"By a certain light, this is the first time that the British director’s vision will be seen properly."

"The restoration contains censored moments once thought lost, like frenzied, naked nuns writhing sexually on a giant crucifix or a Mother Superior (Vanessa Redgrave) making love to a phallic bone fragment.... The uproar makes sense in context. 'When people saw the film, because Ken’s imagery is so visceral, they were shocked by it,'  said the critic Mark Kermode, who befriended Russell in the 1990s and was instrumental in finding the lost footage and reintegrating it into the director’s cut.... Yet Russell, who died in 2011 at 84, was adapting a respected 1952 nonfiction book, 'The Devils of Loudun' by Aldous Huxley, and a stage version by John Whiting that followed in 1961. The plot centers on a Roman Catholic priest, Urbain Grandier (Reed), who unabashedly pursues sexual relationships with women, but also presides over the walled city of Loudun as a sort of secular stronghold where Catholics and Protestants live together peaceably."

From "In 1971, This Film Was a Scandal. In 2026, It’s a Respected Period Piece. 'Ken Russell’s The Devils' was deemed shocking for scenes with orgiastic nuns and a debauched priest. But its serious aims are clear in a new restoration" (NYT).

I can't remember how I was ever able to see this film, but I did see it, I believe in the 70s, and for many years I'd always include it on my very short list of favorite films — along with "Aguirre the Wrath of God" and "My Dinner With Andre." Clearly, I had a taste for a certain sort of male character! I have no idea how this film would strike me today. But I think it would resonate with present-day themes: a strong political man ruined over his sexual acting out and women who lose their rationality when overexcited by sex and politics.

As Kermode puts it: "It is really a brilliantly serious, heartfelt story about brainwashing, about the politicization of religion, about the use of hysteria."

Speaking of naked writhing and early 70s films the critics panned, I got through "Zabriskie Point" the other day. Not good. Seems to say if only you can be young, beautiful, and naked — and kick up a big cloud of white dust while having intercourse in a barren landscape — you can save the world. I was worried about the dust — borax?!— and the damage to the landscape — Death Valley  and I couldn't even believe those 2 crazy lovers could enjoy their gritty play. We're supposed to think they do because the camera pulls back and shows the landscape full of naked couples simulating sex. Who are they? Where did they come from? Answer: This is art. They're an idea.

"Zale Parry... [an] underwater stuntwoman whose reverence for the oceanic world was deepened by tripping out on LSD in a research study that included Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper..."

"... died on July 20 at her home in Tillamook, Ore. She was 93.... [She] doubl[ed] for Sophia Loren in the 1957 film 'Boy on a Dolphin' and co-starr[ed] with Lloyd Bridges on the television show 'Sea Hunt.'"

I'm reading "Zale Parry, Aquatic Hollywood Star and Early Acid Tripper, Dies at 93/A diving feat landed her on the cover of Sports Illustrated and led to a film and TV career. She also took part in one of the first LSD studies" (NYT gift link).

"Girl skin diver" — I like that old-time locution. 

Onto the LSD part of the magnificent lady's story. 

Trump says he thinks that Biden withdrew because he was "threatened... violently."

From the Theo Von podcast embedded in the previous post — at 44:31. Von asked about what pushed Biden to let go of the nomination he had won in the primaries. Trump said:

"I know what happened, and you're not supposed to do that. It's not supposed to be probably constitutional. She got no votes. He got 14 million votes. All of a sudden they're telling him to get out. or they threatened him. And he is an angry person."

Von breaks in to ask, "But who are 'they'?" and Trump responds:  

"Well, I would say Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party, yeah — and they did, they threatened him violently, I think. And he didn't want to get out. Remember he said only God will get me out — right? Only God... Yeah, and what happened is they went to him, and they said — this was after the debate — now, if he didn't have the debate he would still be running...."

What violence is Trump talking about?  

Haven't I looked into the word "violence" before? Yes, I did the OED routine back in 2019 when Elizabeth Warren introduced the term "traffic violence":

To what extent does "violence" mean that the damaging action was intentional? The first definition is, as expected, "The deliberate exercise of physical force..."

But then there's "Great strength or power of a natural force or physical action" — for example, a storm or an earthquake. There's no mind deliberating there (though maybe there's an implication of human will and the usage is metaphorical, such as when corny writers tell you the sea was "angry").

"Violence" is also "Great intensity or severity, esp. of something destructive or undesirable. Example: " Mrs. Viveash had been reduced, by the violence of her headache, to coming home..for a rest." (That's Aldous Huxley.)

Similarly, there's "Vehemence or intensity of emotion, behaviour, or language; extreme fervour; passion." Example, from Shakespeare, "Marke me, with what violence she first lou'd the Moore." But now we've got the human mind in play again. I don't think what's being called "traffic violence" is any intensity in the traffic, just accidents, by people who didn't mean to do that (if we set aside the very tiny proportion of car damage done by an evildoer deliberately running somebody down).

"Violence" is also used to refer to restrictions imposed on nature, as in "He was obliged to attend near a Quarter of an Hour, though with great Violence to his natural Impetuosity, before he was suffered to speak" (Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones" (1749)).

And then there's the "Improper treatment or use of a word or text; misinterpretation; misapplication; alteration of meaning or intention." Again, from "Tom Jones": "A Passion which might, without any great Violence to the Word, be called Love."

Back then, the issue was the lack of intentionality in car accidents. Pressuring Biden to drop out was completely intentional, so the issue here is whether "violently" connotes physically injuring him. I find it very hard to believe anyone threatened to physically injure him, but perhaps it's not so hard to believe that Trump thinks that or that Trump would lie and say that he thinks that. 

But let's look at the fact that Trump did say that he thinks Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party — threatened Biden violently.

Now, maybe the word "violently" was used in a different sense that doesn't involve physical injury, that aligns with the OED's definition of "violence" in terms of great intensity, severity, vehemence, fervor, and passion. Maybe Trump just meant to say They threatened him very strongly. Then his use of "violently" may be easy to accept... depending on what the meaning of "threatened" is.

Of course, Trump has been accused of inciting violence on January 6, 2021. That word looms large in his subjective experience of persecution. So I don't think he uses it lightly. I think he feels mistreated in these accusations of violence. Perhaps he thinks: If they're going to use that word wildly as they come for me, I'm using it against them. Very strongly.

"So we’re left with a two-bit case that has devolved into dirty bits, filled with salacious details...."

"Trump came across as a loser in her account — a narcissist, cheater, sad Hugh Hefner wannabe, trading his satin pajamas for a dress shirt and trousers (and, later, boxers) as soon as Stormy mocked him. The man who was the likely source of the 'Best Sex I Ever Had' tabloid headline, attributed to Marla Maples at the time, no doubt loathes Stormy for having described their batrachian grappling, as Aldous Huxley called sex, as 'textbook generic.' Like a legal dominatrix, Stormy continued to emasculate the former president after her testimony, tweeting: 'Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court. Oh … wait. Nevermind.' The compelling part of this case is not whether Trump did something wrong with business papers. The compelling part is how it shows, in a vivid way, that he’s the wrong man for the job."

Writes Maureen Dowd in her new column "Donnie After Dark" (NYT).

1. Dowd seems to approve of using the criminal process not for its proper purpose — to enforce specific written law — but to expose and humiliate one's political enemy. Let's look at him in his underwear and sneer at his sexual fumblings, as described by someone who openly hates him — please, emasculate him! — and let's laugh.

2. It's so exciting — sexually and politically — that she doesn't see the downside. The aggressive desire to humiliate and crush him makes him sympathetic and makes you look like a bully. 

3. I'm imagining the jurors talking about this testimony and trying to connect it to the elements of the crime — assuming they can get their mind around what this crime even is. In my vision, they say: What was that Stormy Daniels testimony even about? Why did we have to know what material his pajamas were made out of? Satin! A shiny fabric. Waved about... to distract us.

4. "Batrachian" — it means "Of or pertaining to the Batrachia, esp. frogs and toads" (OED). It wasn't Daniels's adjective. Dowd got it from and credited Aldous Huxley. I found the relevant passage, in his "Point Counterpoint":

‘But what has love to do with it?’ asked Slipe. ‘In Beatrice’s case.’

‘A great deal,’ Willie Weaver broke in. ‘Everything. These superannuated virgins—always the most passionate.’

‘But she’s never had a love affair in her life.’

‘Hence the violence,’ concluded Willie triumphantly. ‘Beatrice has a n*gger sitting on the safety valve. And my wife assures me that her underclothes are positively Phrynean. That’s most sinister.’

‘Perhaps she likes being well dressed,’ suggested Lucy.

Willie Weaver shook his head. The hypothesis was too simple.

‘That woman’s unconscious as a black hole.’ Willie hesitated a moment. ‘Full of batrachian grapplings in the dark,’ he concluded and modestly coughed to commemorate his achievement.

"Douthat is highly skilled at addressing liberal Times readers in a manner that makes clear he is not one of them, without allowing them to think..."

"... that he actually holds views—about Donald Trump, say, or the importance of vaccines—that would render him beyond the pale...."

Writes Isaac Chotiner in "Ross Douthat’s Theories of Persuasion/At a time of distrust and polarization, the conservative Times columnist seeks to bridge the worlds of the Christian right and the secular left" (The New Yorker).

That last post — about warning Trump not to use the criminal trial to prove the 2020 election was stolen — got me exploring the general subject of warnings...

... exploring with a robot.

Me: "What are some examples in literature of a person being told not to go somewhere, as if it would be dangerous, when in fact it would be beneficial to that person to do what he is being warned against? "

ChatGPT:

"Kramer’s old uniform—camp-collar shirts in colorfully printed silk or rayon, sack pants that pull up a little short at the ankle to reveal white socks, clunky-soled shoes, a thin gold chain..."

"... is new again. This summer, the stylish young men I’ve seen around New York have continued their rejection of the once-inescapable skinny pants and check shirts in favor of something a little looser and decidedly more louche."

Writes Amanda Mull in "It Was Only a Matter of Time Before Everyone Started Dressing Like Kramer/It’s the summer of Kramercore" (The Atlantic).

"Years of stretch fabrics that really needed the stretch have given way to breezy textiles and retro short-sleeved knits with a natural slouch, idiosyncratic prints, a lot more color, and maybe a little bit of embroidery. There are fewer sneakers and more loafers. And then there are all those camp collars.... Tired of the sameness and omnipresence of new clothes and nostalgic for a past that many of them don’t remember, young people have plunged themselves into thrifting and vintage resale, hunting for weird or interesting things from the ’90s and early 2000s."

"I'll madly live the poems I shall never write."

It's too complicated to explain how I arrived here, but I encountered this cool poem by Aldous Huxley:

Complaint of a Poet Manqué

We judge by appearance merely:

If I can't think strangely, I can at least look queerly.

So I grew the hair so long on my head

That my mother wouldn't know me,

Till a woman in a night-club said,

As I was passing by,

"Hullo, here comes Salome ..."

I looked in the dirty gilt-edged glass,

And, oh Salome; there I was—

Positively jewelled, half a vampire,

With the soul in my eyes hanging dizzily

Like the gatherer of proverbial samphire

Over the brink of the crag of sense,

Looking down from perilous eminence 

Into a gulf of windy night.

And there's straw in my tempestuous hair,

And I'm not a poet: but never despair!

I'll madly live the poems I shall never write.

"A long time ago, I munched on a few handfuls of fetid mushrooms and brought on personal crises of my own design."

"There weren’t many bright colors, but some theretofore unnoticed textural quirks—on clothes, on faces—went wild with deep, scrutinizing, photographic detail. For many hours after those visual effects had faded, I haunted the hallways of my mind, regretting how many memories I’d retained and neuroses I’d cultivated. Mostly, I regretted eating the things at all. Nothing happened that I’d want to put onstage; certainly, nobody sang.... The closest 'Flying Over Sunset' gets to true surreality is when Cary [Grant], a guy with mommy issues who is consumed with masculinity and its meanings, dons a body stocking and a cap and flails around, having become a facsimile of the phallus that possesses so much of his thought and his posture.... The play is based on a groovy idea, but it indulges in the myth that... drugs alone... make for interest."

Writes Vinson Cunningham in "The Bad Trip of 'Flying Over Sunset'/James Lapine’s new musical, at the Vivian Beaumont, sets the LSD hallucinations of three nineteen-fifties celebrities to song" (The New Yorker).

Possibly the most famous quote with the word "calamari" in it got uttered at the Democratic Party convention last night.

"The calamari comeback state of Rhode Island casts 1 vote for Bernie Sanders and 34 votes for the next President Joe Biden."

The "Calamari comeback state" of Rhode Island caught viewers' attention during its turn on the #DemConvention roll call across America 🐙🇺🇸 https://t.co/6tjma19Dq4 pic.twitter.com/4jp0thiAir

— Bloomberg (@business) August 19, 2020

I mean, really, is there any competition? I found "Top 12 Quotes About Calamari." It includes one by Scott Adams: "If you think it's easy to write jokes about fried calamari, you've probably never tried."

I don't trust this list, though, because it includes, as #10: "I want to be a poet, from head to toe, living and dying by poetry" — by Federico Garcia Lorca. Maybe if you're a poet — from head to toe (from fin to tentacle) — you can visualize how that's about calamari.

If we extend our tentacles into "squid" quotes, we've got Aldous Huxley:

The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace,
The prurient ape's defiling touch:
And do you like the human race?
No, not much.

There's also this insight from Marlon Brando: "The most repulsive thing you could ever imagine is the inside of a camel's mouth. That and watching a girl eat octopus or squid."

And here's something Clare Boothe Luce said about the Democratic Party: "Its leaders are always troubadours of trouble; crooners of catastrophe ... A Democratic President is doomed to proceed to his goals like a squid, squirting darkness all about him."

"I'm happiness blogging today. Nothing interested me in the news. It's a good move to make when nothing in the news is interesting."

"I stumbled into a strategy, that is. I thought I'd just put up a quote from this book I was reading — Robert Louis Stevenson, An Apology for Idlers — and the quote was about happiness, so I started casting about for happiness items. Happily, there was no end to bloggable things."

That's something I wrote on March 16, 2012 — Facebook just reminded me. I loved getting that prod, as I engage in a higher level of seclusion this morning...



There's so much anxiety mixed with boredom these days that I thought I'd take you back to that happiness day, 8 years ago:

1. "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy" — the post title is a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson. Much more to that quote at the link. I'll just add: "[I]f a person cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle he should remain. It is a revolutionary precept... and within practical limits, it is one of the most incontestable truths in the whole Body of Morality."

2. "And... that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny" — a quote from The Director in "Brave New World."

3. "I have told myself a hundred times that I would be happy if I were as stupid as my neighbor, and yet I would want no part of that kind of happiness. But yet, upon reflection, it seems that to prefer reason to happiness is to be quite insane" — said "The Good Brahmin" in the story by Voltaire.

4. "I broke my theme. Something made me laugh"/"Then you didn't break your theme. Something made you laugh. Something made you happy. Something made you smile." A real-life colloquy. The first commenter didn't understand that post, and, funnily enough, I don't either now. Oh, I think it was maybe the next post: The headline, in Forbes, "Santorum Promises Broad War on Porn," which required me to blog about the double entendre ("broad war"). That was good for laughing, but not really about happiness.

5. "'5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won't)'/You already know what they are going to be, don't you? It's interesting to be able to think something while simultaneously knowing the opposite."

6. "Happiness is more like knowledge than like belief. There are lots of things we believe but don’t know. Knowledge is not just up to you, it requires the cooperation of the world beyond you — you might be mistaken. Still, even if you’re mistaken, you believe what you believe. Pleasure is like belief that way. But happiness isn’t just up to you. It also requires the cooperation of the world beyond you. Happiness, like knowledge, and unlike belief and pleasure, is not a state of mind" — a quote from the David Sosa, whose field is philosophy.

7. "A large Gallup poll has found that by almost any measure, people get happier as they get older..." — a survey from 2008. We are all only ever getting older, but the phenomenon doesn't kick in until age 50. After that, it gets better and better.

8. "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.... By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men...."

9. "Romney's Religion of Happiness vs. Gingrich's Religion of Grievance" — a Sarah Posner headline at Religion Dispatches. I'm happy that I don't have to bother with the feelings of Romney and Gingrich anymore.

10. A post about my favorite Beatles song, "Happiness Is a Warm Gun."

11. I also don't have to think too much about Rick Santorum, but back then, he said: “This is the mantra of the left: I have a right to do what I want to do” and “We have a whole culture that is focused on immediate gratification and the pursuit of happiness ... and it is harming America.” He took the position that the Founders idea of "the pursuit of happiness" was “to do the morally right thing.”

12. "The Happiness Bank."

13. The acronym PERMA represents the 5 components of happiness.

14. "Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful?"
"Years ago, when I was researching an article on research into stress, one social scientist passed on a simple tip: 'At some point every day, you have to say, "No more work."' No matter how many tasks remain undone, you have to relax at some point and enjoy the evening."

15. "Happy people rarely correct their faults... they consider themselves vindicated, since fortune endorses their evil ways" — wrote Le Duc de La Rochefoucauld.

It's like end "gun violence" — "It's time to #EndTrafficViolence" sounds like you want to take our cars.

Traffic violence kills thousands and injures even more Americans every year. On World Day of Remembrance for Traffic Crash Victims, I'm sending my love to the families and friends of those who have lost loved ones. It's time to #EndTrafficViolence.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 17, 2019

ADDED: This got me looking up the word "violence" in the OED. To what extent does "violence" mean that the damaging action was intentional? The first definition is, as expected, "The deliberate exercise of physical force..."

But then there's "Great strength or power of a natural force or physical action" — for example, a storm or an earthquake. There's no mind deliberating there (though maybe there's an implication of human will and the usage is metaphorical, such as when corny writers tell you the sea was "angry").

"Violence" is also "Great intensity or severity, esp. of something destructive or undesirable. Example: " Mrs. Viveash had been reduced, by the violence of her headache, to coming home..for a rest." (That's Aldous Huxley.)

Similarly, there's "Vehemence or intensity of emotion, behaviour, or language; extreme fervour; passion." Example, from Shakespeare, "Marke me, with what violence she first lou'd the Moore." But now we've got the human mind in play again. I don't think what's being called "traffic violence" is any intensity in the traffic, just accidents, by people who didn't mean to do that (if we set aside the very tiny proportion of car damage done by an evildoer deliberately running somebody down).

"Violence" is also used to refer to restrictions imposed on nature, as in "He was obliged to attend near a Quarter of an Hour, though with great Violence to his natural Impetuosity, before he was suffered to speak" (Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones" (1749)).

And then there's the "Improper treatment or use of a word or text; misinterpretation; misapplication; alteration of meaning or intention." Again, from "Tom Jones": "A Passion which might, without any great Violence to the Word, be called Love."

But the real question here is whether we like the term "traffic violence." Does it do what its users want it to do? Of course, we're all against the harm done by cars, but most of us like our cars and want to use them for our good purposes.

"I don't think there are any sinister persons deliberately trying to rob people of their freedom" — in the United States — but there are "a number of impersonal forces..."

Mike Wallace interviews Aldous Huxley:

The news is nicely boring this morning, isn't it?

That's nothing to complain about. I like boring.

Just yesterday, I was thinking again of a quote I'd blogged a couple months ago: "People soon get tired of things that aren’t boring, but not of what is boring."

I think that was because Meade sent me this quote from Aldous Huxley: "Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure."

It makes me think of the idea that in China, the curse is "May you live in interesting times." Here's the Wikipedia article on the subject:

Despite being so common in English as to be known as the "Chinese curse," the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced.... The nearest related Chinese expression is 寧為太平犬，莫做亂離人; nìng wéi tàipíng quǎn, mò zuò luàn lí rén; which is usually translated as "Better to be a dog in a peaceful time, than to be a human in a chaotic (warring) period."...

The basic premise of the curse may also be found in a quote by the German philosopher Hegel: “World history is not the ground of happiness. The periods of happiness are empty pages in her.”...

Research by philologist Garson O'Toole shows a probable origin in the mind of Austen Chamberlain's father Joseph Chamberlain dating around the late-19th and early 20th centuries. Specifically, O'Toole cites the following statement Joseph made during a speech in 1898: “I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. (Hear, hear.) I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety. (Hear, hear.) [emphasis added]”

From this it is likely that the Chamberlain family may have inadvertently transmitted a folk etymology by expanding Joseph Chamberlain's use of the concept to refer to some Chinese curse.

"Today who believes anything in the WaPo or NYT?"

Said David Begley in the comments to "The Washington Post spoke to seven scholars of the eugenics movement; all of them said that Thomas’s use of this history was deeply flawed."

I spend most of my news-reading time on WaPo and the NYT because they're better, and the alternatives are worse. I've defended my practice many times. I'm so often challenged by readers when I engage with the text of these MSM outlets. They ask why I'm still reading that, and my answer has always been that it's the best there is. Readers prod me to read The Daily Caller and Breitbart, but my view has been that stuff is too trashy. I can't stand it, and I'm not interested in writing about it.

But this morning the issue strikes me in a different way because yesterday I encountered the opinion, "You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad." I wrote:

[The] idea seems to be that there's a special harm in exposing yourself to things that are only somewhat good. Better to read outwardly trashy things than trash that has been inflated. And then there's also the idea that those who inflate trash are dead.

It was Gertrude Stein (as presented by Hemingway) who said "You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad." And she characterized Aldous Huxley as "dead" because his writings were not truly good but trash "inflated" to seem somewhat good. ("Why do you read this trash? It is inflated trash, Hemingway. By a dead man.") So I'm thinking about that.

Maybe the worst thing to read is something that's dressed up to seem as though it's not trash. Maybe it is better to read The Daily Caller and Breitbart... and Slate and Vox or whatever. Read the frankly bad.

Ah, but I don't need to protect myself like that. I hope you're reading me because you think I'm "truly good," and I pursue true goodness by reading the somewhat good things for you. I'm choosing to expose myself to the deleterious, inflated trash. I'll approach the corpse. Gertrude Stein still talked about the "dead" man who inflated trash. That's all I'm doing, talking about the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Bonus debate issue: Trump's tweets are frankly bad, and that's why it's good to want to read them.

Second bonus debate issue: If there's one thing that deserves to be viewed as deleterious, inflated trash, it's judicial opinions. (I am a professor emerita, having spent too many years palpating that corpse.)

"You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad."

Said Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway, quoted in "A Moveable Feast," which I'm reading after someone (who?) mentioned it in the comments recently. Here's the larger context, all of which I really liked:

I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

To keep my mind off writing sometimes after I had worked I would read writers who were writing then, such as Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence or any who had books published that I could get from Sylvia Beach’s library or find along the quais.

“Huxley is a dead man,” Miss Stein said. “Why do you want to read a dead man? Can’t you see he is dead?”

I could not see, then, that he was a dead man and I said that his books amused me and kept me from thinking.

Aldous Huxley was not actually dead at the time. Huxley had the distinction of dying on the same day JFK was assassinated. Hemingway, who died in 1961, did not live one single day when Huxley was not also alive.

“You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.”

“I’ve been reading truly good books all winter and all last winter and I’ll read them next winter, and I don’t like frankly bad books.”

“Why do you read this trash? It is inflated trash, Hemingway. By a dead man.”

Stein's idea seems to be that there's a special harm in exposing yourself to things that are only somewhat good. Better to read outwardly trashy things than trash that has been inflated. And then there's also the idea that those who inflate trash are dead.

"When something is threatened to be taken away, people start to rally around it."

Even the people who didn't want it in the first place.

"These Americans Hated the Health Law. Until the Idea of Repeal Sank In" (NYT).

This can't be a surprise to anyone, and it's also not a surprise the Republicans have no idea what to do next. That's why Obamacare had to be stopped before it started, so people didn't become reliant on whatever it was, even though it was never good enough. But it wasn't stopped. So what are Republicans going to do? The only hope, it seems, is for them to fall short of having enough power to do anything.

"It’s very, very scary to think about not having health insurance. If the condition doesn’t kill you, the stress of having it does, in this country. The fact that people do without health insurance is a sin, in my opinion," says one woman, quoted in the NYT article.

But think what it's like for the Republicans. The stress of having political power is killing them. One way back to health is to fracture into parts that can get back to playing from the comfortable minority position.

Remember the old affirmation: I’m so glad I’m a Beta... I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta...

"Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments..."

"... is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul. Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory—all these have served, in H. G. Wells’s phrase, as Doors in the Wall. And for private, for everyday use there have always been chemical intoxicants. All the vegetable sedatives and narcotics, all the euphorics that grow on trees, the hallucinogens that ripen in berries or can be squeezed from roots—all, without exception, have been known and systematically used by human beings from time immemorial. And to these natural modifiers of consciousness modern science has added its quota of synthetics—chloral, for example, and benzedrine, the bromides and the barbiturates. Most of these modifiers of consciousness cannot now be taken except under doctor’s orders, or else illegally and at considerable risk. For unrestricted use the West has permitted only alcohol and tobacco. All the other chemical Doors in the Wall are labeled Dope, and their unauthorized takers are Fiends."

Aldous Huxley, "The Doors of Perception." I'm thinking about that book this morning because, in a dream last night, I asked someone if she'd ever read that book and she said no, and I decided — extravagantly — that no one reads books anymore and no one talks about books. When you think of the title to Huxley's book — if you ever do — you remember — if you can remember — the epigraph that begins the book: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." That's from William Blake. Read it in context here. But there's also the H.G. Wells, which you can read in full at the first link.

"[T]ake what’s happening now and imagine what would happen if it kept on happening. That’s what satirists do."

"Jonathan Swift saw that the English were treating the Irish as animals; what if they took the next natural step and ate their babies? Orwell, with less humor, imagined what would happen if life in Britain remained, for forty years, at the depressed level of the BBC cafeteria as it was in 1948, and added some Stalinist accessories. Huxley, in 'Brave New World,' took the logic of a hedonistic and scientific society to its farthest outcome, a place where pleasure would be all and passion unknown...."

Writes Adam Gopnik (dealing mostly with Michel Houellebecq’s "Soumission," a satire about Muslims getting elected in France and imposing Sharia law, with the collaboration of the French élite).

Like most satirists worth reading, Houellebecq is a conservative. “I show the disasters produced by the liberalization of values,” he has said. Satire depends on comparing the crazy place we’re going to with the implicitly sane place we left behind. That’s why satirists are often nostalgists, like Tom Wolfe, who longs for the wild and crazy American past, or Evelyn Waugh, with his ascendant American vulgarians and his idealized lost Catholic aristocracy....

But...

The next thing is just never likely to be the same thing. The fun of satire is to think what would happen if nothing happens to stop what is happening. But that’s not what happens.

"The fact that under the influence of psilocybin the brain temporarily behaves in a new way may be medically significant in treating psychological disorders like depression."

"'When suffering depression, people get stuck in a spiral of negative thoughts and cannot get out of it,' Dr. Expert said. 'One can imagine that breaking any pattern that prevents a "proper" functioning of the brain can be helpful.' Think of it as tripping a breaker or rebooting your computer."

"Dr. Expert." I love that. The doctor really is Dr. Expert — Dr. Paul Expert. I have no idea how fascinating that would seem if I were high on psilocybin — or should I say breaking a cerebral circuit or rebooting my brain with psilocybin? But I do find that amusing. Dr. Paul Expert! How to trip/medicate like Paul Expert....

Must we be depressed to deserve the brain benefits of psilocybin?

Anecdotally, psychoactive mushrooms may positively affect even nonsufferers. They did for me. 

"Me" = Eugenia Bone, author of "Mycophilia: Revelations From the Weird World of Mushrooms." These names! I feel like I'm reading a work of fiction... a work of fiction possibly titled Dr. Expert and Ms. Eugenia Bone.

I ate the mushroom as part of research for a book. The experience lasted about four hours, much of which I spent outdoors, but seemed to last much longer. I think because everything I was seeing was so new: the way the air was disturbed behind the flight of a bee, the way the trees seemed to respire, how the clouds and breeze and rocks and grass all existed in a kind of churning symbiosis.

I experienced a number of small epiphanies — self-realizations actually — but one in particular remained with me. As the drug wore off, I went indoors to take a hot bath. For a moment I thought that might not be a good idea, as bath time is when women in middle age can be very self-critical and unforgiving, and I didn’t want the sight of my waistline to veer me into a bad trip. But while in the tub I envisioned my body as a ship that was taking me through life, and that made it beautiful.

Makes me think of the old George Harrison lyric: "I got born into the material world/Getting worn out in the material world/Use my body like a car/Taking me both near and far..."



I hope you watched that, because it was very trippy, and it might have rebooted your brain in a way that could enhance your experience as as we bring this post in for a landing and get close to Ms. Bone:

I stopped feeling guilty about growing older and regretful about losing my looks. Instead, I felt overwhelming gratitude. It was a tremendous relief that I still feel.

Ah, now, I hope the looming access to psilocybin is not limited to those who can name the right psychological ailment, so that women with body dysmorphia get access, slipping in through the door along with the depressed. That would be depressing. But look how fast the middle-aged woman who feels bad about her naked body jumps from wanting access for herself to the urge to control the young and the festive:

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting 16-year-olds take magic mushrooms. I’m not suggesting they be used to party at all. What I am advocating for is a mind open to the possibilities of their use to help people in need. Because illiberality doesn’t cure disease; curiosity does.

If you want relief from government control, you have to embody the persona of the victim. You must belong to the ranks of the "people in need." Your desire to tweak and tamper with your brain medicinally must be a matter of disease. You must portray yourself as down and trying to get to normal, not normal and seeking a higher ground.

From the Spiritual Sky/Such sweet memories have I....