Cabeza Revisited and Updated

 

This page is intended for those who have read/are reading Cabeza; those who haven't may get a distorted view of the book.  I suggest reading instead the various excerpts, perhaps starting with Three Vignettes.

 

June 13, 2023. At the moment this page is a work in progress. It will likely become more polished in the future. Unfortunately when I paste pages from Word into my website, all the links disappear. I’ve complained about this but nothing has been done as yet. The worst is in the entire articles I’ve included because the links are behind a pay wall. A way around this I discovered is to copy this entire website page and paste it into another program such as Word or WordPad (not sure what you do on the Mac). I discovered then the links magically reappear (but not those in the articles)!

 

For easier navigation I have divided this into four pages. 

 

This page up to p209

 

This page  for p210-248  

 

 

 

 

I am calling this Cabeza revisited and updated because I am leaving the main text virtually unaltered, putting notes to pages that, in a new printing would be at the end of the main text. For now, they will just be on this webpage. I suggest reading at least each chapter in its entirety, or several chapters at a time, and then see the notes referring to those pages.

 

Next, if this book perchance inspires anyone to go out in the wilderness, note that while driving there is likely more dangerous, hundreds of people do die in the wilderness annually, most due to being unprepared for potentially extreme weather changes. See: 

 

 https://www.foxnews.com/us/deadliest-national-parks-america-revealed

 

It’s a good idea to carry a rain parka and rain pants even on summer day hikes — just in case one were to become lost and have to spend the night out. Also, extra food and more than enough water. There are numerous books on hiking and backpacking that I suggest the novice peruse. I may place some suggestions of my own on this website. 

 

If one hikes alone, investing in a satellite phone might be a good idea. There is often little or no cell phone reception in wilderness areas. While I have made numerous trips on my own without even a cell phone, one never knows what might happen. One unfortunate young man hiking in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming (where my wife and I have done much backpacking) stepped on a precariously balanced boulder which shifted onto his leg, trapping him. Either he didn’t have it in him to cut off his leg as Aron Ralston cut off his arm when trapped in a canyon in Utah, or he knew he would have bled to death had he done so. His body was found years later by hunters. So, it’s also best to always let someone know where you are going and when you will return. Something I never do. Do as I say, not as I do. 

 

We also have found a mini weather radio helpful — if you are in an area with no cell phone coverage. The National Weather Service covers a larger area but if you’re in a valley surrounded by mountains there may be no reception. In the Wind Rivers hearing that a snowstorm was coming in sooner than expected prompted us to do a forced march to get back to our truck in one very long day instead of two. The snow wouldn’t have been so bad, but the idea of packing up and carrying a snow and ice encrusted tent wasn’t appealing.

 

Also, if hiking in narrow canyons MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE FORECAST. It seems I read every year of people who died when caught in flash floods. Not just the forecast where you are but entirely upstream from you. 

Wild animals are probably the least of your worries but we always carry Counter Assault bear deterrent pepper spray, which works on all mammals (but not birds; wild turkeys can be very aggressive). (This brand was the top-rated by Backpacker Magazine years ago and was carried by REI.) Also, it’s rare, but a couple was murdered in Utah at a campground not long ago. Pepper spray might have prevented that.

 

See my videos of Bach’s Art of the Fugue (three videos) and The Musical Offering for more photos.

 

Chapter 1, IN THE BEGINNING

 

Page 1. “A silence so profound” implying he made his trip long before all the sightseeing flights began.

 

Page 1. “Into the inner Gorge” — see the next to final photo of my video of Contrapunctus 14 of Bach’s Art of the Fugue.

 

Page 5. “coyotes don’t attack people (so they say)” — some years ago a man was killed by coyotes in Nova Scotia. More recently an endurance runner was attacked by one in California. We live in a mostly forested area — so we have lots of deer. The neighbors 500 feet down our hill told us they heard a huge amount of howling and screaming of coyotes during one night. The morning revealed the almost entirely devoured carcass of a deer. If they could take down a deer, they could take down a human. So we always carry our pepper spray here at home even when jogging on our road, mostly in case one neighbor’s Bulldogs escape.

 

Page 6. “Resveratrol” — this is a very popular supplement, but see this link for why it’s probably best to get it just from food. 

 

https://nutritionfacts.org/2018/05/24/resveratrol-supplements-are-finally-put-to-the-test/

 

Also, see my website page for a large variety of nutritional tips:

 

https://www.meaningofwilderness.com/eating-right-to-save-oneself-and-the-planet/

 

“(excepting gas and water)” — we now bring all of our water in emptied and rinsed bag-in-the-box wine containers. Saves the hassle of finding water which is frequently chlorinated and ruins our tea.

Page 7. “Little Nissan” — I don’t want to promote any particular make of vehicle so I’ll mention that after I totaled our Nissan in an ice storm, we got a Toyota Tacoma which is still humming right along at 17 years of age. But we actually had fewer problems with that Nissan.

 

Chapter 2, CABEZA

 

Page 12. Dirty underwear. Intentionally draped.” — Click here to see.

Page 13. “INS” — Now called the Department of Homeland Security.

Page 13. As hopefully the reader is well aware, thanks to the “progressive” Biden administration, five million and counting illegals, as of the beginning of 2023, have been welcomed with open arms — except perhaps by the communities that are forced to spend billions to deal with the influx.

 

Chapter 3, MOUNTAIN LION!

 

Page 15. Mountain lions “moving east” — we saw one just down the road from us, one leaving on a later trip out to Utah. A logger I spoke with said he also has seen them, as have others in upstate New York. But the New York State Department of environmental conservation won’t believe us.

Page 22. “Range fires” — I said this as a joke but in the Maze district of Canyonlands National Park, Utah, a ranger specifically told us there had been a range fire from someone burning their toilet paper.

 

The last dozen years or so I’ve been sending “Christmas” cards to a few friends and relatives with stories of our wilderness trips. Thus:

 

AN INSPIRING ENCOUNTER

 

We were on our way to Canyonlands, such a wonderland of canyons of extraordinary diversity, convolutions, and colors that one might be inspired to volunteer that our Dear Lord had not only a most powerful imagination, but also an exceedingly fine sense of humor: for example, the huge white slabs of sandstone, perched at every conceivable angle, on tall chocolate-brown monuments of shale and, especially “humorous,” when those massive slabs were delicately balanced on steeply inclined ledges — directly above the trail!

 

But for now we were in the La Sal mountains to the east, about to take an easy hike on a high mesa affording unobstructed views of the skyscraper-tall Fisher Towers. We weren’t bothering with packs but we wondered, was it really necessary to bring along our big canisters of pepper spray? We’d gotten them primarily as defense against grizzlies in the Yellowstone ecosystem but we knew they’d work against other threatening creatures (not to mention humans as we’d learned the HARD way when a test spray blew back into our faces). Since in recent years not only have there been four deaths from grizzlies, but a college student killed by a black bear in New Jersey, someone by a pack of coyotes in Nova Scotia, and even a hiker in Olympic National Park . . . gored to death by a mountain goat! We reluctantly shoved them in our pockets.

 

The hike was a little longer than planned and we decided to camp nearby, even though the only possible site was adjacent to and overlooking the trail. There was a fine view from there out the back of our pickup camper, and no one was around so we decided, why not? But after supper I suddenly noticed a large tawny shape entering our view from the left. I assumed it was someone’s dog with the owner soon to follow. But it wasn’t a dog. Rather . . .  a cat. Not a cute and cuddly kitty cat. Rather, a mean and ugly — at least in Anne’s estimation — mountain lion! 15 feet away! Or less!

 

It stopped, turned towards us, and stared, as if trying to determine whether we were predator or prey (how about, potentially, both). I quickly grabbed the spray, which we always try to keep within close reach, and raised myself into firing position (Anne said I made myself, completely unintentionally, look big). A dramatic face-off ensued. I attempted a threatening growl. The lion was unimpressed. Neither of us moved. Finally I banged on the side of the camper and shouted, “Shoo!” – which did successfully effect it’s somewhat reluctant departure from our environs.

 

And after the event I couldn’t help but recall how very stealthily it had moved into our view. . . .

So we were left most decidedly . . . inspired . . . to always . . . have our spray with us.

P. S. Sadly, I neglected to take a selfie of myself with it. Next time.

 

Chapter 5, THE LAST SONATA

 

One of my reasons for these revisions is to add more information and nuances to what I wrote about Beethoven — which I’ve gleaned both from reflection, working on Sonatas 30, 31, and 32, and a number of other biographies. Most of these I will put in this section.

 

Page 26. “in the development the pain returns and builds to unbearable intensity” — this pain, which Schubert resists to the nth, but ultimately has no choice but to give in to, is really a purification. One of my favorite parts of Handel’s Messiah is when the alto sings: “But who may abide the day of His coming. And who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner’s fire.” And then the chorus: “And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.” (Malachi 3:2-3). And Beethoven writes: “We finite beings, who are the embodiment of an Infinite Spirit, are born to know both joy and pain, and it may be that the most distinguished of us know joy through pain.” Thus this “unbearable” pain leads directly into, “some of the most beautiful bars ever composed.…” 

 

I should have noted that the trill deep in the bass that interrupts the opening melody is akin to distant thunder, ever reminding Schubert of his fate, which is in fact the fate of us all. I write later in Cabeza that I feel like I’m on a mountain far too difficult to climb… But all the forest below me is in flames. Just so is Schubert’s trill. In the development after the “unbearable intensity,” I write “. . . but what follows are some of the most beautiful bars ever composed. Softly repeated chords in one hand, like a heartbeat. A simple three-note questioning theme in the other. Here is revealed as nowhere else the extraordinary beauty of the mind that knows, despite and because of its most dire circumstances, that there is no choice but to find its way free of wanting and fearing.” That trill reappears during that section, and then — especially — at the very end of the movement, not like menacing thunder, but rather showing Schubert’s understanding of what someone else later discussed in Cabeza called: “the eternal necessity of suffering.”

 

Page 27. Regarding Beethoven’s Quartet 14: “with its superhuman, terrifying to some opening fugue that takes in everything…” In Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, JWN Sullivan writes that to Wagner it was “a melancholy too profound for any tears. To Berlioz it was terrifying. To Beethoven himself it was the justification of, and the key to, life. In the light of this vision he surveys the world.” Way back in 1968 I described it to someone as a “bridge.” Yes, but some years later I discovered Vincent van Gogh’s letter to his brother Theo, at the same time he cut off his ear, stating, “To suffer without complaining is the one lesson that has to be learned in this life.” And later still I discovered Beethoven’s own letter to Countess Erdody: “Man cannot avoid suffering. He must endure without complaining, and then again achieve his perfection, that perfection the Almighty will then bestow upon him.” This is the opening fugue, which leads into the second, third, and long fourth variation movement, which Sullivan writes of a “vision . . . that resolves all our discords. . . . It is a transfigured world. . . . All creation . . . seems to be taking part in this exultant stirring. If ever a mystical vision of life has been presented in art it is here. . . .”

See also my website page: Beethoven: The Man Revealed.

 

I write later in Cabeza that I oversimplified writing about Beethoven. Here I will note that at the end of the last movement — “that epic Beethovenian struggle” — slows down, more and more and more, and then suddenly leaps up high to end with three fortissimo major cords. This strikes me as cycling back to the opening fugue — and an affirmation of everything he had to go through.

 

See this link  to my own rendition of the B-flat, which I feel I understand better than any other performer — because I go through, repeatedly, especially in my daily meditation, everything Schubert went through. If any celebrated concert pianist were to REALLY understand all the music I discuss in this book, they would drop 90% of their repertoire and do four hours a day of meditation as I do.

 

and here for all the music discussed in Cabeza and more:

 

At the latter webpage is also a link to Schubert’s Sonata in C minor, composed slightly before the B-flat, which shows what he had to go through - let flow through him - to come to the “perfection” of the latter. See also my discussion of these pieces on their webpages and at YouTube, where they are also posted.

 

This is from the pocket score of Beethoven's Quartet 14 — which he himself called his greatest and was played for Schubert on his deathbed bringing him into such states of ecstasy that his friends feared for his life. Bought this in 1968. It’s dated 1960.

[This is in three languages, only signed H. G.] Beethoven's last quartets — Opus 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, and 135 which the master wrote during the last years of his life (1824-1826) [after finishing the 9th Symphony and receiving a commission for three quartets; he said he still had more ideas so composed two more] occupy a solitary position, not only among Beethoven's works: they probably represent the last word and the supreme effort in the instrumental music of all ages. This music soars high above all material things — the purest expression of a lofty spirit which dwells serenely beyond all earthly things, indeed beyond the limits of music itself. It is music such as probably could be written only by one who, like the Beethoven of that period, was no longer of this world: one who had for years been barred from perceiving the voices of the surrounding world, who listened only to his own inner voice — one who was alone with himself and with his creator. Small wonder, then, that only decades later these works began to meet not with understanding but with at least some measure of respect from laymen and professional musicians. There is in them so much that is new and unusual, even strange, as regards form, style and expression, as to explain the lack of understanding on the part of Beethoven's contemporaries towards these quartets which demand the utmost concentration and receptivity even from hearers of our era whose appreciation for them benefits by the tremendous musical development of the last 100 years. Certain of their movements may be accessible to and even possessed of direct appeal even to the unprepared listener: but their inherent greatness and beauty will only fully reveal themselves to him who has made them the subject of close study and who bears there every detail in his heart and mind as clearly as those of a beloved master painting.…

 

[The only caveat to the above is that I consider the 9th Symphony his greatest work and the last three sonatas on the same level as the last quartets. Also, Bach’s Art of the Fugue and Musical Offering are on the same level as the 9th.]

See the performances on my website link above. One comment to the slow movement of the 15th quartet (entitled by Beethoven: “Holy song of Thanksgiving to the Godhead…”) on YouTube is: If you listen to this movement it will change your life. As I wrote in the last Sonata essay Adagio of Quartet No. 15, op. 132—which, when half-asleep I first understood it, raised the great question of how this man, so alone and isolated by deafness, could know such love, such joy…

 

 

“Or a man engaged in a titanic battle of “good” versus “evil.” — On further consideration (it’s been 23 years since I wrote those words) I think he saw how important it was to show us everything he had to go through. Yes, he also wanted perhaps “commiseration” for everything he went through. But the goal was always in order to “spread the rays of the Godhead throughout the human race.”

 

“He so grossly mistreats his nephew Karl…” — As I mention in a later chapter, he obviously had a manic-depressive temperament. I myself know well what that means and how at times in the past (one of which is mentioned later in Cabeza) seemingly little things have set me off. I discussed all of this more later in Cabeza and in the book I’m currently writing about my cousin Nell. All of his acquaintances, as far as I know, considered Beethoven an extraordinarily noble, honorable person. Memories of Beethoven, by Gerhard von Breuning : “The truth about Beethoven’s character is that he had these traits: great nobility and tenderness, with an easily excitable temperament, mistrust, withdrawal from the world around him, together with a penchant for sarcastic wit.… His suspiciousness was based on his dreadful deafness; his ready outbreaks of anger were soon made good, in the most amiable way, by his quick admission, even to the point of exaggeration, of any mistakes he might have committed.…

 

[Beethoven’s friend Franz] Grillparzer [who gave the oration at his funeral]: “for all his odd ways which, as I said, often bordered on being offensive, there was something so inexpressibly touching and noble in him that one could not but esteem him and feel drawn to him.”

 

Page 28. “His last recorded words are ‘Applaud friends, the comedy is ended.’” — It had always puzzled me that he said these words in Latin: “Plaudite amici, finita est comedia.” I’ve read at least 10 biographies of Beethoven (at least half of those since writing Cabeza) but I had to discover on my own through a Google search (when I wrote the first part of this chapter I didn’t even have an Internet connection and had never even heard of Google) that it was actually recited by the Roman Caesar Augustus on his deathbed, and that it was a common closing line in classical Roman comedy. In Memories of Beethoven, Gerhard von Breuning — the son of a childhood friend of Beethoven’s and who was at Beethoven’s bedside throughout his last days — writes, “I can say quite definitely that my father, Schindler, and I were present, and that he quoted these words in his favorite sarcastic, comic manner in order to convey the idea: nothing can be done; the doctors’ work is finished, my life is over.”

 

But they were not his last words. After someone had sent him one of his favorite wines he offered, “Pity, too late.”

 

“He shakes his fist with his dying breath.” — One author believes this was just an involuntary death spasm. Very likely. Gerhard von Bruning does not mention the shaking fist. But (March 26, 1827): “I had stayed in the room of the dying man with Beethoven’s brother Johan and Sali the housekeeper. It was between four and five o’clock; the dense clouds drifting together from every quarter increasingly obscured the daylight and, all of a sudden, a violent storm broke, with driving snow and hail. Just as in the immortal Fifth Symphony and the everlasting Ninth there are crashes that sound like a hammering on the portals of Fate, so the heavens seemed to be using their gigantic drums to signal the bitter blow they had just dealt the world of art.…”

 

“And one can’t help thinking of so many spiritual teachers…” — I write later in Cabeza that I oversimplified in this chapter regarding Beethoven and how I distinguish him from the spiritual teachers I have known.

 

“Schubert’s idol — what he might have learned from gentle Franz.” — Well, I think all the great composers learned from each other. Beethoven learned from Bach and George Frederick Handel. And when presented with a few of Schubert’s early songs Beethoven said: “He too has the divine spark.… This one will surpass me.” And when I started working on Beethoven’s Sonata 31 I realized the similarities in the opening movement with that of Schubert’s B-flat. It starts with a beautiful opening theme, punctuated by a trill, and thence slides into a very flowing section not unlike Schubert’s B-flat. Very possibly it inspired that work. See what I have written about this sonata along with my rendition of it.

 

Also of note is that Schubert seems to have visited Beethoven on his deathbed (along with two others; Beethoven said, “Let Schubert be the first”). Memories of Beethoven indicates that Beethoven was working on a Quintet that in C major with two cellos at the time of his death. The above-mentioned quintet of Schubert’s just happens to be in C major…… with two cellos! Schubert wrote it for him! (Schubert may have learned of the quintet from mutual friend amateur violinist Carl Holz whose quartet played Beethoven’s 14th quartet for Schubert on his deathbed.

 

Page 28. “when it suddenly became precisely clear why I loved that music so dearly.” — This was when I first started playing it. Seems I never fully understand music until I do so.

 

Page 29. “was napping . . . and awoke into—another realm.… slipping past the normally formidable defenses of my mind” — Throughout Cabeza I discuss how failure in love, or more generally reproductive success, propelled Bach and Schubert to more profound levels of understanding. For Beethoven, his works are always categorized being early, middle, and late. The early was before he realized, in 1802, he was becoming deaf which brought him very close to suicide: his Heiligenstadt Testament (found in a drawer at the time of his death; can be found online — worth reading) reads almost like a suicide note. But this propelled him into his much more profound middle period with the works most usually identified with him. Then in 1812 the “Immortal Beloved” affair occurred (known, again, only by the presence of a letter in that same drawer). Some musicologists seem to spend their entire careers trying to figure out who the woman was, and whether the relationship was consummated; biographer Jan Swafford says none of the three possibilities make sense, “But life doesn’t make sense.” Whatever actually transpired made Beethoven know he would never find, like Schubert, love with a woman. He wrote in his Tagebuch (which he seems to have started right at this time): “Submission, deepest submission to your fate, only this can give you the sacrifices — for this matter of service. O hard struggle!… You must not be a human being, not for yourself, but only for others: for you there is no longer any happiness except within yourself, in your heart. O God! Give me strength to conquer myself, nothing at all must fetter me to life.… (Even in his last year he told his childhood friend von Breuning he wished he had married.)

 

Shortly thereafter at the estate of Countess Erdody he disappeared for several days — everyone thought he had returned to Vienna — only to reappear in a very disheveled state. It has been surmised that he had been attempting self-starvation. But, again, this trauma led to the composition of his truly greatest works: the last three sonatas, the Missa Solemnis, the 9th Symphony, and the late quartets — without which I don’t know where I’d be, if I’d be.

 

But I’m leading up to the fact that only several years after writing Cabeza did it dawn on me the similarities with my own experience mentioned here. In high school I was “very shy and retiring,” as a friend described me, especially with girls. But said friend in the early summer after my senior year fixed me up with a blind double date with a very pretty younger girl — who liked me, even giving me a peck on the cheek when I dropped her off at home! I had my first girlfriend, all through that summer. Off to college, and I phoned her every weekend, and was so excited to see her after flying home at Thanksgiving. Then she told me she had gone back to her old boyfriend. Whether this relates to my experience half-asleep listening to the Hallelujah Chorus, I cannot say — but it’s an interesting coincidence. I had gotten good grades that semester but the next I fell in with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells, and got in the habit of going for long after dark walks along the railroad tracks out of Ann Arbor, coming back only at dawn and sleeping through my classes. Flunked out. But deep down I understood Albert Einstein’s words, mentioned later in Cabeza, “I must seek in the stars what is denied me on earth.” All the greatest composers and artist understood this. Against their will. Aeschylus: “And even in our sleep, the pain that does not forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God above.”

 

Page 31. “Chemistry — boring.” — Ernest Rutherford, who formulated to a degree our current understanding of the atom, famously said: “All science is physics. Everything else is stamp collecting.” As the author who informed me of this quote put it in a footnote, “It must have really sucked for him when he won the Nobel Prize for chemistry.”

 

Page 34 footnote. “Mayflower” — every account I have read of first contact between Europeans and Native Americans has indicated the latter has well understood the powers of the former and sought them to have them as allies — against their “fellow” Native Americans.

 

Page 37 footnote. “Way to go, Brett.” — Sadly, a female game day presenter charged Brett with sending “inappropriate” text messages (she said he asked her to sleep with him), a charge that was never proven, but Brett was fined $50,000 by the NFL for not cooperating with the investigation. (As discussed later in Cabeza, monogamy makes for a more stable society as there aren’t access males floating around to cause trouble. But this means that a man works like crazy to raise his status like Brett… And his only wife is no longer fertile!) Perhaps this act of “bad judgment” may be somewhat explained by the following. Wikipedia: “In 2013, Favre was asked to consider returning to the NFL to play for the injury-plagued St. Louis Rams. He turned down the offer, telling WSPZ radio in Washington, D.C. that he has had memory loss and that he feared it was related to the multiple concussions he suffered throughout his career. He was previously asked in a 2009 interview with NBC how many times he had played with a concussion that with the new standards would have resulted in him sitting out. 'A lot', he replied.

“In 2021, Favre was featured in a public service announcement (PSA) urging parents not to allow their children to play tackle football under age 14. In an interview with Today, Favre stated that while he is in good health, he often questions how healthy he really is due to fears about the long-term effects of his playing career and that he is unsure whether the cognitive lapses he sometimes experiences are a natural effect of his advancing age or a sign that he may have CTE.”

 

I myself, at the age of 75 making these revisions, thanks to meditation, diet, and exercise, feel zero effect of my “advanced” age.

 

My brother-in-law, after two botched knee replacements, when into cognitive decline and died a few years later. He had played as a football lineman in high school and college…. Don’t let your kids play football, or even soccer. Let them play tennis. If you are considering a knee replacement — don’t! I just read there is one chance in 100 of death within three months afterwards. Exercise can cure most knee problems.

 

My current football hero, whom I’ve never watched play of course, is Aaron Rodgers who admirably succeeded Brett at the Packers, but now at the end of his career has moved to the Jets. Seems he’s almost a vegan and maybe not vaccinated, stating that diet and exercise are just as good or better. YES! He also said he was terrified of dying when he was young but since taking a psychedelic only available in South America he is free of that. The article didn’t say but maybe he saw Something of the IT. He also does “darkness retreats.” He should stop playing before his brain is addled. I should send him my book.

 

Page 38. “Lisa Randall” — In Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe, she writes in the introduction: “I was also overwhelmed by the many connections among the phenomena that ultimately allow us to exist. To be clear, mine is not a religious viewpoint. I don’t feel the need to assign a purpose or meaning. Yet I can’t help but feel the emotions we tend to call religious as we come to understand the immensity of the universe, our past, and how it all fits together. It offers anyone some perspective when dealing with the foolishness of everyday life.” Seems to me that’s pretty, if not religious, then what I call genuine spirituality. So maybe I was wrong and she might get something from my book. Beautiful woman, powerful mind, zero children. See later in Cabeza when I lament how the most intelligent are making the fewest babies… And the implications for civilization.

 

“Okay, so how did the apples get here?” — Carl Sagan: “To make an apple pie from scratch you have to invent the universe.”

 

Chapter 6, IOWA

 

Page 44. “And the rest starve” — Well, these days it seems like obesity is as much of a problem in Africa as in the West.

 

Chapter 7, OF BEETLES AND MEN

 

Page 52. “those trucks on Interstate 80.” — Actually, it’s those drag racers on Interstate 80 just south of Chicago (I’ve read it’s becoming a problem both in New York City and the Windy City). On our way out I’m always driving then and it’s around midnight. Last trip in moderately heavy traffic two cars zipped past us going about 110 miles an hour. Then two police cars zipped past going about 130 miles an hour. Then there was a big flashing sign saying there was a delay ahead. Wonder why. After crawling for about half an hour, only one of the five lanes being open, we finally reached the “incident of interest.” Two cars were totally totaled but the two drivers, male of course (pardon my sexism but if someone knows of a female drag racer, let me know and I will adjust my views), looked uninjured and were being interviewed by the police. Both cars were facing the wrong way. One was headed towards the oncoming traffic. The other had its tires pointed to the sky. Coming back, same thing except three lanes were open and the delay was shorter.

 

 

Page 54. “Mr. President.” — See this article about Jimmy Carter, who was always talking about love, but did not display even the bare minimum of friendliness to his security agents, one of whom related that “Carter was just very short and rude most of the time. With agents, he’d just pretend like you were not around. You’d say hello, and he’d just look at you, like you weren’t there, like you were bothering him.” … “Even one of Carter’s most famous populist touches, carrying his own luggage when going on a trip, was a bit of fakery: the bags the president carried were empty. The Secret Service men carried his real bags. ‘It was all for show,’ says an agent. See: 

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11807897/Ex-Secret-Service-agents-reveal-Jimmy-Carter-actually-rude-time.html

 

Chapter 8, LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS

 

Page 51."Killer wrist straps." Photos

 

“I’m sure no bears come up this high” — On a later trip I saw them well above tree line in the Canadian Rockies. Note that there are occasional deaths from black bears even in the East where there is hunting. Four Rutgers students going for a walk in New Jersey saw bear behind them and started running, all in separate directions. The bear chased one of them… And killed him. In my book on Nell I quote an African guide who tells his clients: “You don’t run from a lion. If you run from a lion you will be running from that lion for the rest of your life.” Same applies to bears.

 

“Until the glaciers melt in a few years” — 20 years ago the park put up signs that the glaciers would be gone by 2020. As I write this it’s 2023 and the glaciers are still there and they took down the signs. More on global warming later.

 

Page 58. “Hoary marmot (I gave tidbits to)” — DON’T feed any animals.

 

Chapter 9, CHOLLA I

 

Page 64. “Fig bars of your own imaginations” — This was an allusion to the Beatles cartoon movie, Yellow Submarine. Ringo says something is a “fig bar of our imagination,” and all the other Beatles moan.

 

Page 65. “Having involved, pardon the pun, hand-in-hand” — A mistake by my dictation I never caught. Should be “having evolved.” This has been corrected in the digital edition and will be in future printings.

 

“Virtually every single human being is obsessed with [hair].” — At least three men I know are VERY upset about going bald, one of them wearing a baseball cap all the time. It seems other men intentionally shave their entire heads so no one will notice that they are bald. I have the good fortune of either through my genes (my father never went bald up to his death at age 80), or that combined with diet and exercise, of still having a full head of hair at age 75.

 

Page 69. “Such an onerous cart.” — It should be noted that while our genes are continually evolving by natural selection, the vast majority adapted to our ancestral environment when we were living in hunter-gatherer bands. One example of this is the genes for lactose tolerance. In the past infants were tolerant of lactose so they could breast-feed but lost that after a few years. Then milk producing cows and goats were domesticated and many people — primarily in Europe where this first occurred — retained their lactose tolerance into adulthood. But some have not and therefore have to have lactase added to their dairy products. See:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance

 

From Wikipedia: “Worldwide, about 65% of people experience some form of lactose intolerance as they age past infancy, but there are significant differences between populations and regions. As few as 5% of northern Europeans are lactose intolerant, while as many as 90% of adults in parts of Asia are lactose intolerant.[74]

 

“Some populations, from an evolutionary perspective, have a better genetic makeup for tolerating lactose than others. In northern European countries, early adoption of dairy farming conferred a selective evolutionary advantage to individuals that could better tolerate lactose. This led to higher frequencies of lactose tolerance in these countries. For example, almost 100% of Irish people are predicted to be lactose tolerant.[75] Conversely, regions of the south, such as Africa, did not adopt dairy farming as early and tolerance from milk consumption did not develop the same way as in northern Europe.[45] Lactose intolerance is common among people of Jewish descent, as well as from West Africa, the Arab countries, Greece, and Italy.[74] Different populations will present certain gene constructs depending on the evolutionary and cultural pre-settings of the geographical region.[45]”

 

“Saddam Hussein.” — In a book about the Iraq war a dentist who had the privilege of treating Hussein after he had been captured by the Americans related that he asked him if he had killed people. The reply: “In a country like this you have to kill people.” Unfortunately he never got his teeth fixed because the Shiites took and hung him. Bad teeth and all. 

 

Page 70. “Invited twins” — Should read invited identical twins. 

 

Page 75. “What the fuck?!” — But at least his last words conveyed a profound understanding of the human condition. The IT does not care about us as individuals. And the widely ignored words of the Buddha in the Diamond Sutra confirm this: “In reality, there are no sentient beings to save.”

 

Page 77. Not long ago a California couple carrying their baby, with their dog trotting beside them, went for a hike in 106° heat. A ranger had told them to take at least 160 ounces of water each. They took 80 total. They all died. One mile from their vehicle.

 

Chapter 10, THREE VIGNETTES

 

Page 79. “The Flaming Gorge.” — That little vignette is perhaps the most perfect depiction of the human condition. Rainer Maria Rilke echoed this almost precisely in a letter: “. . . as soon as we accept life’s most terrifying dreadfulness, at the risk of perishing from it . . . then an intuition of blessedness will open up for us. . . . Whoever does not, sometime or other, give his full consent, his full and joyous consent, to the dreadfulness of life will have been neither alive nor dead. To show the identity of dreadfulness and bliss, these two faces on the same divine head, indeed this one single face, which just presents itself this way or that, according to our distance from it or the state of mind in which we perceive it—: this is the true significance and purpose of the Elegies and the Sonnets.” 

 

Chapter 11, ME AND THE MOON

 

Page 81. “Beethoven Sonata 32” — Please see my own rendition on my websites and YouTube.

 

Page 83. “The potential to play the way I’ve always longed to” — Thanks to digital technology I now have unlimited editing capabilities on what’s called a midi clip that I record into from an electronic keyboard. So I can now perfect the pieces to how I hear them in my head.

 

Page 84. “The Aria” — Should be Arietta. Something I thought I knew so well I didn’t need to look up!

 

“Applaud friends” — See the notes to The Last Sonata chapter.

 

Chapter 12, GUMBO!

 

Page 85. “Died an early death at 57” — He was in his 57th year but what we call age 56. In Beethoven: That Jealous Demon, My Wretched Health: Disease, Death and Composers, Jonathan Noble (a retired surgeon) mentions that while Beethoven’s autopsy did show cirrhosis of the liver, it was of a type most likely caused by viral hepatitis, Type A. He does however use as a reference Jan Swafford who, in his biography of Beethoven, called him a “working alcoholic.” Vincent van Gogh, who drank copiously in evenings, remarked, “I’d like to see a drunkard in front of the canvas!” Certainly Beethoven could not have composed his extraordinary works while drunk. He may have abstained until his midday or evening meal, but then still, as I wrote, “self-medicated” to take the edge off his ofttimes intense inner misery.

 

Carl Holz, however, may have quickened his demise by, in his last several years when he took over as Beethoven’s unofficial secretary from Anton Schindler, taking him out to taverns in the evening to “raise his spirits.” Beethoven later remarked in the letter that Holz was a “hard drinker.” Edward Slingerland, in Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization, makes a strong case that a certain amount of alcohol or other forms of intoxicants may open up deeper levels of creativity within one. Also, a recent analysis of five preserved samples of Beethoven’s hair showed a genetic predisposition to cirrhosis of the liver. “Although we could not identify a genetic explanation for Beethoven's hearing disorder or gastrointestinal problems, we found that Beethoven had a genetic predisposition for liver disease. Metagenomic analyses revealed furthermore that Beethoven had a hepatitis B infection during at least the months prior to his death. Together with the genetic predisposition and his broadly accepted alcohol consumption, these present plausible explanations for Beethoven’s severe liver disease, which culminated in his death.” See: 

 

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)00181-1

 

Note that it was also a hard-drinking age, in part because the water supply was unsafe and may have been what killed Schubert.

 

Noble: “Beethoven’s ultimate cause of death was likely to have been pneumonia, which probably overtook him before hepatic encephalopathy could. Pneumonia and cirrhosis are not mutually exclusive, and Beethoven had a long history of respiratory illness.” He also thinks Beethoven likely had ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease with liver cirrhosis. Finally, he thinks his deafness most likely was otosclerosis first, or possibly autoimmune disorder. The former is precisely the cause of Anne’s hearing loss which began at roughly the same age as Beethoven’s: late 20s or early 30s. 

 

Noble also believes the proximate cause of Schubert’s death was food poisoning since he became extremely ill immediately after a fish dinner, and never recovered. But he agrees that regardless of whether it was that or typhoid fever, that syphilis had greatly lowered his resistance to any affliction. Shortly before he died Schubert met a friend to whom he said, “Sometimes it seems to me as though I am no longer of this world.”

 

Noble also wrote regarding George Gershwin [famous for Rhapsody in Blue], that he had a malignant glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive tumor. “This was the worst of circumstances and one for which the prognosis was truly appalling… Six months before his death, Gershwin told his sister Francis that he had so much more music in him, symphonies, concertos, operas… Perhaps he sensed what was to overtake him. He had already expressed his dislike of Hollywood and told Francis that, once he was financially secure, he would “devote my time to compose serious music.” Tragically, he ended up by saying, “I feel that I haven’t scratched the surface.” He was starting to write a string quartet. — Sad to think what we lost here. My father and nephew and possibly sister (who died in her sleep after reporting feeling dizzy during the day) died of the same, virtually untreatable, brain tumor. It could kill me at any time. This knowledge is “distant thunder” to me just like syphilis was to Schubert.

 

“Sitting might help some people live with less medication…” — In Malady of the Mind: Schizophrenia and the Path to Prevention, by Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, and former president of the American Psychiatric Association, describes a schizophrenic young man who went through cycles of hospitalization and a range of drugs (at least one of which left him with “a blanket over my mind”), but eventually turned to meditation “which he describes as life-changing.”

 

Note, by the way, that exercise is been shown to be better for mental health than medications. With POSITIVE side effects: 

 

https://nypost.com/2023/02/24/exercise-more-effective-than-meds-for-mental-health-study/ 

 

Page 85."For seventeen years I rode my bike to work twice a day, twenty minutes each way, every school day, all year round." See photo.

 

Page 89."Dissertation on the efficacy of various extraction techniques for freeing two-wheel-drive pickups from Utah mud holes."-- See photo.

 

Page 90."My father offered to pay for a four wheel drive truck ." See photo.

 

Page 92. “The tow truck operator had informed me his fee was $500” — Getting out of the Maze now with a tow is at least $2000.

 

“The stake simply broke under the stress” — I have since fabricated four additional stakes from one quarter-inch angle steel. Haven’t used the winch or the stakes since…

 

CHRISTMAS 2019 (edited)

 

The forecast was not good. Not good at all. Big storm coming in. And we, now camped at the lower levels of the Maze District of Canyonlands National Park, had to get out. And, most concerningly, up. Up the notorious — steeply switch-backed, one vehicle wide, four-wheel-drive only, sharp drop-offs the entire way — Flint Trail, cut by cattlemen and prospectors into the nearly vertical Orange Cliffs, which we’d descended three days earlier. Which had significant stretches of that wondrous gray green clay to which, when water is added turns it to gumbo and makes surface travel just a tad problematic.

 

 A few days earlier we had spoken with some people who had had the “learning” experience of ascending the Flint when wet. They said it just made it more exciting. That kind of excitement . . . maybe we’d prefer to live, literally live, without. At the Ranger station we'd seen a photo of an SUV that had been descending the trail. It showed the vehicle precariously balanced on its roof. It was unclear how it had attained such an “advanced” posture . . . without rolling hundreds of feet almost straight down. The driver had perhaps touched the brakes a little eensy-weensy tiny bit too hard. In dry weather.

 

And now, rounding a bend, we could view the Trail directly ahead about eight miles off. Except we couldn’t, clearly, as there were sheets of rain partially obscuring that distant view. Neat.

 

But off to the left was an utterly different, exceeding marvelous view. Down into the heart of the Maze, with all sorts of formations of red and white striped rock, and the aptly named Chocolate Drops, Lizard and Chimney Rocks rising above. Not only that, but with clouds equally marvelous, driven East by the oncoming storm, still with lots of blue sky and a brilliant sun. Despite our worries of the ascent, this was — photo time. 

 

I only took two rolls of film the entire trip, lugging my nine pounds of camera equipment around, often to no avail much of time. Good exercise, and builds moral fiber, too. But for moments like this . . . that effort was definitely worth the trouble.

 

 And made us, momentarily at least, forget the troubles ahead.

But as things turned out — we lucked out. As we approached the Flint Trail the rain abated, the sun came out, and the trail dried off. Up we went, no problems. Whew!

 

The next day, 1500 feet above at High Spur which offers the finest views of the park — the full brunt of the storm finally hit. Rain, sleet, high winds, thunder, you name it. But we (having attentively listened to our weather radio’s prognostications), after a very early morning’s hike had just made it back to the secure confines of our “mobile mansion,” where we could relax and enjoy nature’s “fury” in cozy comfort. And the next morning we were rewarded with clouds and fog slowly rising out of the myriad canyons in our view. Not that bad a trip . . . For more photos of that and earlier trips to the Maze go to: 

 

More photos are on the homepage and my Bach and Schubert videos.

 

Chapter 13, CHOLLA II

 

Page 93, footnote. “And ad on the back inside cover of Discover” — I haven’t seen ads worded like that lately. Maybe the decline of IQ is not quite as severe as I had thought, and people aren’t buying it. But there are still plenty of ads for relatively cheap watches that try to look like Rolexes.

 

Page 94. “Homosexuality” — Robin Baker (Sperm Wars)states that many homosexuals are really bisexual and they are also more promiscuous so enough of them make enough babies that their genes persist in the gene pool. But generally heterosexuality is a more secure path to reproductive success.

 

“Americans are obsessed with family.” — According to surveys, not anymore. With disastrous consequences for our civilization.

 

“’Fulfilling’ career” — The wife of a nephew of mine wanted her cake and eat it too. Career and children. When she was pregnant her doctor warned her she was at risk from preeclampsia. But her career demanded a 1200-mile flight. Her doctor okayed it… But she went into labor on the flight, gave birth half a continent away from home, baby premature and on life support. She had great insurance — good thing since I was told the medical costs were $1 million plus. And the baby was developmentally retarded. He’s now a high school music teacher but I wonder if he might have aimed higher with a normal birth. She was unable to have more children so they adopted one — a girl of course — from China ($40,000 out of pocket). This is WHY, in part, the Taliban makes their women stay home and uneducated. Also, so the husband knows he’s the father. No greater sin — as far as evolution is concerned — than for a man to use his resources to raise another man’s child.

 

On the eve of her wedding my niece traveled a couple hundred miles just to have sex with an old boyfriend. For SOME reason the birth control didn’t work right (she told me) and she got pregnant. (Reading between the lines, I think the old boyfriend had a higher IQ — i.e. better genes — but her husband to be was a better provider. It was her I quoted as saying, “Any girl’d want a doctor.”) When she got back she had sex with her new spouse as much as possible and then did everything she could to make him bond with the boy. But somehow he sensed it wasn’t his and extracted from her the truth. This is WHY people say things like, “Oh, he looks just like his father.” Because, again as far as evolution is concerned, knowing paternity is essential. It also — for SOME reason — happens that stepfathers are much more likely to abuse and even murder their stepchildren than their own. When the male lion takes over a pride of females he kills all their cubs.

 

Pardon the repetition but the whole point of this chapter is showing how we are programmed by evolution — something we are also programmed not to be aware of. Or even deny.

 

Page 95. “Serial monogamy” — As I write, football star Tom Brady and his wife of a dozen years have divorced. Supposedly it was because he, at age 44, wanted to keep playing another year, and she objected. But I suggest that deep down he didn’t really mind that she left. She was 42 with only a few years of fertility left. His new girlfriend is in her early 20s… Even if he doesn’t want more babies, his genes know younger is better.

 

Page 96. First footnote — The New York Times doesn’t even dare print such articles anymore. And for Harvard professor Steven Pinker to say, “That’s the difference between the University and a madrasa” is obviously racist and he’d be instantly fired. As I write in 2023, everything that the Left doesn’t want to think or know about is racist. Or sexist. Trans-phobic. But in fact, MRIs have shown male and female brains ARE different. But Google may censor that now. Probably. For non-politically correct searches duckduckgo may be the best search engine.

 

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Page X: “Many writers are so desperate to discredit any suggestion of an innate human constitution that they have thrown their own logic and civility out the window … The analysis of ideas is commonly replaced by political smears and personal attacks… The denial of human nature has spread beyond the academy and has led to a disconnect between intellectual life and common sense.”

 

Page 97. “Breast-Feed or Else.” My father slowly worked his way up the corporate ladder in part by taking extensive business trips around the US to where his company had factories — for up to three weeks at a time. How could a breast-feeding woman do that?

See:

 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/the-us-campaign-against-breastfeeding_5335331.html

• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), between 2011 and 2016, only 40 percent of infants under the age of 6 months were being exclusively breastfed, worldwide.
• Thanks to growing awareness of the science behind the “breast is best” slogan, breastfeeding rates in the U.S. have risen from a low of 24 percent in 1971 to 81 percent in 2016.
• The global goal is to get 70 percent of infants exclusively breastfed for the first six months by 2030. To achieve that, the World Health Assembly introduced a nonbinding resolution in early 2018 to encourage breastfeeding and stress the health benefits of breastfeeding.
• In a move that shocked the world, U.S. delegates opposed the resolution, demanding that language calling on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” be deleted.
• The American delegation threatened countries with sanctions lest they reject the resolution. It was even suggested that the U.S. might cut its financial support to the WHO. Russia ultimately introduced the resolution.
• US Government Backs Formula Makers
• “‘We were astonished, appalled and also saddened,’ said Patti Rundall, the policy director of the British advocacy group Baby Milk Action … ‘What happened was tantamount to blackmail, with the U.S. holding the world hostage and trying to overturn nearly 40 years of consensus on the best way to protect infant and young child health,’ she said.

In China men refuse to marry women of the equal or higher status even if it means they don’t have to work. See New York Times Magazine, March 9, 2013, “Love Hunters.”

 

Page 100. “Our human foreknowledge of what we are getting into.” — I recently read that there was a plant in ancient Greece that was discovered to work as a contraceptive. It went extinct. Wonder why. The Roman empire in part went into decline due to declining population — they practiced infanticide regularly. This is how Christianity made its ascendancy: by forbidding that, and this is why the Catholic Church still bans birth control and abortion. See Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct. Wade concludes with pondering whether any civilization can survive without religion. I would say, specifically, a religion that promotes fertility. Religions that do so will take over. See the link below: 

 

https://nypost.com/2023/03/29/americas-soft-revolution-away-from-everything-thats-made-us-great/

 

“Richard Dawkins as Darwin’s Rottweiler…” — Actually, blind anger may have had a certain niche selective advantage when we were evolving in hunter gatherer bands. I recently read in The Viking Way, by Arthur Herman that in their battles there were some called berserkers who fought like crazy — literally — while, Herman suggests, the others hid behind their shields. Those that survived of course attained great status and likely reproductive success. In today’s society this has less selective value — except maybe linemen in football — and they are classified as manic-depressive or schizophrenic and drugged like nuts. To put “a blanket over their mind” so they won’t cause trouble.

 

Page 104, footnote. “Ashkenazi Jews… High IQ” — See Scientific American, July 2012: “Medal Migrations.” The global distribution of Nobel Prizes in the hard sciences shifted to the United States from Germany around 1940. That just happened to be when Jews were leaving Germany for the United States. Also, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History, by Nicholas Wade for which he was, and likely expected to be, crucified as a racist — for stating, proving, the obvious.

 

Page 105. “You are the egg carriers and no amount of denial” — these days, in 2023 denial is rampant and everyone — or at least the Left — says you can change your sex. Just mutilate your body — at the youngest age possible — and take dangerous hormones for the rest of your life. Then you won’t have to worry about babies. (But civilization will.) But, sad to say, your sex is there in every cell of your body. But maybe someone will invent a gene therapy to rectify that. Yes! I will note that up until 2016 I was an avid New York Times reader even paying $200 a year for a digital subscription. But at that point it became more and more evident how they twisted facts — leaving out everything inconvenient with selective reporting — that I’ve switched to conservative media. See the article below as an example. A black boy was shot by a white man (possibly suffering from dementia) and the media trumpeted over and over and over and over and over again. Whites are so evil. But when whites are killed in the same circumstances — nothing. And when a black is killed by another black in the same type of circumstance — no mention of the race of the killer. These are just a few of the most recent cases I have seen over and over again since switching to conservative media. 

 

https://nypost.com/2023/04/26/medias-existing-while-black-coverage-of-crime-twists-facts-worsens-racial-divide-in-us/

 

https://pjmedia.com/columns/benshapiro/2023/04/20/the-lefts-favorite-lie-widespread-white-on-black-violence-n1688681

 

https://www.newsmax.com/billdonohue/media-tucker-carlson-far-right/2023/04/26/id/1117617/

 

https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/look-out-biden-world-teen-migrant-horror-story-vanishes-and-other-commentary/

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/davidharsanyi/2023/04/28/medias-gorsuch-hit-continues-to-delegitimize-scotus-n2622535

 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2023/04/28/another-day-another-dishonest-media-hot-job-about-florida-n2622597

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-book-explores-covid-leak-theory-shut-down-liberal-media-lab-accidents-arent-rare

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/05/03/we-already-have-a-disinformation-governance-board-media-decides-what-you-can-and-cannot-hear-from-rfk-jr-n1692356

 

The below makes clear why this is happening:

 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/america-civics-crisis-means-too-many-students-dont-know-declaration-independence

 

And Humberto Fontava details in his blogs how the New York Times and the rest of the media have glorified the killers Fidel Castro and Che Guevara:

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2023/04/29/media-defamation-fine-how-bout-the-new-york-times-n2622595

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2023/04/15/the-bay-of-pigs-62th-anniversary-what-really-happened-n2621964

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2023/04/22/the-bay-of-pigs-part-iithe-battles-over-but-the-heroism-continues-n2622263

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2023/02/11/grammy-winner-bonnie-raitthypocrite-extraordinaire-n2619424

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2023/02/13/socialists-must-work-to-defeat-their-own-country-n2619476

 

For more see:

 

https://townhall.com/search/q?q=cuba&sort=date

 

So, for the benefit of those who have stayed with mainstream media I am putting lots of links to news they may not have seen. I apologize to those who are familiar with all of this. The lies of the mainstream media, by the way, go way back. See: 

 

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/08/1097097620/new-york-times-pulitzer-ukraine-walter-duranty

 

New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty gushed over and over about how wonderfully Stalin’s communist/socialist paradise was working out — when in fact millions were starving to death, had been sent to the Gulag, or were put before firing squads. This may have been what got my uncle Walter killed. He went off to Spain theoretically to fight Franco and fascism but was uninformed about the socialist “paradise” that was supporting the revolt. He never got to fight. The truck he was on made a wrong turn into fascist lines… and everyone was shot.

 

See below how the insane transgender madness is purely a cultural phenomenon, and related issues: 

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/04/03/study-confirms-trans-social-contagion-theory-n1684173

 

https://pjmedia.com/culture/catherinesalgado/2023/04/20/european-reviews-find-that-gender-transition-doesnt-solve-mental-problems-n1688895

 

https://pjmedia.com/culture/athena-thorne/2023/04/23/study-shows-mothers-of-boys-with-gender-issues-are-mental-n1689518

 

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2023/04/24/trans-rights-means-no-rights-at-all-n1689761

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/04/22/need-proof-that-pride-events-are-about-grooming-children-here-it-is-n1689386

 

https://nypost.com/2023/04/28/dont-believe-the-activists-hype-trans-people-are-not-under-threat/

 

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/un-backed-legal-recommendations-normalize-sex-minors-critics-say

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/04/30/irish-lgbtq-lady-inmate-proves-he-shouldnt-be-housed-with-women-n1691643

 

https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2022/04/25/the-left-is-willfully-blind-to-transgender-attacks-on-kids-n1592505

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2023/05/15/new-daughters-of-the-west-documentary-exposes-how-the-transgender-movement-is-especially-hurting-girls-n2623243

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/05/22/australians-who-criticized-male-breastfeeding-told-they-broke-the-law-n1697132

 

Page 107. “Our wonderful country… Is doomed” — Culture has evolved so much — prostitution is even being described now as a legitimate vocation, by Planned Parenthood no less — 

 

https://pjmedia.com/culture/catherinesalgado/2023/04/22/planned-parenthood-tries-to-normalize-prostitution-n1689498

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/03/17/why-is-petes-hubby-chasten-buttigieg-so-peeved-over-florida-banning-porn-in-schools-n1679269

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/tamra-farah/2023/06/03/pride-month-and-why-schools-are-sexualizing-children-n2624014

 

In the early 17th century Galileo was subject to house arrest for claiming that the earth went around the sun, contradicting Church dogma. But at least there was good reason to believe the reverse was the case. But now, in what is being called the post truth era, in Michigan you are subject to five years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine if you merely call someone by their "wrong" pronouns.

 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/michigan-house-passes-bill-using-wrong-pronouns-felony-fineable-10000

 

Who can ignore this testomony:

https://nypost.com/2023/07/28/detransitioner-chloe-coles-full-testimony-to-congress-is-a-final-warning-to-stop-gender-surgery/

 

And since I wrote those words, now I’m almost, in 2023, on the side of evangelicals now. Almost. The Left seems determined to destroy from within the greatest, most prosperous, open, though of course hardly fault free, civilization in human history. Open borders, astronomical debt, cancel culture, the sexualization of children, etc., etc., etc. 

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/elon-musk-says-george-soros-hates-humanity-reminds-him-magneto-viral-twitter-skirmish

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/05/27/lululemon-employee-fired-for-calling-911-on-looters-robbing-the-store-n1698542

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/seattle-area-business-owner-pleads-city-officials-costly-break-ins-buck-keeps-getting-passed

 

https://nypost.com/2023/05/27/newborns-are-becoming-victims-of-legalized-marijuana-use/

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/05/25/the-lefts-contract-on-america-n1698032

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/ny-times-ripped-piece-lamenting-kink-new-little-mermaid-left-sexualizes-kids

 

The latest is that a transgender man (i.e. a biological woman) killed six people at a Christian school including three 9-year-olds. Some of the media are so invested in the transgender movement that reporters are instructed not to mention that the killer was transgender. Others in the media are practically saying the shooting was justified because Christians won’t kowtow to their utterly insane belief that they can change their sex at will. A few days later another transgender (biological male) was discovered to be planning a copycat attack.

 

And the media and the Democrats are on the side of the transgenders saying it was just the natural response because of the “violent” Christians who wanted underage children not to be allowed to mutilate themselves so they could pretend to be a different sex. (Comedian Bill Maher hit the nail on the head when he said when he was 10 he wanted to be a pirate, but is glad his parents didn’t let him cut off one leg and put out one eye. He also recently said that the way it's going half the country will be LGBTQ, etc. by 2050.) And to prevent drag performances designed to sexualize and groom their children.

 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/colorado-dems-vote-against-harsh-penalties-indecent-exposure-kids-because-could-ban-drag-shows?dicbo=v2-PctkuNW

 

On top of that the authorities have refused to release the manifesto of the first named shooter — surely because it would reveal “uncomfortable” facts. As mentioned earlier, Nicholas Wade questions whether any civilization can survive without religion, so in this regard I have no choice but to be on the Christians’ side. Even if they believe the earth was created 6000 years ago. See these:

 

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/pastor-facing-10-years-prison-preaching-canada-trucker-blockade-protesting-vaccine-mandates

 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/street-preacher-rich-penkoski-threatened-jail-time-citing-bible-verses-oklahoma-lgbtq-organization

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/cbs-news-reportedly-barring-staff-from-using-term-transgender-reference-nashville-shooter

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/03/31/just-four-days-after-christian-school-murders-biden-goes-full-throttle-on-trans-madness-n1683339

 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-trans-movement-targeting-christians

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/03/29/can-you-guess-who-nbc-news-portrayed-as-the-real-victims-of-the-nashville-shooting-n1682486

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/03/29/trans-activists-call-for-more-blood-after-nashville-shooting-n1682475

 

https://nypost.com/2023/03/29/audrey-hales-identity-no-reason-to-cover-up-her-manifesto/

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/05/06/study-transgender-youth-prescribed-more-psychotropic-drugs-after-gender-affirming-care-not-less-n1693178

 

https://nypost.com/2023/05/16/university-of-wyoming-sorority-sisters-say-they-live-in-fear-of-trans-member/

 

Almost makes me want to convert to Christianity. Almost. Mainly because there is been such an extraordinary amount of genuinely spiritual music composed for the Church. See my online list.

 

 https://www.meaningofwilderness.com/music-of-cabeza/

 

 But I’ve just been reading a book about Jesus and I really don’t see much of that in him. 

 

Anne, during the composition of the original Cabeza, questioned why I was including so much commentary on “news.” The reason is I fear deeply for civilization. Without it, genuine spirituality has little chance to flourish. I feel I have to do whatever I can to turn the tide. These days even Beethoven is being canceled. And even requiring students to be able to write sheet music is called racist. Mathematics is racist. On and on it goes. I will add that I have posted my piano rendition of the African-American ragtime composer Scott Joplin — who is my favorite composer since Schubert. But he’s also considered a white supremacist. See what I wrote about him with my rendition.

 

Chapter 14, BRAINS VERSUS BRAWN

 

Page 112. “Two sides of the same coin” — Perhaps it’s worth repeating the words of Rilke (which I’ve also put on my YouTube video renditions of the last three sonatas of Beethoven, his 9th Symphony, and the Bach Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue)

“. . . as soon as we accept life’s most terrifying dreadfulness, at the risk of perishing from it . . . then an intuition of blessedness will open up for us. . . . Whoever does not, sometime or other, give his full consent, his full and joyous consent, to the dreadfulness of life will have been neither alive nor dead. To show the identity of dreadfulness and bliss, these two faces on the same divine head, indeed this one single face, which just presents itself this way or that, according to our distance from it or the state of mind in which we perceive it—: this is the true significance and purpose of the Elegies and the Sonnets.”

“Beethoven refused all entreaties to avenge the honor of his mother” — I fear I relied too much on the biography by Maynard Solomon who now strikes me as — I can’t think of a nicer word — a pervert (there are other examples of this but it’s too tortuous to go into). In Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, Beethoven’s actual letter responding to a friend regarding this is given: “You write that somewhere I am referred to as a natural son of the deceased King of Prussia; this was already mentioned to me a long time ago. But I have made it a principal never to write anything about myself nor to reply to anything written about me. Therefore I gladly leave it to you to make known to the world the honesty of my parents, and my mother in particular.…” I take Beethoven’s words at face value, not Solomon’s. Ironically, though, the recent analysis of Beethoven’s hair showed “Unexpectedly, an analysis of Y chromosomes sequenced from five living members of the van Beethoven patrilineage revealed the occurrence of an extra-pair paternity event in Ludwig van Beethoven’s patrilineal ancestry.”!!!

 

“Distinguished” — I don’t know what the original German was and I don’t know what other words he could have used, maybe “some of us.” After writing Cabeza I discovered the other quotation of Beethoven’s: “Man cannot avoid suffering. He must endure without complaining, feel his worthlessness, and again achieve his perfection, that perfection the Almighty will then bestow upon him.” Feeling our worthlessness — which is the same as what I wrote in my notes: “The biggest trap is trying to get out of the trap” — has nothing in common with berating ourselves. Feeling our worthlessness means experiencing intimately the utter impossibility of the finite being, by means of its own willpower, to find freedom from its limitations. And thus allow the mind to know the Infinite Spirit/Almighty/ Godhead.

 

Page 117. “This ‘play’ was fun” — Scientific American, August 2021. “Why Animals Play,” by Caitlin O’Connell. It’s all about learning skills for reproductive success. “Chasing and tripping littermates and then giving them a good chew on the spine or throat or rehearsals of the skills needed to catch prey animals and dispatch them by severing their spinal cord or choking them.” Etc. etc.

 

Page 119. “Gifted programs” — Now that we are arriving in the woke paradise, gifted programs are being eliminated in the name of “equity.” How wonderful. Time surely wouldn’t consider printing such an article today. By the way, that was me, one “of top 5% of high school grads failing to finish college.” But I needed to do meditation and play the piano. Genuine spirituality was not to be found in the classroom.

 

Page 121. “Decline in violent crime” — In The Better Angels of Our Natures, Steven Pinker disputes that it’s due to abortion; rather that many potentially violent persons were incarcerated for drug offenses starting at that time, so they were unable to commit crimes.

 

Page 123. “A virtual piano.” — What I have currently posted at YouTube is with the seventh of these which is FINALLY at least as good as my best CDs. And by being able to record by means of an electronic piano into my computer onto what’s called a midi clip, I have unlimited editing abilities. I record pieces as best I can, then spend many months perfecting them to the way I hear them in my head. Which, pardon my immodesty, makes them, in my view and others who have commented on them, the best renditions — the most perfect expression of the composers’ intentions — of MIND’s intentions —around. Because I know I understand these pieces, feel these pieces, have lived these pieces to a degree no other pianist, in my opinion, has. If they did, they would drop 90% of their repertoire, do four hours of meditation daily, and very likely give up their concert careers.

 

 

Chapter 16, THE UNFREE WILL

 

 

 

 

Page 134. “Free won’t.” — In Malady of the Mind, page 324-325, Jeffrey Lieberman discusses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), saying it “might be the only psychosocial treatment proven effective against psychotic symptoms.” “A patient in CBT is taught three Cs: catch the thought, check it, and change it. A skills coach could go out with a patient for a cup of coffee, a situation that might ordinarily be a trigger for psychotic symptoms, and when paranoid thoughts arise — Another customer is staring at me and looks angry — the patient is helped to think the situation through. If there are other possible explanations… then a spiral into paranoia, or a confrontation with a stranger, might be avoided. [One can imagine this is how many violent acts take place: a schizophrenic imagines someone else is angry at them and then attacks them in one way or another.] This IS free won’t. My way of sitting meditation. Lieberman says the person is taught to change the “thought,” but it’s really that they are abstaining from reacting to the feeling. But in fact, ultimately there are no rational fears — for the Infinite Spirit, that is.

 

 

"radically, alter one’s sexual behavior." -- See:

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2019/08/29/there-is-no-gay-gene-comprehensive-scientific-study-finds-n68425

 

 

Page 136.“I have no opinion on rebirth…” --Actually, both the Christian idea that everyone has a soul that will either go to heaven or be condemned to hell, and the Buddhist/Hindu concept that we are reborn into a “higher” or “lower” state depending on whether we have accumulated good or bad karma in this lifetime — have the same flaw. How did that “soul” come into being in the first place? If you are Christian, do you believe that God created some souls good and some bad? And if so, why? To amuse Himself? (Not that amusing for us poor sinners.) The Buddhist/Hindu concept makes a little more sense. When I first began calling myself a Zen Buddhist, it seemed that the idea of karma explained, in particular, my own misery — which thus was due to my actions in a previous life. And it was the only idea that seemed “fair.” Everyone had an equal chance at attaining Buddhahood, as it was sometimes expressed: “A master is someone who started before you.”

 

But again, how and when were these souls that were subject to rebirth created? In the Big Bang? And some were “better” than others? Makes no sense.

         

The only thing that makes the slightest sense is Beethoven’s “finite beings who are the embodiment of an infinite spirit.” The finite being is created by evolution. One might say that Beethoven didn’t know about evolution since he lived before Darwin, but I think in fact all humans have known about it for thousands of years, since they've been breeding plants and animals for that long. Plus we have these sayings like, “Like father, like son,” and “A chip off the old block.” Ancestries were always important. Everyone always wanted to know what their genes were, even if they didn’t know what genes were.

 

In a certain sense the finite being has been subject to karma, i.e., the forces of natural selection over the 3.8 billion years of life on earth. But every individual finite being is doomed to dissolution. The Infinite Spirit, however, is beyond time and space. Since the earliest memories anyone has seem to be from 2 ½ or three years of age, I suggest that it is by this time that the brain has developed enough begin to act as a receiver of some sort (as a radio) of the Infinite Spirit. Of course, the degree to which the finite being or the Infinite Spirit determine a person's behavior varies dramatically from individual to individual, and I suggest only the Infinite Spirit is capable of free won't. See page 175 of Cabeza and the notes to that page in Cabeza Revisited. At death, that particular finite being is gone forever. But the Infinite Spirit? Hardly. As the spiritual saying goes, "Those who die before they die do not die when they die."

 

Chuang Tzu was a Chinese sage who lived about 300 years after Lao Tzu and several hundred years before Buddhism spread to China from India infecting it with the ideas of reincarnation and rebirth. Chuang Tzu expresses precisely what Beethoven (we finite beings with an Infinite Spirit) and I myself have expressed above. I thought of this story when Anne was suffering from complications of a burst appendix and the doctor thought she might not survive.

 

When Chuang Tzu’s wife died. When Huei Tzu went to offer his condolences, he found Chuang Tzu sitting on the ground with legs splayed out in front of him, singing and beating on a basin as if it were a drum, “When a wife and husband have shared their life,” said Huei Tzu, “raised children together, reached a ripe old age, and the wife dies, truly it is heartless not to wail for her, but you are even taking things a step further with your singing and drumming. Don’t you think you’re going too far?”

 

“Not at all.” said Chaung Tzu. “Moments after she died, do you think it was possible for me not to feel distraught? When I reflected on the state of nonbeing before the origins of her being; not only has she not yet been a being, but originally she had no bodily form; not only did she have no bodily form, but originally she had no Qi. In the intermingling midst of the profound and obscure chaos, a change occurred, and there arise Qi. After a further transformation of Qi, her corporeal form appeared. Another change took place in the corporeal form, then birth and life sprang forth. Now another change has taken place, and death has come upon her. These changes, following one after another, mirror the same rhythms of the four seasons: from spring to autumn; from winter to summer. Now she lies peacefully asleep in the great chamber composed of heaven and earth, and if I were to go around weeping and wailing, and gnashing my teeth over that, in the end I would believe that I had failed to understand the concept of what is known as ‘the appointed life span’ of the common lot of people. Therefore I let it go.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 17, NOT TO MENTION

 

Page 142. We went for at least 20 years at our home in upstate New York without mice problems but then they started getting in. I discovered that due to humidity the sheathing under the vinyl siding was pulling away leaving a space. I finally fixed that after going over it countless times… But the mice were still getting in. I still hardly believe it but they were coming in under the foundation. Our basement floor is called a floating slab which has a little crack at the edge to allow water to drain. Because we had drain tubing going downhill I eventually discovered they were getting in that way. I put window screen on the tubing but they chewed through that! We haven't had any mice since I sealed that crack with both cement and heavy-duty screen.

 

For those similarly plagued as some friends of ours have been, a few more thoughts on mice: there is no good way to kill them. Poison is a slow painful death, plus the corpses may end up in your walls. Snap traps USUALLY provide an instant death… But all too often the mouse escapes but with one leg caught in the trap. It then drags the trap off to some hard-to-find place, and then — if you find it — you have the not fun task of drowning it in a bucket.

I now prefer glue traps but sometimes the mouse escapes — so I always, using gloves, put the glue trap with mouse in a large bucket it can't jump out of. Then it will have time to meditate on its fate and repent its sins.

 

We haven't had any mice for six months now so I'm hoping…… But as I write we just had a mouse a few days ago. I put glue traps around so I can figure out precisely how it got in.

 

Page 146. “Bats in your belfry.” Several other times since then either mice or squirrels — according to the lineman — wiped out our phone and Internet. Fortunately we have a cell phone now with which to call the phone company.

 

Chapter 18, AND THE STARS

 

Page 152. “Van Gogh did go… mad” — Dietrich Blumer, MD, shows in “The Illness of Vincent van Gogh” (Am J Psychiatry 2002; 159:519–526; found online), that absinthe— which has convulsant properties — played a great role in all of van Gogh’s hallucinations and breakdowns. Looking online there is considerable dispute about this, but Blumer does show how when he did partake of the beverage, he became more emotionally disturbed and suffered what Vincent called “unbearable” auditory hallucinations. All of his psychotic attacks were connected with absinthe. When he abstained, the hallucinations disappeared entirely. But he did have, like Beethoven, a strong manic-depressive temperament. See Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament,by Kay Redfield Jamison.

 

“Starry Night.” — Painted while he was hospitalized in an asylum. Note that six months earlier at the time he cut off his ear — but also started making his greatest paintings — he wrote to his brother Theo: “How strange these last three months do seem. Times of indescribable mental anguish. Times when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed pulled apart for an instant.” Van Gogh’s memories of those instants are what he passed on to us in his greatest paintings, which express — recall Brian Greene’s “the reality we experience is but a glimmer of the reality that is” — the reality that is.

 

CHRISTMAS, 2016

 

It started to snow. Hard. Not as in hard, heavily. Rather, hard, horizontally.

“Maybe we should set up the tent,” Anne said.

 

But I wanted to see the stars, and there were sure to be plenty of them here, in late September, ensconced in our sleeping bags by the shores of half-frozen Knoll Lake, above 12,000 feet in Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains. But other than three or four glimpsed for an instant or two between the scudding clouds . . . there were . . . no stars.

 

“My face is cold,” Anne said. She can’t sleep when there’s wind on her face. I set up the tent.  

 

Next morning . . . same thing. The plan had been . . . to camp on the top of 13,468’ Mount Febbas last night — for a great view and photos of a glorious sunrise. But we’d been slow and the forecast we’d gotten five days previously, before we’d started in the valley, hadn’t been that bad: 20% chance of showers. But now, after four days backpacking that 20% chance of rain showers had morphed into 100% chance of blizzard. Mountain weather.

 

After two hours of sitting, tea, and breakfast, however — hope! You could almost tell there might be a sun up there, somewhere, someplace, somehow — behind the rushing clouds, that is. Time to go! We packed everything up including the tent (a good half hour’s work) and began our . . . summit assault!

 

But . . . it got darker . . . and darker . . . and darker . . . and then . . . a flash! BOOM! Not that brilliant, to be totally exposed at 13,000 feet . . . in a thunderstorm. Down we went. Set up the tent. Had more tea. Did more sitting. Listened to the tent flapping. Exciting day.

 

Next morning . . . same thing. With food running low, nothing to do but head back . . . except . . . the way we’d come had been over large steep boulders that were now . . . encrusted with ice and snow. Not exactly our, pardon the expression, cup of tea. I checked the map and it seemed we could make it down off-trail, following gently sloping Horse Ridge — so named since the first exploratory party in 1833 had ridden up on, you guessed it, horses. Then, with a bit of route finding we could loop back to the main trail.

 

Our one bit of good fortune was that the 60 mile-per-hour streaming snow and searing wind would be at our backs, assisting and — most markedly — inspiring our progress. We snatched a quick — very quick — glance at the highest peak of the range, Gannett, then headed off. Three or four hours later — sunshine! Calm, relatively speaking that is, winds! Warmth! We settled down in real grass — not rocks, as before — snacked and relaxed. And took the picture here of the main range shrouded in stormy snow squalls.

 

Then down to the trail, eventually making camp. The sky was clear so I almost didn’t set up the tent . . . which would have been less than brilliant since in the morning it was sagging under 4 inches of snow. Or more. Out we trudged, through snow and ice, three more days, to the truck. Past small flock of miniature ducks diving and splashing around in the icy glacial runoff, having a heckuva time—unlike a pair of half-frozen not-so-hardened hikers who had had enough.

We returned a year later, hiking the route in reverse. Except for a large plume from a forest fire to the North blowing away from us there was nary a cloud in the sky. But the timing wasn’t right for camping on the top, and it turned out my favorite picture was on the way up, just a bit down from the grassy spot where the first had been taken, showing Gannett, all its glaciers, and it’s perfect glacially carved valley . . . in all their splendor. Nice place, the Wind Rivers. If you don’t mind the weather, that is. And bring lots of tea. [Photos of the Wind Rivers can be found in my Bach videos, especially in The Art of the Fugue, Contrapunctus 2.]

 

Page 153. “Republicans fertile future.” — At the moment I only wish it were true. As Winston Churchill may not have said: “Anyone under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart. Anyone over 30 who is not a conservative has no brains.” Well, it took me to age 56 when we came back from Cabeza and read that article about the illegal aliens trashing Cabeza and Organ Pipe. It is utterly amazing how much the cultural situation in the United States has changed since I wrote this (finished 14 years ago as I write). I am, however, strongly in favor of abortion up until 20 weeks which seems the necessary time to know if the fetus is defective. It seems Republicans and Democrats are going to opposite extremes, with the Democrats wanting legal up until the moment of birth. And Republicans wanting it totally prohibited.

But:

 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-vote-for-joe-biden-best-predictor-of-states-with-lowest-birth-rates-according-to-analysis_5338282.html

 

Page 155. “Muslim Europe.” — Since I wrote this the situation is far far worse due to the influx of “refugees.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her wisdom, after seeing the photograph of a poor Muslim boy who drowned trying to get from Turkey to Greece, opened her heart, and her country’s borders. The Wall Street Journal investigated this and found that the Muslim man bringing his son to Europe was coming because… he wanted to fix his teeth. Or rather have Germany fix his teeth. And they do not assimilate. See: Europe: Integrating Islam, Toni Johnson, Staff Writer. Updated: December 1, 2009

 

 “Since 9/11, Western Europe's growing Muslim population has been the focus of debate on issues ranging from immigration policy to cultural identity to security. Several incidents in recent years have increased tensions between some Western European states and their Muslim populations: the 2004 Madrid and 2005 London attacks, the 2004 ban of the head scarf coupled with recent calls to ban the "burqa" in France, the 2005 Paris riots, the 2006 Danish cartoon incident, and several high-profile murders.  

 

“Despite signs that Muslims are beginning to succeed in business and academia in countries such as France and Germany, many analysts say most of Western Europe's Muslims are poorly integrated into society. They cite closed ethnic neighborhoods, high crime rates in Muslim communities, calls for use of sharia law in Europe, the wearing of the veil, and other examples as evidence of a conflict with European values. Reacting to the November 2009 vote to constitutionally ban minarets in Switzerland, Oxford University scholar Tariq Ramadan wrote in the Christian Science Monitor: "Over the last two decades Islam has become connected to so many controversial debates ... it is difficult for ordinary citizens to embrace this new Muslim presence as a positive factor." Fears over a possible major demographic shift toward Islam as well as ongoing Muslim assimilation problems highlight the continuing divide between Europe and its Muslim population.”

 

I just read that 65% of the French population DO NOT want more foreign immigration. but the elites in Brussels know better. More on Islam later in these updates, but here’s this for starters. Anyone with warm fuzzy feelings for Islam needs to sign up for the Coptic Christian Raymond Ibrahim’s blogs:

 

https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2022/11/02/american-muslims-more-islamophobic-than-everyone-else/

 

https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2022/09/12/we-are-taking-over-your-country-the-baby-jihad-revs-up/

 

https://www.foxnews.com/world/oberlin-colleges-professor-peace-endorsed-fatwa-murder-salman-rushdie

 

https://www.raymondibrahim.com/about/

 

Nowadays anyone who presents FACTS that liberals just don’t want to think about is called racist. That’s the case for New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade. I strongly suggest reading all three of his trilogy: Before the Dawn (on evolution; listed in the selected reading of Cabeza), The Faith Instinct, and A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History. In the last he is accused of racism in part for proving that there are different races. But if there are no races, how can he be a racist? I haven’t quite figured out this particular Catch-22. Maybe after I figure out the speed of light problem discussed below.

 

“The Chinese with their one child policy.” — This has recently been relaxed as the leaders have understood they face population decline. But very few want to have more children, in part because they may be the only child frequently and have to support their elderly parents. I’ve also read that because so many girls were aborted (or sold to willing Americans like my nephew) there’s a huge surplus of males which leads to societal instability. The best thing to do with them is to use them to fight a war — with Taiwan or us. Or both. Any males that find “glory” in war will be more likely to find mates and achieve reproductive success — as Alexander Hamilton did during the Revolutionary war.

 

Page 157. “Science and Islam.” — See: 

 

https://pjmedia.com/columns/raymond-ibrahim/2022/11/18/here-have-a-fresh-glass-of-camel-urine-say-muslim-scientists-n1647091 

 

 In A Troublesome Inheritance, starting on page 216, Wade writes: “There are few controlled experiments in history, but the historian of science Toby Huff has discovered one in the way that the telescope was received and used in the 17th century. The reactions of four civilizations to this powerful new instrument [invented in 1608 by the Dutch spectacle maker Hans Lippershey] bear on the very different kinds of society that each had developed.” In Europe, Galileo merely upon hearing a description of the new device, immediately built one ten times as powerful and promptly discovered the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, and mountain ranges on the moon — which essentially proved Copernicus’s then disputed notion that the planets, including the earth, were satellites of the sun. While he was forced to recant by the Inquisition in 1633 and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life, it was impossible to suppress his discoveries — which inspired Kepler, Newton, and the entire Scientific Revolution.

 

In 1616 telescope was presented by the British ambassador to the Mughal Emperor in India, and while the Mughals “knew a lot about astronomy… their interest in it was confined to matters of the calendar.”

 

“Telescopes had reached Istanbul by at least 1626 and were quickly incorporated into the Ottoman Navy.” “But despite Muslim eminence in optics in the 14th century, scholars in the Ottoman Empire showed no particular interest in the telescope.”

 

In China, “the Jesuits figured they had a better chance of converting the Chinese to Christianity if they could show that European astronomy provided more accurate calculations of the celestial events in which the Chinese were interested.” But despite several times providing, for example, a more accurate prediction of the time and duration of a solar eclipse,

 

“the Chinese had little curiosity about astronomy itself. Rather, they were interested in divination, in forecasting propitious days for certain events, and astronomy was merely a means to this end.… This led [to the Jesuits] being denounced as foreigners who were interfering in Chinese affairs. In 1661, Schall and the other Jesuits were bound with thick iron chains and thrown into jail. Schall was sentenced to be executed by dismemberment, and only an earthquake that occurred the next day prompted his release.

 

“The puzzle is that throughout this period the Chinese made no improvements on the telescope. Nor did they show any sustained interest in the ferment of European ideas about the theoretical structure of the universe, despite being plied by Jesuits with the latest European research.”

 

Wade: “Both China and the Muslim world suffered from a ‘deficit of curiosity’ about the natural world, Huff says, which he attributes to their educational systems. But the differences between European societies and the others went considerably beyond education and scientific curiosity. The reception of the telescope shows that by the early 17th century, fundamental differences had already emerged in the social behavior of the four civilizations and in the institutions that embodied it. European societies were innovative, outward looking, keen to develop and apply new knowledge, and sufficiently open and pluralistic to prevent the old order from suppressing the new. Those in China and the Islamic world were still entrammeled in traditional religious structures and too subservient to hierarchy to support free thinking and innovation.” 

 

See also the works of Toby E. Huff: Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective, and The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (Third Edition). From the latter, page 282, “We are led to the conclusion that neither the arrival of the treasure trove of scientific works brought by the missionaries nor the arrival of the telescope in China had the fructifying effect on scientific inquiry that it had on astronomy in Europe.”

 

But times have changed. While in the past China could, thanks to its isolated location, convince itself it was superior, nowadays it is had no choice but to steal our technology in its attempt to leapfrog to — number one!

 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/next-battlefield-china-college-campus

 

From the back cover of Rise: Huff “argues that to understand why modern science arose in the West it is essential to study not only the technical aspects of scientific thought but also the religious, legal, and institutional arrangements that either open the doors for inquiry, or restricted scientific investigations. [He] explores how the newly invented universities of the 12th and 13th century, and the European legal revolution, created a neutral space that gave birth to the scientific revolution.…” 

 

Huff (research associate at Harvard University’s Department of astronomy, and Chancellor Prof. and Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth) is, of course, another racist.

 

And just in the news today as I write: another racist! Off with his head! I really think it’s coming. Metaphorically it's here now:

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/06/06/my-advice-for-the-idaho-student-barred-from-graduation-for-saying-guys-are-guys-and-girls-are-girls-n1700996

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/louisiana-dad-faces-economic-warfare-social-media-post-celebrating-faith-calling-pride-month

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/trantifa-experts-warn-increasing-trend-extremism-violence-far-left-transgender-activists

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/italian-politician-called-racist-saying-country-should-have-more-kids-instead-importing-migrants

 

Page 159-160. “Michelson-Morley experiment.” Einstein: “I came to see that time itself was suspect.” It’s been debated whether Einstein knew of that experiment, but I think he did. For myself, I keep trying to get a handle on this speed of light business. I think it must imply something incredibly profound about our universe. But I can’t quite grasp it.

 

“Time will pass more slowly for you.” — Brian Greene demonstrates in Fabric this utterly and absolutely upends all our notions of now and simultaneity — leading to the incredible conclusion that all moments in time can equally be considered as now. Or NOW. But physicist Lee Smolin, in Time Reborn (a book I didn’t fully understand and plan to reread), puts a different spin on this. Also, The Order of Time, by Carlo Rovelli. Also his Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity.

 

“For us believing physicists” — believing in relativity, proved over and over.

 

Page 161. “Transcending time and space.” — Beethoven wrote in his Tagebuch in 1816 (one year after the letters to Countess Erdody mentioned earlier and four years before his most profound works) a quotation from Hindu sources: “For God, time absolutely does not exist.”

 

Page 165."Multiculturism...from the other side."See:

 

https://pjmedia.com/columns/raymond-ibrahim/2023/06/12/muslims-want-to-benefit-from-not-be-friends-of-austrians-and-all-infidels-n1702676

 

“[Footnote] colonize other planets.” — Yes, this is what Elon Musk is determined to do. But I swear, I don’t know how. First, the radiation frying the colonists’ brains on the trip there. Second, they’d have to live underground to be protected from that radiation. Third, who in the world want to be cooped up in a spaceship for seven months! Fourth, after looking at photos of the surface of Mars, while it has a certain exotic appeal, I’m sure would lose its charm quickly. Anne and I love the desert but we’ve never gone anyplace totally barren like Mars. Every place we’ve been there’s been all sorts of interesting plant life — in fact made more interesting by the very nature of its sparseness, not to mention being subjected to a harsh environment. And colonize other solar systems? With the travel time of tens of years? Bare minimum. The only way would be to send out spaceships in all directions with embryos of humans in suspended animation, who would then be “awakened” when a suitable planet was found. If a suitable planet was found. And we here on earth would probably never know their fate, at least for decades or millennia. The objections listed above are just for starters. 

 

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/william-shatner-reveals-why-he-wont-return-to-space-revisiting-a-love-affair

 

NASA says it would be impossible to terraform Mars, i.e. give it an earthlike environment — as is proposed in numerous sci-fi novels. I don’t know, maybe a comet could be redirected at it to supply water. But there’d always be the radiation problem.

 

Page 167. “The uncertainty principle” — what’s expressed in the last paragraph on the page Einstein in fact pointed out to both Heisenberg and Bohr.

 

How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch: In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe, from the Origins of Atoms to the Big Bang, by Harry Cliff (Particle Physicist Based at the University of Cambridge and carries out research at the Large Hadron Collider):

 

Page 205, 206:… “physicists found a way… [to describe] electrons and positrons in the same way as photons — as vibrations in quantum fields. [A quantum electromagnetic field, for example, simply means that when you add a certain amount of energy — a quanta — to the electromagnetic field, then a photon will appear. All fields are essentially quantum fields.] The boundaries between fields and particles, light and matter, had finally dissolved. Today, we physicists think of all particles this way. For every particle we’ve met along our journey so far there is a corresponding quantum field. Photons are little ripples in the electromagnetic field, electrons and positrons, likewise, are ripples and something called the “electron field.” Up quarks are little ripples in the up quark field, and so on and so on.…” 

 

Page 208: “the upshot of all this is that an electron is not simply a ripple in the electron field; it is a ripple in the electron field plus the distortions in every quantum field we have ever discovered. What we might call the bare electron — the pure ripple in the electron field — is dressed up in an elaborate gown woven from every quantum field in nature.… In fact, you might even say there’s no such thing as a particle. As far as we can tell, the real building blocks of the universe are quantum fields: invisible, fluid like substances that we can’t see or taste or touch, yet are all around us, stretching from deep within the smallest atom of your being to the farthest reaches of the cosmos. Quantum fields — not chemicals, nor atoms, or electrons, nor quarks — are the real ingredients of matter. We are walking, talking, thinking bundles of tiny self-perpetuating disturbances sloshing about in intangible quantum fields.

 

“Of course, things aren’t quite that simple. While it would be lovely and comforting if we could just think of an electron is a little ripple in the electron field, that is really only half the story. It turns out that even an object as simple as an electron is a fantastically complex thing, not merely a ripple in the electron field but a baroque mixture of every quantum field in nature. While this makes calculations in quantum field theory fiendishly difficult, it also opens up opportunities to explore nature in ways that would be totally impossible in either quantum mechanics or special relatively alone. In particular, experiments that study the electron in exquisite detail have the potential to teach us both about the electron itself and even quantum fields that we have never seen before.…

 

Page 215: "all objects – apple pies, humans, stars — are agglomerations of vast multitudes of these vibrations, moving together in a way that creates the illusion of solidity, of permanence. What’s more, since there is only one electron field, only one up quark, and only one down quark field, you and I, dear reader, are connected to each other. Each of our atoms is a ripple in the same cosmic ocean. We are one with each other, and with all creation.”

 

Page 171: “push poor Einstein over the edge.” — Schizophrenic Nobel Prize winner John Nash, quoted in A Beautiful Mind: “Rational thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos.” He also said, “Shock treatment takes the edge off genius.”

 

Page 172: “Spooky action at a distance.” — For those interested, see Spooky Action at a Distance: The Phenomenon That Reimagines Space and Time — and What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything, by George Musser: A few months before he died, Einstein reflected on what the dissolution of space might be for our understanding of the world: “Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of contemporary physics.”

 

Page 11: “many physicists now think that space and time are doomed — not fundamental elements of nature, but products of some primeval condition of spacelessness.”

 

Page 139: “whereas regular entanglement connects certain aspects of two or more particles, such as their polarization, super entanglement links every aspect of everything.” Brian Greene says the same, quoted in Cabeza.

Page 214 “if the ultimate constituents of the universe aren’t spatial, they have no size, and they can’t be probed by cracking matter into ever smaller bits. They exist everywhere. They may well be right in front of our eyes have gone unnoticed all this time. We may find the most exotic phenomena in the most prosaic places.” 

 

“The idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether we observe them or not…is impossible.” — Werner Heisenberg

 

Wolfgang Pauli to Erwin Schrodinger: “Don’t take it as a personal unfriendliness to you but look on the expression as my objective conviction that quantum phenomena naturally display aspects that cannot be expressed by the concepts of quantum physics. But don’t think that this conviction makes life easy for me. I’ve already tormented myself because of it and will have to do so even more.”

 

Zen master Huang Po: “That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught beside.”

 

Note this account in Walk in My Combat Boots, by James Patterson and Matt Evers (about soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan):

 

“They throw a grenade. This is the end.… I know I’m going to die.… I surrender to it. In that moment, I can feel my entire body. I can feel every single cell, even the hairs growing out of my skin. I can feel the air rushing into my lungs. And then I have this weird experience where I feel the world around me dissolve. I’m now in this timeless, peaceful place where I’m guessing my consciousness expands, taking me out of this building, away from the men shooting at us.

 

“Right here, in this eternal moment, I don’t have any worries. I know everything is going to be all right, and I am at complete peace.

 

“Somehow we manage to take these guys down. I survive, with a little cut on my neck from when the grenade exploded.”

 

Page 398, Rory Patrick Hamill: “The bomb explodes. I’m launched 10 feet into the air and then I hit the ground. The lower part of my right leg is gone.… After he gets a tourniquet on my right side, he rolls me over, onto my stomach. The amount of pain I experience in that moment turns me into an animal. I don’t feel human. I start clawing at everyone’s faces. They pin down my arms while the doc hits me again with morphine.… The pain starts to subside. I calm down.… On the helicopter, I wind up flatlining for two minutes because of the amount of trauma and blood loss. I’m not a religious person. I don’t experience the typical “great white light,” but I do feel absolute peace. Like I’m one with the universe, or something. It’s beautiful and terrifying at the same time.” [My emphasis]

 

Page 174: “consciousness is the most profound mystery” — Unfortunately this is behind a pay wall so I have no choice but to print it all out: Scientist Reveals ‘Quantum Entanglement’ May Explain the Mind Existing as a Field Separate From the Brain, BY TARA MACISAAC JUNE 16, 2022 , The Epoch Times.

Click here to read:

 

Page 175: “I didn’t come from no ape!” — At the end of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, neuroscientist David Eagleman (which I read after writing Cabeza) also throws out the possibility that consciousness arises from the quantum realm, and that the brain may be like a radio. And that figuring out how the radio works tells little about the signal itself. The Signal ITSELF. Again, Beethoven: “We finite beings who are the embodiment of an Infinite Spirit…”

 

“As if… For… Life.” — This is a letter I gave to my urologist who did my biopsy for prostate cancer. I have a score of Gleason 6 which normally does not advance. 

 

Dear Dr. Joseph: As you seemed especially interested in this, I will give you more information. All of it is essentially in the chapter And the Stars, in more detail, without however mentioning The Anthropic Principle by name.

 

 “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does it need a creator, and, if so, does he have any other effect on the universe? And who created him?…… 

 

"However, if we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe do exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.” — Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, pages 174-175 [the underlined quoted in Cabeza, pages 38, 177, etc.]

 

From The Anthropic Principle: Man As the Focal Point of Nature, by Reinhard Breuer [1st published in 1981 in German and somewhat out of date. The books mentioned in Cabeza may be better]:

 

“We are here in this quite fantastic universe and have hardly an inkling of whether our existence has a real meaning.” — Fred Hoyle. (Hoyle also was said to have exclaimed, [as quoted in Cabeza, page 176], after reflecting on the “carbon resonance,” without which . . . we would not be here [see earlier on page 176], “The Universe is a put-up job!” Meaning, it is designed for life.)

 

“As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.” -Freeman J Dyson 

 

Page 8: Weak Anthropic Principle: because there are observers in our universe, the universe must possess properties which permit the existence of these observers.

 

 [The implication is that there must be an infinite number of universes and we can only exist in the one that was just right. See Cabeza chapter, And the Stars. But this also implies there are an infinite number of me's writing this and an infinite number of you's reading, and the next instant there will be an infinite number of each of us just an infinitesimal different from that, etc. etc. Many respected, otherwise sane, physicists actually believe this. But I find it philosophically utterly unpalatable.]

 

Strong Anthropic Principle: the structure of the universe and the particulars of its construction are essentially fixed by the condition that at some point it inevitably produces an observer. 

 

Zen master Huang Po: "This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection.… Where do you keep your enlightened mind and your ordinary mind?… How many minds have you got?"

 

Also, the strong anthropic principle proves Carl Sagan's "We are THE way for the universe to know itself." Why should the Universe care about creating an observer unless for some reason it needs to understand itself? As Karen Armstrong writes, reflecting on English mystic Lady Julian of Norwich: “Julian stresses the paradox of God’s mysterious need for mankind.” [Page 275, Cabeza]. 

 

Similarly, the “father of American psychology,” William James, writes [Cabeza, page 392], “If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight—as if there were something really wild in the universe which we . . . are needed to redeem.” I.e., isn't this life Something more than a game of reproductive success [discussed in depth in Cabeza], Something far beyond our comprehension, Something far beyond words (James’ use of “wild” and “redeem” being, I'm sure he knew, merely provisional) . . . but Something not beyond our finest intuitions? Please, dear reader, look again at the cover of Cabeza. Don't you too sense there's Something more?

 

Finally, Beethoven had copied out in capital letters, under glass on his work table, the following quotations from ancient Egyptian sources (which he likely learned from his first piano teacher, a Freemason).

 

 

Egyptologist Jan Assmann considers the above to have influenced the Old Testament where God says to Moses, “I Am That I Am.”

 

And this brings us to some of my final words to you: The Mind that breathes fire into the equations… IS… your, and my, very own mind. As I write in Cabeza, “Thus, therefore, thereby … I sit” (meditate, four hours daily). To “allow mind to know Mind; Being to permeate being.”

 

Since you recognized this as being important, I do hope you read Cabeza (preferably straight through), as well as listen to all the music I’ve put on YouTube and put links to at my website. There is also more on the anthropic principle at Wikipedia.

 

Your fellow observer, Phil

 

The following article suggests, but does not prove, that Mind is more than just the brain. 

 

https://www.newsmax.com/health/health-news/death-near-death-experience/2023/05/02/id/1118251/

 

Page 176: “the Multiverse finally hit the jackpot.” — From What’s Eating the Universe: And Other Cosmic Questions, by Paul Davies: Page 126:

 

"My own feeling is that, even if the Multiverse exists, it doesn’t explain everything. In the eternal inflation version of a Multiverse, for example, there needs to be a universe-creating mechanism — a bubble generator — based on some physical laws. The inflating superstructure itself uses the laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity. The origin of those laws remains unexplained. You could cook up any number of different Multiverse models with different overarching laws in different bubble universe generators. So, the problem is just shifted up a level: instead of “Why this universe?” One can ask, “Why this Multiverse?” There may be no end to this ontological paper trail."

 

Page 157: “It seems to me that if we can extract science from nature, then there must be something like “science” in nature. By this I mean that nature is “about” something, and interconnecting rational scheme that for some reason can be grasped by the human mind.… how has this come about? How have human beings become privy to nature subtle and elegant scheme? Somehow the Universe has engineered, not just its own awareness, but its own comprehension. Mindless, blundering atoms have conspired to spawn beings who are not able merely to watch the show, but to unravel the plot, to engage with the totality of the cosmos in the silent mathematical tune to which it dances.”

 

Page 159: “Every scientist who opts to work on profound cosmic questions is confronted by the stark choice: either like Sean Carroll, take universe for what it is — an inexplicable fact — and get on with the practical job of doing science, or accept that the entire scientific enterprise rests on a deeper layer of rational order. If the latter is the case, a pressing question is whether science will ever advance to the point where we can fully grasp that deeper layer. That is the biggest of all the big questions discussed in this book.”

 

Davies also quotes Einstein: “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it’s comprehensible.” 

 

All of the above has made me reflect on Beethoven’s: “Music is a higher Revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.” If he had known about modern physics he might have added that to the list. The very greatest music — on my website and especially that discussed in Cabeza — leads us into realms far beyond any physics and mathematics. It has changed my life. It has shown me that the miseries of the finite being are really just a trivial aspect of what a human being really is. I don’t know where I’d be, if I’d be, if not for this music. It directly led me to meditation. And the wilderness of nature, and mind.

 

Thus the quote of Davies on page 175 — “Somehow the Universe has engineered, not just its own awareness, but its own comprehension. Mindless, blundering atoms have conspired to make not just life, not just mind, but also understanding. The evolving Cosmos has spawned beings who are able not merely to watch the show but to unravel the plot. What is it that enables this?” And for myself and many others an immense part of that comprehension and understanding has come from the very greatest music. How in the world, how in the Universe, was it arranged that this be available for human beings 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang. Just as I write in Cabeza that people say I have an eye for pictures but I know it’s not my eye. Perhaps I allow an EYE to operate. Thus it is as if that music were just there, waiting for the composers to discover it. Maybe, probably not, as if.

 

The Order of Time, by Carlo Rovelli, Page 156: He speculates that essentially entropy can go backward from high to low, fluctuating, and then says, “I’m not sure if we are dealing with a plausible story, but I do not know of any better ones. The alternative is to accept as a given of observation the fact that entropy was low at the beginning of the universe and to leave it at that.” In other words, the last thing he wants to do is to allow for a Prime Mover that might be called God.  It has now dawned on me that Roger Penrose and Lee Smolin present that same agenda in their books. 

Stephen Hawking, in Brief Answers to the Big Questions, inexplicably does the same thing by, in not so many words, completely ignoring what he wrote in A Brief History of Time — “But what is it that breathes fire into the equations” — by positing that the equations breathe fire into themselves! Sure thing.

Page 29: “I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science.”

 

But how, Stephen, in the world did those laws get there in the first place? Well, if you can ignore that then you can convince yourself — presumably by not thinking too much about it — there is no Prime Mover. Interestingly in the Afterword his daughter Lucy writes regarding the huge crowds at his funeral: “My aunt squeezed my hand as we both burst into tears. ‘He would’ve loved this,’ she whispered to me.” In other words, he would never have felt “his worthlessness,” as Beethoven wrote was necessary to “again achieve our perfection which the Almighty will then bestow upon us.” I wrote the same of Brian Greene.

 

 

 

Page number 79, The One: Hugh Everett: The question is one of terminology: to my opinion there is but a single (quantum) world, with its universal wave function. There are not ‘many worlds,’ no ‘branchings,’ etc., except as an artifact due to insisting once more upon the classical picture of the world.”

 

Page number 101-102: of course, as long as we stick to the reasonable hypothesis that our consciousness is confined within our brains, there is no way we could ever experience the universe from a bird’s perspective. [Unless one started meditating by means of free won’t, that is.]

 

Page number 102: as a result, whatever is achieved by decoherence, including the quantum to classical transition, probably the emergence of matter and possibly even time and space itself is not a real process in the fundamental quantum universe. It only describes the impression an observer located in space and time gets about this fundamental reality.

 

Page number 125: the problem that if all is One, where is the observer who assumes such an instrumental role in the emergence of the classical world coming from? [Everwhere,of course.]

 

Page number 156 Marsilino Ficino [a contemporary of Galileo?] believe that “the human soul acquires through the years a memory of the divine music which is found first in the internal mind of God, and second in the order and movements of the heavens.”

Page number 243-244: Brian Swingle, a PhD student at MIT concludes that “entanglement is the fabric space time… You can think of space time is being built from entanglement,” and Mark Van Rammsdonk agrees: “Space time… Is just a geometrical picture of how stuff in the quantum system is untangled.”

Page 247: A common thread now seems to be that space and time are not considered fundamental anymore. Contemporary physics doesn’t start with space and time to continue with things placed in this pre-existing background. Instead, space and time themselves are considered products of a more fundamental projector reality. Nathan Sieber, a leading string theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, is not alone in his sentiment when he states, “i’m almost certain that space and time are illusions. these are primitive notions that will be replaced by something more sophisticated.”

Page 255: Max Tegmark: “Consciousness is relevant to solving… The quantum factorization problem,” he wrote in his 2014 paper “Consciousness As A State of Matter.” As does Michael Lockwood, the late Oxford philosopher, who had already written in his 1989 book Mind, Bring in the Quantum, “I see the preference for a particular basis as being rooted in the nature of consciousness, rather than the nature of the physical world in general.” If true, this implies that before we really can understand quantum mechanics in the universe, we first have to understand ourselves.

 

Chapter 19, THE SUPERNATURAL SAGUARO

 

Page 181. “Connected by wire to a black box” — In Do You Believe in Magic: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine, Paul A Offit, MD mentions this type of black box, saying that if you opened it up it would show a contraption that a 10-year-old would use to fool an eight-year-old. Anyone who partakes of alternative “medicine” NEEDS to read his book. Page 42: “Alternative Remedies . . . are often rejected in the countries where they originated. In China only 18% rely on alternative medicine; Hong Kong 14%; Japan even less. In China acupuncture is embraced almost solely by the rural poor.” 

 

Where I write: “Regarding Traditional Chinese Medicine, click here to see the article in April 2019 Scientific American: “The WHO Takes a Reckless Step: The World Health Organization is now promoting unproven traditional Chinese medicine.” The same WHO that covered up for China regarding the Covid pandemic, and whose head is in the Chinese’s pocket. See:

 

 https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/china-covid-cover-up-had-huge-help-from-western-elites/

 

 Fourth paragraph: “An extensive assessment was done in 2009 by researchers at the University of Maryland: they looked at 70 review papers evaluating Traditional Chinese Medicine, including acupuncture. None of the studies proved conclusive because the data were either too paltry or did not meet testing standards.” Plus, a testing of “187 Chinese products taken by sick patients . . . discovered 1234 hidden ingredients including unapproved and banned Western drugs . . . samples contained plants that produce toxic chemicals and animal DNA from vulnerable or endangered species,” etc., etc.

 

“But there is a truly magical elixir guaranteed to either cure or significantly ameliorate virtually any and every disorder. Exercise.…”

See:

https://www.meaningofwilderness.com/exercise-a-spiritual-necessity/

 

And even more so, a plant-based diet: 

 

https://www.meaningofwilderness.com/eating-right-to-save-oneself-and-the-planet/

 

Page 182. “IT coursed in waves through my resistant body-mind.” — I have gone through this regularly in recent years. See my Notes to Myself While Sitting which I will be posting online in the near future on my website.

 

“Van Gogh… killed himself” — He may actually have died while in an altercation with some teenage boys who had been tormenting him and who had a gun. See Van Gogh: The Life, by Gregory White Smith and Stephen Naifeh. But he was certainly very depressed — being “Touched with Fire,” as Kay Redfield Jamison puts it is not a whole lot of fun, to which I myself can attest.

 

Page 183. “Ode to Joy.” — Everyone it seems willfully misinterprets this movement due to looking at it from the point of view of the individual self. Five years ago or so I discovered what is now my favorite performance: The Berlin Celebration Concert, celebrating the tearing down of the Berlin wall in 1989, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Prior to the performance the announcer claims it “sings exultantly of the brotherhood of men.” First, it should be noted that Beethoven was very selective about what he took from Schiller’s poem, almost making it his own.

 

But the words are clear: “All men become brothers where thy gentle wings spread.” Thy refers to Joy which is really just another word for the IT, the Whole, The Great Mystery. If we open up to that joy, we, in Einstein’s words, “free ourselves… to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” And as I later quote English mystic Lady Julian of Norwich, “God sees all men as one.” The European Union has adopted it as its anthem while simultaneously denying the religious, the genuine spirituality, that Beethoven intended. Again, as he wrote, “There is nothing higher than to approach the Godhead more nearly than other mortals, and by means of that contact spread the rays of the Godhead through the human race.” In our benighted era no one wants to recognize that. Must be racist.

 

Later in the piece the words are: “Millions, be embraced. This kiss is for the entire world.” If we open up to it. And: “Bow down. Do you know his works? Above the heavens must a loving father dwell.” In all of Beethoven’s last works this was his goal, to show this. He wrote regarding the Missa Solemnis, composed just prior to and part of which was performed before the first performance of the 9th in 1824: “My chief aim was to awaken and permanently instill religious feelings not only into the singers but also into the listeners.” But the “enlightened” European Union and countless others just don’t want to know about that.

 

There are other interesting words: “Brothers, run your race joyfully / like a hero on to victory.” What is a hero? Someone who forgets themselves in the interest of a noble cause, such as saving someone from drowning at the risk of one’s own life. But note the word “like.” To me this is exactly what sitting, what genuine spirituality is about: forgetting the individual self in the interest of allowing the IT to manifest itself. As I wrote on page 182, “it was clear… absolutely… totally… 100% clear that my life had no meaning but to relinquish myself to ITs devastating power.”

 

But as I wrote, it is the first three movements that are the most profound. Interestingly Beethoven told his former student Carl Czerny that the last movement was a blunder, and intended to write a new final movement. But he received a commission for three quartets which diverted him from that aim. While the fourth movement is greater than any of Beethoven’s previous eight symphonies, Felix Mendelson, for one, felt it was a come down from the supernal heights of the first three. Since Beethoven was intending to write a 10th Symphony, perhaps he felt he would make up for that blunder then. Too bad he didn’t. But most ironically, since the last movement is much more immediately accessible to listeners, it thereby inspires them to become acquainted with the entire work — as it did for me.

 

Regarding the first movement, see my notes to page 139, which really apply all of the first three movements. Several months ago in the middle of the night I had woken up and was sort of dozing… and had a glimpse of that “Heart of Creation,” as I term the third movement. It was exactly as Beethoven described it, truly “spreading the rays of the Godhead.” Author Jan Swafford, who has written long (900 pages or so) biographies of Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, and is likely working one on Bach now, calls what I write of on page 185 — “a great crescendo led by the brass. All, All, All… Is revealed here, and I feel that I have traveled the length of the Multiverse to find myself… At the very Heart of Creation” — a “stern fanfare.” Well, maybe so… to the finite being. If he doesn’t get what I consider the greatest piece of music ever written — tied with Bach’s Art of the Fugue — well, I write later in Cabeza I wonder if Christoph Wolff and Maynard Solomon, the biographers of Bach and Beethoven respectively, “ever actually listen to the music they write and think so much about.” Same for Swafford.

 

But fortunately, some do get it. In the performance I now find the most satisfying, at 40’39” (part way into the third movement) you can see Leonard Bernstein’s cheeks glistening from the tears streaming from his eyes. He died from complications of lung cancer eight months later.

 

And 19th century pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow, known for giving recitals of just the last three or five Beethoven sonatas. (He wrote: “Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier is the Old Testament. The Beethoven sonatas [surely referring especially to the last 5] are the New Testament. We must all believe in both.” Not sure if he knew The Art of the Fugue, which is far greater than the Well-Tempered Clavier.) As a conductor he would not infrequently give double performances of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. But once when a single performance had been planned but the audience had not registered what he deemed as sufficient appreciation, he immediately repeated the entire massive 75 minute work. A reviewer felt bound to note that “He baptizes the infidels with a fire hose.”

 

Note that Beethoven often went into a state of what he called a raptus — which could be called the state of spiritual illumination or enlightenment — from which he got the “ideas” for his music. Thus: “There is nothing higher than to approach the Godhead more nearly than other mortals, and by means of that contact, spread the rays of the Godhead throughout the human race.” See:

 

https://www.popularbeethoven.com/beethoven-his-raptus-and-the-flow/went

 

Page 183. “T.S. Eliot: ‘Humankind cannot bear very much Reality.’” — Should read “Human kind,” a subtle but important difference. The same held true for Eliot himself. After composing Four Quartets and being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for it he stopped his meditation, found “love” with a rather unattractive woman, and spent his final years smoking cigarettes and doing crossword puzzles — dying of emphysema.

 

Chapter 21, THE HEART OF CABEZA

 

Page 195. “The Democrats who are more likely to protect the environment.” — Not any longer. To paraphrase what one commander said of a village during the Vietnam War, “We have to destroy the planet in order to save it” from global warming. Wind turbines, solar panels everywhere, all across pristine landscapes, killing whales but the “greens” don’t care. I will focus on this and “Catastrophic climate change” — see notes to page 248 below.

 

Page 196. “Constant Battles.” — See also War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage, by Lawrence H Keeley.

 

Page 35: “Women have very rarely engaged in combat, but have often played auxiliary roles in mobilization and logistics. Before hostilities commenced, they might shame cowards, taunt the hesitant, and participate in dances of incitement. Among some groups, women have accompanied war parties to carry weapons and food. During combat, they might serve as a cheering section…”

 

[This is why there are cheerleaders at football games!]

 

“Neanderthals’ bones evidence many injuries and breakages (one study determined that 40% of them had suffered head injuries). Since the heavy musculature and robust bones of Neanderthals imply that their way of life was much more strenuous and physically demanding than that of more recent humans, it seems probable that most of the traumas in question were accidental. Why they so often “forgot to duck” remains a mystery, however. 

 

“That Whenever modern humans appear on the scene, definite evidence of homicidal violence becomes more common, given a sufficient sample of burials [Neanderthals did not bury their dead, it seems] … showing evidence of violent death.”

 

Page 93: “one author has very liberally estimated that more than 100 million people have died from all war-related causes (including famine and disease) on our planet during this [20th] century. These deaths could be regarded as the price modern humanity has paid for being divided into nation-states. Yet this appalling figure is 20 times smaller than the losses that might have resulted if the world’s population were still organized into bands, tribes, and chiefdoms.” [The 100 million may be small and not include the tens of millions who died due to famine under Mao and Stalin, but even if it’s double that it’s still 10 times smaller.]

 

Overall, Keeley estimates 30% of adult males died in battle. Chimpanzee researcher Richard Wrangham (who studied under Jane Goodall), in Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, says the same holds true for chimpanzees.

 

And it probably holds true for most social animals such as those cute and adorable wolves repopulating Yellowstone. In American Wolf: The True Story Of Survival and Obsession in the West, Nate Blakeslee writes that

 

(p13) territorial conflict was the most common cause of death for the park’s wolves, most of whom didn’t live beyond four or five years. Life for wolves was an adventure, but it was usually not a long one.

 

And p28: “but the Druid alphas preferred to stay in the Valley and fight. . . . Nobody witnessed the battle, but the dead wolf’s bloodied carcass told the tale well enough — the Druids had killed him. The Crystal cubs were missing as well, presumably killed or scattered. The alpha female, injured and desperate, retreated into the park's interior with what remained of her pack. Another conflict soon followed.…”

 

Cute and cuddly African lions exhibit similarly adorable behavior. Wikipedia:

 

“When one or more new males oust the previous males associated with a pride, the victors often kill any existing young cubs, perhaps because females do not become fertile and receptive until their cubs mature or die. Females often fiercely defend their cubs from a usurping male but are rarely successful unless a group of three or four mothers within a pride join forces against the male.”

 

To note these FACTS means I must be a species-ist. There was a book out a few years ago called A World Without Us, suggesting that the world, the universe would be so much better off without our mean and nasty species.

 

Time for another Christmas letter:

 

Christmas 2020

 

(Photo, see below: Globe Mallow on the eastern slopes of the San Rafael reef looking east at sunrise over the Book Cliffs.) Due to the virus we had left a few weeks later than usual for Utah trips, making it a bit warmer than we care for: mid-eighties. But thanks to that … the Globe Mallow was in bloom! The day before we had attempted to climb to the top of the reef to the West where we’d be able to look straight down on the San Rafael River, but the landscape was so convoluted we gave up short of our goal. Now, our last morning before the long drive back, we sat/meditated and admired the scenery and spectacular sunrise from the back of our mobile mansion . . . and I couldn’t help admiring all the flowers catching the sun’s early rays on a nearby slope. So I had to go out and crawl in the dirt with my extreme wide-angle lens to try to take in the whole thing. Came back to the truck, sat a bit longer . . . and decided I had to try again, that I hadn’t quite captured it the way I wanted. Another crawl on the dirt. Back to the truck. Still not satisfied. Back to the dirt. Took about a dozen shots in all. This was the best. To my eyes, worth the trouble.

 

See : for more photos from this trip. I’m very fond of the “Little Yellow Tree.”  So fond I had to take three pictures. Though I hardly had the thought when I snapped the shutter, it strikes me now as a parable of the human condition: dry and barren and seemingly lifeless, on a landscape somewhere in nowhere land — yet still it reaches in its own way for the sky … while being suffused with the most wondrous golden glow.

 

On the way back we had an unplanned layover in Davenport, Iowa. In Wyoming I had started hearing a strange noise coming from our 15-year-old vehicle. At Cheyenne I stopped and checked the transmission fluid — close but no cigar — but it was fine so I decided the muffler was just making a bit of a vibration. The drive was noisy due to rain and thunderstorms so I couldn’t really tell the truck’s issue was getting worse … until 3 AM Sunday in the rain just outside of Davenport … the rear differential self-destructed. The police officer who answered my 911 call said there’d been about 100 shootings that night so he didn’t mind missing the action to help us out. I asked if he’d ever been shot at. Only in the service in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fun.

 

Shorter than me but with a very muscular build, he had biceps thrice the size of mine. At least. He didn’t like Davenport: too cold. Raised in Texas, he had inherited a huge cattle ranch on the border with New Mexico he’d love to get back to … but his wife wanted to be near her family. This was two weeks before the George Floyd protests started. After we got home, we heard at least two protesters had been killed in Davenport … by other protesters. Hopefully the nice officer’s job will be defunded and he’ll get back to his ranch.

 

After the truck had been towed he gave us a lift to a nearby Comfort Inn. Surrounded by two truck stops and an industrial park, it wasn’t quite like Utah. A 10-minute walk did get us to the edge of an utterly flat endless cornfield, but aside from watching the corn grow, there wasn’t a whole lot to do. Except be with ourselves, and sit.

 

But there was some entertainment: We were fortunately on the second floor facing the rear, and past the parking was a partially mowed grassy area bordered by some bushes, which provided cover for wildlife. Rabbits. Lots of rabbits. Lots and lots of rabbits. Nothing so peaceful and innocent as a cute little rabbit — especially compared with us mean and nasty human beings. Right? But. Except. There were so many — like us? —they were fighting, for territory or mates or both, chasing each other like crazy round and round. They hardly had time to munch on the grass. They would even face-off like gunslingers at high noon: Two rabbits, 4 feet apart, staring each other in the eye. Then one would charge and the other would leap straight up in the air 2 feet! The charging rabbit would run underneath the airborne one and then one would chase the other in circles. I know you won’t believe me because I never would have believed that myself, but next May go out to the Comfort Inn just west of Davenport and ask for room 211. Then you will learn the truth about rabbits.

 

Our truck had been towed to a Toyota dealership fortunately only 4 miles distant, but of course the parts had to be ordered. Took four days. Then installed. Another day and a half. We finally left around noon on Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Straight into a massive thunderstorm directly between us in Chicago, our only route back. We had heard there was a tornado warning, but we didn’t see a tornado. We didn’t see anything … except sheets of driving rain, hail, winds at least 80 miles an hour, one flipped car, and a tractor-trailer blown on its side. Three quarters of the drivers pulled over, but I persisted at about 25 mph until we got through.

 

But I wanted to stay ahead of the storm, which was also moving east, so I didn’t take the time to check the differential. Big mistake. An hour or two later I started hearing the same ominous sound I’d heard in Wyoming. I pulled over, checked . . . and there was oil everywhere: differential, spare tire, muffler, the truck bed. Even though I had asked the service manager at Toyota how the differential could have gone bad, no one took the trouble to look — at $150 an hour for labor — for a leak, even after the test drive. The top of the differential had rusted through, and while it didn’t leak when the vehicle was stationary, it all got thrown out when driven.

 

I always carry 5 quarts of extra engine oil, so I refilled it with that and found a Pilot truck stop that carried gear oil. I cleaned out their supply, and every hour I’d pull over and add another quart. After eight quarts we WERE, at last, at last, at last … home. If I hadn’t stopped to check we would have spent another week in Ohio waiting for a new differential. At home I fixed the holes with epoxy, but the noise hadn’t gone away so I took it to a dealership in Rochester who, after getting the okay from Toyota headquarters, completely replaced the differential under warranty no charge. Again. But even the new repair wasn’t done right and there’s a little bit leaking from a gasket they installed so the story’s still not quite over . . .

 

When we backpack in the Wind River Mountains, which are in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, I’m more concerned about wolves than grizzlies. With grizzlies there’s only one that pepper spray may quickly dispatch (if the wind is not against you!). With wolves you’ve got a whole pack coming after you from every direction. But they’re so cute… Classical pianist Helen Grimaud loves them so. Says there’s much we can learn from them. Like the best way to kill our rivals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The largest child sacrifice on record took place after a torrential rainfall, when about 140 children and 200 young llamas likely had their hearts ripped out by the ancient Chimú culture in A.D. 1450, in what is now Peru. See the link below. 

 

https://www.livescience.com/64924-children-llamas-sacrificed-ancient-peru.html

 

https://nypost.com/2023/06/06/killer-ms-13-gangsters-are-being-bused-into-our-communities-as-minors/

 

See also Science News: Massacre at Sacred Ridge: A violent Pueblo incident sparks debate regarding prehistoric genocide, By Bruce Bower, November 6th, 2010; Vol.178 #10 (p. 22). “Excavations at an ancient Pueblo site uncovered crushed skulls (one shown) and other bones from at least 35 victims.

 

“Attackers with a deadly plan climbed a knoll to a Pueblo village called Sacred Ridge around 1,200 years ago. What happened next was anything but sacred.

“At least 35 people, roughly half of those living in the village, were brutalized, killed and sliced into thousands of small pieces. Fellow Pueblo from nearby villages battered victims’ feet hard enough to break toes and fracture heels. Blows delivered with blunt weapons crushed the faces and heads of men, women and children. Scalps, and possibly eyes and ears, were removed, perhaps as trophies.

 

“Wielders of sharp stone implements chopped up victims’ bodies in at least four Sacred Ridge structures. Attackers removed the roof of a large house and threw in heaps of human body parts, some of which had been fished from burning hearths. Several village dogs met the same fate.

“’This extreme level of violence came as a complete surprise, that’” says archaeologist James Potter, who directed the excavations that uncovered this murder at Sacred Ridge. “’I was blown away from the start at how many human remains we were finding.’”

 

Yes, a complete surprise — to all members of the noble, peaceful savage crowd who love to blame everything on our horrible Western civilization. Related to the above are the following:

 

https://pjmedia.com/columns/raymond-ibrahim/2023/05/26/bedlam-at-city-council-somali-culture-takes-minneapolis-by-storm-n1698384a

 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/05/25/kirk-cameron-our-nation-and-its-values-are-being-completely-hijacked-and-infiltrated-n1697987

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/former-employee-reveals-shocking-conditions-nyc-migrant-hotel-free-for-all

 

 

Page 198. “I and many others of my generation thought similarly in the 60s. We had such a virulent anger for the “establishment” (which included our parents), the perpetrators of the Vietnam War, etc. we were ready to embrace Soviet style communism.” — “Many then, and now have not…” And they have taken over universities, newspapers such as the New York Times and even corporations.

 

https://nypost.com/2023/03/29/americas-soft-revolution-away-from-everything-thats-made-us-great/

 

I see it this way: as the previous notes indicate, human beings have evolved to fight. We are programmed to fight. And at root we, especially males, are full of anger. The best way to win a fight is to be very angry like the berserkers of the Vikings. Why else is there all this sports competition? The man who fights the hardest, of necessity trains the hardest — all to be on top, number one. If you are not number one, and in complete control, someone could kill you at any time. Thus China wants to be number one. Just like the sex drive needs an outlet, so does that anger. And it doesn’t matter if it’s “rational” or not. So if there is not a neighboring tribe to fight, well maybe there’s a neighboring sports team. But if that doesn’t suit you, well, do everything you can to destroy the most open, prosperous, free country that ever existed.

 

 

 

 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/americans-becoming-sovietized-10-warning-signs-victor-davis-hanson

https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2023/06/05/its-maoclock-time-to-wake-up-your-normie-neighbors-n1700382

 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/miacathell/2023/06/02/affirmative-action-documentary-n2623903

 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/immigrant-store-owner-begs-san-francisco-for-help-after-losing-100k-to-burglars-worse-than-afghanistan

 

As Margaret Thatcher put it, “Socialism works until you run out of other people’s money.” If there’s no incentive, why work hard? Sadly — tragically, as far as civilization is concerned — a huge proportion of the youngest generation has been indoctrinated by leftists to believe the opposite. And they are not taught how communist/socialist regimes either murdered by firing squad or through famine tens of millions. I don’t have the link but I even saw recently that there were conservatives at one University who set up a table outside distributing literature regarding this. It wasn’t allowed.

 

 

https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2023/04/25/without-firing-a-shot-how-islam-overcame-the-west/

 

Page 199. “Europe has had a long, hard path to stability and I suspect the evolution of genes and culture is responsible.” — See The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. Page 169-170: “Those who refuse to acknowledge the crucial role of biological differences in the European conquest and settlement of the Americas are rejecting Darwinian evolution. Thousands of years of high disease load among Eurasian agriculturalists had to select for increased disease resistance. This isn’t particularly unusual or unorthodox, yet many who claim to accept the idea of natural selection reject the most obvious implications of the theory when it’s applied to humans.” These include Jared Diamond who won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel for being oh so politically correct. Page 121: “Diamond asserts that such differences were entirely cultural…”

 

 

Page 204. “Rotterdam may soon become the EU’s first large Muslim majority city.” — See the link below. Maybe China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and a few other countries will survive the baby jihad. The rest . . . ?

https://pjmedia.com/columns/raymond-ibrahim/2023/09/29/muhammad-is-taking-over-the-world-n1731018