Posts

Showing posts from November, 2006

Strange Platypus(es) Part VII

My secular colleagues often assert that humanity has a common obsession with the sacrificed and eaten god. Ritual sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. This is but one of a thousand arguments that all religions are really one and the same at their core, and rooted in "superstition" (whatever "superstition" may mean). I find it rather facile to stop there, however. There is something interesting that this common phenomenon reveals about the human psyche. In our deep-rooted, animistic core (I use the word animism without any sense of it being "degraded," "superstitious," or "barbarian". In some ways, I believe that the animists understand a good deal more about the world as it is than we do in secularized West. If we are to call animism "superstitious," then I find modern secularism equally so, the only difference being where each worldview keeps its "superstitions.") lies this fervent desire to kill god and by ing

Word-Wise Platypus

After perusing a calendar of archaic English, I am convinced that the English have forgotten more words for beer than most languages have words.

The Platypus Misses Byzantium (But not Tea Bags)

Wherein is told the story of an amazing car break down, a mildly expensive repair, a missed wedding, and best wishes for an old friend. Dear reader, You must not assume the worst when you see the picture that has been thoughtfully placed at the head of this account. Our society is so given to that excess of morbid wonder, that one is fairly induced to plumb the depths of horror to produce even a mild sensation of excitement in the organ of feeling. A writer's heroines must suffer as veritable Psyches and our villains must be more cruel and tyrannical than the late King Leopold if they are to be of even the most casual interest. I suppose one might be induced to spend a great portion of ink here deploring the depraved conditions of our age and wax toward the highest pitch of moralism upon the point to put even an enthusiast to shame. It is quite excessive, and yet it is the tenor of our times, dear reader. I, however, never could abide a fashion, unless it be fashiona

The Platypus Sets Sail (For Tea Bags)

"This is no country for old men. The young in one another's arms, birds in the trees -Those dying generations- at thier song, the salmon falls, thhe mackerel-crowded seas, fish, flesh, or fowl, comend all summer long whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all negelect monuments of unageing intellect." "An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap is hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress, nor is there singing at school but studying monuments of its own magnificence; and therefore I have sailed the seas and come to the holy city of Byzantium." "O sages standing in God's holy fire as in the gold mosaic of a wall, come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, and be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal it knows not what it is; and gather me into the artiface of eternity." "Once out o

Two Tea Bags One Platypus

There is no wind upon the surface of the water Life is so beautiful in the still moments Furious energy has but one goal The shrike upon the reed fills my heart