Chapter 9
Power ought to serve as a check to power.
-John Milton "COMUS"
OEDIPAL CHRIST AND MILTON
I was forging ahead with my Milton course, and doing rather well
which pleased me and my family. I needed one more essay so I called upon
the Heavenly Muse to inspire me. And in turn, I hope my work inspires
others to read Milton and other great writers, too. I finished my essay
at 10pm and went to bed, not wanting any coffee a friend offered me. I
slept in until 7am, unusual for me, because my last essay was done - at
least for that time. It went as follows:
There is so much mystery, wonder, grandeur, admiration and also
prejudice against the greatest poet, John Milton. For those of you
who are fundamentalists you may be about to be pissed off. For those
skeptic "poets" who read a great deal but avoid Milton, I hope you
will reconsider and study him in depth. The following is an indictment
of both parties, through an eclectic analysis.
If we take history from The Bible that Jesus was born the son of
God or Holy Spirit, that is widely held. But Milton maintained Christ was
lesser than God since Milton did not believe in The Trinity which
still upsets fundamentalists. And since Christ's mother was Mary it
can be argued that she was a goddess or at least holy - unlike Christ's
stepfather, the lesser Joseph, so it is not surprising to consider that
Christ had an impending Oedipus Complex.
While no doubt this view borders on heresy to some, Christ was
closely involved with Mary Magdalene who was a strong female figure
as well as a prostitute. Symbolically, perhaps, Christ was looking
for his mother in his female companion, especially since they had the
same name, Mary. We now know that this tendency is found in Sophocles'
"Oedipus Rex," and this is emphasized by Milton at the end of "Paradise
Regained" where Christ wins out over Satan and then goes back to his
mother's. Clearly, Christ and Milton were attracted to strong women. The
fact that Freud was heavily influenced by Milton's incomparable epic adds
support to the idea of an Oedipal Christ and Milton.
Furthermore, many of us are familiar with William Blake's belief that
Milton was the reincarnation of the pagan Christ. But, Milton was a healer of
the intellect and came forth as a man of unequaled knowledge and wisdom
as he dedicated his life to freedom and was the central figure in changing
our western culture to democracies and uncensored speech. We see in
Milton's towering prose masterpiece, "Aereopagitica" the greatest polemic
ever written which influenced the laws of many countries, especially America.
One of the clinchers comparing Milton to Christ is that Milton's first wife's
name was Mary, too. And his Father was John, too, like him and his son.
There were three key John's in The Bible: The Baptist, The Apostle and
The Divine. So far much of this may seem like conjecture but if we think
of The Baptist as holiness or Milton's love for the world one is reminded of
the parable of Noah's Ark where God baptizes the Mother Earth. The Apostle
John wote one of the gospels and was very closely associated with Christ.
But, St. John the Divine was a prophet who foresaw the future in Revelation
just as Milton predicted the downfall of the church and clergy in his great poem
"Lycidas", and like Christ who prophesied his own Second Coming.
But, Milton's mother, Sara, whom he loved very dearly had been named
after Abraham's wife in Genesis, who gave a miraculous birth in The Bible
when she was nearly a hundred. Like Mary's in The Bible, this was a holy
birth. There are simply too many parallels like this for us not to consider these
two central figures, Christ and Milton, in history as great archetypes of gods.
An overlooked example is the humour and wit that Christ and Milton display
when discussing religion. The famous "Shew me a penny of Caesar" is the
only humour in the Bible and Milton emphasizes this by joking in the opening
lines of "Paradise Lost" with puns on "fruit" and "taste." Also, most Milton
readers remember his hilariously witty remark to King Charles II who said
to Milton: "God took your eyesight for killing my father" and Milton retorted:
"And God took your father's head for being a tyrant." Thus, both archetypes
had dismissed the previous moral canons of the church and state by mocking
them. It was also apparent that both acted "according to conscience" and knew
no fear. Christ was beaten and scourged and Milton was mobbed and beaten
- as a blind man - yet that did not prevent either from fulfilling their roles as
prophet/Messiahs.
If we accept that Milton and Christ approached their mothers with love
and esteem then certainly it would seem ridiculous to assume they treated
other women differently. Too often, for example, writers have taken Eve the
Mother of mankind as weaker than Adam or man. In "Paradise Lost" she is
brave to accept the challenge of the serpent because by doing nothing Eden
would be empty and boring forever. Some have said she was the first Wiccan
because she desired wisdom by filling her mind and body with knowledge of
good and evil. And when she sees herself in the pool in "Paradise Lost" there
are lesbian overtones as she falls in love with herself. Also, it is interesting to
note Milton had a daughter named Mary...
Of course, fundamentalists will often argue against homosexuality but
Jesus enjoyed being around men although, in context again, he hinted its time
was not right as God said "be fruitful and multiply". The Earth was not heavily
populated then, and now after the liberating words of Milton we see a coming
out of homosexuality which is latent in everyone according to the Monotheistic
beliefs Milton and Christ held. Moreover, in "Paradise Lost" angels and demons
shapeshift and often are bisexual. This view is widely held in religions including
early Christianity which accepted reincarnation. And, of course, The Bible says
Satan can transform himself into a being of light. And to Milton, if God knows
all things then God must know how it feels to be a woman and indeed feel
absolutely everything including lesbianism and oppression by men.
A great example that Milton knew things that the rest of humanity didn't was
his description of happy and enlightened beings that live on planets that revolve
around other stars. His 1638 meeting with Galileo who was jailed for saying the
Earth revolved around the sun may have influenced this but Milton's comments
brought about the attention of the Inquisition and fellow poets like Tasso had to
get him out of Italy. This was very much like Christ who was persecuted by Rome.
Milton also portrayed Satan as the first space traveller. And Satan, who to the
church was evil, was a hero to many later readers, especially the Romantic poets,
as he bonded with his daughter, Sin, and son, Death, and did not send them to die
but was given freedom to go to Eden by Sin. He was once compared to Captain
Kirk on a space mission which was somewhat humourous. Surprisingly, Satan was
even sad when a fellow demon was disfigured and his almost comic answer to
Gabriel's challenge that he would punch Gabriel out shows his courage despite
having to answer to Milton's God who like Christ's did little and had to have others
do his work. God may have still been exhausted from creating the universe.
Christ and Milton stood for freedom, love and wisdom. But they suffered,
struggled and scrapped their way knowing that they one day would be freely
accepted not as ridiculous fundamentalist icons but lovers of all people and other
beings. Christ knew he had to become a symbol of hope and he showed the same
courage as Eve had when he went to the cross. Milton knew that he had to suffer
but one day write his supreme epic and other masterpieces or he would be hubristic
and the world would remain enslaved to Kings, Queens and other despots.
The final point that Christ and Milton were Oedipal is that their human mother,
Eve, was a fertility goddess according to Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and was
the mother and co-creator of mankind. Milton trumps the ridiculous view of being
even a little oppressive towards women as his Eve emerges as the stronger character
between her and Adam at the end of "Paradise Lost". Of course, some may say that
since Milton read The Bible in Hebrew, Greek and English ( he had a total photographic
memory which Christ must have had, too ) that he was showing Eve as a Matriarchal
Jew. But Eve was like the Earth Mother and a goddess since both Christ and Milton
were her descendants. And Milton's "The Doctrine And Discipline Of Divorce" caused
an outrage in the church since Milton advocated divorce if two people did not love each
other. He called this type of marriage an "empty husk," because he knew how women
were sometimes abused and mistreated or if there were other differences. Moreover,
Milton's muse was female and he was inspired by her in dreams to write many parts of
"Paradise Lost". His muse, Urania, the goddess of Memory and Astrology often
identified herself as Moses or King David so it is clear that Milton felt God and the Holy
Spirit were both feminine and masculine. Milton was years, even centuries ahead of his
time and works like "Paradise Lost" are still very perplexing in many ways just as much
as Christ's works are, since Christ did many great things AFTER he rose from the dead.
G.B.
The following great MILTON quote was influential to philosphers and writers, but none
more so than to Thomas Jefferson, whose The Declaration Of Independence was inspired
over 100 years after MILTON's physical demise from The Gout. Jefferson noted that the great
Milton had aided Cromwell in defeating a tryrannical English King.
"No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men were naturally born free."
-John Milton "THE TENURE OF KINGS AND MAGISTRATES"
Note: T.S. Eliot was a "true poet" and used Milton's LYCIDAS as a model for THE WASTELAND
without knowing it.
Further Key Notes: The Who's "TOMMY" was about a deaf, dumb and blind boy's musical
religion since Townshend is partially deaf as Beethoven was and both are geniuses. But,
Beethoven was heavily influenced by Byron's poetry who said in his great epic "DON JUAN":
"Thou shalt honour Milton...". The dumb antipun here is poets and critics who no longer read
Milton but all of them unwittingly follow him much like The Who's Tommy who can't speak,
read or write but "turns his rebellion into money" to quote The Clash, whose main influence was
The Who. Townshend's quest for "self-esteem" and "enlightenment" ( Milton coinages ) through
music and eclecticism since he followed Meher Baba, an eastern holy man, said in his great
"Baba O'Reilly" song "Let's get together before we get much older." He recognized, as a prophet,
that time is running out before the abuse of our planet leads to destruction and NO FUTURE as
Johnny Rotten sang. Milton was irritable like Townshend, too, because of their mental illnesses
and hope for the world as idealists.
Northrop Frye's seminal study of William Blake, "FEARFUL SYMMETRY" showed that juxtaposing
Blakean ideas towards Miltonic references no longer made Blake the "madman" as Wordsworth
shamefully misinterpreted Blake. ( Still love ya, WORDS, though ). And since Milton was the most
erudite and intellectual man in history, Frye brilliantly recognized Blake as the mystic people's poet
and visionary; thus, we see the link between Milton ( the epitome of "Classic Art" ) and great folk
poets such as Bob Dylan and Townshend who are avant-garde "Popular Culture Art" artists. Blake
is the center between classic and folk art in English Literature and English Art, although there are
cases like Robbie Burns, Hank Williams and the legendary Elvis Presley, whose impact on our
modern culture has infiltrated into every "nook" in our artistic forest of creativity. Yet, the final point,
is ELVIS PRESLEY was a true artist as his music was called "Devil's Art" by many at first just as
MILTON's had been called by BLAKE. But, as Blake said in his "PROVERBS OF HELL": Enough!
Or, too much!
"Where more is meant than meets the ear."
-JOHN MILTON "IL PENSEROSO" ( 1:120 )
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
THE PACIFYING MILTON Chapter 8
Chapter 8
The Stars with deep amaze
Stand fixed in steadfast gaze...
-John Milton "On The Morning Of Christ's Nativity"
PARADISE LOST: MILTON HERO
Since no book or mention of Milton's incomparable epic, "PARADISE LOST" should
ever be overlooked or understudied, I decided to go back to college to learn one day
at a time. Disability funds paid for my courses, where I learned Milton had suffered
more than any other writer and given back what he could at such a cost that he was
jailed, beaten,and blind yet never gave up. Like the archetypal Christ he stood for
freedom and proved that wisdom was the only way to the true Transcending Love, God.
I wrote the following essay with the spirit of Milton in mind, to "argue freely"and
"according to all conscience, above all liberties."
Milton is the true hero in Paradise Lost. Milton said his aim to do "things unattempted
yet in prose or rhyme" was for one thing to "justify the ways of God to man." But in saying
this, as a man, he was trying to justify the ways of God to himself. That appears to be why
Milton, as narrator, is the most powerful and heroic force to be reckoned with in the poem.
And while Milton revolutionized poetry by writing his epic in blank verse ( which even his
20th century detractors like Pound and T.S. Eliot, for example, are indebted to him for
English non-rhyming poetry as well as enjambment where poetic lines continue into the
next line and can be shorter than the previous line ) he also created a type of Monotheism
that was derived from so much erudition, surely from other religions, even Eastern ones,
that he shocked the clergy which was no doubt his heroic intention. Certainly, Satan
appears heroic especially in the first few books with his open and brilliant speeches after
his war with God's angels who are not always like Biblical angels. Milton's depiction of
male homosexual angels outraged the church, for example, and his constant mixture of
pagan references with Christian ones was also considered blasphemy by exasperated
prelates which endeared him to almost every poet and critic up to Tennyson. Byron
said Milton's Satan "led a noble revolt against political tyranny." Certainly, Milton's puns
in his epic infuriated the church,too, since the clergy were totally sanctimonious and
humourless about the Bible. Indeed, the opening lines: "Of man's first disobedience and
the fruit" with the pun on "fruit" was Milton's foreshadowing irreverence.
Milton's God is seen as austere, cruel and vengeful since he banishes Satan yet uses
him to tempt Adam and Eve. If God is the creator of all including Satan then He is responsible
for evil. And instead of having a very simple resolution where he saves all and even redeems
the rebels he invents a complex salvation where no angel steps forward to be sacrificed but
his son does "to regain that blissful seat ". Here we see God willing to bring suffering on his
Son for his own selfish purposes: why not have His son come without being innocently tortured
so there is less suffering and why keep allowing Satan false hopes? Satan says "evil be thou
my good" out of frustration and constant manipulation and unspeakable horror. This supreme
epic ( Edgar Allen Poe, for example, said it was the greatest epic under the sun, and all The
Romantics held it in the highest esteem ) has been interpreted so differently by each generation
of poets and critics because of its tremendous depth and intricacy of meaning.
Since Milton did not believe in The Trinity,and other traditions which the Church labelled him a
heretic for, God's Son was a creation and therefore somewhat of a brother to Satan. But, instead
of treating Satan like the Prodigal Son because if God was the Father of all, he would want him to
come back to him because as Shakespeare wisely pointed out love shouldn't alter. We see
Adam's love for Eve so great that he is willing to die for her. But God's love is always conditional
and although He is a merciful God to many, clearly Milton struggled with this idea. Milton was
more aligned with Jungian ideas derived from his epic, such as the "collective unconscious." He
was also as many realize now the first to have New Age ideas since he believed that spirits
could shape-shift, and he was among the first to write of beings on other planets: PL Book III lines
565- 572 : "Through the pure marble Air his oblique way/ Amongst innumerable Stars, that shone/
Stars distant but nigh hand seem'd other Worlds,/ Or other Worlds they seem'd, or happy Isles,/
Like those Hesperian Gardens fam'd of old,/Fortunate Fields, and Groves and flow'ry Vales,/
Thrice happy Isles, but who dwelt happy there/he stay'd not to enquire..." Here we see Milton's
Satan as a space traveller passing enlightened worlds and beings to get to Earth. What is puzzling
is how he conceived about life on other planets since no one understood what he meant until
much later.There is mention that John Donne, the metaphysical poet/preacher who passed away in
1631, believed in other worlds but Milton never referred to him, probably because he hated the clergy.
When Abdiel returns from Pandemonium God says "thou hast fought the better fight." Here Milton
portrays God as petty gloating over a minor incident just as Satan did in his early upperhand in the
War in Heaven. So, Milton portays God as not always good and Satan as not always evil. Thus,
Blake's assertion that "Milton was a true poet and of the devil's party without knowing it" is true
although he was of God's party as well. Therefore, we see a kind of dualism where Satan and God
by almost every reader's interpretation are coming across alternately favourable to our human
intellect and on the other hand distasteful, too. We see Milton struggling to figure out how to justify
God's ways but he also has to justify Satan's ways, too. This anticipates the Age of Reason where
reason ( God ) had to keep desire ( Devil ) in check which creates the personality or ego. It is ironic
that Freud was influenced by this idea and derived the super ego/ ego / id notion from Milton's
"Paradise Lost" just as Jung had garnered the "collective unconscious" from it.
But, to The Romantics controlling desire meant controlling imagination which is the true God so
Shelley said" poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." And Milton, like the God who
imagined The Bible and was therefore a poet, was thus seen as an archetype who had redeemed
man by writing the greatest literary work, "Paradise Lost." Milton ended up justifying the creative side
of God as well as the creative side of Satan. He admitted both sides could be destructive so he
recognized the constant battles without mirror the ones within ourselves and by accepting both
sides as hero and villain he taught us that the only constant was love and acceptance of freedom
which is what his God never did but Milton's thesis was He should. So, like Blake, Milton shows us
the higher good: learn through wisdom as we all should and Milton's God should not imprison freedom,
especially of speech, but relax and ease the repression and suffering He creates. This is shown in
"Aereopagitica" where Milton offers the greatest polemic on freedom of speech. And to Milton if God
has his say certainly we must listen to Satan so as Blake said "without contraries is no progression."
This is the main reason why Milton abhorred the church and clergy because he felt they were corrupt,
biased and dogmatic.
What Milton taught us in Paradise Lost was that his epic was the true Bible since the original was
not only far inferior in language but it did not allow Satan freedom of speech. Milton's way of combatting
tyranny was literally playing the devil's advocate. But his overall wisdom came from his constant learning
and desire for knowledge from anyone which is why he read almost everything in many languages and is
the heroic poet of liberty and justice. Milton was believed by Blake, and others including myself, to be
the reincarnation of the pagan Jesus Christ who taught wisdom and to love thy enemies, including Satan.
But, he also believed that tyrants who stifled freedom of speech had to be deposed which is why he aided
Oliver Cromwell in defeating Charles I, which influenced similar overthrows of governments in Europe but
particularly the United States whose founding fathers admired Milton, especially Thomas Jefferson and
John Quincy Adams, who noted Milton had been instrumental in deposing an English King. After the
Revoltionary War of 1776 many of the laws and most of the U.S. Constitution were based on Milton's
writings, particularly "Areopagitica", widely regarded as the greatest polemic ever.
Milton is the true Christ because even today most fundamentalist Christian churches, for example, see
Muslims as evil and Satanic. Fundamentalist Muslims see Christians as Satanic ( or at least as infidels).
Milton, however would no doubt unite the two making them both of "the devil's party" and therefore no
longer enemies or a threat to each other. So, to justify the ways of God to man as a Monotheist and lover
of all humanity Milton would unite the world which would make him as some clergymen condemned him
as a Christian Humanist. He is the least understood writer by even many of the most renowned modern
writers who think he was a fundamentalist which is the probably the biggest illusion versus reality idea
ever. He remains the greatest writer in history towering over even the mighty Shakespeare.
-G.B.
The Stars with deep amaze
Stand fixed in steadfast gaze...
-John Milton "On The Morning Of Christ's Nativity"
PARADISE LOST: MILTON HERO
Since no book or mention of Milton's incomparable epic, "PARADISE LOST" should
ever be overlooked or understudied, I decided to go back to college to learn one day
at a time. Disability funds paid for my courses, where I learned Milton had suffered
more than any other writer and given back what he could at such a cost that he was
jailed, beaten,and blind yet never gave up. Like the archetypal Christ he stood for
freedom and proved that wisdom was the only way to the true Transcending Love, God.
I wrote the following essay with the spirit of Milton in mind, to "argue freely"and
"according to all conscience, above all liberties."
Milton is the true hero in Paradise Lost. Milton said his aim to do "things unattempted
yet in prose or rhyme" was for one thing to "justify the ways of God to man." But in saying
this, as a man, he was trying to justify the ways of God to himself. That appears to be why
Milton, as narrator, is the most powerful and heroic force to be reckoned with in the poem.
And while Milton revolutionized poetry by writing his epic in blank verse ( which even his
20th century detractors like Pound and T.S. Eliot, for example, are indebted to him for
English non-rhyming poetry as well as enjambment where poetic lines continue into the
next line and can be shorter than the previous line ) he also created a type of Monotheism
that was derived from so much erudition, surely from other religions, even Eastern ones,
that he shocked the clergy which was no doubt his heroic intention. Certainly, Satan
appears heroic especially in the first few books with his open and brilliant speeches after
his war with God's angels who are not always like Biblical angels. Milton's depiction of
male homosexual angels outraged the church, for example, and his constant mixture of
pagan references with Christian ones was also considered blasphemy by exasperated
prelates which endeared him to almost every poet and critic up to Tennyson. Byron
said Milton's Satan "led a noble revolt against political tyranny." Certainly, Milton's puns
in his epic infuriated the church,too, since the clergy were totally sanctimonious and
humourless about the Bible. Indeed, the opening lines: "Of man's first disobedience and
the fruit" with the pun on "fruit" was Milton's foreshadowing irreverence.
Milton's God is seen as austere, cruel and vengeful since he banishes Satan yet uses
him to tempt Adam and Eve. If God is the creator of all including Satan then He is responsible
for evil. And instead of having a very simple resolution where he saves all and even redeems
the rebels he invents a complex salvation where no angel steps forward to be sacrificed but
his son does "to regain that blissful seat ". Here we see God willing to bring suffering on his
Son for his own selfish purposes: why not have His son come without being innocently tortured
so there is less suffering and why keep allowing Satan false hopes? Satan says "evil be thou
my good" out of frustration and constant manipulation and unspeakable horror. This supreme
epic ( Edgar Allen Poe, for example, said it was the greatest epic under the sun, and all The
Romantics held it in the highest esteem ) has been interpreted so differently by each generation
of poets and critics because of its tremendous depth and intricacy of meaning.
Since Milton did not believe in The Trinity,and other traditions which the Church labelled him a
heretic for, God's Son was a creation and therefore somewhat of a brother to Satan. But, instead
of treating Satan like the Prodigal Son because if God was the Father of all, he would want him to
come back to him because as Shakespeare wisely pointed out love shouldn't alter. We see
Adam's love for Eve so great that he is willing to die for her. But God's love is always conditional
and although He is a merciful God to many, clearly Milton struggled with this idea. Milton was
more aligned with Jungian ideas derived from his epic, such as the "collective unconscious." He
was also as many realize now the first to have New Age ideas since he believed that spirits
could shape-shift, and he was among the first to write of beings on other planets: PL Book III lines
565- 572 : "Through the pure marble Air his oblique way/ Amongst innumerable Stars, that shone/
Stars distant but nigh hand seem'd other Worlds,/ Or other Worlds they seem'd, or happy Isles,/
Like those Hesperian Gardens fam'd of old,/Fortunate Fields, and Groves and flow'ry Vales,/
Thrice happy Isles, but who dwelt happy there/he stay'd not to enquire..." Here we see Milton's
Satan as a space traveller passing enlightened worlds and beings to get to Earth. What is puzzling
is how he conceived about life on other planets since no one understood what he meant until
much later.There is mention that John Donne, the metaphysical poet/preacher who passed away in
1631, believed in other worlds but Milton never referred to him, probably because he hated the clergy.
When Abdiel returns from Pandemonium God says "thou hast fought the better fight." Here Milton
portrays God as petty gloating over a minor incident just as Satan did in his early upperhand in the
War in Heaven. So, Milton portays God as not always good and Satan as not always evil. Thus,
Blake's assertion that "Milton was a true poet and of the devil's party without knowing it" is true
although he was of God's party as well. Therefore, we see a kind of dualism where Satan and God
by almost every reader's interpretation are coming across alternately favourable to our human
intellect and on the other hand distasteful, too. We see Milton struggling to figure out how to justify
God's ways but he also has to justify Satan's ways, too. This anticipates the Age of Reason where
reason ( God ) had to keep desire ( Devil ) in check which creates the personality or ego. It is ironic
that Freud was influenced by this idea and derived the super ego/ ego / id notion from Milton's
"Paradise Lost" just as Jung had garnered the "collective unconscious" from it.
But, to The Romantics controlling desire meant controlling imagination which is the true God so
Shelley said" poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." And Milton, like the God who
imagined The Bible and was therefore a poet, was thus seen as an archetype who had redeemed
man by writing the greatest literary work, "Paradise Lost." Milton ended up justifying the creative side
of God as well as the creative side of Satan. He admitted both sides could be destructive so he
recognized the constant battles without mirror the ones within ourselves and by accepting both
sides as hero and villain he taught us that the only constant was love and acceptance of freedom
which is what his God never did but Milton's thesis was He should. So, like Blake, Milton shows us
the higher good: learn through wisdom as we all should and Milton's God should not imprison freedom,
especially of speech, but relax and ease the repression and suffering He creates. This is shown in
"Aereopagitica" where Milton offers the greatest polemic on freedom of speech. And to Milton if God
has his say certainly we must listen to Satan so as Blake said "without contraries is no progression."
This is the main reason why Milton abhorred the church and clergy because he felt they were corrupt,
biased and dogmatic.
What Milton taught us in Paradise Lost was that his epic was the true Bible since the original was
not only far inferior in language but it did not allow Satan freedom of speech. Milton's way of combatting
tyranny was literally playing the devil's advocate. But his overall wisdom came from his constant learning
and desire for knowledge from anyone which is why he read almost everything in many languages and is
the heroic poet of liberty and justice. Milton was believed by Blake, and others including myself, to be
the reincarnation of the pagan Jesus Christ who taught wisdom and to love thy enemies, including Satan.
But, he also believed that tyrants who stifled freedom of speech had to be deposed which is why he aided
Oliver Cromwell in defeating Charles I, which influenced similar overthrows of governments in Europe but
particularly the United States whose founding fathers admired Milton, especially Thomas Jefferson and
John Quincy Adams, who noted Milton had been instrumental in deposing an English King. After the
Revoltionary War of 1776 many of the laws and most of the U.S. Constitution were based on Milton's
writings, particularly "Areopagitica", widely regarded as the greatest polemic ever.
Milton is the true Christ because even today most fundamentalist Christian churches, for example, see
Muslims as evil and Satanic. Fundamentalist Muslims see Christians as Satanic ( or at least as infidels).
Milton, however would no doubt unite the two making them both of "the devil's party" and therefore no
longer enemies or a threat to each other. So, to justify the ways of God to man as a Monotheist and lover
of all humanity Milton would unite the world which would make him as some clergymen condemned him
as a Christian Humanist. He is the least understood writer by even many of the most renowned modern
writers who think he was a fundamentalist which is the probably the biggest illusion versus reality idea
ever. He remains the greatest writer in history towering over even the mighty Shakespeare.
-G.B.
THE PACIFYING MILTON Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Of goodliest Trees loaden with fairest Fruit...
-John Milton "Paradise Lost" ( Book IV , line 147 )
After talking to my psychiatric workers and agreeing to new meds
I began to feel better. Seroquel took the voices away and I moved into
a new place. We were a brooding trio of mental patients in a boarding
home. We coffee mates were barred from the kitchen where all the food
and drinks were locked up like a coop. It's 5PM and Norma, the Filipino
nurse, has just left to put the feed bag on her other house, too. Both
houses next big pigout is breakfast. My biggest relief is the joy of
revelling in Milton and his influences ( which is every later writer's
"Ignorance Or Theft" as the great poet Andrew Marvell wrote in his awe
of Milton, in his preface "ON PARADISE LOST" ). Marvell had been Milton's
secretary when Milton was in Cromwell's government as Ambassador Of
Foreign Tongues. ( I wish I hadn't mentioned tongues, because the meds
make us hungrier).
This sixteen hour lock-out is a way of profiteering. We use our
hungry checks to buy pop and chips until the money dries up like an old,
empty bottle. We have all quit smoking rather than go through tobacco
withdrawal every month as most mental patients do; we feel coralled as
horses with no hay. We are bitter but defiant. Then, I suggest something
that men should know about modern women. We should eat of the forbidden
fruit this eve.
So our rage boils into a cooked up scheme. When Norma leaves, the
kitchen door hinges are unscrewed and we greedily chow down from our paid
for food. We toast each other's bread, fill our bellies with milk, coffee
and juice. Our binge goes on for awhile as we three big pigs are smug and
sneaky until Norma, the keen-eyed nurse, says we're getting bigger bellies.
I tell her we're all pregnant and that she'll have to marry us. We laugh
with great zeal.
"Screw you," she says. I tell her the feeling is mutual with a wink
at her cross, but beautiful face.
Then she claims someone has copied kitchen keys because there is
food missing. We deny this. That night, we unhinge the kitchen door and
eat a Pumpkin pie faster than Peter-Peter could have. Then sandwiches are
jammed in our mouths. We are in snack nirvana.
Suddenly, Norma is there and she tells us locks will be put on the
inside of the kitchen. We are are locked out of the kitchen and sent to our
rooms much like church children - as Norma prepares herself a snack...
Of goodliest Trees loaden with fairest Fruit...
-John Milton "Paradise Lost" ( Book IV , line 147 )
After talking to my psychiatric workers and agreeing to new meds
I began to feel better. Seroquel took the voices away and I moved into
a new place. We were a brooding trio of mental patients in a boarding
home. We coffee mates were barred from the kitchen where all the food
and drinks were locked up like a coop. It's 5PM and Norma, the Filipino
nurse, has just left to put the feed bag on her other house, too. Both
houses next big pigout is breakfast. My biggest relief is the joy of
revelling in Milton and his influences ( which is every later writer's
"Ignorance Or Theft" as the great poet Andrew Marvell wrote in his awe
of Milton, in his preface "ON PARADISE LOST" ). Marvell had been Milton's
secretary when Milton was in Cromwell's government as Ambassador Of
Foreign Tongues. ( I wish I hadn't mentioned tongues, because the meds
make us hungrier).
This sixteen hour lock-out is a way of profiteering. We use our
hungry checks to buy pop and chips until the money dries up like an old,
empty bottle. We have all quit smoking rather than go through tobacco
withdrawal every month as most mental patients do; we feel coralled as
horses with no hay. We are bitter but defiant. Then, I suggest something
that men should know about modern women. We should eat of the forbidden
fruit this eve.
So our rage boils into a cooked up scheme. When Norma leaves, the
kitchen door hinges are unscrewed and we greedily chow down from our paid
for food. We toast each other's bread, fill our bellies with milk, coffee
and juice. Our binge goes on for awhile as we three big pigs are smug and
sneaky until Norma, the keen-eyed nurse, says we're getting bigger bellies.
I tell her we're all pregnant and that she'll have to marry us. We laugh
with great zeal.
"Screw you," she says. I tell her the feeling is mutual with a wink
at her cross, but beautiful face.
Then she claims someone has copied kitchen keys because there is
food missing. We deny this. That night, we unhinge the kitchen door and
eat a Pumpkin pie faster than Peter-Peter could have. Then sandwiches are
jammed in our mouths. We are in snack nirvana.
Suddenly, Norma is there and she tells us locks will be put on the
inside of the kitchen. We are are locked out of the kitchen and sent to our
rooms much like church children - as Norma prepares herself a snack...
THE PACIFYING MILTON Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Hence loathed Melancholy. -John Milton "L'Allegro."
Hence vain deluding joys. -John Milton "Il Penseroso."
"L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" have been regarded as
Milton's "companion poems" by almost every critic. I decided to
write my experience with their ideas but the nervous breakdown I
suffered was at the hands of God who had taken my mother and my
pleasure or mirth so I withdrew and became melancholy.I could not
be around people and like a poor man's Hamlet I wanted "to shuffle
off my mortal coil." I was becoming increasingly irritable at
certain times and getting high on the Arts at other times.I even
had the Haldol Shuffle.
After Mom's passing, I had moved in with my biker sister
and brother and got a measly pension. My room was cluttered with
poetry books as in Simon and Garfunkel's song "I Am A Rock". Then,
I began hearing voices from ghost artists telling me what to do or
how to behave. I started thinking like a child again and didn't
know whether to trust them. But, when I was alone I'd play The
Stones and "trip the light fantastic toe", that Milton mentioned
in L'Allegro. Then, in Milton's claim of "Sweetest Shakespeare,
fancy's child" my pleasure would be high and wild, and like "The
Tempest's' Prospero", I'd delight, magically, in such as "L'Allegro."
Then in my dreams I'd rest, with cloudy vision of Ophelia's
Little Mountain's "barren breast," but like Milton my words"forsook,"
in "Il Penseroso" her"fleshly nook." But without poets like Wordsworth
no poets would have written books about such things, nooks, streams
and treating women like UNfleshly dreams. So, I was put on pills for
paranoid-schizophrenia and bi-polar ills. For I have made a mess of
this paragraph, I confess.Then I heard the following crazy play I was
Leary of and involved in. It came in a drug-induced dream reminding
me that Donne, Milton and Blake all believed in beings on other worlds
which was "heresy" to the church. But, like E.R. Dodd's "The Greeks
And The Irrational" we are enlightened by poets, artists, musicians
and philosophers who seem wrong to the unacquainted, but often display
powerful, innovative ideas and profundity of feelings.
FACING THEM ( Progressive Insanities Of A Paranoid )
My sister Kari and my brother Rod
Were aliens sent by Mars, the War God
John Donne knew this in sixteen-thirty one
And in his wake there prophesied Milton
Blake claimed to see them with Milton as well
Yet the clergy ignore Ezekiel.
The Argument
There isn't any. I avoided treatment as long as I could. I think
Milton would have been sensible since he, too, had bi-polar it can
be surmised, especially when I've had it for 32 years, so I know a
bit of what I speak. Now come the hallucinations that keep me up
often for five or six days at a time and in the hospital the staff
said religion is a trigger for my illness. But, I got fooled again.
VOICE: I'm Shakespeare, and you're dying a coward;
unlike your valiant brother,Rod, you nerd.
GLEN: How did you know he drove a Valiant once?
VOICE: Did you hear me or are you still a dunce?
Don't avoid the topic but give up on
your craziness and lose your religion.
GLEN: So I should play music, like R.E.M.?
As a Christian, I don't know about them.
VOICE: It's time you learned to socialize and gain
compassion for others so grab a brain.
For there is more to know pathetic Glen,
Then what you dream of in your fool Heaven.
GLEN: I certainly wouldn't take your advice
because you're a sinner drowning in vice.
VOICE: I'm god of this world, and I live in all
I imagine like John Lennon whose call
is to people to join the human race
with love instead of turning a blind face.
GLEN: In the name of Christ begone foul demon!
The Bible is the one book worth readin'.
VOICE: "Without contraries is no progression";
as Blake once said with such true precision
and as he pointed out through Miltonic
writing that diversity heals the sick:
because if we read only just one book,
on a single path we will only look,
but "all the world's a stage" and you will fit
into a happier role "As you like it "
if you repent on fundamentalism
and share your dark thoughts with eclecticism.
GLEN: I know we all have bad thoughts and desires
but I want to escape burning hellfire.
VOICE:They are not bad but "darkness visible"
for black and white are indivisible
some people love the night more than the day
while others like white and some prefer gay
colours that will one day "bleed into one"
as U2 has assured everyone.
GLEN: I just want to be right, to know the truth.
VOICE: But the "expense of spirit" is your youth;
and when colours of skin, flags and dress
no longer cause much hatred and distress
only then will you find Heaven's cure
and have like Milton "th'upright heart and pure."
GLEN: You say good and bad things in your strange verse.
VOICE:It's the yin and yang of the universe.
GLEN: I will still want to believe in Jesus
though I'm starting to see the world needs us
to control "passionate intensity":
( fooled you with a line from Yeat's poetry ).
VOICE: That's much better and you're a quick learner,
now put your one god with the others
and like Joseph Campbell mark their masks
to find truly your life's appointed task.
GLEN: ( Crying ) But,"the meek will still inherit the earth?"
Especially those suffering since birth.
VOICE: And the lion and ox will also go
to Heaven, Nirvana, to learn to grow.
GLEN: ( Crossing himself ).What about Jesus? And the Holy cross?
VOICE: What about him? He's only one god lost.
GLEN: You mean the only holy god who died.
(Although with murderers crossed along side ).
VOICE: That was the customary way of killing then;
would you wear a pew had he the chair, Glen?
"I cannot conceive you" like Kent in Lear
but get out of your room and watch and hear;
but beware of your biker family
because they will test you as you will see.
GLEN: ( Shaking, looks at his watch, and takes 5 milligrams of Haldol.
He has no water left in his cup on his dresser ).
I still haven't found what I'm looking for.
VOICE:Get out of your room and lose even more;
but don't be dismayed and stand your own ground:
even Ali didn't win ev'ry round.
( Glen exits his room ).
SCENE II - The Kitchen
( Rod, Bob and Ron are drinking beer with Carrie. Enter
Glen with a cup in his hand ).
ROD: Hey, Glen, you came out of your lonely tomb;
have a beer, and tell us about your room.
GLEN: I think I'll just stick to a coffee brew.
ROD: How do you do that? With some crazy glue? ( They all laugh except
for Glen).
GLEN: ( Pours a coffee). So, Rod was it crowded at the Toy Run?
VOICE: Dumb question, and now they will have some fun.
ROD: No, I was the only one there, ya see. ( Again they laughed ).
GLEN: And I suppose you guys rode your Harleys?
ROD: No, we ran along behind all the way. ( Laughter ).
Got more questions or are ya gonna pray? ( They laugh as
Rod looks at his watch).
VOICE: Glen, tell him it's time to get a new watch.
GLEN: Time to get a new watch, you big Sasquatch.
ROD:Why should I get a watch? Did it break down? ( Glen looks at his
own watch, and they laugh again).
GLEN: Yes, as did the brain of a biker clown.
CARRIE: On your driver's licence where it says sex,
did you fill in no or just put an "X"? ( Laughter ).
GLEN: Your licence would read license with an "s".
CARRIE: Take a pill, for shit's sake. You're under stress.
BOB: Let's go to the pub. There's nothing going
on. Besides, Glen needs his rest from picking
up his stereo needle and hearing
love songs, instead of our biker swearing.( Laughter ).
GLEN: Well, don't punch out too many guys tonight.
ROD: What do ya mean? We've never had a fight;
we work in the pub kitchen making cakes.
remember, Bob, one cup of yeast it takes.
( They laugh and rise to leave; Rod is the last one out.
He whispers to Glen).
Keep trying, Glen and don't give up,okay? ( Rod winks and
slaps Glen on the back).
VOICE: You did well to face up to them today.
( Glen hears the revving up of Harleys).
SCENE III - The Kitchen
VOICE: Keep trying like Rod said and you'll be cool;
they just had some fun with you as the fool
yet as Hamlet loved his poor fool Yorick
he was indecisive and then grew sick
like you, so it's good to experience
and the gods love to see perserverance:
add a little danger to heat up life
like Chaucer did, and find your own Bath wife.
GLEN: What, like I should try drinking or smoking?
VOICE: Things go better with it to methinking.
GLEN: But coke, pot and street drugs are illegal.
VOICE: Because ministers treat you gullible
but even in your King James scriptures
nothing is said of cocaine or reefers
even Freud snorted drugs on occasion
but just use a little for recreation
and remember not to fear the bishops
for they have caused many holy mishaps.
GLEN: Maybe I'll try some coke. Just a sniffle.
VOICE: Try it but be careful just a little.
GLEN: They should have some up here in the cupboard.
( Pulls out a small zip-lock bag filled with white powder out
of the cupboard ).
VOICE: Do unto others and don't be bored.
GLEN: ( Stands catatonic for awhile, literally left holding the bag).
Do I dare? God help me but I feel I must
I need to know to strengthen any trust
we only learn through tough education.
VOICE: The gods are with you; proceed with caution.
You know naught about this sort of lifestyle.
GLEN: Well, here goes!I'm off to becoming wild! ( Begins sniffing and
snorting the powder ).
It smells sweet and it's making me feel sick
This stuff is evil; I need the sink quick! (Throws the bag
in the garbage,and begins to throw up until he is lying on the
kitchen floor, still barfing ).
VOICE: "To be or not to be, that's the question"
and today you have learned a strong lesson.
( Suddenly, there is a thundering roar of Harleys pulling
up in the driveway).
You're lying in your puke due to blind faith
but you're better off here I still sayeth
( The three bikers enter with Carrie. They see Glen on the
floor.)
RON: Holy, shit!Look at the little fucker!
He's gone and OD-ed on icing sugar!
He must have thought it was coke, the damned fool!( They help
Glen up and give him tissue to blow his nose).
We don't use coke anymore, it's not cool:
we gave it up for the Pepsi challenge. ( They laugh).
VOICE: This is Shakespeare, Glen. "All's Well That Ends Well."
VOICE: Get help Glen and escape "The Cope Of Hell."
( PL Book I line 345 )
ME( GLEN ): I am a Blind Mouth, and forsake the way
That has fooled bipolars until today.
Hence loathed Melancholy. -John Milton "L'Allegro."
Hence vain deluding joys. -John Milton "Il Penseroso."
"L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" have been regarded as
Milton's "companion poems" by almost every critic. I decided to
write my experience with their ideas but the nervous breakdown I
suffered was at the hands of God who had taken my mother and my
pleasure or mirth so I withdrew and became melancholy.I could not
be around people and like a poor man's Hamlet I wanted "to shuffle
off my mortal coil." I was becoming increasingly irritable at
certain times and getting high on the Arts at other times.I even
had the Haldol Shuffle.
After Mom's passing, I had moved in with my biker sister
and brother and got a measly pension. My room was cluttered with
poetry books as in Simon and Garfunkel's song "I Am A Rock". Then,
I began hearing voices from ghost artists telling me what to do or
how to behave. I started thinking like a child again and didn't
know whether to trust them. But, when I was alone I'd play The
Stones and "trip the light fantastic toe", that Milton mentioned
in L'Allegro. Then, in Milton's claim of "Sweetest Shakespeare,
fancy's child" my pleasure would be high and wild, and like "The
Tempest's' Prospero", I'd delight, magically, in such as "L'Allegro."
Then in my dreams I'd rest, with cloudy vision of Ophelia's
Little Mountain's "barren breast," but like Milton my words"forsook,"
in "Il Penseroso" her"fleshly nook." But without poets like Wordsworth
no poets would have written books about such things, nooks, streams
and treating women like UNfleshly dreams. So, I was put on pills for
paranoid-schizophrenia and bi-polar ills. For I have made a mess of
this paragraph, I confess.Then I heard the following crazy play I was
Leary of and involved in. It came in a drug-induced dream reminding
me that Donne, Milton and Blake all believed in beings on other worlds
which was "heresy" to the church. But, like E.R. Dodd's "The Greeks
And The Irrational" we are enlightened by poets, artists, musicians
and philosophers who seem wrong to the unacquainted, but often display
powerful, innovative ideas and profundity of feelings.
FACING THEM ( Progressive Insanities Of A Paranoid )
My sister Kari and my brother Rod
Were aliens sent by Mars, the War God
John Donne knew this in sixteen-thirty one
And in his wake there prophesied Milton
Blake claimed to see them with Milton as well
Yet the clergy ignore Ezekiel.
The Argument
There isn't any. I avoided treatment as long as I could. I think
Milton would have been sensible since he, too, had bi-polar it can
be surmised, especially when I've had it for 32 years, so I know a
bit of what I speak. Now come the hallucinations that keep me up
often for five or six days at a time and in the hospital the staff
said religion is a trigger for my illness. But, I got fooled again.
VOICE: I'm Shakespeare, and you're dying a coward;
unlike your valiant brother,Rod, you nerd.
GLEN: How did you know he drove a Valiant once?
VOICE: Did you hear me or are you still a dunce?
Don't avoid the topic but give up on
your craziness and lose your religion.
GLEN: So I should play music, like R.E.M.?
As a Christian, I don't know about them.
VOICE: It's time you learned to socialize and gain
compassion for others so grab a brain.
For there is more to know pathetic Glen,
Then what you dream of in your fool Heaven.
GLEN: I certainly wouldn't take your advice
because you're a sinner drowning in vice.
VOICE: I'm god of this world, and I live in all
I imagine like John Lennon whose call
is to people to join the human race
with love instead of turning a blind face.
GLEN: In the name of Christ begone foul demon!
The Bible is the one book worth readin'.
VOICE: "Without contraries is no progression";
as Blake once said with such true precision
and as he pointed out through Miltonic
writing that diversity heals the sick:
because if we read only just one book,
on a single path we will only look,
but "all the world's a stage" and you will fit
into a happier role "As you like it "
if you repent on fundamentalism
and share your dark thoughts with eclecticism.
GLEN: I know we all have bad thoughts and desires
but I want to escape burning hellfire.
VOICE:They are not bad but "darkness visible"
for black and white are indivisible
some people love the night more than the day
while others like white and some prefer gay
colours that will one day "bleed into one"
as U2 has assured everyone.
GLEN: I just want to be right, to know the truth.
VOICE: But the "expense of spirit" is your youth;
and when colours of skin, flags and dress
no longer cause much hatred and distress
only then will you find Heaven's cure
and have like Milton "th'upright heart and pure."
GLEN: You say good and bad things in your strange verse.
VOICE:It's the yin and yang of the universe.
GLEN: I will still want to believe in Jesus
though I'm starting to see the world needs us
to control "passionate intensity":
( fooled you with a line from Yeat's poetry ).
VOICE: That's much better and you're a quick learner,
now put your one god with the others
and like Joseph Campbell mark their masks
to find truly your life's appointed task.
GLEN: ( Crying ) But,"the meek will still inherit the earth?"
Especially those suffering since birth.
VOICE: And the lion and ox will also go
to Heaven, Nirvana, to learn to grow.
GLEN: ( Crossing himself ).What about Jesus? And the Holy cross?
VOICE: What about him? He's only one god lost.
GLEN: You mean the only holy god who died.
(Although with murderers crossed along side ).
VOICE: That was the customary way of killing then;
would you wear a pew had he the chair, Glen?
"I cannot conceive you" like Kent in Lear
but get out of your room and watch and hear;
but beware of your biker family
because they will test you as you will see.
GLEN: ( Shaking, looks at his watch, and takes 5 milligrams of Haldol.
He has no water left in his cup on his dresser ).
I still haven't found what I'm looking for.
VOICE:Get out of your room and lose even more;
but don't be dismayed and stand your own ground:
even Ali didn't win ev'ry round.
( Glen exits his room ).
SCENE II - The Kitchen
( Rod, Bob and Ron are drinking beer with Carrie. Enter
Glen with a cup in his hand ).
ROD: Hey, Glen, you came out of your lonely tomb;
have a beer, and tell us about your room.
GLEN: I think I'll just stick to a coffee brew.
ROD: How do you do that? With some crazy glue? ( They all laugh except
for Glen).
GLEN: ( Pours a coffee). So, Rod was it crowded at the Toy Run?
VOICE: Dumb question, and now they will have some fun.
ROD: No, I was the only one there, ya see. ( Again they laughed ).
GLEN: And I suppose you guys rode your Harleys?
ROD: No, we ran along behind all the way. ( Laughter ).
Got more questions or are ya gonna pray? ( They laugh as
Rod looks at his watch).
VOICE: Glen, tell him it's time to get a new watch.
GLEN: Time to get a new watch, you big Sasquatch.
ROD:Why should I get a watch? Did it break down? ( Glen looks at his
own watch, and they laugh again).
GLEN: Yes, as did the brain of a biker clown.
CARRIE: On your driver's licence where it says sex,
did you fill in no or just put an "X"? ( Laughter ).
GLEN: Your licence would read license with an "s".
CARRIE: Take a pill, for shit's sake. You're under stress.
BOB: Let's go to the pub. There's nothing going
on. Besides, Glen needs his rest from picking
up his stereo needle and hearing
love songs, instead of our biker swearing.( Laughter ).
GLEN: Well, don't punch out too many guys tonight.
ROD: What do ya mean? We've never had a fight;
we work in the pub kitchen making cakes.
remember, Bob, one cup of yeast it takes.
( They laugh and rise to leave; Rod is the last one out.
He whispers to Glen).
Keep trying, Glen and don't give up,okay? ( Rod winks and
slaps Glen on the back).
VOICE: You did well to face up to them today.
( Glen hears the revving up of Harleys).
SCENE III - The Kitchen
VOICE: Keep trying like Rod said and you'll be cool;
they just had some fun with you as the fool
yet as Hamlet loved his poor fool Yorick
he was indecisive and then grew sick
like you, so it's good to experience
and the gods love to see perserverance:
add a little danger to heat up life
like Chaucer did, and find your own Bath wife.
GLEN: What, like I should try drinking or smoking?
VOICE: Things go better with it to methinking.
GLEN: But coke, pot and street drugs are illegal.
VOICE: Because ministers treat you gullible
but even in your King James scriptures
nothing is said of cocaine or reefers
even Freud snorted drugs on occasion
but just use a little for recreation
and remember not to fear the bishops
for they have caused many holy mishaps.
GLEN: Maybe I'll try some coke. Just a sniffle.
VOICE: Try it but be careful just a little.
GLEN: They should have some up here in the cupboard.
( Pulls out a small zip-lock bag filled with white powder out
of the cupboard ).
VOICE: Do unto others and don't be bored.
GLEN: ( Stands catatonic for awhile, literally left holding the bag).
Do I dare? God help me but I feel I must
I need to know to strengthen any trust
we only learn through tough education.
VOICE: The gods are with you; proceed with caution.
You know naught about this sort of lifestyle.
GLEN: Well, here goes!I'm off to becoming wild! ( Begins sniffing and
snorting the powder ).
It smells sweet and it's making me feel sick
This stuff is evil; I need the sink quick! (Throws the bag
in the garbage,and begins to throw up until he is lying on the
kitchen floor, still barfing ).
VOICE: "To be or not to be, that's the question"
and today you have learned a strong lesson.
( Suddenly, there is a thundering roar of Harleys pulling
up in the driveway).
You're lying in your puke due to blind faith
but you're better off here I still sayeth
( The three bikers enter with Carrie. They see Glen on the
floor.)
RON: Holy, shit!Look at the little fucker!
He's gone and OD-ed on icing sugar!
He must have thought it was coke, the damned fool!( They help
Glen up and give him tissue to blow his nose).
We don't use coke anymore, it's not cool:
we gave it up for the Pepsi challenge. ( They laugh).
VOICE: This is Shakespeare, Glen. "All's Well That Ends Well."
VOICE: Get help Glen and escape "The Cope Of Hell."
( PL Book I line 345 )
ME( GLEN ): I am a Blind Mouth, and forsake the way
That has fooled bipolars until today.
THE PACIFYING MILTON Chapter 5
Chapter 5
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th'upright heart and pure.
- John Milton "PARADISE LOST"
After my mother's physical death I began to read more about
spirituality and kept finding that Milton was as Dr. Samuel Johnson said
" the one poet thatall writers keep coming back to." The great visionary poet,
William Blake's visions of Milton and his progression from the "dark, Satanic
Mills" of the Church to the redeemer of England saw that Milton had to return
to correct spiritual errors he made in PARADISE LOST. Blake believed
Milton's portrayal of a a cruel, vengeful and unmerciful God was not the true
God, who must transcend all creation and give love.
Since Milton's invocation to his Muse, Urania, the goddess of Memory
and Astrology, was in the tradition, especially the latter, like Chaucer, Spenser and
Shakespeare's beliefs, the " starry Rubic" signs Satan foretells in PARADISE
REGAINED passively to Milton's Christ about his suffering really reinforced Blake's
coinage of "The New Age" phrase which is going through a major revival now. But,
not like a dogmatic church revival but more like John Fogerty's great Creedence
Clearwater Revival, who looked for someone "Who'll Stop The Rain" much like
the optimistic Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World" instead of the existential blues
guitar Masters of Chicago and The Mississippi Delta who were lost, lonely, and
outcast in poverty and sang their melancholy music, The Blues, like one man against
a hostile universe.Most modern artists who"spurred us on" and "sit in judgment of all
wrong" were fooled like The Who wasn't because they were an anomaly punk band
who looked to Meher Baba and denounced organized religion on "Tommy".
But for the heart's need, as The Beatle's sang, "All You Need Is Love"
from their landmark 1967 album Sergeant Pepper was true, although "Lucy In The
Sky With Diamonds" still intimidated me and brought back the delusions and the
"Psychotic Reaction" ( sorry, can't remember who did that song ) with its LSD
connotations which had not helped like Timothy Leary claimed it did. I tried to get
a grasp on the truth but could anyone fully understand Milton? Even Shakespeare
was easier who Milton thought had the greatest imagination of all poets. I was still
young and becoming increasingly fixated on Milton and like most serious readers
tried to make sense out of our expulsion from God's love and juxtapose it with
existentialists and nihilists. I had also developed a penchant ( no Miltonic anti-pun
intended ) for the Romantic poets especially Blake. I began writing theories and
essays and thought maybe someday I'd be a writer.
I liked Milton's idea of freedom of thought in polemics only if the other side
would "argue freely with conscience." So, I began: if we believe in an omnipotent God
who is the creator and can do anything, then that God is evil. He created the universe
including Satan, demons, bad people, etc. If God refuses to stop evil when he clearly
can then he is guilty. He could snap his fingers and make the entire universe, pure,
sinless, loving and happy. He could erase Satan's memory and make him good as he
destroys hell where billions are supposed to suffer for billions of years. The old joke
by George Carlin comes to mind about a Catholic eating meat on Friday: "How
would you like to do eternity for eating a baloney sandwich?" I don't buy any of the
above except symbolically and for the universe to have a purpose which is to learn
and in that sense to me it is Shakespeare who is almost godly. I believe what
William Blake said "that without contraries is no progression." We all have good and
evil in varying degrees in us. Blake said Milton, a Christian, was "of the devil's party
without knowing it." We all are. But, again it is how deep we go towards evil, and how
much we do good or love by honoring Christ or the god (s) within us. The war in heaven
in Paradise Lost symbolizes the struggle between good and evil, war and peace and all
our conflicting, changing feelings just as the PARADISE LOST Book VI war goes back
and forth with tremendous violence and God watching but never acting. The Christian
God, Jehovah, is rarely seen or directly talks to anyone in the Bible ( he walked with
Noah ) and is deliberately mysterious and almost incomprehensible.
I believe he is one of many gods and wisdom and learning about life can lead to
mysticism and other ways of transcending good and evil and finding the transcending good
or higher innocence. Christians often say "Praise God" for example, but they repeat it over
and over, ad nauseum. They are worshipping Nobodaddy as Blake referred to him because
only an arrogant and unbelievably vain god would want billions of people singing how great
he is constantly. A true god would be humble like Christ or Buddha or Lau Tzu and love all
people and creation and not have to be told every second how wonderful they are. These
types of sycophants think they are going to Heaven. Almost every person on Earth would
have a relative, friend or loved one who doesn't make it to Heaven. How could you be
happy in this type of Heaven knowing there are violent crimes and torture and mental anguish
that is unheard of happening to loved ones? ESPECIALLY women and children.
No one could be happy in this type of heaven. Even Blake said in his epic poem,
"MILTON" that Milton was unhappy in Heaven and would smash through the sky in The Second
Coming Apocalypse like a comet. And if God ended hell and ALL suffering because people were
agonizing then there would be no one in heaven who would not be happy and have love and
harmony. But the judgment of eternity on an 80 year life would be a crime of only a trillionth
of the sentence. Which brings me back to why God would not just make everything and
everyone good? He, by the Christian standard would have had to if he wanted to create Heaven.
But, by creating a temporary Earth hell where everyone suffers and we all do here isn't that a type
of hell, suffering? But, there is goodness and love here too, so doesn't that make the Earth like
Blake's "The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell?" When we stop trying to half kill ourselves as some
religious people do by denying desire or other "evil" feelings and acts then we ironically find it
easier to be tolerant and wanting to learn as much as we can. The same goes for people who do
not do good as they are partially killing themselves.Then, they often project their anger and even
hate and bitterness towards others. Milton said it best: "He who has overcome by force has but
half overcome his foe."
And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th'upright heart and pure.
- John Milton "PARADISE LOST"
After my mother's physical death I began to read more about
spirituality and kept finding that Milton was as Dr. Samuel Johnson said
" the one poet thatall writers keep coming back to." The great visionary poet,
William Blake's visions of Milton and his progression from the "dark, Satanic
Mills" of the Church to the redeemer of England saw that Milton had to return
to correct spiritual errors he made in PARADISE LOST. Blake believed
Milton's portrayal of a a cruel, vengeful and unmerciful God was not the true
God, who must transcend all creation and give love.
Since Milton's invocation to his Muse, Urania, the goddess of Memory
and Astrology, was in the tradition, especially the latter, like Chaucer, Spenser and
Shakespeare's beliefs, the " starry Rubic" signs Satan foretells in PARADISE
REGAINED passively to Milton's Christ about his suffering really reinforced Blake's
coinage of "The New Age" phrase which is going through a major revival now. But,
not like a dogmatic church revival but more like John Fogerty's great Creedence
Clearwater Revival, who looked for someone "Who'll Stop The Rain" much like
the optimistic Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World" instead of the existential blues
guitar Masters of Chicago and The Mississippi Delta who were lost, lonely, and
outcast in poverty and sang their melancholy music, The Blues, like one man against
a hostile universe.Most modern artists who"spurred us on" and "sit in judgment of all
wrong" were fooled like The Who wasn't because they were an anomaly punk band
who looked to Meher Baba and denounced organized religion on "Tommy".
But for the heart's need, as The Beatle's sang, "All You Need Is Love"
from their landmark 1967 album Sergeant Pepper was true, although "Lucy In The
Sky With Diamonds" still intimidated me and brought back the delusions and the
"Psychotic Reaction" ( sorry, can't remember who did that song ) with its LSD
connotations which had not helped like Timothy Leary claimed it did. I tried to get
a grasp on the truth but could anyone fully understand Milton? Even Shakespeare
was easier who Milton thought had the greatest imagination of all poets. I was still
young and becoming increasingly fixated on Milton and like most serious readers
tried to make sense out of our expulsion from God's love and juxtapose it with
existentialists and nihilists. I had also developed a penchant ( no Miltonic anti-pun
intended ) for the Romantic poets especially Blake. I began writing theories and
essays and thought maybe someday I'd be a writer.
I liked Milton's idea of freedom of thought in polemics only if the other side
would "argue freely with conscience." So, I began: if we believe in an omnipotent God
who is the creator and can do anything, then that God is evil. He created the universe
including Satan, demons, bad people, etc. If God refuses to stop evil when he clearly
can then he is guilty. He could snap his fingers and make the entire universe, pure,
sinless, loving and happy. He could erase Satan's memory and make him good as he
destroys hell where billions are supposed to suffer for billions of years. The old joke
by George Carlin comes to mind about a Catholic eating meat on Friday: "How
would you like to do eternity for eating a baloney sandwich?" I don't buy any of the
above except symbolically and for the universe to have a purpose which is to learn
and in that sense to me it is Shakespeare who is almost godly. I believe what
William Blake said "that without contraries is no progression." We all have good and
evil in varying degrees in us. Blake said Milton, a Christian, was "of the devil's party
without knowing it." We all are. But, again it is how deep we go towards evil, and how
much we do good or love by honoring Christ or the god (s) within us. The war in heaven
in Paradise Lost symbolizes the struggle between good and evil, war and peace and all
our conflicting, changing feelings just as the PARADISE LOST Book VI war goes back
and forth with tremendous violence and God watching but never acting. The Christian
God, Jehovah, is rarely seen or directly talks to anyone in the Bible ( he walked with
Noah ) and is deliberately mysterious and almost incomprehensible.
I believe he is one of many gods and wisdom and learning about life can lead to
mysticism and other ways of transcending good and evil and finding the transcending good
or higher innocence. Christians often say "Praise God" for example, but they repeat it over
and over, ad nauseum. They are worshipping Nobodaddy as Blake referred to him because
only an arrogant and unbelievably vain god would want billions of people singing how great
he is constantly. A true god would be humble like Christ or Buddha or Lau Tzu and love all
people and creation and not have to be told every second how wonderful they are. These
types of sycophants think they are going to Heaven. Almost every person on Earth would
have a relative, friend or loved one who doesn't make it to Heaven. How could you be
happy in this type of Heaven knowing there are violent crimes and torture and mental anguish
that is unheard of happening to loved ones? ESPECIALLY women and children.
No one could be happy in this type of heaven. Even Blake said in his epic poem,
"MILTON" that Milton was unhappy in Heaven and would smash through the sky in The Second
Coming Apocalypse like a comet. And if God ended hell and ALL suffering because people were
agonizing then there would be no one in heaven who would not be happy and have love and
harmony. But the judgment of eternity on an 80 year life would be a crime of only a trillionth
of the sentence. Which brings me back to why God would not just make everything and
everyone good? He, by the Christian standard would have had to if he wanted to create Heaven.
But, by creating a temporary Earth hell where everyone suffers and we all do here isn't that a type
of hell, suffering? But, there is goodness and love here too, so doesn't that make the Earth like
Blake's "The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell?" When we stop trying to half kill ourselves as some
religious people do by denying desire or other "evil" feelings and acts then we ironically find it
easier to be tolerant and wanting to learn as much as we can. The same goes for people who do
not do good as they are partially killing themselves.Then, they often project their anger and even
hate and bitterness towards others. Milton said it best: "He who has overcome by force has but
half overcome his foe."
THE PACIFYING MILTON Chapter 4
Chapter 4
...but this pure and more inbred desire of joining to
itself in conjugal fellowship a fit conversing soul
( which desire is properly called love )"is stronger
than death," as the spouse of Christ thought..."
-John Milton "The Doctrine And Discipline Of Divorce."
I stepped down from the 19 Kingsway bus as its
engine buzzed to a complete stop. Somehow I had ceased
to be myself and was feeling dead-tired. The once sturdy
maple trees hung weakly over the streets as I walked on
their crunchy orange-red leaves that had dropped, shaken
by a cold, Arctic wind.
It was October in Vancouver and I had a feeling it
was going to be a rough winter, which was unusual here.
Winters in Vancouver usually meant a lot of rain like her
sister city, Seattle, about a two-hour drive south. I
stopped to look over my shoulder at the snow-hatted
range of mountains that reigned over the city. They were
breathtaking, looking like the ultimate blueberry sundaes.
But this picturesque moment surprisingly turned sour, and
only upset my weak stomach into a mini-volcano as I held
back its avalanche of lunch in my burning throat. I turned
away, lifting my legs as though I were in two feet of snow.
Why did Mother Nature's beauty suddenly leave me so uptight?
Was it something I ate at school maybe? Something was eating
at me so I reflected on my day.
I was twenty and I had only been to two classes
that day at UBC: English and Classical Studies. I wandered
lonely, my head in a cloud thinking of the Professor's quote
of Euripides: "never that which is, shall die". I didn't really
believe it. I kicked the leaves and swore at the neighbour's
barking pit bull as I tried to mount a justification for God or
the after-life. University professors always sent a wave of
new ideas to challenge the "Alps of Science", as Alexander
Pope wrote, and progress to them was a burning drive for the
student to climb the ropes to higher learning. But today I was
stuck in my muddled thoughts.
I thought of my English exam. Normally, I would have
been snowed under with only a B. After all, I had loved Margaret
Atwood's "The Edible Woman" which we had been tested on earlier
and I had seen several themes, apart from her brilliant writing
ability. It was about Anorexia Nervosa and brought attention to the
symbolic suffering of women being dominated by men, like the
heroine, Marian McAlpine, whose illness was about finding herself
and her identity and being eaten alive by despair and confusion.
But, "The Edible Woman" was quite possibly a rallying force for
women to increasingly eat of the fruit of The Tree Of Knowledge
Of Good And Evil, as the liberated Eve did, defiantly. It was a
calling out to men that women were ready to right the harshness
of guarded, domineering "Goblin's Market", Christina Rossetti's
fight and flight of sisters. Even Francis Brook's, "Emily Montague"
or the bland "Pamela" by S. Richardson ( parodied by Fielding's
"Shamela" ) were usurped by the hardy and resourceful Susannah
Moodie, who was like a Woolf in Virgin Mary's jeans, digging the
holes in Sharon Thesen's "Loose Woman Poem."
But something else was biting at my mind . Whatever it
was it was affecting my studies. I approached our yard and saw
my three sisters in the front window. Strange, I thought, my
older sister from Surrey, a distant Vancouver suburb, there with
her two year old daughter, Lila, I noticed. She never came here
and I barely knew her. I entered the house, feeling my heart
trying to escape my chest.
" Glen, " my youngest sister Kari said, " Mom has cancer."
The three were teary-eyed, and I dropped my bag and mouth.
"No, no!...No way!" I think I shouted.
" Yeah, Glen , " said my other younger sister, " It's bad.
The doctors did an exploratory when she collapsed today. She has
bowel cancer. They've given her six months to live."
The next five and a half months were a blur of going to
the hospital, going to school and working. I was in denial, as I
think the entire family was. I lost all faith in life and God as
I angrily watched Mom collapse into the hyena jaws of hungry
death. I was also very pissed off that the doctors were so close
in their prediction of her death.
The service for my mother was large as she was extremely
well-loved. Her maiden name was Meeks, and I hoped the meek would
inherit the Earth. If anyone deserved it, she would be the first.
But, I don't remember crying at the funeral. I held a mountain of
feelings inside but I no longer gave a hill of beans.
A few days after our mother's passing on, the entire family
gathered at my sister's in Surrey. It was about midnight and we were
all talking in the living-room. Suddenly, my niece, Lila, came
running down the hall screaming. Her mother asked her what was wrong,
as my brother-in-law gathered the toddler in his arms.
" I saw Grandma in a brown box ....and there were flowers
and people....and.... I...", sobbed Lila. We settled her down and
finally my sister got her back to sleep. I thought, as my two
brothers did, that she'd simply overheard us talking. But my
brother-in-law and sister revealed that strange things had been
happening with Lila. For one thing, she had an imaginary friend
who she would talk to and seemingly wait for him to answer her.
Strange. I think it was then that I finally understood Euripides,
the Greek writer's quote : "Never that which is shall die."
...but this pure and more inbred desire of joining to
itself in conjugal fellowship a fit conversing soul
( which desire is properly called love )"is stronger
than death," as the spouse of Christ thought..."
-John Milton "The Doctrine And Discipline Of Divorce."
I stepped down from the 19 Kingsway bus as its
engine buzzed to a complete stop. Somehow I had ceased
to be myself and was feeling dead-tired. The once sturdy
maple trees hung weakly over the streets as I walked on
their crunchy orange-red leaves that had dropped, shaken
by a cold, Arctic wind.
It was October in Vancouver and I had a feeling it
was going to be a rough winter, which was unusual here.
Winters in Vancouver usually meant a lot of rain like her
sister city, Seattle, about a two-hour drive south. I
stopped to look over my shoulder at the snow-hatted
range of mountains that reigned over the city. They were
breathtaking, looking like the ultimate blueberry sundaes.
But this picturesque moment surprisingly turned sour, and
only upset my weak stomach into a mini-volcano as I held
back its avalanche of lunch in my burning throat. I turned
away, lifting my legs as though I were in two feet of snow.
Why did Mother Nature's beauty suddenly leave me so uptight?
Was it something I ate at school maybe? Something was eating
at me so I reflected on my day.
I was twenty and I had only been to two classes
that day at UBC: English and Classical Studies. I wandered
lonely, my head in a cloud thinking of the Professor's quote
of Euripides: "never that which is, shall die". I didn't really
believe it. I kicked the leaves and swore at the neighbour's
barking pit bull as I tried to mount a justification for God or
the after-life. University professors always sent a wave of
new ideas to challenge the "Alps of Science", as Alexander
Pope wrote, and progress to them was a burning drive for the
student to climb the ropes to higher learning. But today I was
stuck in my muddled thoughts.
I thought of my English exam. Normally, I would have
been snowed under with only a B. After all, I had loved Margaret
Atwood's "The Edible Woman" which we had been tested on earlier
and I had seen several themes, apart from her brilliant writing
ability. It was about Anorexia Nervosa and brought attention to the
symbolic suffering of women being dominated by men, like the
heroine, Marian McAlpine, whose illness was about finding herself
and her identity and being eaten alive by despair and confusion.
But, "The Edible Woman" was quite possibly a rallying force for
women to increasingly eat of the fruit of The Tree Of Knowledge
Of Good And Evil, as the liberated Eve did, defiantly. It was a
calling out to men that women were ready to right the harshness
of guarded, domineering "Goblin's Market", Christina Rossetti's
fight and flight of sisters. Even Francis Brook's, "Emily Montague"
or the bland "Pamela" by S. Richardson ( parodied by Fielding's
"Shamela" ) were usurped by the hardy and resourceful Susannah
Moodie, who was like a Woolf in Virgin Mary's jeans, digging the
holes in Sharon Thesen's "Loose Woman Poem."
But something else was biting at my mind . Whatever it
was it was affecting my studies. I approached our yard and saw
my three sisters in the front window. Strange, I thought, my
older sister from Surrey, a distant Vancouver suburb, there with
her two year old daughter, Lila, I noticed. She never came here
and I barely knew her. I entered the house, feeling my heart
trying to escape my chest.
" Glen, " my youngest sister Kari said, " Mom has cancer."
The three were teary-eyed, and I dropped my bag and mouth.
"No, no!...No way!" I think I shouted.
" Yeah, Glen , " said my other younger sister, " It's bad.
The doctors did an exploratory when she collapsed today. She has
bowel cancer. They've given her six months to live."
The next five and a half months were a blur of going to
the hospital, going to school and working. I was in denial, as I
think the entire family was. I lost all faith in life and God as
I angrily watched Mom collapse into the hyena jaws of hungry
death. I was also very pissed off that the doctors were so close
in their prediction of her death.
The service for my mother was large as she was extremely
well-loved. Her maiden name was Meeks, and I hoped the meek would
inherit the Earth. If anyone deserved it, she would be the first.
But, I don't remember crying at the funeral. I held a mountain of
feelings inside but I no longer gave a hill of beans.
A few days after our mother's passing on, the entire family
gathered at my sister's in Surrey. It was about midnight and we were
all talking in the living-room. Suddenly, my niece, Lila, came
running down the hall screaming. Her mother asked her what was wrong,
as my brother-in-law gathered the toddler in his arms.
" I saw Grandma in a brown box ....and there were flowers
and people....and.... I...", sobbed Lila. We settled her down and
finally my sister got her back to sleep. I thought, as my two
brothers did, that she'd simply overheard us talking. But my
brother-in-law and sister revealed that strange things had been
happening with Lila. For one thing, she had an imaginary friend
who she would talk to and seemingly wait for him to answer her.
Strange. I think it was then that I finally understood Euripides,
the Greek writer's quote : "Never that which is shall die."
THE PACIFYING MILTON Chapter 2
Chapter 2
"Truth and understanding are not such wares as to
be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes
and standards." -John Milton "AEREOPAGITICA"
I felt like Elmer Fuddle-Duddled Gantry as I
remembered Sinclair's sinfulness that had been as
Bugsy as me, an oiled gull staggering across the slick
Sahara on the bitch hurling insults and threats to
anyone who'd listen to my Bible Baby Talk. I hawked
on the dying tar and feathered though they were only
peaceful doves who were Middle-Aged but like the Popes
I was right with my true wit from Urizen, the Satanic
Church God which organizes all ignorance and only
on Christmas is it a bit of a bliss with. I liked the
little Dickens story about fearing the ignorant boy
on that day.
My mind was meandering and left crazy tracks on
the beach, like coloured cob-webbed words and patterns
perhaps Charlotte would have loved. But they were
scaring me as my distant eyes searched the gulf that
had taken my love away, maybe even to the Mexican one.
I should not have taken the Acid Test because that's
what drugs can do: send you to the Cuckoo's Nest. But,
I had never heard of it then even though most of it
was B.S. for as far as the eye ken see out into the
depths of the human mind's Surfacing which my mother
taught me was more real. She'd Jonesed after witnessing
Death By Water. Earlier, bitter by the water, we both
had boldly cracked a Blue Oyster Cult and ate, but we
had escaped with very little Satisfaction, still starved
to find a precious soulmate who sang so sweetly like a
female Angel.
I had vaguely remembered leaving the beach the
night before for pissing. I thought I was being Paged
but I wanted to "spin in my skin" preparing to leave
rather than going up the Stairway To Heaven to darkness
visible. Then, I had gotten even more pissed with some
other bird until my mind was blotted with images, like
a collage that would only make sense in college. Later,
the drunken oil tanker was seen by the drunken S. Taylor
Coleridge who released the Albatross with blessings
of the baptised snakes, God's creatures, too. It would
be years until I could almost forget the mod Jimmy's
suffering - and? - my own Freudian fuck-upped voice in
the village Philosopher Square - yet maybe that's the
way everything needs to be: "full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing." But from Descartes to Townshend
we know nothing IS something. I loved Pete's quote:
"Abandonment is the key to rock: when we lose ourselves
we ironically find our real selves".
I chirped away the King James version which wasn't
totally real and my guilt fell like a crazy Monty Python
sixteen ton block off my back. I cried then for the
dying souls that had washed up on the existential shore
and I stared sadly, remembering all the fallen poets who
had been forgotten when most needed now. Wordsworth's
"London 1802" called out to the heroic spirit of Milton:
"Milton thou shouldst be living at this hour/ England
hath need of thee." Few poets know that Milton read with
his total photographic memory many languages and retained
everything in his mind even when blind, and he knew the
Hebrew, Greek and English versions of the Bible. What he
probably would have found is that any church or organized
religion using "Lord" for Christ is a noble English term
and had been translated from the Hebrew so it does not
have spirituality except to the Archie Bunker types who
belong "to the right religion." Then, pacified, I suddenly
fell asleep like Dylan's white dove in the sand...
"Truth and understanding are not such wares as to
be monopolized and traded in by tickets and statutes
and standards." -John Milton "AEREOPAGITICA"
I felt like Elmer Fuddle-Duddled Gantry as I
remembered Sinclair's sinfulness that had been as
Bugsy as me, an oiled gull staggering across the slick
Sahara on the bitch hurling insults and threats to
anyone who'd listen to my Bible Baby Talk. I hawked
on the dying tar and feathered though they were only
peaceful doves who were Middle-Aged but like the Popes
I was right with my true wit from Urizen, the Satanic
Church God which organizes all ignorance and only
on Christmas is it a bit of a bliss with. I liked the
little Dickens story about fearing the ignorant boy
on that day.
My mind was meandering and left crazy tracks on
the beach, like coloured cob-webbed words and patterns
perhaps Charlotte would have loved. But they were
scaring me as my distant eyes searched the gulf that
had taken my love away, maybe even to the Mexican one.
I should not have taken the Acid Test because that's
what drugs can do: send you to the Cuckoo's Nest. But,
I had never heard of it then even though most of it
was B.S. for as far as the eye ken see out into the
depths of the human mind's Surfacing which my mother
taught me was more real. She'd Jonesed after witnessing
Death By Water. Earlier, bitter by the water, we both
had boldly cracked a Blue Oyster Cult and ate, but we
had escaped with very little Satisfaction, still starved
to find a precious soulmate who sang so sweetly like a
female Angel.
I had vaguely remembered leaving the beach the
night before for pissing. I thought I was being Paged
but I wanted to "spin in my skin" preparing to leave
rather than going up the Stairway To Heaven to darkness
visible. Then, I had gotten even more pissed with some
other bird until my mind was blotted with images, like
a collage that would only make sense in college. Later,
the drunken oil tanker was seen by the drunken S. Taylor
Coleridge who released the Albatross with blessings
of the baptised snakes, God's creatures, too. It would
be years until I could almost forget the mod Jimmy's
suffering - and? - my own Freudian fuck-upped voice in
the village Philosopher Square - yet maybe that's the
way everything needs to be: "full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing." But from Descartes to Townshend
we know nothing IS something. I loved Pete's quote:
"Abandonment is the key to rock: when we lose ourselves
we ironically find our real selves".
I chirped away the King James version which wasn't
totally real and my guilt fell like a crazy Monty Python
sixteen ton block off my back. I cried then for the
dying souls that had washed up on the existential shore
and I stared sadly, remembering all the fallen poets who
had been forgotten when most needed now. Wordsworth's
"London 1802" called out to the heroic spirit of Milton:
"Milton thou shouldst be living at this hour/ England
hath need of thee." Few poets know that Milton read with
his total photographic memory many languages and retained
everything in his mind even when blind, and he knew the
Hebrew, Greek and English versions of the Bible. What he
probably would have found is that any church or organized
religion using "Lord" for Christ is a noble English term
and had been translated from the Hebrew so it does not
have spirituality except to the Archie Bunker types who
belong "to the right religion." Then, pacified, I suddenly
fell asleep like Dylan's white dove in the sand...
THE PACIFYING MILTON Chapter 1
THE PACIFYING MILTON by Greg Bauder
Chapter 1
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
-John Milton "PARADISE LOST" ( Book I )
I was this morning. Long ago in a dopey Eliot wasteland,
the snowy sun cruel as a blot of ghost. I rolled Joyce-like
into my self stream of a pissed hangover on my joint falling
floor. I rose and forgot the next silenced hour. Coming undone
on my clock, I forgot tomorrow while my kettle whistled at the
legs of the piano, as my radio sounds boiled by cup of horny
tongue, so I drink my drowning table under steam. My lonely
collar has been lost as me, eaten by love and pacing with
substitute tears on my window eyes, glassy as the face
on my clock.
Orange peeking in my spaced dead tea tripped the sun's
wiry rays through blind curtains. My radio wets my appetite
as my walls picture her moaning, and I eye and turn to fondle
tea, spreading it across the music ceiling, as I make my
breakfast of les champignones. But my kitchen sinks in the
floor, as I note our seat. Outside, the tree of death sings
and I am timeless. I raised my pain at the rubbery trees, the
blurring blue heaven and its electric spots sun I vacated.
Fuzzier, the sun baked eating my last testament. I walked
willfully from room to door going nowhere, then hurried
outside. I was born to run like Springsteen but was borne
elsewhere, looking for Young's Heart Of Gold sun.
An explosion of day hit the picture of backyard. I
guarded the sky and shocked the flipping grass. I was stoned
in my shoes. It was my second coming to unlucky White Rock.
Waves of wind roughed my seagulls up, as they screamed like
Daltrey's feedback from Townshend. The beach rose lower than
the mountains I didn't climb, frightened as Birney's Bobbie.
I reached out for the sea, and held it in my mortal coil mind,
behind my blue eyes, glazed as doughnuts. Through the mirror
of imagining the sea I saw Diana Ross' reflection. My mind
felt her supreme sun voice, a throat of golden sixties allure,
pacifying the Pacific in me.
I sat and turned into an afternoon on the beach, shooting
my life like a film, as I ate a half sandwich of something that
would return like MacArthur. My dreams died until Stevie Nicks
sang sexy somewhere. But, I wasn't a player; I existed as the
day, as I balled the sand with rocks. I skipped the sea, like
Ahab, obsessed with futility. I stoned myself when I thought
of rain and Dylan - but I doubt Thomas toked the green fuse.
Then, my sea had a Messiah and Goddess walking like bored
surfers puffing on it. I was awed by these poetic beings. My
feet ripped up small sand storms and my sun stopped crying
behind clouds. My other happier sun screamed delight like
Hendrix as I was swallowed by the rocky reef sea. The sea shone
as I gulped my vision into my eyes. The gods were my parents,
John Milton and Margaret Atwood! And I was freaking out and
dying beneath my two sun eyes! But they dragged me back to
Earth, the place where Father's intellectual mastery of epic
poetry, mythology and astrology and Mother's feminist , modern
Survivor tales, united - pacifying my baby mind.
mourning. I was staring mouth open full of magic mushrooms,
Chapter 1
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
-John Milton "PARADISE LOST" ( Book I )
I was this morning. Long ago in a dopey Eliot wasteland,
the snowy sun cruel as a blot of ghost. I rolled Joyce-like
into my self stream of a pissed hangover on my joint falling
floor. I rose and forgot the next silenced hour. Coming undone
on my clock, I forgot tomorrow while my kettle whistled at the
legs of the piano, as my radio sounds boiled by cup of horny
tongue, so I drink my drowning table under steam. My lonely
collar has been lost as me, eaten by love and pacing with
substitute tears on my window eyes, glassy as the face
on my clock.
Orange peeking in my spaced dead tea tripped the sun's
wiry rays through blind curtains. My radio wets my appetite
as my walls picture her moaning, and I eye and turn to fondle
tea, spreading it across the music ceiling, as I make my
breakfast of les champignones. But my kitchen sinks in the
floor, as I note our seat. Outside, the tree of death sings
and I am timeless. I raised my pain at the rubbery trees, the
blurring blue heaven and its electric spots sun I vacated.
Fuzzier, the sun baked eating my last testament. I walked
willfully from room to door going nowhere, then hurried
outside. I was born to run like Springsteen but was borne
elsewhere, looking for Young's Heart Of Gold sun.
An explosion of day hit the picture of backyard. I
guarded the sky and shocked the flipping grass. I was stoned
in my shoes. It was my second coming to unlucky White Rock.
Waves of wind roughed my seagulls up, as they screamed like
Daltrey's feedback from Townshend. The beach rose lower than
the mountains I didn't climb, frightened as Birney's Bobbie.
I reached out for the sea, and held it in my mortal coil mind,
behind my blue eyes, glazed as doughnuts. Through the mirror
of imagining the sea I saw Diana Ross' reflection. My mind
felt her supreme sun voice, a throat of golden sixties allure,
pacifying the Pacific in me.
I sat and turned into an afternoon on the beach, shooting
my life like a film, as I ate a half sandwich of something that
would return like MacArthur. My dreams died until Stevie Nicks
sang sexy somewhere. But, I wasn't a player; I existed as the
day, as I balled the sand with rocks. I skipped the sea, like
Ahab, obsessed with futility. I stoned myself when I thought
of rain and Dylan - but I doubt Thomas toked the green fuse.
Then, my sea had a Messiah and Goddess walking like bored
surfers puffing on it. I was awed by these poetic beings. My
feet ripped up small sand storms and my sun stopped crying
behind clouds. My other happier sun screamed delight like
Hendrix as I was swallowed by the rocky reef sea. The sea shone
as I gulped my vision into my eyes. The gods were my parents,
John Milton and Margaret Atwood! And I was freaking out and
dying beneath my two sun eyes! But they dragged me back to
Earth, the place where Father's intellectual mastery of epic
poetry, mythology and astrology and Mother's feminist , modern
Survivor tales, united - pacifying my baby mind.
mourning. I was staring mouth open full of magic mushrooms,
Preface To THE PACIFYING MILTON
PREFACE
to
THE PACIFYING MILTON
by Greg Bauder
I have this Milton inspired Psychological/Memoir
work called "THE PACIFYING MILTON", an almost
entirely literary work, loosely based on my early college
years at The University Of British Columbia and my
fascination and seemingly endless pursuit of wisdom
studying Canadian poets and English ones, especially
Milton. It is sort of a critical study of the works I read
and how they shaped my intellectual views and helped
me through my darkest hours.
This piece, though, leans as heavily on The Who or
The Sex Pistols as it does T.S.Eliot or Ezra Pound, or
in actuality more on the great repressed blues singers
who had the soul Wordsworth looked to in Milton in
"LONDON 1802" for example. But, "we still haven't
found what we're looking for" as Bono, too, cried out,
alluding to many great writers' ideas and profundity of
feeling that often keep people going against "a sea of
troubles" as The Bard put it succinctly. I know that's
how I survived for the last 32 years with schizoaffective
disorder, a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar,
triggered by my mother's nightmarish death and my
earlier drug abuse and love of popular culture.
But the style and content progress into a more
mature and serious outlook naturally as the Jagger/
Townshend "wasted" Wasteland ( Guess Who? -No,
the fucking Who! ) me-teen who goes through terrifying
experiences and reemerges "Pacified" after self and social
analysis through literature and recognizing that it is the
Blues that are universal truth, existentially and spiritually,
"Pure And Easy" making darkness visible, even after
billions of voices crying together alone in the wilderness
of even Milton's "God-foresaken mess ( Like the "men
who lie in their "Purple Dress "). But, only after bizarre
chapters like the "Mini-Mouse Trap" play within this non-
fiction novella. The final "enlightenment" ( one of Milton's
630 record - no pun intended - word coinages ) is when
the graduation of the student is not about finding the
degree on the wall but the humanitarian writing on the
wall. The young grad ( is it me ?) would be interested in
knowing how much you read because the writing becomes
a bit more sophisticated and coherent.
I have a BA in English from UBC and I have had seven
books published and my first novel, "The Temptress Ariel"
will be a feature film this year. I have published in many
literary magazines and I have written newspaper articles and
have done many readings around Greater Vancouver. But,
enough of that B.S., just put down what you're doing and
read my Kool Acid trip into popular intellectual Illuminati
and flight from the nest of cuckoos advertising Koka-cola
and Kobain.
Greg Bauder ( All I am saying is give this piece a chance ).
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