https://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?56957-Cloudy-Trophies The largest classic literature discussion forum on the Internet. Read Write Teach Share. en Thu, 04 Jun 2026 15:07:04 GMT vBulletin 10 https://www.online-literature.com/forums/images/misc/rss.jpg https://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?56957-Cloudy-Trophies https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10552-My-eyes-do-decieve-me Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:53:28 GMT Can anyone understand these things? It seems so farcical – that man can be so inventive, so creative, and yet a slave to the physical self! Is it... Can anyone understand these things? It seems so farcical – that man can be so inventive, so creative, and yet a slave to the physical self! Is it perhaps because my mind so often conjures up mighty vistas of the imagination, never needing banal sight, that my eyes have wasted so? The sheer power of inherent wonderment is often enough; why then am I still so reliant on these weak orbs? Can human craft beget nothing more profound than flimsy plastic plates and tender wires to keep me truly in this world?

When, yesterday, my glasses, so long the frame of my existence, fell apart in my hands, my world vanished. Can you possibly understand it? How the world is transformed? How mind and reality blend into disharmony? We exist only outside ourselves by our senses, and when those are weakened, our self intrudes upon the world as we perceive it.

Observe! As I walk through the woods, on this most beautiful of days, such a change is wrought! The sunlight dappling through the leaves is still wondrous, but now it is tinged with uncertain danger – the blurred colours dance enigmatically, beyond comprehension, observed and yet unseen. I cannot match their subtle movements; they have escaped me. But my mind goes forth, surpassing the faulty apparatus of my sight, and the fluttering light seems to make the world whirl. Can you believe me when I say that it is intoxicating? Every spluttering shadow can hide a danger, and yet as I wander the luminescent bowers I am more alive than I have ever been. So alive that it hurts – I am losing myself, dissolving into the landscape, becoming simultaneously one and nothing!

To my left, through the dryadic trees, there is the gash of the river. My God, what words could describe it? The water is water no more; a breathless, dazzling evanescence that is both all colours and no colour. What is this world without certainties? This world where all things, external and internal, blur so easily? How can we exist as such?

The throbbing, insistent pain between my temples is all that safeguards reality. My desperate body clings to a whirling soul that every ambiguous, entrancing movement nearly draws out. Without sight, that which is ‘I’ wanders through worlds unrealised, never certain, never knowing if they be inward or outward. Pain, pain alone is within, the anchor of myself, the soul point of humanity in my light befuddled forest.

Would that you could ‘see’ my world? Ours is a precarious existence, subject to the transience of our senses. It is with conviction, and with utmost truth, that I impart this to you: these eyes of ours are doorways, going both in and out, and the inner lock is weak indeed! ]]> Lokasenna https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?10552-My-eyes-do-decieve-me https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?9020-If-not-to-heaven-then-hand-in-hand-to-hell Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:50:08 GMT A few thoughts on the debt we owe to Hell. Satan was the first democrat. In all creation, he was the first to rebel against hegemony and tyranny -... A few thoughts on the debt we owe to Hell.

Satan was the first democrat. In all creation, he was the first to rebel against hegemony and tyranny - indeed, the great hegemony! Of God Himself! The ineffable plan was exposed, a declaration in a world were disagreement and discord had never previously appeared, and Satan took it upon himself to disagree. How revolutionary - how human! Power to the masses, not just the One! The first ever example of something so important: not just discord, but creativity - the single greatest event, if only a change in the mind, in all the history of existence.

But how can this be so? Angels have no free will - Satan specifically rebelled because we mere humans were to possess it! I suggest that free will played no part in it, but was rather a mistake of God. This universe is governed by an absolute law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction; God has bound Himself - limited Himself - to a universe that requires an opposite for Him. As the sole embodiment of all-powerful benevolence, of necessity, there must be an equal and opposite power for malevolence.

Satan's choice, then, was illusionary. His rebellion was the product of a universal imperative that is born of God, and yet which contains God. Free will is not about acknowledging a choice, but allowing chaos to dictate that choice - to ignore the choice! The stimuli and consequences of the universe will always dictate the most fitting end to a choice - but we can ignore them! Show me the child, our essential self, that would not sacrifice half the world, all the world to save its mother! Our freedom is in the denial of rationality.

It is this denial that makes us such interesting creatures. Our creativity comes from our free will, and that comes from chaos. Heaven is perfection, and perfection, by its very definition is unchanging and eternal - creativity cannot add to perfection, for creativity is about changing the world, even in a minute way. Hell is torment, and chaos, and, most importantly, energy. The fuel of creativity is discord - without Hell, mankind could never have advanced. Hell can truly be said to hold "the mirror up to nature." The creative genius sees himself in Hell, the fantasy of it all! - and he creates!

Satan, because of his faults, was the first artist - genius! As creatures, as products of this world, we far more resemble him than our creator! ]]> Lokasenna https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?9020-If-not-to-heaven-then-hand-in-hand-to-hell https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?8067-What-the-hand-dare-seize-the-fire Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:27:06 GMT Out, out, brief candle! Ah yes, the flickering flame, such a symbol of ourselves, and of our world. Almost every religion attributes some symbolic... Out, out, brief candle!

Ah yes, the flickering flame, such a symbol of ourselves, and of our world. Almost every religion attributes some symbolic meaning to this item, representing some form of synergy with a higher power to our mutual improvement - bringing, as it were, illumination to our personal darkness.

But is it an accurate representation of our situation? Is our existence, our personal reality, a flame? A single burst of energy in an otherwise eternal darkness? A candle in darkness illuminates only itself, and once extinguished is entirely forgotten. Is not that supremely sad? That all we see is ourselves, and that in the seeing we slowly reduce ourselves until we are nothing - consumed by the eternal night.

Yet what is that single twist of smoke that issues from the doomed candle? I, like Wordsworth, believe that something greater precedes us - the flame is our pre-life, and that which we call life is in reality our death-throes. For like the smoke, we move with a transient violence that soon defeats itself - surely a more fitting image than the steady flame?

But do we end? No! We become something more, something infinite - one with the darkness! The flame of pre-life is individuality, and the process is not one of self-destruction, but rather a progression from one of many to one being alone - a true realisation of Moksha? One with the night, beautiful and mysterious, and ever around us!

But, a candle can be relit..? ]]> Lokasenna https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?8067-What-the-hand-dare-seize-the-fire https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7870-Cause-Célèbre Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:51:24 GMT With Madonna attempting to use her 'fame' to adopt yet another African child, and being aghast at the media coverage of this event, its time I climbed on to my soapbox once more, and have a rant about modern celebrity culture:

'Celebrity' is such an odious term, and a repellent idea, at least in its modern application. Everywhere I walk, its soulless stink surrounds me. All men are not equal - this I freely acknowledge - but the distinction is not a meritocratic one. Rather, it is arbitrary and demeaning. And what has caused this recent effusion of that prize oxymoron, celebrity culture? - I tell you it is godlessness!

In this "enlightened" age, science seeks to destroy God's mystery. Do they not realise the harm they do? That which is infinite and incomprehensible is a source of wonderment simply because it is so distant - the sublime majesty of the unknown is, by definition, destroyed if we understand it. There is indeed knowledge which makes us poorer by the possessing of it. Now that we live in a secular world, in which God is dead in the minds of so many people, we feel His loss. Man requires, in his essential nature, a God-image - and in his arrogance has cast it away! Devoid of a higher power, man has taken the final, inevitable, tragic step - man has raised himself to godhood, an idol in his own sight.

Far too many people, pargons of unthinking mindlessness, worship celebrities; they read about them on a daily basis, watch them constantly on television - laughably seeking to explore the heart of the mystery! How comic, how tragic - a shallow religion for a shallow age! And what are these celebrities, this pantheon of the new divinity? Their chief characteristic is blandness, and their only talent seems to be a distinct lack of that quality - theirs is a cult of mediocrity. Flawed people (as all people are flawed) praise, worship the flaws in others, in the sad hope that their own flaws shall come to be similarly extolled. This is an inverse religion indeed! To strive, not for divine perfection, but for wanton imperfection; to worsen, rather than to better, oneself. Indeed, it is something only human arrogance could truly manage - not to raise ourselves to godhood, but to drag godhood down to our level - rather than changing his essential nature, man strives to overturn the order of the universe itself.

Nietzsche was right - God is dead! And His corpse, ignobly, has become a wretched trophy in our halls - we have killed God, we are His assassins, and must not we become His equal to be worthy of such a title? ]]> Lokasenna https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7870-Cause-Célèbre https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7840-We-Humans Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:40:01 GMT What are we? We humans! Elements and chemicals, atoms and molecules that move in such wondrous concert, such harmony. Yet my clothes move in concert... What are we? We humans! Elements and chemicals, atoms and molecules that move in such wondrous concert, such harmony. Yet my clothes move in concert with me - are they not me? There is no special property that differentiates the molecules in my skin from those in my shirt - yet I feel no pain if my shirt is torn. What are those molecules to me? We are such closeted ideas, so entirely cut off from the world around us, and yet we think we see! The irony! How do we justify calling ourselves alive, when we are dead to so much of the world.

DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid - a simple molecule that somehow defines us? Are we so basic? What a piece of work is a man! Aye, a quintessence of dust indeed! Dust! Chemically we are just dust. Yet - a definite self! An existence in dust.

We are simultaneously the most realised and unrealised objects. We impact so much upon this world, yet live so little in it. How much can we say this is our world? Our span in it is brief, and do we really ever truly experience it? Oh, to truly feel the pain of simply existing would be marvellous!

There is, however, I believe, abundant recompense. Ours is a unique existence, for we have that capacity to expand beyond our limits. I am convinced that true humans, who enjoy their existence rather than ignore it, extend beautifully into worlds unrealised. Existence - the harmony of movement in all worlds, and no world. The true music of the universe! ]]> Lokasenna https://www.online-literature.com/forums/entry.php?7840-We-Humans