" Now I have come to The Crossroads in my life. I always knew what The Right Path was. Without exception, I knew. But I never took it. You know why...? It was TOO DAMN HARD. Now here's Charlie. He's come to The Crossroads. He has chosen a Path. It's The Right Path. It's a Path, made of PRINCIPLE -- That leads to CHARACTER. "
"There are Limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other."
-- David Foster Wallace, Consider The Lobster
WILL So what's this? A Taster's Choice moment between guys? This is really nice. You got a thing for swans? Is this like a fetish? It's something, like, maybe we need to devote some time to? SEAN I thought about what you said to me the other day, about my painting. WILL eah? SEAN Stayed up half the night thinking about it. Something occurred to me, I fell into a deep peaceful sleep, and I haven't thought about you since. You know what occurred to me? WILL No. SEAN You're just a kid. You don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about. WILL Why Thank You. SEAN It's all right. You've never been out of Boston. WILL Nope. SEAN So, if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo. You know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the Pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right? But I bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. Seen that.... If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. I ask you about war, you'd probably uh...throw Shakespeare at me, right? "Once more into the breach, dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, and watched him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I ask you about love, y'probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable...known someone that could level you with her eyes. Feeling like God put an angel on Earth just for you..who could rescue you from the depths of Hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, n to have that love for her be there forever. Through anything. Through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleepin' sittin' up in a hospital room for two months, holding her hand because the doctors could see in your eyes that the terms visiting hours don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself. I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. I look at you: I don't see an intelligent, confident man. I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you're a genius, Will. No one denies that. no one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine and ripped my fuckin' life apart. You're an orphan, right? Do you think I'd know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally, I don't give a shit about that, because you know what? I can't learn anything from you I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you wanna talk about you, who you are. And I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't wanna do that, do you, sport? You're terrified of what you might say. >>> Your move, chief. >
Carmine Falcone :
You're taller than you look in the tabloids, Mr. Wayne.
No gun? I'm insulted!
You could have just sent a thank-you note.
Bruce Wayne : I didn't come here to thank you.
I came here to show you that not everyone in Gotham's afraid of you.
Carmine Falcone : Only those who know me, kid.
Look around you: you'll see two councilmen, a union official, a couple off-duty cops, and a judge.
Now, I wouldn't have a second's hesitation of blowing your head off right HERE and right NOW in front of 'em.
Now, that's power you CAN’T BUY — That's The Power of fear.
Bruce Wayne : I'm not afraid of you.
Carmine Falcone : Because you think you got nothing to lose. But you haven't thought it through. You haven't thought about your lady-friend down at the D.A.'s office. You haven't thought about your old butler. Bang!
Carmine Falcone : People from your world have so much to lose. Now, you think because your mommy and your daddy got shot, you know about the ugly side of life, but you don't. You've never tasted desperate. You're, uh, you're Bruce Wayne, the Prince of Gotham; you'd have to go a thousand miles to meet someone who didn't know your name. So, don't-don't come down here with your anger, trying to prove something to yourself. This is a world you'll never understand. And you always fear what you don't understand. Alright.
Carmine Falcone : Yeah, you got spirit, kid. I'll give you that. More than your old man, anyway. In the joint, Chill told me, uh, told me about the night he killed your parents. He said your father begged for mercy. Begged. Like a dog.
We all want to Help one another — Human Beings are like that.
We want to live by each other's Happiness, not by each other's Misery.
We don't want to hate and despise one another.
In This World, there is room for everyone :
The Good Earth is rich, and can provide for everyone.
The Way of Life can be Free and Beautiful —
But We Have Lost The Way
Greed has poisoned Men's Souls,
Has barricaded The World with Hate,
Has goose-stepped Us into Misery and Bloodshed.
We have developed Speed,
But We have SHUT ourselves IN.
Now, THIS is Podracing!
pod (n.1)
"seed of beans," 1680s, of uncertain origin; found earlier in podware "seed of legumes, seed grain" (mid-15c.), which had a parallel form codware "husked or seeded plants" (late 14c.), related to cod "husk of seeded plants," which was in Old English.
In reference to pregnancy from 1890; in reference to a round belly from 1825. Meaning "detachable body of an aircraft" is from 1950. Pod people (1956) is from movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," based on novel by Jack Finney.
pod (n.2)
"herd of whales or seals," 1827, American English, of unknown origin.
BUT, nowadays, if they have surgery and they undergo 'Gender Re-assignment', if they accept 'Gender Re-assignment', which means changing their sex in their passport --
Their marriage is ANNULLED...
Now, that's not even just ended -- that's
ANNULLED....
What that says is,
"There Never WAS a Marriage....”
The Wife is DUMPED,
and The Children are BASTARDISED
-- and that's The Law!
I can't get over that!!
That was NEVER discussed....
I didn't know it myself until a week ago.
And I've had women writing to me, saying that they've been dumped in this way, and....
they've got nothing.
They can't claim Child Support, or anything.... So....
Something needs to happen, there....
And they now want ME to represent them —
and I don't think I want to do it -- because it's now become this silliness...."
"It's awkward having a policeman around the house. Friends drop in, a man with a badge answers the door, the temperature drops 20 degrees.
You throw a party and that badge gets in the way. All of a sudden there isn't a straight man in the crowd. Everybody's a comedian. "Don't drink too much," somebody says, "or the man with a badge'll run you in." Or "How's it going, Dick Tracy? How many jaywalkers did you pinch today?" And then there's always the one who wants to know how many apples you stole.
All at once you lost your first name. You're a cop, a flatfoot, a bull, a dick, John Law. You're the fuzz, the heat; you're poison, you're trouble, you're bad news. They call you everything, but never a policeman.
It's not much of a life, unless you d on't mind missing a Dodger game because the hotshot phone rings. Unless you like working Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, at a job that doesn't pay overtime.
Oh, the pay's adequate-- if you count pennies you can put your kid through college, but you better plan on seeing Europe on your television set.
And then there's your first night on the beat. When you try to arrest a drunken prostitute in a Main St. bar and she rips your new uniform to shreds. You'll buy another one-- out of your own pocket.
And you're going to rub elbows with the elite-- pimps, addicts, thieves, bums, winos, girls who can't keep an address and men who don't care. Liars, cheats, con men-- the class of Skid Row.
And the heartbreak-- underfed kids, beaten kids, molested kids, lost kids, crying kids, homeless kids, hit-and-run kids, broken-arm kids, broken-leg kids, broken-head kids, sick kids, dying kids, dead kids. The old people nobody wants-- the reliefers, the pensioners, the ones who walk the street cold, and those who tried to keep warm and died in a $3 room with an unventilated gas heater. You'll walk your beat and try to pick up the pieces.
Do you have real adventure in your soul? You better have, because you're gonna do time in a prowl car. Oh, it's going to be a thrill a minute when you get an unknown-trouble call and hit a backyard at two in the morning, never knowing who you'll meet-- a kid with a knife, a pill-head with a gun, or two ex-cons with nothing to lose.
And you're going to have plenty of time to think. You'll draw duty in a lonely car, with nobody to talk to but your radio.
Four years in uniform and you'll have the ability, the experience and maybe the desire to be a detective. If you like to fly by the seat of your pants, this is where you belong. For every crime that's committed, you've got three million suspects to choose from. And most of the time, you'll have few facts and a lot of hunches. You'll run down leads that dead-end on you. You'll work all-night stakeouts that could last a week. You'll do leg work until you're sure you've talked to everybody in the state of California.
People who saw it happen - but really didn't. People who insist they did it - but really didn't. People who don't remember - those who try to forget. Those who tell The Truth - those who lie. You'll run the files until your eyes ache.
And paperwork? Oh, you'll fill out a report when you're right, you'll fill out a report when you're wrong, you'll fill one out when you're not sure, you'll fill one out listing your leads, you'll fill one out when you have no leads, you'll fill out a report on the reports you've made! You'll write enough words in your lifetime to stock a library.
You'll learn to live with doubt, anxiety, frustration. Court decisions that tend to hinder rather than help you. Dorado, Morse, Escobedo, Cahan. You'll learn to live with the District Attorney, testifying in court, defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, judges, juries, witnesses. And sometimes you're not going to be happy with the outcome.
But there's also this: there are over 5,000 men in this city, who know that being a policeman is an endless, glamourless, thankless job that's gotta be done.
I know it, too, and I'm damn glad to be one of them."
I, Supreme Chancellor Sheeve Palpatine identifies as The Senate.
This means that I originally identified as the gender assigned to me at birth, in my case male, but have now made myself, through my own Will to Power into More Than a Mere Man, into an Idea.
I use I/Me Pronouns.
Palpatine:
Ha ha ha ha, so I threw the senate at him. The whole senate! True story!
" So we then move on you see to another possible response, not repentance, but that of resignation :
"I quit The Game, I won't play it."
There are all sorts of ways of doing this but basically this is an aristocratic posture,
"You ordinary mortals with all your Desires, and all your Involvements are deluded - You Get attached to Things.
But there are a certain minority of Us, Who are above it all.
And since We've resigned, We're not going to follow This now. "
This as I say is an artistocratic, [be aware] that it may be aristocratic in two ways :
There's the aristocracy of the Hindu Sannyasi the people outside and above caste
and there's also the aristocracy of the actual aristocrat - I get so mixed up with my British and American pronunciation on this - but
The Aristocrat who comes on with the position ofalways being bored, who has complete sangfroid, who is imperturbable
Kaiser Ling's study of this mentality is marvellous in his book of Europe the essay on Hungary portrays the rightly he calls the grand signeur.
He always identified himself as a type disrobe the grand familia cannot be saved, who could always be always rise to the occasion under any social circumstances whatsoever, without trying to do so or without apparently trying to do so.
In other words if he goes to the Opera wearing blue jeans he will somehow make it apparent that everybody else is improperly dressed.
This is a very interesting type of person you know there was an essay written by someone whose name I can't remember in the Centennial Review which contrasted the Attitude to Time of the
aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat;
It said The Aristocrat lives in The Past because his ancient forbears have achieved everything and his very by the fact of his birth in his existence he has nothing to strive for and he somehow I never need overdo it -he's always cool.
The Bourgeois on the other hand feels that it's necessary to arrive
and he's always striving for The Future
Whereas the aristocrat lives in The Past, on the other hand, The Proletarian lives in The Present because he doesn't care about his reputation, and he just lives.
And so of the three bourgeois The Sucker
because the formula is always cheated because, well, it's going to come someday, see, you're going to get it - even your money when you pull it out of your pocket, there says on it
"Promise to Pay" - watch out for that!
It's poverty and the bourgeoisie use the news on from the whole the whole economy is the United States being the great bourgeois country is in a state of expectancy of feeling happy, not on what you have but on what is going to come
The Aristocrat is happy on what has happened, these great achievements of the past mean there's nothing left to do except sort of glory in it.
The Proletarian wants it right now, see and they often get it;
About the poor bourgeois, my uncle once said
The Poor have it given them
The Rich have it anyway so
The Middle Classes do without
So both the aristocrats and the sannyasi have resigned.
Now, the more interesting of the two types is Acosta Sonia who Resigns From The World Game, let me review for you the role of the sannyasin in Indian culture you know there are four castes because
The Priests or Brahmins
The Caste of Warriors and Rulers called Kshatriya
The Caste of Merchants called Vasia
and The Caste of Workers called Shudra
And to belong to a caste means that you are in the state called grihastha, which is 'Householder' that is to say you are One Who is Involved in The World, you are engaged in what is called loca Sandra and loca means The Well, Sandra, upholding, upholding the going on of The Great Illusion and so you are playing for money for position for status, for success and hoping above all that you could win - You can beat The Game.
But it's supposed in the same Culture that every Man who attains the age of 45 or so, who has now a grown son to take over his work, will quit the game, will resign and so, when you come to be at age you're supposed to move from the state of grihastha,'Householder' to vanaprastha which means 'Forest Dweller'.
You Give Away All Your Possessions
to Your Son,
You Change Your Name,
You Take off All Your Clothes and Go More or Less Naked,
because you have
Abandoned Status.
So in spite of the fact that he has no status, he is however respected in the culture for being an Upper Outcast, whereas The Aborigines of the Indian Peninsula are Untouchables, The Lower Outcast and The Upper Outcast always mimics The Lower.
For example Buddha had his disciple wear ochre robes, because ochre robes were worn by convicts.
So in the same way if today, in San Quentin, they all wear blue jeans with special kind pants and a kind of a blue denim jacket and this could well become the uniform of a new kind of sannyasi in The Western World
and to some extent this is happening.
So this guy says
"The Game is Not Worth The Cap, The Richer I Get, The More Miserable I Get"
Mo' Money, Mo' Problems.
You know how this is, you think that your problems may be monitored and you get more money.
What do you do then we've got enough money, you start worrying about your health and you can never never stop worrying about that
Or if you're not worried about your health you worry about politics, if somebody's going to take your money away from you, worried about taxes, about Who's Cheating You.
And so a person who goes through all that he's finally
"I don't think The Game's worth it,
I'm going to resign."
And so Resignation or Renunciation --
The difference from Repentance is that it hasn't got the same kind of passion in The Resolve, that
The Repentant Person Feels He's Wrong,
Who Made a Mistake, Has Committed Sin
and
Wants to Get Better
about the renounce first didn't concerns of that country he knows that better progress whether moral or material is an illusion and you have to understand this when you approach for example the study of Buddhism I think one of the most withering remarks I ever heard, from an oriental, he was Japanese he said once he was
"Never forget that whereas Jesus was the Son of a Carpenter, Buddha was the son of a King"
You know Wow! Take that! And it's choose it is something always about about that this is not the this is easy to see which Christianity historically was the protest of the slave class again if the Roman, establishment Buddhism was different it was the abandonment of position by an aristocracy -
That
'We've done it. We've seen it all we've had it so now we check out and We will be therefore we will resign from all games'
and if you follow this attitude to an extreme you're going to make because it all goes to the centre the same discovery that is made by the person who follows repentance to an extreme.
Just as The Repentant Person discovers that his contrition is phony, The Person Who Tries to Resign
Will Discover That He Can't, that -
There is no way of notplaying games
Let's go a little bit then into this Game Theory there are a lot of games that we play and not only the game of Can I get One Up on The Universe, of Pretending That I'm me This Ego, With Its
Name and Its Role, The Man, but also we have what I call meta-games, for example the game My Games Better Than Your Game,
or The Game "I Won't Play With You Because Your Game is Vulgar, Stupid, Banal, Inferior or Whatever."
One of the most, therefore, effective games in saying My Game is Better Than Your Game is that I'm Not Playing Games At All.
You are now at the lowest level we find that in the form of :
You're Not Sincere, I am Sincere
You are Fooling, I'm not Fooling You and Being Honest with You
Now, that's a great game and of Resignation is a form of it as to say you are children claim with toys and you haven't ever really woken up to the important concerns of life you haven't reached the dimension of ultimate sincerity all, that is to say Ultimate Reality, and in order to reach it you have to Resign from Distractions
You hear a great deal in the literature about meditation of getting rid of distractions wandering for well I you might ask when you think about all that what are wandering for what are wrong for what shouldn't I be doing with my mind, well they all say actually every day you think about this and then you think about that in your thoughts run on in an undisciplined way from one association to another and you can't keep your mind fully on the job or whatever so you see, you're supposed to announce that because -
That's True Reality, all those wandering thoughts they're not about the importance now, What's Important, What should you keep your mind on well, something just as long as you keep your mind on it.
In an instruction one of the Buddhist scriptures says about concentration,
When they concentrate on a yellow square on the ground, on the burning tip of an incense stick, on your navel, on the tip of your nose on the, centre between the eyes, or anything.
And then the footnote The Commentator adds
"But not on any wicked thing."
As you know that commentators the world over, they never have any [sense of humour].
So anything will dojust so long as you keep your mind on it, and don't wander, stick to it, so
Wandering is Involvement in Games,
by this kind of definition, so then you try to get out can you now get out can you stop competing with other human beings
In ancient Greek society there was a place in the center of the community called the argon A-R-G-O-N and this was a place for contests where they had wrestling matches and other athletic events because all the men were constantly trying to show who was the better and from this were the agonyax which means these the contest itself held in the argon we get our word agony,the struggle and striving to be superior and a lot of people that you meet among you, you will recognize this among your friends all the time are not happy unless they are involved in the contest it doesn't matter what it is, so long as they're trying to beat something they're happy
And you may say over everything
“You know can't we just sit around and talk instead of having to play a game, or bet or do something to prove who's the stronger...?"
I was married to a girl who never was happy unless she was engaged in some kind of combat, when of course I had a game, it didn't look like one, and so it was a very superior game just because it didn't look like one, but it was a form of the game, my games that renews so you can't really not-play, you may go through the motions of not playing, but you still are.
