From: Phil Talbot <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon Jul 4, 2005 12:49 am
Subject: Re: [tempestuous] Even more inconsequentials philtal_uk
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And when the African tribes-people were asked who
'Sir' Bob was and what Live8 was and what
MakePovertyHistory was ... they said words to the
effect of '... don't know ... and it probably has much
nothing to do with our lives anyway ...'
One day they will make their own poverty [or in other ways enrich themselves otherwise] in [their own time[s]] history in
their own ways and will put the western dinosaur
decadents to shame ... or confine them to the wheelie
bin of history ...
And when 'Sir' Bob instructs the 'anti-poverty'
multi-millionaire 'celebrities' not to criticize Mr
Bush and Mr Blair from the Live8 stage ... and said
'anti-poverty' multi-millionaire 'celebrities' ...
well ... you sort of sense that this was just a
stage-managed status quo maintaining 'arrangment' with
the establishment ... don't you?! ...
Well ... they do not want to make poverty history do
they really ... ?! ... because that might affect their
'status' ...
Our revels are now ended ...
The show is over ... and poverty is not history ...
surprize ... surprize ...
Too many vested interests involved in its maintenance
of course ... including aid agencies ... celebrity
anti-poverty campaigners ... etc ... etc ...
Too cynical?!
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
On to more truly significant others ...
World[s], It[s], People[s], Water[s] ...
Ref. Leonardo, Paris MS F
Write first of water in each of its motions then
describe all of its basics and the substances therein
... and let the order of the writing be good, for
otherwise the work will be as confused and swirling as
all the multitudinious oceans and all that flow into
and out of them. Represent all the forms that water
assumes from its largest to its mallest wave, and
their causes.
Comples volatile structures.
Flowing state[s] that is/are not entirely formless but
which defy categorization.
In the blink of an eye it changes.
No two waves are the same, though there is regularity
to wave patterns.
Not forgetting, thermodynamics, etc ...
In my perceived universe there is not sensed a
physical body of greater power than the Sun. It
donates light freely to all earthly matter. It gives
heat to all living creatures. Although not, perhaps,
strictly speaking, alive itself, it is a VITAL force.
Without the sun water would be ice, having still some
fluid dynamic properties but less living motion. And
without water in the fluid state ...
Too hot. Too cold. Just right, more of less.
Life emerging from the sea. Life returning to the sea.
Deluges. Rapid changes. Not entirely chaotic but
sometimes seeming so.
Collapses of categories and distinctions. Mixed up in
the churning mix.
An engulfing of intellect by a nature uncontrollable
and in many repects unknowable.
Ref. Codex Leicester. Now 'owned' by Mr Bill Gates
[special guest multi-billionaire 'anti-poverty'
appearance on Live8 stage]. 'Ownership' is never fixed
or lasting. We only borrow the stuff of physical world
temporarily.
Texts vary and interact and ...
At one point he claimed to have reached 730 [in fact
temporary] 'conclusions' on water and gathered them in
8 folios.
Books bring order of/to sorts ...
[Book] 1 ... of water in itself
2 ... of the sea ...
3 ... of underground channels ...
4 ... of rivers ...
5 ... of the nature of the depths ...
6 ... of objects impeding water-flow ...
7 ... of gravels ...
8 ... of the surface ...
9 ... of the things that move in it ...
10 ... of the means of renovating rivers ...
11 ... of conduits ...
12 ... of canals ...
13 ... of machines turned by water ...
14 ... of how to make water ascend ...
15 ... of things consumed by water ...
'... only ... there is water under the dead rocks ...'
Revisions and Reviews.
Restart any where ...
It is 'just' a matter of time and place ... and
perspectives ...
Newcastle Central railways station.
Place of flux. People and things in motion.
Some fixed points, which change too.
The automatic photobooth where she had that
askance-eyed snapshot 'portrait' taken.
Sometimes time seemingly quickens, sometimes it
seemingly slows. Imagination comes into it.
What we see as fixed and relatively stable is in fact
in motion and relatively unstable.
One day a few months ago, sitting relatively
motionless on Platform 4, I 'saw' [or 'merely'
imagined] the station and surrounding environment
being deconstructed and changed into other forms.
It was not an illusion. It was there to be seen. It is
only a matter of time and space.
Details change, forms remain the same?
It is possible.
Something holds things together.
Might 'just' be imagination.
One of the things that what I take to be real
knowledge gives you is a kind of humility. This is one
of the reasons I have no great liking for the power
'elites' [sic] who use their knowledge [usually
collected for them by others] to further empower
themselves. I particularly have no great liking for
people who gather 'intelligence' on others in order to
use, exploit, or otherwise manipulate those others -
some great abuse of knowledge in that; also some great
loss of humility.
As it was. As it is.
That Leonardo 'self-portrait' in red chalk.
Though to have been drawn by him when he was about 60.
Even if - as some suggest - not in fact a
self-portrait, and not even perhaps drawn by his
'hand', it looks like the later Leonardo is likely to
have looked.
Assuming it is a self-portrait, it is a merciless
self-representation. His life, his life's work, his
response to the universe, in a single drawing, as it
were. Incomplete. Impossible to complete. In some
respects an outline drawing. But deepening into
multilayered complesity around the eyes and mouth.
Gone is the 'naive' youthful belief that nature can be
contained [within perfectly proportioned human figures
inside circles and squares, etc]. This is a deluge
drawing about to emerge from a human face. Flux
bursting out of stasis. The edge of near chaos.
Complexity. Fluidly dynamic change. He looked at
himself without self-deception. That took a rare kind
of courage. He looked at the universe without wishful
thinking. As he was. As it was. This is the face that
has been inside the Circle of Mirrors and faced waht
is there to be seen - infinite complexity: the dynamic
multiverse, ever changing, never the same twice.
And some have had the fucking cheek of accusing me of
not acknowledging change!
'I have a busy life now and have moved on.'
The things they say!
Cat's in the photobooth, eyes askance, caught up in
the flow of a great fluid dynamic pattern beyond her
comprehension. What else can she do other than pretend
to have more understanding than she has and to resort
to cliches and to pass on her 'unfavoured' snapshots?
'You can have that one! [I have a busy life and have
to move on to pass snapshot bits of myself to others
...]'
It is, to my mind, in some ways a defeated face. In
those eyes the awareness that the multiverse that he
has spent his life attempting the comprehend is beyond
comprehension, by him, by anyone else.
And the dimbo bimbos in the 'intelligence' agencies,
etc, seem to imagine they 'get it'!
I like the snapshop of Cat, eyes-askance in the
photobooth, because there is no posing in the face, no
posturing, no role-playing. Lady B-Grade Philosophical
Drama Queen has been caught unawares. Given time I
will go into that picture further. There are already
many notes about it elsewhere, in fact, as I recall.
[Why do I give time to consideration of these people
who have no time for me?!]
Diversions ...
Type-castings ...
She was a 'typical' representative of her age, and
had, for example, watched too many B-Movies, and did
tend to make a rather cheap but amusing drama out of
more or less every banal event. Sometimes, it seemed
as if she could not say the simplest thing without
turning it into a line from a melodramatic B-Movie.
Sometimes it was irritating, but mostly it was
actually quite endearing really. And I was prone to
the same sort of role-playing myself.
Once upon an everyday summer's day in some
unremarkable English spot, she was hotter than she
wanted to be. She could not bring herself simply say
words to effect of 'I am a suburban girl in some
unremarkable spot who is at this moment feeling too
hot'. Instead, she 'had' to transform herself into a
character in a B-Movie ... rugged adventuress lost in
the desert ... truck run out of fuel ... water
supplies almost exhausted ...
'It is too damned hot ... it is too damned hot ... it
is too damned hot ...'
She rehearsed the line many times until she got it
more or less right for the 'scene'.
Not too emphatic. Not too understated. Just right.
Curious Cate Curlylocks's Variations.
There is no posing in that face. No posturing. No
role-playing. It 'says': 'This is Me as I am. It is as
it is.' And this is no snapshot. No image captured by
chance. This is a life's work. A life's face.
This is not one of a series.
This is not the one he selected out of a series of
many for some reason ... because he liked it the best
... or disliked it the most ... because he found it
most flattering ... or least flattering ... or
whatever ...
Ego-tripping.
Think of what happens when I look at collections of
photos of myself. The tendency to think that the one
that appeals to me most, the one in which I look my
'best', is the 'most me'. The rest are dismissed as
somehow 'not me'.
Face yourself. See yourself as you are. Face it as it
is. Courage required for that!
That Leonardo drawing is the self-representation of a
man who has faced himself. His life. His work. The
universe. The multiverse. And done his best to see
himself as he is. And tried to put into his own face
his awareness of him it ['everything'] is. And it is -
or seems to be - a somewhat defeated face. The mind
behind that face looked more deeply than most. Saw
more of what there was to been seen than most. It some
too much. It did not see enough. It saw that is was
not possible to see enough. The multiverse could not
be 'contained' in a single mind, so could not be
comprehended. It was too complex. Too multilayered.
There was too much too it. It contained the faces of
those who tried to contain it. It would break up those
faces, leaving only traces behind. Fading outlines.
A 'defeated' face. A disappointed face. But not a
despairing face. And not a bitter face. He has seen it
as it is. And moved into a state where ...
Words trail off.
How strange it is that that face of the older Leonardo
is so similar to the faces of the older Darwin and the
older Tolstoy. Three great consciousnesses, which had
perceived so much, and understood more than most, and
bravely confront 'it' as it is, rather than as humans
would like it to be. And those three consciosnesses
ended up fronted by a very similar face: a contenance
of deep, multi-layered complexity; a contenance that
has seem more than most, seen very deeply, yet had a
sense that it was never possible to see deeply enough.
Sensed how it is, if not seen how it is.
I imagine Lear with that countenance. Prospero too.
And perhaps Shakespeare himself if he had lived
longer. Lear and Prospero are perhaps Shakespeare's
versions of that countenance. Prospero more so than
Lear perhaps. Because Prospero is beyond raging
against the way it is. He gives voice to the
countenance. Speaking gently of little lives rounded
by sleeps leaving bare remote traces behind.
Sa sa ...
Happily, commonplace concerns that often spare the
bereaving of further mememories has dimmed his mind's
eye.
Or else, having not had enough breakfast, there is not
enough carbohydrate in my system to fuel my brain to
further writing.
Or else, the limitations of the form have undone me.
Ref. Dante, Purg. 33.
Had I greater space for writing, I would sing, at
least in part, of the sweet draught that never would
have sated me. But the space given over to this
section is filled.
Or else, dumb fuck daft Geordie boy that I am, I lack
to art to take it further ...
Revision and Reviews
27_06_2005
Shortly after noon ...
The practicalities of subsistence.
Do I have enough tobacco to get me through the day and
night until tomorrow when ... ? ...
Will I at some point today feel such a desperate
craving for alcohol that I will have to go out and buy
enough drink to get drunk ... ? ...
I do not know what writing really is but I write
nevertheless.
The idea that reality is at core a near chaotic mess
that we order with patterning systems ... like writing
...
What is in the void ... ? ... near formless near chaos
...
Is there misery greater than mine. Without doubt. But
awareness of that does not reduce my own misery -
increases it in fact. Strange that I do not seem to
absorb others' happiness to the same extent. It is not
that I do not recognize it, nor that I am made jealous
by it, but that ...
Sentences trail off ...
Feel opened up and exposed ...
Everything you give away is used against you to
manipulate you ... and/or fed back in a travesties
form to you ...
No that bleak perhaps but sometimes it seems that way
...
Gave too much away on Heraclitus and in the emails to
Mary, etc, and the result is ...
Don't wear your heart on your sleeve because it is too
unprotected there and likely to get damaged ...
But it was damaged anyway ...
Motives ...
Strange that the best I could come up with was a quest
for love ...
I seemed to believe in it at one time ... it was not
just a fiction I had conjured up ...
Experience disillusions, of course, ... so you give up
more or less ...
there is always some flickering of hope, of course,
but it is mostly hopeless seeming because ...
Strange that it should have been Catherine rather than
some other because ...
I did not chose her and that it is fact ...
nevertheless when all the rest was stripped away ...
there she was ... so ...
That does not really capture the essence of it ... but
nevertheless ...
Wonder what it is like to be the loved one in an
unrequited love ...
I must have been there ... but I did not recognize it
...
The letters suggest that that was how it was from her
perspective re me ... for a while ... I did not really
recognize it at the time ...
All that is a long time ago ...
Once upon a time ...
Today ... I feel myself caught up in a surreal
daymare/nightmare beyond my comprehension ...
Sun is out today so I should be more cheerful but ...
Dunno what it is ... overwhelming sense of being
'oppressed' ... cannot really account for it ...
My appetite is a puzzle ... hungry all the time but
not much inclined to eat ...
And you look forward in time and what do you see but
... no real prospect of change for the better ... and
a strong prospect of change for the worse ...
Powerless too ... and even empowerment seems futile
... the illusions of power and all that ...
I am growing older ... way it goes ... worst bit of it
is the reducing possibilities ...
It is probably true that I was even more miserable
when I was younger ... but at least there were more
possibilities then ...
One of the curious aspects of the surrealism ... is
the sense of 'attunement' ... impossible to put into
words ...
If I was not going through it alone it would not be so
bad ...
Fucking knackered ... but rest is impossible too ...
Wed. 29_06_2005
Whatever happened to my wedding day?
She got away!
The ones that got away ...
Meanwhile ...
Reached Purgatory 28 in rereading [in translation] of
Dante's Comedy today. Dante reaches the Earthly Garden
of Eden and chats with the wise woman Matilda. While I
have reached 65 St Cuthbert's Avenue, South Shields,
alone, one rather grey Wednesday afternoon.
Autonomous spaces.
A space in which to write.
Signs of vitality.
One evening, a while back, I sat here and saw a young
woman doing cartwheels in the street outside.
Today, a black cat on the wall opposite.
Sense data - which I cannot really make sense of.
Revisions and Reviews.
The marginal magi concept was a generous one - because
everyone could get involved in it.
Not enough feedback though.
Seems all played out now, but could be revized and
reviewed and recast.
Could find a new Yahoo group and revize and review it
there.
Problems of communication.
Incomprehension.
Smashed bottles on my doorstep. What does that mean?
They puzzle me. I puzzle them.
Disappointed by/with Mary, but [apparently] she aims
to disappoint so as to maintain 'distance'. She has
her rights to 'autonomous spaces' of course, just like
evryone else.
Impressed by 'young' Clare, but cannot speak my mind
to her really. Plus 'complications' I anticipated on
first glimpse of her are arizing.
Difficulties of maintaining 'professional' [!]
relationships.
And then one day she'll depart and that will be that.
'Don't you miss me?'
'In all honesty: some of the time.'
Problems include: knowing my own mind better than most
know their own minds.
That might be a conceit, but has some truth in it, I
suspect.
Puzzles.
And what exactly was going on just after midday on
Saturday when all those police cars were buzzing
about? Seemed aspects of contrived drama to it.
Suspect it was because Mr Miliband was here or there
abouts, and so suspect it as some sort of 'show of
strength', but then I do not know for sure.
Problems of the 'Middle Man'.
Some of the locals apparently suspect me of being in
league with the cops.
Some of the locals apparently suspect me of being in
opposition to the cops.
I am neither really.
It is a difficult situation, to understate.
Puzzles of my appetite.
I am hungry, but do not feel like eating much of the
time.
Need for autonomous space - and/or 'time out'.
I am knackered but cannot rest.
Snapshots I store away for who knows what reason.
Clare at the doorstep. The wind on her hair.
Growing into ... a foolish fond young-old man.
The old-young man avuncular - and still somewhat
carbuncular.
Contradictions.
I am knackered but bored by the 'statis'.
There is nothing much I want to do but lots I want to
do.
I have no great sense of purpose but a great sense of
mission.
How it might have been.
That woman in Waterstone's the other week who looked
like Catherine. Creatural smell to her, which was not
unpleasant. Kind of glow.
How easy reconciliation should be - and by
reconciliation I do not mean harmonic reunion.
Too much resistance, and not much of it coming from
me.
Don't know what it is really, it is a kind of
malevolence, though, I suspect.
Because it does not have to be this disharmonious.
How she actually smelled.
She had an odd smell, which I could never adequately
describe.
It never turns out how you intended, but it did not
have to turn out this bad.
And a lot of people have not been as frank with me -
and/or themselves - as they might have been ...
--- Philip Talbot <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Lives of the Philosophers, 21st anniversary edition
> ...
> Of the class of '84 Kev. M. was the only one clever
> enough to work
> out how to get a 3rd class honours degree - which
> was quite an
> achievement because they were giving away seconds
> without any
> requirement to study seriously to the likes of me.
>
> But that is 'no matter', as Ms Little said, in other
> words
> insubstantial stuff of no consequence that does not
> persist long .
>
> A community of matter appears to exist throughout
> the visible
> universe…. the elements most widely diffused through
> the host of
> stars are some of those most closely connected with
> the living
> organisms of our globe.
> William Huggins.
>
> We are stardust ...
> Joni Mitchell
>
> The thing that more or less convinced me that we'd
> never be
> reconciled (or rather that you would never be
> reconciled to me, since
> the nature of the break-up meant the call of
> reconciliation, however
> small, was only yours to make) was a small event
> involving a single
> lost hair.
> For more than a decade, I had kept a hair of yours
> (never having
> acquired a lock, since it would have been too
> 'soppy' to ask for
> one), which had chanced its way into one of the
> letters you sent me.
> One day, while poking about in a bag of
> miscellaneous trivia, I
> chanced upon the envelope containing the hair. I
> attempted to shake
> the hair from the envelope to the palm of my hand.
> But the hair,
> being of irregular shape, and not having much mass
> to it, defied a
> simple fall. It missed my hand, and fell on to a
> carpet covered with
> other bits of debris. I couldn't find it. It was
> lost in the mess,
> somewhere near, but not to be found. Another bit of
> you (and one
> containing some of your DNA, the key to life
> according to some na?ve
> fundamentalists) was lost.
> My imagination transformed the (blue) carpet into a
> representation of
> the universe. Crumbs and tobacco flakes became
> galaxies. Ash pellets
> and wine stains were molecular clouds. Hairs (mostly
> mine, one of
> yours) were organic streams. I seemed to see another
> trace of you
> blending into the cosmos, drifting away from me,
> never to be refound.
> I searched for that hair for some time, probably an
> hour or more.
> Then I stopped searching but still hoped to find it
> - sometimes
> things turn up when you stop looking for them. Then
> I gave up. Later
> I vacuumed the carpet, seeing in the act some sort
> of finality
> (matter disappearing into a black hole from which it
> cannot return).
> It was just a hair. But for a while I experienced
> real pain - a
> decade of pain condensed into a small period of time
> and focused on a
> tiny thing (one small curling hair, a few
> centimetres long, less than
> one millimetre wide, weighing next to nothing).
> Something. Everything. Nothing. So it goes, perhaps.
> This absurd behaviour might be seen as psychotic or
> pathetic. But
> doesn't everyone charge apparently trivial objects
> with emotions and
> meanings? And don't suburbanites spend hours
> deliberating carpet
> patterns, which may or may not have the meanings
> they seem to see in
> them? ['It is time to realise the vision' - from an
> advert for a
> carpet shop.]
> So I lost the hair. [And so fucking what you might
> say] But,
> according to atomic theory, I have perhaps a hundred
> or so atoms of
> you in my body right now. And this doesn't just
> apply to you, but to
> every person who has ever lived - atoms of all are
> in me too. (The
> idea is that every human contains such a huge number
> of atoms [about
> 1028] that those atoms must include at least some
> that have
> previously been in the body of any given person,
> living or dead.)
>
> p.s. This might perhaps be of interest to
> Christians: everyone must
> contain atoms once in Jesus - and, most probably,
> atoms from the
> cross -, in other words, you don't need
> transubstantiation to get
> bits of Jesus inside you.
>
> The narrative peters out, as narratives do from time
> to time, and all
> you can do then is to continue to compile narrative
> elements in the
> hope that you will be able to arrange them into a
> better narrative
> later - there is more to what is going on than that,
> 'of course', but
> that is what is going on at one level anyway.
>
> Sometimes it flows, sometimes it does not, is
> another way of putting
> it.
>
> By the way, respect in passing to RESPECT - and
> gallant George G. in
> particular - because at least they are speaking out
> boldly trying
> something different.
>
> [He deserves even bigger rounds of applause actually
> for having the
> guts to speak out against the wanky yankies -with
> words not violent
> deeds.]
>
> Not sure about a labour Party Mark 2 though ... one
> is enough ... but
> when the 'best' [sic] 'local' [sic] Labour can serve
> up is that
> shitbag Miliband ...
>
> [And did Miliband really need all that police
> protection when he went
> for a 'friendly' walkabout with the residents of
> Horsley
> Hill ... ? ...
> (They affect to represent 'the people' but have
> nothing but contempt
> for them'us) ...]
>
> Choices choices ... who to 'defect' to ... ? ...
>
> And where to go to get away from this 'dirty old
> town' ... ? ...
>
> By the way ... on my sick note ... 'psychological
> problems' ... will
> have to do more to justify that ... some act[s] of
> unparalleled
> lunacy ... like being as sane as I actually am in
> this crazy fucking
> situation ...
>
> Moving on from/with with my own mixed up narrative
> of sorts ...
> Where am I? [Noplace that I recognize as 'home' for
> sure.]
> Where were we?
>
> We were both there at some moment that is a here and
> now as far as we
> are concerned - i.e.e we both existed at a
> subjective present moment
> that had relatively objective correspondence.
> She looked my way and I looked her way.
> She may not in fact have seen me directly, she might
> instead have
> seen my long long ancestor Hangme Dogface, who was
> arround some
> million or so years agao in Earth time, while she
> was looking at
> Earth, perhaps it was for real, or perhaps it was in
> imagination,
> from some distant vantage point in a neighbouring
> galaxy that later
> Earthlings would call M31, Andromeda, or something
> else entirely. And
> perhaps Hangme Dogface went by some other name too,
> names change,
>
=== message truncated ===
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