Matthew A. Pagan

It's hard to be a jackalope

For your weekend reading, all about the mighty jackalope. captiveliberty.substack.com/p/its-hard-t...

"History's foremost concern in every generation is awakening."

--Walter Benjamin

Photography of a mountainous ridge, overlayed with text: "Vibrato: From the pitch of a stone".

When to fight really bad vibes and when to quit: Read my poem "Vibrato".

captiveliberty.substack.com/p/vibrato

"The more you change, the more you become what you are." Wuote by Philip K. Dick, from In Pursuit if Valis, page 163.

"The more you change, the more you become what you are."

--Philip K. Dick

"A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how'." --Viktor Frankl

"A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how'."

--Viktor Frankl

How do i gently break things off with my language learning app?

Suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little.

--Viktor E. Frankl

Was Franz Kafka familiar with Pure Land Buddhist? He nearly certainly was not, and yet... captiveliberty.substack.com/p/infinity-e...

I am accepting this only so that you do not believe you there is anything you have failed to do.


--The Gatekeeper in Kafka's tale, "Before the Law"

A Political Genealogy of You Can Just Do Things Walter Benjamin #2: Critique of Violence

Indefinite extrajudicial detentions have many times in American history followed from the executive branch assuming authority from the judicial. open.substack.com/pub/captivel...

@heynowdana.com Love the show. Can you play "At Peace " by Propaghandi?

An author interview I heard a while back (don't remember with whom) gave some advice that finding the right audience for one's book and discovering a community of fellow writers with shared sensibilities are both part of the important journey of finding one's people. So, go find your people.

Empire-Slop: Walter Benjamin #1: The political transformation of Dream-kitsch

Empire-slop: the roots of kitsch in the White House's AI-generated deportation tweet open.substack.com/pub/captivel...

"No it's fine."
...
"Yeah no heaven's amazing. Really great stuff."
...
"Not at all, it's just... Well, I wasn't expecting God to be a giant-ass crab, that's all."
...
"I dunno, a man, I guess."

Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet.

Propose a protocol change making importing tweets optional. Once accepted, inform users they can no longer import tweets after a certain date. Next, amend the protocol so viewing imported tweets is optional. Once accepted, inform users they no longer will see imported tweets after a certain date.

Seems there's a very easy solution to this problem in reality; but the developers who worked hard to implement the import feature aren't going to like it.

The fact that Bluesky allows users to do this makes me never want to trust any timestamp I see on this website

Wisdom has to be, by its very nature, rational.

—Philip K. Dick, in _Valis_.

It's strange to consider how Walter Benjamin and Philip K. Dick wrote during the same century. They are both 20th century thinkers.

A reader encounters an obscure word in the text he's unfamiliar with.

He checks the glossary; it's missing.

Neither is it in the index.

Finally he Googles it.

One result:

A commentless reddit post block-quoting the passage in question.

Reader, has this happened to you? If so what was the word?

Talk to people. No computer will ever mourn your death.

The best quote from this novel is a realization about the nature of God:

“He can’t help us very much. Some, maybe. But he stands with empty, open hands; he understands, he wants to help. He tries, but… it's just not that simple.”

Wrath of the Sky Deity: From Ritual to Narrative PKD #5: A review of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

I wrote a book review of Philip K. Dick's classic science fiction novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch: open.substack.com/pub/captivel...

As Jung recounts it in MEMORIES, DREAMS AND REFLECTIONS: Around five o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday the front door bell began ringing frantically. It was a bright summer day; the two maids were in the kitchen, from which the open square outside the front door could be seen. Everyone immediately looked to see who was there, but there was no one in sight. I was sitting near the doorbell, and not only heard it but saw it moving. We all simply stared at one another. The atmosphere was thick, believe me! Then I knew that something had to hap-pen. The whole house was filled as if there were a crowd present, crammed full of spirits. They were packed deep right up to the door, and the air was so thick it was scarcely possible to breathe. As for myself, I was all a-quiver with the question: "For God's sake, what in the world is this?" Then they cried out in chorus, "We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought." That is the beginning of the Septem Sermones ... Then it began to flow out of me, and in the course of three evenings the thing was written. As soon as I took up the pen, the whole ghostly assemblage evaporated. The room quieted and the atmosphere cleared. The haunting was over.

Did anyone else realize Carl Jung began writing his first book to ward off the ghost army attacking his house?

It's come to my attention that I should poast moar on this site.

The Family Curse: A tale for All Hallows' Eve

Get your spook on with this scary Halloween #shortstory of Christian legends, matrilineal destiny, and the Capricorn monster. open.substack.com/pub/captivel...

Despite any impression you might get from the title, this #shortstory is actually about TWO novels (A Voyage to Arcturus + Mrs. Dalloway). Read it! open.substack.com/pub/captivel...

My latest piece on Captive Liberty open.substack.com/pub/captivel...

The losing of personal belongings is always a psychological affair. Lost possessions are as much crystallizations of mental states as the possessions themselves.