July 23, 2005
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Go Ask Alice
Click to enlarge“This is a
Datura Moonflower.”From Dec. 20, 2002: See… my Sermon for St. Patrick’s Day.This contains the following metaphysical observation from Mark Helprin’s novel Winter’s Tale:
“Nothing is random.”
For those who, like the protagonist of Joan Didion’s
feel that they “know what nothing means,” I recommend the following readings:
“Christian Mystery and Responsibility:
Gnosticism in Derrida’s The Gift of Death” –“Derrida’s description of Christian mystery implies this hidden demonic and violent dimension:
The gift made to me by God as he holds me in his gaze and in his
hand while remaining inaccessible to me, the terribly dissymmetrical
gift of the mysterium tremendum only allows me to respond and only
rouses me to the responsibility it gives me by making a gift of death,
giving the secret of death, a new experience of death. (33)”The above-mentioned sermon is a meditation on randomness and page numbers, focusing on page 265 in particular.
On page 265 of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, we find the following remark:
“Googlaa pluplu.”
Following Joyce’s instructions, and entering “pluplu” in the Google search engine, we find the following:
“Datura is a delusional drug rather than a hallucinatory one. You
don’t see patterns, trails, or any cool visual effects; you just
actually believe in things that aren’t there…. I remember holding a
glass for a while–but when I raised it to my mouth to take a drink, my
fingers closed around nothingness because there was no glass there….Using datura is the closest I’ve ever come to death…. Of all the
drugs I’ve taken, this is the one that I’d be too scared to ever take
again.”For those who don’t need AA, perhaps the
offer of Ed Harris in the classic study of gangs of New York, “State of
Grace,” is an offer of somewhat safer holiday cheer that should not be
refused.
Ed Harris in
“State of Grace“
Xmas Special
