Act I Scene II

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! Oh God! God!

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature.

Fleurs du mal.

La Destruction

Sans cesse à mes côtés s'agite le Démon;
II nage autour de moi comme un air impalpable;
Je l'avale et le sens qui brûle mon poumon
Et l'emplit d'un désir éternel et coupable.

Parfois il prend, sachant mon grand amour de l'Art,
La forme de la plus séduisante des femmes,
Et, sous de spécieux prétextes de cafard,
Accoutume ma lèvre à des philtres infâmes.

II me conduit ainsi, loin du regard de Dieu,
Haletant et brisé de fatigue, au milieu
Des plaines de l'Ennui, profondes et désertes,

Et jette dans mes yeux pleins de confusion
Des vêtements souillés, des blessures ouvertes,
Et l'appareil sanglant de la Destruction!

— Charles Baudelaire

Destruction

The Demon is always moving about at my side;
He floats about me like an impalpable air;
I swallow him, I feel him burn my lungs
And fill them with an eternal, sinful desire.

Sometimes, knowing my deep love for Art, he assumes
The form of a most seductive woman,
And, with pretexts specious and hypocritical,
Accustoms my lips to infamous philtres.

He leads me thus, far from the sight of God,
Panting and broken with fatigue, into the midst
Of the plains of Ennui, endless and deserted,

And thrusts before my eyes full of bewilderment,
Dirty filthy garments and open, gaping wounds,
And all the bloody instruments of Destruction!

The Unknown. Camille Flammarion

We may see without eyes and hear without ears, not by unnatural excitement of our sense of vision or of hearing, for these accounts prove the contrary, but by some interior sense, psychic and mental.

The soul, by its interior vision, may see not only what is passing at a great distance, but it may also know in advance what is to happen in the future. The future exists potentially, determined by causes which bring to pass successive events.

POSITIVE OBSERVATION PROVES THE EXISTENCE OF A PSYCHIC WORLD, as real as the world known to our physical senses.

And now, because the soul acts at a distance by some power that belongs to it, are we authorised to conclude that it exists as something real, and that it is not the result of functions of the brain?

Does light really exist?

Does heat exist?

Does sound exist?

No.

They are only manifestations produced by movement.

What we call light is a sensation produced upon our optic nerve by the vibrations of ether, comprising between 400 and 756 trillions per second, undulations that are themselves very obscure.

What we call heat is a sensation produced by vibrations between 350 and 600 trillions.

The sun lights up space, as much at midnight as at midday.

Its temperature is nearly 270 degrees below zero.

What we call sound is a sensation produced upon our auditory nerve by silent vibrations of the air, themselves comprising between 32,000 and 36,000 a second.

Very many scientific terms represent only results, not causes.

The soul may be in the same case.

benjamin axtmann

walter bily shiam enjoys anagrams.

well you've seen the world now,

wasn't that the deal?

signed & sealed

you'd come back to me?

well where are ya jimmy?

i've been waitin' a while,

to be your wife

& to have your child.

where are ya jimmy?

you forgot about me.

forgot about us,

& what you said we'd be.

said you'd be back,

yeah that was a lie.

babe you got to me

& i just wanna die.

you're all i was hangin' onto jimmy,

now i'm hangin' from a rope.

booze couldn't mend my broken heart,

neither could the dope.

but it's too late now jimmy,

you forgot about me.

forgot about us,

& what we used to be.

yeah you'll be missing me now,

but it's too late jimmy.

V.

Democracy dodders.

Ferocious Fascism, cackling Communism,

equally frauds, cavort crazily all over the globe.

They are hemming us in.

They are the abortive births of the Child, the New Aeon of Horus.

Liberty stirs once more in the womb of Time.

Evolution makes its changes by anti-Socialistic ways. The 'abnormal' man who foresees the trend of the times and adapts circumstance intelligently, is laughed at, persecuted, often destroyed by the herd; but he and his heirs, when the crisis comes, are survivors.

Above us to-day hangs a danger never yet paralleled in history. We suppress the individual in more and more ways. We think in terms of the herd. War no longer kills soldiers; it kills all indiscriminately.

In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then he openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man.

-Job xxxiii, 15.