Mark Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger"

"The Mysterious Stranger"

by Mark Twain

"An unfinished novella that Mark Twain worked on periodically from roughly 1890 until his death in 1910. The body of the work is a serious social commentary addressing Twain's ideas of the Moral Sense and the ''damned human race.'' Published posthumously in 1916 by Twain's biographer Albert Bigelow Paine.

“…I must go now, and we shall not see each other any more." “In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?” Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, “There is no other.” A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his, bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed and hopeful feeling that the incredible words might be true - even must be true. “Have you never suspected this, Theodor?” “No. How could I? But if it can only be true.” “It is true.”

A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a doubt checked it before it could issue in words, and I said, “But - but - we have seen that future life - seen it in its actuality, and so –” “It was a vision - it had no existence.” I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was struggling in me. “A vision? - a vi –”

“Life itself is only a vision, a dream.” It was electrical. By God! I had had that very thought a thousand times in my musings! “Nothing exists; all is a dream. God - man - the world - the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars - a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space - and you!”

“I!”

“And you are not you - you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream - your dream, creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me... I am perishing already - I am failing - I am passing away. In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever - for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!"

“Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago - centuries, ages, eons, ago! - for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane - like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell - mouths mercy and invented hell - mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! 

You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks - in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier. It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream - a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought - a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.”

Read online a wonderfully illustrated version  of 

Mark Twain’s “The Mysterious Stranger” here:
- https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3186/3186-h/3186-h.htm

“This I Believe..."

“This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual

 human is the most valuable thing in the world. 

And this I would fight for:  

the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. 

And this I must fight against:

any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.”

- John Steinbeck

Paulo Coelho, “Afraid To Change”

“Afraid To Change”

by Paulo Coelho

"We are afraid to change because we think that, after much effort and sacrifice, we know our present world. And even though that world might not be the best of all worlds and even though we may not be entirely satisfied with it, at least it won’t give us any nasty surprises.

 

We won’t go wrong. When necessary, we will make a few minor adjustments so that everything continues the same. We see that the mountains always stay in the same place. We see that fully-grown trees, when transplanted, usually die. And we say: ‘We want to be like the mountains and the trees. Solid and respectable.’

Even though, during the night, we wake up thinking: ‘I wish I was like the birds, who can visit Damascus and Baghdad and come back whenever they want to.’ Or: ‘I wish I was like the wind, for no one knows where it comes from nor where it goes, and it can change direction without ever having to explain why.’ The next day, however, we remember that the birds are always fleeing from hunters and other larger birds, and that the wind sometimes gets caught up in a whirlwind and destroys everything around it.

It’s nice to dream that we will have plenty of time in the future to do our travelling and that, one day, we will. It cheers us up because we know that we are capable of doing more than we do. Dreaming carries no risks. The dangerous thing is trying to transform your dreams into reality."

 "Wrong!"

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

"Don't Fret..."

"It is what it is, and it was what it was.

Don’t fret the could-haves because if it should-have, it would-have."

- Unknown

"Rising Mortgage Rates Trigger A Housing Market Crash: Prepare Your Self For The Worst!"

Full screen recommended.

"Rising Mortgage Rates Trigger A Housing Market Crash: 

Prepare Your Self For The Worst!"

by Epic Economist

"Housing prices all across the country have surged at the fastest pace since 2014, but wages haven't keep up with that growth, and all of these determinants are affecting people's ability to buy new homes. The housing bubble has become so unsustainable that demand is already significantly collapsing and further increases in interest rates could push the entire market to the brink of housing market collapse just as well. That's what we're going to analyze in this video.

Last week, mortgage interest rates have unexpectedly soared, throwing cold water on already cooling demand. Consequently, the total mortgage application rate has flat-lined, increasing by just 0,5%, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. The median contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances registered a significant hike, having increased to 3.23% from 3.08%.

The latest housing rally has been fueled by several different factors, in addition to historically low mortgage rates, there was an unprecedented demand for suburban homes as city-dwellers fled urban centers to escape the harsh effects of the health crisis and mounting social turbulence. But low inventory has sent prices to sky-highs and formed a splendid price bubble that never ceased to grow.

However, rising borrowing costs could not only jeopardize the rally but also burst the housing price bubble and push the entire housing market to a secular correction. Higher rates are also bad news for lenders who have managed to collect huge gains ever since we entered a low rate environment at the beginning of the recession last year.

These developments outline that the Fed's attempt to offset the devastating impact the health crisis caused to the economy by lowering rates and pumping trillions of dollars into the markets in order to create an artificial "wealth effect", has not only enabled the formation of a massive housing bubble, as it could suddenly pop it due to the unsustainability of its policies. That's why investors and bondholders are already running for the exits not to see their gains irreversibly wiped out in face of an imminent crash. Moreover, in the process of artificially fueling the bubble, policymakers have ended up worsening wealth inequality and housing affordability issues.

The spring housing market is on track to become the leanest, most expensive, and most competitive ever. As the supply gets tighter and tighter, home prices soar even higher, and increasingly fewer Americans can afford to have a home of their own. In January alone, prices increased more than 10% year over year, according to CoreLogic. But wages are not keeping up with the rising costs of housing.

According to a 2020 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, workers need to make $21.10 an hour just to afford a market-rate 2-bedroom rental. The massive gap between wages and housing prices is the reason why millions of families are evicted every year, ending up in shelters or on the streets and oftentimes being pushed to a poverty spiral that is incredibly hard to recover from.

People in middle and lower-income segments being are increasingly priced out of the market for homeownership. And the situation will likely get worse, as legislators are considering a number of bills this session that will significantly increase the cost of new homes. With the passing of a new fiscal relief package, although payments may help to ease the economic struggles of renters and landlords in the short-term, it also means our money supply will increase by $1.9 trillion dollars.

As soon as the economy reopens and consumer spending resumes to pre-lockdown levels, we will see a major spike in inflation, which is the most frequently mentioned trigger to the burst of the current asset bubbles. In that way, a dramatic housing market crash is now more imminent than ever, and that will cause enormous financial pain to homeowners as they see the value of their properties sharply collapsing. As our leaders and policymakers seem to remain unbothered in face of so many warnings, eventually, we will all be witnessing an astronomical explosion occur across financial markets. Needless to say, we will be the ones paying the price for this tragic housing crisis made by design."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com

Must Watch! “Your Stimulus Check Won’t Buy Much; A Real Disaster Is Forming; Soaring Prices Are Coming; Get Ready”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Your Stimulus Check Won’t Buy Much; 

A Real Disaster Is Forming; Soaring Prices Are Coming; Get Ready”

Musical Interlude: Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad" (Ben-E.dit)

Moby, 

"Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad" (Ben-E.dit)

"A Look to the Heavens"

 “Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the gorgeous island universe is one of the largest Hubble images ever made of a complete galaxy.

NGC 1300 spans over 100,000 light-years and the Hubble image reveals striking details of the galaxy's dominant central bar and majestic spiral arms. In fact, on close inspection the nucleus of this classic barred spiral itself shows a remarkable region of spiral structure about 3,000 light-years across. Unlike other spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, NGC 1300 is not presently known to have a massive central black hole.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120325.html

Chet Raymo, "Six Memos "

"Six Memos"

by Chet Raymo

"Italo Calvino, the famed Italian storyteller, died in 1985, just before he was to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. He had writen five of the six lectures he proposed to give. The title of the series: "Six Memos for the Next Millennium." Each lecture was devoted to one of the qualities Calvino believed literature should aspire to. Lightness. Quickness. Exactitude. Visibility. Multiplicity. Consistency. Qualities, perhaps, we could all aspire to.

Lightness. The opposite of the heaviness that tries to drag us all down. Wit. A spring in one's step. Playfulness. Not taking oneself too seriously.

Quickness. A certain deftness in combining thought and action. Nimbleness. Agility. Mercury with winged feet who outpaces gloomy Saturn.

Exactitude. A concern for precise, apt expression. Clarity. Simplicity. Respect for facts.

Visibility. The visible imagination as an instrument for knowing the world and oneself. By extension, honoring the senses as a way of discovering the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Description as revelation.

Multiplicity. The infinite possibilities of language. But also the infinite contingencies of the universe itself. The way every little thing contains the whole. The way everything is related to everything else. The artist seeks to contain the infinite in the finite -- an impossibility, of course, but to the extent that the artist succeeds, we are lifted by the art.

Consistency. We can only guess what Calvino had in mind.

He concludes with an observation about literature and science: "Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function. Since science has begun to distrust general explanations and solutions that are not sectorial and specialized, the grand challenge for literature is to be capable of weaving together the various branches of knowledge, the various 'codes,' into a manifold and multifaceted vision of the world."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Moscow, Moscow City, Russian Federation.

 Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Paul Fisher, "The Boat"

"The Boat"

"Maybe the eyes of a dragon or goddess

glare from its prow.

More likely it leaks, loses an oar,

and reeks of rainbows awash on a sheen

of gutted salmon and gasoline.

If it's a liner, we lash ourselves

to whatever will float or sell.

No matter which. We choose. We're aboard,

icebergs or no, as we plow

through the songs of the siren stars-

one boat, black water, dark whispering below."

- Paul Fisher

"We Often Discover..."

“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.

We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do;

and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.”

- Samuel Smiles

"Too Busy Frontrunning Inflation, Nobody Sees the Deflationary Tsunami"

"Too Busy Frontrunning Inflation,

Nobody Sees the Deflationary Tsunami"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"It's an amazing sight to see the water recede from the bay, and watch the crowd frolic in the shallows, scooping up the flopping fish. In this case, the crowd doing the "so easy to catch, why not grab as much as we can?" scooping is frontrunning inflation, the universally expected result of the Great Reflation Trade.

You know the Great Reflation Trade: the world has saved up trillions, governments are spending trillions, it's going to be the greatest boom since the stone masons partied at the Great Pyramid in Giza. It's so obvious that everyone has jumped in the water to scoop up all the free fish (i.e. stock market gains). Only an idiot would hesitate to frontrun the Great Reflation's guaranteed inflation.

Unless, of course, what we really have is a tale of reflation, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Everyone frolicking in the shallows scooping up the obvious, easy, guaranteed gains is so busy frontrunning inflation that nobody sees the tsunami rushing in to extinguish the short-sighted frolickers. ("When Does This Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Finally Implode?" 3/3/21)

Gordon Long and I discuss The Deflationary Tsunami racing toward the frolickers in a new video program. It's not that there aren't inflationary dynamics in play; there are. The issue is that not all the dynamics in play are inflationary, and the deflationary dynamics have been building for the past two decades.

Funny things happen when we substitute debt for earnings and speculation for productive investment. That's what America has done for the past two decades: as wages stagnated for the bottom 95%, we've inflated speculative bubbles in everything to generate the illusion that we have "wealth" that we can borrow against, and then use all that "free money" (free fish!) to consume and speculate in all the shallow safe waters created by interest rates falling decade after decade, making it ever cheaper to borrow, buy and blow speculative bubbles.

Here's an example of the dynamics near-zero yields and interest rates have unleashed: in the frenzy of ever-lower rates, one crazed frolicker buys a $200,000 house for $500,000. Suddenly every homeowner in the neighborhood has $300,000 in "free money" to borrow and blow-- free fish! It would be crazy not to scoop some of that "free money," so homeowners refinance at low rates and extract the "free money" created by the speculative bubble powered by declining rates.

So what if your earnings buy less every year - there's "free money" galore - you just have to borrow it. And never mind value - what's value other than what some frolicker will pay? What new utility or productivity was created when the $200,000 house was revalued at $500,000? None. How about the commercial building that went from $2 million to $5 million? None. Or the stock with phantom fantasies instead of actual profits that went from $2 to $20?

A few problems arise from all this frolicking with the "free money" created by declining rates and speculative manias. One is that rates/yields have hit zero and are starting to rise. It's fun to imagine rates sliding into negative territory, but banks can't really afford to pay us $1,000 a month to borrow money from them. I know it's hard to imagine, but the banks need us to pay them interest and principal.

That interest and principal piles up, even at near-zero rates. Combine stagnating wages that buy fewer goods and services every year with ever-higher debt loads and monthly payments, and then add in higher taxes, and presto, we end up with insolvent households and enterprises that must borrow more to stay afloat. If they can't borrow more, they default.

Those that can't borrow more can't spend, and that's a problem because the entire economy depends on everyone borrowing and spending more every year. i.e. "growth." Just as new loans create money, defaults send money to money heaven. When loans are paid off or written off due to default, the money supply shrinks. That is deflationary. When discretionary spending dries up, that's deflationary. When the free fish of speculative phantom wealth created by bubbles run out, that's deflationary.

It was fun to frolic in the fantasy that we could borrow our way to prosperity on the phantom collateral of speculative bubbles, but that's not sustainable. The wealth conjured by zero rates inflating speculative bubbles is illusory. Real wealth requires sustained increases in productivity that are widely distributed to wage earners. Anything other than that is illusion destined for a messy, shattering destruction.

Speculative bubbles pop. All phantom wealth vanishes back into the air it emerged from. Insolvent borrowers counting on ever lower rates of interest and ever higher valuations default. Lenders who leveraged up to loan gobs of "free money" to uncreditworthy borrowers will be destroyed by the monumental write-offs of uncollectible debts based on phantom valuations.

Those looking up from their "free fish!" frolicking will see the tsunami too late to save themselves. None of the frolickers will be able to outrun the tsunami or avoid being crushed as it sweeps all the debris of a speculative mania into the flooded ruins beyond the shoreline."

There's much more in our 53-minute presentation, 

"The Coming Deflationary Tsunami:"

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

○

Related:

"Everything Is Broken"

Gregory Mannarino, “Markets, A Look Ahead: This Is a ‘Lex Luthor’ Market”

"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/7/21:

“Markets, A Look Ahead: 

This Is a ‘Lex Luthor’ Market”

- https://traderschoice.net/

"How It Really Is - The Left Has Lost It's Mind"

 

And then appears this gem of mind boggling idiocy...

"Coca-Cola Staff Told In Online Training 

Seminar ‘Try To Be Less White'"

Pardon the language, but WTF Coca-Cola?

Buddy Brown, "We Gotta Be LESS WHITE"

"And It Is Still True..."

"And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you

go out into the world it is best to hold hands and stick together."

- Robert Fulghum

"Our Answer..."

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

- Viktor Frankl

The Poet: William Stafford, "The Gift"

 "The Gift"

"Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one

that your life conceals, the one waiting outside

when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at

in her crochet design, the one almost found

over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.

It's the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.

You get killed now and then, violated

in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about.)

You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait

and pray, and maybe good things come - maybe

the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.

You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.

It's a balance, the taking and passing along,

the composting of where you've been and how people

and weather treated you. It's a country where

you already are, bringing where you have been.

Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,

turning the world, moving the air, calling,

every morning, "Here, take it, it's yours."

- William Stafford

"If Only You Knew "

"If Only You Knew "

by Teresa Marchese

"This morning, I saw a young man, hanging dead from a tree. It started out as a typical  morning. It was 6:45 am. I brought the "toys" today; weights, bars, balls and boxing gloves, to have my clients work at stations. I run Rock Solid Fitness, a women's outdoor fitness club, at San Francisco's Land's End. We run trails and hills and stairs on this rocky park of cypress and redwood. But this morning, the first client to arrive begged for a "wimpy" workout, so we headed out to Land's End trail. It was a beautiful morning, and I thought some deep stretching overlooking the Golden Gate as the sun rose was in good order.

Walking that path shoulder to shoulder with three of the amazing women with whom I begin each day, whose stories I learn, whose lives weave through mine with soft, smiling, shimmering threads. An evening at the theater was recounted, a daughter was praised, a mention of Bill Clinton's charm (if you were to meet him in person), a reference to Vince Neil. Setting a quick pace, marching on, the stories continued. Looking forward, as I tend to do, I noticed an unfamiliar silhouette in those well-known woods. My stomach lurched, but only slightly, as I was unbelieving. A body hung from a tree, heels in the leafy ground. "Is it real?" I asked, as we moved toward him. Hands. Face. Body. It looked almost an effigy, a sick waxy joke, at the end of a rope.

We moved closer. And we moved quickly. There was no doubt he was real. There was no doubt he was dead. Clearly trained in knots, he had hung himself well in the night with a brand new electrical cord. A suicide. Finished.

He was young. Early twenties? Looking back, I wonder if he was younger, maybe in his teens. I don't meet Death often, but I suppose his mask makes one look older. Apart from being lifeless, he was everything a young man should be - handsome, well-heeled, sporting backpack and iPod. Hood up over dark curly hair - a San Francisco kid. His hands rested, resolute, at his sides.

Not one of us hesitated to touch him, to hold him, to relieve the tension that took his last breath. We four women strongly played our part - mother, sister, tender, friend - released him from his hold. Normally, I'm in charge. I'm the teacher. I'm the trainer. I give the orders. But something else took over here - a solidarity among women. One a doctor, another a mother, all of us upright and bold. We didn't speak. We didn't need to, I guess. We understood that we wanted to get him down and we moved accordingly. The thick branch that held him was about seven-and-a-half feet off the ground. I got underneath him and lifted his weight as the tallest of us lifted the smallest of us to reach and unwrap the cable. We laid him on the soft, grassy earth. Our doctor checked his pulse, his pupils. I felt his fingers, tried to open his stiff hand.

I looked at the group, I knew none of us was carrying a phone. Addressing the three of them, I said, "You'll stay? And I'll go for help." Help? There was no helping this one. I would take the next proper step. I spotted a morning hiker, ran to him and explained the situation. I took his phone while he went to the parking lot to direct the first-responders to the trail.

911 answered immediately, but wanted an address. Frustrated, I asked to be connected to San Francisco dispatch, to someone who could listen to my instructions and understand where I was. I heard sirens within two minutes, hung up the phone, and waved the paramedics to the trailhead. The first jumped from the engine to walk with me. "How do you know he's dead?" he asked me. "He's dead," I answered.

We left them to their work and deferentially gave a park police officer our statements. We were commended for staying - merely for staying on the scene. Most people call and leave, he told us. Really? How can someone just walk away from the dead? Because we took him down, we had to give detailed written statements. Our foursome huddled together in one car and rode in silence. There was a deep sadness and reverence among us - among all of us. Even the paramedics and the police officers, who surely meet grief often, were dejected and mindful. Because of the hour and "remote" location, the scene was respectfully not tainted with gawking onlookers and gossip-hungry voyeurs. For this, I was grateful.

We handed over our statements, hugged each other hard, and dispersed. It was 7:58 a.m. I canceled my next class and the day's remaining appointments and sat in my truck for a while, looking out over the edge of the world. I wanted to shout out to everyone I love, "We belong on this earth! We are here for a reason! Stay here with me!" I decided I would do just that, in my own way. I would start with my husband. I drove home, vowing to better love those I love, as well as those I don't yet.

To the family of the nameless one, I am sorry I could not speak his name. Please know he was carefully and lovingly tended to when he was found. Four gentle, but rock-solid women, took him from that tree and laid him down to rest.

To the nameless one, whom I briefly held, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the loss of those who loved you. (They did, of course, you know.) I'm sorry that it wasn't enough for you, here, now. Alas, you've moved on, young friend. You left your sorrow in that tree. Let your despair roll down those rocky cliffs, and be taken with the tide, pummeled and churned in the pacific surf, sprayed and splayed on the horizon, metamorphosed into air and light. Now do you see that you interrupted the rhythm of all things? If only you could have known how important you are to the fabric of this life, this place, you could have stayed, and lived your short life longer. You surely would have cried more tears, but you would have laughed more, you would have loved, you would have learned and lost and traveled. You might have started a business, a revolution, a country. You might have saved a life. I wish you would have. And now I wish I would have." 

- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

"The Big Scary Unknown..."