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.