GARY C. MOORE AND RICHARD SANSOM - THERE'S ALWAYS NIETZSCHE

There's Always Nietzsche
By Richard Sansom

I know there's no such thing as pay-dirt.
There are only baskets of slag
and silhouettes of horizons and endings.
When I drink from another's face,
their words beat at my feet like beached fish.

It doesn't matter.
There's always an ambulance.

When I send out feelers and seekers,
they all come back like trash returned in a storm.
The sun has a good laugh. . . the moon is not dejected.
It's like walking out of an old movie long after it's over.
But I stay beyond the end, and the aisles are full of decisions
staring at me like persistent monks.

It doesn't matter.
There's always Buddha.

There's no such thing as pay-dirt,
so why do I tattoo my prayers on the bottle,
walk the chambered nautilus of my room
banked by old pirates, wind striped and stark, lascivious and cheap,
and take into my songs the drugs of this wilderness?

I've begged for it many times, pimped, I should say,
wanting nettle to splay me raw with light,
my women doing all the cutting
through glass-hard ribbons,
to the flowers of passion.

It doesn't matter,
there's always wine.

There's no such thing as pay-dirt,
between day's calyx and midnight's spore,
under plantations of life,
alone with the same nightmare
of meeting myself at the door.

It doesn't matter.
There's always lavender.

In the street my heart falls like a sack of hearts,
before I can give it
to an old wretch begging hearts and love.
But no one sees it fall.
They're too busy dancing on the bricks and girders,
and burned into the sidewalks with graffiti and epics
steaming on their lips,
wanting nothing but volcanoes and soup.

It doesn't matter,
there's always Chagall.

Memory drags in its articulate damage,
the lovers, fathers, daughters
and mothers of speed-of-light wrecks,
strewn among my manila folders,
bleeding, as if I collected specimens.

It doesn't matter.
There's always Nietzsche.

Dear Richard, your poem is absolutely wonderful! Several images in it I immediately found statlingly fresh!

So let us get to Richard's MARVELOUS poem which is here and NOW! NOW! NOW!
There's Always Nietzsche.

It is a truly great poem, Richard. But I am old. I am tired. I will die [*will*? *hope*?]. The ghost of the future. Mark Twain once wrote, *If there is an after-life, I want to go to Hell because that is where all the interesting people are.*

The nail is hit directly on the head right from the start and goes perfectly along with what I just said, not because we *understand* each other - but because the simple field of human action has been defined. We are mortal. We are finite. Ergo there can necessarily never be any such thing as *pay-dirt* per se or heaven for that - *matter*. *Pay-dirt* is ontologically *hope*. If you actually *have it*, logically by definition, it is no longer *pay-dirt*. Of what *use* is *pay-dirt* or *hope*? It keeps making you do something in the present NOW whose purpose you will NEVER attain. Even Paul understood this. ALL purpose is placed in the future. It is ontologically in the future. Even the *future* of *hope* is placed in the future. If one assumed the real existence of either *pay-dirt* or *heaven*, even if *attained*, it would cease to be because all of what they *are* is the pure direction and motivation of human action. It is the great metaphysical

*Go there!* And *There!* will always be over *There!*, never *Here! And NOW!* This does not even need to be classified as theistic or atheistic. No matter what, whatever both of those terms point to are by definition always pointing *ELSEWHERE*, never *HERE and NOW!* Even though, as Sartre says, *Man's project is God*, which does not say ANYTHING about God, he more strictly delimits it by *Man is a futile passion*. Those are two of the most strict definitions, essentially purely negative, of what *man* is. Anything else is a start in the direction of Plato's *positive* definition *man is a featherless biped*. It is not Plato's fault - he was being *Socratic* - but Sartre's definitions hit the nail much more squarely on the head.

GARY: Jacques Derrida would love this: *Everything is marginal. All one?s attention is directed toward a purported content, but that which is much more important is what delimits the *content*, that is, the *margin*. In other words, the whole God/no-God issue is trivial compared to the enclosing, marginal issue of Why is there an issue at all?

GARY: Those are possibly the best lines you have ever written, Richard. Once at the University of Texas at Austin, on a bathroom wall in the philosophy department, someone wrote *A man needs God like a fish needs a bicycle*. Of course there can be no meaning in life without a belief in God, but since by necessity you are never going to *accomplish* the *pay-dirt* of meaning in the first place, what possible difference can it make?

GARY: You really know how to hurt a guy, Richard. But if I am put in an ambulance I WILL be dead. How's that for *hope*?

GARY: There is nothing more fascinating than a sea beach after a storm. The whole world is at your feet.

GARY: Michael Crichton said everyone is complaining about how we hurt the earth. But there is no possible way we CAN hurt the earth. The earth, as far as we are concerned, will always go on and be the - *same* - whatever that is, but *we* will definitely not.

GARY: This is absolutely fantastic!!!! It will take some thought on my part to even begin to plummet the depth of this. It is philosophically perfect in its terrifying open-endedness.

GARY: The first thing that popped into my mind was the infamous message-in-a-bottle, a message essentially intended to go nowhere and address no one essentially the same as the theist/atheist debate - a tempest in a tea cup

GARY: I like it and think I understand it, but it is hard to say anything about it now.

GARY:
That is what I do here, isn't it? That is what my whole life is about is it not? Somewhat *articulate damage*, but damage to -- what? That is one phenomenalistic description of the thesis *Everyone somehow believes in God* because everyone confronts a *-- what?* This brings in another snippet, *If God is the answer, what is the question?* It is a non-linear equation, functional -- but going nowhere -- because there is nowhere to go to. Meaning is the margin to our intent. If our intent intrudes into the margin, then the text is obscured. *Meaning* and *intent* then always have to be separated for comprehensibility. If the painting flows over its frame, then what is it?

GARY: The *essence* of human life is memory. Memory is a collection. Sometimes there is a connection from point to point, sometimes there is not. Contextually it is always a sea of randomness. Even with the best of meanings, everything goes wrong.

GARY:
pay-dirt.stoics-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

part of the recent debate on

1] Of what use is atheism to anyone,
2] how the poor believers are terribly persecuted by atheists,
3] that everyone naturally believes in God in one way or another, and
4] etc, etc, etc, I had the *insight* - yuk, yuk - that terms like *God* and *despair* contain far too much *baggage* [as one commentator noted] to - my expression - actually communicate anything.

The 1st debate for instance soon becomes nonsense because no logical definition of the terms - all of the terms - is really sought for. Rather, I would *hope* for an intellectual tool that could automatically raise the real problems in such a question such as 1] Why one God? Why not more? Simple? No, because once again the *context* is ignored. The monadic identity can never be self-contained. First, no conception of God can be made except as a *reflection* of the writer.

As a monotheistic God, how would the writer IN FACT behave? If polytheistic, then automatically all the god-writers are going to be opposed, if nothing else just defending their own *turf*. One might then see normal communication is inherently atheistic without at all making any assumptions about the existence of a God, etc. We are mortal, we are finite, etc. Therefore any *concept* of God is going to be terminally contaminated right from the start. You have the writer and the audience, an actor and a receiver, two completely different animals with all the logically inherent limitations of their modes of action and reception/reaction. Rather, a perspective should be sought whereby the necessary existential situation that a finite/mortal human being can thoroughly grasp without dragging along unnecessary baggage.

For instance, of what possible necessary *use* is a finite mortal to any God or god? There is absolutely no *place* for such a relation in the first place. There are also numerous other problems, but once that point is admitted, one is at the point of *despair* whether a *believer* or *unbeliever*. Even if a god existed, there is ABSOLUTELY no reason he should pay any attention to you. If there is, then there is ABSOLUTELY no possible way to understand WHY or with what motives he is paying *attention* to you. So, presupposing for any reason whatsoever that theism is *useful* and atheism is *useless* is totally in realm of pure fantasy.

So the problem of despair is *always already* inherent in the mode of any human communication simply because it is necessarily mortal and finite. Anything *done* can only and absolutely be *done* for the present moment. So the whole concept of *accomplishment* as some kind of enduring *entity* is nonsense. So any claim of *ability* or *possession* has to be proven each and every time it is challenged. *Out of sight, out of mind* is actually the ontological human situation. The very concept of any kind of enduring meaning is irrational because nothing endures. That this keyboard I pound on has been here in the past and will be waiting for me in the future is fantasy of highly limited utility. It is merely one of the numerous assumptions one makes in planning one's next action - which may not happen.

This situation automatically creates a situation of *you did not understand me* amongst several other things. One cause of confusion on the Stoics list which is rampant is that the audience has exactly the same response and/or understanding to the terms. There is a lack of *contextual understanding*. The first and primary mistake is that one self-contained monadic identity is writing to another self-contained monadic identity either just the same as it or very similar or else no communication can occur. Although that is what is happening - no communication or no real desire for it - the actual, factual, basic situation is a writer is writing to an audience. So the first problem really is NOT is there a two plus two equals four equation of perfect understanding occurring between the two - that will never happen - but rather what is the writer really trying to accomplish if one drops the whole fallacy of achieving *TRUTH* equation.

That ALL the audience has exactly the same response and/or understanding to the terms. There is a lack of *contextual understanding*. The first and primary mistake is that one self-contained monadic identity is writing to another self-contained monadic identity

Either just the same as THE FIRST or very similar or else no communication can occur. Although that is what is happening - no communication or no real desire for it - the actual, factual, basic situation is a writer is writing to an audience.

So the first problem really is NOT is there a two plus two equals four equation of perfect understanding occurring between the two - that will never happen - but rather what is the writer really trying to accomplish if one drops the whole fallacy of achieving *TRUTH* equation.
*** The 1st debate for instance soon becomes nonsense because no logical definition of the terms - all of the terms - is really sought for. Rather, I would *hope* for an intellectual tool that could automatically raise the real problems in such a question such as 1] Why one God? Why not more? Simple? No, because once again the *context* is ignored. The monadic identity can never be self-contained.

First, no conception of God can be made except as a *reflection* of the writer. As a monotheistic God, how would the writer IN FACT behave? If polytheistic, then automatically all the god-writers are going to be opposed, if nothing else just defending their own *turf*. One might then see normal communication is inherently atheistic without at all making any assumptions

About the existence of a God, etc. We are mortal, we are finite, etc. Therefore any *concept* of God is going to be terminally contaminated right from the start. You have the writer and the audience, an actor and a receiver, two completely different animals with all the logically inherent limitations of their modes of action and reception/reaction. Rather, a perspective should be sought whereby the necessary existential situation that a finite/mortal human being can thoroughly grasp without dragging along unnecessary baggage.

For instance, of what possible necessary *use* is a finite mortal to any God or god? There is absolutely no *place* for such a relation in the first place. There are also numerous other problems, but once that point is admitted, one is at the point of *despair* whether a *believer* or *unbeliever*. Even if a god existed, there is ABSOLUTELY no reason he should pay any attention to you. If there is, then there is ABSOLUTELY no possible way to understand WHY or with what motives he is paying *attention* to you. So, presupposing for any reason whatsoever that theism is *useful* and atheism is *useless* is totally in realm of pure fantasy.