Society for scientific rigor and journalistic excellence.

This show will be gaining wide circulation soon and I can’t wait to see more from WAPS.

As for myself, with the newfound knowledge I have, I’m going to have to do some hard soul searching to figure out if I’m going to have to change my religion.

She is like the wind.
Or rather, she is like the sunshine.
Maybe like a spring rain.
Or a cloud. But a fluffy cloud. Not the sad kind.

Scratch that. She is not a meteorological or natural event at all.
She is like a lazer beam. Or a microwave oven.
Or maybe neither. Anyway, she is not like a moldy towel.

Her name is Saunia Powell and lemme tell you:
you should meet her.
Seriously. You think that you’ve got life all wrapped up and figured out don’t you?
Well get ready to have your mind exploded because you don’t know jack taint
about nuthin’ until you meet Saunia Powell.

So in your plans for the next year, alongside your trip to see your cousin in Topeka, make time to meet
Saunia Powell.

You won’t regret it.

*Saunia Powell likes tea but not coffee. Take her out for a nice tea, won’t you?
*Saunia Powell likes the sunshine, but for Chrissakes, she’ll sunburn if she’s out too long. Be a dear won’t you and bring some SPF 40.

Ryan McGivern

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We chemically all dissolve back into
But! 7 years of this diet is sure to take 50-100% of your DNA soul material

Back into God’s Genesis 1:29-30 salvation plan.
50-100% more salvation w/ all 3
No less.
Attention: UFO, UN, England Axis, USA, Spain, Allies
Enforce For Everything’s own good.
New Testament God says “Behold I stand at the gate.” “I am the vine.”
(Seedless) (See Deathless)
See over all. Please more.
100% Vegetarianism daily.
100% Iron Daily.
100% Magnet Massages Daily.
(Notice that God is ¾ good. Genesis 1:31)
Get a new body from food before rigor mortis
(4-6 hours after heart stops)
But Vegetarians bodies do not.
Trains your body material to feel earth’s core of iron radiation and magnetic field
which trains sould material to feel touch of other souls in space-not die from alone.
Nothing to do.

Alive until resurrected by iron in cells magnetized by magnet massages/waist, neck, ankle.
Wristbands of magnets extra strong hardware—drugstores.
Difference between body and soul.
REVELATIONS LOGIC
WORKS COMPLETE
Also, much body weight of food we eat go out of our body every seven years.
Also, they get rigor mortis whether you’re ready or not.

Salvation is 100% vegetarianism daily.
The difference between soul and body
the meat eater gets stiff in rigor mortis
and its material touches common material and stars and planets come apart
until the universe ends.
“One nation under God” Constitution preamble
Genesis 1:29-30
100% iron daily to magnetize and teach cell stuff to heed the other being of earth’s
magnetic field
and iron core radiation go through all earth.
UFOs see other UFOs in stars shaped like antennae heads and they stop all life back
to mineral kingdom to stop death.
Head of Orion
Sons of God and Earthlings Antennae head of Orion
Antennae Head Etacyenus
Sons of Man and Both do God’s get straight before no change for suns
and Planets in future plan or we all going to find what wternally keeps happening to us:
Minus memory.
As we change with every new day so as our habits gotta get some rest, sleep, relaxation.
My boss says “a change is better than a rest.”
760 degrees Fahrenheit below Zero
all black structureless space material alone as meat eaters in rigor moris and all common touch by the (thou shall not kill
Heaven and thou Shall Not Kill Earth)
meat eaters kill God.
Vegetarian (Animal) Vegetable mineal (Universe) Ethereal (Kosmos) Common
Touch faint personality
TETRAHEDRONS OF SMALLEST POSSIBLE SIZE
souls trained when taken into universe by heed touch of magnetic field
of iron core fusion radiation to carry on in structureless ether
the God Common Touch Live.
On Earth as it is in heaven—no such thing—all feels forever—same as we chemically
dissolve into space stuff again but electro-magnetic into iron and vegetables
fed dead bodies plus ground up meat eaters with their familiar food material
and carbon and iron dust
magnetized strong enough to wake the dead.

In fact, say religious sources around the world in a position to know, the ‘Original Jesus Christ Superstar’ died and then rose from the dead three days later to allow humanity to escape the crushing pressures of life in sin -and he is now socked away equally in heaven, in Christians’ hearts via the Holy Ghost, in communion wafers, in icons, in images burned into tortillas, and equally everywhere at once due to a power known as omnipresence.
And in the strangest twist of all, say the insiders, once he’s rested and ready, Jesus Christ, age 2009, will blow the lid off speculations that he is “either dead, gone, uncaring in a Deist way, or absolute sham” and make a comeback tour on May 21 2011. Adoring fans are already buying tickets to Frankenmuth Michigan’s World Beer Expo to celebrate his surprise career turn.

“Jesus Christ is following in the footsteps of others he greatly admired –Amelia Earhart, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Jim Morrison, L. Ron Hubbard, all who faked their deaths and are still alive, and in hiding, today,” Pastor Joshua Loomis, of Topeka’s Victory Chapel said in this previous Sunday’s sermon.

“Make no mistake, Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior, both as a performer and as and showman and marketer and promoter. Remember when he made water into wine just to get the publicity? Remember when he reputedly was trying to combat imperialism, injustice, ethnic bigotry, and classism through non-violent protest and inclusive fellowship? If you look at his history of stunts he’s pulled to keep himself in the public eye, like loving social outcasts and committing himself to egoless service, the idea that he would rise from his death makes sense.” Loomis said.

“Let’s face it – Jesus Christ has been vilified by many in the the liberal media and by people who just don’t like him. He’s been called ‘Just A Good Man’ and ‘Chief Among the Prophets But Yet Not God’, ‘The Firstborn of Creation-Meaning an Angel’, ‘The Son of God, Meaning a Human Turned God Who Created This World And Is Son Of Elohim Who Lives Near The Planet Kolob’, et cetera, et cetera. When Jesus comes back May 21, 2011 he’ll set matters straight and by the way it will be awesome to hang out in Frankenmuth Michigan for their beer festival. I love Michigan!” The pastor said, to his congregation’s ‘amens’.

“Yes, he’s got billions of fans. Yes, he’s sold perhaps billions of books about him. But for all the love he gets, there are those who still get their rocks off by being asswipes to other people and justify it by using his name and legacy. It ain’t right, and it hurts overall sales. With all due respect to the President of United States, Jesus Christ on a ‘Back from the Dead, Gone, or Uncaring Tour’ will make Obama look like a B-List celebrity.” Pastor Loomis then quoted at length from I Corinthians chapter thirteen and Frankenmuth’s website.

More on this story as it develops – exclusively at www.mindflowers.net

But not everyone is convinced. There are some who believe that Jesus Christ has, in fact, died. Secular Humanist and volunteer firefighter Mike Gresch says Elvis Presley welcomed Jesus into the Great Nothingness. “Non-existence isn’t all that bad I’d imagine. Anywho, god bless him. I love that guy. Elvis, I mean. And Jesus too I guess. I wish them both well.” Gresch then added, “Frankenmuth Michigan is a great town and it has some of the nicest people you’d want to meet. Jesus or no Jesus, I’ll be there come May 21 2011.”

(Highlight @ 4:41)

            The founding figure of Hermeticism was Hermes Trismegistus, a religious figure conjured by the religious imaginations in ancient Hellenistic Egypt. Though fictive in nature, the pseudonymous writings assigned his name had very real impact in their Medieval and Renaissance ‘rediscovery’. By combining the Egyptian god of writing and crafts Thoth and the Greek god Hermes lord of techne (art and craft) and being the mercurial medium of communication; Trismegistus’ mythic figure captures much of the spirit of development that has led to the contemporary Western information age. Trimegistus represents not only to the mechanical achievements and technological esprit of ancient Alexandria, but Davis states is also “one of the leading lights of the Western Mystical tradition, a tradition whose psychospiritual impulses and alchemical images…have haunted Western dreams.”[3]

            McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’ reveals that not only the modes of worship but the content of worship is radically transformed through technological development. Heron of Alexandria, known as ‘the Inventor’ or ‘Machine Man’, circa 10 CE constructed temple vending machines which he named “Sacrificial Vessel That Flows Only When Money Is Introduced” and another trinket using pulleys and gear shafts depicted a Bacchanal replete with miniature dancers, flames, and sound effects. Second Life worship gatherings, Blackberry enabled interactive sermons, and YouTube transparency in once private worship spaces are modern examples of the continuing flux of worshipping and its modes and contents.
            The relationship of religion and science can be revealed to be bound by mutual competition, polemicizing, ambiguity, and benefit. The benefits can be seen as coming from the competition of social cultural influence as each seeks its foothold in rising to the challenges both individual and cultural. Davis recalls Avital Ronell’s statement “Science acquires its staying power from a sustained struggle to keep down the demons of the supernatural with whose visions, however, it competes.”[4] The existential anxieties or spiritual complexities faced by an individual and the interdependent web of social structuring are shaped by the cultural understanding of exactly what the problems faced are. Carl Gustav Jung’s study into the secret realms of the individual’s innerspace are illustrative of the meeting ground of where esotericism and science meet, compete, and propel each other forward. Jung was a student of esoteric sciences, mystery cults, Gnosticism, Islamic mysticism, I Ching, and developed a system which was warmly accepted in mainstream academia and an established place in psychoanalysis. Jung appealed to a perennial philosophy comprised of an archetypal realm which he denoted as the ‘collective unconscious’. Davis suggests that an analogous inspection of psychic phenomenon, the human condition, and the larger macrocosmic sphere could be that of Henry Corbin, the Sufi scholar that posited the mundus imaginalis. Jung’s balance of mainstream scientific credibility and mystical sensibilities which reveal an esoteric view of the concordance of ancient religious traditions changed the landscape of both religion and science by positing a system that addressed the ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ of humanity’s experiences. Theological anthropology and the ‘harder’ sciences of biology, sociology, and evolutionary applications are intimately linked in the dialogue of what is presented as the nature of human suffering, how to alleviate it, and the horizons of possible human freedom from suffering.

            Davis examines a moment of the magical assuming contemporary technoscientific postures and methodologies. Upon the invention of telegraph technologies, mediums, séances were given pragmatic and concrete phenomena which they identified as strengthening their magical worldview. Spiritualists at the time of Morse’s discovery were affirmed in their rejection of supernaturalism and that afterlife was best described as natural law; Morse’s discoveries and the rapping spirits of the Fox Sisters were equally natural and scientific events. As John Dee before them, Spiritualists took rigorous notation and their data collection in séances mirrored the objective language found in scientific labratories. The publication of the 1850’s Spiritual Telegraph captures the spirit of the same sacred science that of the Renaissance Cabalists, though managing with the level of cutting edge concurrent technologies. As much as spiritual religion must always struggle to be relevant, articulate their concrete ethical praxis, and negotiate their faith to the demands of secular knowledges; so too do they accept portions or applications of technologies as apologia to the veracity of their worldview.

            Technoscientific advances and the promises they make or are imagined speculatively to be heralding can reveal spiritual faddishness as what was cutting edge becomes accepted, widespread, normalized, and a new technology arises to repeat the process. One example of this is that of the quickly expanded and deflated interest in Michael Drosnin’s The Bible Code which claimed to find esoteric revelations hidden in the Hebrew scriptures using computer-powered code-breaking programs performing a similar function that of Jewish Temurah and Gematria. The Bible Code in its context, Davis finds, is associated with the interest surround the explication of DNA and the human genome project which was seen as unlocking the true hidden formula of humanity’s condition and predetermined futural outlook. Drosnin and the school of computer enabled holy code hacking had been foreseen in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum which combined intrigue, Rosicrucianism and Kabbalah. The technology and its accompanying magical philosophy that the whole of history and future were hidden away in the scriptures only to be unlocked at the prescribed time by the computer’s eschatological application took many contemporary religionists by storm, its esoteric nature and historical tradition shrouded in occult and Kabbalah lost on many. However, it passed away largely not due to institutionalized religions’ proclamations as heresy but because the technology itself became passé. Through the same computer programs, it was revealed that any word or series of words could be plumbed from scripture and that any text, famously Mark Twain’s writings, would reveal the same ‘revelations’.

            The close relationship between religion and technoscience is deftly handled by the occult and esoteric traditions. Each new succeeding technological discovery can be grafted into a system where the arcane, esoteric, and popular technological advances can be synchronized into comprehensive systems where knowledge within a universe of corresponding macrocosm and microcosm can be absolute and where contradictions can be shelved as being illusory or imperfect understandings. Contemporary religious traditions, using Christianity as an example have shown to have more difficulty navigating the ambiguity of technoscientific progress. This can be related to a modern expression of what Davis sees as the Hephaestus mythos. Hephaestus the master craftsman has the power to create proto-cyborg women and powerful weapons but he himself is partially blinded and his limbs have become withered and crippled. With Hephaestus’ technological extension of his abilities, there is imagined a loss. Davis writes that this portrays what “both Plato and Marshall McLuhan would later insist upon: that technologies that extend our creative powers by amputating our natural ones.”[5] This myth draws a distinction of how many contemporary religious traditions feel threatened by technologies and therefore imply their transcendence and removal from its influence.

            The dynamic, complex and fluid relationship witnessed between religion and technology will continue and most likely become more intimately conflated and pronounced. As humanity continues to ask the questions of its nature and meaning, ethics, and hesitantly posits goals and teleology, the technoscientific will increasingly be involved explicitly in the questions themselves and the answers offered. If the symbol, as described by Paul Tillich has a surplus of meaning, humanity will always have not only a venturing progressive spirit, but one that will never be satisfied with concrete and absolutistic conclusions of the technoscientific. Esoteric, occult, and Hermetic traditions can serve as a guide into the future of how the spiritual strivings of individuals and cultures can positively adapt to, integrate, and give back to technoscientific advances. The esoteric traditions reveal a pattern of strong humanistic ideologies, reverence for nature, and a meta-philosophy which can find ecumenical application through the mystical complimentarity of diverse religious expression. Davis writes, “whatever social, ecological, or spiritual renewal we might hope for in the new century, it will blossom in the context of…technologies.”[6] Any investigation into religion and spirituality will have to ask hard questions of technology and vice versa. Esoteric traditions will continue to be an essential and exemplary inroad into such inquiries.

This is Henry.

As you will soon read, my friend Henry is amazing in more ways than I can count. My birthday is coming up on January 25th — for presents I’d love for you to make a small donation to the orphanage described below, even just $5. Thanks ya’ll!! Love, jj.

“For those of you who don’t know; last year I decided to ride a bicycle from Boston to Guatemala and give my time to anyone who might need an extra hand. I’m always inspired by, and find that I can both learn and teach the most working with youngsters, so volunteering at an orphanage was a natural choice. Regardless of the nominal cultural differences, kids need the same things all over the world. Love, compassion, education, food, shelter, positive role models. Here in the states, it usually goes without saying these necessities will be available, but as I’m sure you all know, it’s not a given in many other places all over the world.

Once I got to Guatemala, I was lucky enough to come across and spend six months at Casa Guatemala, an orphanage on the Rio Dulce near the Caribbean coast. During my time there, I worked as an orientador, which means living with one group of children in their home, helping with anything from homework to patching up flesh wounds, and basically just keeping them all organized so they could keep to their daily routines.

My particular group of kids consisted of 32 adolescent aged boys, half of whom had family to go home to on the weekends, the other half of whom did not. There are also younger boys in the boys home, and adolescent and young ladies in the girls home. For these children without anywhere else to go, the Casa is the only home they have; while the local teachers, workers, and volunteers from all over the world are the only family that they know. That’s why, when I was recently informed that several of the boys and girls who are graduating right now from the orphanage’s school still don’t have funding to go on to the next step, I felt a strong sense of responsibility to do whatever I can. With the proper funding, each child who has graduated sixth grade will go on to a nearby boarding school for four more years of education, complete with room and board. Without funding, the same children will be left without options, without a home, and certainly without any further education.

This message is not meant to be a sad story. In fact; quite the contrary. Most of these children are more resilient than any I’ve met here in the states, and I’m sure I’ve learned more from them than they ever could from me. For instance; one thing that could be seen every day that never ceased to amaze me was that regardless of how little each of these kids had, whenever one would earn enough to buy themselves a treat, like a bag of chips (about twelve cents and just as many chips) they would freely share them with whomever happened to be in the area. Most times, without the other kids even asking! If you’ve been around children before, you’ll know that this is no small feat! With this type of inspiring and selfless generosity in mind, I’m asking everyone I know to donate ten bucks, or more if you’re feeling jovial. I know that not everyone has much of a disposable income right now, but I also think that we could all switch the next few lattes to drip coffee and feel like a philanthropist for doing it. I was recently inspired by Barack Obama’s campaign that reaffirmed how a lot of people can come together, give just a little bit, and come through to make a big difference.

I know most folks are tightening their belts right now, but I also know that none of us will go hungry, and none of our children are going to have to worry about getting a high school education. Let’s think about all the consumerism we take part in in our privileged country and all the money we’ve recently spent on presents that will soon lose their luster. And then figure that education is something sustainable, and self-less, compassionate giving goes from hand to hand inspiring everyone it touches to be a better person.

If you would like to learn more about any of the kids, the orphanage, the yearly prices for school and what they go to, or anything else you can think of, feel free to send me an e-mail at this address [hthoreen at gmail dot com]. I’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to donate, you can go to www.paypal.com and give to hthoreen at gmail dot com (if you don’t have a paypal account they’ll prompt you to make one, no sweat, if you want to go old school I’ll send you a street address), which goes to an account that I set up specifically for the kids. Unlike many “charitable” organizations, no money will get lost on the way to the education of these children. The money will go into an account that I manage here in the states, and will then go directly into the education accounts of each respective child. I’m paying any expenses to myself, and of course, I will be donating as well. Thanks so much for reading this. I know that both myself and everyone at Casa Guatemala appreciates it. Take care, everybody, and happy holidays.

(The pictures, in order, are the Achivi brothers. Jesus cheesin’. Jose flexin’. And Miguel bootin’ the fut. They’re three of the boys without parents who will graduate this year. All three have a ton of potential in their own unique ways, and I passionately hope that they will be nurtured into realizing it).”

I think Roberto had a crush on you because he kept throwing rolls at the back of my head and they would float off into infinity.

We talked a lot about soup and you played footsie with me. Your eyes sparkled like the stars around us and a meteor flew by and messed your hair. You were like the sun and I was like the fourteenth moon of Jupiter.

It was not at all like the wet dream I had where we were swimming, or the hot and sultry dream where we were on safari. It was like nothing I had ever dreamed, or ever dreamed of dreaming.

I remember faintly the sound of you expanding into a vast nebula and I made a joke about Orion.
You looked away then and became a space donkey and Roberto mounted you with a familiarity that startled me.

I don’t believe that dreams mean anything. That is, anything more than any other message
given to me by God. So when I saw the image of your face in my morning breakfast burrito, it didn’t surprise me.

I know that I shouldn’t still be dreaming about you after all this time.
And I know that the restraining order says I really shouldn’t even be writing this to you.
But I feel so strongly about the way the dream ended that I needed to tell you.
You landed on a planet and got implanted with an alien egg that later exploded out of your chest.
And I threw Roberto into a black hole.

I don’t know what all this means. I’m no dream interpreter.
And I don’t know if my need for you is some sort of reverse Stockholm Syndrome.
I’m no criminal pathologist.

But this I do know. I’m gonna dream of you again tonight. Because I love you.
And because I’m going to drop three tabs of acid and stare at your picture for five hours before drinking myself to sleep.

JJ and Ryan

http://dreammoods.com/
http://www.sleeps.com/
http://www.nasa.gov/

Weeks ago, on a Sunday, a few friends and I wandered in the forest to spend a day basking in a sulfuric hot springs near Vancouver, CA. As you might imagine, the pleasant smell of the sulfur-laced water was reminiscent of that dream everyone has of wading through a plethoric concentration of rotten eggs, but somehow it was a pleasant experience for me. The natural warmth of mother nature contrasted sensually with her chilled air, and the putrid smells eventually became us because — as is well documented by Cambridge ass-tro-physicists — our own shit don’t stink.

Soon after we arrived a second group joined us consisting of five folks coming from a Renaissance Fair, folks who reminded me of the 80’s video game Golden Axe. They quickly and obnoxiously asserted an uncomfortable social domination over our group, spicing our conversation with shouts of non-politically-correct vulgarity. They got naked (as were most of us), drunk (a cold beer in a hot spring is delightful idea!) and overly-stoned, and then they began literally overly-stoning each other, throwing rocks at each others’ faces and ignoring us, the innocent bystanders. There was one female included in their coterie and it became apparent that an orgy would occur the moment we left. Our presence was a cockblock.

At dusk they brought out a box of 200 glow sticks which lit up the water like a radioactive lightning bug factory. The rock war turned into a glow stick war. “With the rockets green glare, the bongs bursting with THC fortified air, gave proof through the night that empty beer cans were bound to be left there.”

We made our exit as darkness made its entrance, to permit our companions privacy to relieve their blue balls (and the female equivalent) and because there seemed no time limit to their violent ballistic battles. The drunker they got and the darker it got were Oxy clear factors in rapidly declining aim. Oh yeah, and two of their guys were already making out French style.

Most of my group was dissatisfied with the day’s happenings but I was fascinated with this display of raw, timeless human nature. We are all animals, dude. Hear me roar.

By the way, what do you think of “Blue Ovaries” as the name for my autobiography?

All Spice and Periwinkle,
j.j.