The Power of the Written Word

Paximus wrote:

earthenjug wrote:

ericclimbs wrote:

earthenjug wrote:Gawd, I'm such a slut. Just finished "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty" and will start "Beauty's Punishment" as soon as I have some time to "enjoy" it (This weekend). Both by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)

Well hey there! I have also read "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty", enjoyed it, and could probably recommend some other titles in the same, uh, ahem, genre.

I haven't read "Beauty's Punishment" but, if I recall correctly, it should begin at her banishment.

yeppers. exactly.

I gotta list but I'm more than willing to compare!

I love comics of all kinds, been collecting them since I was a kid. There is a lot to be learned in a comic book if you read between the lines. Social and political satire is a great thing.

Same here
I don't collect so much anymore but I still read
Collecting is too much of a pain sometimes

Hermann Hesse Steppenwolf
"There is much to be said for contentment and painlessless, for these bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible, but pass by whispering on tip-toe. But the worst of it is that it is just this contentment that I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain. When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so-called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thankgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols, to provide a few rebellious schoolboys with the longed-for ticket to Hamburg, or to stand one or two representatives of the established order on their heads. For what I have always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity."

ericclimbs wrote:

earthenjug wrote:

ericclimbs wrote:

earthenjug wrote:Gawd, I'm such a slut. Just finished "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty" and will start "Beauty's Punishment" as soon as I have some time to "enjoy" it (This weekend). Both by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)

Well hey there! I have also read "The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty", enjoyed it, and could probably recommend some other titles in the same, uh, ahem, genre.

I haven't read "Beauty's Punishment" but, if I recall correctly, it should begin at her banishment.

yeppers. exactly.

I gotta list but I'm more than willing to compare!

Have you read any of the Hidden Grotto Books by Louisa Burton? I've read the first two (House of Dark Delights and Bound in Moonlight). I have the third installment but haven't read it yet. Some parts are a little dull but, for most part, I definately recommend them.

Actually, that is anew one for me. Where's my pen and paper....

brave new world
Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But there were also husbands, wives, lovers. There were also monogamy and romance.

"Though you probably don't know what those are," said Mustapha Mond.

They shook their heads.

Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrow channeling of impulse and energy.

...

"Think of water under pressure in a pipe." They thought of it. "I pierce it once," said the Controller. "What a jet!"

He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little fountains.

"My baby. My baby... !"
"Mother!" The madness is infectious.
"My love, my one and only, precious, precious..."

Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder these poor premoderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty -- they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly(and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?

Looking for some good intro books to Buddhism. I'm not much into any kind of dogma but do have undefined spiritual beliefs. Sort of like I cannot look up at the night sky, witness all of those nearly infinite galaxies out there, and believe that there is nothing more than this Life. To me there has to be a reason, an answer. And, in the old days, I did enough psychedelics to know what it is like to feel completely blissed out while being totally disassociated from the Ego. I enjoy yoga and meditation when I am disciplined enough to be on top of it (which is, currently, not as much as I should). I'm seeking to reign in my randomness and and re-condense it into a laser beam of focus.

Recommendations?

ericclimbs wrote:Looking for some good intro books to Buddhism. I'm not much into any kind of dogma but do have undefined spiritual beliefs. Sort of like I cannot look up at the night sky, witness all of those nearly infinite galaxies out there, and believe that there is nothing more than this Life. To me there has to be a reason, an answer. And, in the old days, I did enough psychedelics to know what it is like to feel completely blissed out while being totally disassociated from the Ego. I enjoy yoga and meditation when I am disciplined enough to be on top of it (which is, currently, not as much as I should). I'm seeking to reign in my randomness and and re-condense it into a laser beam of focus.

Recommendations?

Ill find you some books later but here is the place to start, its a site ran by Buddhist monks themselves.

accesstoinsight.info