THE DYSFUNCTINAL HUMAN MIND

A Look at the Human Condition~ trough poems, images, and quotes ~ PART 1_ Foreword The title is not intended to be disparaging to or scathing of our ability to think. It is derived from the fact I had on many occassions considered the value of our everyday thoughts and actions and came to a humorous statistical representation: 96% of what we say and think is robotic sloganeering. Only on rare occassions something surges in us and produces thoughts, words, and acts of substance. Something that originates from our core, and directly relates back to our core. This I refer to, with a sense of serious humour, the twenty fifth item. The other 24 are insubstancial, only this one has the true human punch. A logical evaluation of the human condition - what we are and what we do - leads us to consider the major player in this situation: that system of programs we are accustomed to call "our mind". If we however place this mind under a close scrutiny we realize it does not really serve our innermost interest. It appears to serve our need for personal survival, but only in the coarsest sense of the word: it makes us endure life, as contrasted with actually living life. And in this scenario of two mutually antagonstic forces, the body and the mind, each striving to win our being for themselves, our heart's desire to be fulfilled is forever unsatisfied. In the course of this mind-examining activity we may also come to notice how skillful our mind is in making pomisses based on projections into a hypothetical future, and making us believe in these promises. In other words, the mind's ongoing mode of operation is insinuating personal fulfilment with one hand, yet forever withholding it with the other hand. The carrot and stick method; disarmingly simple and terribly effective. However, what the mind does give us in abundance is placebos and soothers. So that it may cover up the real effect of its doings: the deliberate, ongoing and neverending generation of subtle unhappiness - the first part of its business. The second part of its business is to convince us that it's doing what it can to fix everything up, and make us good again. But why does it never tell us how and when we stopped being good in the first place? It only wants keep fixing us up.

Yet despite this nefarious agenda the mind can never quite obliterate our true heritage - the heritage to be free beings, run by no foreign programs imposed on us by forces not originating from within ourselves. And thus, from time to time, we remember, in different degrees of intensity, our true status as incomprehensible beings of the cosmos, with the potential to keep evolving. The following poems, images, and miscellaneous quotes somehow, and in different ways, pertain to this premise. Though seemingly disjointed, they are still meaningful through the unifying intent of desire to know. They beckon, insinuating that there is something beyond our current terrifying and puzzling predicament - the impasse of not knowing what, rather than who, we really are. Peter Faigl

Homo Floresiensis skull (right), who existed 13,000 years BP; National Geographic, April 2005

Core of My Heart The love of field and coppice, Of green and shaded lanes, Of ordered woods and gardens Is running in your veins. Strong love of grey-blue distance, Brown streams and soft dim skies I know but cannot share it, My love is otherwise. I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror The wide brown land for me! A stark white ring-barked forest All tragic to the moon, The sapphire-misted mountains, The hot gold hush of noon. Green tangle of the brushes, Where lithe lianas coil, And orchids deck the tree-tops And ferns the warm dark soil. Core of my heart, my country! Her pitiless blue sky, When sick at heart, around us, We see the cattle die But then the grey clouds gather, And we can bless again The drumming of an army, The steady, soaking rain. Core of my heart, my country! Land of the Rainbow Gold, For flood and fire and famine, She pays us back threefoldOver the thirsty paddocks, Watch, after many days, The filmy veil of greenness That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country, A wilful, lavish land All you who have not loved her, You will not understand Though earth holds many spleandours, Wherever I may die, I know to what brown country My homing thoughts will fly.Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968) Written at age 19 while homesick in England, in 1904.

Watercolour painting at Gunnegah Art Gallery by Jean Isherwood (19112006)

What's art but an intense life?Henry James (1843-1916)

We are all readers of Infinity. But just like reading a book, Some reading is shitty and Some reading is good.Anonymous

What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?Sylvia Plath, Conversation Among the Ruins; excerpt

Right Winger 1 On planes he always sat over the right wing. 2 When he went hunting he always shot the duck in the left wing.David Ray, in Poet's Market 1990, p349

Come to my museum of poetry. The masterpieces of my mind are cast about like the misplaced children of a mad whore.Poet unidentified, in Poet's Market 1990, p399

Morning Song Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.Sylvia Plath; the first 2 stanzas; Ariel

Sydney Morning Herald, The Good Weekend, 31 Mar 2007

I am a shell of a person, I am a can of beans, I am a product.Stewart Copeland, of The Police; The Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend, 31.3.2007

1979

2007

Day of the Soft Mouth Somewhere in the dark pack There is a dog who will not bite, Who will run with the rabbit: Who mouths it like butter.Walter Griffin, in Poet's Market 1990, p352

"The Police was a painful seven years. Everything you thought would make you happy was given to you, and then it did not make you happy."Sting (of The Police), in The Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend, 31.3.2007

Time Marches On You ask me, brothers, why I flinch. Well, I will tell you, inch by inch. Is it not proper cause for fright That what is day will soon be night? Evening I flinch the selfsame way. For what is night will soon be day. At five o'clock it chills my gore Simply to know it isn't four. How Sunday into Monday melts! And every month is something else. If summer on the ladder lingers, Autumn tramples upon her fingers, Fleeing before the jostling train Of winter, and Spring, and Summer again. Year swallows year and licks its lips, Then down the gullet of next year slips. We chip at Time with clocks and watches; We flee him in love and double scotches; Even as we scatter in alarm He marches with us, arm in arm; Though while we sleep, he foreward rides, Yet when we wake, he's at our sides. Let men walk straight or let them err, He never leaves them as they were. While ladies draw their stockings on The ladies they were are up and gone. I pen my lines, I finish, I scan them, I am not the poet who began them. Each moment time, the lord of changers, Stuffs our skins with ephemeral strangers. Good heavens, how remote from me The billion people I used to be!

Flinch with me, brothers, why not flinch, Shirts caught in the eternal winch? Come, let us flinch till Time stands still; Although I do not think he will. Hark brothers, to the dismal proof: The seconds spattering on the roof!Ogden Nash

"G r e e n w a s h i n g"

Sydney Morning Herald, The Good Weekend, 31 Mar 2007

"We are not human till we receive our mind" An old Fijian chief, who counted for me on his fingers no fewer than fifteen of his children, who had been killed when infants, and who were burried in one corner of his house, defended the practice of infanticide by the following curious argument: E senga so ni tamata na ngone sa nggai suthu vou. Sa mbera mai na yalona.

Which may be rendered A new-born child is scarcely a human being. Its spirit has not yet come to it.L Fison & A W Howitt, Kamilaroi and Karnai, p120

For my Family: Maggie, Ronnie, Michael and Zoe(Dedication of Lauren Burns's book "Fighting Spirit")

The two loves of my life: Rabinda (above) and Zoe.

Lamarckian Evolution Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck proposed that organisms are not possibly altered by their environment. Instead, a change in the environment triggers a change in the needs of organisms living in that environment, which in turn causes changes in their behaviour. Altered behaviour then leads to more or less use of a body part: more use would cause the structure to increase in size over several generations, whereas less use or disuse would cause it to shrink or even disappear. This rule - that use or disuse causes structures to change - Lamarck called his 'First Law'.Ross Honeywill, Lamarck's Evolution, p58

Lamarck: 'When I wrote Flore Franaise (The Flora of France) I classified plants and flowers according to their family similarities not their individual differences. My interest was in the connection between species not the distances between them.' This was, at the time, declared to be against God, given the belief throughout the eighteenth century that God created every species separately and individually. ditto, p37 In the 1800s, Lamarck crafted a description of the ideal naturalist-philosopher: He is the man who, prepared initially by education, has contracted the usual habit of exercising the organ of his thought by devoting himself to the study of basic knowledge available. He observes and compares all that he sees and all that affects him. He forgets himself in order to examine all that he can perceive. He varies without limit the acts of his intellect. He has gradually become accustomed to judge everything on his own, instead of adopting a blind confidence in the authority of others. ditto, p46 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder The dark side of the disorder is incresingly well documented: ruined marriages, wrecked or lacklustre careers, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, domestic violence. Prisons are full of people with undiagnosed symptoms, say mental health professionals. Joy Toll, New South Wales secretary of the support group ADDults with ADHD frequently sits up until midnight answering emails from people desperately seeking help. "They also ring on our help line. 'I think I've got ADHD. Where do I start? Where do I go?' The saddest calls and emails are from people who really love their partners but can't live with them any more."Sydney Morning Herald, The Good Weekend, p26, 31.3.2007

Sydney Morning Herald, The Good Weekend, 31 Mar 2007

The Applicant First, are you our sort of a person? Stop crying. Open your hand. Empty? Empty. Here is a hand To fill it and willing To bring teacups and roll away headaches And do whatever you tell it. Will you marry it? It is guaranteed To thumb shut your eyes at the end And dissolve of sorrow. Come here, sweetie, out of the closet. You have a hole, it's a poultice. My boy, it's your last resort. Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.Sylvia Plath; excerpt; Ariel

In Vietnam Things Not OK In Vietnam things not OK Think to self, "must get away". So jump on boat and come to Aussie "ah so" I say, "what lovely possie". Go quick smart to Welfare fella he hand me money - I give Bank Teller. Welfare say: "come here no more, we send you cheque right to your door". Six months on dole - no longer poor, drive around in Commodore. Write to friends in Vietnam; tell them - "come here quick as can". Still on welfare (work at job), so get loan from finance mob. Get pretty smart - know what to do, buy big house in Waterloo. Friends write and tell "on the way", can I find them a house to stay. When they arrive, with beds I fix, in just four rooms - get twenty six. Soon am banking plenty rent, (five in back yard - live in tent). All are drawing Social money, must think Fraser "bloody bunny". With all my friends now living there next door neighbour starts to swear. Tell me he must move away, I buy his house, with cash I pay. Now everything is going good, soon I own all neighbourhood. Open fish shop next to Coles, make big profit from spring rolls.

Get real fat from eating nice, sure as hell beats bloody rice. Still on welfare, still get rents, think I buy Mercedes Benz. Very happy - real good life, bring out girl and make her wife. Take up hobby - call it breeding, baby bonus pay for feeding. Kids need dentist - wife need pills, we get for free, we get no bills. White man good: he pay all year to keep the welfare running here. We thank Australia - damn good place, too damn good for Aussie race. So if you no like yellow man, PLENTY ROOM IN VIETNAM.Anonymous

The power of the word The power of the word is completely misused in hell. We use the word to curse, to blame, to find guilt, to destroy. Of course, we also use it in the right way, but not too often. Mostly we use the word to spread poison - to express anger, jealousy, envy, and hate. The word is pure magic - the most powerful gift we have as humans - and we use it against ourselves. We plan revenge. We create chaos with the word. We use the word to create hate between different races, between different people, between families, between nations. We misuse the word so often, and this misuse is how we create and perpetuate the dream of hell. M Ruiz, The Four Agreements To Pluck It Tsumu no oshi tsumanu mo oshiki sumire kanaNaojo -

To pluck it is a pity, To leave it is a pity, Ah, this violet!in BR Horace, Haiku Vol1

The Old Temple Furudera ya horoku suteru seri no kanaBuson -

The old temple: A baking-pan Thrown away among the parsley.in BR Horace, Haiku Vol1

The Looks, and The Paths

Above left: Journey To The Afterlife. Egyptian antiques from the Louvre, National Galery of Australia, Canberra, 17.11.06 - 25.2.07, The Daily Telegraph, 17 Feb 2007. Above right: David Williams, an Aboriginal digger, who was on HMAS Vampire in the Vietnam War, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 April 2007. Below right: Milton Orkopoulos, the former NSW Aboriginal affairs minister, charged with sex and drug offences against three teenage boys, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 April 2007.

The Poet and the Writer The best poems of Sylvia Plath remain rare in their ability to reproduce for us mental and emotional states from which we flinch.Robyn Marsack, "Sylvia Plath", p91

We ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, you tell me? We would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.F Kafka, in R Marsack, "Sylvia Plath", p91

My childhood landscape was not land but the end of the land - the cold, salt, running hills of the Atlantic. Something is breathing...something...like a deep woman, it hid a good deal: it had many faces, many delicate, terrible veils. If it could court, it could also kill.Sylvia Plath, in R Marsack, "Sylvia Plath", p1

Left: an image from a NSW election campaign. Right: an image from a car tyres advertisement.

My Son, My Executioner My son, my executioner, I take you in my arms, Quiet and small and just astir And whom my body warms. Sweet death, small son, our instrument Of immortality, Your cries and hunger document Our bodily decay.Donald Hall; the first two stanzas

Contusion The size of a fly, The doom mark Crawls down the wall. The heart shuts, The sea slides back, The mirrors are sheeted.S Plath; excerpt; Ariel

Balloons Peacocks blessing Old ground with a feather Beaten in starry metals.S Plath; excerpt; Ariel

Totem There is no terminus, only suitcases Out of which the same self unfolds like a suit Bald and shiny, with pockets of wishes, Notions and tickets, short circuits and folding mirrors. I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms. And the truth it is terrible.S Plath; excerpt; Ariel

A Homologous Series

Various sources.

The Poetess Sylvia Plath These poems in "Ariel" were written in the last months of her life and often rushed out at the rate of two or three a day. Ariel, the Oxford English Dictionary notes, is the name given in the Old Testament to Jerusalem, and means "Lion of God". Serpents were the Greek symbol of Necessity. The following two lines are from "Kindness": The blood jet is poetry there is no stopping it. Plath connected writing with health, and made the body-poetry connection when she wrote about the the poets that gave her most pleasure as being "possessed

by their poems as by the rhythms of their own breathing. Their finest poems seem born all-of-a-piece, not put together by hand." While writing a poem she could feel magnificient, but afterwards the feeling could not be sustained. And according to Hughes, Plath was "writing not occassional poems but one long poem, chapters in a mythology where the plot, seen as a whole and in retrospect, is strong and clear - even if the origins of it and the dramatis personae (the characters) are at the bottom enigmatic. The world of her poetry is one of emblematic visionary events, mathematical symmetries, clairvoyance and metamorphoses." Stephen Spencer has suggested that even Plath's best poems "have little principle of beginning or ending, but seem fragments, not so much of one long poem, but as an outpouring which could not stop with the lapsing of the poet's hysteria." Ted Hughes: "It's my suspicion that no poem can be a poem that is not a statement from the powers in control of our life..." Accounts of Sylvia Plath's school and college days emphasize the deliberate, at times driven manner in which she conducted her life. The conventionality and lack of spontaneity are striking. Plath declared herself interested in novels because of the sort of detail they could accommodate: "I am a woman...I like trivia". Perhaps what Plath was discarding as peripheral to poetry was in fact the dailiness of experience that helps to preserve sanity. Acknowledgement of what is hidden, of what is confusing, imitating in the writing itself a sense of confusion; deliberately blurring boundaries between consciousness and the unconscious; an interest in fluid, intermediary states; the representation of many voices rather than a single, knowing voice - all these things are typical of women's writing.Robyn Marsack, "Sylvia Plath"

Afterword Anyone can find or come across the evidence for this law of 'One in Twenty-five', mentioned in the Foreword, in just about all printed matter. The problem is that we seem to routinely overlook it. The glimpse of truth does not to jibe with our mind's agenda. Because the moment the mind spots anything that threatens its uncontested dominion over the body it intervenes. It makes us skip the crucial information. How? Through adult cynicism, the revelations are ignored, dismissed, disbelieved, and disparaged. Anything, but examined. The selected poems, passages, and images do not, or not necessarily, express my personal convictions or feelings. When I originally selected them I had no predetermined idea what I was doing nor what I was doing it for. Over a period of some years, whenever something I happened to read, or just plainly stumble

upon, grabbed me internally, I coppied it in a journal. Subsequently, I titled the journal "Indications from Infinity", and subtitled it "Peeks into Open-Endedness". I am not quite sure what I meant by that, but the name seemed appropriate. If I am pressed to clarify and elucidate on my selection criteria, I can do that only post facto. Thus I retrospectively try to pin down what it was that made me choose one and discard the other. It was plainly only the feeling of intensity in those selected items that somehow arrested my attention for a moment and made me copy them into my journal, regardless of whether my mind approved or disapproved of their actual meaning and content. If I sensed something intense and revealing emanating from a passage, then that was it. I hope that the reader will likewise derive a similar experience of intensity from considering them - the intensity of wonder, of stupidity, of wisdom, of helplessness, of joy. peterfaiglATgmailDOTcom YouTube channel: peterfaigl