Ch. 23... The vanishing line between sanity, the nuthouse, and the outhouse: The American Dream

Chapter 23

 

The sensation of Life (as experience) is the relationship of everything less then Infinite and that which is never necessarily Finite:  Therefore the sensation of Life is the relationship of everything necessitating (enabling) the Infinite as (to become) unlimited Finitude.  Thus Stunk Garlic

 

 

Rotten meats and bitter fruits can be for some dishes the freshest and sweetest ingredients; how they get mixed into any one ragout does not define the character of the meal in progress. Even the foulest of items can produce the most delicious dish. I am is tasty ragout continually simmering, through the grace of Garlic, on the stove, and even as “we speak here in this sentence” your lives are being added to this here and now ragout. And as you continue reading this story of ragout, whatever Garlic flavors get mixed into your simmering goulashes may only be here in the now for you to know… but the flavors are nowing nonetheless.

When I got to the hospital at 3 a.m., the emergency room looked like a war zone. Leading up to my admittance, and during my wait, there had been not only several shootings and car accidents, shaking the whole place with drama, but, as I would later find out, two of my fellow students from the public high school I was then attending had killed themselves, and two others from a different H.S. had tried. And while this suburban truth played itself out in the emergency room, I was kept bound in the straitjacket and strapped to a gurney. It was only after my mother arrived that

I was, with her permission, set free… for the time being.  

Nearly three hours passed before the staff psychologist finally saw us—or I should say saw me—and in the time my mother and I had sat there waiting, inundated in the behind-the-scenes truth of suburban bliss, and before we entered the legitimized realm of studied human behavior, the office of the chief magistrate of non-Existence and nullified-Life, I hadn’t said one word to her. What could I have said? 

When we finally walked into the psychologist’s sterile office and sat down, specks of light from a dawning day drizzled in through the windows:  It had already become a long night. Wasting no time, the overworked doctor immediately, with a pretense of concern, asked me why I would threaten to kill myself. Like the rest of suburbia the doctor was slowly but freely giving up his time, and so each moment he lost in expressing character and sentiment relevant to Existence and Life buzzed with anticipation of something more and/or less; his lugubriously rigid efforts at caring, in their efficient yet stressed demeanor, seemed to make each ensuing moment my mother and I spent in his respectably authoritative presence that much more important. What the doctor didn’t know, as he sat there expressing a newly emerging paradox of a non-virtuous, time-restrained concern for life, was that his characterless and detached thereness was an anchor in the process of being lowered. His nonexistent Life was on course to becoming tasked and tethered to his divine profession:  It was the evolution of his professional self in the process of running alongside his evolving Super Consumer Individual. Patients and their problems were, at the time of this incident, in the early stages of being put onto the Frederick Winslow Taylor conveyor belt of efficacious diagnosing or better said, “efficient processing”, so that doctors tasked in such divine professions as psychology or psychiatry could move onto the next patient as quickly as possible. Accommodatingly, I explained in an “efficient” manner that this particular rumor of “suicide” wasn’t true, and that my mother and I were just having our problems at home. Without wasting words he inquired about my drug and alcohol abuse. Again in an “efficient” manner, I jumped ahead on the Frank Gilbreth conveyer belt of processing and, not answering his question directly, told him about my grades, my full-time job, and my aspiring music career:  I already knew that suicidal people are not into planned living or filled with hopes and aspirations—I had plenty of plans and many aspirations. (Fortunately, my current aspirations and hopes only consist of stinking of Garlic.) Immediately, in his Gilbreth/Taylor efficient and stressed manner, following the less than the two minutes time it took him to conduct his licensed and diplomed interview, the shrink looked at my mother and said:  “I can see your son needs help. We’ll keep him here.”

I looked at the doctor, politely said, “No thanks”, stood up, and left. The door closed behind me, and as I imperturbably neared the exit, CODE RED blared over the intercom. I approached the doors to freedom as a security guard nonchalantly, and with a flair not much unlike that expressed in my own unflappable gait, entered the hospital from the very same doors; not completely head-on, but off to my left side. He pretended as though he was going to casually stride by me, but at the moment we, in stride, stood parallel to one another he reached for my arm. If Garlic has failed to mention it, I took martial arts when I was a child; starting at age seven the lessons went on until I was just shy of ten, so when the security guard accosted me I automatically blocked his grab, hit him at the throat, and slammed his head against the wall. I admit I wasn’t fighting Arnold Schwarzenegger:  The guy was a short, fat, wannabe cop. But while I had him pinned against the wall five security guards surrounded me; one of whom, with a less than collected voice, agitatedly if not apprehensively stated: “We can either do this the easy way

 or the hard way.”

I’m not stupid:  No matter how pudgy and pathetic the wannabe cops were, numbers did (and still do) make a Difference. The straitjacket willingly came on and away I freely went to the nuthouse. If you don’t already know, the cuckoo’s nest is the place and time where and when the real story is always happening.

Upon arriving at the asylum I got a lucky break: breakfast was just being served. I was, though, still bound in a straitjacket as the sun rose over the Hinsdale Hospital Sanitarium. But before they would release me so that I could get to my plate of yummy giblets, they made me promise I wouldn’t hit anyone. I wasn’t entirely defeated, but hunger was burning a hole in my stomach, and what else was a kid to do at this point besides acquiesce and eat? Besides, one can never win a battle of wits on an empty stomach; so I let my hunger dictate my immediate future, and I gave my word not to hit anyone again.  

These memories of my time in the nuthouse swim in a cloudy existence as if they are bulbs of Garlic soaking in a brine of vinegar and herbs, waiting to be plucked from the vat; with their eventual ingestion presenting themselves as the release and, thus, deliverance of my Identity into yet another mystical, emotional triumph in this savory, positive spirit we are ragouting… one in which you, lovely reader, are a nowing flavor. There was the nurse who was warm and friendly. There was the this is your new family introductions to the other institutionalized nut jobs. One patient in particular I’ll never forget. Her name was (and still is) Donna and she had (and still has) an audience of invisible, furry and friendly little creatures, which were (and still are), according to her, flying above her, protecting her from anything and everything bad. She was (and still is) such a nice person that she took (and is taking) the time to introduce me, a nutty newbie, to her army of talking, flying, stuffed animals. If I could recall their names, I would recite them here, but a Tale of Ragout doesn’t always deliver details; trace flavors reveal only pleasant mystery. But the waft of Garlic tells me that Donna was (and still is) kind enough to offer me the company of one of her fuzzy, furry friends—an offer I didn’t and, perhaps, can no longer take her up on:  Existence and Life may be one and the same, but they/it are always two Differences. Donna and her army of flying, cuddly creatures exist, but they may or may not be with me or us in the necessarily here and now. In the now, at the Hinsdale Hospital, it wasn’t that I ever doubted the Existence of Donna’s army so much as it was I couldn’t see it… and I still can’t. So what good would it have done or will it do me to accept her generous offer? I could have hollered (and still can holler) “I do believe in fairies. I do! I do!” and perhaps Tinkerbell would have appeared (and still will appear) before me, but what is the point:  I was afraid then of never getting out of Never Never Land, and it certainly wouldn’t have done me any good to have my own army of talking stuffed animals that I couldn’t even see. Maybe now I could use Donna’s furry, flying little friends, regardless of whether I can see them, because I would put them to better use in the nuthouse called the outside world… but in 1985 I wasn’t ready to command such invisible sprites, pucas, elves, fairies, pixies or brownies to battle for me. The here and now is always grounding in Difference—so, lovely reader, make no illusions of time and space. We are, in garlic’s thrall, in deliverance and not in an illusion.

I have to laugh when I think about it:  There I was, stuck in an insane asylum; in a country where the President was already suffering from Alzheimer’s in his first term in office ― and then got re-elected to a second term!

“During an Oval Office visit with her family, as Leslie Stahl was ending her time as a White House correspondent, she wrote (in her memoir Reporting Live, 1999, Simon & Schuster Inc.) at the end of President Reagan’s first term in 1986:  ‘Rea-an didn’t seem to know who I was. He gave me a distant look with those milky eyes and shook my hand weakly. Oh, my, he’s gonzo, I thought. I have to go out on the lawn tonight and tell my countrymen that the president of the United States is a doddering space cadet.’” 

Most Americans are in denial about this, but hey, Nero’s fiddle playing is just an allegory for the trials and tribulations of every great civilization. Humorously enough, everybody believes Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War, but that’s a lie:  He merely solidified power in the hands of monsters and vampires; and then it was these demons that battled with beasts elsewhere in the world. Eventually, the Republican mantra of small government would become a clandestine but unified Democrat/Republican, trickle-down chant of: 

Big business should govern the world! Individualism must become synonymous with willing slavery…feudalism and fascism has a new sibling called Individual-Mass-Consumer Capitalism!  Cheeseburgers for the subservient! 

Everyone in the USA seems to forget that in our nuclear arms race we, too, just like our then bitter enemy the Soviet Union, were seconds away from being bankrupt (unless you count spending Social Security funds as good financing), and that the backs of working-class people carried the burdened of this so called “win”. The “win” undermined the unions and slashed the average guy’s wages. (Do you remember the time when employers paid holidays and benefits, and when pension weren‘t voided at the end of work careers?) The working man shouldered the financial burden of the arms buildup while corporate America was given the green light to hoard untold fortunes (that they earned on the mad arms buildup and the backs of working people everywhere in the world) and, if need be, commit atrocities to assist in obtaining these fortunes. To this day, America’s fanatical turn towards unbridled, irresponsible and decadent power can be traced back to the legacy of the Reagan Administration. Sure there has always been corruption but Reagan legislated it into the hands of the elite few, and in today’s United States, corporations lead, through their financial influences over Congress and Presidents, Americans into war without the approval of Congress. Corporations now fire tens of thousands of employees and strip them of their lifelong earned pensions, retirement benefits and healthcare packages: but somehow the CEOs still keep their multi-million dollar perks and benefits regardless of whether they commit felonies or run their companies and our economy as well as other countries’ economies into the ground. This is to say that even when there’s nothing left to trickle down, those on top are entitled to feast on the corpses of those they’ve long since owned. We as consumers have even less value than slaves. Good old George W., as an example of the Reagan legacy, even passed a bankruptcy bill (at the request of credit card companies) that excludes the rich and targets the middle and working-class people of America. And now (as of this most recent rewrite), we have Obama face-track-selling out working class Americans and world citizens in the secretive TPP agreement. Thanks Ronnie Reagan for killing the communist dream and middle and working class America all with an army of talking, flying stuffed animals at your command—and the will of American people, of course.

      In those days I was still punk, but I was old school, and not how one would understand old school in today’s world. I used to have a pair of jeans on which I had sewn flowery material into the legs to give them extraordinarily big bell bottoms. Bell bottoms and flowers were, and I suppose still are associated with the Hippie movement, but I was punk—even for the punks—because being punk meant always cutting the edge. So as American Hardcore Punk, bare-boned, raw music violently tore through small venues throughout the USA, I was even a sight for sore-eyes within this expression itself. Instead of the skinhead and ripped, torn, worn-out jeans and either an old T-shirt or hoodie, I still flamboyantly flaunted the creative aspect of punk. Check out Negative Element in Facebook and look at the cover photo from our 1982 release, Yes We Have No Bananas, and you’ll see me in my striped pants. To this day the guitarist, Barry ribs me about those pants and my nonconformity within the nonconformists. I never drank Generic Beer, maybe the next cheapest beer on the shelf, but I never lost my appreciation for the expression of Life itself. Punk has always been an aesthetic movement because it embraces Difference as an origin. Even as a generic expression it still aspires to creation as expressed in the relationship of living. (From Difference rising into Identity and celebrated again in Difference’s origins.) Perhaps American Hardcore Punk music is, in another sense, similar to the failed experiment of Communism here in Dresden and the rest of East Germany. American Hardcore fought to strip itself of the valueless expressions of consumerism, but in doing so it became an ally to consumerism’s eventual takeover of any and all relationships of living.  

I was always a spiritualist first, and, for me, the aesthetic of Life celebrating in its own Identity (symbolic form, mental image, idea) of deliverance (in Difference) is the vehicle to the experience, as creation and inspiration. There are many spirits in any one given experience, and in punk I loved the spirits of emotional intensity, energy, and creativity. Unfortunately, most punk kids today only have the spirits of commodity and consumerism. Don’t get me wrong, there are still positive aspects to the aesthetics of any expressions—especially in the expressions of punk—but now they appear negative. Step one foot into a trendy mall store, such as Hot Topic, and you can feel the lack of energy and/or inspiration—unless you have enough money in your pockets. (Nothingness-positive) Some might call me avant-garde, and this is okay, but I was born in the spirits of creation and inspiration as they first moved through the 1970s fashion of punk. Nowadays, you have punk things as happenings (even the current term punk’d reveals this underlying meaning), and this is only going to get worse or, depending which side of the coin you are looking at, better. Life can’t end in plastic wrap and UPC tags. I don’t say this as a threat but as a warning to our beloved politicians and business leaders. This is something not easily understood, because we live with daily lies about Life:  Lies mask the very positive nature in All—the Difference—of Existence. Identity, as it lives in symbolic forms, mental images or ideas, as the ideas are of consciousness, is not to be owned. Difference—the only knowable what-quality of any sense object or theoretical reference—as it dances without time and space in the exchange of Infinite/Finitude is our beginning and end, and, as such, is NEVER a task or goal oriented¹. But Identity is the how in how we appear. These symbolic forms as they are of consciousness must be recognized as the only living aspect:  We never know of the narrator as a God or as self, but/and/or because the context belongs to All of Life, the wondrous Infinite/Finitude Difference; hence, Garlic is an origin of awareness that still pays respect to both the Finite and Infinite nature of there is. Perhaps in Aristotle’s time, Garlic hadn’t yet revealed its face, but that’s only because Aristotle had no need for such a relationship:  There was no his or my world needing Garlic’s necessitating authority in such matters as Life. There was only, thank the gods, there is: 

“Where something is capable of making or moving a thing without actually doing so, no motion results; for there can be no potency that does not actualize.  It is not a sufficient principle of expla- nation, then, to postulate eternal essences (ousia) as the advocates of Forms do, unless we postulate

them as includingan ‘initiating principle’ (archê) of change. And even this qualification would not be enough, nor would it be enough to postulate another kind of ‘essential nature’ (ousia) besides the Forms, for unless it were ‘actually functioning’ (energeein) there would be no motion. But even for a thing to actually function is not enough if its essential nature were but a potency; for as the potential may fail to exist, eternal motion would not thereby be assured. There must, accordingly, be an initiating principle of the kind we are seeking whose ‘essential nature’ (ousia) involves actuality (energeia).  Furthermore, as such essential natures must be eternal if anything is eternal, and accordingly are without admixture of the ‘material component’ (hylê), it follows on this ground too that they are actuality.” (Wheelwright, Aristotle:  The Metaphysics, book XII. Lambada, The Eternal Unmoved Mover, vi., pgs. 97-98;  Odyssey Press, 1951)

 

With our current delivery of and in deception, the Individual Identity, as a pure consumer, is forcing the spirits of creation and inspiration to appear in actions or otherwise face their (creation and inspiration as a spirit’s) own death in consumption, as (could be said) lived in consumer products:  Symbolic forms, ideas, or mental images, as they are Differences’ deliverance, are only celebrated when they are destroyed through purchasing and consuming... as objects adherent to nonexistence. However, Garlic says that to even turn the idea (symbolic form) of creation into a kind of pre-packaged product is asking for trouble and to turn explosive actions into a catalyst for financial and social reward can only cause the actions themselves to escalate. Difference must now appear through self-destructive Identity and/or, therefore, “the task” becomes humanities tour of destruction... consciousness, as it is reality, is completely broken. The relationships rooting Life to Existence in taking on the form of not to relate or to self-destruct become, in their non-relational valuing, the method for Identity to make its own appearance

real.  

 

“Cogitare” and “esse” remain, in their deepest roots, separated.  As a person relinquishes control of the mind/spirit, he or she is in Life split into two; he or she is left to the discretion of a vampire-esque Power that drove a piercing dissonance into the chant of spheres.”

 

People here in Dresden were horrified after having read in the local papers about fifty drunken hooligans who called the police after a soccer game had ended a few hours earlier, from a phone booth near to where the soccer stadium is located, to report a brutal assault in progress:  The reported assault in progress being the phone call along with the eventual arrival of two policemen who the hooligans then, in an orchestrated theater of the absurd, beat up; thus creating the crime of the reported assault in progress.... That was punk. The hooligans could have just as easily grabbed the first persons to have walked by, beat the crap of them, and then have called the police. But their actions were intelligent and choreographed:  It’s a hooligan’s job to kick some ass, and it’s a policeman’s job to protect the citizens. The hooligans fulfilled their characters… as did the police. The event transcended every participants own transcendental states of awareness; thus, the event actually lived and continues to live, in a greater and lesser sense, as art. Why was this creative and inspirational? Well, life is an orchestration and we either hear the music and know the awe in all of its appearances (regardless of whether the show is of a violent or peaceful nature) and give absolute thanks or we consume and we have no experience:  Zero-lived-realized-delivered is no-Life.  

Some time ago I read about spontaneous happenings or what are now referred to as flash mobs that have been occurring throughout New York City (and now, as of this latest rewrite, everywhere in the world). In a flash mob people first text one another an invitation to an impromptu gathering that is to be held at a location like a subway station, inside a subway train itself, in a bus, at a restaurant, in a bank lobby, in a mall, or inside a public building, and then, after the invitees arrive at the prearranged time and place, they either perform a pre-rehearsed skit, dance routine, smile and laugh at one another for a few moments, or do whatever it is they agreed to do in the exchange of texts, before quickly dispersing. In one happening, if I recall correctly, the participants got on a bus at various stops and then at a prearranged moment everyone clucked like chickens before their little spontaneous party came to an abrupt end with everybody simply getting off at the same time. In more recent developments, thanks to the documentation done by cellphone-camera-work and the eventual upload of said documentations at Internet sites such as Youtube, we are able to re-live such events. People can now be viewed performing their purely simple and silly and/or highly complex, but still impromptu routines performed in open, public places. As far as Garlic goes, all of these spontaneous acts are punk. And by the very definition of being spontaneous these happenings were and are, like American Hardcore Music, artless or without consumable creation or inspiration:  The acts and their participants appear (as happenings) in self-negation:  as consumable ideal and not as actual objects with possibility of being bought and/or sold.

 

“All art is concerned with coming into being, i.e. with contriving and considering how something may come into being which is capable of either being or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing made; for art is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being, by necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance with nature (since these have their origin in themselves).  Making and acting being different, art must be a matter of making, not of acting. And in a sense chance and art are concerned with the same objects; as Agathon says, ‘art loves chance and chance loves art’. Art, then, as has been said, is a state concerned with making, involving a true course of

reasoning, and lack of art on the contrary is a state

concerned with making, involving a false course of

             reasoning: both are concerned with variable.”

(Nichomachean Ethics, Bk. VI: Ch.4)

 

 

The “false course of reasoning” in a flash mob being that the art, which is a word translated from the Greek word techne and means that the “chance” or “opportunity” to come into Existence, is by its design earmarked for death or nonexistence. The “action” and the “making” reconcile through humanly finite reasoning so that “making” produces no object except for an “action”. Flash mob art is a suicide or kamikaze art form. Such flash mob art is not about the object but rather the inspiration of the moment… like the Garlic you, lovely reader, can now smell.  

One last example of creation and inspiration, an example you, dear reader, might not consider valid, is the Columbine school shooting. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold orchestrated an art-full expression, the spirit of which will last for a long time:  A spirit that made the Jane Fonda / Gene Simmons do it yourself instructional home videos on how to kill and create mayhem at your local high school or shopping mall. (Law enforcement never made the videos public.) This alone expresses a strong sign, if not a logical conclusion, that Eric and Dylan knew of the everlasting non-consumer effects their actions had and will continue to have, and that there will continue to be a receptive audience for their art-full work for decades to come.

People have a hard time understanding this last example because life and death have become too closely related to the Individual’s Existence as it now so closely aligns with consumerism. Especially in America, the spirit of the pseudo-religion called economics defines the values of Life — or by the spirit of death as it has become the remote actor animating the consumable or the function-pure. Punk as something creative and inspirational can no longer make an appearance (Identity) as or through fashion, but only as a consumable product or as something earmarked for death (as a product meets its Infinite-end in being consumed). But inspiration is an original phenomenon:  It is directly linked to awe (thaumázein). Inspiration is an impetus for Life to build upon Existence. And I may be stretching Noam Chomsky’s words here: “we should not underestimate the capacity of well-run propaganda systems to drive people to irrational, murderous, and suicidal behavior” (Noam Chomsky, 9-11, Seven Stories Press, 2001), but I would think he would agree with me in that “inspiration”, or in Chomsky’s word “drive”, when set loose, whether as a result of the guidance of a “propaganda” or “marketing” system, is no longer something any “one” can control or direct… much to the chagrin of our vampire and monster-led American politicians who believe they alone own history, because they are, or at least believe themselves to be, the only ones ― the guidance counselors ― (capable of) tightly holding and thus controlling the reins of such “inspiration”. 

Thaumázein (awe) is, as far as it inspires, that which Abraham, in absolute certainty, embraced when he did not question God’s request he sacrifice his own son. So when Søren Kierkegaard writes in Fear and Trembling (1843), “So one surely can talk about Abraham, for the great can never do harm when it is apprehended in its greatness; it is like a two-edged sword which slays and saves,” he never considered there would be, in a future history or alternate reality, a world in which God AKA the Infinite/Finite inspired people to regularly commit such acts as randomly killing. For a suicide bomber and/or suicidal school/mall shooter, the nullifying act of killing one’s-self ensures that the act adheres, through negating the Finite/Individual aspect in every negating possibility of the zero/one Life, to faith in its godly Infinite dimension of the only knowable aspect (Difference) of Life living:  Infinite/Finitude. The horrific and unjustifiable act of killing, like Abraham believing to kill his own son would demonstrate his faith in God, thus becomes justified in the felo-de-se in that the act transcends the doer—the killer — in his or her own self-limiting nature of a world filled only with delusional selves AKA individuals AKA finite beings:  A world incapable of experiencing or of being required to experience the full Difference value of our Difference Existence in Life. Faith is therefore surpassed, because the true-value-potentiality of the belief that recognizes awe (thaumázein) is guaranteed when the I kills, not so strangely en mass, the only thing God and his/her eternal, Infinite Life has revealed in absolute certainty:  Individuality... the I think therefore I am. The killer is thus not like the others. He is not like those that he or she kills. He or she is better. After a shooter commits suicide or a suicide bomber has “bombed”, can anyone doubt that person’s integrity? It seems, to Garlic at least, that there are a lot of people out there who believe in Abraham and the religions of Abraham, so there’s obviously something to sacrificing what one cherishes most… Unfortunately in our world mandated by Narcissus it is the self we all love or are told to love most:  Through the authority of politicians and business leaders who are being led by vampires and monsters, craftily mediated created and manipulated desires are now tools for our guidance counselors to use in directing our purchases of the day.

            This is to say that punk’s appearance is no longer expressed in the power of Living (Identity) as manifest creativity and inspiration, but lives as a vehicle to consumer product potential:  Punk’s Life, as it is of inspiration, belongs to the vampires and monsters as they lead our keepers in the corporate world. We now only value, as individuals and regardless of our positions in Life, every creative expression in its ability to live as a consumer object of money making potentiality. Life has become nothing but a bi-product to consuming.

Imagine watching a nature documentary wherein a peacock spreads its flamboyant, ornate plume in a dance of courtship. Now imagine that same peacock having to first purchase its feathers from the mall before it’s allowed be portrayed in the film. The greatest irony to this is that even if we, the “peacock”, are inspired and creativity flows from our own Individuality, we no longer want to dance with a potential partner. We see our own potential in existence as the possible placement on the mall-store shelf, where our potential as one, a maître d for creativity and inspiration, is bought and sold. Our potential no longer lives as rhythm and myth in the songs and dances themselves. We no longer belong or even want to belong to ourselves (our-selves) or to Life. 

Punk’d has become a reality TV Show:  Instead of pogoing in the glory of life, we believe we have to own the dance of others before we ourselves can dance. Creativity and inspiration are valued only when they provide monetary wealth and/or an omnipotent kind of fame (how many likes has my video achieved?). We no longer create or simply express the new feathers for the sake of the dance... for the sake of Life as it is of Existence. In its place, we exist, as an expression in form or appearance revealed as ideas, symbolic forms or mental images, for a someone or a something else (as represented in liked fame or hard currency or as consumed items) with which we have no desire to dance:  Appearance as it is Identity’s dance in Difference no longer has a direct relationship to Existence. Whatever belongs to Existence for deliverance of our Identity has become mediated by consumerism (as it lives through annihilation of Difference. (Think of Zero or a Nothingness reality) Every attempt to dance like the peacock is no longer done for the dance itself as it is rhythmic, mythical expression celebrating Difference-origin. Nor is it done for the potential partner (in the relationship or the exchange of Identity in Difference) but for placement in a mall store or on the homepage of an online retailer. In its most recent elevation, the dance is now done, as previously mentioned regarding flash mobs, for YouTube likes… and so ends the creativity and inspiration lived in a flash mob event. Ritual and myth, as they are core to living time as a value or the sphere chanting in Infinite and Finite,

have been imprisoned by monsters and vampires. 

In Fear and Trembling (1843) Kierkegaard describes the nature of the Knight of Infinite as: “Every movement of infinity comes about by passion, and no reflection can bring a movement about.” Thus, in the Knights’s Finite thereness: “He, the Knight, feels a blissful rapture in letting love” (love in Kierkegaard’s dialogue is fine example of that which reveals “passion” in a pure form) “tingle through every nerve, and yet his soul is as solemn as that of the man who has drained the poisoned goblet and feels how the juice permeates every drop of blood–for this instant is life and death.” And it is in this moment of awareness, as life and death, whereby awe (as Kierkegaard’s wisdom so wonderfully assumes the role of the bugler paying taps) must fill or reflect one’s own perceptual quandary. The perceptual quandary (Identity sans Difference) becomes a default task. The default is thus an answer to one’s limited-in-nature perceptions in as far as it, the perceptual quandary itself, is overcoming that which simply is-ing (or there is). Kierkegaard further poetically reveals, in our Zeitgeist of obliviousness, one’s inability to recognize reflection in its absolute sense of Difference. The object of quandary becomes a historical creation of one’s functional, a priori act of reflection.  Like Kierkegaard, one revels in the futility of living in a cage: the cage being The Individual. Besides expression of form having become task oriented, and thus negating Life in its entirety of Infinite/ Finitude Difference, the orchestration in the expression of form, as it is Difference’s dance into Identity and Identity’s return to Difference, is no longer captured and caged by those who are experiencing consciousness and life (in its anchoring nature as sheer Being), so that life may then be retold to others, so that the others, too, can feel the inspiration and creativity as it was lived and is delivered by the experiencer of consciousness AKA The Storyteller. But inspired and creative experience is, instead, caged for the results obtained from the “Like” icon on a video posting website. The past four hundred years of blind, Difference-free searching for Identity has resulted in Identity itself being rejected by Existence (or Consciousness). Life has been put at odds with Existence in order that humanity may succeed. The only option for inspiration and creativity to be expressed in the full context of Difference and Identity is through actions that search to transcend expression’s form (appearance as revealed in ideas, mental images, symbolic forms):  Because any and every attempt at appearing, in our Kierkegaardian dystopia, is simply earmarked as a consumable item. Somewhere deep down in a place long since hidden from experience and/or understanding, we might want to win the mate in the dance, but the actual display is owned by monsters and vampires, and we are thus driven to do things… things which have no presence in our own Existence. The actions of the Columbine shooters as well as many other children and adults participating in such happenings can only win:  Their actions are given to and in the moment. Their actions are not driven by an Individual consumer Identity, and this is proven in that their suicides solidify the deal. To go on a random killing spree and then commit suicide reveals that the person has little regard for his or her own Life, but cherishes Existence… just like Abraham. Such said happenings (school/mall shootings and such) are thus, as and in Existence, appearance of Difference sans Identity. This is why these actions are abhorrent:  Life is forced into its primal essence. Origin as it is Difference first rising in consciousness tries to shed an Identity that is, as it is, attempting to annihilate itself (an Identity that is in its default complementarity nature Difference) so it can reestablish a proper order of things… things which can only have the delivery of awe as their purpose. Such an original conflict is one of the primal essences of war itself:  This is what Mr. Vonnegut was commenting on. There is no Individual reward of Identity in the sacrifices made in a war, but only a spirit which continues to live on. What Eric and Dylan understood is that Life as it is appearing can never be negative. There is therefore no difference between their actions and that of Palestinian, Iraqi, or Afghan suicide bomber’s actions. Unfortunately, we don’t like to look at the political nature of these extreme oppositions to our consumable Identities, because to do so would put us in a position that no longer recognizes material, Individual, mass consumerism as an origin:  We would no longer have an Individual Identity as a true, spiritual source or transcendent impetus:  One would have to recognize Difference as the true source for all that is spiritual and/or meta. We are, in our historical perspective that Dr. Delgado, the guidance counselor, wanted to take charge of, was already convinced that to do so—to recognize the political nature of such violent acts—would lead us, our Identities, into the abyss. If the mass consumer products of our historical humanity no longer embody our spiritual-potential and transcendental probable and possible lives, where would or could we end up besides at the bottom of Nothingness? This is to say that vampires and monsters compel us to cling to our precious Individuality through use of fear. Ironically, we freely give ourselves into this bondage to Nothingness out of fear of a Nothingness that doesn’t even exist. In tragic irony, Existence itself is the sacrificial lamb for this Faustian pack that Clergy, Church, Temple, Science, Scientists, Politicians and Corporations embrace and embody. Nothingness is requisite for our possibility and probability to live in their world. Regardless of whether we know about the Faustian pack, we willingly give up our lives. We give up the only thing that one might ever truly possess:  Time.² 

Is this the preferred (non-historical) dialogue? Not for me, and obviously it doesn’t mean that I have stopped experiencing or that I’m not here in spirit (Eau de Garlic), trying to convey this to you, dear reader, so that we all may take another direction. I wish such happenings on no one:  neither the victims nor those doing the shooting. The comical characteristic to the tragedy of our consumer truth is that the Mr. Obamas, Mr. Bushes, Mr. and Mrs. Clintons, and their ilk act as if they’re doing Existence a favor by bringing market/consumer Identity to the world, but it is people like them who deliver the suicide bombers and Dylan Klebolds and Eric Harrises into Existence. Our leaders and their corporate and monetary friends are the responsible parties, because they believe they own the monsters and vampires, and thus they feel justified in deciding how Life is mediated… there is no need to apply any electrodes. But we know from Garlic’s glorious aroma that for any virtuous politician the only reward is in his or her responsibility to their positions as leaders and not to their own Individual greed. This latter so-called virtue of consumer market economies delivers only death:  When the consumer objects (or object-lifestyles) have become the only rewards of Life, Existence is sacrificed. Thus, death, as a way of conquering the Nothingness or Zero given in the equation, is the resolution to this paradox. (It is no coincidence Aristotle considers pleonexia or greed- aggrandizement-graspingness-avariciousness as the root of all evil. Nicomachean Ethics, Wheelright 1951) Erik and Dan are still here in Life and Existence, otherwise their names would mean… nothing. We could only hear or say blip and blip caused tragedy blip… so every killer’s name would simply become an indistinguishable “blip”.

Garlic may flow in opposition to the Individual, and it may be suspect of the virtues in evolution, technology and consumer economics, but it is not about death. In a Garlic Revolution, vampires and monster have no chance of winning in living, and although the Obamas, the Bushes, the Clintons and their kind purvey absolute negativity, the I am should probably be giving them more credit because they also fuel my Existence, The Origins of Garlic Cures and the Art of Telling a Tale of Ragout. But then again, without them Life would be so

much more positive. 

       As for the origins of Garlic Cures, James B. and his wise ways helped me, and continue to help me. I might get lost in Life, but I know how to protect myself. Jim could have easily crumbled, because his enemy was as deceptive and illusive as all of ours, but he could hear the spirits of Garlic speaking and they guided him. Maybe we could all fare better with a little more Garlic in our pastas.