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~~tantric~~ · 11-26-2008, 06:44 PM

i think i've encountered a real life necronomicon drive-the-reader-insane book. it's called Parallel Botany

a paragraph makes my ears ring. after a chapter, i'm seeing spots and dizzy. the prose is just - wrong. it reads like english, but there's no information there at all. it's just layer after layer of detailed delirium using the writing pattern of a scientific publication. given, the subject matter concerns imaginary plants that can only be experienced subjectively, but still....the horrible bit is that the author writes children's books, some of which i remember. the only review on amazon.com talks about having visions of an insane asylum full of plants.

" I have often mentioned the matterlessness of parallel plants, drawing attention not only to their entire lack of organs but, also to the fact that they have no real interior. Oskar Halbstein extends this notion, typical of parallel botany, to everything in the world, observing that the interior of material objects is nothing but a mental image, an idea. He pours out that when we cut something in two we do not reveal its interior, as we set out to do, but rather two visible exteriors which did not exist before. Repeating the action an infinite number of times, we would merely produce an endless series of new exteriors. For Halbstein the inside of things does not exist. It is a theoretical construct, a hypothesis which we are forbidden to verify.
The interior of parallel plants, moreover, eludes even theoretical definition. As we are concerned with a substance that is totally "other," that cannot be found in nature, it is literally unthinkable. Halbstein speaks of it as being of a "blind color," but to me it seems arbitrary and scientifically risky to draw even the most openly poetic comparisons with the normal world. (pl. XIV)

The Tubolara, which for the most part are found on the Central Plateau of Talistan in India, put the problem of the interior of parallel plants in a new and rather different light. It concerns not so much their matterlessness as their form, not so much the solid interior of their ambiguous substance as the hollow exterior- which, in a sense, is the external limit of the interior of the plant.

Here then is the paradox of the Tubolara: two interiors, one of which in normal terms would be its substance and which at bottom is responsible for its presence, is imperceptible, while the one wewould normally be inclined to think of as nonexistent, the void contained by the plant, is visible. The paradox is even greater when we think that the void within the tube, the visible interior, has a very precise function: that of containing, like a fragment of its own habitat, part of the environment in which the plant itself is contained. "

11-26-2008, 06:44 PM	#99
~~tantric~~ Banned Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Athens, GA	Re: Real-Life Weirdness i think i've encountered a real life necronomicon drive-the-reader-insane book. it's called Parallel Botany a paragraph makes my ears ring. after a chapter, i'm seeing spots and dizzy. the prose is just - wrong. it reads like english, but there's no information there at all. it's just layer after layer of detailed delirium using the writing pattern of a scientific publication. given, the subject matter concerns imaginary plants that can only be experienced subjectively, but still....the horrible bit is that the author writes children's books, some of which i remember. the only review on amazon.com talks about having visions of an insane asylum full of plants. " I have often mentioned the matterlessness of parallel plants, drawing attention not only to their entire lack of organs but, also to the fact that they have no real interior. Oskar Halbstein extends this notion, typical of parallel botany, to everything in the world, observing that the interior of material objects is nothing but a mental image, an idea. He pours out that when we cut something in two we do not reveal its interior, as we set out to do, but rather two visible exteriors which did not exist before. Repeating the action an infinite number of times, we would merely produce an endless series of new exteriors. For Halbstein the inside of things does not exist. It is a theoretical construct, a hypothesis which we are forbidden to verify. The interior of parallel plants, moreover, eludes even theoretical definition. As we are concerned with a substance that is totally "other," that cannot be found in nature, it is literally unthinkable. Halbstein speaks of it as being of a "blind color," but to me it seems arbitrary and scientifically risky to draw even the most openly poetic comparisons with the normal world. (pl. XIV) The Tubolara, which for the most part are found on the Central Plateau of Talistan in India, put the problem of the interior of parallel plants in a new and rather different light. It concerns not so much their matterlessness as their form, not so much the solid interior of their ambiguous substance as the hollow exterior- which, in a sense, is the external limit of the interior of the plant. Here then is the paradox of the Tubolara: two interiors, one of which in normal terms would be its substance and which at bottom is responsible for its presence, is imperceptible, while the one wewould normally be inclined to think of as nonexistent, the void contained by the plant, is visible. The paradox is even greater when we think that the void within the tube, the visible interior, has a very precise function: that of containing, like a fragment of its own habitat, part of the environment in which the plant itself is contained. " Last edited by tantric; 12-01-2008 at 01:10 PM.