--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote:
CURTIS: This exchange made it worth participating on FFL this month! Thanks. ROBIN: A wonderfully generous and fair and noble summing up. We are grateful for this, Curtis. I entirely concur--and not under duress either. I envy your brotherly love with Barry. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@> wrote: > > CURTIS: That was a bit of a revelation and a cogent analysis of why we > > can't get there from here between some posters. ROBIN: Indubitably. The self-objectivity of you and Barry in terms of appraising your performance on FFL, it is something I strive for, Curtis. Well, at least you don't have to worry about getting crucified for your willingness to stand for the truth. Curtis: I am the way, the truth, and the life. Except you come through me you cannot enter the kingdom of Curtis. I wish I could enter that kingdom, Curtis. My conscience in this regard is my enemy. > BARRY: Glad you enjoyed it. ROBIN: I enjoyed it too, Barry. But my response carries the universality of my pleasure in it, not the inside fidelity of my friendship with you. "Glad you enjoyed it"--why even have to say this out loud to each other, Barry? We all know that you would be glad that Curtis enjoyed it. Stick with the secret handshake. Don't give away the initiation ceremony with all the skulls. > > CURTIS: Since I know the hypothetical guy you were imagining... > > it also explains why it can be fun to go point by point > > to stimulate a different part of my brain. That was > > largely what doing philosophy involved and I enjoy that > > in a different way from creative writing. ROBIN: What a guy we have here who presents himself to us. Inside talk to Barry: closed off to the rest of us. This quarantined talk between you and Barry: it is a singular phenomenon on FFL: no one else acts as if their bond was a Freemasonry; only you and Barry. This is decisive in its sentence of failure. I don't know any posters on the other side--the hostile alliance arrayed against you guys--who speak in a kind of intimate sphere of seclusion. A wonder, this. You have stopped talking to reality; you are only talking to yourselves. Hope this works when you come to the Big Event that all of us face, Curtis. But then you are a True Believer. CLICK > BARRY: Professor Phillips points out that neither of these modes > of brain functioning are superior, and in fact the real > benefit is that we can switch between them, to train and > develop different parts of the brain. In her words, > "...cognition is shaped not just by what we read, but how > we read it." Reading rigorously and analyzing the ideas > presented and even the structure of the language and how > the ideas are presented exercises one mode of functioning > in our brains, and cultivates that mode. Reading just for > the fun of it exercises another mode of functioning, and > cultivates it. Both are necessary to see the world around > us clearly, from a balanced point of view. ROBIN: You and Curtis: You guys didn't even have to read the theory: it is already embodied in the performance of each of you. This is just self-congratulations. You are reading a description of what your brains do perfectly already. I like this. I am jealous of this. It is an achievement which we can only lament because it is clear, from the tone of your conversation with Curtis, that the rest of us have been left out. "Reading rigorously and analyzing the ideas presented and even the structure of the language and how the ideas are presented": this is an exercise that is manifest in every one of your posts, Barry. "Both are necessary to see the world around us clearly, from a balanced point of view". Oops! I get it. This is Monty Python. But since I can't quite bring myself to believe that, I am going to take you and Curtis seriously from here until I get to the end. > > CURTIS: Drilling deeper into this thoery I can also see how being > > attacked here stimulates a pseudo fear mechanism that > > prompts and urgency of response. Combined with things > > that a reader feels are inaccurate it creates a sturdy > > chain to pull and get pulled by. That may be a case for > > not posting in a place where a lot of that goes on. It > > is hard to resist getting pulled into that cycle, > > especially when not much more of that writing is going on. ROBIN: For your position to be true, Curtis, it requires that Raunchy's three satirical pieces didn't make it. Are you prepared to lie through your teeth and declare that it is your honest experience that Barry's assessment of the efficacy of Raunchy's dialogues is in agreement with a truth beyond and outside of your, my, Raunchy's, and Barry's POV? Your loyalty to your friend comes ahead of any regard for truth. And the appalling and ludicrous implication of what you say here is: NO ONE BUT YOU AND ME, BARRY, ARE WRITING WITH HONESTY, CLARITY, AND SINCERITY. EVERYONE ELSE IS WRITING OUT OF FEAR AND DEFENSIVENESS AND INSECURITY. This is so fatuous. You don't believe it for a second--BUT YOU WILL NOW FIGHT TO THE DEATH TO MAINTAIN THE LIE YOU INSINUATE IS THE TRUTH HERE. This immunizing yourselves from the critical judgment of anyone who would quarrel with anything you write here on FFL--how maladaptive is this? This is an anti-Darwinian principle you are living by, Curtis: survival of those most willing to cheat their conscience. > > CURTIS: I used to think about some of the back and forth stuff > > about Maharishi's philosophy here as more of the first > > thing, the stimulation of the close attention part of my > > brain. As it has drifted further and further from any > > content, it has become less and less satisfying in that > > regard, so I switch to the creative but negative angle > > creating images of trollish scenes to keep me interested > > in writing. ROBIN: Some of the posters here on FFL have attempted to take your measure, Curtis--and they have written with conviction and honesty and force. You have never once addressed them in a way which would convince any honest witness that you were willing to contemplate the possible truth of what they said such that you could demonstrate in your rebuttal that you had experienced why and how these criticisms did not apply to you--COULD not apply to you. (Or your expatriate buddy.) You must, to be honest to your past, remember our friendly and complexly reasoned dialogues before we fell out with each other. There has been so much going on here on FFL, Curtis, and when you make smug and indulgent generalizations like you are making here you utterly betray the truth of history, your own conscience, and the experience of every honest reader on FFL. This is a disgrace. I never knew you could be so craven. I cannot believe the experience inside you, inside Barry, which permits you this license with the truth. If it served your amour propre, you would, in coming back from the front in World War I, describe the fighting as a mere skirmish. You have been wounded here on FFL, Curtis. And the matters at stake have been serious indeed. > > CURTIS: This really gives me a lot to think about, thanks for > > that Barry. I would like to become a bit more conscious > > of my outcomes here and ultimately if being here is where > > my real outcomes are likely to get met in becoming the > > kind of writer I want to be. ROBIN: I don't know if FFL will serve "the real outcomes" you are seeking as a writer, Curtis, but for sure you will get a dose of a form of reality which challenges your cherished and FANATICALLY HELD assumptions about yourself, about truth, and about reality. So being on FFL was all about improving your writing, then? No, Curtis, you have been drawn into battle, and you have fought for your goddamn life. You have not emerged triumphant. Live with it, Curtis. > BARRY: Much more research is being done by this same team, > including fMRI scans of readers to determine how the > two different modes of reading affect such things as > how they experience emotion arising from what they're > reading. Will those emotions be stronger and affect > the person more when reading for pleasure, or for > analysis? ROBIN: Well, Barry, when it comes to disputation, argument, debate, your brain is not getting ANY exercise or stimulation at all--but you know this. Your heart is dead. Raunchy has hit you hard in three instances--and has beautifully and incontestably succeeded, as eventually your silence will tacitly give proof of. You never analyze the argument of your critic, Barry. Once more: You never analyze the argument of your critic, Barry. Everything anyone needs to know about Barry Wright is found in Raunchy's three dialogues. Everything you need to know about yourself. What a terrible sentence: never to know what that minimal state of internal grace is whereby ONE KNOWS ONESELF AND HOW ONE APPEARS TO OTHERS. And Christ wept, Susan. > BARRY: But one of the valuable things learned even so far > from this projects is that each of us has the ability > to *change the way that our own brains work*. We can > shift them from one mode of operation to another, > just by the *intent* we bring to our reading. This > is a discovery that I cannot help but relate to work > on mindfulness meditation and fMRI, which has also > shown that we can control which areas of our brains > "light up" and are used or not used, depending on > whether or not they are appropriate for the > circumstances. ROBIN: This must be the most ironic paragraph ever on FFL (as uttered by the author): "Each of us has the ability to *change the way that our own brains work*." Not yours, Barry baby. PAY ATTENTION, BARRY. I am calling you on your disgraceful trip here. Reality may have given up on you, Barry. Seems that very well may be the case. There is no shift of modes with you, Barry; you are one algorithm--I have not felt you experience the impact upon you of anything written in response to anything you have written. You have made yourself invulnerable to reality. When your brain "lights up", Barry, I'll tell you. > BARRY: On the literature side of the equation, these > experiments may help us to understand the impact > that great writing has on us. As Natalie Phillips > says, "...give us a bigger, richer picture of how > our minds engage with art or, in our case, of the > complex experience we know as literary reading." ROBIN: You seem incapable of having a "complex experience we know as literary reading", Barry: you are sealed up in your world, and this spectacle of you posting--in polemical fashion--is one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life: because you are so unwilling (I suppose unable) to receive into yourself the tremendous intention of reality to break into you and knock some sense into you. Too many honest and sincere critics coming at you, Barry. You judge your critics and make an even more severe judgment fall upon your head. Raunchy has spoken the last word with her third dialogue, Barry Baby.
