From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Native, was Witches and death
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 92 04:48:50 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Nov3.193347.3681@radian.uucp> markbr%radian@natinst.com writes:

 > I give up, Gil. Have you managed to develop such a marvelous forcefield,
 > I don't know, but I describe something, and the description just slides 
 > right around you and hits the wall behind you. You respond with what
 > are along your same track, which is somewhere off to one side of what
 > I'm talking about, and the issues I'm speaking to. I just hope you don't
 > have the same problem with the folks you work with; you seem to have the
 > same problem with Corum.

Well, my classic repost here is that I have to live with myself 24
hours a day, in person. You should be so lucky!

Same problem with who? All I do is repond to text printed to a computer
screen. You too could be another bit of software adding random phrases
to key words you select from what I sit here typing into the Cybervoid.

 > What makes you think my bitterness about what's happened in this country 
 > is the sole causal reason of my desire to leave the planet, physically, in a 
 > spaceship, to find the glories of the universe? You haven't even considered
 > that I might have said that I've been wanting to leave since I was < 10. 

I simply do not know what you want. Should I?

I do not know you at all, for that matter, yet you appear to expect that
I will simply anticipate so much about you without reference to any
factual information. Until I get something in the order of the issues
you write that you are addressing, it is all just pinning jelly to the
wall, isn't it?

Given that, I might just as well have some fun with it.

 > Do you think, also, that what is on this planet is the most wonderful stuff
 > in the universe? The views of the Moon, or the other planets made by the 
 > astronauts and the probes do not thrill you? Why are you so closed to the
 > glory of the universe? Why do you seem to find a need to find a lack in
 > me, for wanting to GO? For thinking that there is so much more out there?

Perhaps rather than being closed to anything, I am open to everything.
If that is the case, you might anticipate that I would be wondering
why you make such distinctions at all. Why would you differentiate the
Earth "here" from the universe "out there" to start with?

Somebody else recently posted a Zen koan to the effect, "if you can't
find what you seek here, where would you wonder in search of it?". Is
that relevant to your journey?

I don't "find a need to find a lack" in you. I really don't give that
much of a shit about you at all, and I don't see any of this as of
any meaning or relevance to anything beyond typing words to this void
before me. If I disconnect it, there you go, POOF! Gone! While I
continue to sit here at the very epicentre of the entire cosmos!

Perhaps it is *me* you want to visit when you describe the glory of
the universe "out there"? Magic, isn't it?

 > Gil, reread.

I did! It still did not tell me anything about you.

 > +Note: sf (science fiction) is *not* referred to as sci-fi. Sci-fi (rhymes
 > with Skippy), is what is referred to by ignorant movie reviewers when
 > discussing monster movies.

Is this relevant to anything? Or am I correct now in assuming that you
have been pursuing a science fiction all along for want of glory in
the terrestrial lifecycle I assume again binds you to this domain?

 > Note 2: There are fen (pl of fan) is Australia, you know. WE can GET YOU.
 > (Dum-da dum dum) (humor alert!)

Oh good!

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
From: wells@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (John Wells)
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1992 17:04:10 GMT
Subject: Re: Samhain & Spiral Dance
Organization: Zanzor of the CLOUDS