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Chapter Text
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”
Almost every VCR aficionado who compulsively records movies (myself among them) is well aware that the immediate effect of owning a VCR is that one effectively watches fewer films than in the good old days of a simple TV set. One never has time for TV, so, instead of losing a precious evening, one simply tapes the film and stores it for future viewing (for which, of course, there is almost never time). Although I do not actually watch the films, the very awareness that the films I love are stored in my video library gives me a profound satisfaction, and occasionally enables me to simply relax and indulge in the exquisite art of far niente – as if the VCR is in a way watching them for me, in my place.
Slavoj Žižek, How to Read Lacan
Much is made of MERRIMENT in the hymnal of the Latter-Day Emendation, AND much is made ALSO of bells, boughs, finery, of SPLENDOR, streets of precious silver AND the sweet towers lining them, sweet towers fit for feasting and all AGLOW, as too the very trees come AGLOW, of the fire ALSO that leaps from the log, and how it leaps in every color AS THOUGH the rainbow were to lay itself down to earth and give its body up to be our hearth, AND MUCH ALSO of GIFTS, of KINGS, of SPLENDOR, perfumes, ointments, CROWNS, of how NIGHT HERSELF girds her body in the holy SHELL as I did ALSO don the holy SHELL, of much-knowing NIGHT holy as I was ALSO holy, of NIGHT and IN HER the STAR, of the STAR, of its wonder and perfection, of how it rived the priestly body of NIGHT with its KINGLY beams, and made ALL AGLOW, even the very ground; much is made there of MERRIMENT, of feasting, of JOY.
There is much meetness in this MAKING-MUCH; there is much in it that is of proper reverence. INTENSITY is but the shadow of IMMANENCE, and so IS IMMANENCE ALREADY for he who has OPENED HIS EYES and cast off all shadows, while separately, for he who cannot yet see the body, the shadow may prove the surest guide.
MUCH IS MADE, of all these things, because all these things SHALL BE. Shall be, FOR US, and ARE ALREADY, in an IMMANENT fullness, not IMAGED IN the body of the hymnal as a record but INCARNATED in that body as a LITERALITY, AND the great body ABOVE shall ALSO be an immanent body, a literality, in which are PRESENT such things as bells, boughs, streets, towers, trees, crowns, starlight, splendor, long tables laid for feasting, and the MERRIMENT of the men feasting there, their laughter, their JOY, their FEAST THAT FILLS –
– which is IN UTTER CONTRADISTINCTION to CYBERNESIS, which is held out and offered up by them AS AGAINST CYBERNESIS, which arms the heavens against my Adversary, having ALREADY IN ITSELF the nature of such an armament.
Much is made ALSO in this hymnal of the necessity of BEING GOOD, and of the Book of Life and the sins and sanctities tallied there, of that Book's inerrancy, and ALSO of the MAN TO COME, of his perfection of SIGHT which no thing can escape, his KNOWLEDGE of GOOD and EVIL, of his JUDGMENT soon to come. These verses supply their own exegesis, and have no need of mine.
Herschel Schoen, “Of Merriment”
