due to

most comic circumstances, it was recently discovered that a number of posts were misplaced by blogger and shall be reinstated in due course.  the sadoo vicariously apologizes for any resultant inconvenience and in the meantime resumes his life as a mumbler of poetry and explorer of arcane mysteries.  also in the meantime, blogger is exploring an obscure technical defect and expresses its hopes to this blogger and its humble readership that, in the best manner of a customer-centered organization, a satisfactory solution will be implemented as soon as possible.

daodejing lxiv

It is easy to maintain a situation while it is still secure.

It is easy to deal with a situation before symptoms develop.

It is easy to break a thing when it is yet brittle.

It is easy to dissolve a thing when it is yet minute.

Deal with a thing while it is still nothing.

Keep a thing in order before disorder sets in.

A tree that can fill the span of a man’s arms grows from a downy tip.

A terrace nine storeys high rises from hodfuls of earth.

A journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath one’s feet.

Whoever does anything to it will ruin it; whoever lays hold of it will lose it.

Therefore the sage, because he does nothing, never ruins anything and, because he does not lay hold of anything, loses nothing.

In their enterprises the people always ruin them when on the verge of success.

Be as careful at the end as at the beginning and there will be no ruined enterprises.

Therefore the sage desires not to desire

And does not value goods which are hard to come by.

Learns to be without learning

And makes good the mistakes of the multitude

In order to help the myriad creatures to be natural and to refrain from daring to act.

Always in the Dao a fish, deeply set, sensed, known, perhaps even loved, by the sage.  Below, some membrane separating words and things.  Is it feral?  Whose desire is it for it to be set free, to be loosed into the human circus:  another flood, another olympian drama?  Can anything be done to it? Can it be ruined?  Is it possible even to stretch one’s hand through the membrane and touch it?  What are the methods for its description?  Is this stretching, this setting free, the reason for humanity, its being and becoming, the arc of history, time’s timeless blood?

We exist on a murky equilibrium, an unseen fulcrum.  The sage knows the feel of the pivot as life whirls around and she is somehow not undone.   For to deal with a thing while it is still nothing, you must know nothing.  You must know how it feels to attempt to get the fish to leave, to grasp its scales, to know ruin, to have attempted to have become the slippery spirit of desire, suck on its piscine heart, been spat back to land, unloved, unnamed, unbecome.

But, in that Daoist twist, the scales—those energies of all seduction—are not known by grasping or doing but by grasping not-grasping and doing not-doing.  The sage does not lay hold, but lies on the membrane, watching the fish, watching the grasping, watching the watching watching the fish.  The sage does not seduce or is not seduced in the usual ways, but through the eyes on the membrane on the fish on the deep.  So things get done, though no one really knows how.  So ways are walked, and the walking is not a method, a program, a measure, but a step, and another, and another, and that is all:  this the vision and the eyes and the learning and the care.

In the Dao a fish and in a fish the Dao.  Untouched, bound, and in its binding free.

tao te ching lxiii

The sadoo returns to the Tao Te Ching after a hiatus--

Do that which consists in taking no action, pursue that which is not meddlesome, savor that which has no flavor.

Make the small big and the few many.  Do good to him who has done you an injury.

Lay plans for the accomplishment of the difficult before it becomes difficult.  Make something big by starting with it when small.

Difficult things in the world must have their beginnings in the easy.  Big things must have their beginnings in the small.

Therefore it is because the sage never attempts to be great that he succeeds in becoming great.

One who makes promises rashly rarely keeps good faith.  One who is in the habit of considering things easy meets with frequent difficulties.

Therefore even the sage treats some things as difficult.  That is why in the end no difficulties can get the better of him.

The Dao is a self-sustaining spiritual ecosystem, using the materials of destruction to destroy destruction, enabled to do this through its core use:  using use to achieve non-use.  For doing is usually active, pursuing meddlesome, savoring flavorful.  The small is usually just small, the few few, and greatness a result of effort.  What is this spiritual magic show, pulling big from small, many from few, good from injury, greatness from nothing, action from no-action, and flavor from no-flavor?  A linguistic game, an inane delusion, a mind so imbalanced it’s upside down, hanging from itself?

Perhaps.  But it could simply be a graceful imaginative act:  seeing the world in your beloved or without stirring abroad.

The Dao itself is a manual for this seeming sleight-of-hand:  using word to get beyond word, language to deconstruct language (long before deconstructionism).  But once language is deconstructed through the Dao, there is not nothingness but a way of nothing, not emptiness but an empty path.

Unlike the dominant forms of religious and secular moralities, the Dao never attempts to be good or to eradicate or condemn evil; instead it asks how great the distance is between the two and in asking, in not defining, dissolves the duality.  It pursues non-pursuit, creates by turning back to old ruts.

I wait at Yonge and Bloor for the scramble to open.  In waiting and in scrambling i immerse myself, naturally, with minimal cost, in the waiting and scrambling that comprises life.  This little waiting becomes the waiting the bureaucrat does for the president, the general for the enemy to finish a mistake, the universe to end or expand, the pain of unrequited love; this little scrambling becomes the way through, the cessation of unsustainable pollution, an order of chaos.

This smallness is not done from volition, from frivolity, self-effacement, inferiority or ressentiment, from spiritual principles or guidelines, some text, but from an almost unthinking unwilled unassuming efficiency of nature—this self-sustaining ecosystem called Dao which the world tries vainly to emulate visibly through green technologies and spiritual systems.

Yet here it is.

Dictionary of Modern Times - scattered first entries

The Sadoo begins listing selective preliminary entries to the Dictionary of Modern Times.  (Readers are free to alter this one, write their own, or eat this one.  Other freedoms that may appear as freedoms are not.  Avoid them.)  (In the future, Dictionary of Modern Times may be referred to as dom-tea, DoMT, or something else.)

Marriage

Sitting here in a condo watching a couple in the building to the northeast of me having a fight on a monday morning around 7:00, their kids still asleep:  she very aggressive, racing back and forth, arm outstretched, pointing, then going back to the mirror to put on her makeup for work, then racing back; he shoulders slunk and dismissive.  Ah, morning love.  (There’s something about a pretty woman in a dress blowing up:  among my many defects, part of me has always rather enjoyed watching it, even when the anger’s directed at me, which, i must say, has not often felt like a particularly useful trait.)

Geese

Somewhere in a lost Austen scrapbook, there’s this scene of a young woman—i think her name was Filomena—who is believed to have been meandering, vaguely happy, through meadows of stinging nettles, undisturbed to that point, pursuing (though this might be too strong) an elusive morsel in her soul (some undigested leftover from a Brueghel is not impossible) which she would likely have (if she had ever had the chance to find it) put into another compartment, like a spiritual cow, for further processing.

Alas.  It was not to be.

Reality

really, except when it’s not, a positive negative condition we prefer to be inspired by the following fine story:

Josephine-Joseph or Joseph-Josephine, a boy-girl of the girl-boy persuasion or a girl-boy of the boy-girl persuasion, persuaded, or was persuaded by, a similarly minded individual to try on his or her (or her or his) or her or his (or his or her) outfit one fine day, leading from or to or to or from or to and fro or fro and to another persuasion or persuaded or persuaded by or outfit and another day.

Mellifluous

Bob, sometimes known as Bafti-Salood or Alice, reached in the little used cupboard above his stove for what he thought might be a jar of peanut butter left there after a party of sorts some years prior.  Following an uncomfortable struggle with some bugs and knocking over a bunch of jars he was sure couldn’t be it, his hand settled on something resembling a memory he had of it, one which had cunningly, serpentinely, somehow intruded through the day’s grimy detritus, its rambling mindscape of unswept chimneys, and set itself, prominently, at the very forefront of Bob’s desire.

(church) Pew

That on which i sit in yonderscope, wondering if my pondering her open yoni and what i’d do with it if here might be of that prayerway to heaven that that leaden blimp besang some yonderyear.

The Middle Ages

In 1400 Griselda, a peasant girl, was swinging her basket on her left and charming arm when a pig she had never seen before approached from a stile.  Griselda, fair of flesh and foul of doom, avoid the Frith of Flith, orient thyself to the Fwith of Fnith, and of the Fhith of Fvith we have no opinion, the pig intoned.  But Griselda did not heed the words of the pig who had approached from a stile, and was bludgeoned to death the following day by a band of marauding alesmen from the north.

Cast Shadow of a Plaster Cast, in Floor

Around ’57 or ’58 or maybe ’74 or later but definitely—to the extent we can speak of time in such a way—before ’13, a femme drapée (of no relation to Drapeau, that froggie dépensier!) emancipated herself from her voyeured dais, crept into the floor, improving hue, mystique, originality, translucence, unstealability, seductive prowess, and acepholosity.

That femme drape, that shadow cast, that froggy-not, she who refused to remain seated, she knew what she was doing, eh?

Talk Of Facts, Acquisitions, Positions, Vis-à-vis, Holdings, Social Scuttlings, What’s One Seen, Where One’s been, All That Usual ([almost] regardless of the quality of conveyance)

Matilda, being hairy, was humping, being hairy, Harry too, who, being hairy, being eyed by, being hairy, Jane, wished to, hairy hairy, hump too Adgar, in addition to her usual, being being, you.

white highheeled boots

Grit was sitting there, on his ass, the way we sit, on his ass, watching white—call them white—highheeled boots—call them boots—walk by.  Grit was there, on his ass, getting hard by those boots, and those boots, by themselves, were somewhat hard, very wet (it was raining), being watched.

Transience

Myrtle crawls across the exhaustion of her days muttering, muttering, muttering, muttering, muttering, muttering, muttering.  She crawls the way she crawled, the way she’ll crawl, mutters the way she muttered, the way she’ll mutter.  Myrtle crawls across, exhausted crawls, muttering across, across exhausted, across her days, crawls muttering.

atavism

(note that the definition of atavism is incomplete at the beginning of the third line of third, last and climactic stanza due to blogger's or blogger's stupidity)

Billy went o^Ene day to scho^Eol and was beaten up^E by boys.

Billy^E went one day ^E to school and was ^Ebeaten up by boy^Es.

Billy went on^Ee day to school^E and was beat^Een up by boys.

And there you fucking have it.

^ESusan San from the Soo sang a^E little song.^E

Susan San from the So^Eo sang ^Ea lit^Etle song.

Susa^En San from^E the Soo s^Eang a^E little song.

And there you fucking have it.

Bill a^ánd Sue met on^ãe day and fucked.

Sue and Bill me^™t one day and fucked.

   ^ºmet one d^ëQJay and fucked.^R

And that is atavism.

Dictionary of Modern Times - prefixes: a brief history of the dictionary & a note on method

A Brief History of the Dictionary

A dictionary historically and predominantly has been a collection of definitions of words and sometimes brief phrases—often including etymologies, grammatical functions, pronunciations­— ... definitions which are proper—that is, oriented to the serious and firm operations of society.  Exceptions—primarily the notable Bierce and his less notable successors—exist; (Bierce might be said to contain more truth but less utility than his mainstream equivalents, even as we aim here for more—not truth, for who aims for that these days? but—love, viewing utility merely as a function [and hardly one of its most important] of love).

Yet there is a gap.  There are always gaps.  (Gaps exist to be filled so that new gaps can be created.  This is not an error:  we can’t help but be the homo gapus gapus that we are.  Error—itself a form of truth; thus, like utility, now subservient to love—creeps in when value is inevitably imposed onto the gaps, the filling, the creating.  We do what we must do, even as trees leaf and shed and cockroaches scurry and startle.  Homo errorus errorus.)

We, thus, being made to fill and create gaps and not much more, fill and create this gap:  the dictionary of modern times.  Which seeks to capture less the technical definitions of an age than free the spirits of an age by means of the caprice of defining, thus subverting the definitional task and engaging in the poet’s perpetual task of the (re-) liberation of language.  (Knowing caprice is the beat of love’s dancing stable heart.)  It aims less to please the serious operations of society and more to please that which those operations are devoted to denying.  It aims to be systematic, but according to the systems that create new worlds rather than those that ossify existing ones.  If these creative systems are not well understood, well then, perhaps this dictionary can be an aid to further understanding—not necessarily in the individuality of any entry, but in the conglomerate effect of the whole.  And, truly, is not this the only way we effectively understand anything?

For no word exists in isolation; there is no platonic word:  this is the error of the conventional dictionary which, while it seeks—it must seek—to define a word with other words (even our dictionary does not attempt to escape this directly, but indirectly, by travelling to the center of language itself), still maintains the pretense that certain other particular words and sets of other particular words, set in certain styles against certain backdrops, are closer to what we should expect are the truth of the word being defined rather than only one of an infinite myriad of possibilities, restricted only by the fetters we put on imagination and freedom.  In other words, the conventional dictionary approaches language from the necessary societal perspective of death whereas our dictionary—for the first time—approaches language from a necessary aesthetic perspective of life.  This, then, is the first gaseous dictionary, a dictionary of the spirit, of things not as they are—or seem, or pretend to be—in themselves, but as they are—or seem, or pretend to be—in others or, rather, in that ineffable numinous space between.  Even as each of us is recognized only in the dissolving mirror of the other (or the same in ourselves as we see ourselves dissolving in that other mirror that dissolves, in another).

One might also call it a mystic’s dictionary—and this would be less and more precise, but possibly misleading (for the pretentious overtones which would likely be imposed by a naïve readership—for which mystic has cared about language as a face of god ... or, rather, cared about god as a face of language?)  From an eastern perspective (if we are permitted [but being westerners, we permit ourselves]), we could think of the Dictionary of Modern Times as a haiku dictionary—not, naturally, in any literal sense, but as if the definitions were written by a haiku, a haiku made flesh.

(One might also call it Humpty Dumpty's Dictionary, but this would be too easily misunderstood by all the false eggs out there.)

A dictionary not of and by and for the people—not user-led and edited:  some tricktionary—but of and by and for language.  We introduce to you the first dictionary of language; all dictionaries to date have, most misleadingly, been dictionaries of words—worse, of Word:  offering solid mental images of artifacts and concepts of human projection, a form of the puerile project of god.  Instead, i place Word, word and words where they belong—in language:  that is, as gas, of feeling.  For most, language—and so a dictionary—is a monument, a stolidity, a once-and-for-all ... but dictionaries should dance:  everyone should have their own!:  the dictionary an unchoreographed choreography of each, all dictionaries!

The reader should be aware that grammatical functions are not provided (all language parts are verbs), etymologies are not provided (all language derives from darkness), and pronunciations are not provided (the reader should attempt to read the text aloud in Westminster and if she be understood she may interpret this as her having pronounced improperly).

Finally, it has been suggested by some—some of whom some don’t consider entirely “with it”—that the entries in DoMT (pronounced dom-tea), as it is sometimes affectionately known, are in the order of degree of irony:  though from greatest to least or least to greatest it is debated.  Others, however, disagree, and posit an order not unrelated to the recent coup in Guinea-Bissau.  Regardless, the one thing almost all agree on (Flipp, an accomplished South Dakotian cowherd, is a notable exception) is that the entries are not in alphabetic order.

A Note on Method

We use—that is, we embody—the claimed values and valued methods and methodical claims of modernity:  narration, diversity&multiperspectivity, absurdity, non-linearity, mutability, ellipticality, relationalicalness, fleetingness&momentariation & gasity.

Dictionary of Modern Times - intro and possible title page

The Sadoo wishes to slowly publish--at will (whatever that means) and at random (which seems more the will)--a dictionary of language as it might be written by a visitor from another world.  Here, in honour of a certain past visitor, might be the title page.

-----------------------------------------------------------

DICTIONARY
of
Modern Times:

in which
The WORDS are deduced from their FLEETING CONTEXTS,
and
ILLUSTRATED in their DIFFERENT SIGNIFICATIONS
by
NARRATIONS and other MEANS from the best IMAGINATIONS.
To which are prefixed,
A BRIEF HISTORY of the DICTIONARY,
and A NOTE ON METHOD.
Assembled by The Consortium of Consortionists,

of many degrees and inclinations
In VIRTUAL Volumes
in the early third millennium in the republic of the internet 

yap clackity worm

faces yap the human news

yap yappity yap yap yappity yap

europe gives europe a prize for its virtue

yap yappity yap yap yappity yap

punching killing winning losing

yap yappity yap yap yappity yap

meanwhile trains do their thing

click clackity clack click clackity clack

going nowhere must be on time

click clackity clack click clackity clack

and worms and bees keep the world going on

buzz buzzity worm buzz buzzity worm

so that faces can yap and trains go clack

buzz buzzity worm buzz buzzity worm

and one day soon not long from now

the yaps will stop and so will the clacks

and all therell be on the face of the earth

buzz buzzity worm  buzz     buzzity       worm

                      buzz                buzzity                worm           buzz                                                           buzzity                

worm

self-exile and exile

self-exile         a misnomer, for all exile is a transtextual dialogue of no’s.

self-exile         an attempt to again glimpse art through society’s arsenal.

self-exile         an i ching of terrorisms.

self-exile         to demonstrate the exile that has already taken place.

self-exile         for exile is becoming obsolete and the window for self-exile itself is only open until the psyche assumes the state’s attributes—bureaucratic, average, mechanical, powerless, indebted, fully prosthetized, incessantly intermeshed, intradatabased, planetary.

self-exile         the dream of exile being the sufficient substitute for exile.

self-exile         nothing left to be exiled from, nowhere to be exiled to.

exile       for the pop and shame of culture, for the lightness and plonk of being human.

exile       for the glory of peculiar movement.

exile       in celebration of homelessness, dispossession, transience.

exile       to subvert the brute necessities of biology and state.

exile       to wean new forms from the teats of the familiar.

exile       because anomie must be made incarnate.

exile       for the dream and memory of exile, to maintain a tradition.

exile       no need, for it’s already happened.

exile       not a bad kid’s name.

ganesh postcard forest

rabelais

His one sentence will ... I have nothing, I owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor.

His last words ... I go to seek a Great Perhaps.

sublimation

The sadoo is faintly embarrassed by its earlier post, the one on politics.  Not that it isn't embarrassed by its other earlier posts.  But, as frank zappa sang, what's embarrassing yesterday is lunch tomorrow.

To compensate--though there's no such thing as compensation--he offers a little titty ditty recently found inside a turtle's stomach in the titanic by dr. herbefa h. h. h. permalink, rabelais scholar, of the university of ridgely's delight at cylburn.  Dr. h. h. h. permalink, in her article "rabelais and the turtle under the sea:  rhetoric and fornication as parallels to freud and testudines" in bawdy studies (254:IX), claims that the poem ("sublimation") is a lost fragment from rabelais' seminal work, gargantua and pantagruel.  (Her claim has been hotly disputed by rabelais scholars around the world.) Written in greek, french, and latin, the poem was translated by iffy f♨üüf, one of dr. h. h. h. permalink's doctoral students.

sublimation

Take off thy mask, my slutty lass,

And slip your yoni hither.

Time is not time unless we join

Our genitals together.

I saw you winking yesterday

At that big cheese called Ingram.

But come instead inside my bed

And lick my meaty lingam.

What are skirts for but lifting up

And tossing panties yonder?

Your clam awaits, basting, baked,

For my hungry salamander.

Your titties aren’t for tots to suck

Or be jailed in a pricey teddy,

But to bounce unhindered, wantonly,

As you ride my stick and hump me.

Yet. There you are. Masked, aloof,

Like Sheba in her gloaming.

And here I am, hard as Zeus,

Doomed to fuck by writing.

a joke

This sadoo tends to find it best to avoid any direct comment on what is typically called the political activities of homo sapiens sapiens, preferring art--which, to be art, in contradistinction to the proclivities of the day, must avoid politics in any non-foucaultian sense--to state its non-statements in its unstated way.  Politics is only useful to the creator in the form of the extreme self-parody it not infrequently provides (a berlusconi).  (Politics self-parodies routinely of course; this is one of the functions of the news and why the news is tedious:  it's at best a mediocre joke ... whereas a berlusconi intuitively understands what politics is about:  the pure incarnate absurdity of barely mitigated exploitation).

Yet the largest public joke of the third millennium has just taken place!  Europe has given itself the nobel peace prize.  One of the most powerful entities on earth rewards itself for virtue--an act requiring a lobotomy so large one is rather astonished that any physical structure remains to support the gargantuan bureaucratic virtuality of its delusions.  (That jagland is both secretary general of the council of europe and chairman of the norwegian nobel committee, responsible for awarding the peace prize, consummates the joke.)  Colonialism hasn't diminished; it's simply changed its forms.

Who will celebrate this other than a few mandarins in luxembourg & brussels and a few doddering scandinavians?

I suggest europe's institutions and citizens immediately follow its example, rewarding themselves for philanthropy, humanitarianism, humility, restraint, and general beneficence to humans and animals throughout time and space.  Monuments to banks should be erected outside of banks.  Household shrines to the household should be established.

Shouldn't we award the peace prize to worms and bees?

HERE AND THERE

Going green the melons go along the boulevards

Competing with the parasols who like to have their way.

We could think as some do that it’s not worth the fight:

Melons are just melons ... and, rain, that’s so passé ...

But once was lunch and now is cow so what are we to do

But go along the boulevards competing every day?

And even those who question worth still question from somewhere—

But where exactly is that space i can’t exactly say.

identity i

genesis

Down by the bay.  Where the water faeries grow.  Back to my ...                    the womb is an infinite ikea, bouncing colors, reliable swedes, wee packages of sugar expectations ...                                     and the lord god said hey skank you wombat you  slug of slugs and scat of scats  come out and i came out and yea there were finite ikeas and bouncing swedes and reliable sugar and expected colors and machines of love ...                                                                     mrs mcgregor whacked me with her holey paddle, barbaric badge and edgy-cation, grade six, three years running, as she was whacked, the whacker whacked, before the whacked whacker whacking also whacks and whackers brief history of time that’s a lie we shall find god in hawks and hope ...

                                         so there was the scrimmage of marriage and the firth of birth, the faucets and drains of money and verily there’s justice for they balance, the ins and wins the outs and pouts, the frozen corn, ½ cup of kalamatas (the olives not the neighbours), the crashes and bashes, the winking grave, gin and gin (barristers and solicitors), the lists, the lists, the lists of lists, the lists of cysts of lists, the pissed of Lyst, all the lost in Lyst are pissed, the pissed were kissed but the cost was lists ...             

Nosespotting

I remember that smell.  What is it?  Camp and carrots boiling slow in brown sugar.  Little boys like artichokes running everywhere, farting in the forest, looking for bears.  Deep in my nose, older than grandparents, the smell runs too in the forest, lightly then now weighty, that ancient incense, like the urge to piss in temples.  I lie in bed, on the silent koans of the sheets.  The stars fry outside like a mexican sunset.  Burnt lentils and barley, mortar in my fingernails.  Gramma, wrinkled like love, comes crawling down my nose with cookies and vodka, a chariot of twinkies abducts her, takes her straight to her charbroiled destiny.  5 smells like cocoa, i’m told, 7 like watermelon lollipops, 43 like juniper lemongrass, π’s confusing, 0’s a mess.  I lie in bed, pingpong balls leaping like marshmallows, the moon frozen in the hot wok of the night.  Worms in spring smell different than worms in fall, every dying candle knows that.  Waft of crypts, acrylics of cum.  Grampa comes, covered in mulch and foreskins, with his ax of silence, chops the worms, goes down in relief to the leaves.  The cold reek of mirrors, reeking of acidrain lakes, those mechanical perfections.  The cold reek of wires, cough syrup and puke.  You.  Wilted on our spontaneous disaster, served dishabille, rotten seaweed on the beach.  I lie in bed, lit matches in my anus, spiders toking on the ceilings, the sun burnt out in the distance like a god, mintleaf boats on breastmilk rapids coursing down to heads-on-sticks & kurtz, candyfloss & stickysmiles & countryfairs.

But it was only that woman as she passed on the platform.  I think it was her.  I remember that smell.

Letting Go of the Money Tree III & IV

sadoo deeply regrets that the technical limitations of booger or the technical ignorance or indolence of this sadoo or some combination of the two or some other factor or combinations of factors not herein mentioned, and/or herein mentioned, and/or not necessarily thought, herein or therein, prevent them from posting the third and final portions of Letting Go of the Money Tree, named, respectively, Quaternities and Emptiness:  the Sequel, at least in any form even vaguely resembling the incarnate aesthetic vision in which the sadoo received them

The Spleen of I

The dozen or so anti-abortionists at Yonge&Bloor yesterday, scattered around each corner.  Why are they always so horribly dressed … and ugly?  Their signs argue against abortion but their fashion and faces argue for it.

Recently I’m lounging around Nathan Phillips Square, somewhat slovenly.  A horde of Christians (over 80 of them) descend, offering brown bag lunches to the homeless, a group in which I seem to be temporarily included.  They all look as if they have just been bused in from Iowa or Alberta.  Scrubbed and stupid.  Hay still in their asses, James Dobson on their phones.  One line from Pascal would kill them.  I almost take a bag (I’m smoking a Montecristo for crissake) from spite (I’m offered 4 lunches, from various Scrubbies) but can’t even rouse enough emotion to extend my hand.  I watch my smoke curl up to heaven, like a prayer.

POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS OF AN AESTHETIC KIND

The Christian’s antagonism toward evolution became clear to me recently ... and, in becoming clear, became necessary also.  For there are antagonisms built into the universe’s marrow that are so central to it if they were to go missing, our worlds would have no choice but to collapse.  There are a few antagonisms factory-woven into the wet towel of existence that they must become a meditation for those of us given to futilely care about what we seem to be.

What, then, is the Christian’s fatal objection to the migration of humans from simians?  Why the angst and spittle?  Why not laughter?

It is this.  The Christian objects to the visible expression of the negation of itself.  (It lacks the imagination to see its negation prior to its visible expression.)  This lack is one of the reasons for its objection and also for its being a Christian.

This visible expression could not become visible—at least to the Christian—until a certain mass had developed.  And what mass is required before the Christian can see!

The mass in this case is the widespread acceptance of science-based evolutionary theory which, at its spiritual core, reveals the possibility of the evolution of consciousness, which is also to say the evolution of god.  The Christian looks at the possibility of the human—even sees or reads about the partial incarnation of such possibility—and speedily retreats to its defense of creation … but a creation by an externalized other—breeding guilt and war on internalized creation (the internalized other):  most importantly, refusing the possibility of placing creation in its proper place:  a place without locus, neither external nor internal, without nameable or visible source—forcing the human into maintaining itself as creature.  (None of this is new of course:  20th and late 19th century [and before, in various modes] thought and art are riddled with variations of these themes.)

This is the crux, though:  the Christian opposes evolution in order to maintain its denial of the human and the advocacy of the simian.  Christianity is a gargantuan comic edifice erected to perpetuate the human as ape.  Religion, in this case, is the social and verbal construct necessary to maintain and grow the Christian’s fear of light—which is to say, of thought, imagination, and beauty.

The Christian, as that which strives to be the consummate ape, violently opposes any idea that might pull itself out of itself, that might suggest the possibility of being something other than ape, the reek and howl of nature, the limits of a puerile imagination.

So the Christian (and by Christian we must mean the majority of secularists today, who have taken on the deep values of the Christian while denying its superficial artifacts, who even assume the doctrine of evolution (as they have been effectively, dumbly, enculturated into its acceptance while opposing, in practice, evolution’s central mantras and orientations) and the artist have become opposed—the one devoted to maintenance and land, the other to vision and water.

But all this is saying nothing more than Baudelaire, Blake, or Kierkegaard.  Or, for that matter, Heraclitus, if he could have.

THE AGNOSTICISM OF SPIRIT & FLESH

So the day is here that artists are persecuted and die for art—which is to say, the vision of their psyches (collectively, the emerging vision of the human psyche, our aesthetic DNA, our mapping of the divine)—even as the religious once died for their god (and why psychology is religion’s paltry replacement).  Yet the present persecution is more subtle than the past one.  The persecutors have learned.  They no longer waste their time killing those they fear (they have learned that they prefer their killing virtual); rather, they structure the home in which the artists have to live (society) in such a way as to suffocate the artists, allowing some random ones to breathe long enough to produce sufficient current product to use for their amusement, even as the Coliseum’s slaughters were used for the Romans’ amusement.  They have learned.  And yet they haven’t.  (Naturally.  Always this dual movement.)  What they haven’t learned—what they never can—is the primordial power of the Spirit as it hovers on the waters,  perhaps present—and this is surely the base of human hope—even when what we presently call humans are not.

SYMBOLEZE

The aesthetic language is Symboleze.  It stands, distinctive, in its own family within the larger family of the groups of languages people speak.  It stands alone, but in a different dimension.  A Symboleze speaker does not need to translate Symboleze into other languages for internal understanding; she or he only needs to do so when communicating with non-Symboleze speakers (the majority).  But this translation can involve much effort.  (So, however, is building a country called Symbol, dominated by Symboleze speakers.  Wouldn’t this be the new Palestine, the new Jerusalem?  Could it be a physical republic?  Might this be the core war of the upcoming millennia?  Or will it fatefully be a virtual land, dispersed through time and space, almost disregarding them, its citizens united through their common exile.)

The dictionary of Symboleze is art itself.  Most of what is called art simply builds on and explores existing definitions.  But now and then a symbol is added, modified, removed.  This act of significant addition, subtraction, division, multiplication (the mathematics of Symboleze, the geometry of art) is what I call art.  The fiddling with what exists I call craft (including the reference to the cunning and politic inherent in the necessity of craft, which remains wedded to society in ways art cannot.  [Art rather flings and swoops.])

The artist’s desire is to communicate in Symboleze as much as possible; efforts in other languages (efforts which are unfortunately required to obtain money, to feed and clothe and shelter oneself, but these just to once again communicate in Symboleze) quickly become exhausting.

I greatly desire to speak Symboleze and speak about speaking Symboleze.  It is my first tongue.  My aesthetic work orbits around the seeking of a word, the word, word … a word to describe my condition of being a citizen of Symbol.  If I say Theodore Wallace has Asperger’s, people say, Ah!, and adapt (or don’t adapt, but have the opportunity to).  I would (perhaps) like to self-identify as having a condition also.  You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve been diagnosed with Existence.  There, see, see, it’s a real condition, it’s been validated by the experts, it’s on page 4,723 of DSM-17.

But.  My aesthetic work orbits equally around resisting the finding of a word, the word, word.  Around resisting a label, a condition.  For if the center is named, it falls apart.  The fish must not be allowed to leave the deep.  Symbol must not become a physical republic, must not be brought to earth.  Exile is the artist’s natural home.  The aesthetic diaspora is the same as the Fall.

Meanwhile, the insecure, afraid and inexperienced label me labels for their convenience, to enable them to proceed with the bolstering, the solidifying, of the name “normal” to their diseases, to enable them to mask their inability to speak Symboleze, to ennoble their pride in not being exiled, for belonging fully on earth.

RANDOM CHEESIES FOR THE URBAN SLUG

Švankmajer’s Spiklenci Slasti (Conspirators of Pleasure, 1996).  A riveting exuberant litany of human kink.  Fittingly filtered through the master’s peculiarly transcendent comic-horror lens.  A visual metaphor of our very individual absurd existential circumscriptions, which we inevitably take so seriously.

Apply a poetic principle to politics:  the good politician would minimize adjectives, using primarily verbs and nouns …

Emotional unintelligence.  Accessing my heart/emotions is no different in major respects than accessing my body.  I give permission to whomever I give permission to, based on their ability to possess and wield the right keys in combination with the present configuration of my doors and locks.  Some people are sexual sluts, sharing their bodies liberally; others are emotional sluts, liberally sharing their hearts.  At least I can receive certain pleasures from the sexual slut.  But the emotional slut is typically a bore, expecting me to join it in an orgy of tedious thought-splaying and heart-humping … though it has shown almost no tact, wit, intelligence, technique, or talent.  As for me, I shall be emotionally seduced by those who have the capacity to emotionally seduce me.  I shall not assume their paltry names or be swayed by their emotional tyrannies.

The tao:  seeming as being, fragmentation as health, detachment as compassion, no-action as action,    silence as communication, regress as progress, no-desire as desire.

[And, to conclude, as some other lunatic and liar said, there are also many other things which I did and thought that if they should all be written even the world itself could not contain the books.  Amen.]

Letting Go of the Money Tree II

The Normalization Thesis

So Dr. Tooty-freudy comes to me and says (something like), Hey Jude, want me to throw a couple of projections in with your next session? This one’s on the mouse.  And i say, Hey doc, never hurts.  And that’s the way it goes.  Squeak squeak.  That’s the way it goes, squeak squeak that’s the way it goes squeak squea ...

The people say choose choose the finite is all there is ... you have to be something you have to be something you have to be something ... be an adult be a man be an ape ... god is dead but he who said god is dead chose his not-choosing, no-chose his choosing, like a god ... you always want someone to crack through, to see the unseeable you think you see, to say it the way you think you do, that person with the key

            the one who jabs and jabs and fucks that narnian witch like what the froggies did

to the algerians, it’s all good, it’s all right, you’re gonna sleep tonight like a baby-o and dream

(Which dream is your cloud and chain?  Families of dreams, like languages:  the romantic, the germanic, the tectonic, the blondiebeastie, the indie-european, the fruttitutti, the fresh&wild, the lone&eddied, the khoi-san, the neetcheenatzhee, the burushaski, the langwij sanwich, the glossoh!lalia, the ...)

^{Here are the problems of identity.  If one wishes to maintain a cohesive identity, one has to sacrifice reality (though one calls this sacrifice something like maturity, responsibility, sanity).  If one wishes reality continuously, one dies.  If one wishes some compromise between reality and identity, between spirit and flesh, between consciousness and mortality, between dreams and potato chips, if one wishes some semblance of reality, one’s identity morphs, partially and at times seemingly wholly, into whatever objects present themselves to one’s so-called identity.  With such compromise, one either travels into undesirable places and has partial or little support for such travels, resulting generally and specifically in mayhem, or one fabricates (that is, one arts), which is the same as the aforementioned except for the fabrication.}

The problems of identity are not problems other than for those who require and/or acquire them as problems.^{in through the bonking glass, out through the viewing glass, abiit ad plures vixit mortuos plango cuntus obnoxicus prickus objectionicus fungi4allofus amen}

That’ll be $200 please.  And your kids and your gonads for the projections.

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Baudelaire's Bunions

A Redefinition of Hell

I draw on whatever aspects of my soul are required to accomplish any task that calls to me.  Once that task has stopped calling, i turn to other tasks that call, drawing on whatever aspects of my soul that are required to accomplish those tasks.  If you get confused—if you expect me to have a heavy soul:  unalterable, fixed, dumb, knowable—whose issue is that?  Isn’t this what you do anyway but slower?  You who change your mind once a decade and view it as a fault!  You who praise diversity in your mouth and shit on it with your other!  You celebrate olympic golds, you paw at the maserati, then accuse me of speed?  You stand-ovate Hamlet then accuse me of wit?  You object to the creationists and assume darwin, then accuse me of adaptability?  You celebrate madonna, then accuse me of … of? … of! … anonymity and poverty?  You practice your yoga, then accuse me of aum?  You blab classlessness then take classes!  Oh you lukewarm camels.  You who are crucified on time.  You who require a stage for intimacy.  Have you not heard of the dance?  Would you go to the hell mister wilde created for you?  Ah, dear wombats, you are already there.

No

I’m not taking the burden of 40 years of bad management.  I’m not taking the burden of three millennia of stupid men or the women who throw that burden at me to suit their own stupidities.  I’m not taking the burden of christianity’s puerility or leslie who in kindergarten called me toothpick.  I’m not taking the burden of all those who are too scared to adapt, who have ossified psyches, who talk about god or peace or knowledge or anything as if they haven’t almost died from it, who call fear love, who haven’t sweat entire nothingnesses over a misplaced elastic, who cover their lust for money and comfort—what spiritual insecurity!—with rhetorics of virtue paid for by others by their tongues and their brains and the very pit of their love and their lives … you know … their lives.  I’m not taking the burden of your lack of voice and the burden of whoever and everyone who gave it to you, including me, i’m not taking the burden of myself.  The 51 years of bad management and whoever wrote the training manual for me or you or the dna we’re all happily mapping&living (what’s the difference?), like michelin or nat’lgeog or google-in-your-bedroom.  Easy blood, i call it.  What we do in our cloudy cage.  Living in the womb of something else.  That whipping destiny.  The face that’s waiting in the mirror.  Freedom.  Sing it, liar.  Sing it to the end.