Mindful pleasures..... As the words turn.

Wed Aug 30 08:17:01 CDT 2017

Since I have expressed my positiveness about many/most of your associative
mini-essays on Pynchon and the world as you see it
in him, with him, etc.......liking them without getting into an argument
over any of my differences since that does not seem the point,

I guess my M & D-like line, which might be too narrow, I admit, is to not
go where you do about GR (and Others) and its internal
mirroring. So I am.

On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 2:26 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe I do. But I think Mindless Pleasures was a possible title about the
> world of the novel as Gravity's Rainbow was the final title. No, not a way
> to enjoy the writing process, which also must have been as tough as
> enjoyable. Pushing to such verbal limits like that?
>
> I also do not think he has a no-judgment pov. His artistic vision is also
> judgmental.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Aug 30, 2017, at 12:16 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> >
> > I think you are misunderstanding me. I am not saying the work is
> solopsistic, but that it is genuinely meditative about everything, even the
> darkest, most hateful and ego driven madness as it emerges on both sides of
> a war.. I am just saying the title was possibly not a working title but a
> way of giving himself permission to enjoy the writing process. There is a
> dialog being observed between powerful ideas, but also within the unlikely
> self liberating soul of Slothrop. and occasionally we hear very directly
> authorial statements, but these moments float freely within the matrix of
> the work with no effort to assert their particular source or authority.  It
> is this no-mind clarity of observation that makes the shadows and light of
> the madness so sharp and the soft hills, clouds and shimmering rainbow into
> which Slothrop dissolves a transcendence from film noir  into a full
> spectrum universe.  GR is the astute observation of a game that is
> destroying the planet and the implied future of that game, so yes it
> considers the real world, history, ideas, in as powerful and nuanced a way
> as has ever been achieved with narrative fiction, and it astutely uses many
> literary structures requiring intense discipline.  For me the reason for
> this no mind approach to very dark materials is obvious. Our greatest
> intellectual tool for avoiding the future he warns is to understand the
> infectiousness of the mindset, addictions, ideas, and ambitions that
> produce fascism, self hatred, subservience to cruelty etc. He takes us into
> these various characters in a no-jugement pov not to tell us what to think
> but to compel us to get close enough to these things that we have to think
> and cannot claim any authority, so must ask our own questions and form our
> own answers.
> >> On Aug 29, 2017, at 4:59 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Nah, he says more nicely this time.
> >>
> >> P might have scenes or part of a character that are about the writer
> and the writing AND a sub-theme of The Crying of Lot 49 may be a Portrait
> of the Artist as a Finder of Fictions but his books are about the real
> world, history, ideas....
> >>
> >> Our experience of reading them is not the theme itself.
> >>
> >> Mark
> >>
> >> On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 4:37 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> >> Is there some kind of connection between mindful and mindless? Isn’t
> one of the possibilities  or goals of mindfulness to escape “my” mind and
> simply perceive with no mind, with direct non-interpreted consciousness?
> >> When you carry this process into fiction what does it look like?  Is
> there a narrative form for non-narrative mind? One thing Pynchon does NOT
> do is tell you what to think about the experience he offers. It isn’t that
> there is no point of view, but points of view are constantly dissipating
> and changing. The persuasiveness or simple pleasure lies as much with the
> reader as the text, as much with the observation as with the interpretation
> of the observation.
> >>  If MINDLESS PLEASURES was P’s working title is it possible  that it
> suggests  more his personal relationship with the writing process than  a
> possible title giving meaning to a work that needed freedom/ no mind to
> nurture into full form and scope? To read GR is to be in a suspended mental
> state moving through a very large range of specific mental states and
> perceptions in a very fluid way. One feels like smoke blowing through
> rooms, dreams, open and closed spaces, inner  and outer narratives; even
> time itself is no barrier. What was in my mind before reading GR was
> already tenuous, unmoored from my personal narrative and it was literally
> blown away.   I found myself in a more fearless mental space, both more
> open and more wary, more willing to live with questions. There were other
> factors, but as  art maker and reader  the arts play a major role in my
> inner process.
> >>
> >> I just re-watched Orson Welles TOUCH OF EVIL and am reminded of the
> mesmerizing tracking shots that weave into and out of the story setting and
> events. Here the camera is both mindful and mindless, focused and
> inevitably taking in more than the planned narrative, or the core story. We
> all seem like cameras making a movie, but who is the director, where is the
> storyboard, who writes the script.
> >>
> >>> On Aug 29, 2017, at 9:01 AM, Atticus Pinecone <
> atticuspinecone at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Well to keep it grounded in Buddhism, focus is covered by in the Noble
> Eightfold Path under Right Concentration. Words changing definition is
> annoying & inevitable, but losing concepts is a problem.
> >>>
> >>> There are sects of Buddhism less strict than lay Zen?
> >>>
> >>>> On Aug 29, 2017, at 8:12 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Well said.
> >>>>
> >>>> Www.innergroovemusic.com
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Aug 28, 2017, at 11:59 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I think "Mindfullness" in meditation terms mean "focusing
> attention."  It is an action more than a state. There are many ways to
> focus attention, many sense-based locales for focus.  The central idea is
> sustained focus on a sensation or question.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Chi schools teach how to sense and manipulate Chi, Life Force.  More
> passive schools don't aim to manipulate that Chi, but to give it free
> reign.  I prefer the later.  Both are attention-based meditation
> techniques.  Other Zen schools advise to ignore the energy.  Zen is  too
> strict for me.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> David Morris
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On Mon, Aug 28, 2017 at 10:59 AM Atticus Pinecone <
> atticuspinecone at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>> That's where it gets weird. Mindfulness is part of the Noble
> Eightfold Path—and it means to keep in mind all the other numbered Buddhist
> stuff... all of which doesn't jive with getting ahead in a rat race.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> On Aug 28, 2017, at 11:36 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> That was kinda my take, but I didn't know how to say it,
> "secularizing mindfulness...". Nice.
> >>>>>> You might say mindfulness is a product or result of meditation?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Www.innergroovemusic.com
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Aug 28, 2017, at 9:55 AM, Atticus Pinecone <
> atticuspinecone at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> The Buddhist take on it is 'yeah, it really is selfish, but better
> than going around making a mess of things'.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Maybe secularizing mindfulness is... I don't know... stupid?
> Besides it's meditation that sows the benefits—mindfulness goes on top of
> that.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On Aug 27, 2017, at 1:34 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/mindfulness-would-
> be-good-for-you-if-it-werent-all-just-hype/2017/08/24/
> b97d0220-76e2-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html?utm_term=.a655dfed2455
> >>
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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