10-30-2023, 09:15 AM
I read Self-reliance. Now that I've read it through, I am going to listen to that recording, as I think the essay warrants a second exposure. I see why you like it and I quite often heard your voice while reading it.
I've been doing the I Ching without asking a specific question. I figure it knows better than I do the questions I have, and which one is paramount in my mind at any given time. I'm also keeping a notebook of my readings. Not sure why I'm doing that, but it seemed important to do it. The book you cited looks very interesting. I've always used the old Wilhelm translation. I like that she shows the primitive version of the Chinese characters for each hexagram. The oldest book I still retain is Chinese Characters: Their origin, etymology, history, classification and signification by L. Wieger, a Jesuit missionary. I bought it in Santa Fe on a road trip with my best friend (at the time) to Canada just after we finished high school. Probably some of the happiest weeks in my life. Anyway, it shows the primitive characters for the modernized versions and explains their origins as pictographs. The book is the closest thing I own to a magical object. It's bright red, like Mao's little book.
In Colorado, we bought some peyote from a group of hippies who needed gas money. I think we paid $15. It was an amazing night, once we got through the business of choking down the dried up cacti. One of the guys with the hippies had his neck in a brace, and a weird cage-like helmet to keep his head still. He had a jeep, and I went for a crazy ride with him in the dark along the forest roads; I thought I was probably going to die but was laughing the whole time. He also had a huge dog, the son of "The Strongest Dog in the World" (it won some kind of contest). One of the first poems I put on the forum was about that night.
We made it to Vancouver, but started running out of money and pretty much drove non-stop back to Texas. We hated each other by the end of that drive, at least temporarily.
I haven't thought about John Ashberry in a long time. I did try to read him when very young. My memory is he was too abstract for my tastes at the time, but that's a guess.
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Just read some of his poems on the Poetry Foundation website. Pretty mindbending stuff.
I've been doing the I Ching without asking a specific question. I figure it knows better than I do the questions I have, and which one is paramount in my mind at any given time. I'm also keeping a notebook of my readings. Not sure why I'm doing that, but it seemed important to do it. The book you cited looks very interesting. I've always used the old Wilhelm translation. I like that she shows the primitive version of the Chinese characters for each hexagram. The oldest book I still retain is Chinese Characters: Their origin, etymology, history, classification and signification by L. Wieger, a Jesuit missionary. I bought it in Santa Fe on a road trip with my best friend (at the time) to Canada just after we finished high school. Probably some of the happiest weeks in my life. Anyway, it shows the primitive characters for the modernized versions and explains their origins as pictographs. The book is the closest thing I own to a magical object. It's bright red, like Mao's little book.
In Colorado, we bought some peyote from a group of hippies who needed gas money. I think we paid $15. It was an amazing night, once we got through the business of choking down the dried up cacti. One of the guys with the hippies had his neck in a brace, and a weird cage-like helmet to keep his head still. He had a jeep, and I went for a crazy ride with him in the dark along the forest roads; I thought I was probably going to die but was laughing the whole time. He also had a huge dog, the son of "The Strongest Dog in the World" (it won some kind of contest). One of the first poems I put on the forum was about that night.
We made it to Vancouver, but started running out of money and pretty much drove non-stop back to Texas. We hated each other by the end of that drive, at least temporarily.
I haven't thought about John Ashberry in a long time. I did try to read him when very young. My memory is he was too abstract for my tastes at the time, but that's a guess.
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Just read some of his poems on the Poetry Foundation website. Pretty mindbending stuff.