Lust being perhaps as far as the Purist can conceive of it — an insane attribution to a sane impulse.
The miasma of traditional taboo rising to the brain at the onset of desire — the complement of shame imposed on the right to realisation — a mental congestion that obfuscates the directitude of virility.
lo
But may there not be some perspicacity in this presentation of an abandonment of the reasoning self to a swollen eroticism?
mi
It is the paradox of morality that the only human passion that has been tabooed is the amatory passion. The sole passion that is not destruction — the only passion that can do no harm to anybody — the only passion that can disseminate comfort and consolatory relationship—
The law of the world moralist actually is—
Thou mayest kill — wholesale
But thou shalt not enjoy
One would think that suffering sold easier — that there was a greater profit to be culled from pain — that the moral merchant-combine should so consistently endeavour to withhold rapture from the market—
THE OIL IN THE MACHINE
Hear the evangel of the new era—
The machine has no inhibitions
Man invented the machine in order to discover himself
Yet I have heard a lady say, “Il fait l’amour comme une machine à coudre,” with no inflection of approval.
It is the oil in the machine to which the mystics referred as the Holy Dove
We spasimal engineers
Whose every re- act — ion of grace is an explosion in consciousness.
TUNING IN ON THE ATOM BOMB
Serene, amid scintillas of sunlight gilding our narrow garden, writing of the danger induced by extracting force from Power, suddenly, seismically was I overcome by an eccentric sense of guilt; as though speared by an echo of some forgotten wisdom sunken in ancient time, forbidding all revelation of some perilous secret.
Excentric guilt! I did not know the secret.
A causeless accusation as if of defying some unknown taboo detonated in my brain, a shattering terror of the limited incarcerated within the illimitable—
Longing to regain serenity I struggle to regain serenity, to refocus a tremulous perception, to recapture my easeful surroundings — to see “Nature” as before my inexplicable shock? explosion blast? despite a dawning premonition it might no longer prove to be enjoyable
Indeed, the lively foliage of the garden had concentrated to a mirage of but one branch, bronzed by some unnatural blast, a mummied relic of previous appearance to arraign me as dupe of molecular pretence to forms of reality.
I faced a glaucous continuity of evacuated space, a universe constructed of intangibles crushed one upon another like endless proportionless strata of inexistent glass, reflecting nothing (néant).
Nonentity of force, of pressure, more pressure; inopposable pressure upon the soulless branch it was driving into the visual locale, through my brain and out into the limbo ever present to man’s blind back.
My usual warm appreciation of the concrete world disintegrated in a global disappointment — continued in endless chain-reaction of terror transpiercing me.
I could feel the former ulcer in my body revert to its origin, a sensate sore in cerebration — nauseous nucleus of fear.
Jam packed into an instant the linked infantile panics diffused by ill-mated parents — the consequent catastrophes of maturity shrouded in lethal anxieties — rearose — — from dreamy hollows, long since sealed by my inconquerable optimism due to the fascination of existence — — — anxiety. . . . . an inexhaustible fount of terror involving force in fear of itself.
Turned loose on an Infinity, forever emitting one, now, meaningless apparitional phenomenon after another all common to our historic earth.
Thought, no longer reasonable, confronted with the prestidigitation of an unreasonable universe, changed to mere confusion.
Temperamentally content to enormously appreciate the world as it is patterned for us; unable to imagine what part was mine in this over-all alarm I miserably supposed my unfounded distraction to be symptomatic of insanity. But I was not inclined to give in — consent to it when I had not invoked it.
However onerously, I would go on as usual — struggling through a sort of double life half my conscious esse belabouring the other half with blows of inordinate apprehension — of what, I could not even guess — while dropping smiled “darlings” to my daughter who responded, “What makes you always so damned cheerful?”
Before the mysterious onslaught, I had been about to look through the New Testament to locate, in chapter and verse, the inspired utterances of Christ. Such as
“The Spirit” (all conscious Power) is everlasting life; the letter (derivative unconscious force) is death. (This being only one significance of this cosmic saying)
Resolute, I returned with my manuscript to the lately inconducive garden seat, determined to proceed with my writing, taking for granted my former confirmations survived the unaccountable transformation.
I searched the scriptures for the divine citations — — — and at once it was as if the very roots of the supreme knowledge were being torn up and the leaves of the tree with threatening verses in celebration of doom printed upon them, scattered in the patient face of humanity, lashing it, blinding it — — a ruthless tornado of castigation; the breath of a god whose raving majesty consisted in correcting his creature, purely for being as created.
All I seemed allowed to perceive in such darkened scriptures were authorized specifications for Inquisition. In a black-out vision — phantasmagoria of the exoteric religious debacle — my mind submitted to some abnormal pressure, brought into focus with that of the Inquisitor, was forced to concede his interpretation alone to be logical.
In line with such gospel very Eternity deteriorated to an ultimate dimension of hopelessness from which there is no escape, even the suicidal, for man accounted endlessly responsible for not having formed himself in his own unlikeness.
There was nothing to seek in this shattered scripture — — nothing to write with thought defeated.
For weeks, I resisted, a misery so mysteriously baseless, slowly reducing to tremulous fear the terror that appeared to invade me from something endlessly surrounding me — till it faded to the annoyance of neurosis — — — this lessening
UNIVERSAL FOOD MACHINE
I. Universal Food Machine
Open radiators at regular intervals along the streets to temperate the rigours of winter — and as an integral part of the architecture heated shelters for those anonymous creatures who seem to come from nowhere and to be going nowhere.
Also automatic distributors of some luscious soup most carefully composed of the essential elements of perfect nurture, and so savoury that it stimulates the more subtle faculties — together with exquisite croutons to furnish the necessary sensation of solidity that is needful for the ease of the digestive organs. How much would be saved by calling in the vast sums in disseminated charity and pooling them for a national distribution of general welfare. How easily would such an overhaulment occupy the millions of unemployed.