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Showing posts from December, 2022

Seneca on the Philosopher's Mean.

I commend you and rejoice in the fact that you are persistent in your studies, and that, putting all else aside, you make it each day your endeavor to become a better man.  I do not merely exhort you to keep at it; I actually beg you to do so.  I warn you, however, not to act after the fashion of those who desire to be conspicuous rather than to improve, by doing things which will rouse comment as regards your dress or general way of living.  Repellent attire, unkempt hair, slovenly beard, open scorn of silver dishes, a couch on the bare earth, and any other perverted forms of self-display, are to be avoided.  The mere name of philosophy however quietly pursued, is an object of sufficient scorn; and what would happen if we should begin to separate ourselves from the customs of our fellow men?   Inwardly, we ought to be different in all respects, but our exterior should conform to society.  Do not wear too fine, nor yet too frowzy, a toga.  One needs no silver plate, encrusted and embos

He said: "the gator's got yo granny."

  "Are not the joys of morning sweeter than the joys of night and are the vigrous joys of youth ashamed of the light   Let age and sickness silent rob the vineyards in the night but those who burn with vigrous youth pluck fruits before the light."    

the enmity, and explanations sans reason

It was like a curse, life itself, enmity between me and thee, and Original Sin, the due diligence, was still very much being meted out. It was a beautiful morning this morning, temperate, but all the while i was thinking on the pure casual way i lost a family member some years back, least resistance  and all. They had asked off the cuff for my opininion of things, why things happen, and i amazed them by saying no one had ever been able to explain life, but here i was, the one and only narrator  asked by an underpaid state employee, that immortal existential question. And expected, just as much off the cuff, shooting from the hip, to explain all of life in the last five minutes of my session. That i would be let go easy, i acknowledged some time ago.  They were more beholden to the wwe mcmahons and the nfl, cbs and nascar, than to me.  They were beholden such that if i explained the interconnections as i saw them, and may have actually however been accurate, to hold the narrative line,

of societies old, and gods forgotten; elder ones and bygone ways and quite other items, things, and thoughts.

  Hath not a congressman eyes? The ancient Carmalians had proposed not a spirit animal for each year that rotated through the continuity, but a different deity for each year.  Not like the "personal daemon", not like the animal politic, or anything like that, but a whole new system, every da*n year. Further than that, the had the "family gods", the unisex little bearded figurines that they ensconced in a cloth until they retired for the evening, wine and charred pork on their breath, whispering things to their forebears. I heard that Agcrats were having a vacation into Puerto Fern, and there was a "virtual" option, for those less inclined to travel, the peanut farmers of the lot, the ones on the precipice of a harvest, that is, you know. Oral Roberts said you didn't apply hands until you were ready to actively release your faith, like through a thunderbolt, imparting a wish, believe as an active verb. The Carmalians left behind crags of ruins, though

a bards moment.

Hath not a congressman eyes? Prick him; do he not bleed? A congressman by any other provenance is just as sweet. I would save a word for after--a pouch of globulin; i would fleck this out, somewhat hereafter, to make anends to the observing daemon of posterity, for all its insults and ignorance, maybe, to do it a service.

2022: The Lateness of the Hour Revisited.

It was, "once more into the breach", another noel, another yuletide, another chance to get it right. Beans. Tasked to control the crisis, was decided, "we'll buy them houses".  And I thought this sounded like government wisdom, that full-fledged citizens crap in city parks, and the immigrant gets a free house. "We'll buy them houses", and this when most of their own voting bloc aren't homeowners themselves. Its what happens when we put lawyers in charge, I wot. The serialized pillaging and the "just add water" go-to news story for the right side of the aisle, the story of "a crisis". We'll take a kind of spherical geometry and run in through a spatial matrix, and me, I'm having a prophetic vision, laying at the Lateness of the Hour, thinking how so often, the kids are raised by phone apps, and only yelled at by their helpless, busy parents. Not that the parents don't care, but they're panicking already, up to

william blake: a cradle song

Sleep sleep beauty bright Dreaming over the joys of night Sleep sleep: in thy sleep Little sorrows sit & weep Sweet babe in thy face Soft desired I can trace Secret joys & secret smiles Little pretty infant wiles As thy softest limbs I feel Smiles as of the morning steal Oer thy cheek & oer thy breaswhere thy little heart does rest O the cunning wiles that creep In thy little heart asleep When thy little heart does wake Then the dreadful lightnings break From thy cheek & from thy eye Oer the youthful harvests nigh Infant wiles & infant smiles Heaven & earth of peace beguiles.

On the good and evil of nature, questions and answers, and a four-feathered bird bottom.

    From the natural world, an occasion or something pockmarked by various things, cratered by the flying storm of detritus that is the modern conversation--a saving grace then, to cut the noise. In my cups again, and feeling no pain, I wagged the bird ahead of the dog, whacked the dog on the head with the four-feathered bird ass. I said if it was natural, then it was explicitly a good, and not an evil, no matter that stance of perception, that a natural thing was by nature a good, by reason of faith, by faith in reason that these things transcend subjectivity of the being a remain static, objective principles of life and the cosmos. The Nuclear Snowstorm.  Not an evil, but just a thing, and by faith we can sheepishly apply the label "good" to it, if we can maintain feeling enough to grab the post-it and the tape, we can put a name on that sucker for all posterity, and say, no matter how many crashed, died, lost property or what not, it was not an evil because it was natural

where the spirit is wheeling.... the freschetta is abysmal.

She had, more than once, the Whore, called Kimberly Brighton-Wonderworth on me, complaining about my thought-inappropriate technique. But one day she was saying she could hold any position for a length of time. "Ya juss lay there?" "Aw naw, cuz.  You don't think I'm gonna give you a chair to sit in. Hit the clock, cuz, or go to the back and unload the truck." I was thinking to myself, and not saying out loud, that I'd probably have to jab her with my pocketknife to get a reaction out of her, the Prodigious Whore. She had a man to pass the time, but away, she was in lamentation about him, that placeholder of a penis, holding between the pages, a fleshy little bookmark of Peter. Years ago, we had threatened unmercifully every Peter Hunt driver in Columbia around I76 and I20, and they were laying low, probably hanging down in their own little air-ride chairs. The whore just lay there like a jellyfish, waiting to call Kimberly Brighton-Wonderworth, thinking

Stranger To The Water.

I was flipping through the cards, amazed of the contradictions I was being shown, such as Defeat manifesting Victory, such as the galactic truth that Victory is Defeat, and Defeat Victory, and perhaps, as is said, "there are never any winners". The muddling speaks of nature, a stream troubled, perhaps, in which the sediment clouds the waters, or even a timeline, a sequence, to be defeated once and then victorious: I looked at it and I puzzled. The very gayest little stick man...   Your grandfather, circa 1949, shining his shoes and having a bottle of something brown, but not tea, not tea brother, but something more revoltingly antiseptic; he could have been even then having a go against nature, despite that nature reclaims her own. There's no explicit "Tiddies" tarot card, I observe, but a few with female nudes, like the girl and the bucket, "This Is The World", and I'm like yeah, your ass wishes, Cheever.  She's got a bucket full of your pocke

Movie: In The Good Old Christmastime. "The Shop Around The Corner."

Of the romantically starcrossed Jimmy Stewart being accused of being bowlegged, we can only remember Eisenhower's cryptic warning about the Military-Industrial complex, which JFK and LBJ would later milk-enthusiastically.  If DDE was King Philip, then JFK thought he was an Alexander, and LBJ a Nebuchednezzar, later to go crazy after the writing on the wall: PSSH, thought to be bowlegged. The director's favorite film of his own. "He stole that from Victor Hugo." Mataczek's Roadside Super Emporium is where lovers meet. It's Budapest, baby, its Christmastime, and the only Five Folds we got this time are the imported pig skin wallets that both Jimmy and his colleague work on, to get that from the girl as a romantic present. "I can prove I'm not bowlegged.  Let's go out on the street and I'll pull up my trousers." More Western optimism, but this time in Budapest, invading the near East, with a new kind of imported pig skin bi-fold in place of

Eine Kliene Nachtmuzak. "Stuck in the Middle with You."

Perhaps, as it were, a sort of cosmic dissipation, the cosmos vomit into empty space, and that, the dog returns to its vomit, the center cannot hold, the dogs and the cats, and sort of the infernal thing taken back into itself. I had a strange, blessed blissful day. "thy thoughts, towards, cannot be quite catagorized" Indeed thy thoughts, the issue of my mouth. Praises I sing, women I fight in the ring, Titan Mexican. One hysterical vomit of indecency, malaise, onto the pavings, and so forth. Melvin Vernon Presnell holds the torch, carries the standard of decency, athleticism, energetic actions towards that Horatio Alger handpurse full of what the universe tabulates as "earnings", one man holding the torch, making the case: Melvin Vernon Presnell. ....I watched the sun vibrate higher and higher......  from the between the tree trunks, to higher into the tendril witch-finger limbs.... the heat from cigar smoke exhalation daubing and defrosting the windshield slowly..

Intellectual Freedom, Creative Courtesy. Hochevar, Legion, and my life in wonderment.

  Hochevar had came, toting a frosty, bicycling shorts and all, and we observe frost on the chicken's back too. Redundancy gives a kind of sense to things, I told him, layers and insulations and installations and the pings and the pongs.  As Blake put it, not redundancy, but a more kind of synchronizing, a symmetry, like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, some pointing one way, and some another, but all each a radius from a kind of nexus, and in that, certainty is a deliberate illusion created by the system, that nature pumps and ca-jugs along whether there is certainty or not, and the only true certainty is but a few precepts of nature, and those that we only feel as if we can prove. I do not mean the world is subjective, but your chains, some of those fetters, are different from those that assail my person; and some things are common, such as the common ailment or the common blessing, the common cursing, and the snow and rain.  Yet some things are quite unique in the interim; I do re

the frisson sociale, and le medium sociale, the sunshine after, and the popular content torpedo aimer.

  Oh the peculiar vulgarities and transciences of the life social, and itself a cataloging of said peculiarities, curiosities and emotional atrocities, a file of instances in which we were happy or sad. But then there is the utterly peculiar beauty, that kind of renewed resonance of the sunlight after a storm. What am I but one in the catalog?  I pretend to be no more special, and certainly any special quality I might show you could be partaken of and imparted to any of the others, and that, a kind of "participation trophy" of the blogging world, and the life social, nothing thrust upon us, as we assured in the Good Book, nothing tossed onto our aching backs that is not common to mankind. God loved and gave, in turn the spirit comes upon us, and we can think of what we deserve, or not what we deserve but that we get overmuch, out of love, we are duly blessed, and in the interim we are but with our grateful hands out in wonder, surprise, amusement..... I awaken talking to so m

On learning....

.... The author or speaker from whom you learn the most is not the one who teaches you something you didn’t know before, but the one who helps you take a truth with which you have quietly struggled, give it expression, and speak it clearly and boldly.   -Oswald Chambers

William Blake's version of the Demon Futnuckery, circa 1800 AD; remembrances.

(excerpted from "The Chimney Sweeper," from Songs of Innocence) ....And so he was quiet, and that very night, As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!-- That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black. And by came an angel, who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins, and set them all free; Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing, they run And wash in a river, and shine in the sun. Then naked and white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind; And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.... I come, mayhap, dreadfully so, dread and want of my own sillinesses and gray gooses, for want of a horrid smile turned toward that youngling face; do I come to eulogize?  Demonstratize?  Evoke?  Persuade? Come perhaps, on my own time, to say something of the dark corners in our well-worn halls, mayhap, of something which we express

Midnight's Children: The Kaballic Verses.

  Martha and I were sitting there over a dish of toast and some Stella Rosa chatting of minutia, her boyfriends, and other things, a perfunctory foray into investing in electric cars. It was a quiet morning, before Hell came to the door of the conscience. That's what it was. And then hell came to our door, "for all have sinned", "not one is righteous", kind of an ethnic cleansing of the suburbs, kind of a Western Civilization stomach cramp, and for such a mundane malady, people do, in fact, die. I had lead the mammie dog out for breakfast, you know, having to keep them caged: town limits and all, and they were saying you could put chickens in cages, but don't under any circumstances, park a car out front. I told Martha that electric cars were just a dream of the future, but that someday, it would indeed pay dividends.  I considered that the stock value was a bit much for how much product went out the door; I looked at mass-marketing competitors like GM and F

'heard the Crimbus bells rangalanging.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play,     And wild and sweet     The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom     Had rolled along     The unbroken song Of peace on earth, good-will to men Across the brow-beaten schizoid-of-weather fusion-encrusted and drained erf, I wandered, looking at the monuments of some of the old cities.  A world-destroying existential paradox, a proclivity towards California-style dissipation, but I thought to myself, with an ounce of renewed depression, it hadn't always been that way. Under Reagan in 84, it was "Morning In America", before the hardliners got bitchy, everybody was essentially beguiled of a dollar and a spare moment to pick a booger.   Now some say the woke are trying to tear it all down and rebuild it in their own weird image, the people that can barely read past emojis and nude photos, trying to recast the world in the

From the "book of improbable short-hairs."

There was once an insane man, taken into police custody for accosting strangers. Only the most skilled lawyer could see what had happened: when the people came close to the man, they each accidentally, and without realizing it, each, had stood on the tip of his necktie, which, each time, drove the man into a kind of belated fury. Before the truth was known, they had all complained about him, both the left and right-leaning media types. -upon being asked, "who do you envy?"

Brittany Grimesgorge meets Santa in the Free World. "The Great Santini."

So they let out this WNBA player, going to basically a dictatorship with her little marijuana in her bag. They had so many reasons to be upset; they lined-up politically, the liberals and potheads versus the others swarming around the conservatives. When we have every reason to condemn Brittany, it becomes, perhaps, more and more obvious, that she is.... well.... us.  Any of use abused and misused by the system, just an American in the Russen hip pocket to be traded like a pollywog. She us. Isaiah 53, bebies, the maligned and put-upon among us, and she was hustling as an athlete year-round, bound by chronic pain. Some on the political right observe that "she hates America".  Well that's her right, no pun unintended.

Futnuckery 2: The Way of Blunder, exentuensis the first: why people enjoyed his films, the fact eludes him, James Tiberius Fern Cameron.

Indeed, it was the early 90s and he was a kind of "hitman", a person expected to make big-budget, high-profit, widely-appealing action films.  He had a singular hit with the original Terminator, and through the years, with his own Terminator sequels, and a few other things, he clearly demonstrated time and time again that he did not quite grasp how to do those really big films that demanded his attention as a "hitman". Terminator 2, where he supposedly establishes kind of a precedent for later Terminator work, was itself the recipient of a dividend of attention based on the success of the more modest original film, beloved and known, constantly repeated on video and cable. Terminator 2?  Not so much.  Consider people went to see it, flocked to it, in part on the novelty of certain gimmicks introduced in the film, but largely because of the prior enjoyment of the first film. Around the same time, we were given Predator 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 and a few othe

Jaunty a loo etta: the 12/6 conspiracy.

d The face, the Age of Enlightenment, the insipid, "I think, therefore I am", while some yet sleep and live and be, some yet dead and in their comfortable urns, yet, be. "I am, and, betimes, I think on my condition." Twas, in fact, the kind of people to go where, "everybody knows your name", and some of the interns had never even watched Fox News Channel; those f*ckers.  

What if we're not correct in our closely-held precepts?

Dubiously so, to aim the narrative is to invite the spectacular possibility, that in all the probabilities, millions of consequences, outcomes, happenings and such forth, we have to have believed with something other than our own discursive squeamish hearts that we have indeed chosen, correctly. And how often are we otherwise, correct, in our heart of hearts?  We have only the certitude, the moral imperative that others are wrong, evil, while we ourselves have the very purest motives. It was said of Cambodia, "dey no dey bad people", and I responded oh really?  There was a probability that in my counter-reasoning, there may have been something of a snick-snock video being shot of me from an obtuse angle; and I observe, straight-on the front is obtuse enough, even moreso when in view of the rank and file. The very few people who believe themselves truly bad, are the broken in spirit, who mistrust even that, having felt even morese that they had lost touch with their trueselves

1987 movie film. batmanator. bedizzle fer rizzle.

There was Lance Henriksen, putting over the baddy. "This is different." "Harder to kill." The lobstrocity came from the Easter Sea, formed one mimetic alloy arm into a rudimentary blade. Then the the other arm, a blade. Put them together around john connor's bewildered head, And so. August 29, 1997. Took his head. "Millions died that day." I almost spilled my beer, too. "Bodies burning like paper." "They called it the trepaning day." I was sitting with a girl, and i hadnt asked her her name-whats in a name, anyway?-a name was unimportant, though if i had it, i would have glorified well beyond its worth. A lotus flower, it was, a cup in which we sat, two illegals, maybe, in a nation of Karens, a nation of scraps of information. She had fell in a trash dumpster at nestle water, and i, drunk, looking for a place to sleep, bottle in hand, and all i had in addition was my socks and a newspaper, climbing up to get in and sleep for the nig

high school reonion

The films of my high school experience. Freshman: the godfather Sophomore: clockwork orange Junior: for a few dollars more Senior: the matrix 4 yrs.  4 different best friends. Crushes on a new girl each year. From buying novels to stealing nascar hats. The more i learned, maybe, the less i cared.  I piled a litany of reprehensible factoids onto a burning fleshlaser. In year two i read thoreau, and in year three i stood in the pines, dollar books in my bag, myself a kind of fractituous thoreau, watching the pine trees communicate breeze.  The dark fresh water, a soapy froth mingled, was at my toes, kfc rime on my fingers, 11 herbs and spices being my supplement for reading Pyche and Symbol, my young sponge of a brain denying the existence of a shadow self, reading objectively a text of subjective importances and application.

melinda gates, would you also regain beauty with your regained youth?

I was talking with Melinda and she gave me a piece of life advice, unsolicited of course, and quite often, thats where we find the gems among the chaff, nuggets of wisdom. Something like, "be who you were in high school." Paradoxical for me, this advice, because i was honor roll first year, and failed 2 of 3 classes my last year. I went from doing my homework daily, to, finally, just walking out of school in the middle of class. I lifted weights one year. I drank heavily one year. I made an a+ in psych one year. I was fatter and heavier in year one than in year four. I liked a different girl every year. I had a big old color tv, year one, and that tv was gone year four, replaced by a growing collection of music.  Not having the tv in my room, i lorded over the family set in the living room. Cable tv came to my neighborhood in high school. Nicole, at the time, loved and cherished me even without knowing i existed, and later it would seem so effortless and trouble-free, her los