THINKING WITHOUT THANKING

If you know me IRL, then you have heard me discuss how I am the Second Coming. The Secular-Second-Coming, that is. I discussed it last night in fact, at Alexi's. But I can never remember all the reasons (so many reasons...) that could prove My Divinity to skeptics.
Even the (Re-)Christ forgets things, okay? (It makes it easier to forgive, BTW!)
Here are the reasons that I always remember:
My name means bearer of christ (and who would bear christ more than the Re-Christ?)
Almost nothing bad ever happens to me
I have stigmata: one from an ACTUAL NAIL going through my hand; the other JUST SHOWED UP ONE DAY and has a way bigger/better scar than the nail one
people love the shit out of me
(with this corrolary: while I love everyone, in my own special -often despising- way, Jesus did not really love ALL THINGS, just all people: I love all things, even Us Weekly and dirt, so that makes me BETTER THAN HIM)
I have a beard


((This is Soutine. It is supposed to be a self-portrait, with a beard, but I see no beard... Well, let's cut him some slack SINCE HE'S DEAD))

But just moments ago, I remembered another one, a really key reason.
Everything in my life is connected in a productive way. I don't mean 'connected' as in "Man, my yoga guru and I are like, totally connected", nor do I mean it in the sense that temporally distant and causally distinct events might be thought to 'mean something' or 'belong' together. I mean that something happens- I hear something, I say something, I see something- and then something else happens- I am told something, I am shown something, I post something- and the connection which is established between the 1st and 2nd thing/event is E P I C.

It's like this:
Went to the Barnes Institute the other day. Saw many painters that were new/s to me. One of those was Pacsin. (others of note were Corot, Rouault, Demuth, Sefarbi, Pippin, Glackens, Karl Priebe, Soutine, Settani, Dimock, Wols, and Gritchenko)
Of these, Pacsin may have impressed me the least -- BUT -- there is a Divine Connection lurking...


I went to my WC today, just as I was thinking about writing a lil' weblo' about the Barnes Foundation
http://www.barnesfoundation.org/
(people gotta know, ya know?). In the WC I have a copy of Hemingway's 'A Moveable Feast'. I don't love Hemingway, by the by, this is just a physically small book that will fit in the WC. (I scavenged it from Villanova Katie.)


One that I got recently, too, which makes me more likely to read it (oh, the backlog of books...).
Plop down for a read and what do you think the very next chapter is called? 'With Pacsin at the Dome', that's what it's called. One and the same Pacsin as of the Barnes.
HAH!
The Supremes were playing on the jukebox (hereafter 'juxe') aka ITunes, which is also weblo' material (Past and Future).
Dr.J
and I were just talking about the Supremes here, and she had this genius insight about how the sample in question basically added a comma ('love child' vs 'love, child...') to the meaning. That changed the meaning from a comment about the status of the child, to a comment about the love this child has for someone else.
Then I read the following in my German book (yes, the book from that OTHER blog).

Friedrich the Great was friends with the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Let’s pretend this Matisse below is Friedrich the Great, shall we?






And let’s pretend this Cezanne is a young Moses Mendelssohn.

Mendelssohn invited Friedrich the Great to dinner, and was keeping poor Fred waiting. The Great wrote a note and told his servant to place it on the missing philosopher's plate.
The note reads: "Mendelssohn is an ass. [signed] Friedrich the second."
Mendelssohn finally arrives, reads the note, puts it in his pocket. Friedrich says jovially, 'Hey, Moses, what was that note? What did it say?'
Mendelssohn smiles and loudly reads HIS version of the note:
"Mendelssohn is an ass; Friedrich: the second".
Get it? Change the emphasis/punctuation a little, and The Great is just one of multiple asses. (Also densely connected within Blogville because Chet
probably has read this note in the Official National German Archives- in the original German, no doubt.)


See? I was going to write a blog anyway, and then all these other related things pop up to jiggle my memory box and get themselves inserted into the blog too!
And see how then it got WAY BIGGER and then mutated into a blog about how my blogs can mutate into other, bigger blogs?
And when these things come together in a really big, really effective, really truly awesome way, then we have such a greatness that we have no option other than to declare the birth of a divinity.
OBVIOUSLY

(that's El Greco's version of the vision of my ascension. They're trying to take off my clothes! Gasp/Giggle!)



Now, in no way, shape, or form do I think that my Father is GUIDING these things. There is not something or someone planning/directing/guaranteeing this good-into-Awesome development of reality. No, no, three times no. The new Christ is not a piece of a 'tripartite good', but an equiprimordial 'bipartite AWESOME'. Meaning, that my father does not guide these things, but rather they happen simply as a direct causal effect of the ontological depth of my reality. Holier than thou? NO: REALier than thou. I am, in the strict sense, 'more real' than you are: I have more formal and objective reality than you.

Don't get offended- it's a dirty job, but someone has to be the new improved Christ.

I am 'causa sui' (that means 'self-caused') -here, I say causa sui not as strictly as I said 'more real', but close: I am the primary cause of my own increase in reality. Hence the so-called bipartite awesome: I sprang fully formed from my own forehead- also, just heard Missy Elliot say "I don't brag I mostly boast..." --told you it was all related!!!)



Now, if there is not a transcendent/external cause, but an immanent/internal one (immanent to the caused, even- hence the 'loose-sense causa sui'), then you can understand why I stand in no need of a father. The result being: two parts (me as cause, and, me as effect) not three; and no need to go outside of the connected things to find a 'reason' why they are connected.
(An important corrolary of the above is that no things BELONG together, but that many things can be productively combined, which is precisely the means by which I increase my being).
Diana Ross does not BELONG with Hemingway; but she can (as it turns out- you could not have predicted it!) be placed right alongside, or superimposed upon him, and we can then see an increase in knowledge, power, or being (the three being very nearly synonomous: very tightly related).

(The above is Karl Priebe- admit it: you'd never heard of him either.
That is not ACTUALLY a painting of Diana Ross- her hair is not that bad.)

And, to go back to my love of all things, Jesus was a dirty dirty humanist: people are different than, and better than, things, according to him (Jesus= Augustine here; same diff, right?).
But I know (this would be 'The Newest/Bestest Testament') that people are not different than things: people are simply made up of things.
(Trust Me: Spinoza proved this for us.)

In my case, the things of which I am made up of are :
The Supremes,
Hemingway (just a little Hem though),
a really big and badass bookcase,
asphalt,
a selection of works from the Barnes,
coffee (aw, you could tell by this weblo, huh?),
Missy Elliot,
the day of Sunday,
shoes,
ties,
special-bought shoelaces to ghetto-match with my shirts/hats (yup, made of those too),
etc.
etc.
etc.


The above things have a shit-ton of being or reality (or, perhaps a dick-ton: I am willing to admit when I don't know something- I am a modest little DIVINITY after all), especially when combined.
I am nothing but those things of which I am made.
I am made of the above things
THEREFORE
I have a shit-ton/dick-ton of being.
QED



(DEMUTH- I was probably the most taken with him)

(Demuth again duh)




Degas


Matisse


Modigliani



Toulouse-Lautrec


(It pains me to say this, but most of the above pictures are NOT the ones at the Barnes. It was surprisingly difficult to find pictures of the paintings that I remember online; partly because, beyond the Matisses, and the Picassos, and the Cezannes, the Renoirs, etc., most of these artists are not so well-loved and so well-documented that many would take the time to put up significant numbers of their works.
Plus old museum people are scared of the ones-and-zeros.
The last 4 are at the Barnes Foundation; the Great and the Philosopher are as well; the smoking girl is Picasso's and I think there too.)