barbaric citizens,
Persephone has to present a good image I would say. Her transparent veil is that and indicates an atmospheric ambience, perhaps a mask, her 'airs' of infinite profundity and frivolity. It's necessary given the festive occasion at this moment and given the corruption and stupidity that surrounds us. No longer blooming like she used to she needs more art in her style, she has to make things up. She is wilting now and getting wise. Her flattery is penetrating but she herself is impenetrable to cheap attempts at flattery. Look to what happened to the ephebe Allen when he was flattered. Be that a lesson for wise guys. We could die tommorow that's how bad things are getting. It's an apocalyspe now... everything is vain and bound for eternal meaninglessness. Long before our sun goes nova and turns the earth into cosmic dust without aim we will cease to exist. Is this not THE TRUTH? So how does the song go a-gain? "The music the moment you own it you better never let it go you get only one shot do not miss your chance to blow... "
Admiration is always directed at the surface, at a superficial appearance that blooms without a why, wilts and is never more, never never more..
If you miss one chance there is always another occasion of course but the point is to be ready, prepared always to seize the day, to rise to the occasion! What is important here from a tactical and strategic point of view is to be FLEXIBLE and SUPPLE. That means practicing a sort of art of disappereance where you put on a formless shapeless manner of being that is always taking on the contours of the environment that currently surrounds you. There is always a kind of abandonment to the context or the ambience of an atmosphere which is to say also a stlye. This is why in the spider's web there is always a fly code that captivates it's prey. Persephone as a network of poems, improvisational conversations, experimental hybridizations of fact and fiction (even straight and normative academic pieces are okay) is a collection of codes that flatter subtly the victim. The trick to not getting caught up in a bewitching play of appearences is to not be curious and try to figure out what is behind an appearance. You have to respect the veil as transparent. This is a virgin field of work and play and that means respecting the honor of an enigma without depth and keeping in mind that what is most important is becoming my friend through an adherance to the constitution of Persephone.
The tactical point for the moment is to stay flexible and supple which is the esssence of being sociable as we learn from La Rouchfoucauld if not from Gracian or Machiavelli.
So if forms are supple then they are more fluid. In fact the engaging in the practice of potentiality in act by which we cultivate instituting power allowing us to seize the day through innovative transformations results in the secretion of fluids, the nectar of the gods. Instituting power is strength in the sense of virtue that we call wu-wei in Chinese or effortless action, or 'doing nothing' and is like the flow of water. Confucius in the analects says that "the intelligent find joy in water". Water is like being a good student always attentive to what is being said without imposing any kind of willfull reading on what you absorb. This is like being a tabula rasa, like being an empty, virgin page which is another image for water and potentiality in act... Without this there is no chance of becoming bright in the sense of being ingineous and a quick wit and very sharp. Without this you will always be the reactionary red neck that Nietzsche hated. Potentiality in act... is an alchemical process of refinement that makes us more subtle and perceptive as if we were taking on board a sixth sense. Confucius says that because water is " compliant and exploratory, it reaches to the tiniest point, like perceptiveness (cha)."
What is important here is to minimize the tendency to engage a situation prematurely. The rules of engagement call for rigorous patience that's not rigid but one that is floating in all directions at once like a tennis player on the ball of here feet ready to receive a serve. The thing to note here is that potentiality in act... also indicates a kind of explosive speed that leaves zero room for any kind of hesitating deliberation but is ignited in a flash like lighting which is what allows you to return a serve in the most economical and advantageous manner as possible.
In the context of military strategy this dispositional propensity is called shi in chinese and is like the drawing of the bow before it is release. Francois Jullien in a book called _The Propensity of Things_ writes that "to say that shi, as a strategic tool, must be as mobile as flowing water and that "victory is gained through transformation and adaptation to the enemy" means more than merely saying that the ability to adapt is necessary or purely a matter of common sense. What is involved is the deeper intuition that a particular disposition loses its potentiality when it becomes inflexible (or static). For is it not precisely the fundamental objective of all tactics to ensure that dynamism continues to operate to one's adavantage (meanwhile draining the opponent of initiative and reducing him to paralysis)? And how to better to reactivate the dynamism inherent in any disposition than to open it up to alternation and reversability? It is here that strategic theory coincides with the most central idea of Chinese culture: the perpetually renewed efficacy of the course of nature, illustrated by the succesion of days and nights and the cycle of the seasons. Ultimately, because the absolute causality constituted by the dao never becomes immobilized in any one disposition, it remaind forever inexhaustible."
general-coach tympan
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