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Showing posts from February, 2022

Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus on novelty, the rational mind, and choice.

"What is wickedness?  It is that which many times and often thou hast already seen and known in the world.  And so oft as anything doth happen that might otherwise trouble thee, let this momento presently come to thy mind, that it is that which thou hast already often seen and known."  -Marcus Aurelius Nothing new under the sun, for all things of old, of novelty, elapse again and again, over and over, according to Solomon, some thousand years before Marcus Aurelius.   Death and life renews again and again, and only perhaps, in Buddhism do we see a common thread each time with a novel twist in terms of reincarnations, but the distinction there is granular, because the particulars, though different, are yet the same. The duality between same and distinct, or new and old, leads us of course, to the great duality that is the Tao, the indefinite distinctive quality of truth. "Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, de

If I should forget thee, Parnassus.

The doings of a year: defensible?  We sort of float through, and yes, we can later summarize whatever misdeeds as purely justifiable.  In the diaspora, the dog-leg, the caboose, we have a Dennis Miller kind of hodgepodge of commentary, seeing as it were, ammonia-sniffers and so forth. Malcolm X went to Mecca, the pilgrimage, and others, Parnassus, Sappho, Deuteronomy. Volley.  Thunder. The Lord coming out of the cave, Roman guards unawares, and the look on the Apostles' faces. "This. Changes. Everything!" I crossed my own Rubricon, and took my notchbacks and hindrances forth, yet without breaching the civic centrum, yet without thresholding zero, or cornholding the inflamed and enfamed and entitled.  We crossed forth into a country undiscovered, peradventure that the future was a time and a place unset, and we Sarah Conner-ed our little asses into something of a deadspin-freefall in which we just had to get our heads together, you know, to put it all, as it were, into

Forthright MC: "Contrapunctus 1: The Art of the Fugue"

 

"Among the Native Negroes" Futnuckery/the fireballer takes up "Black History Month" (0r "Ten Minutes at 350)

The native people are so often, a downcast set, porters and livery workers, so much.  Of sex amongst the evening toad calls and crickets, it seems a sport, and the dialect between them is shared in radio broadcasts, such as popular music and the spirituals. "Finally the Crock has come back.... to Mckinnon. Hear me with your hearts, Lester Maddux Peanut Dome." Cheesy Gah-luck Bread. Whole grain, whole wheat our multi grain bread.  Bottom layer. then butter. then cracked pepper. then garlic powder then onion powder then chili powder then basil. Then shredded cheese. (shredded cheese is crucial to allow thermal venting to eviscerate the butters.) 10 minutes at 350.

Raw Wounds: "Nuthin says lovin like simpin' for the coven."

They all came to hear Brocrates, and Paulcibiades lay at his feet, trying to appear beautiful. "Thou art fair" he said. "We may all have to cover you so nothing unusual happens.  Dogpile." Spermlord and Assmaster, Spermlord looking like a character from a Brian DePalma movie("I'm Benny Blanco!"), had their annotations, and revealed a noxious odor from some of the commentary crew. Had he been drinking?  Heavy drugs? They were all about the art and telling of new things, and they even let the Apostle Paul speak to them, for they were good for a story, the hearing of something new.  Regal moments of bliss, stealing a moment and so forth.  "Put em in a box and see who rises to the top." "A man is a featherless biped." And Kevin, just like Brocrates, walked in with a plucked chicken and said, "behold a man." Alcibiades trumped his own purity, anal virginity, his natural fluting, how he made pleasant sounds in the Avis shitbox M

Thoreau on the "now", and myself examine the ever new meeting place of the future and the past.

"In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line." The nicked notch swatch stirring rod of time, that great axial protuberance, knitting along the fabric of all, intermeshing such things as the idle philosopher, the taxidermist, an Instagram influencer, and the odd newsman, here and there.  I too have stood at that nexus, future ahead and past squarely behind, and the great needle scraping along at 78 rpm. I remember once, sitting in 87 degrees, the bird screaming less than 24 inches from my elbow, and a giant Motorola console player going with an instrumental long play on the wrong speed.  With no vocals, I had not a reference to know it was at the wrong speed, and it made rather Hawaiian sounds seem rather pop foppish; it traversed the breadth of time and thought between Chet A

Forthright MC: Mad Dogs Timmed and Burning

    Classic street preacher.     Classsic Mad Dogs and Englishmen  

You ever choose whether to give a fig? Or a care?

"I think therefore I am" he was saying, and I'm thinking, you can be, still, and not be sure, too, Little Cheever.  You really could.  Generally forking around, borehogging tater tots like the Pygmy that was left out in the cold. Oh, Cry Me A River. "I hit that sh*t like a starving Pygmy." I was bragging to Tammy, later, and she's like, "I know how you does", "and all." It was Aurelius, last of the Good Antonines that reminded us that man is a social animal, and inclined somewhat to politics.  Where Epictetus threaded the needle reminded us of the ruling reasoning faculty, like looking upon gold and having to consciously decide its beautiful by choice of reason.  Those value judgements thread us back into politics, the shuffle, but the social reasoning, do we bring down choice or emotion into our social interactions? A Dern I could opt not to give, or yet more and more the opposite, clutching my pearls, pawing at my handbag, holding my li

Freddie Hubbard: Straight Life.

In a flash, in a blaze transmogrified by the miracle of modern alchemy to bygone days... Perhaps, he had, "cleansed the doors of perception" a wee too squeaky clean, and what he interpolated and synched-up as "unburdened perception" was something of the order of random noise from the universe.   1. The Straight Life 2. Mr Clean 3. Here's That Rainy Day A haphazard foray into a cleaner, unfettered state of mind might make a man susceptible to so much of the random noise of the universe, million dollar radio telescopes and all, schizophrenics blogging. *Don't f*ck up, now, Vladimir. Freddie Hubbard tried to capture the bluesy doldrum of clean living, finding, while drug-addled, they had wrecked their existence, all the trappings, home gone, job gone, girlfriend a relentless bore, and such other.  A kind of relentless rhythm of its own to sobriety. *The frazzled terpitude of self-serving individuals. The blues guitar, a Gibson or Epiphone, ringing out and then

Three chords to stardom.(KRU propaganda dust-up)

  Three chords to stardom. "I know, I know, I know, I know, I know I better leave the young thang alone..." The Outlander had multiple denominations of Outlandia currency, Crooners, on his person, when they found him. *That girl from High Point, NC, had near about got her stuff straight.  Which, incidentally, is no small feat, her being a classic Karen, a worry wort of the highest order. *Another from Shallote playing kick the can on a Sunday afternoon.  Marginally dignified.

Valentine's Day 2022: Poe, Edith Wharton, and Sherwood Anderson.

"make the most of your time, while you have rosebuds." -they told me, on the precipice, the free-standing edge of corporeal being, a temporary vortex. Sherwood Anderson's group of unsavory-types, working stiffs, as it were, and pastor thrown in for good measure, berating himself and looking at a reading girl through the window.  She good nude and he forgot himself. Edith Wharton wrote of a cruel prank played on a rather ditzy friend, as we all have ditzy friends, and are sometimes in fact, ourselves, considered by someone under the velvet scarsdale, to be, the ditzy friend.  A letter sent to the ditz, that some NBA player that she hadn't slept with yet kept one of her instagrams as a phone wallpaper. She was enraptured, perhaps, but the narrator saw no sign, and thought it hilarious. Many moons and cymbal booms later, the ditz was nothing but a single mother, and the narrator recounted the tale, partly in triumph over the lamentable ditz, but partly, I guess, pity. Bu

a hundred quiet interstices.

If Vlad Duthiers was on the premiere of the Reading Rainbow reboot. But he is. He wouldn't just phone it in, toilet sounds in the background. "Rodney, did you just--?!?" "'scuse me sistah I gotta take a sh*t." Amanda Gorman reading in a somewhat robotic voice, a regular cadence that is emphatic and deliberate.  In her poem she's thinking about her own place in the world, and that's relateable, but she's thinking of us, too, as so much of this struggle is common. (not her)"I felt rather slipstream." They talk so much of mindfulness, Eckhardt Tolle, the now-deceased monk Ninh, how to embrace the current to do the things that you know true and right, explode all of the "ifs" and "buts" Edgar Allan Poe and writers of his era, in the Arkham house style magazines, predominantly, spoke of "a singular experience". That if you bit into a stick of Extra gum, and got the flavor real horrorshow, you balls might windo

A philospher that rubbed vetinary meds on his ganglia and persimmons.

Ferdinand Sausierre it was that taught us about signifiers and connotations, not dipping into symbolic language, archetypal aspects, but the active, innervated figures of any form of communication. Hederbohr Saint-Senz would go on to enumerate a five-part communications model, of ideas, what was wanted to say, what was said, what was left on the cutting room floor, and what was beamed into posterity. As the solar body breaches the eastern horizon, I think that posterity is too much of a confinement; go suck an egg, Posterity, for I am about other business in the interim. Snorting Ivermectin, perhaps rubbing some of the crushed up pill-gore on my scrotum. They say, as if to deter me, "you're consumed by building an enigma".  And my response is that I'm just roiling and boiling along my chosen path.  

An idea of moviefilm: Great Exhortations.

Now we come to, like, the rather seepy part of our story. "What's your name and serial, boy?" "Calvin Klein."  He said, hands over his privates.  "six double-five four three two one." "Bend over." He said, pen light between his teeth.  The spark plug from the lawnmower was useless still laying to the side, and the class watching, all of it, a collection of useless things in the midst of process. "Who is number 1?" "You are number 6." "I am not a number; I am a free man!!!" Well, the De Lorean had us back in 2002, and she was 17 or so, wearing the shorty jean shorts, just lazing around, no targets in the area, and one done come woke, and was targeting, unbeknownst.  "We're among friendlies." But so far, a Grand Old Petting zoo, and not a full on smorgasmbord of carnal delights. I liked reading the Old Testament, the fighting and the sex with the ladies.  Bathsheba, and all that, Ruth crawling in the

French Onion.

The proverbial "they" were saying of the FB algorithm that it had "switches", like "dip switches" that could be pulled on or off, and I'm think, "I'm the chip, and you're the dip." Put me in it any old time. Nevertheless, advanced recognition software, and a vast database that eclipses probably any known dictionary, from the sophisticated to the vulgar, recognizing puns and various connections that go far beyond so-called "meta tags" defined by the poster. But one blogger's speculation, and assuredly the vast dictionary array has been growing and evolving all through Facebook's active life. "Through the vastness of time uncounted; across space and time, and possibly,  -reality itself." As it were, cutting an amazing arc across the heavens, serpentine, schizoid, as it were, reminding of other times, flush cutting furniture hardware, taking a Joe all over the Andrew Jackson statue, and then McPherson saying t