Kiss my Bare Art

Nick Herbert invoking his Muse

KISS MY BARE ART
(responding to Gary Snyder)


We drink our Muse; we smoke our Muse
We duct Her thru our gaping pores
Invent new sins to fan Her whims
We're lovely Muse's lowly whores.


We follow Muse beyond the stars
To bomb labs, muscle gyms and porno bars
Where Life beckons, there we go
Seek deeper meat than Jacques Cousteau.


We crave that rush, that punch, that flood
We love that dark orgasmic drain
Then pick ourselves up off the rug
And open up another vein.


For just one glance we drop our pants
Her prostitutes and renegades
Yet every kiss burns like the first
We're virginal as new-born babes.

What You Should Know

Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg in the Sierra

What You Should Know to Become a Poet

all you can know about animals as persons.
the names of trees and flowers and weeds.
the names of stars and the movements of planets
and the moon.

your own six senses, 

with a watchful elegant mind.
at least one kind of traditional magic:
divination, astrology, the book of changes, 

the tarot;
dreams.

the illusory demons and the illusory shining gods.
kiss the ass of the devil and eat shit;
fuck his horny barbed cock,
fuck the hag,
and all the celestial angels
and maidens perfum’d and golden--

& then love the human: 

wives, husbands and friends
children’s games, comic books, bubble-gum,
the weirdness of television and advertising.

work long, dry hours of dull work 

swallowed and accepted
and lived with and finally loved. exhaustion,
hunger, rest.

the wild freedom of the dance, ecstasy
silent solitary illumination, entasy

real danger. gambles and the edge of death.

--Gary Snyder

Reblogged from Turfing

Quantum Tantra Scrutinized

Scott Jones videoing Nick Herbert at home

For almost half a century, research at my quantum tantric ashram/laboratory in Boulder Creek, CA into new physics-based ways of connecting with nature has been carried out in relative anonymity. A few books of poetry (which no one takes seriously these days)  as well as private conversations and sporadic essays on this blog have revealed some of quantum tantra's aims and methods. But for the most part the quantum-tantric enterprise has been ignored by main-stream media.

Today all that changed.

This morning producer Jeffrey Kripal and videographer Scott Hulan Jones visited my home and photographed most everything--what I eat for breakfast (sausage and beer), my taste in art (prints of Hanuman, personal friends and psychedelic goddesses) as well as my secret sanctum high in the trees from which I like to observe life in the redwood forest after dark.

This Nick-intimate video will be part of a feature-length film on the history of Esalen Institute in which I played a small part in many different contexts--present at the creation, workshop attendee and presenter, guest and friend of many of the staff and long-time leader of seminars on quantum physics and the nature of reality.

Jeffrey hopes to finish the film Supernature in time for a celebration of Esalen's 50th anniversary which will be held in October 2012. I have received much benefit and inspiration from my association with Esalen so I consider opening my home to a video crew a small price to pay for all that Esalen has given me.

Happy fiftieth anniversary, bold, inventive, sexy Esalen Institute! May your second fifty years be even more exciting, sensual and innovative than the first.

Higgs Particle Discovered at CERN

No divine being was implicated in the Higgs discovery

This morning (July 4, 12 Midnight PST) Rolf Heuer, the director of the CERN accelerator, moderated a press conference in which CERN experimentalists announced that both the ATLAS group and the CMS group had achieved the 5-sigma discovery level of a particle with mass equal to about 125 GeV with properties roughly compatible with those of the Higgs Boson predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. See Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance blog for a running commentary on the Higgs discovery.

On other fronts, Nick Herbert's video URGE: a Short Opera About Reality has attracted almost 1000 viewers and his first printing of Harlot Nature has completely sold out.