MADMASTER CALLING
Madmaster Calling from Amsterdam, february 24, 2007
Those of you who have found their
way to this moment in time and space , pse look at my dutch KERSVERS-page
which today brings the reader (in English) close to the source of Sufi-thought
in the Western world, dating back to the first years, prior to and within
the folds of the First World War, of the twentieth century.
Having opened my files abt. Mrs Raden Ayu Jodjana, I fell upon an early
issue of one of its earliest manifestations (april 1916) of Sufi,
A Quarterly Sufi Message, issued in London
In its 28 pages first of all The Sufi Order, its origins, The
Sufi Teachings & The Aims of the Sufi Movement in the West.
Within these pages are also mentioned the Servants of the Sufi Movement,
among whom for Holland Madame Khourshed de Ravalieu, known to me, much
later in 1950 until her death in 1981, as Madame Raden Ayou Jodjana,
spouse of the Javanese dancer and prince Raden Mas Jodjana.
In the same issue, about the Eastern Musicales, held monthly: "Madame
Khourshed sang most wonderfully. She has a beautifully developed voice,
and is also a very clever teacher of voice production."
She was for me a wise spiritual Mother, at a moment in time when lecturing
and reading poetry became more and more interesting as energy-transferences,
as described in Ed Sanders'poetics, and I visited her weekly to take
dictations and transcribe texts, for a book which might still be in
the making. Long Live Life Eternal, in the Here & Now. Your whistle-blower
Simon Vinkenoog.
February 5th, 2007
From the City of Amsterdam, (Mad
Master), Mokum Aleph, third best place in the world for expats, Australia
and France being best and second best.
Calling your attention to the distinguished political author William
Blum, who offers free subscriptions to his monthly Anti-Empire Report,
"some thing you need to know before the world ends." Full
Spectrum Dominance is the main feature of this month's newsletter,
issued yesterday. On www.killinghope.org
you'll also find a list of Blum's forthcoming speaking arrangements
in the USA, Land of the Free.
In the Dutch-section of this website, the daily Kersvers (Cherry
Fresh) notations, I have this last week been mentioning a book
I finished reading today: Barry Miles' William Burroughs El hombre
invisible, published in 1992, seven years before the old Man on
the Mountain took off for whatever destination stuck in his mind. The
story is, as far as I know the best introduction to the life and works
of William Burroughs, seen by many as one of the most important authors
of the twentieth century, a cult-figure indeed, misbehavin' and misunderstood.
With a stockpile of information at his disposal, Miles describes vividly
Burroughs' encounters with some of the best minds of his generation,
his drug-experiences, his Algebra of Addiction, his
masterly characters in books with titles that exploded into popsongs,
the sado-masochistic routines he played with friends, his obsession
with Scientology (where he became a 'clear' and was later expelled
for 'betrayal'), Wilhelm Reich's Orgone boxes, the cut-up and the dreammachine,
the Tanger-Paris-London-New York-Mexico-Kansas connections of globally
translated expat-authors, all his alien-conspiracy-paranoias,-it all
comes into consideration, and falls into place in the 238 pages of this
book. It ends with the description of a shamanistic sweatlodge-healing
ceremony in 1992, during which Burroughs, then 78 years, 7 years before
his death, got rid of his own lifelong Ugly Spirit.
With a magic eye for cut-ups you'll be able to read the Miles-Burroughs
-quotations in original throughout the Dutch language - it's an undeniable
fact that English (or Anglo-American-basic) usually comes easy to dutch
audiences. My own knowledge dates from the years 1948-1956 during which
I worked for Paris-based UNESCO, where English and French were working
languages. Also, 4 years MULO-schoolyears provided me with four years
of English and German, and 3 years of French language learning, plus
my Mothertongue. No more so, nowadays, alas.
If you want to see me read a little poem and do a little dance, and
listento eight minutes of excellent live jazz check the link Sea
me! Hear me!, which connects you with a concert end december 2006
with Bo's Art Trio in the Mahogany Jazzclub in Edam, Holland,
on YouTube, a film of Micheal Holla, shown 634 times. Be the 635th!
Etc.Jazz & Poetry! Jazz is my Religion. Love Sex Death,
Love Special Delivery.Life is a Carnival! Count Your Blessings - your
Amsterdam friend Simon Vinkenoog.
P.S.:I owe some of the best books I've read lately to my friend Renee
Franken of the Antwerp Bookshop Demian, in the Wolstraat 2,
the historical center. If you happen to be in that beautiful Flemish
city go see for yourself. A very interesting collection of beat &
parallel literature, cinema, photogtraphs; the best I've I've seen in
the Lowlands! SV
January 27th, 2007
Here I am again, Simon Vinkenoog,
active at the age of 78, my first contribution this year to these pages
in English, though - as any really interested and insatiable researcher
wd have noticed - I spread a lot of English quotations through my Dutch
texts, supposing - and sometimes knowing the reader to understand what
I'm talking about.
What am I talking about? As an old-time tripper, who 'savoured' his
first LSD-trip in february 1959 as a guinea pig in a medical experiment
at the City of Amsterdam's Wilhelminagasthuis, in Paviljoen 3
- locally known to be the lunatic ward - and who's been reflecting about
the idea of 'consciousness' ever since, and as a poet, I could gather
a multitude of words (in essence: Thou Art All That & Love It
or Leave It). And so I've been doing, in living and writing, translating,
anthologizing, editing & performing.
And I am on line since june 2004 - the worldwide web deepened
old friendships and brought me new friends. To me life itself is an
art; one shd strive for the perfection of humankind as a masterpiece,
and part of Nature.
At the age of 30, when I was asked if I was interested to taste the medicine, I 'd recently come back to my native city after eight years in Paris (France), where I enjoyed both a job as Special Requests Documents Officer at UNESCO Headquarters (then Hotel Majestic, 19 Avenue Kléber), pursued my literary 'career' in the Dutch Republic of Letters, and made the since then life-long acquaintance with Mama Mia Sativa Indica.
The Indian Hemp-Goddess introduced
me to the first dérèglement raisonné de tous
les sens, as foreseen by the visionary poet Arthur Rimbaud, she
brought me a deeper understanding of the surrealists (my admiration
went to Antonin Artaud and Henri Michaux), and had me form friendship
with (jazz) musicians, painters and artists. I started out in Paris
by posing in the nude for sculptor Ossip Zadkine's Masterclasses , where
I met and befriended Shinkichi Tajiri who settled in the Netherlands
- like so many expats still do: at this moment Amsterdam is as enjoyable
a city as Paris used to be in the fifties: Ville Lumière.
Between the academic palefaces and the rapacious rednecks of more than
half a century I found my own way - busying myself by marrying six times
and become a father to 4 children. I fell in Love with Edith Ringnalda
twenty years ago and we know our partnership will last a lifetime, God
willing, Blessed Be!
At the same time I'm stilll who I was then, at the outset of my coming
out of nowhere into the here & Now: curious to the most extreme,
having been locked up as it were during the nazi-occupation of the Netherlands,
during World War Two, between my 11th and 16th year.
Every year I've lived through until now belongs to the formative years,
and who is to tell me when the lessons are over? No-one! The joy of
teaching is the joy of learning. Who said that? Doesn'tmatter. Every
good teacher shd experience that.
Though, my friends - I've also often hummed to myself: All my words
come back to me / in shadess of mediocracy...
If you know what I mean. And you do, otherwise you wouldn't
be here, at this particular moment in whatever space one believes to
be living in.
Living Theater. Constant Orgasm. I think I'll keep this communication
on a regular base; I have the feeling I disappointed some friends who
I showed this way. Better learn Dutch, then. But also: don't forget
to look around, once you're here on this website: Simon Surft -
psychedelic favorites.
I just want everybody to be as happy as I am. Happiness (Don't
worry, be happy!) is an experience to be shared. During a short
visit to Paris last week to see the Antonin Artaud-exhibition at the
new Bibliothèque Nationale de France, my biographer
Derrick Bergman shot a picture of me with the 93-years old George Whitman,
owner of the English Shakespeare & Co Bookshop across the
Notre Dame - who's been offering a crashpad for more than a fifty years,
as I gather from Gregory Corso's published Letters.
I'll be back here then, on a more or less regular base, this shd be
an understanding within myself, let's say a week then, Simon? Let's
make it once a week, and please pronounce my name the Europeaen way:
Seemon. Thank you. Simon. Mastery in Servitude (Meher Baba).
This week I introduced my Dutch-language readers to http://www.maybelogic.org/
where a Meme-orial Celebration in Santa Cruz is announced at the ending
of Robert Anton Wilson's life on Earth. I loved the humor in his
Illuminatus! trilogy and his well-equipped brain/mind/soul.
And now I do take leave, I tend to be garrulous, and have to know when
to say stop. Stop. Bye bye now. Love Still Discovers. "Trust your
inherent machinery". Simon Vinkenoog.
Amsterdam, october 10th, 2006
Yes indeed: not a word in this virtual
neverendingstory called Simon Vinkenoog (born july 18, 1928) since half
a year. What a season it has been! For five months we lived in our 400
square meters garden in the gardenpark Buitenzorg (Sans Souci!) in the
Northern part of Amsterdam, closer to nature than ever.
Media fasting; no t.v. or radio, just yesterday's papers. It's a beautiful
world we live in, I started out feeling alienated, then I grew back
into the original Adam, living each breath according to its direction:
I go with the flow, wherever the wind blows.
I publish poems in the dutch language sinds 1949; in 1950 my first book
of poems Wondkoorts (Traumatic Fever; Gangrene) appeared in 1950. My
latest collection called Zonneklaar (As clear as the sun) including
translations from Gregory Corso, Ira Cohen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and
Milarepa (according to Theodore Rothenberg's Technicians of the sdacred,
appeared six weeks ago).
My first prose-book, the autobiographical 'alibi' Zolang te water in
1954 had a motto by the 19th century English poet Gerald Manley Hopkins.
I stick to it since, as well as I got rewards from the thought of William
Faulkner, whose motto entered my Eerste Gedichten 1949-1963. I copy
these words here. Words contain depth and meaning, making connections,
spoken, written, read or heard, among those of us who are One.
Gerald Manley Hopkins wrote:
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair,
not feast on thee;
Not untwist - slack they may be - the last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
William Faulkner made it known:
Loving all of it even while he had to
hate some of it
because he knows now that you don't love because:
you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.
And, dear Reader, let not the Dutch language hinder you, surfing through the entrees of my Kersvers-notes and other links ; often enough I quote from English-language texts that don't have to be translated into Dutch to be understood by any and all who found their way here: Notes from Paradise. Yours high happy and never in a hurry, Simon Vinkenoog
PS The link Hear me see me! provides you with information about my recent goings and comings. Jajajajajajajajajajajajajajajaja!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Amsterdam, Thursday March 16th, 2006
Hello there! For the first time
in weeks, Edith and I found time to visit one of the 9 Straatjes
in the center of the city, where I enjoyed a look-about in a woman-friendly
lingery shop, to divert the readers of the La Vie en Rose Magazine
(Stout, Berenstraat 9) and get entertained by two lovely ladies
who start conversing with Edith about things I prefer to be unaware
of.
Then we headed towards the Spui-square, where the little statuette in
bronze of het Amsterdamse Lieverdje reminds one of
the days in 1964 and 1965, when Robert Jasper Grootveld started his
cough-cough-cough-uche-uche-anti-tobacco rituals each saturday midnight,
doing his perambulations around it, freakily attired, which drew so
many (mostly young) people that PROVO here found its first outlets for
their ideas, broadsheets and pamphlets.
The rest is part of western world history and brings us back to the
Here & Now with a visit to the Atheneaum Bookshop & News-stand
with its inexhaustible and continuous supply of books, magazines, newsprint
on all possible subjects, in many languages. Peter, recognizing an old
customer, offers me a look at a monthly magazine, called The Believer,
published in San Francisco (www.believermag.com,
ISSN 15433333-6101)and I buy, ever so curious, the 22nd issue, march
05 (Teethsome) and the 31st issue, february 06 (Couchfire!)
Close by are Waterstone and the American Book Center
(Kalverstraat); as a matter of fact there are also more than 200 secondhand
bookshops in Amsterdam. Every Friday, the year through, a number of
open air book-stands are gathered here on the Spui, near the entrance
of the Begijnhof, one of the quietest and loveliest 17th-century hofjes,
hidden sanctuaries of silence - like the courtyards of the Historical
Museum nearby.
Walk. walk. walk. walk. Look around you. People show. People come. People
go. Names. Faces. Names; faces. Our steps lead us to the Tweede
Kamer in the Heisteeg 6 - the real parliamentary Second Chamber
is in the government-town The Hague; we're just (rightly) the country's
Capital City Magic City Publi City - for a cup of coffee and to enjoy
one of their pre-rolled joints.
We sit down and a young American (from Washington, D.C., I hear) looks
at me and says: "I've seen you before!" and then remembers
(having shot a lot of film footage for a DVD he is preparing): "You
were one of the speakers at the Basel LSD-Symposium!
"That's right, and, as one realizes, an immediate friendship. See
you next time, Dean W.!
Out in the Heisteeg, next to Cornercafé Hoppe where we walk towards
the back entrance, our old friend Michel Stoopman greets us heartily
- we haven't been in the neigbourhood for quite some time. He tells
us that he has seen my picture on the cover and read the story in the
Amsterdam Weekly, just out. That's right, I remember - a number
of interviews these days, because of the appearance of a CD, with poems
read by me, embellished and enhanced by the spacious compositions of
Erik de Jong, played by the live crew of his Spinvis-combo,
and attuned to his special treatment of sound-and wordscapes.
We had a press-conference, t.v. and radio-appearances, rehearsals and
to-morrow a first 'official' concert in Rotterdam's Nighttown,
after 'mystery guest' appearances in Amsterdam's Paradiso and
Carré, and then coming up are Antwerp (Belgium), Groningen,
Drachten and furthur.
In the meantime, and how far away it already seems, and I'll keep it
short, enough said to-day, 27 february gave me a special role to play
at the gathering of 25 Dutch-Flemish poets reading Poëzie in
Carré 2006, which commemorated the fact that I co-organized
a similar meeting, exactly 40 years ago in this former circus-theater
along the Amstel River.
My last lines then, a diatribe against the government, were my first
lines now (taken from film in 1966, on stage in 2006) and my last lines,
a manifold JA JA JA (yes, yes, yes)now were musically accompanied. Thank
you Spinvis: Erik, Arjan, Hans, Saartje, Jan, Cor, Lucas &
Jeroen.
Music, until the end. The creator of Charlie Brown, the cartoonist Charles
Schultz, reminds us: "Don't worry about the world coming to an
end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."
As for now: the story goes - life and life only! Simon Vinkenoog.
Amsterdam, Wednesday February 22nd , 2006
Hello! Welcome to the micro-macrocosmos of Amsterdam Magic City. Open up www.greenlightdistrict.nl and inhale the coffeeshop-fumes! And read the warning at each entrance!
Mentioning Thomas Kuhn's The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions and the new paradigmata awaiting
mankind to my Dutch readers, today I offered them two insights into
Oliver Reiser's high thinking, as expressed in his 1966 book:Cosmic
Humanism, subtitled: A Theory of the Eight-Dimensional Cosmos
Based on Integrative Principles From Science, Religion, and Art, one
of the most surprizing REAL books I ever wandered into. The diagrams
LIII and LIV on the Kersvers-homepage today appear in the book
in Chapter XII: The Radiation Belts of Thought; diagram LXII
below forms part of Chapter XIII: The Cosmos Has a Plan and So Has
Man.
The description reads as follows:
"THE CYCLIC-CREATIVE UNIVERSE. It requires eight dimensions to
make the Cosmos: (a) four in the Unmanifest Universe which
provides the invisible guiding fields (archetypes) for emergence. There
is a symmetry between the two universes, i.e. they interpenetrate and
each has its complementary or folded-over image in the other universe.
This provides the basis for what Jung terms synchronicity."
The author being, at the time
of his death in June 1974, Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh,
who published numerous books on his 'philosophical journey.' Albert
Einstein, referring to an earlier book World Philosophy: A Search
for Synthesis, commented that Oliver Reiser 'has overcome, without
sacrificing his intellectual integrity, the paralyzing relativism that
so many clear thinkers of our times feel themselves forced to accept.'
Chapter IX in Cosmic Humanism, entitled Astrobiology, Cybernetics,
Divine Knowledge ends with a supreme statement concerning la
condition humaine:
"Coerced by inner necessity, man is relentlessly driven onward
in his quest. Explanatory groping into the as-yet-unknown is man's inescapable
fate. His salvation lies in relentlessly probing the mystery of this
cosmic drama, perhaps even helping to fulfill its meaning by his tireless
pursuit of the archetypal order that haunts his memories and colors
his anticipation.
Man's highest mission is increasingly to comprehend and enjoy the products
of the Supreme Imagination, as these are revealed in nature and in human
nature. Such is the ecstasy, the mystery, and the agony of man's awesome
journey through the vastness and the majesty of our everlasting universe."
Hic et nunc, in the Center of the Cyclone, Amsterdam. Your scribe Simon Vinkenoog.
Monday, February 13, 2006 A.D. 6 p.m.- 11 p.m. Amsterdam Time.
Rummaging through notebooks of
the last years, pocketsize scribblings, filled from beginning to the
end in a few months and never looked at again, except when one is looking
for one thing and finding another.
As happened to-day, the day I wanted to update this irreguarly written
notebook, and wondered who they are, the people passing by to have a
look at this site, and then - unevitably - turn away from it, looking
for another, yes what? SOURCE OF INFORMATION?
Anyway, once here, you can leave a sign of life in theGuesthouse;
I appreciate your comments or possible contributions, when
you feel like doing so, to be used or not: please not just compliments,
and No Harm Intended!
In fact; that's what I'm doing, sharing information, spreading knowledge,
gnosis.
My Dutch-language audience knows me as a writer from the early Fifties;
in 1950 my first book of poems was published, called Wondkoorts
(= Traumatic Fever), and the poetry-anthology ATONAAL I edited
and was published in 1951, is now being part and parcel of Dutch literary
history, as she is told and sold in the Republic of Letters in the Netherlands.
Since then I have written, published and read a number of books in my
lifetime (1928-20DV) - being entertained by the social games I play
as a poet, performer, anthologizer, chronicler, marihuana-user (since
1952) and researcher of LSD, since 1959). Qualified investigator, indeed!
As the occasion to go on-line on the WorldWideWeb was offered to me
early 2004, I grabbed at it, and here and now I'm chatting away on a
website all my own, totally independent, totally interdependent, addressing
myself (Advertisements for Myself, by Norman Mailer - part
of my curriculum!) to a community of a happy few hundreds - around the
same amount I reached by publishing a roneotyped eight-page little magazine,
called blurb, eight issues between may 1950 and 1951, from
Paris, (where I held a simple job at UNESCO Headquarters with the impressive
title of Special Requests Documents Officer) addressed to
the contemporaries with whom I wanted, then as now, to share my discoveries,
and many they would be...
There is an infinitely complex, beautiful and joyful system in this
Divine Madness; it comprises in its situationist context a healthy brew
of serendipity, 'pataphysics, and what my old friend George Andrews
called in a poem Annihilating Illumination, (The Psychedelic
Review, N# 1, 1963).
Being aware of the fact that I would meet many non-Dutch contemporaries,
sharing my interests at the Spirit of Basel Symposium Problem Child
& Wonder Drug at the occasion of Albert Hofmann's 100th birthday
january 13-15th, just a month ago, I started to set up this collage
of words - and a few pictures, showing we're allright, in my mid-Atlantic
hodgepodge of events, personae and reminiscences, as an extended visiting
card in the name of the Society for the Protection of Truth
(Welcome!)
Unscroll; unscroll - if you wish - back to the source: three guidelines
dated november 28, 2005.
In The Gutenberg Galaxy this text could be the beginning of
an Endless Story: hanging out in Cyberspace, it's doing now, for momentary
conclusion of today's story, to be continued, DV, what I wanted to do
all the time here (with breaks: my wife, my son, the chicken-dinner,
the t.v.news) reminding you of what I read in a notebook of 12 years
ago, a noteworthy reminder. Simon Vinkenoog.
The major
advances in civilization are processes
that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
Alfred North Whitehead.
Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Friday, February 3, 2006.
Private investigations going on; the constant answer to the question
Who Am I can be expressed in so many untranslatable and
different ways, that I realize it's the same for every eye above this
text, who has found this out for HimHer self.
How deep is the ocean, deeper, go deeper and that stillness - it might
be a moment long lost gone - it's the new beginning, the crack in the
cosmic Egg, the long long way to the dawn in Kali Yuga-times. And let's
be certain we have as yet no idea of any future - an utopic vision by
itself, as psychologist Norman A. Brown declared.
Or, as Linus Pauling stated: "I know discoveries will be made that
my imagination is incapable of conceiving. I await them with curiosity
and enthusiasm.".
"A non-psychedelic can not enlighten a psychedelic!', used to be
a familiair Ranting of Ganesh Baba, as written down by Ira Cohen. See
elsewehere in this labyrinth I'm creating with you at the end of it,
Tat Tvam Asi. You and All That.
I sent an adhesion today to William Blum, bblum6@aol.com; the researcher
whose Rogue State-book was lobbied into bestseller-status in
such an unexpected way. I showed the page of contents of the dutch translation
for 'the blissfully ignorant foreign groupies of America.'
Look around you, people show! See them come, see them go, all around
you peple show! You are the people! You are this season's people!
And there is a lot more to be said, I'm entertained by the social games
I play; living out my children's dreams - as Georges Ohsawa, Dr. Macrobiotics
himself realized to be Ultimate Fulfillment. But so did Buckminster
Fuller. Etc.
Truthfully yours, Simon ('mellifluous extravagance') Vinkenoog.
Uit: The Sons of Shiva - to be continued
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006
A CRI DE COEUR
As if a Children's Crusade is
starting; the 7 p.m t.v. news-programme 'Twee Vandaag' showed the reactions
of young teenagers protesting against the authorities' order that an
Afghan family - father, mother and three children, two of them born
in Holland - should be extradited back to Afghanistan, at the same moment
that the Cabinet and Parlemantarians are fiercely debating, under international
pressure, to decide wether to send 1200 dutch soldiers to the same area,
or not. Many experts for, many experts against; as usual. Diplomatic
Movements..
Unbelievable indeed; how conscious and authentic the children's reactions
(in a school in the quiet East of the Netherlands) to the sudden deportation
of their Afghan friend Lida, who has no problems 'integrating'. The
soulfire burning in the indignations, the flesh-feelings in their righteous
words made me jump for joy: Children Crusades a'coming... Brought
me tears as well : why do so many innocent people, the very young and
the very old, have to fall victim to these 'systems', with terrorists
on both sides, Coca Cola against the Poppy Here & Now.
Feeling powerless as well as powerful, yours Simon Vinkenoog, living
within the paradox of chaos & dynamic change.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Ever since the Basel-LSD Symposium
I've been rearranging my psychedelic library, rereading and discovering
texts never read (in books purchased before), and I've been writing
about the occasion since, on these Mad Master Calling-pages,
and the daily Kersvers-homepage inn the Dutch opriginal. I've
also submitted a 2.500 word piece to a monthly; awaiting their verdict/approval.
There has been a trickle of visitors from abroad on this website, and
I've had a few hellos from people I met during the Basel-meeting. And,
of course, we looked at some of the dvd's of the proceedings.
Martin A. Lee, co-author (with Bruce Shlain) of the book Acid Dreams
- the complete social history of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties and Beyond
(Grove Press, New York, 1992), who was pleasantly surprised by
my words, uttered for the audience: 'Gratitude is a way of life',
i.e. Edith's and mine, sent me a poem, written in June 2005:
GRATITUDE
On this uneven evening
patience flees
the sensible heart
& the timid inherit
nothing but awe
I am so tall & heedless
& alive with weird joy
that I could rip words from the sky
squeeze them until they scream
& crackle like lightning
through my fingers
Monstrous syllables
irredescent & tangible
cleave to fleeting memories
& wither into silence
May fierce blessings
shake you without mercy
from ear to thigh to beating brain
until the world we once knew
sheds its churlish disguise
& specks of gratitude
claim whatever is left of you
This morning Martin A. Lee sent
us a quite different urgent e-mail, which I feel it my duty
to reproduce here:
Yes. Whereas Italian
druglaws are being made less stringent, and our own Dutch government
is becoming less tolerant under U.S. pressure, it is a good thing to
remember the message I obtained from a plaque which I bought in a San
Francisco headshop in the seventies (see below) and realize that our
fight for inner freedom will be a part of our lives, as long as we live.
Let's hope intently, and pray (if we know how to) that Common Sense
will come back: so-called 'public opinion' is slowly realizing that
the costs of the War on Drugs far exceed the possible profits: the war-machinery
itself, fed by fear and paranoia, is a self-sustaining monster of Frankenstein,
destined to disintegrate.
What cosmic slight of hand will be on our side in future times is at
yet unforeseen. An organization like Amnesty International
should make appeals for drug-prisoners as well; all drug-prisoners are
political prisoners. Let's keep cool, calm and collected. A Love Supreme.
Simon Vinkenoog.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
My Lady of the Lowlands: Edith Annalida Dorothée Ringnalda, my
beloved partner since august 1987. We were married by the Burgomaster
of Amsterdam Ed van Thijn. September 1st, 1989: he mentioned the fact
that Simon Vinkenoog married for the sixth and last time, whereas Edith
married for the first and last time.
RIGHT he was! These 18 years are the Best of my Life, all shadows have
vanished, all worries blown away. She comes in, we smile.
'Mijn snufkeesje, binkomannetje' she says, nobody understands but Me.
See me, hear me, the happiest man in the world, counting his blessings
minute by minute, every breath, in and out.. We spend 24 hours a day
together, the night in a big doublebed. Kaap Kont. That's what
we want, we can be on our selves together, me doing something, reading,
rustling papers, always at ease, high, happy & never in a hurry!
Our second floor appartment is our Eagle's nest, where we meet family
and friends. This is what I'm doing; what I have been doing; my entire
writer's life I spent surrounded by family-members, sometimes in a room
of my own, and sometimes - as now - sharing the living room.
Beauty all over, in the eye of the beholder. No separation between 'work'
and 'pleasure'. When I have outside gatherings, Edith accompanies me
always - she is the driver of the green Volvo 460 and shares my enthusiasm
to go places, see people, reflect, efficient and quickwitted.
Travelling together to Indonesia, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and the
former USSR - in 1989 when she was manager of the nomadic locationtheatercompany
Dogtroep; a good job she gave up when we married: the most
precious gift: her Living Presence.
We share zodiac-signs and ascendent: both Cancer, both Virgo. We fit.
It fits. We know; we feel. I was born in Amsterdam july 18th, 1928,
Edith in the same city july 5th, 1954.
She put me back on my original tracks, when we met. I went through the
difficult days of divorce, and separation from my children. All these
troubles were cleared away (including the taxman) and we lead an extended
family-life, including my former wife Barbara and all my children: Rob
(1947), Alex (1961), Anna (1973) and Arthur (1978) - I might have told
this before, but then once again. Life and life only. This is part of
a universal lovesong, to be shared by all of us. Love and Light on your
path. Simon Vinkenoog.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Hemp, hemp, hurray! says the captain in the moonlight.
James
Joyce, Finnegan's Wake, p.495.
Some dance to remember, some
dance to forget.
Here is my dance:
"Smoking grass means pledging your time. You're committed, to All.
You're part of a movement on Earth. Consciousness-Expansion. What does
it mean? Find out. Truth. Beauty. Not just words, but feelings, emotions,
bodies, life in the flesh.
Question: What do you mean by consciousness?
Answer: What do you experience when you use the word?
Catholic: Is it true that Jews always answer questions with another
question?
Jew: Is that so?
Hurray, indeed! From the moment you start smoking grass, inhale hashish,
or taste majoum, you tune in unto the other tastes of the infinite.
You'll shed many tears as well - because, as your perceptions widen,
so will the amount of misery aperceived grow in your mind's eye.
The clearer the truth, the more beautiful life, the more distinct and
painful the ugliness within some people, victimized lovers, misdirected
energies. Squares confronted with their own weaknesses, inabilities,
impotence - don't we love them?
Smoking grass in itself does not give you the answers - but if there
ever is a key to understanding, why shouldn't it be this innocent holy
flower, which cleanses your own mirror of life & death.
In the literature of this movement, in its paintings, films, poems,
living theatrical moments, you'll find the endless stream of consciousness,
irrupted and uninterrupted, laughter, crying, smiling, freaking, shaking,
trembling - the collective outbursts of emotions, superseded senses
and senselessnesses.You'll prophesize, prophesize, by looking frankly
into your own heart (Allen Ginsberg). We prophesize Love. Miracles.
Turn-Ons. On our way!"
From How to enjoy reality by Jean-Paul Vroom (graphics) &
Simon Vinkenoog (texts), Thomas Rap, Publishers, Amsterdam 1969.
"Among the drugs that are
currently illegal, I have chosen not to use marijuana, as I feel the
light-headed intoxication and benign alternation of consciousness does
not adequately compensate for an uncomfortable feeling that I am wasting
time."
From the Introduction to PIHKAL, A Chemical Love Story, Alexander &
Ann Shulgin, Berkeley 1992.
Een tevreden roker is geen onruststoker. And thank you,Spirit of Basel, www.lsd.info for having brought all of us together. Bye for today. Remember Friday the 13th, last week, Full Moon! Simon Vinkenoog, Amsterdam.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Alexander Shulgin, as photographed in his lab in the mountains near
San Francisco, published in FACTS (Das Schweizer Nachrichtenmagazin,
12.Januar 2006 www.facts.ch,
page 38-4l: 'Doctor Faustus auf Ecstasy'), was one of the main speakers
at the Basel Symposium.
Author, with Ann Shulgin, of PIHKAL, A Chemical Love Story,
978 pages, Transform Press, Post Office Box 13675, Berkely, California
94701, ISBN 0-99630096-0-5.
PIHKAL means Phenethylaimines I Have Known And Loved. The successor
is called TIHKAL: The Continuation, 804 pages, and concerns
Tryptamines.
More about him, his wife and his work in future installments of this
Narrative.
Back in Amsterdam.
I'll have my first stage performance since our return from the Alchemical
Congress Basel to-night in Haarlem, Holland, 20 kms from here, in Am
Star Dam: four performing poets (Jules Deelder, Rick de Leeuw, Sieger
Geertsma and I) vs. 4 singerwriters, 'Pop vs.Poetry' - kind
of slamming around and do what you please with your BodyMindSpeech.
Lovely poetical license bringing it all back home! That's how I started
this website, april 2004.
Why I did is a long story made short. The first official Dichter
des Vaderlands (comparable to Poet Laureate, winner of elections,
jointly organized by the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam
and the Literary Editors of the influential NRC-Handelsblad
Daily), Gerrit Komrij, abdicated a year ahead of his official end of
5 year-term. Bart FM Droog, Editor of the Internet-poetrymagazine Rottend
Staal, organized a three week internet by-election, and my name
came out first.
Then, of course, I was kindly informed by him that a Dichter des
Vaderlands should be on-line, I got turned on to the idea
with a little help of my friends and I was thrown into the deep - I
like it here. My first words will all be my last. Heavenly idea, just
here happy on Earth!
Anyway, as I didn't have any official printed outlets for whatever I
was going to write, I published the 'Laureate poems'' here on this website,
sometimes reading them on t.v., (during the Portugal-soccermatches,
comparing the GOAL-shout with an Orgasm), for radio or during the poetry-readings,
forming the main part of my income.
A beautiful poem, if I may say so myself, is the one I wrote at the
death of Princess Juliana (once Queen, then Queen-Mother of Beatrix),
who - alas - demented, but had shown her bravery by pleading for Peace
in the USA Congress, entangled in the Cold War.
War and Peace. It's what it is all about. We have no enemy but Fear.
Usually in the West: fear of death. (I just read that 80 % of medical
costs in the USA are spent in the last six months of someone's live...).
So: in Dutch I keep a daily page, for whatever is ruminating in my headhart
and telling the story of my peregrinations; I feel certain I'll have
my english-language friends, known and unknown, enough to tell to keep
them entertained and happy. Me, high, happy and never in a hurry.
See what the goddess Abundanzia, she who holds the Horn of
Plenty, has to tell you, top right homepage Kersvers. I still feel euphoric.
Simon Vinkenoog. And we added last night ten sites to the Simon
Surfs-link.
Recordcover Poëzie in Carré 1966 by Marijke Kooger
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
A Sufi saying illuminates a 33 page text, which I downloaded
16-2-2005, 11 months ago, not knowing I'd meet the author again in Basel,
to our common delight!
If you want to face the Great One, you have to learn to dance in
both directions.
And so we did, and it seems we'll be dancing (Damocles & the Vulcano)
to the end/beginning.
Dancing with the Trickster: Notes for a Transpersonal Autobiography,
Stanley Krippner, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, San
Francisco, California, U.S.A.
http://www.stanleykrippner.com
Stanley Krippner listening to Albert Hofmann talking to the audience
And I took another step back, and now have in front of me Stanley Krippner's
text The Psychedelic State, the Hypnotic Trance, and the
Creative Act, in Charles T.Tart's book of readings Altered
States of Consciousness, a classic textbook (Anchor Books, Doubleday6,
1972) of 590 pages, 35 chapters within eight sections, each with its
own Introduction.
These are An introduction to ASC's (Aldous Huxley under hypnosis!);
The hypnagogic state between waking and sleeping; Dream consciousness
- Chapter 8: Frederik van Eeden's A Study of Dreams; the dutch
psychiatrist-author kept dreamdiaries between 1896 and 1913, in which
he described lucid dreams; Meditation; Hypnosis; Minor psychedelic
drugs (cannabis, Genista Canariensis and Nitrous Oxide); Major psychedelic
drugs - in the expose about a pilot study 'Psychedelic agents in creative
problem solving' a table compares Some Reported Characteristics of the
Psychedelic Experience, to the one side Those Supporting Creativity
and on the other Those Hindering Creativity.
And so, system in the madness, does this bibliomantic trip through the
ASC-book end with the Electroencephalographic Studies, the Alpha Rhythm-sequences
which we'll have to translate as living conscious beings in the Here
& Now: World Wide Wondering.
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing! And
Too much of a good thing is wonderful! Mae West.
I call this a day. Look around
you: People Show!
Simon Vinkenoog
Tuesday January 17th, 2006
Dreamweaver At Work
Just imagine.
Picture yourself.
Aftermath Notes. Back home in Amsterdam, after a week abroad sharing the Spirit of Basel with twothousand of my fellowmen from all over the world, all gathered in a Joyous Cosmology: the celebration of Albert Hofmanns 100th birthday, January 11.
Our planet would have been a different place without him, who was enabled to rediscover one of Nature's oldest sacred healing methods known to mankind, an absolute antidote against the then reigning spirit of Alamos and Auschwitz, the best minds of our generation destroyed by madness, the madness of a world gone crazy by creating Absolute Death (see Gil Eliot: Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1972).
It is the genius of the pharmaceutical researcher Albert Hofmann to realize the importance of what happend to him, then in april 1943, and using himself as a guinea-pig. And even more grateful we have to be that he wanted to share the knowledge and experience of this stone of wisdom with others, like his old friend Ernst Jünger, who was going to be 103 years old and participated in a Ceremony, standing on watch before the Eternal Fire above the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under de Arch of Triumph, Place de l'Etoile in Paris, amidst Presidents Kohl and Mitterrand. We all have our unknown soldiers, hopeless victims to commemorate. We do.
We all have our writers, too, loose-lipped, who can't keep secrets, reveal their visions and want to heal the world, starting by themselves, as writing indeed is a self-analysis of the first order. Quoting Leonardo da Vinci: "I am a discipel of experience."
Rereading chapter LXVII (the one but last) of Desiderius Erasmus' classic treatise In praise of folly I realize again why I had quoted this text (in the then available Dutch translation) before, in july 1968, at the end (the one but last chapter) of my now rare 490 pages book Weergaloos - ontdekkingsreizen naar de waarheid; {Peerless - voyages of discovery towards the truth} and once again and again and again my tears tell me I'm the happiest man in the world.
At this time yesterday we were underway in the train Basel-Amsterdam to arrive there at eleven p.m. and taking to bed at four p.m. Full of memories of the Events we witnessed, this gathering of the tribes, this step on the morgenlandfahrt, this mutating evolution, which shook us all through the boned and brought us back to simple questions of what to do now and next?
Changing the world, changing man - both Rimbaud and Breton realized the need of coming changes; whereas Walt Whitman prophesied: They'll arrive, in the States, the mediums. Beyond new Age. in the post-lunatic, as Ganesh Baba laughed. The gentle art of white magic, holy micro, holy macro. (George - Macrobiotics - Ohsawa: A strong and cruel enemy is specially worthwile; without him one becomes lazy, weak and stupid.' But all of us, I feel, are looking ahead, (en)visioning the future. among others (Teilhard de Chardin and his Noosphere) another researcher Linus Pauling, who stated: I know: discoveries will be made that my imagination is incapable of conceiving. I await them with curiosity and enthusiasm.
I'll be keeping on with this narrative, Godwilling, as I know there is so much more to be told, and retold (Frappez. Frappez toujours!) from my small niche player's private stage in the Magic City of Amsterdam. Quel autre pays où l'on puisse jouir d'une liberté si entière. René Descartes to a friend, gablestone Westermarkt 6, underneath the Westerkerk.
My humble job as an international civil servant at Unesco's Headquarters in Paris (1949-1956) had the official title of 'Special Requests Documents Officer' and it did me a lot of good. Schooldays, oh the Outsider's schooldays.
Ohsawa again: 'In the high school of Bliss and Freedom learning is done through practice. Theory has to be made by the imagination, or improvised by intuition and action.'
To Hell with him then, Marshall McLuhan:'I'm the only one who knows what the hell is going on.'
And didn't I hear Curtis Mayfield singing? If there's hell below, we're all gonne go!
We're all together inhabiting Heaven & Hell, whatever each of us makes out of his/her own Temporal Autonomous Zone.
I love this hungry feeling, gnosis come true. I lovelove these syn-words: synergy, synthesis & their twinsouls Serendipity, with its URLS and neural links. We'll make the word become flesh, and it's a good feeling to be alive. Long live the League of Spiritual Discovery, long live the SPOT: the Society for the Protection of Truth. Long live all of us, all of us stars, each man, woman, child. Growing up, awakening:. These my last words for today.
Later! Simon Vinkenoog, Bishop Universal Life Church.
One last morsel of food for Thought:
"The Mind of this world is not free from its body - and as long as the body is struggling for more life, the mind will go on struggling for more life, more mind. There is no such thing as struggle for death.
There is nothing on this planet but a struggle for Life. Every physical or mental movement, every wave of the sea and every thought or dream is a struggle for more Life.".
Kahlil Gibran. Letter from New York, Oct. 14, 1914 to Mary Haskell; (Beloved Prophet Barrie & Jenkins, London, 1972).(Uncorrected) (YET)
'Remember: Stay Outside!' William Burroughs, closing the door behind him, One World Poetry Festival, Amsterdam, 1980s.
Saturday, january 7, 2006
Hello! This is my second appearance
this year - on the Kersvers-homepage in Dutch I have a daily
discipline to supply food for heart & thought.
I hope to meet in Basel, Switzerland, next week some of the individuals
this virtual peregrination through Me, myself and I is destined
for, which is in the first place an enjoyable journey to the magic center
of Amsterdam (Am Ster Dam & Mad Master, Makom Aleph), which is my
hometown, and the place to be.
Quel autre pays où l'on puisse jouir d'une liberté
si entière? is what the exiled René Descartes wrote
to a French friend from Westermarkt 6, Amsterdam: way back, centuries
ago & the text is legible in stone there: which other country where
one can enjoy such an entire freedom?
As anyone realizes, under the Stone Age Laws of the Western World in
the 21st Century of our so-called Christian Era, such truths cannot
be maintained anymore, as a result of the ill-started (and never ending)
War on Drugs, which seems to be History's Greatest Mistake for Centuries.
This author, however, has always been happy with the goodies the good
people of the U.S. of A. brought us in Europe (I was seventeen years
old at the end of WW 2): jazz, swing, marihuana, The Living Theater,
an easy-does-it mentality which broke old conventions, an openness in
speech and mind, the psychedelic revolution, the beat generation, the
white negro and the black panthers, and a hundred years and more of
classic names in music, litterature, the arts - and whatever else modern
man has at his disposal. Plus of course, thanks to the anxieties of
the Cold War and the complicity of former German scientists the race
for space, the technology, which finally opened up to the use of whatever
is imbubed as real spirit in this WWW-cybernetic adventure.
Me, for example, as a recent user of the PC (since spring 2004), I am
constantly astonished at what knowledge can be got out of it. Thanks
to Joost Geerts (www.checkit.nl)
I can now see through books.google.com/books (oh, these modern abacadabra's!)
in what English-language books I figure, and a beautiful multilateral
collection it makes.
Mentioned in a book On Bohemia, in the Paris Beat Hotel, with The Living
Theatre, through Constant's New Babylon, Broken Images & Broken
Selves (by Stanley Krippner, whom I hope to meet in Basel), on Prayer
in All Things, Saint John's Prayer Book, in connection with Nicholas
Rescher's System of Pragmatic Idealism (never heard of), in a Search
for Philosophical Anthropology, in a book on Museum Director Sandberg,
on The Image of Spiritual Liberty in the Sufi Movement, and as I knew
already in Acid Dreams, and the Psychedelics Encyclopedia. I could mention
a few other titles of which even Google isn't aware of: but this list
(I printed it out in paper; 4 amazing pages) really blows my mind, which
is good for it.
And I feel fine, coming home from a warm get together at the gardencommmunity
where Edith and I spend the summermonths, in the North of Amsterdam
which will the new Left Bank in the years to come!
This is the year! You are it. It is Mozart's Year. It is Einstein's
Year. It is (at least in Holland) Rembrandt Year. We had a chat with
the painter, a few years ago, my wife Edith and I, a picture of the
three of us was made (at the entrance of Madame Tussaud) and he agreed
with the Beatles then, that things were getting better and better and
better all the time - if we had the time to wait for it. So for the
moment. Goodbye, and a picture of this memorable meeting. Later. Simon
Vinkenoog.
Sunday, January
1, 2006
Welcoming in a new Sunday-child, called 2006 anno Domini. Bring in
the Light. Let the Sun shine in! See you later! Just to show that
I'm here, heart beating, expectation: Life Starts Every Moment. This
is It! Yours Simon Vinkenoog.
Monday, december 19, 2005
My biographer, Derrick Bergman
obtained a press accreditation for the Basel Symposium on LSD, The
Spirit of Basel 13-15 january next month/year. My wife and I decided
to go to Basel earlier, to attend the 100th birthday of Albert Hoffman,
"the man who changed my life", the 11th of january 2006.
Derrick asks me for some more information about the speakers; of the
72 persons whose photographs I see in the programme, there is a dozen
or so individuals I know more or less, having encountered them and in
some cases became friends forever.
Of the four of the 29 Americans I know in person there is one I know
by mail only : Rick Doblin, editor of MAPS Bulletin, MAPS being the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. 'Founded
in 1986, MAPS' mission is to develop MDM<A, LSD, other psychedelics
and marijuana into FDA-approved medicines.' Further info: www.maps.org
One of the other Atlantic-crossers is Stanley Krippner, with whom I
wandered around Amsterdam when he did his research here for a book on
Psychedelic Art, which was published later and included one
or two paintings by Alex de Bruijn.
That was in the sixties, and in the mean time many a psychedelic Earthling
wandered through the streets and along the canals of Mad Master, among
whom Timothy Leary himself. More recently, in 1996, a panelmeeting took
place in Luc Sala's Mystèr 2000, with Alexander and
Ann Shulgin, authors of PIHKAL A Chemical Love Story, and its
successor TIHKAL, who're expected in Basel as well. About MDMA, Ecstasy
& other inventions.
I open the first (unread) book on page 373 and read the first words
of the Eagle's Gift, as explained to Carlos Castaneda by Don Juan: "The
power that governs the destiny of all living beings is called the Eagle
... because it appears to the seer as an immeasurable jetblack eagle
... its height reaching to infinity" and Shulgin being 'shaken
by a burst of intense anger'. I'd just mentioned to my Dutch Kersvers-readers
these days that I wanted to copy for them the the Eagle's Gift, as it
appears on the pages 180-185 in my translation of the book, De vlucht
van de adelaar (Uitgeverij Hollandia, 1981). Coincidental Aha!
The other handshakes I exchanged in the past with English and German-Swiss-Austrian
participants of the coming symposium had to do with my participation
in the congress called The Dialects of Liberation and the
Wholly Communion Poetry reading at the Royal Abert Hall, june 11,
1965 in London, when the International Times was published
and Indica bookshop and gallery flourished.
My german speaking friends from Germany, Austria or Switzerland I met
either here in Amsterdam, or during my visit to Timothy Leary there
in the winter of 1972, which resulted in a book: Timothy Leary Magiër
- het ABZ van de psychedelische avant-garde (Sijthoff, 1972). Among
my translations the Alpert-Leary-Metzner version of the Tibetan Book
of the Dead, The Psychedelic Experience, Leary's prisonbook
Confesions of a Hope Fiend - to throw in Aldous Huxley's
Doors of Perception and Heaven & Hell, to bring this
sentence to a full stop.
Werner Pieper, Heidelberg-publisher of Die grüne Kraft is
especially dear to me, and so is Sergius Golowin, after only a few meetings.We're
all so much younger now, seeing the new Renaissance behind all Fear
& Loathing.. Hi Michael Horowitz, hi Happy and hi againMiles! Godwilling,
see you all soon. Simon Vinkenoog.
The following photographs were taken by Eddy Posthuma de Boer during my second LSD-session in a psychological setting, supervised by Professor Henk Barendregt, febrary 1960
.
Dinsdag 20 december 2005
Monday, december 12, 2005
Edith went shopping, while I conversed with Arjan Witte, who is producing a cd with my poems and music by Spinvis, new sounds indeed! This is what she bought for me in coffeeshop 't Ooievaartje, next to our wonderful Moroccan butcher Kaddour; this is the way I smoke my dope since the doctor told me to stop smoking more than a package of Gauloises a day - ever since my Paris-years in the early Fifties, this will help me through the day:
And this is the
cashier's note of supermarket C 1000 for statistic's sake and
the fun of it. This does not include the meat, fish, and bread - for
which she has special addresses - our baker, Hartog, has been elected
the best baker in the Netherlands. (Ruyschstraat 56, Amsterdam-Oost).
His motto printed on the paperbag is:" Wat kan een sterf'lijk mens
beter wensen,/ dan koren op 't veld, brood en vrede voor alle mensen!!"
The bill for drinks did not give details and is printed in disappearing
thermic fax, unprintable here. It amounted € 62.18 - wine, rhum,
whisky, cocacola, fruit- and applejuice, iced tea and Spa-water.
This is a contribution to the Why Not Theater.
Divine Madness is the theme of the party that will take place,
DV, in Paradiso december 28, later this year, organised by The Amsterdam
Balloon Company, HQ Ruigoord.
The herring tastes wonderful! And indeed as my baker says:" What
better can a man wish for himself/than corn in the fields, peace on
earth and bread on the shelf". Your Amsterdam poet Simon Vinkenoog.
Saturday, december 10, 2005
Round about midnight, just back
and energized, exhilirated by the grand reunion we just had in Ouderkerk
aan de Amstel, one of the southern pastoral suburbs of Amsterdam, one
of the first exits on highway A 2 Amsterdam-Utrecht.
Two of my children, Arthur (Nov.18.1978), Anna (Dec.28, 1973) and their
halfsister Talitha (1967) celebrated their birthday together; our extended
family invited and almost all of them were there, my present wife Edith
(since 1987), my ex-wife Barbara, mother of Talitha, Anna, Arthur and
Juana, baptized Maria Juana, 1963), Talitha's father Bob Lens and Arthurs
Ouderkerk-parents, Kees and Ellis Verheul, who took good care of him
when Barbara and I could not make it together anymore. He became the
eldest of four more sons (Kees jr, Dirk, Gijs, Bart) and one daughter
Anna; all the boys outgrow my 1m84.
Ellis' sisters Astrid and Irene were there, so my son Alex (1961), his
wife Dagmar and their two children Marvin and Sammy-Jean, 6 and 2, Talitha's
husband Mark with Bodil and Babette-Diesje 4 and 1, so were Stephanie,
my son Arthur's beloved with her parents, Diane and Tim, and her twinsister
Marloes and younger sister Emma.
Edith reminds me to mention Mark's mother and brother, and there were
more come-along-party friends whose names I don't remember, but two
of Anna's friends who I know from their kindergarten schooldays were
there: Cristel and Susanne, and Talitha's schoolfriend Hester with husband
and two small boys.
If that ain't an extended family: I forgot to mention my oldest son
Robert (1947) , who downloaded more music and movies than he can see
and listen to in ten lifetimes - and it's a good sight to see your four
children, two grandchildren and their lovely mothers together.
Pure joy makes me do this enumeration for whoever is interested - said
the old patriarch at age of 77! Beautiful people, this season's people:
w're all there, ready for things to come, enjoying each other's existence,
happy to be alive and participating in it!
Thursday, december 8, 2005
A beautiful performance, indeed, by Steve Ben Israel and Baruch Baba
Israel, last evening at Bitterzoet (Bittersweet), a multi-media
place we'd never been to; in the past it was the location of the Werktheater,
and my old friend Nico/Floris Bunink tried to get a jazz-scene started
there, but died unexpectedly... all that years ago.
And now, this old friend from Living Theater-days in the '60's-'70s
(they were as a group 14 years on the road through Europe, North Africa
and the Middle East) showed up in Amsterdam after 35 years, accompanying
his son Baba, 31, who found his way in here in the hiphop-scene and
gave an overwhelming rendering of all which is new and exciting within
this context: admirable! And the father Steve used to be one of the
first stand-up comedians in New York (Jetty told me), picking up the
streetwise lessons of Lenny Bruce and Don Buckley. The programm said:
'Come and experience a journey through two directly connected lives-
from family to the stage, from Beat poets to Beatboxing, from riffs
to rhymes, from hipsters to Hip Hop, from counter to culture to "Continuity:
A Father and a son journey from Theater to Hip Hop"'. So much for
that.
The Three
of Us
... never a dull moment ...
In the meantime the show does go on, and I'd like to draw the attention
to www.bitterzoet.com
and you'll see all the niceties this laid-down little theater in Amsterdam,
not far from the Central Station has to offer you. Here I am in my role
as travel-guide. Come to the cosmos of Amsterdam Magic City! Enjoy!
From Joy! Through Joy to Joy! Makom Aleph: The New Amsterdam, city of
178 nationalities, New Babylon, imbued by winds from All over the Place.
Here & Now. Tue das Nächstliegende. Goethe Says. So
I'm off into the clear weather winter day of the driest, stormiest and
hottest year ever measured! Simon Vinkenoog, Bishop Universal Life Church
(1966, Modena, California).
Tuesday , December 6, 2005
Yesterday I received the programme-booklet (42 pages) of the International
Symposium on the Occasion of the 100th Birthday of Albert Hofmann, Problem
Child and Wonder Drug, in Basel 13 to 15 january 2006, which
I hope to attend as one of the 72 (!) speakers, from the USA (29), Switzerland
(17), Germany (16) 5 (Great Britain (5), Austria (2), Canada (2) and
the Netherlands (1, that's me!).
See Kersvers-dutch homepage today, more info Gaia Media Foundation
, www.lsd.info
I'm sure the Spirit of Bassel-meeting will be gathering new energies
for the years to come, not only because of the new information being
disseminated (Hofmann: Evolution now is the expansion of consciousness),
but also through the synergy of so many person-to-person meetings. I'll
be glad to meet people I've seen before, but also those I don't know
yet.
The New Yorker Steve Ben Israel (68), whom I knew as a member of the
Living Theater-community, which made its peregrinations through
Europe in the sixties, arrived in Amsterdam, to give a show tomorow
with his son Baba (31) at the Bitterzoet Venue in the Spuistraat 2.
Full of spirituality and humor, the two of them, we had an inspiring
get together.
In the first three installments of this SPOT-story I made my points
clear by starting to write about moments in my autobiography. I'm in
the middle of Here & Now, as usual, and I'll come back to the past
when needed. It's all One, as we are, on this Planet One. Love Special
Delivery. That's all for the moment. Sincerely Yours, Simon Vinkenoog.
Thursday, december 1, 2005
The meeting in Amsterdam, anno 1957, with Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso
and Peter Orlovsky (I wrote about them in the weekly Haagse Post;
maybe the first time the Beat Generation was mentioned in the
Dutch press) would be the first of many encounters - see the published
Journals Mid-Fifties 1954-1958 et al; I contributed
to the Festschrift entitled Best Minds: A Tribute to Allen
Ginsberg, celebrating his sixtieth birthday (Lospecchio Press,
New York 1986) and also wrote an article after Allen's death (1997)
for the daily NRC Handelsblad, Een grandioos adieu,
april 11, 1997..
This text is also published in Me and my Peepee, the third
book of translations of Ginsberg's poems I published in the Netherlands
(Passage, Groningen 2002) being poems translated through the years during
Allen's poetry-readings at the Poetry International Festival
in Rotterdam, the One World Poetry Festival Amsterdam, Kosmos
and Paradiso (where he recorded Jessoree Road with the Mondriaan Sextet)
in Amsterdam and Buddhist Centers in Nijmegen and elsewhere.
'Me and my peepee' is the last line of a poem Allen wrote in Flushings
(Vlissingen) with a listing of objects found on the beach. The translations
comprise poems from the Collected Poems, King of May, The Fall of
America, Mind breaths all opver the place, White shroud, Cosmpolitan
greetings, poems 1986-1992.
The first book of translations was called Proef m'n tong in
je oor (Taste my tongue in your ear), comprising Howl and other poems,
Kaddish and Reality Sandwiches, along with shorter prose-texts
(published by De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 1966, reprinted 1972); the second
was a bilingual edition of the Plutonian Ode (Uitgeverij 26l,
Heerlen 1980).
"Be kind to yourself, because
the bliss of your own kindness will flood the police tomorrow.-
Be kind to this place, which is your present habitation, with derrik
and radar tower and flower in the ancient brook.-
Be kind to the Chinese psalm in the red transistor in your breast -
Be kind to the heroes that have lost their names in the newspaper -
Be kind to the universe of self that trembles and shudders and thrills
in XX Century."
Let the good times roll, also in XXI Century! Simon Vinkenoog
Third - and last - call - Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Nutshell-optics, bird's eye
view.
Simon Vinkenoog, born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, July 18, 1928,
9.05 a.m., only child of Hendrik Albert Vinkenoog, postman & Anna
Katharina van Meel, housewife. With my parents divorced, when I was
five years old, I lived with my mother alone in the Pijp-quarter of
Amsterdam, close to the famous daily Albert Cuypmarket. Waryears, Nazi-oppression
and socalled 'Hungerwinter' when the Allied Forces at the end of 1944
left Western Holland occupied by the Germans in their run to Berlin,
to meet the Russians. Hunger is a great Master, not easy to forget.
After first marriage at 18, left Amsterdam for Paris, France, with 2nd
wife-to-be at the age of 20, lived there for eight years, since may
1949 special requests documents officer at the HQ of UNESCO
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 19
avenue Kléber, then) in which function - distribution of documents
to delegates - I spent twice two months abroad for General Conferences,
in Montevideo 1954 and in New Delhi 1956.
Admirer - through Paris newspapers headlines - of Gary Davis, who tore
up his American passport in the extra-territorial Conference Grounds
of the Palais Chaillot during the United Nations General Assembly in
december 1948 and declared himself World Citizen # 1.
I enjoyed Paris (love)life to the full: Saint-Germain-des-Prés,
Quartier Latin and Montparnasse. Sidney Béchet, Mezz Mezzrow,
bebop, Juliette Gréco, Boris Vian, Mouloudji, marihuana, the
lettristes and situationists, 'pataphysics and absurdist theater, art
gallery vernissages, parties - a number of them at my 7th floor studio
on Boulevard Garibaldi, 47, metro Sèvres-Lecourbe. At one of
these parties Norman Mailer was my guest; he remembered the occasion,
when I asked him in 1969, when we encountered each other at Cape Canaveral
(now Kennedy) to witness the Apollo 11-take-off to the Moon.
In the meantime the upstart of my Dutch-language literary activities:
a first book of poems Wondkoorts (Traumatic Fever) 1950, a
little magazine blurb (8 issues, 1950-1951), the first anthology
of young experimental poets Atonaal, 1951, other books of poetry
and the first autobiographical novel Zolang te water, 1954.
Letters from Paris in the Dutch monthly Litterair Paspoort,
1954-1956. Contributions to Podium, de Gids and other
lit/mags and periodicals.
Returning to the mothercountry, to hear my own language, in 1957, I
joined the editorial staff of the Haagse Post-weekly (published
in Amsterdam), met Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky
that year (we became lifelong friends, and I Allen's translator) and
had my first experiment with LSD-25 in a medical-physiological context
at the Wilhelmina Hospital under supervision of Messrs. Barendrecht,
Thuring en Van Ree, in february 1959 - but that'll be the beginning
of the next episode in this continuing story. Yours for today. Simon
Vinkenoog.
Second Call
- Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Yesterday I, Simon Vinkenoog, introduced myself here by giving three
quotes; today I'd like to elaborate on one of these, to wit Norman Mailer's
Advertisements for Myself, in the Complete and unexpurgated
edition of Panther Books London 1972 (first edition 1961).
Hip, Hell and the Navigator, an interview with Mailer by Richard
G. Stern, May 6, 1958.
MAILER: "I think Hip is
particularly illuminated by one notion so central and so shattering
that its religious resonances and reverberations are going to dominate
this coming century. And I think there is one single burning pinpoint
of the vision in Hip; it's that God is in danger of dying. In my very
limited knowledge of theology, this never really has been expressed
before. I believe Hip conceives of Man's fate being tied up with God's
fate. God is no longer all-powerful. The moral consequences of this
are not only staggering, but they're thrilling, because moral experience
is intensified rather than diminished."
STERN: "Now that's fantastic assertion.That really makes me sit
up. What is the notion of God behind all this? Do you mean that some
kind of personal god is dying with us?"
MAILER: "Now I only talk about my own vision of it, really, because
it's not the sort of thing that you normally talk about with most hipsters.
I think that the particular God we can conceive of is a god whose relationship
to the universe we cannot divine; that is, how enormous. He is in the
scheme of the universe we can't begin to say. But almost certainly,
He is not all-powerful; He exists as a warring element in a divided
universe, and we are a part of - perhaps the most important part of
- His great expression. His enormous destiny; perhaps He is trying to
impose upon the universe his conception of being against other conceptions
of being very much opposed to His. Maybe we are in a sense the seed,
the seed-carriers, the voyagers, the explorers, the embodiment of that
embattled vision; maybe we are engaged in a heroic activity, and not
a mean one."
Not a mean one, indeed! In the
midst of it, as absolute beginners. Click on Abundance, the
blessing Goddess top right, and you'll see the curtain rising.
Welcome anyway. Do browse around. Suggestions welcome through Guesthouse.
This platform being a clearing house of information I collect and disseminate
non-academic Consciousness Research: Bewusstsein. Witness the
Here & Now as experienced by an Amsterdam-born performing
poet, who is happily married - look for the pictures and see we're allright!
Still surfing, yours Simon Vinkenoog.
Madmaster = of course, Am Ster dam.
Mokum Aleph. New Jerusalem.
More to come. Shalom, God willing. God-speed.
First Call - Monday, November 28, 2005
Let me please introduce myself,
Simon Vinkenoog (Amsterdam 1928 - Amsterdam Here & Now) laterally,
through three quotable quotes which will make my english-language appearance
on the WWW somewhat clearer.
Thanks to the cursor on SPOT you have now become an invisible member
of the Society for the Protection of Truth, with its center
everywhere and its circumference nowhere. No-one is in charge. No-one
is excluded. We don't have to send certificates to make your membertship
official; you'll know for yourself if you participate or not. See also
the Optimist's Creed on the CREDO-link on the dutch-language homepage.
1. "For I wish to attempt
an entrance into the mysteries of murder, suicide, incest, orgy, orgasm
and Time. These themes now fill my head and make me think I have a fair
chance to become the first philosopher of Hip."
Norman Mailer, in Advertisements for myself. The White Negro,
1957.
2. "War is always near,
has been all through the past years. War is a threat given in the very
kind of official formal thinking & acting, while the true, deep
issues of human life are kept hidden in the background."
Wilhelm Reich, Lewisburg Penitentiary, last letter to his son Peter,
October 22, 1957.
3. "Das' Gesetz des Zufall',
welches alle Gesetze in sich begreift und uns unfasslich ist wie der
Urgrund, aus dem alles Leben steigt, kann nur unter völliger Hingabe
an das Unbewusste erlebt werden.
Ich behaupte, wer dieses Gesetz befolge, erschaffe reines Lebens."
(The law of chance', which comprises
all laws within itself, and as incomprehensiblew to us as the original
source from which all life arises, can only be experienced by complete
surrender to the unconsciousness.
I maintain that thew person following this law will create real life.)
Hans/Jean Arp, Unsern täglichen Traum.
(to be continued, oh yes, DV)