Dec 28, 2011
Dec 27, 2011
Dec 26, 2011
Dec 22, 2011
Dec 14, 2011
Dec 8, 2011
Taking responsibility for something is generally a good way of gaining some measure of control over it. That’s certainly true when it comes to one’s own life. You take responsibility for it and all of a sudden you have control over it. And I think it extends to other things as well. If we take responsibility for the way we’re governed and the way that we’re ruled economically and the way that the Anonymous and Occupy protesters seem to be doing, then that potentially can have a huge world-changing effect. That’s the same whether you’re talking about politics or whether you’re talking about the arts. If I hadn’t believed that it would be possible for me to have some sort of effect then I’d never have tried. As it turns out, my ideas have been communicated to a fair number of people. But back at the beginning, that was far from obvious. All that you had was your own belief in yourself. So yes, it’s vital that individuals believe that they can have an impact upon society. For one thing, it’s historically true. For another thing, it is the best thing to believe because if you believe otherwise that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is the philosophy of a natural-born slave in many respects.
There are people out there who are doing a lot of work to change things and they seem to be getting some reasonable results. I definitely think it’s within anybody’s power if they are sufficiently determined, if they have sufficient will and they are prepared to work upon any areas of their ability which needs work, their imagination or whatever, all of these things can be improved.
Dec 3, 2011
"I would suggest beheading the bankers, but while it would be very satisfying and would cheer us up, it probably wouldn’t do anything practical to alter the situation. Behead the currency. Change the currency, why not? It would disempower all the people who had bought into that currency but it would pretty much empower the rest of us, the other ninety-nine percent."
Nov 29, 2011
Nov 21, 2011
I am of the very essence of that proud, boastful Nordic people who have never had the least sense of adventure but who nevertheless have scoured the earth, turned it upside down, scattering relics and ruins everywhere. Restless spirits, but not adventurous ones. Agonizing spirits, incapable of living in the present. Disgraceful cowards, all of them, myself included. For there is only one great adventure and that is inward towards the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.
-Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934)
Oct 31, 2011
I know it is absurd to debate the rules of a reality that does not exist, but this genuinely irks me. You cannot kill a vampire with an MDF stake; werewolves can't fly; zombies do not run. It's a misconception, a bastardisation that diminishes a classic movie monster. The best phantasmagoria uses reality to render the inconceivable conceivable. The speedy zombie seems implausible to me, even within the fantastic realm it inhabits. A biological agent, I'll buy. Some sort of super-virus? Sure, why not. But death? Death is a disability, not a superpower. It's hard to run with a cold, let alone the most debilitating malady of them all.
More significantly, the fast zombie is bereft of poetic subtlety. As monsters from the id, zombies win out over vampires and werewolves when it comes to the title of Most Potent Metaphorical Monster. Where their pointy-toothed cousins are all about sex and bestial savagery, the zombie trumps all by personifying our deepest fear: death. Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.
However (and herein lies the sublime artfulness of the slow zombie), their ineptitude actually makes them avoidable, at least for a while. If you're careful, if you keep your wits about you, you can stave them off, even outstrip them - much as we strive to outstrip death. Drink less, cut out red meat, exercise, practice safe sex; these are our shotguns, our cricket bats, our farmhouses, our shopping malls. However, none of these things fully insulates us from the creeping dread that something so witless, so elemental may yet catch us unawares - the drunk driver, the cancer sleeping in the double helix, the legless ghoul dragging itself through the darkness towards our ankles.
Oct 3, 2011
Sep 30, 2011
Sep 28, 2011
And then your wife
turns to you and says "I'll do anything you want".
And it's the saddest
moment of your life.
(from "Almost Over", 1983)
Hart Menichken
Menichken was born in Oregon in 1944. He worked
as a taxidermist until 1978, when he won a substantial sum in an illegal poker
tournament. His winnings enabled him to quit his job and dedicate himself to
writing poetry and to paint (mostly small landscapes in watercolor).
His poetry is almost always narrative, and as
time went on became ever more focused and condensed. His last published book,
"Almost Over", consists of 100 short poems (none longer than 4 lines)
centered on what seems to be a single day in a small mid-western community.
Suffused in melancholy, only the occasional outburst of rage seems to break
through the surface of quiet domestic failure.
Menichken died in 1986.
A.F. Bytt (red). Taxonomy of Forgotten
Poets of the 20th Century. Buffalo; University of West Seneca. 1993. P. 113.
Sep 26, 2011
“Is the conception of nature and of social relations which underlies Greek imagination and Greek [art] possible when there are self-acting mules, railways, locomotives and electric telegraphs? What is a Vulcan compared with Roberts and Co., Jupiter compared with the lightning conductor and Hermes compared with the Crédit mobilier? All mythology subdues, controls and fashions the forces of nature in the imagination and through imagination, it disappears therefore when real control over these forces is established”
K. Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
K. Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
Sep 11, 2011
Sep 10, 2011
Sep 9, 2011
Sep 3, 2011
18 Brahe, 36 Tranquility
I've recently noticed "as if for the first time" that when people pray they always look "upward" -- i.e. perpendicular to whatever place they're standing -- or kneeling or groveling. I deduce that they conceive of their "god" as topologically isomorphic to a huge donut, about a thousand miles wider than Earth.
[Of course, if people ever pray at the north or south poles, this would have to change; then "god" would become isomorphic to a hollow sphere.]
When I raised this issue in a blog recently, Paul Krasner asked "Does this mean that the pledge of allegiance should be changed to 'one nation inside god'?"
Not necessarily. Although the Bible and Koran always speak of their god as "above," Christians, Jews and Moslems can either accept what their rituals imply -- a donut god -- or return to a flat Earth....
Giambatista Vico, "the father of sociology", suggested in The New Science that Thunder historically underlies the "god" idea; the Noisy Thing roaring in the sky , seemingly in rage, had to be appeased. Sometimes lightning came from that roaring monster, and sometimes lightning killed somebody. Hence Zeus bronnton [Zeus the thunderer], Jupiter, another thunder god; Thor, Donner, whose very name means thunder; etc.... and Yahweh..... and Allah...... Joyce uses this god=thunder equation repeatedly in Finnegans Wake [which drove me to read Vico...]
I have also observed that thunder on the sound-track -- signaling oncoming tragedy or horror -- appears in films as diverse as those of Orson Welles, James Whale, Howard Hawks, Wes Craven, Monty Python etc etc.... Listen for it and note how bloody often it pops up...... especially in thrillers....
The monotheistic idea implies a cruel and grumpy old electric donut surrounding Earth and ever threatening it.
I think this explains the "structural unconscious" or inarticulate neurosemantics of Bozo, Ariel Sharon and Osama bin Laden equally. They're all heaping up human sacrifices, as at Stonehenge, to Him Who Thunders From On High.
I've recently noticed "as if for the first time" that when people pray they always look "upward" -- i.e. perpendicular to whatever place they're standing -- or kneeling or groveling. I deduce that they conceive of their "god" as topologically isomorphic to a huge donut, about a thousand miles wider than Earth.
[Of course, if people ever pray at the north or south poles, this would have to change; then "god" would become isomorphic to a hollow sphere.]
When I raised this issue in a blog recently, Paul Krasner asked "Does this mean that the pledge of allegiance should be changed to 'one nation inside god'?"
Not necessarily. Although the Bible and Koran always speak of their god as "above," Christians, Jews and Moslems can either accept what their rituals imply -- a donut god -- or return to a flat Earth....
Giambatista Vico, "the father of sociology", suggested in The New Science that Thunder historically underlies the "god" idea; the Noisy Thing roaring in the sky , seemingly in rage, had to be appeased. Sometimes lightning came from that roaring monster, and sometimes lightning killed somebody. Hence Zeus bronnton [Zeus the thunderer], Jupiter, another thunder god; Thor, Donner, whose very name means thunder; etc.... and Yahweh..... and Allah...... Joyce uses this god=thunder equation repeatedly in Finnegans Wake [which drove me to read Vico...]
I have also observed that thunder on the sound-track -- signaling oncoming tragedy or horror -- appears in films as diverse as those of Orson Welles, James Whale, Howard Hawks, Wes Craven, Monty Python etc etc.... Listen for it and note how bloody often it pops up...... especially in thrillers....
The monotheistic idea implies a cruel and grumpy old electric donut surrounding Earth and ever threatening it.
I think this explains the "structural unconscious" or inarticulate neurosemantics of Bozo, Ariel Sharon and Osama bin Laden equally. They're all heaping up human sacrifices, as at Stonehenge, to Him Who Thunders From On High.
Sep 2, 2011
'The basic nova technique is very simple: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflicts-This is done by dumping on the same planet life forms with incompatible conditions of existence-There is of course nothing "wrong" about any given life form since "wrong" only has reference to conflicts with other life forms-The point is these life forms should not be on the same planet-Their conditions of life are basically incompatible in present time form and it is precisely the work of the nova mob to see that they remain in present time form, to create and aggravate the conflicts that lead to the explosion of a planet...'
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