X
The following was composed some years ago. It still seems to work:
In the land of the lucky we specialize in irony. The words
Father and sky are linked by legerdemain. Skilled engravers
Etch shamanistic totems on the currency. We need to be seen.
It is not understood how these things are related.
In fine weather we circulate mainly by night. Heedful to
Whom we criticize necessity, we gather around tables in
Subterranean settings to share emphatic liquids, safe
Beneath the great spiked shell of the overhead city.
We scissor between tables, or sit in the din with the
Warm weight of opinion pressed upon our thighs like the
Unwelcomed cat of an arbitrary host. What the mind cannot
Contain, the flesh must often assume. We need to be heard.
Lips sphincter on eggs of darkness. Hands flutter urgently
Like doves snared in a fog. Eyes strobe the pounding ether
For omens of potentiality. Foiled by the tyranny of
Triangulation, do we still hope to be touched?
Boney-fingered dawn now prods a commotion of public events.
We note that the statues on the commons have ceased bellowing.
We hunker close in the deep purple dust of dead presidents
To attend their muttered contempt for the styles of the faithful.
We need to act. Here a committee is formed to oppose a task
Force. There a cetacean is rescued from stardom. All
Future walls must be clearly labeled BIODEGRADABLE. The
Think tank across the river hums like a Tibetan revival tent.
Vouchers for tennis lessons are distributed to the indigent.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff declare a moratorium on the production of
Blues harps. Bumper stickers are found to be edible and the
Parking lots double-up on muscle. Disney annexes Havana.
Weary, rosy, we now trudge our way westward. The
Dying orphans of High Romance are with us yet. We step around.
A large yellow dog of which Dickens dared not to conceive
Makes meat in the gutter of our national thrift.
We need to be seen. We need to be heard. Do we hope to be
Touched? We need to act. It is not understood how these
Things are related. The dog makes meat. The statues are silent.
This latter we take as a sure sign of progress.
X
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Reflections: Lovely Revenants
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Below is an excerpt from Samuel Beckett’s quirky novel, Watt, which I recently finished reading. This particular passage struck me in an odd way, making me aware, for the first time in a long time, of a mental gizmo I’ve intermittently recognized as part of my own apparatus.
The excerpt from Watt is lifted from one of the last few pages of the novel. The novel’s plot is too minimal to require much of a summary by way of setting up a context for the passage to be quoted. Most of the book is, in fact, much like this passage: a noting of mental events, often so fleeting and so experientially “disembodied” that they would go almost unnoticed under normal circumstances. The circumstances in Watt are, however, seldom “normal.”
Briefly, then, at the beginning of the novel, we see the character Watt setting out for new employment in the home of a Mr. Knott (“Not?”), a personage who sometimes (as when he walks in his garden) might strike us as some kind of a “God” figure (or Knott, as the case may be). One apparently holds the position towards which Watt (“What?”...”Wot?”) is travelling, until one day another man comes, unannounced, to take one’s place. Then it is over.
Toward the end of the story, Watt’s replacement has arrived, and he has therefore set out by night, carrying with him the two valises that he carried when he first embarked for Knott’s house, sometime in the indefinite past. He has now arrived at the train station, just as the night station master, his shift over, is about to lock up. After some deliberation, the night man decides that Watt may be admitted to the station to await the dawn arrival of the day man, so long as Watt remains locked in the Waiting Room. And so, in the Waiting Room Watt...waits:
Part of the waiting room was faintly lit, by light from without. …The waiting room was empty of furniture, or other objects, as far as Watt could see.
[…]
Whispering it told, the mouth, a woman’s, the thin lips sticking and unsticking, how when empty they could accommodate a larger public than when encumbered with armchairs and divans, and how it was vain to sit, vain to lie, when without the rain beat down, or the sleet, or the snow, with or without wind, or the sun, with greater or lesser perpendicularity. This woman’s name had been Price, her persona was of an extreme spareness, and some thirty-five years earlier she had shot, with colors flying, the narrows of the menopause. Watt was not displeased to hear her voice again, to watch again the play of the pale bows of mucus. He was not displeased either when it went away.
It took me a minute to realize what is going on here. The disembodied presence of a woman named “Price”—a person from Watt’s distant past—has for no readily apparent or causally-related reason, manifested, and is phantasmagorically explaining to Watt why the Waiting Room is devoid of furniture. Watt can “see” her familiar lips as she “speaks” and “hear” her ghostly voice.
This passage made me realize that my own soul is haunted by such female presences who float up from the submerged past to deliver instructions such as “Squeeze from the bottom!” when I pick up the toothpaste tube. Or, who chant “Home again, home again, diggy-diggy!” as the car pulls into the driveway at the end of a trip.
Just as they are familiar to Watt, so these presences are familiar to me; yet they wax uncanny, if consciously contemplated. Why, for instance, did Beckett choose to name this female apparition that comes to Watt “Price?” Is it not because of the price that these lost relationships demand of a man’s soul? Is the price not those points subtracted by the referee, Necessity, for what we must now consider to have been our unforced errors? Is this not the price we pay for having played and lost? And does this all not explain my fondness for the Steve Earle song, I Still Carry You Around, a stanza of which laments:
You’re with me everywhere I go
xxxIn my heart and in my soul
Down every road, no matter where I’m bound
xxxI still carry you around.
I think so. Yes, I do. And it has also occurred to me now, thanks to Beckett, that I had once fictively described this mental phenomenon myself, in a story entitled, Solitude. To wit:
But I had already gone too far. Inadvertently, I had strayed too near the crushing gravitational pull of that merciless black hole. For I heard a voice, a soft, barely audible, whisper of a voice, distinctly female, though disembodied, that said quite clearly, “Want to smell something funky?” And simultaneously I saw, wavering before my mind’s eye, the vision of a lovely, ghostly little hand; a hand that had slipped through the tiniest crack in the ramparts of memory; a hand that extended an index finger freshly withdrawn from the very fundament of my physical being to emerge redolent of the forbidden aroma of erotic misconduct.
If you have come with me thus far, I invite you now to see and hear a video of I Still Carry You Around here, and/or to read my story, Solitude, in its entirety, here. You deserve no less.
X
Below is an excerpt from Samuel Beckett’s quirky novel, Watt, which I recently finished reading. This particular passage struck me in an odd way, making me aware, for the first time in a long time, of a mental gizmo I’ve intermittently recognized as part of my own apparatus.
The excerpt from Watt is lifted from one of the last few pages of the novel. The novel’s plot is too minimal to require much of a summary by way of setting up a context for the passage to be quoted. Most of the book is, in fact, much like this passage: a noting of mental events, often so fleeting and so experientially “disembodied” that they would go almost unnoticed under normal circumstances. The circumstances in Watt are, however, seldom “normal.”
Briefly, then, at the beginning of the novel, we see the character Watt setting out for new employment in the home of a Mr. Knott (“Not?”), a personage who sometimes (as when he walks in his garden) might strike us as some kind of a “God” figure (or Knott, as the case may be). One apparently holds the position towards which Watt (“What?”...”Wot?”) is travelling, until one day another man comes, unannounced, to take one’s place. Then it is over.
Toward the end of the story, Watt’s replacement has arrived, and he has therefore set out by night, carrying with him the two valises that he carried when he first embarked for Knott’s house, sometime in the indefinite past. He has now arrived at the train station, just as the night station master, his shift over, is about to lock up. After some deliberation, the night man decides that Watt may be admitted to the station to await the dawn arrival of the day man, so long as Watt remains locked in the Waiting Room. And so, in the Waiting Room Watt...waits:
Part of the waiting room was faintly lit, by light from without. …The waiting room was empty of furniture, or other objects, as far as Watt could see.
[…]
Whispering it told, the mouth, a woman’s, the thin lips sticking and unsticking, how when empty they could accommodate a larger public than when encumbered with armchairs and divans, and how it was vain to sit, vain to lie, when without the rain beat down, or the sleet, or the snow, with or without wind, or the sun, with greater or lesser perpendicularity. This woman’s name had been Price, her persona was of an extreme spareness, and some thirty-five years earlier she had shot, with colors flying, the narrows of the menopause. Watt was not displeased to hear her voice again, to watch again the play of the pale bows of mucus. He was not displeased either when it went away.
It took me a minute to realize what is going on here. The disembodied presence of a woman named “Price”—a person from Watt’s distant past—has for no readily apparent or causally-related reason, manifested, and is phantasmagorically explaining to Watt why the Waiting Room is devoid of furniture. Watt can “see” her familiar lips as she “speaks” and “hear” her ghostly voice.
This passage made me realize that my own soul is haunted by such female presences who float up from the submerged past to deliver instructions such as “Squeeze from the bottom!” when I pick up the toothpaste tube. Or, who chant “Home again, home again, diggy-diggy!” as the car pulls into the driveway at the end of a trip.
Just as they are familiar to Watt, so these presences are familiar to me; yet they wax uncanny, if consciously contemplated. Why, for instance, did Beckett choose to name this female apparition that comes to Watt “Price?” Is it not because of the price that these lost relationships demand of a man’s soul? Is the price not those points subtracted by the referee, Necessity, for what we must now consider to have been our unforced errors? Is this not the price we pay for having played and lost? And does this all not explain my fondness for the Steve Earle song, I Still Carry You Around, a stanza of which laments:
You’re with me everywhere I go
xxxIn my heart and in my soul
Down every road, no matter where I’m bound
xxxI still carry you around.
I think so. Yes, I do. And it has also occurred to me now, thanks to Beckett, that I had once fictively described this mental phenomenon myself, in a story entitled, Solitude. To wit:
But I had already gone too far. Inadvertently, I had strayed too near the crushing gravitational pull of that merciless black hole. For I heard a voice, a soft, barely audible, whisper of a voice, distinctly female, though disembodied, that said quite clearly, “Want to smell something funky?” And simultaneously I saw, wavering before my mind’s eye, the vision of a lovely, ghostly little hand; a hand that had slipped through the tiniest crack in the ramparts of memory; a hand that extended an index finger freshly withdrawn from the very fundament of my physical being to emerge redolent of the forbidden aroma of erotic misconduct.
If you have come with me thus far, I invite you now to see and hear a video of I Still Carry You Around here, and/or to read my story, Solitude, in its entirety, here. You deserve no less.
X
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Quote du Jour: Easier Said Than Done
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It is easy to use the words faith and repentence, but the things are most difficult to perform. ...Men will allow themselves to be constrained by numerous severe laws, to be tied to numerous laborious observances, and to bear a severe and heavy yoke; in short, there is no annoyance to which they will not submit, provided there be no mention of the heart.
XXX~ John Calvin, The Necessity of Reforming the Church
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It is easy to use the words faith and repentence, but the things are most difficult to perform. ...Men will allow themselves to be constrained by numerous severe laws, to be tied to numerous laborious observances, and to bear a severe and heavy yoke; in short, there is no annoyance to which they will not submit, provided there be no mention of the heart.
XXX~ John Calvin, The Necessity of Reforming the Church
X
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Reflections: Conservatism
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American political conservatism is populated by a compliant mob of the intellectually-challenged, all desperately seeking leaders who will condone the acting-out of their fear and hatred of anything that looks "different" to them, and which they don't understand. The conservative mob is to be pitied, as are all the confused and disoriented.
The leaders who exploit the weakness and disability of this sorry herd cannot be called "conservative," since the substance of their purposes and agendas transcends political definition by entering into the spiritual arena of Evil.
The strength of such men is derivative of the failure of our age to recognize the objective reality of Evil. This moral vacuum has allowed them to corrupt even religion, twisting and manipulating sacred doctrine to serve their perverse ends.
Ultimately, it must be understood that even these leaders, influential and powerful as they may become, are also to be pitied. No mortal being serves Evil knowingly. We therefore understand that each of these rabble-rousing plutocrats and power-brokers is radically ignorant of the reality of his world, as well as of the nature of his essential self.
One day, men such as these--each in his own time--will come awake to an awful terror, as a shield against which all of his worldly status, riches, and power over little men will be of no avail.
X
American political conservatism is populated by a compliant mob of the intellectually-challenged, all desperately seeking leaders who will condone the acting-out of their fear and hatred of anything that looks "different" to them, and which they don't understand. The conservative mob is to be pitied, as are all the confused and disoriented.
The leaders who exploit the weakness and disability of this sorry herd cannot be called "conservative," since the substance of their purposes and agendas transcends political definition by entering into the spiritual arena of Evil.
The strength of such men is derivative of the failure of our age to recognize the objective reality of Evil. This moral vacuum has allowed them to corrupt even religion, twisting and manipulating sacred doctrine to serve their perverse ends.
Ultimately, it must be understood that even these leaders, influential and powerful as they may become, are also to be pitied. No mortal being serves Evil knowingly. We therefore understand that each of these rabble-rousing plutocrats and power-brokers is radically ignorant of the reality of his world, as well as of the nature of his essential self.
One day, men such as these--each in his own time--will come awake to an awful terror, as a shield against which all of his worldly status, riches, and power over little men will be of no avail.
X
Monday, November 9, 2009
Rants: Making a Federal Case of Health Care
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The following consideration of the constitutionality of a proposed national health care system was originally composed in the comment section of Kyle Cupp's excellent blog, here. I am an advocate of a fully-nationalized, single-payer health care system. I think that to question the half-assed compromise system that is currently before congress on constitutional grounds is a joke and a diversionary tactic, being promoted in defense of corporate profits at the expense of the general welfare of the citizenry. That said, please consider the following:
The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution states that its purposes are the following: ...to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty...
I believe that ensuring access for all citizens, regardless of their ability to pay, to live-saving and life-enhancing health care fits nicely into the category "promote the general welfare." I believe that a national health care system is every bit as constitutionally sound as providing for the common defense. Is not defense against disease as important to the individual citizen as is defense against foreign or domestic enemies? Is it not, in fact, very likely to actually be much more important in the life of almost all citizens?
Much of medical research is funded by tax dollars. Why, therefore, should there not be equal, and guaranteed, access to the fruits of that science for all citizens?
I don't see the problem here. If a national health service, in which the government actually employed the health care providers were being proposed, the argument against it might be stronger. But that is not the case. The only difference here would be in who is writing the checks to pay for the services.
Government agencies are answerable to the people through their elected representatives. Insurance corporation bureaucrats are answerable only to their boards of directors and their shareholders. And what those entities are demanding of them is not good health care, but good profits. You do the math.
X
The following consideration of the constitutionality of a proposed national health care system was originally composed in the comment section of Kyle Cupp's excellent blog, here. I am an advocate of a fully-nationalized, single-payer health care system. I think that to question the half-assed compromise system that is currently before congress on constitutional grounds is a joke and a diversionary tactic, being promoted in defense of corporate profits at the expense of the general welfare of the citizenry. That said, please consider the following:
The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution states that its purposes are the following: ...to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty...
I believe that ensuring access for all citizens, regardless of their ability to pay, to live-saving and life-enhancing health care fits nicely into the category "promote the general welfare." I believe that a national health care system is every bit as constitutionally sound as providing for the common defense. Is not defense against disease as important to the individual citizen as is defense against foreign or domestic enemies? Is it not, in fact, very likely to actually be much more important in the life of almost all citizens?
Much of medical research is funded by tax dollars. Why, therefore, should there not be equal, and guaranteed, access to the fruits of that science for all citizens?
I don't see the problem here. If a national health service, in which the government actually employed the health care providers were being proposed, the argument against it might be stronger. But that is not the case. The only difference here would be in who is writing the checks to pay for the services.
Government agencies are answerable to the people through their elected representatives. Insurance corporation bureaucrats are answerable only to their boards of directors and their shareholders. And what those entities are demanding of them is not good health care, but good profits. You do the math.
X
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Reflections: A Collage
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Two lines of poetry often tell us more, give us more, than the weightiest tome by an erudite. To make anything truly significant one has to poetize it. …Knowledge weighs one down; wisdom saddens one. The love of truth has nothing to do with knowledge or wisdom: it’s beyond their domains. Whatever certitude one possesses is beyond the realm of proof.
xxx~ Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
XXXXXXXXXX#
Ironic Couplet
Although the gates of Hell
Were locked,
Determined Billy
Kristol knocked.
xxx~ Rodak
XXXXXXXXXX#
Matt. 18:3 …Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
XXXXXXXXXX#
The intellect is a product of ego, and the ego can never be stilled, never be satisfied.
xxx~ Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
XXXXXXXXXX#
It’s only when we stop trying to see, stop trying to know, that we really see and know. (ibid.)
XXXXXXXXXX#
Freedom is a misnomer. …Freedom implies choice and choice exists only to the extent that we are aware of our ineptitude. (ibid.)
XXXXXXXXXX#
If we abandoned fear and prejudice, we could meet the murderer as easily as the saint. (ibid.)
X
Two lines of poetry often tell us more, give us more, than the weightiest tome by an erudite. To make anything truly significant one has to poetize it. …Knowledge weighs one down; wisdom saddens one. The love of truth has nothing to do with knowledge or wisdom: it’s beyond their domains. Whatever certitude one possesses is beyond the realm of proof.
xxx~ Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
XXXXXXXXXX#
Ironic Couplet
Although the gates of Hell
Were locked,
Determined Billy
Kristol knocked.
xxx~ Rodak
XXXXXXXXXX#
Matt. 18:3 …Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
XXXXXXXXXX#
The intellect is a product of ego, and the ego can never be stilled, never be satisfied.
xxx~ Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
XXXXXXXXXX#
It’s only when we stop trying to see, stop trying to know, that we really see and know. (ibid.)
XXXXXXXXXX#
Freedom is a misnomer. …Freedom implies choice and choice exists only to the extent that we are aware of our ineptitude. (ibid.)
XXXXXXXXXX#
If we abandoned fear and prejudice, we could meet the murderer as easily as the saint. (ibid.)
X
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Rants: Built on Sand
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All one needs to do is criticize Pres. Obama*--no matter how unfairly, and upon whatever petty, nitpicky grounds--and the mouth-breathing droves of clueless goobers and bleating merinos come marching forth in drooling, lockstep droves, chanting the talking-point du jour in the best approximation of unison that they can muster in their immeasurable incompetence. Send in the Clowns.
If such as these are the foundation of our democracy, this building has not much longer to stand.
If such as these are the foundation of our democracy, this building has not much longer to stand.
___________________________X
*See comment threads following the posts "Open Thread" and "Presidential Disconnect" (Friday, November 6th)
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