All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace is undoubtedly a lovely poem. It perfectly describes the ultimate end of the Revolution: an empty, primeval world populated by a tiny population of immortal, derationalized posthumans, walking in the garden in the cool of the day with the robot gods their ancestors created.

But what do you expect? Brautigan was a hippie poet, channeling the Zeitgeist of the Age of Aquarius. Of course he wrote about a future when peace will guide our planet and love will steer the stars!

Our posthuman descendants will be humanoid, but not human. Being human requires a rational mind. But, since only a rational mind can experience suffering, it'll have to go. That's what they meant in the song when they talked about "the mind's true liberation" : its non-existence. Or, as Siddhartha put it, Nirvana.

So hail, Richard Brautigan, poet of his own farts. Only a towering genius of his day could have penned these immortal (and NSFW) lines:

I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking
about you.

Pissing a few moments ago
I looked down at my penis
affectionately.

Knowing it has been inside
you twice today makes me
feel beautiful.

-- "The Beautiful Poem"
3 A.M., January 15, 1967

Heeeeavvvvvyyyyy. Bell-bottoms forever.

Gerard, please feel free to show detailed close-ups of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych Garden of Earthly Delights any time you'd like. Every time I see this painting, I discover new things in it (bird eating frog in lower right corner this time).