I first read the following paragraph in the Atlanta Library. This is the opening of the book and it gripped me then and it grips my attention now. Something my friend Sean and I call the delicious morsels of writing: those tasty bits that explode with delight on the tongue and on the lips and in the heart-spirit center in the brain and linger wonderfully in memory's taste buds long after the meal/snack/dessert was first tasted.
Following the paragraph as it appears in the book, I included it again with some words underlined. These would (will) be what I would look up in a close reading/textual analysis, but also serve as the keyholes through which we'd peep (for if I were leading this critical mission, there would certainly be other voyeurs there beside me—I mean besides me...) to reveal what lurks beyond the edge of the page that is conjured there by referential association.
I also did this back in Fall 08 at Columbia, but I wasn't ready yet. Now, I think I am.
~•~
"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies—everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages—the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Elusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.
"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."
—Jay Stevens,
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream
"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies--everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages--the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Eleusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.
"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."
That's 101 unique words in two paragraphs totaling 147. 45 of those words are reference keys (18 are "the"). I love this kinda thing. Confectionery words. Tasty. Yum.
· • ·
Following the paragraph as it appears in the book, I included it again with some words underlined. These would (will) be what I would look up in a close reading/textual analysis, but also serve as the keyholes through which we'd peep (for if I were leading this critical mission, there would certainly be other voyeurs there beside me—I mean besides me...) to reveal what lurks beyond the edge of the page that is conjured there by referential association.
I also did this back in Fall 08 at Columbia, but I wasn't ready yet. Now, I think I am.
~•~
"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies—everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages—the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Elusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.
"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."
—Jay Stevens,
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream
•
"Had you asked your average hippie about beginnings, you would have discovered there were as many as there were hippies--everyone had a favorite chronology. Some preferred to begin the psychedelic story all the way back at the Rig Veda, the ancient Hindu text that spoke of the ecstatic visions obtainable from the plant soma; others began with the mystery cults of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages--the Rosicrucians, the Alchemists, the Illuminati. The lure of higher consciousness had exercised a fascination across the centuries, and whether it was Athenians being initiated at Eleusis, or Balzac and Baudelaire smoking hashish at the Club des Haschischins, the hippies recognized them all as parents.
"But if the psychedelic story had a hundred beginnings, at some point all the plot lines converge on Basle, Switzerland, at a few minutes before five on the afternoon of Monday, April 19, 1943."
•
That's 101 unique words in two paragraphs totaling 147. 45 of those words are reference keys (18 are "the"). I love this kinda thing. Confectionery words. Tasty. Yum.
· • ·
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