Hello Bauldoff

“If you slip or have a minor fall, don’t allow yourself an instant’s pause. Find your pace again the moment you get up. In your mind take careful note of the circumstances of your fall, but don’t let your body linger over what happened. The body constantly tries to draw attention to itself by its shiverings, its breathlessness, its palpitations, its shudders and sweats and cramps; but it reacts quickly to any scorn and indifference in its master. Once it senses that he is not taken in by its jeremiads, once it understands that it will inspire no pity for it that way, then it comes into line and obediently accomplishes its task.”

—René Daumal on climbing the mountain. Found in notes written for his unfinished story, Mount Analogue. He footnotes this passage as follows:

The moment of danger
The difference between panic and presence of mind
Automatism (master or servant)

Daumal died of tuberculosis in 1944, age 36, before completing the novel. Interestingly, it is the absence of closure to his story that makes it all the more compelling. Alejandro Jodorowsky found his own ingenious way of bringing The Holy Mountain to a satisfying close; a film which draws much metaphysiphorical inspiration from Daumal’s work.

I found the above photo in a Dream The End article. If anyone knows the context of the photo, or the significance of the Rorschachian owl Daumal is holding, I’d love to hear from you. Daumal considered himself a mystic of sorts. In Mount Analogue, he even makes mention of the superstitious nailing of owls to doors to deter forces of wickedness. I’m not sure if similar metaphysical purposes were photographed above.