Bears that dance, bears that dont.

2012-01-25T14:33:00.000-08:00

Clark,who led last year’s expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UCBerkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a reexamination of a300,000-year-old fossil skull found in the same region earlier shows evidenceof having been scalped
–The Yuma Daily Sun, June 13, 1982

From BloodMeridian, or The Evening Redness in the West,
by Cormac McCarthy

"Andthe answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy ofmankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. Whatother creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The wayof the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men thereis no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. Hisspirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once hisdarkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes.This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you notthink that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with othersons.
The judge looked about him. He was sat before the fire naked save for hisbreeches and his hands rested palm down upon his knees. His eyes were emptyslots. None among the company harbored any notion as to what this attitudeimplied, yet so like an icon was he in his sitting that they grew cautious andspoke with circumspection among themselves as if they would not waken somethingthat had better been left sleeping.

…

The judge wrote on andthen he folded the ledger shut and laid it to one side and pressed his handstogether and passed them down over his nose and mouth and placed them palm downon his knees.

Whatever exists, hesaid. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without myconsent.

He looked about atthe dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimenshe'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothingin the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneathyon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when theexistence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before himwill he be properly suzerain of the earth.

What's a suzerain?

A keeper. A keeper oroverlord.

Why not say keeperthen?

Because he is a special kind of keeper. Asuzerain rules even where there are other rulers. His authority countermandslocal judgements.

Toadvine spat.

The judge placed hishands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said.And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In orderfor it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by mydispensation.

Toadvine sat with hisboots crossed before the fire. No man can aquaint himself with everything onthis earth, he said.

The judge tilted hisgreat head. The man who believes that the secrets of the world are foreverhidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rainwill erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task ofsingling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alonehave taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that hewill effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

I don't see what thathas to do with catchin birds.

The freedom of birdsis an insult to me. I'd have them all in zoos.

That would be a hellof a zoo.

The judge smiled.Yes, he said. Even so.

…

Itmakes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As wellask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, warwaited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That isthe way it was and will be....
War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity ofexistence. War is god.

...

Menare born for games . . . Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all.Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and thehumiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stakebecause they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial ofchance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here thatwhich is wagered swallows up game, player, all.

…

Morallaw is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful infavor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn.
...

A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge.Will or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore someopposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the sameappointed time, for each mans destiny is as large as the world he inhabits andcontains within it all opposites a well. The desert upon which so many havebeen broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimatelyempty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.

…

I tell you this. As warbecomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable menwho recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, whichis the warrior’s right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and thedancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a truedancer and can you guess who that might be?

You aint nothing.

You speak truer than you know. But I will tell you. Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor ofthe pit and seen horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to hisinmost heart, only that man can dance.

Even a dumb animal can dance.

The judge sat the bottle on the bar. Hear me, man, he said.

There is room on the stagefor one beast and one alone. All others are destined for a night that iseternal and without name. One by one they will step down into the darknessbefore the floodlamps.

Bears that dance, bears thatdon’t."

can't lose what what you lacked at conception

2012-01-18T13:35:00.000-08:00

"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry onthe boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall fromgrace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what youlacked at conception. Mass market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past thatnever existed. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth andhindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight...It’stime to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars.It’s time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define theirtime."

- James Ellroy, American Tabloid

2012-01-16T22:23:00.000-08:00

Ancient human burial site shows evidence of mass cannibalism: Slaves were skinned and butchered like animals

"Admission to them is through election and they are generally limited: they are not for all... [They reach] beyond the local tribe seeking out friends and members among alien peoples... a particular stress is given in these secret men's societies to a skull cult that is often associated with the headhunt. Ritual cannibalism and pederasty are commonly practiced and there is a highly elaborated use made of drums and masks."

-Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology

2012-01-09T22:12:00.000-08:00

"Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the Earth.
Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke.
Blessed are the powerful for they shall be reverenced among men - Cursed are the feeble for they shall be blotted out."
- Might is Right, or Survival of the Fittest, 1890

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

"Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder"
-Leonard Cohen, The Future

Meat Machine

Bears that dance, bears that dont.

can't lose what what you lacked at conception