8.2.13

t5: an irrationale

Due to a brief bout of Postyogic Transeconomic Polypolar Teslaslian Perspicatititus Teraclaudiuhamletia Syndrome (PTPTPTS)--a disease of the psyche we intend to bring to The Secular Sadoo's reading public in a future post and which our executive team is already actively lobbying those who must be lobbied to include in DSM-17--the Sadoo neglected to correct a few proofreading errors and include two major taxonomies:  those for t1 and t2.  Readers and those who retain the appearance of reading are encouraged to view the reposted t5:  an irrationale for the authorized modification of these transgressions.


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In this and all it points to, we aim for the sanity of absurdity, the reason of faith, the science of the indefinite article, and the difficult perfection of the freestyle double sestina.

origins & methods

In early 1995, some 18 years ago, i received an inchoate vision, an obscure urge, that i was to create—and be created by—something which i, with increasing irony (even mockery) and affection (even love), named the world’s first literary sacred text.  The reasons for this naming, for the irony, the affection, are manifold, archaeological, heterogeneous, and capriciously subversive.  The code name (there seems to be no name behind the code) for this text is t5.

It has seemed at times to be a paint-by-number set:  i the one who fills the predetermined shapes with predetermined colours; the designer, manufacturer, marketer, unknown.

(Although even the one who fills the shapes seems often to have no or shifting names and even shapes.)

Yet a set without an objective image, without directions, tools, paints, numbers.  Which, if it comes with anything, comes with now invisible, now translucent, gremlins, possessing all manner of not-quite-lethal ammunition, adept at hiding, whose object and disaster seem to be the one given to the set.

Perhaps because of the indeterminate nature of this absurd hobby, as the shifting shapes are becoming fleshed out, the overall pattern, instead of becoming clearer, as one might expect, has become more opaque; instead of becoming more finite, more infinite; instead of more finished, less so; instead of more ordered, more disordered ... as if each progression is less of a progression and more of a returning, each shining colour a hue of night.

So origins and ends and even methods, as the silent mathematics of the stars are not tired of foretelling, may be the same.  And we are silly scribes, etching our discovery of the one endless story, on ourselves.  tis my body, the empty set of i.

genealogies & relations

t5 as a sacred text is born from and gives new birth to existing sacred texts.  Principal among these are The Bible and The Tao Te Ching, which seem to The Sadoo to be, taken together, the most wholly representative of the global historical record of human spirituality, with the most eminent language and insight.  Yet almost as important are other significant records, particularly from Daoism (Chuang Tzu), Hinduism, and Buddhism, although Islam, Wiccan, Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, Bahá'í, Shinto, Jainism, Sikhism, Raëlism, Satanism, Pastafarianism, New-ageism, Acquisitivism, Yogaism, Familyism, Sexity, Automobilism and almost everything else are never far from consciousness, whether desired to be there or not.

The reader of t5 should, after having read t5 (a wholly impossible task) and returning to a classic religious text, experience the classic text in such a way as to feel it almost to be an entirely different text than before t5.  My intent is, from a Christian perspective, to crucify and resurrect all other sacred texts--or at least crucify them; from a Daoist perspective, it’s to deconstruct and reconstruct (in perpetual symbiosis) all other texts through a text that perpetually deconstructs and reconstructs itself, that is learning to do this without the presence of its supposed author(s) and even, perhaps without a presence of any supposed reader(s).  t5 is intended to be the first independently interdependently animate text, capable, if required, of existing, reinterpreting, and propagating on its own, regardless of what happens to humanity:  a self-sustaining spiritual alphabetic ecosystem, an alchemical union of spirit and letter, soul and word—no longer the word made flesh but the flesh made text.

All this is accomplished, naturally, by processing the traditional sacred texts through the meat grinder of modern technology, under which i include the subdivisions of third millennium thought, art, and sex, and why—for those who doubt (and isn’t this all of us?)—tmust (but such a strong word!) be presented, released, packaged, branded, and marketed the way it has been, is, and will be.   Amen.

taxonomies

Superficially, yet truly and with the appearance of audacity, t5 points to five other pointers:

1.      the hebrew and pre-christian christian scriptures:  the law, the prophets, the writings: 24 - 51 books, depending on who’s counting.
2.      the christian scriptures:  the gospels and apostolic acts, the letters, the apocalypse: 27 books.
3.      god’s blood:  in three parts: 20 or 21 books, depending on one’s mood.
4.       the god who sleeps:  death, technology, caprice, void: 20 books.
5.      i seem:   (0,) 1 or 81 books, depending on nothing.


A total of 172 – 200 books in 14 – 95 sections, the section sequence being 3-3-3-4-1, 3-4-3-4-1, 3-3-3-4-81, or 3-4-3-4-81.  (Some, such as reb neual and reb zam, posit a minimalist 13 sections, counting i seem as 0, but this is not the orthodox opinion.  I, on a majority of days, in a majority of moods, incline toward an interpretation of 172 books in 13 parts, accepting a 24-27-20-20-81 book sequence and a 3-3-3-4-0 section sequence, reconciling the apparent discrepancy through the principle of the synthesis of opposites.)  The mishmud all (with the possible exception of reb herbert) include in neither the parts nor the sequences.  (Reb herbert’s numerologies and explications can be found in his book, t5: the true sequencing, with new evidence from the Galápagos Islands and with many references to the kabbalah, upanishads, and keanu reeves (Illuvator:  Bathsheba, 1961), now out of print.)  Finally, and most tediously, reb nucyrto, along with his cabal of lunatics and geometers, in its commune on the Tuscany hills, practising its grey magic to offset the black and whiteness of the world, applies a formula of 20-20-20-20-81-1, counting the mishmud as one book and ignoring the debates and schisms of parts altogether, as well as the almost insurmountable difficulty of t5 becoming t6, when history is barely ready for t5.

—stnemmoc lanosrep emos

The hebrew and pre-christian christian scriptures lay a primitive and ostensibly schizophrenic foundation for western civilization (though this may be too trendy a name for it).

The christian scriptures lose, after the crucifixion, whatever ground the hebrew scriptures had in bloody nature and gamble almost entirely on a delusional utopia, this function now having been transferred to the modern technological-scientific cosmos, about which we spend trillions of dollars and expend quintillions of lives (counting the non-humans) to inform ourselves that we are not being delusional, as the technological-scientific cosmos is obviously immanent and so must be true.

God’s blood, while complete, i now view as largely aesthetically puerile, a necessary output, like Leviticus, although, given a few centuries and some drugs, aspects may seem, like Job or The Apocalypse, aspects.

the god who sleeps includes a number of mad or manageable pieces, some of which are incomplete or embryonic, evolving moderately, turds and ibits to peruse on one’s deathbed.

i seem, a sprawling behemoth of 81 pieces, some of which contain 81 pieces, some of these containing 81, and so on, also incomplete, broaches genius in some of its underforms, but leads so frequently to the brinks of madness and disaster that, as Witlessstein said, Whereof one cannot laugh, thereof one must be communicating.

(As with Plato, so much of what remains after the writing and the speaking and the forgetting is not the content, which fritters itself away into potato chip crumbs and donut diarrhea, but the form, the quest itself, the words but a pale companion of the quest.)

What, then, am i left with, if literature, sacredness and text itself have all fallen into life’s precipice, the vision returned to murkiness, yet the gnaw beneath the vision remaining?

Fortunately this eventuality was foreseen some seven years ago, necessitating the mishmud, the commentary (though this is a sorry misnomer) on t5, a borgesianical infinite work, lacking mass, form, vision, and almost reality.  The mishmud is eternal and i willingly confess i don’t comprehend it at all, being, as it is, neither inside nor outside, a workless work, and increasingly, a creation inseparable from life.

See the coda following flesh for a detailed t5 breakdown, with various helpful, unhelpful and frequently juvenile editorial comments.


flesh

the mishmud and t5 are an expression, an empty set of expressions, which leave the reader bereft of an aesthetic unifying thread, so as to point it to the only unity that exists—the life, the body.  My body is the novel, the narrative, the story—t5 (what i term, what is termed, my sacred text) the fragmented polymorphous shifting contextually-rooted utterances of this novel.  Should the reader require a narrative, it may seek in psychology, in biography, that which it seeks as a foundation for creation, as a security for art—modernity’s preferred methods and truths—or it can provide its own unity, itself an utterance of its body.

I am not willing to manufacture any narrative other than that which arises from the integrated aesthetics of the collapsed moment. In doing so (in not doing so), i align myself, my creation, with that aspect of humanity and evolution which refuses God and his children:  metanarratives, mononarratives, finality or completion (in analysis, ideation, story), etiology.  I accept the only true story as the silent one told by time crossing the path of my body.  I accept the necessity of my telling many false stories, stories my mind hauls into its factory from my body’s bottomless bog, using the chemicals/elements of blood and tears to manufacture stories on its hot and indifferent assembly lines.  I accept this, as a factory has taken up residence in my body and to remove it would be to remove my body, the true story.  I am not yet so strong.  I remain wedded to the false stories, the factory that has taken up residence, its policies, procedures, strategies, its noise and metal erected on the fecund desert of my mind.  I wish to fuse the noise and sand, to make my stories as quiet as sand, a breath above my body’s silence.  But the factory that has taken up residence has many operations.  ttells the stories of my factory and its operations on a bed of sand and silence.

I wish to do pioneering work, work that will likely be seen as primitive in certain ways by the future (if the future sees), in spirituality, in the way that Heraclitus did in philosophy (or, if i am blessed, Socrates), Pythagoras in mathematics, Goethe in colour, Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler in astronomy.  While the founders—whether considered of earth, heaven or hell—of the great religions are, in fundamental ways, the true pioneers, i wish to pioneer aesthetic spirituality (to pioneer simulated spirituality, god in the mirror)—an integrative (non-technocratic) description of spirit (in form rather than content) through the writing of myself (the indistinguishability of text and self, word and spirit), a spirituality fully rooted in the immanence of creation, the passion and purity of fleshy nothingness.

Whether it be vain, whether it be futile, whether it be foolish, i shall reach past the stars to the black and hidden gods and drag them down to earth, and drown them.

To do this i borrow what is necessary from the heart of the great traditions—religion (christianity, daoism, buddhism, hinduism), technology, romance&eroticism, the family in its simian glory, money, art, philosophy&knowledge, shamanism/mysticism/vaticism.  Modern movements are largely uninteresting (other than as evolutionary cultural phenomena and social facticity) technical configurations (industrial science and the academic factory as the formulization of the great traditions, psychotherapy as the societal enforcer of these formulizations—so continuing the functions and heritage of Catholicism in its peak during the middle ages).

The great traditions were all born (i.e. became visible, were birthed from the womb of spirit) in the millennium preceding Christ, most subsequencies regressions, ossifications, institutionalizations, and denials of the great traditions, the line between where people live and the traditions’ spirits stretched to the extent that modernity must be vastly frenzied&noisy to fill the space between.  But i wish to fill the space between with myself, with the text i am, by way of abiding less in speed&sound and more in their roots.  I live below soils.  I am as vermiculous as death.

coda


5t fo skoob 271 eht

*Note that items marked with an asterisk may have been, in whole or in part, accidentally or intentionally (who understands motivation?) released into The Secular Sadoo.




t1:  the very very very oldtee

No.
Title
Description
Torah
1
Genesis
The Elohim are scared of the Void and run away and then all the patriarchs are scared of the Void too.
2
Exodus
The ossification of society begins.  Everyone runs away.  The Elohim officially change their name to Yahweh, which means I am I am, which may mean God has a stutter, which may mean we were created because we’re better at talking.
3
Leviticus
Based on the fear and the running away, laws are laid down against sleeping with a menstruating woman (why? that’s the one time she can’t get pregnant!), against sleeping with pigs (who needs laws for this?), against riding your tractor on Sundays, and against thinking for yourself.
4
Numbers
More laws against everything.
5
Deuteronomy
A weird sort of alternative history of fear and running away, in which—through some nifty little trick which is never explained—the author records his own death and keeps on blabbing.
Nevi’im
6
Joshua
Joshua was an early and versatile James Bond, who also had prophetic capabilities and brought Moses his coffee and sharpened his pencils.
7
Judges
Asses talk, guts are spilled, almost everyone’s betrayed and dies, all in the name of the Lord.
8
Samuel
In which God penalizes Saul for not committing genocide.  The next king, David, commits murder and rape and is rewarded by God.
9
Kings
The Twelve Kings at Qaqar defeat Assyria, which is somewhat like the 10 Premiers of Canada defeating the United States, and Jeroboam II invents the Richter Scale.
10
Isaiah
Impeccably poetic xenophobia.
11
Jeremiah
Along with Yahweh, somewhat responsible for the vast schizophrenias of Western Civilization.
12
Ezekiel
There’s nothing like a little Tim Burton in the Valley.
13
The Twelve
Portending Tolkien’s Nine.
Ketuvim
14
Ruth
An early nod to feminism.
15
Chronicles
Readers’ Digest version of Samuel and Kings.
16
Ezra-Nehemiah
Pink Floyd, adumbrated.
17
Esther
Another early nod.  Then it’s about 2,000 years until the next one.
18
Job
Humanity realizes it’s superior to God, but is discreet about sharing its knowledge, hiding it in art, which is humanity’s not-so-secret secret hiding spot.
19
Psalms
A king writes about his angst about killing and fucking but, nevertheless, keeps on killing and fucking.
20
Proverbs
A bitch in rhyme craves wine.
21
Ecclesiastes
Nihilism 2,500 years before nihilism.
22
Song of Songs
Jewish porn.
23
Lamentations
Angst, guilt, neuroses, OCD:  the origins of DSM.
24
Daniel
An early example of magical realism.


t2:  the once newtee, now a very oldtee

No.
Title
Description
Gospels & Acts
1
Matthew
Following Zeus’ example with Leda, the god of the Jews and the future god of the future Christians descends to earth and has sex with the unsexed Mary.  Jesus is born, tells humanity how corrupt and ignorant it is, then humanity kills him.  Dostoevsky retells the story two thousand years later.
2
Mark
Following Zeus’ example with Leda, the god of the Jews and the future god of the future Christians descends to earth and has sex with the unsexed Mary.  Jesus is born, tells humanity how corrupt and ignorant it is, then humanity kills him.  Dostoevsky retells the story two thousand years later.
3
Luke
Following Zeus’ example with Leda, the god of the Jews and the future god of the future Christians descends to earth and has sex with the unsexed Mary.  Jesus is born, tells humanity how corrupt and ignorant it is, then humanity kills him.  Dostoevsky retells the story two thousand years later.
4
John
Beginning with a terrifyingly beautiful and beautifully terrifying modification of Plato, this book, along with the first few Letters, is partially responsible for taking the West on a grizzly and abstract detour from nature and the body, the 20th century being its rough and bloody return, the de-wording of Word and the beginning of the long composting of God.
5
Acts
Glossolalia, circumcision, stoning, castration, talking asses, hallucinations—everything you need for a good time in Paradise.
Letters
6
Romans
An early precursor to American fundamentalist organizations, Romans supports homophobia, anti-semitism, and delusion.  t3 – t5 only support delusion.
7
Corinthians I
While misogynistic, this letter is well written in parts.  Its passage on ideal love is still used throughout the world, although it pales next to Donne’s more embodied and aesthetically-intellectually-erotically perfect poems.
8
Corinthians II
The Bridge of Sighs, The Letter of Tears, The Tower of Song, The Avenue of Anguish.
9
Galatians
Paul travels to a suburb of St. Louis and founds the Hydraulic-Press Brick Company.
10
Ephesians
The drug of dreams is set against the pain of living and not found wanting, providing a rough foundation stone for the two great paths of attempting to bypass the brutality of human nature:  western art and romantic love.
11
Philippians
A troupe of troubadours engage against the odds of the times—thieves, murderers, and highly aggressive backgammon salespeople—cross the Channel (with the unexpected help of a few altruistic and drunken Romans) and plant Hampstead Heath.
12
Colossians
In a surprising twist to narrative developments, the Apostle is appointed keeper of the lodge at the King’s park in Feckenham.
13
Thessalonians I
Injunctions are given to avoid at all costs Chalcot Square and Weston, Massachusetts.
14
Thessalonians II
The story of Hansel and Gretel is retold from a vegan perspective.
15
Philemon
An early tract for the advancement of Spinach Phylloism.
16
Timothy I
Timothy is shipwrecked with Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé, who almost all kill each other, but are saved from aesthetic self-genocide by Charles Baudelaire, who walks in with a case of absinthe and a pound of hash.
17
Timothy II
Timothy’s sister, Agna Naga Gaan, falls in love with a goatherd, an affair which quickly turns tragic.
18
Titus
A treatise suggesting that Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius, Iapetus, Mnemosyne, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Rhea and Themis did not excel in lawn bowling, as previous records have suggested, but may in fact have been quite mediocre.
19
Hebrews
Early recipes for the production of Trappist beer.
20
James
A manual of magic tricks, with a focus on rabbits, saws, women, and the Jack of Spades in compromising positions.
21
Peter I
Religious erotica, featuring Johnny Wadd, Georgina Spelvin, William James, and Evelyn Underhill.
22
Peter II
Pornographic mysticism, in which the most vulgar and lewd acts are performed with nothing, by no one, and to no end.
23
John I
A reflection on ambition, with instructional material from howler monkeys and threatened barn owls.
24
John II
Human history, not something to be sniffed at, is sniffed at.
25
John III
When all is said and done, which it seemingly never is, there’s still something to be said.
26
Jude
The renowned entomologist, Pete Sutcliffe, writes about the relationship between the rhinotia hemistictus and cultural caesuras.
Apocalypse
27
Apocalypse
Acid trip to nowhere on a train of marshmallows.




t3:  god’s blood, a recent tee

No.
Title
Description
Part I
1
In the Beginning
An attempt to rebegin the beginning, to remyth the myth, and to recreate creation.  In 11 parts.
2
The Great Code
A transformative application of Northrop Frye, Vico, Pythagoras, Jung and Nietzsche to the new science of mythohistory.
3
Prometheus
It’s a cold fire he stole, and the vultures have microchips.
4
Panegyric
Every god must be wailed and noted, even as the word-god must be worded in remembrance of his going down.
5
North Americans
A rough comparison between the Church of Laodicea and the neotemple of North America.
6
Genealogy of the Gods
The global divine pantheon is rankly incestuous; this work traces their relations, lives, and deaths.
7
Faust
A roughly homoerotic and blasphemous reinterpretation of the old legend.
8
Jesus the Artist
Written on drugs about drugs for drugs and by drugs.
9
The Jerusalem Scroll
Dostoevsky visits first century Jerusalem and breaks analyst-analysand confidentiality.
10
BAO
A theology of hematology and a sociology of hematopathology.
11
The Anointed
Histrionic, vatic, nuts, unreadable.  In 11 parts.  To be accompanied by locusts, honey, and porn.
12
The Dialogues
A closet drama in which the ubermensch hosts a dinner party for the founders and gods of the great religions.  Tension is provided by Simone de Beauvoir crashing the party and providing a little intellectual and erotic excitement.
Part II
13
The Wars
Influenced indirectly by Melville’s “white chapter” in Moby Dick.
14
The Second Coming
Frankly, I forget this piece and don’t want to look at it to remember.
15
Technology and the Feminine
Written and read on the Pacific, this work attempts to fuse gender, sexuality, history, and myth through the application of the geometry of spirit.  With The Great Code, it portends the vatic geometry occasioned in the god who sleeps.
16
Man the Slave, Man the Scribe
The prequel and sequel to technology and the feminine.
17 or 3B
Prometheus (Reprise)

17 or 18
Technologists
A subdued epistolary plea, rant, and dirge.
Part III
18 or 19
Hymn of Blood
A dubious attempt to write an ode to carnage.
19 or 20
God of the West
Brahman-atman (transmuted) interpretations are possible.
20 or 21
Dissolution
Bookend to in the beginning and the apocalypsedissolution fuses religion and science through the laboratory of modern literary metaphor in one tight little myth.  In 33 parts.


t4:  the god who sleeps, a recent tee too

No.
Title
Description
I (Death)
1
Death:  the Play
The Greeks can’t particularly be imitated, but faith and futility are among art’s many names.
2
Made for Death
Upon reading this, a once and literary girlfriend suggested tactfully that I might be mad.
3
Invocation
Yet to be written, in Spanish, this work will invoke the gods of technology.
II (Technology)
4
*Geometry (2:0)
An extension and fulfillment of the great code, a mathematical mysticism, God is defined as the ratio 2:0.
5
*Metageometry
Time is explicated through geometric means, revealing (or imposing) spiritual archaeologies of history.
6
The Matriarchy Manual
If we were to imagine a future global matriarchy, how would we imagine the advice we’d give to men?
7
The 2000 Year Strategic Plan
Our five-year and ten-year plans are short-sighted, those corporate and government visions too small.  Here, we cleverly propose one for the next two millennia, for all of humanity and the planet and even, perhaps, the universe.
8
*Energy and the Object
We all know that the object has disappeared and power along with it.  This work explores the historical, cultural and geological causes for this relatively recently phenomenon, and, more importantly, provides practical advice for the average citizen in the emerging age of objectless energy.
9
*The City

Many assume that with God dead and decomposing we can get on with our lives.  Not yet!, this creative non-fiction piece suggests!  Using unusual metaphors and a loopy vignette structure, the author maintains a provocative and somewhat macabre thesis.
III (Caprice)
10
Thou
To be written in Spanish, an application of Buber, Sappho, Marguerite Porete, and de Sade.
11
Rites
For solstices, disasters, passages, spillages, and occasions of individual and collective terror.
12
Wanderings
A comic homoerotic collection of ribald stories, featuring Dr. Evans in unusual political and social situations, with appreciation to Chuang Tzu.
13
Conversations
See the second coming.
14
Songs
Poems, with thanks to King David and many others.  Juvenilia.
15
Love
A personal record of its cycles, vicissitudes, despairs and ecstasies.
16
Myths
To be written in Mandarin.
IV (Void)
17
Ex nihilo nihil
 To be written in Mandarin.

18
The Sayings of i
With thanks to the gospel of thomas and possibly other Gnostic works.
19
Thanatopsis
Yet to be written.
20
Void
An attempt to bridge nihilism and nothingness.  In 33 parts.


t5:  i seem, the newest baby tee



No.
Title
Description
1
Mirror Mirror
A creative multidimensional exploration of reflection.  In 8181 parts.  Unfinished.
2
*Proper of Saints
To honor past saints and encourage future ones, the lives of saints are told.  In 81+12+2 parts.
3
The Diary of a Banker as Young Man
The decline and fall of i, a banker.  Juvenilia.
4
Aesthetic Exercises
Rigorous exercises for the training of the serious artist.
5
Richard and Regina
Eugene Onegin updated for the post-pomos.  Unfinished.
6
*Reveries and Prayers
Thoughtful meditations on the demise and life of God.  In 81 parts.  Unfinished.
7
To Delight in Fire
Spinozaic spins on God, god, gods, nature, humanity, technology, and art.
8
Dear World
A rationalization.
9
History of the World
For the instruction and edification of all students of time.  Unfinished.
10
Historical Accounts from the Dark Ages
Seven eyewitness accounts from the period 1021 in Scotland – 1519 in France.
11
Life Exam
All humans are required to take this exam prior to passing life.
12
Letters
i’s correspondence with Johann Goethe, Martin Heidegger, Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, Simone Weil, and William Blake.
13
The Spirituality of Deception and the Structures of Deceit
The author proposes an abstruse thesis in which the alphabet is responsible for evil.  In 33 parts.  Notes only.
14
*Of Merdia
A modern citizen honors the Goddess of Merde.  In 42 parts.
15
Songs
Various laments.  Juvenilia.  Ongoing.
16
Encyclopedia of Terms
For futurists everywhere.  Ongoing.
17
Auguries
i makes 81 predictions.
18
Call for a New Discipline
Call for a new discipline
19
The Divine Portals
The primary ways and byways to access the divine are outlined and briefly described, providing interested parties both validation and encouragement on their spiritual journeys.
20
The Jesus Variations
Based on a true story.  Juvenilia.  In 33 parts.  Moderately inspired by Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, and other poets and miscreants.
21
Void and Compensation
The paths the human uses to compensate for loss and humiliation, so frequent and tragic in this life, are not only described but explained.
22
The Virtues
A bold call to replace the historic virtues with a new set, more aligned with the present age.
23
Mirror Negation:  Theory and Practice
Franz von Vemeer, acclaimed negationist and lunatic, articulates the theoretical and practical geometry of negating mirrors.
24
The Lost Fuel of Anonymity
i is concerned that the current obsessions with “fame and name” are removing something vital from the human condition.
25
The Negative Ecstasy of Men
You decide:  are men gradually being transformed from positive to negative charges in society?  If so, what can be done about it?
26
The Process of Psyche and Art
With helpful columns for both poets and journalists, i examines the relationship between psyche and art.  Scholars and students, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, will also find this helpful.
27
A Brief History of the Soul
Linking time, world, soul, society, individuals and civilization, this seminal work does it all--in less than three thousand words!
28
*Aphorisms
A collection of witticisms and pithy profundities designed to provoke even the most jaded and experienced minds.  I like some of these, but a good number of the quotees are obviously bombastic bullies.  Ongoing.
29
The Judgments
Despite this age of greater tolerance, we all feel the need sometimes to judge our fellow human beings.  Ongoing.
30
Charter of the School for Mystics
An unauthorized but accurate copy of this famous school’s charter.
31
Dear Urban Men
A letter.
32
Letter to Artists
Another one.
33
A Defense of Mourners
The pressure to be happy has unfortunately discredited a large and necessary segment of society.
34
Why the Good Die Young
It should be obvious.
35
Letter to the Good
Hopefully they’ll read it before they reach 30.
36
The Role of God in the Human Age
God, though dead, still plays a vital role in all societies.  This remarkable thesis is cogently defended.
37
Letter from a Madman
Not for those easily imbalanced.
38
The Necessary Manufacture of God
In case you didn’t get enough in #36.  Although personally, I think this gets somewhat repetitive.
39
The Mythical Life of i
i gets on his high horse and tries to make his life better than it was.
40
Statement of Intent
This is an arcane piece you should skip.
41
*i seem
Title track.  In 0 parts.
42
The Metaphysics of A.
It seems obvious that A. isn’t a person but a concept or behavior.  Actually, I think it’s really obvious what A. is.  If you don’t get it, you’re really dense.
43
The Marriage of East and West
May they live happily … and all that jazz.
44
The Council of i
This is nuts, but I kinda like it.
45
The God Project
More about the author’s dead dog.  Get over it.
46
The Plural of Being is Is
Huh?  I mean really just like really.
47
The Order of i
You notice that as we get down the Contents, i keeps sticking himself in the titles more.  We discussed this at the publisher’s meeting and I tried to get it changed, but the editor, who yields a great deal of influence, is you-know-whating with i and that always changes everything.
48
Theophilos
It means a dog-lover if you don’t know Greek, so get ready for the worst.
49
Call to Return
My cat died while I was reading this.
50
The Aesthetic Bodhisattva
The sub-title of this is “The Will to Will’s Negation” which should sort of warn you to go read Poe.
51
The Life of the Spirit
Life of the Spirits would be better--gin, vermouth, brandy …  My mother told me not to drink, but it was written up above I’d be a boozer.  The only thing I’ve not done that my mother told me not to do was stick my tongue in an electrical outlet.  Though I got my brother to do it.  He’s in the state mental hospital.
52
The Death of i
Finally.
53
A Proposal for a Proposal
For a proposal for a proposal for a poor poser.
54
Principles of Art
I didn’t think it had any.
55
The Eternal Superiority of Good
I loved my cat.
56
Undertenant Agreement
I don’t think anybody agrees on anything.  All we do is pretend to agree cause if we said what we bloody well wanted to, we’d all get killed.  Then who would there be to make fun of?  Unfinished.
57
Muliebrity
A kind of weird attempt to perpetuate certain gender stereotypes.  Which by the way I’m all for.
58
The Secret Meeting of the Secret Sorrow
Too many secrets.  I think this is trying to be clever but it’s just stupid.  Vision only.
59
Image
I had a hairdresser once named Jimi Imij.  Now that guy understood the times.  Vision only.
60
The Phenomenology of Zero
Sounds pretentious.  Vision only.
61
The Order for Copulation
Like every time I do it it’s pretty disorderly.
62
The Bavarian Code of 1543
When my brother had to be hospitalized after the tongue thing, I remember I had a dream about cats.  Cats were everywhere--in my bed, in the toilet tank, down my mother’s top, driving cop cars.  I was being chased, see, and … no one ever listens to my dreams.
63
Metaphysics in the Age of Mirrors
i’s obviously a nutcase.
64
To my Children
The sentimental crap you’d expect from someone about to go under.
65
*The Role of the Prophet in the Cinematic Age
The best roll I had ever had was in this cheesy French restaurant in the lower east side.  The waitress got off early and she was livelier than a genetically modified chicken despite the fact a bushel of cabbages fell on us during the Act itself.
66
The Shapes of i
I’d like them to be:  mashed, julienne, hashed, sliced, saladed.
67
Poetry and Science
I guess there’s a kind of order to it, like you’ve got to unzip before you stick it in.
68
Necessity and Eros
Ketchup and Doritos
69
Mysticism and Marriage
Peanuts and Margarine
70
New Forms
Introducing Belkin’s TuneBuds for iPod®.  Add a splash of color to your earbuds.
71
Instructions for Completing T5
Like, cut it in half.
72
iSO20001
iso
73
The Craft Industry of Art
I would have preferred this to be, The Dark Industry of Cats, and for it to have gone something like this:
In the dark days of cats, long ago, before men lost their swords and women wept, Jane McFlaherty pondered her most abjectly failed jalapeno soufflé in awkward silence.
The End.
74
The Feasts of Durin Book of Law
We suggest you and your family pay close attention to these carefully considered codes of culinary behavior.  Unfinished.
75
Dreams
So anyway, cats were everywhere, chasing me like marijuana.  I was a three-legged squirrel with two heads and a migraine, being read the riot act by the Weird Sisters and Genghis Khan.  Apocalypses tumbled on me like rose petals in a love affair and my mother was an underwater elevator with no buttons.  I woke up only to wake up as a cat on a bed of squirrels and Mr. Khan beside me quoting Catallus.  Ongoing.
76
First Reviews
This was reviewed in the NYTRB in a style not particularly reminiscent of Terrence Rafferty.  Ongoing.
77
Uncle Dennis
I think the whole family’s fucked up.
78
Apostates Creed
A pleasant little nonsense ditty about Kant and the transcendental object.
79
Retraction
It’s New Year’s Eve, my woman’s left me, and I’m alone drinking ouzo playing foul tunes on my lingam.
80
Not i
said the cat.
81
*Give the book to her, for we owe a debt.
Pprrpffrrppffff

(in -1 parts)

  

the mishmud, not a tee, but all tees, an emptee tee, tee zero

The mishmud, being the mishmud, is transclassificatory.  Anything appearing in The Secular Sadoo and not formally part of t5 could be considered as belonging to the mishmud, to the extent that we can speak of belonging in such contexts and considering that it has been reasonably argued that even t5 belongs to the mishmud, as do you, that t5 perhaps does not even exist, as do not you, and as neither the mishmud.  The mishmud, then, even more than i or you, is all.


A few of the thousand million titles of the mishmud

The Inmate’s Journal
Tao te ching Commentary *
Dictionary of Modern Times *
The Disorder of Things
Quaff Quail and Other Stories *
The Secret Life of Marshmallows
Writings on flaneuring, sadooing, self-exiling, Daoism, anarchy, time, money … *
The Seven Stations of the Sadoo – Funeral Rites
Movie Reviews *
The Househusband

6.2.13

Nine Dark Sides of Neptune

(aka Poseidon’s nocturnal nonagon)


the ghosts of reincarnation

We never hit bottom (death, annihilation, call it what you want) after we’ve been dropped from the clouds by bonobos or gremlins or angels or planes or laboratories into life’s well but rather our names gradually (though at different pacings) lose themselves in the increasing distance and darkness.  Our names are scraped by the well’s debris, by the bumping against the eternal walls, the other octillion things falling, until they cannot be read, except perhaps by those few who, by training or inclination, read obscure and ancient scripts.  At most, they may be sensed, as a mutant draft temporarily flings us, unnamed and acquainted only with falling, upward into the named; then we briefly become what are called ghosts or ancestral spirits or that uncanny mood that inexplicably possessed me as i passed that alley that spring evening, with mulch and blossoms still clinging to the dusk.

inheriting

William Golding, in The Inheritors, captures the melancholic exuberant inevitable takeover of Neanderthals by Homo Sapiens Sapiens.  Are we not now writing—collectively, melancholically, exuberantly, during the phenomenon itself—of the inevitable takeover of ourselves by the next order, already emerging and visible in the urban hordes ... what shall we call it?  If part of the Homo line ... Homo Webus? Homo Technus? Homo Nihilus?  If not part of the Homo line ... Weberthals? Technothals? Nihilathals?  They will not replace us primarily by violence and deceit, the techniques we used to overcome the Neanderthals, but with virtuality and pharmaceuticals and a dark patience not dissimilar to the dark patience of god.

the project of the projection of why

We don’t ultimately criticize anyone else or thing, although it frequently feels like this; all we do is receive signs that we’re to walk a particular path, which most are unable to help us with, an inability deriving from the characteristics of the particular or general path they are walking and must walk.  Our criticisms are emotional responses to our objections to our solitudes and fates.  We are inclined to blame others for these circumscriptions of nature, we attempt to drag facticity into our subjectivities, but in so doing refuse to grow into the circumscriptions of ourselves.

spiritual blood-letting

Even as there is a blood type that can donate to all others but only receive from its own, so there are spiritual types.  In one or two thousand years, if we progress spiritually at the same rate we’ve progressed technologically over the past two thousand years, we may understand these as well as we presently understand the ABO blood system.  But now, spiritually, we perform the practice of blood-letting and call it psychotherapy.  Our tamperings with psyches, minds, souls are primitive and barbaric; distant generations will look aghast on them, as we do now on the medical practices of the 17th century.  But in the meantime we diminish spirits everywhere by having professionals draw vitality into their curious bowls, so that they can turn it into specimens and lay claims over it by virtue of having mapped it on their brains ... for, surely, in the logic of premodern medicine, doing something is better than doing nothing.

monsters of maturity

Once one has acclimatized oneself to human rejection, betrayal, anger, hate, abuse, incompetence, corruption, stupidity, greed, vanity, arrogance, projection (ideological and emotional), lust, delusion, hypocrisy, schadenfreude, injustice, possessiveness, smarminess, sentimentality, smallness, jealousy, envy and resentment; once one has accepted them as aspects of existence, as presently palpable (and so, in a sense, necessary, legitimate) as play, reflection, stillness, and smoking ... and experiences them in the way one experiences the Canadian winter (one may not always like it, one is at times compelled to mention it, even discuss it, but one becomes fairly indifferent to its harshness and vicissitudes); once one has traversed these common, bulky expressions of the human soul—and seen that routine society, its members and institutions, is primarily devoted to nurturing and renaming these expressions, in a kind of spiritual laundering process, to make them socially acceptable—one then can enter a space which facilitates appreciating the rare instances of nobility, dignity, grace, and intelligence as they do appear, randomly, irrespective of ideology, class, education, gender, almost as mutations, fleeting and beautiful, in the occasional individual—whether in a novel, poem or dream ... or in what we call reality ... who can say?

pupils of truth

I look into my pupils in the mirror and see rabbit holes:  deep shafts carved in vision to mine the madness of night.  I fall into them.  I count the false lights, falling, like fountains in a desert, windows on the energy of ossified illusion.  My words are tears, electric tears on the infinite electric page.  Only tears are real.  They carve the shafts that yield the words in falling.  Tears carve and in carving yield the tears of words.  Everything is a circle.

the insects will see god!

... : —  everything with twenty tentacles, grasping, asserting, leeching, sucking:  society a galaxy of tentacles, a fashion house of mawing hunger, a vast pile of insects crawling over each other, with the dead, the poor, the dispossessed, the exponentially growing artifacts of history and mind and art forming an increasingly huge and reeking pile on which the rest of us—randomly born into relative privilege, now for a moment able to breathe and move and see—crawl in hopes we can better see the stars.  And inch by inch, century by century, light year by light year, blood by blood, we get a little closer ...

inquisition redux

Modern psychotherapy as a vital resurgence of the Inquisition, in new, modern and exciting forms.  Immanence may have replaced transcendence, the psyche may have replaced god and psychology religion, but humans remain much the same, as a reading of Euripides, Chaucer, Omar Khayyám or Chuang Tzu quickly reveals.  Unfortunately, our First World social apparatuses lack the power to physically maul and decapitate those who deviate from the emotional orthodoxy ... but the means must align themselves with the environment, so the presently approved techniques of emotional mauling and decapitating are studied, developed, applied, published, enforced and analyzed by the industry’s professionals, with their canon and vocabularies, and accepted as commonplaces and promulgated by the masses and penitents, who receive their treatments with a dignity as wholesome and admirable as those 200 – 800 years ago.  These structures and processes include, but are not limited to, rigid unimaginative socially enforceable definitions (theoretical, behavioral) of emotional and spiritual maturity (no less narrow, dogmatic and serious than the official belief structures of the Middle Ages), orthodox emotional configurations devoted to tyrannizing—but nicely, politely, professionally, legally—their heterodox alternatives and calling their devotion not righteousness—for that is passé—but health.

the feather and the rock

Happiness is a feather on the edge of a shoulder while running an obstacle course through air conditioners, pain is a rock.

Happiness is not a feather, happiness is water.

But pain is a rock.

Flesh is a rock.



Flesh is a rock, movement is water.
Flesh is a rock, love is water.
Flesh is a rock, flesh is water.

Dictionary of Modern Times viii


With a mild preponderance and possibly overpreponderance of this is its and animals and genetics and night and screams and muches, very muches, born of a February in Canada and dedicated to the particular convergences of this time and this place, and in sweet memory of Excess’ child, Silence.

Melencolia I 

(7.2973525698 ×10−3 = 1/137.035999074 wasn’t, surely, just a coincidence,
when Albrecht writ god’s soul on 24x18.8 centimeters)

that old master, that old bastard, albrecht dee, calmly fit the whirring world onto a page
angels and artists, like cows and justice, aren’t that impressed
with whirrs and whirls and worlds
but go about their predetermined business anyway
of sitting or sleeping or looking
while others gasp or spit or drive quickly by when shown, calmly, cows and artists
just sitting there
appearing to do nothing

ssssssodomy,ssssssodome

Manūščihr, High Persian Priest, who wrote Dādestān ī Dēnīg or Pursišn-Nāmag (but truly it seems more Dēnīg than Nāmag), devotes an unusually inordinate bulk of his little treatise to rectums, what not to do about them, what to do about them if you’ve done something about them, the impact of any such actions on archangels and whether the angels raise those who do something about rectums from the dead, whether killing those who have done something to them is meritorious or deleterious, a discussion of the height of the stenches arising from those who have done something about rectums, ... almost 10% of his ninth century work—written to highlight the most important religious, social, ethical, legal, philosophical, and cosmological knowledge of the age—devoted to rectums!

The pious may be pious but they ain’t porous, said Boris.


the propositions of freedom

1.      so one day you know or sense or it’s sensed for you
2.      or maybe not one day but in the crack of a mood or some hideous lunch or a forgettable decade or genital
3.      that this is it
4.      and you decide or more likely it’s somehow decided for you
5.      by your genes or a stray banana or your parents (whatever they have to do with anything) or some misplaced underwear
6.      whether you buckle down and do the that this is it:  kids and cars and pufnstuf
7.      or you go nuts and the that this is it does and buckles you
8.      or you try to detour around the buckling and the doing and the nutting and the #3 follows along (or maybe leads or plays hide-and-seek, it’s hard to tell), which seems like a kind of buckling and doing and nutting (and/or being buckled&done&nutted) and the seeming, as mister frost in his hiemal soul foretold, might have made all the difference, which doesn’t, frankly, (as he also sang, but more surreptitiously) seem very much


it’s raining cash&jism, the sun is slippery in the sky!

And I saw ducks, like greasy monsters,
hirsute and horrible, on the teetertotters of their quacks,
mourning for their churchy mamas yet,
spinoza’s ethics tucked inside their pretty breasts.
And I saw crocodiles, in sartorial suspenders,
quoting ducks but mainly snoring,
seated on their leather ancestry not meaning very much.
And there were tortoises too, almost cute and cuddly
if it weren’t for their memory of now till 1889.
And not just these!:  neurotic OCD flamingos chomping on themselves,
rolypunting wombats and crafty sewer faggy rats,
birds in bunnies! phoenixes in tabloids! fish in fishnets! giraffes as maître d's!
     !             !!!                    !!                  !              !!!                           !       !!
So it is in the age of meteorology,
with cash and giraffes and mamas.  (And a slippery sun.)

dna murmurs

Pling goes the pling of the pling on the plingpling
Plong goes the pling of the pling on the plong
Schasht goes the Unterwoof of your sweet pedigrees
And pling goes the plong of the pling on the pling

the fair

I like the weird ones.
Who have fallen off the carousel’s piggies and horses
and wander among the music, the rising falling rising falling rising falling
and watch, halfheartedly, the changing riders, the lineup’s scramble, the crying laughing faces
and wait, though not necessarily with anticipation, for those called to fall to fall:
and some sit there, appearing dumb, close to the hooves
others babble below the noise, the happy hum
still others walk with or against the revolution, conversing with the riders
for their own peculiar purposes or just because they must converse
and a few are given over to feeling the falling rising the revolutions the music
and saying, or not, this is it this is it …
Meanwhile, the lineup waits excitedly, replenishing itself like weather
and the piggies know exactly what to do to give that special feeling of what it’s like to be alive
and the weird ones, who have fallen off (or maybe climbed down because of godknowswhat)
still join in the ride and are not apart

All’s Well That Ends Well

The experiment fails if the word is uttered,
it’s all signs and pigeons and the impossible calm of your gaze:
time must do its thing without help from us
(who’ve never really known what to do with time other than fill it with our sighs and screams
[which may be, for us, all time ever is:
our problem play of noise]).

So utter the word anyway—
the word’s but a yellow scream or sigh,
a streak on god’s expanding canvas
which does—(admit it!)—nothing to failure or experiments
(they’re quite capable of doing fine on their own, thanks).

Words are just pigeons and time is just your gaze.

weather report

The sky’s today the underbelly of a dove
Vast and sleepy in the heavens,
Resting on the bloated arrogance of earth

It looks, too, somewhat like a marshmallow
A little charred, as if it fell into the fire,
Enough food for all Somalia, if we could drag it down

All this—though it isn’t much—might portend some days to come
Without doves or marshmallows or the relief of famine.
Just the overturned blue bowl, the empty ancient shape,
Holding the avocado of the world.

in a february, random snapshots taken with my iEYE, whilst touring on a dubious lectica, inappropriately portered by doré and hopkins

the sky is green,
my heart is green like the sky

i drive the tram between the Cocytus and Lethe:
there’s always room, never any fare … entrer!

When I was six, bound in the trunk of a Bourbon taxi,
the Delta wailing like a herd of marauding banshees,
Krishna, gloved, in the back seat, tickled my toes.

the world, as light as bubbles,
is always chained to Wonderland with songs

See the paintings, suspended in the air!—
twisted landscapes with the brains of emergent DNA
sipping lattes in postbiopunk cafés.

Fluffy vivisected faces crossing suns of perfect beauty
whilst the Flintstones play stone banjos on a duck float.

There—the city rising to receding lights, coke and gin and futures in the faucets,
numbers cracking through the concrete, maudlin peace and tofu,
hearts for sale like sausagedogs, pronouns rotting in the dumpsters,
you like Shirley Mosque and me like Thelonius Poopoo
playing cards on the distended belly of the headless duchess.

It’s all here, in the funfair, in the city, on the greens,
the world is light as bubbles and the sky as free as banshees
we’re playing golf on bloodcarts, singing—Hey nonny ninny
it’s all here in the window, in a scream

Pflug & Pfuff

visited the Room of the Eleven Heads on the last day of the first month in the year after The Apocalypse, and counted the heads and looked into the eyes even when there seemed to be none and necked a little in the washroom and returned to the Eleven Heads, which all seemed to be quite aware that something had been going on.

They’re peeking out from everywhere, said Pflug.
Like gophers on Groundhog Day, said Pfuff.
They know what we did, said Pflug.
In the washroom, said Pfuff.
That we maybe shouldn’t, said Pflug.
Just recently, said Pfuff.
In the washroom, said Pflug.

But the 11 heads, despite their seeming awareness, remained mute, and if they knew anything, retained it in their stony hearts and showed it only with their eyes.

poverty

                … say it … say it over and over … say it fiscally, emotionally, intellectually, imaginatively, spiritually, ontologically, socially, romantically, sexually, psychically, erotically, culturally, familially, politically, aesthetically, oneirically, temporally, integratively, physically, eternally … an artist is never poor … her endless effusions of wealth erupt from vast deserts of emptiness … but none of this is poverty, for poverty is lack, indicating concrete objects outside one’s grasp that one must have to be fulfilled; the artist, wanting all and being intimate with the gap between desire and fulfillment, works with what is given—and what is given is most frequently the gap—to destroy and create.

dinnertime
(aka stretched unsonnet, having just been run over by a GO train, on a simulated death march to bataan)

Brussels sprouts like baby heads
In the laptop’s womby glow
Thyme like beatcops stuck in Gorgonzola’s teeth
The city stretched like bubbling pancakes
John Cage caged like hamsters
The dance like Karen Cane on stilts
Rice and lentils happy in their reputations
And the carrot—noble carrot!—laughing like an orange.
Ah!, it’s dinner, it’s dinnertime,
King Crimson’s playing bible tunes
And the city’s sparkling like a rhinestone demiurge
The city’s sparkling like a Brussels sprout
Baudelaire’s skeletons hiphopping on the twinkling apathetic clouds
Death winking like a greedy god
And metaphor on crack, you on jungle daylight savings time
The night climbing Leah’s Ladder,
You in Hades munching vultures
I in heaven being munched by cokey Munsch
It’s Toronto at three a.m. in February
It’s like a raisin tko’d in some detergent factory
It’s dinnertime and the oven’s counting roman numerals,
It’s dinnertime, we’re riding chaise longues to hell.