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Copy to Pam

Nov. 21, ’88.

Dear Norm

Thanks for your letter. I sent a copy to Pam.

I am going to send you several stuffs to show what I have

been doing. But for now, I tell you about Leonard Cohen’s

Beautiful Losers. It is old stuff from Hippy days, published in

mid 1960’s, and it was a hit then. So you might know it. Anyway,

I write assuming you have some memory of the story. I came to it

from a review which said something about “Cosmology”. So I

checked it up.

There are other “motives”. One is your letter, though I do

not know what you said led me to this. Something you said did the

trick. Another one came from a Blackfoot lady. I gave an exam to

my introductory physics class and the result was disastrous. It

depressed me enormously. I cannot teach. Not that I taught

before. I do not “teach” any way. But this time, it made me think

that I ought to resign. Then, I met this woman from whom I am

learning Blackfoot language. She asked “How are you?” (I mean she

asked, not just greeting. Incidentally, you say “Tsa Niita’piwa?”

If you mean greeting, then you reply “Soka’piwa”.) So I told her

the reason for my depression. She laughed and said “Don’t you

have Lust any more?”.

“Lust!” The word sent me down to my memories. I am a clumsy

guy from my early childhood. That is why I tried to “know”

everything about humans. By 6th grade, I understood what adults

were talking about. I had no difficulty reading adult books, and

read a lot, more than my schoolteacher mother ever did. That was

a kind of compensation for my inability to do “Lusty” things.

They say “Those who cannot, teach”. In my case, “Those who cannot

do, try to know”. Relative to that, you are doing splendidly.

But, I am used to it and that does not hurt me much, for the most

time. Only occasionally, it does hurt, and I go down deep into

despair. Usually, I do not complain, because there is no use

saying anything to anybody. They have their own troubles and

doing the best they can. The last thing they need is someone

nagging them.

My mistake was that understanding of what is “talked” is not

understanding of anything.

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“Ah, that is your Ego!” you would say? Yes that is there

too, So, I tell you my troubles. But Orientals have this

peculiarity that they do not talk much in Love and in Sorrow.

They would be silent about deepest part of feeling, as if they

are afraid that talking might make things cheap. Oriental lovers

just gaze into each other’s eyes and don’t utter even a single

word for 3 hours. It also happens between friends. (This, Leonard

Cohen would know nothing about.)

Now, about this Beautiful Loser. It is a story, or rather a

“non-story”, about an Indian Saint Catherine Tekakwitha, the

narrator which is a scholar-researcher who admires Saint

Tekakwitha, Edith an Indian girlfriend of his, and “F.” a

homosexual friend. I do not know if Cohen was conscious of it or

not, it involves 4 elements. That is the Symmetry Group (2 x 2),

characteristic to Native American Myth-Mandala. [The story “To

Carry The Grace” is based on the Native Geometry of 4 elements. I

added one more, Tree Princess, to suggest a way out. You know who

the Tree Princess is. But my Princess is not quite ready to

accept the meaning of her Being. That is another reason why I

look into stories like this.]

Tekakwitha is an Iroquois name. She was a Mohawk girl

adapted from “Tribe A… ” and was Christianized by Jesuits. She

represents the Native Spirituality. Edith represents decaying of

the same “Tribe A… ” in the story and a (suspected) member of

only some 20 survivors. Out of the 20, 4 are young women whom F

“managed to fuck them all”, including Edith. F is the modern

decadence, nihilist, sex maniac. F is one side of the Euro

American Culture which does the “let it go”. He also represents

“Urban Indian” Phenomenon. The narrator is another side of the

same White Culture which did not “let it go” — in story he is

having “Constipation” problem —.

In terms of Group Dynamics the “story” is simple one. But

of course it is not “a story”, but a Style of writing — in the

sense “media is the message” —. I could not help thinking that

if you write like this, you would have sold a half million copies

two years ago.

It is only clumsy guys like me who see “Geometry” in

stories. The million people who read this story, probably did not

read “Geometry”. Say, 90% read “Explicit Sex”, 1% read an Indian

Story, and 1% read something else.

This does not say, however, that people did not get

anything beyond a dirty sex story. Implicitly, they do probably

sense something. And for the sensing of that “something”, I do

not think it to be of any help to know the Geometrical Structure

of the story (or the Dynamics of the situation). I only do it

because I am always looking for

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“Native Science” in anything, so much so that I see the (2×2)

Group Dynamics almost everywhere.

And, that “doing science” to story destroys my enjoyment of

“unadulterated” reading. I cannot read things for pure

enjoyment’s sake any longer. That is bad. For a while Cohen

entertained me by defying my “science”. And I liked his “Style”.

But it lasted only a quarter of the story through. I soon caught

up with the author in technical sense, and the rest became

predictable, and in fact deteriorated even in its “style”. His

story got to the climax too soon, like premature ejaculation.

That is no fun. The picture of Catherine Tekakwitha stayed on the

wall in the room where all those Lusts were going. The “sensual”

Tekakwitha did not “come”. The story ends with the suicide of

Edith (extinction of the romanticized Indians) in the first

quarter of the book. If I did not have a respect for Tekakwitha

enough to make up a sensual story in my imagination the

“Cosmology” world have collapsed. At expense of (1) all manner of

fucking, (2) suicide of an Indian gir1, and (3) religious death

of an Iroquois Saint Maiden, the story failed to elucidate what

this “Lust” is.

[My theory of (2×2) Dynamics suggests that Cohen missed one

more entity (power being) to go beyond the romanticism that

is too frequent in Whitemen’s intellect. Pam’s “Rock” might

be the one (4).

To be sure, in Cohen’s Story, there was a feeble attempt to

go back to “Spirituality”. That is the episode about the

“Water”. It took place a few days before Edith commits

suicide. “Going back to the Tradition” often takes place in

Desperation” “Going back to Nature” (and join Indian way of

life), “Going back to Uninhibited Sex”, etc. are variations

on the same theme. The frantic sex life is the Last Refuge

for those “Urban Indians”, from European Tribes or Native

American ones.

In the desiccated modern urban society, they try to escape

through the only intimate sensual medium left for them. The

Capitalism left nothing else but Sex. It is a “let it go”

only in the sense of relieving Constipation in the urban

Waste Land. It is the only “moist” thing in the Hell. As

such I respect it, but, to me, it is rather painful.

The “Natural Love” is indeed uninhibited and people did

walk around naked. Sex was free, but it was no “Big Deal”

like those Urban Indians are obsessed with. Sex was as

natural as eating, peeing, etc. That is, Love was diffused

all around, permeated in, distributed throughout every

interaction in the community life. There is no “Intensity”

of the kind that Cohen was

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“making points” and keeping scores about. They shared women

and men, mothers, sisters, brothers, just as they shared

foods, dwellings, works, and life.

Bourgeoisie life dried up all that Except Private

Possession, including Private Sex. Having Free Sex does not

bring back the Love Community. We perform all sorts of

rituals, including Sex but that would be vain. What was

lost will not come back, no more than Buffalo herds come

back to the prairie. That is, unless we bring back the

whole Community, the whole Boundary Condition to the Field

Equation, the whole Enchanted Cosmos.

While we are refusing our neighbors Free Foods, Free Sex

will not liberate us. Love is a whole life, not an

obsession with “coming” and “going”.

Intellectually and Emotionally, Cohen probably knew it. But

he also knew that Urban Bourgeoisie Indians, from European

Tribe or Native American ones, are not capable of the Whole

Love. Hence there is no way out. That is why his story is a

story of Death. He meant to write another Waste Land. And

he did.

Hippies were too narcissistic to clean up their ass of

Christian shit like “Chosen People”. And probably they

thought themselves as the “Vanguard” for Sexual Revolution.

The “Savage Indian Wild Sex” might be their way of “back to

nature”. In a narrow sense, they were correct. Except their

Bourgeoisie snobbism blinded them to their lifestyle based

on destruction of Nature and desecration of community.

Greenwich Village had nothing in common with the Amazonian

Tribe Village that George Wallace wrote a poem about.]

The “Cosmology” of Beautiful Losers is analyzed by Dennis

Lee in Savage Fields. ANANSI 1977. It gave a rave review to

Cohen. But I am rather disappointed. Most “erratic” literature on

Indians do not do justice to the “Lust” that my lady friend is

referring to. Sex is there to sell the book.

The “Beautiful Losers” are not beautiful. But it is perhaps

another “Constipation” of Euro American Intellect. And if that

was the aim of his description, Cohen succeeded very well. Saint

Tekakwitha failed to “loosen” the intellect. That may be blamed

on Judeo-Christianity.

By the same token, the cover picture on a book by Gunther

S. Stent, Paradoxes Of Progress, is misleading. The picture is

from “The Golden Age” by Lukas Cranach. Naked

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men and women are dancing around a tree, perhaps the Tree of

Knowledge. The book talked of problems of “Scientism”, suggesting

“The Fall” by “knowing”. But it did not cut through the surface

of discussing “Ethics of Science” etc., to get to the “Lustic

Origin” of human Intellect.

So I am back to the question of Lust. Cohen was writing

about Lust. So was Stendhal, Lawrence, Goethe, Nietzsche, etc.

etc. Also, all Indian stories written by Europeans are stories of

Lust in one form or another. Even Max Weber was writing about

Lust, which he saw as Conflict-violence-irrationality and hence

could not find any way out but to control it by Power. That is

what I told Galtung. Galtung, being a good “scientist” in the

Weberian sense, was very much surprised hearing a physicist say

this, In effect, I told him that “Peace Research” has not even

begun to look at the Origin of Conflict-Violence, though it was

the theme of Literature and Art since anything was written or

drawn by humans.

I would very much like to write about “Lust” for Peace

Research. Alas! I am not much of a man of Lust. My sexual

adventures, aside from book-knowledge and imagination, is very

limited. Those who know it, namely you, do not write. Despite all

my pushing, Pam does not use writing as a means of knowing. I

would think that one does not need to constipate before shit.

(Pregnancy is a different matter. According to Blackfoot Myth,

women have to have a Big-Being Orgasm to get pregnant. That is a

part of the Lust.) But then, what could I say? I do not have

anything even to constipate! I write and write, in a hope that

they come to constipate someday. I hope it comes before my Lust

runs out.

I heard that “Okanagan” means the Lost People (or Lost

Souls). It has a marble quarry somewhere, which I have not yet

seen. I might pay homage there and see what the Rock tells me.

What was that Thomas Hardy was suggesting about the Power of Rock

(Stonehenge) in Tess?

Yours

Sam K.

P.S. If you do not need it for a while, can I borrow back

Easlea’s Fathering the Unthinkable. Internal-library Loan

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is somehow holding me up on this book. In the spring semester

next, I plan to do a bit of Feminist Science in Physics 2020. I

also coordinate an Integrated study course on Peace and War.

There, I intend to talk about something like “The Paradox of

Intelligence; its making of Wars and Peace”. I will not fail to

mention an anthropological finding that to gain women was the

biggest cause of fighting. In addition, I would say that our

sense of Power came from the feeling–illusion of men subjugating

women in sexual contexts. For that, we Nuclear Physicists built

the Super Bomb. I think it is a clumsy way of imitating Orgasm. I

like to do it “Gracefully”, if possible at all.