From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Sat Jun 8, 2002  4:34 am
Subject:  Jane Makeover

Riverland is full of all sorts of fashions ... and girls who would
make natural models ... which is why we sent out own special
correspondent little Ms June Makeover to investigate a local
modelling course.
It started as a typical Saturday morning. It finished with her legs
aching, a £13 parking ticket, and a new-found image with a veneer of
sophistication.
She had rolled out of bed, splodged some make-up on to her barely
open eyes and bowled down to the Pat A. Cake Agency for a one day's
intensive grooming and self-improvement course.
The other girls were immaculate, most of them wanted to be models,
and most of them were about 15 years younger than her.
'Never mind,' said Pat, immaculate blonde, and former Ms Great
Britain, 'this course is about confidence, that's what we're here
for.'
Jone had always fancied herself as a kind of down-market glamour
kitten with tousled appeal. Someone once told her she had cheekbones
like Bo Derek. Nothing else, just the cheekbones.
When Pet started out with make-up she knew she was kidding herself.
Off came the stuff Jine'd only just put on. The lines and shadows
under her eyes that Jene'd always thought interesting came under
attack.
And there was more. Deportment - sitting, walking, taking off a
jacket, entering a room, ascending and descending stairs (models do
it sideways). They paraded in front of the huge mirror, with Pit
intoning 'Heel-ball of foot, heel-ball of foot'.
Over lunch they chatted.
Pot has all kinds on her books - glamour girls ('a bit of class'),
fashion girls, children ... and 30-something-year-olds who are in big
demand with the advertizers who need 'ordinary' looking people the
punters can identify with.
'The children are great, but some of them have very ambitious
mothers,' she said.
'One lady rang the other day and said "I'm having a baby in three
weeks, can you put it in your books", which I thought was taking it a
little far.'
She conceded that modelling work was tough, and sometimes she
accompanies her girls to make sure they don't fall into the wrong
hands.
'You get a photographer who says "You're fat, get out", which really
knocks you. You have to develop quite a thick skin,' said the last
woman in the world anyone would dream of calling fat.
In the afternoon, the utterly charming Irony Washername, herself a
model, arrived to tell about grooming.
Everything from interviews, sitting down, shaking hands, to waiting
for a bus, and choosing clothes.
'It hurts to be beautiful,' Irene said, with a beautiful smile. 'But
remember, you're as good as you think you are.'
At the end of the day Jane asked Put what her chances were in the
modelling world. 'Fantastic!' she said - and they both collapsed with
laughter.
The rest of the world watched out for them.
+++++
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Sat Jun 1, 2002  7:20 am
Subject:  Re: So how come no ones discussing Heraclitus!? :)
Dear Mike
Thanks for your generous message.
I don't think I have a new creative way of regarding Heraclitus. I
follow the lead of (old) Plotinus (mentioned in a message dated
01/09/02) who suggested Heraclitus 'leaves us to conjecture and omits
to make his argument clear and to reach conclusions, perhaps because
he realised that we should inquire for ourselves as he himself
inquired'. If you are studying 'limitless matters' (which is what
philosophers do, isn't it?) then you can start anywhere - and the
fragments of Heraclitus are among my starting places.
I acknowledge huge debts to Hopkins, whose love of asymmetic off-
double patternings and 'all things counter, original, spare, strange'
has never been far from my thinking since I first encountered the
Pied Beauty poem as a boy. Plus with Hopkins there is a great respect
for humdrum-seeming everyday-daily-job-doers ('all trades, their gear
and tackle and trim')- who are often neglected, even sometimes
despised, by the more academic-minded and by the some of the more
unwordly sorts of mystics.
Personally I am trying to mix spontaneous art with hard graft labour
and bits of mystery - in a cheerful sort of way. I don't think I have
succeeded yet ...
Good luck with your grad school applications. I have difficulty with
formal application processes myself - I find orthodoxy quite
difficult ... and I tend to digress ...
Take care...
Philip.
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Sat Jun 1, 2002  7:30 am
Subject:  Re: On matters of footing.

...visions of Swastikas...
...
Germany 8, Saudi Arabia 0
...
... it was just a football match, but one saw ... light-skinned burly
merciless-seeming Teutonics trample all over darker more slimly built
semites...
...
it seemed a shema that the Saudis were not gifted at least one goal...
...
some might say that pretty babies (boys and girls) have to clear more
of the blood and filth shit out of their systems ... or temporal
tectonics might bring in revenges ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 4, 2002  10:22 am
Subject:  4 kids

ADVERTISEMENT

The Fat Prince, the Cream, and the Jelly.
In the land of cream and jelly, the streets were foul and smelly, the
jelly, you see, had rotted and the cream had soured and clotted. The
king of this land was sad to see all of his kingdom go bad. `Oh what
can be done?' he sighed as he sat in his palace and cried. His son,
the Fat Prince, had plan, and that clever but greedy young man
said, ` I'll get rid of the smell you hate,' then he picked up his
spoon and he ate. And he ate and he ate and he ate, he cleared plate
after plate after plate, of smelly jelly and rancid cream, his
favourite foods, it would seem. After four long days of scoffing,
the prince showed no signs of stopping – he's eaten three tons of
cream and jelly but had room for more in his belly.
A while later, when the job was done, and all the cream and jelly had
gone, the prince was as big as a whale – and he burped with the force
of a gale. But the king still sat and cried, and when the prince
asked why, he replied: `You've got rid of the smell, that's true, but
you've eaten my kingdom up too!'
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  12:31 pm
Subject:  Re: inclusive consciousness

PS
...
Poe (for Susan)
I shall cork the MS up in a bottle ... and throw it into the sea ...
Yours ... PUNDITA.
[pppps ... pretty pretty pretty peggy sue ... got married ...]
PST (for Creatives and Observers)
There is much more to creativity than self-expression (which is a
relatively minor matter).
PT (for Rosemary)
... perhaps I am starting to 'use that brain' of mine a little
more ... but don't expect miracles ...
PTO (for Madonna)
... and ... do you know what it feels like for a boy? ...
... and ... when you open up your mouth to speak ... could you be a
little weak? 
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  12:39 pm
Subject:  Re: 4 kids
A child in time met a man who called himself Mr Possible.
'Why are you called Mr Possible,' the child asked.
'Because I can do some things some people believe are impossible,'
the man replied.
'But if you can do impossible things you sould be called Mr
Impossible,' the child suggested.
'No ... it is not possible to do impossible things and I cannot do
them,' said the man, worried that he had been misunderstood. 'What I
do is demonstrate that some things that some people believe to be
impossible are in fact possible.'
'What sort of things are possible?' the child asked.
'What do you imagine?' the man replied.
The child imagined. 
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  12:49 pm
Subject:  Unblocking Parmenides

ADVERTISEMENT
I will speak of two searches.
There is a search for what is or might be and there is a search for
what is not and could never be.
The first is a possible search (what is or might be can be found),
the second impossible (what is not and could never be cannot be
found).
The dishonest person wanders through the world stupefied and two-
faced: gazing at what is possible and what is not.
The undisciplined and/or closed mind, which maintains absolutist
positions and/or huge internal contradictions, never moves towards to
truth - it is in stasis, with the forces of truth checked by the
forces of falsehood.
There is the world as it is and there is the world as you would like
it to be - and the latter often is not and never could be.
Do not waste time trying to prop up absolutist beliefs that you
secretly know to be false (or at least not completely true), however
much you may want to believe them.
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  1:07 pm
Subject:  Excuses
ADVERTISEMENT

Height:   4 5 6 7 ft  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 in
Weight:  
Sex:   F  M

It was Apollo who started it ...
the seasoning of tales of wars and humanity with peppar-dust excuses.
Blame it on the gods ... who splash the earth with pain and blood and
then - clean souls - wash it away with floods. It is deities' whims
that determine fate ... filling peaceful people with killing hate ...
and when guilt is denied and passed above, all humans can return to
their endless love.
And blasted beauty ... it too has killed many. Gracious Helen, not
even a full goddess, ... but she, they knew, was the real cause: her
passion-rousing face deserved a curse ... while galley left ports to
wide applause.
And the women know the truth of course ... it is all the fault of the
men, plain and simply.
And ignorance, it warrants a share ... not of our making ... born of
our natures ... a means of slaughter for the immature.
Ugly Thersites knew a version of the truth ... and jeered from the
ranks at limitless greed. 'What more do you want?' A question for the
booty-sated. They wanted a beating for the questioner it transpired.
Blind Homer obliged with blows [well the jobbing bard had to appease
his 'noble' masters] ... just for wise-cracking ... to smash the
scant-haired egg-head. But at least he let the shrill voice speak and
then live on into uncertainty ... others, less tolerant, killed the
freak, for doubting a great general's sincerity.
When 'great' people sigh, small children die ... dut do they sway or
move with the day?
And god, now single, carries the burden alone ... or (greater
mystery) merely watches ... an inventor shocked by consequences, who
cannot endorse all-licensed free will.
God damned, new culprits must be found to create the course of our
events.
Chance
powerfully powerless
forceless force
governs all
randomly ordering
formless
fragmenting
we wave goodbye to our particles
and blame the physicists)
And, of course, if all else fails ...
we can always blame 'the Other Side'...
However...
careful moments of reflection suggest (albeit with doubts) that
alternatives are always possible ...
and that, for better or worse, more often than not, we can determine
our own ways ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  1:23 pm
Subject:  flowing eastward for further education
... dragons and dynasties ... diversions and disturances ...
When Xido was finally released from prison he learned with horror of
the murders still going on and of how people were still drinking
soups made of other people's misery ... he began to feel queasy ...
then worse .. and with huge retches he vomited up a mass of puke
which seemed to writhe in the ground as if a living thing ...
Staring at this entity ... he thought and felt some more about the
mostly innocent victims and opened up his guts in grief again ...
Eventually he moved on, leaving the sickening mass for others to
contemplate ... some recommended burying it ... some thought there
might be much to learn from it ... many just turned away after giving
it a curious glance ...
As he travelled on, Xido was still haunted by the world-wide
injustices ... and by the question of how they might be undone
without violent revenges ... and although he seemed to be beginning
to build up some alliances .. he still lacked a close and trusted
wise counsellor, well versed in the natural arts and sciences and
other launguages ...
He sometimes dreamt of such a counsellor ... sitting apparently
fishing but not catching a single fish ...
... perhaps both the counseller and Xido were both too wary of the
possibilites of causing pain to each other and to the fish ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  1:32 pm
Subject:  Different song
Every church has a varying sway ... similarly singing different
songs ... and giving missing lines to all the other songsters.
So ...
... when missy mister missionaries song sing of apple pie and no more
trouble-kind when they go live up in sky ... walkabout naturals
wonder wanderingly why they take so much care not to die ... while
seaspray spitituals see things flowing countercurrently ...
[...which might be sung by the missing darker native Australian faces
in the shiney happy whitey people Aussie Neighbours slipply sloppy
soppy soapy opera ...]

From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 11, 2002  1:45 pm
Subject:  Bantu Banta

ADVERTISEMENT
One day Unkulaunty said on a whim to a chameleon 'Go and tell all
humans that they will not die'.
The chameleon started off towards humanity ... but it went very
slowly and ...
... some say it stopped to eat the fruit of a mulberry bush and then
went round and round and ...
... others say it climbed a tree to warm itself up in the sun with
the hope of increasing its speed in a heated state at a later
stage ...
... most agree that it fell asleep ...
...
Meanwhile, on another whim, Auntiuncle changed minds and sent a
second chameleon with a message that all humans would die. The second
chameleon made much more rapid progress, passed the first chameleon
and the way, and delivered its message to humanity first.
Eventually the lazy first chameleon did rouse itself, continued on
its way, and delivered its message second.
...
'Which message shall we believe?' humans wondered.
...
'Make your own minds up,' replied a third chameleon, which (foolishly
or not) believed it had a mind of its own.

+++++
From:  philtal_uk
Date:  Sat Feb 2, 2002  6:29 am
Subject:  Leonardo's Heraclitean Vision
Leonardo: 'Everything proceeds from everything
else and everything becomes everything else and
everything can be turned into everything else.'
[If you look for long enough, everything might be seen in
a young woman's smile ... or an old man's frown.]
From:  philtal_uk
Date:  Wed Feb 6, 2002  4:29 am
Subject:  Re: Leonardo's Heraclitean Vision
Leonardo: '... The artist can call into being the
essences of animals of all kinds, of plants, fruits,
landscapes, rolling plains, crumbling mountains, fearful and
terrible places which strike terror into the spectator;
and again pleasant places, sweet and delightful with
meadows of many-coloured flowers bent by the gentle
motion of the wind, which turns back to look at them as
it floats on; and then rivers falling from high
mountains and the force of great floods, ruins which drive
down with them up-rooted plants mixed with rocks,
roots, earth, and foam and wash away to its ruins all
that comes in their path; and then the stormy sea,
striving and wrestling with the winds which fight against
it, raising itself up in superb waves, which fall in
ruins as the wind strikes at their roots.'
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Wed May 8, 2002  12:27 pm
Subject:  Re: The Society of Heraclitus
Beatrice Kombo, farmer, Kenya, explains:
'When my trees became diseased it was the last straw. They were
producing so few nuts. I didn't know how I was going to feed my
family.
...
Today, my trees have recovered and they are sagging under the weight
of the nuts - I'm expecting 15 times more than before.
...
There are 350 of us involved and by working together we can make
sure we get a fair price for out produce.'
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Wed May 8, 2002  12:33 pm
Subject:  Names
Dot Golightly, writer, England, explains:
'In the 17th Century Laygate was farm land - known as Lay farm - and
a country lane ran through where Frederick St, Palmerston St and
South Eldon St still stand today - there it met with garden Lane. Now
in this lane was the Garden Gate pub, so - Laygate. Anyway it's one
theory.'
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Wed May 8, 2002  12:38 pm
Subject:  The Hunger Problem
Approximate volume to be filled = 4/3 xyy
where x = 'I am starving'
y = 'the shops are overflowing with goods but I am still
starving'
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue May 7, 2002  11:45 am
Subject:  peek-a-boo
'...
The human-interest stories of the penny newspapers had a timeless
quality; their power to engage lay not so much in their currency as
in their transcendence. Nor did all newspapers occupy themselves with
such content. For the most part, the information they provided was
not only local but largely functional - tied to the probelms and
decisions readers had to address in order to manage their personal
and community affairs.
The telegraph changed all that.
...
The telegraph may have made the country into "one neighbourhood", but
it was a neighbourhood populated by strangers who knew nothing but
the most superficial facts about each other.
...
... this ensemble of electronic techniques called into being a new
world - a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into
view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is a world without much
coherence or sense; a world that does not ask us, indeed, does not
permit us to do anything; a world that is, like the child's game of
peek-a-boo, entirely self-contained. But like peek-a-boo, it is also
endlessly entertaining.
Of course there is nothing wrong with playing peek-a-boo. And there
is nothing wrong with entertainment. ... we all build castles in the
air. The problems come when we try to live in them.
...'
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death [?]

+++++

Continuations ...
+++++
Re: Journey of the marginal magi.  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/10/02 3:56 pm
It can seem foolish to speculate at random about the narrowest and widest matters ... but what else can you do? 
+++++
New address as from mid-March:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/heraclitussociety
+++++
Goethean Intrusions/Inclusions ...
Re: New Member  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  3/9/02 8:27 pm
To 'Walkingondiamond'
...Thanks for the reply ... and you've summed up the English (though I prefer the British) very nicely ... we are paradoxical ...
Say more or less anything about us ... and it is true ... but the opposite is true also ...
We are a mixed up mess of a people ... and that is our (open) secret ... for better or worse ...
Regards Philip. 
Re: New Member  walkingondiamond
(30/M/Michigan State University)  3/3/02 1:13 am
I was just contemplating today a nation such as England. It seems very paradoxical in essence. It is really the home of capitalism, but at the same time probably the most social progressive as well in the history of the world in terms of intellectual and social movements . It is rather humanistic and at the same time a history of exploitation.
America seems really more exploitative than humanistic, considering the force with which capitalism weighs, environmentally and socially. We really don't have a problem with slave labor or environmental destruction if it maintains the appetites of greed.
"Man and Machine"
'Man invented the machine
and now the machine has invented man.
God the father is the dynamo
and God the Son the talking radio
and the Holy Ghost is gas that keeps it all going.
And men have perforce to be little dynamos
and little talking radios
and the human spirit is so much gas, to keep it all going.
Man invented the machine
so now the machine has invented man.'
DH Lawrence
 
New Member  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/26/02 6:19 pm
Hi ... from Philip ... hoping for a Goethe-sort of future.

Re: A Goethe quote?  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/26/02 6:17 pm
I share your hope in philosophy and art (plus in science, I also hope) ... but I am not sure that the capitalist fury is taking over the world.
Philip. 
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Sat Mar 9, 2002  5:46 pm
Subject:  ...migration...

ADVERTISEMENT
... who decided to migrate? ... or was it decided for us? ...
it seems to me that liberties have been taken without
consultation ... which is not the basis for free and frank
discussion ...
... plus there have been posts lost in the the transition ... which
looks a bit like censorship to me ...
... change ... yes ... but with free will ... or it is just fucking
imposition ...
+++++
'Look Back' Space[s]-[+/-]Time[s]...
Northern Skies ... etc ...
Stars and Planets Of The Galaxy
All Astronomy lover's are welcome Category: Astronomy
Type: Listed 
Re: Greetings from a nNorthern Skies   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 8:25 am
I'm a clumsy fool and pressed the post message button before the message was complete (but what message ever is complete?) - and before I'd deleted the extra n in the subject bar.
Anyway ...
Greetings from a northern sky watcher who has been a member of this club for some time, but does not think he has posted here before.
It is daytime and it is a little cloudy but it is quite pleasant for February in the northern parts of England, and occasionally it is good to observe some normality, which is wonderful enough in its small way.
I would like to get a look at southern skies someday. A view of the Magellanic Clouds would be good, we've a shortage of naked eye galactic pleasures in the north. Magellan sailed around the world (some say he only got half way, and others had to finish the voyage for him, but he had more or less done the other half in earlier voyages) and got two galaxies named after him. As a person however he seems to have left much to be desired (something similar could be said of all of us I suppose) and was not very respectful towards other human beings. Hopefully future generations of explorers heading out perhaps even as far as those Magellan clouds and beyond will carry more humane value systems with them.
The clouds have opened up in one place into a kind of eye shape gap. So simple but so complex. There are no end to wonders to be found in the sky. But the earth is seemingly limitless in variety too. And northerners miss out on much of it (though we've got wonders aplenty to share with you southerners too). The mammal type animals of South America and Australia, for instance. Isolation of sorts sometimes results in interesting variations on themes. And of course most importantly there's the people. When I was younger there was the Brandt Commission report, which was a plan to bring the northern and the southern worlds closer together in a variety of respects (including mutual respect perhaps most importantly). Not enough seems to have come of that. (The road to hell is paved with good intentions ... and all that).
Take care.
I will maybe post again soon, if I have time.
Love Philip.
 
Re: The Temptations of Blue Peter  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/14/02 5:52 pm
... and when they were all laughing at some crude bit of nonsense that was quite funny actually, the Welsh puritan, who looked a bit Irish and must have had some Scot and English and all sorts of other bits in her, and who liked a laugh in other circumstances, said she really didn't find the joke very funny and was really quite offended by it ... and the likely lad said: 'She's the moral minority' ... and they all laughed at her ... but the joke wasn't funny any more, because laughter was now separating rather than bringing together ... and in her discomfort she carried the secret discomfort of them all, which was that they didn't want to live in a world in which the decent moral people were sometimes apparently in the minority ... and while there is much to be said for levity, including the coarse seeming kind ... the anti-comical voice is not an unnecessary one ...
 
Re: What does Blue Peter have to do?  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 8:32 am
He doesn't have to do anything - he has free will (to some extent at least).
...ppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp...
What he would like to do is to share some of his eccentric, perhaps unworldly, but not entirely lunatic visions

Re: What does Blue Peter have to do?  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 8:58 am
The short-sighted archaeologist went to Crete, or there or thereabouts. It was partly a holiday and partly a working expedition. He lost some important things there, but that seems to happen wherever you go. But he picked up some trinkets and brought them home with him. And he also took a few snapshots. Some of important people. Some of important things. And his odd vision (which seemed to vary a bit, but was quite stable - take the spectacles off and it looks one way, put them back on again and it looks another) seemed to transform the small trinkets into wider wonders.
Funnily enough this more of less mirrored what an earlier short-sighted archaeologist had done about a century earlier - and the later one never claimed to be very original, and did his best to acknowledge his sources.
Mr Evans (who came from an earlier age when first name familiarity was not encouraged, and who might or might not have had Welsh origins) went in search of tiny trinkets (which his eyes transformed into huge wonders) and found an almost forgotten ancient seafaring civilisation.
And it seemed to have been rather a good one, relatively stable and peaceful, and with women seeming to enjoy fairly equal rights with men. And they had skilled technicians and wonderful artists working side by side it seems. And they liked a good time too ... at the bull-leaping festivals (you don't have to kill animals for sport) which seem to have been a ritualised representation of the taming of the worst male instincts ... and in return, though Mr Evans might not put it quite like this, the lasses got their tits out for the lads on a regular walkaround basis.
All good things come to an end, and it looks like this Cretan society was finished off by a combination of volcanic activity and violent attacks by unfriendly neighbours (maybe societies can become too soft - but if the whole world were more peaceful, that might not be such a big problem). It ended, but traces remained (which seems to be the general case) for Mr Evans to find.
The past is a wonderfilled place, which creates the present and the future. But you can't live there, and lost golden ages were never in truth as golden as imagined.
Still, if anyone were to be looking for models for a decent and slightly different modern civilization, they might do well to pick up elements from the short-sighted trinket searcher's diggings. He might even help them out if asked. 
The New Life  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 9:01 am
The new life begins with each new instant, which, with a bit of self control, can be expanded
...
or contracted
.
and is always something
more
not nothing.
 
Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 9:17 am
My chief political correspondent shows some little malice apparently, and claims a scalp. Which is something of a relief really, because I had worried about her being too nice to be believed.
The story concerns one Jo Moore (who is a full woman despite her male sounding name), until yesterday a senior news spin doctor (or press officer ... or hired liar ... or ...) working for the British government. On September 11 last year, shortly after the terrorist attacks on that day, Jo wrote an 'infamous' email in which she apparently suggested that it was a 'very good day' for the government to bury bad news about itself. Then, apparently, this week she was at it again: suggesting that the death of Princess Margaret was another headline grabbling event that gave the government the opportunity to slip out bad news unnotied. It has to be said that the evidence against Jo is not clear-cut, and includes some dubious seeming stuff, including a 'small white envelope .. addressed in scruffy handwriting'. Whatever the evidence, yesterday Jo resigned - or was sacked (there's always an ambiguity about that isn't there?). Yesterday also just happened to be the day of Princess Margaret's funeral - which Jo might or might not have suggested was a good day for the government to bury bad news about itself.
I have to admit that up to yesterday, my only relection on the long-running Jo Moore saga had been to note with passing lonely male gazes that she was another good-looking mid-life woman who looked very attractive in a pair of trousers. But the sacking and the little bit of edge in my chief political correspondent's dispatch alerted me to wider matters: 'Observers say the already slim Moore .. has lost weight, a sign of how the problems have affected her.' 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 9:28 am
The things they say about each other.
In a crowded office building, the young gauche Geordie boy was lucky enough to sit opposite a young blooming English rose who had a habit of wearing loose-fitting tops, which fell down at irregular intervals as she sat working to reveal a plump fleshy sometimes slightly perspiring (though imagination might have added that) shoulder. It would fall to the right and she'd hitch it up and it woud fall to the right again and she would hitch it up and it would fall to the left and ...
A young blooming Scottish rose visited the office on training business and stood talking to the Geordie boy for a while about serious matters of professional concern. Then she slipped the important bit to him in passing: 'How do you manage to concentrate on your work with THAT sitting opposite you?' (At just that moment the top fell from the shoulder once more). He mumbled something incomprehensible in reply, which the passing of time has transformed into: 'I manage not to concentrate.'
And when the young blooming Welsh rose said to him of his young blooming Irish rose girlfriend 'She's lovely isn't she?' did she really mean it?

Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 9:45 am
So Jo resigned or was sacked just for doing her job of trying to present the government in the best possible light (as some would have it). And she was buried metaphorically on the day another British rose was laid to rest more literally. The order I have just put it in is the reverse order of the order of things in one (and probably more) of today's newspapers. That's the essence of news spinning. It is not a black art.
In the missed of life we are in the mist of death ... and in trivial seeming stuff there is much serious matter.
And death is always serious. I am not a royalist and I did not feel close to her, but I felt a touch of sadness, for perhaps an instant or two, when I heard of Princess Margaret's death - all deaths are sad. And then the touch of sadness went. And that is the way it is with the news. It comes and it goes without having much emotional impact on us most of the time.
Jo's 'infamy' was something we are all guilty of -being psychologically distanced from other people. We don't feel others' pain enough most of the time, and we don't feel others' pleasure enough most of the time either. whatever her official job title was, Jo was part of the government's public information service and maybe she has, wittingly or unwittingly, done a public service in illustrating some aspects of how it works - and of how we work.
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 10:37 am
My parents sat in bomb shelters during world war two and they and others have told me some things about what it was like (and in some sense I, like everyone else alive at this moment, have survived many bombing raids). You sit and listen to the bombs falling and you hope they fall on someone else. That is not to say you wish others dead, it is just that if the bombs have to fall on someone, you don't want it to be on you and your closest loved ones.
The lads who wandered out into no man's land in the first world war collectively composed a song that seems to say it:
'... I don't want to be a soldier ...
... send out my mother, my sister and my brother
but for god's sake don't send me ...'
But the lads went out anyway ... and their fathers went with them ... as did bits of their mothers ... and bits of their sisters ... and bits of their brothers ...
In times of war there are always countries that remain more or less neutral, and they have their uses. They do diplomacy. They keep the idea of peaceful living alive. And they preserve gene stocks. While British genes (which are more or less limitless in their worldwide reference points - which justifies my use of the term British genes: genes do not observe human national boundaries, despite the efforts of the nazis of many nations, including my own) were being bombed in world war, two our Irish cousins, even those who seemed to despise us, were doing a favour for us by keeping a pool of very similar genes safe for us. But all too many of us from both sides of the Irish sea waterway have been killed fighting each other and fighting common causes.
 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 10:51 am
When the suicidal terrorists made flying bombs of civilian airplanes, most of us probably thought-felt something like: ... that's terrible, thank god I wasn't too near to any of that ...
(Perhaps a more honest represention would be: 'FUCKING HELL')
... and then we sat back to watch the show of spectacular images from a safe distance (the lust of the eye for the spectacular) ... and felt the full range of emotions between us ... but individually we could not quite get it ... we couldn't quite take it in ... we couldn't quite feel enough ... and couldn't find the words to say it ...
In such circumstances switching off the emotions and being quite coldly rational is the normal response for some people, myself included.
There are limits to fellow feeling in a world of 6 billion or so people. You can't love everyone. and you can't grieve properly for every death. If you gave a full emotional response to each of the tragic events, you'd spend you whole life grieving, and that's no way to live. You have to cut yourself off occasionally, and feel only for your nearest and dearest.
On September 11, Jo Moore seems to have cut off her emotions from what was happening, and got on with her job. Mid-lifer Jo, a vicar's daughter according to reports, made a terrible seeming error of judgement apparently because she was just too professionally detached from other people's human realities. Indifferent reason can be just as monstrous seeming as violent emotion. 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 11:03 am
You can't love them all, and you can't grieve for them all, but you can always pause from your own preoccupations for a while to reflect on other people's points of view - and give them a few moments thought and feeling.
...

And the catty comments always seem to have a fresh twist to them.
Flabby female weight watchers, who always had in the back of their minds the neverending question of how to stop piling on the pounds, and who did things that harmed them, such as smoking, and crash diets, just to keep the weight down, looked at Jo and noticed that the already slim Jo has lost weight recently. And they sense the cause without being able to vocalise perhaps at first. And although they are angry at her for some things (and normally a bit envious of her because she is thinner than she is), they feel for her, because she is showing signs of withering. And although her weight is mostly discussed in catty sounding ways, they are concerned for her. And they carry some of her pounds of flesh for her.
And when a bomb falls on anyone anywhere in the world, the rest of us have experienced a near miss, and we all pick up a small bit of the guilt.
 

+++++
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 10:37 am
My parents sat in bomb shelters during world war two and they and others have told me some things about what it was like (and in some sense I, like everyone else alive at this moment, have survived many bombing raids). You sit and listen to the bombs falling and you hope they fall on someone else. That is not to say you wish others dead, it is just that if the bombs have to fall on someone, you don't want it to be on you and your closest loved ones.
The lads who wandered out into no man's land in the first world war collectively composed a song that seems to say it:
'... I don't want to be a soldier ...
... send out my mother, my sister and my brother
but for god's sake don't send me ...'
But the lads went out anyway ... and their fathers went with them ... as did bits of their mothers ... and bits of their sisters ... and bits of their brothers ...
In times of war there are always countries that remain more or less neutral, and they have their uses. They do diplomacy. They keep the idea of peaceful living alive. And they preserve gene stocks. While British genes (which are more or less limitless in their worldwide reference points - which justifies my use of the term British genes: genes do not observe human national boundaries, despite the efforts of the nazis of many nations, including my own) were being bombed in world war, two our Irish cousins, even those who seemed to despise us, were doing a favour for us by keeping a pool of very similar genes safe for us. But all too many of us from both sides of the Irish sea waterway have been killed fighting each other and fighting common causes.
 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 10:51 am
When the suicidal terrorists made flying bombs of civilian airplanes, most of us probably thought-felt something like: ... that's terrible, thank god I wasn't too near to any of that ...
(Perhaps a more honest represention would be: 'FUCKING HELL')
... and then we sat back to watch the show of spectacular images from a safe distance (the lust of the eye for the spectacular) ... and felt the full range of emotions between us ... but individually we could not quite get it ... we couldn't quite take it in ... we couldn't quite feel enough ... and couldn't find the words to say it ...
In such circumstances switching off the emotions and being quite coldly rational is the normal response for some people, myself included.
There are limits to fellow feeling in a world of 6 billion or so people. You can't love everyone. and you can't grieve properly for every death. If you gave a full emotional response to each of the tragic events, you'd spend you whole life grieving, and that's no way to live. You have to cut yourself off occasionally, and feel only for your nearest and dearest.
On September 11, Jo Moore seems to have cut off her emotions from what was happening, and got on with her job. Mid-lifer Jo, a vicar's daughter according to reports, made a terrible seeming error of judgement apparently because she was just too professionally detached from other people's human realities. Indifferent reason can be just as monstrous seeming as violent emotion. 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 11:03 am
You can't love them all, and you can't grieve for them all, but you can always pause from your own preoccupations for a while to reflect on other people's points of view - and give them a few moments thought and feeling.
...

And the catty comments always seem to have a fresh twist to them.
Flabby female weight watchers, who always had in the back of their minds the neverending question of how to stop piling on the pounds, and who did things that harmed them, such as smoking, and crash diets, just to keep the weight down, looked at Jo and noticed that the already slim Jo has lost weight recently. And they sense the cause without being able to vocalise perhaps at first. And although they are angry at her for some things (and normally a bit envious of her because she is thinner than she is), they feel for her, because she is showing signs of withering. And although her weight is mostly discussed in catty sounding ways, they are concerned for her. And they carry some of her pounds of flesh for her.
And when a bomb falls on anyone anywhere in the world, the rest of us have experienced a near miss, and we all pick up a small bit of the guilt.
 
+++++

blagger bigger blogler what/wotever 23112013

From the Old/New Bloggers Blog of [Pseudo-Sub-]Literary Anecdotes [similarities to The New Oxford Book Of Literary Anecdotes/Allusions are almost entirely unintended]:
'Might I suggest "Ravings of a Madman?" as a title?' she wondered.
Dame Catherine began her voyage [from laundry girl in a workhouse] to damehood in South Shields Public Library, where she came across a volume of Lord Chesterfield's 'Letters To His Son' [1837]. Although he was originally addressing another, Lord Cheserfield seemed to speak directly to the then unenobled - and otherwise 'unlettered' - Ms C. 'If you improve and grow learned everyone will be fond of you and desirous of your company,' he 'said' to her. She later recalled: 'I would fall asleep reading the letters and awake round three o'clock in the morning my mind deep in the fascination of this new world, where people conversed , not just talked. Where the brilliance of words made your heart beat faster.'
May 2003.
Dear C.
Thank you for the lovely card you sent to me around the time of my last birthday.  [It actually arrived two days late - on my father's birthday - I was due on his birthday, but arrived two days early, presumably to establish my individuality from the start.]
The card was a nice gesture, which meant a lot to me.  Some of the things you said in it were controversial enough to justify a reply.
You said that you have moved on [but haven't we all?!] and that you could not be my 'therapist, lover or true friend'.  In writing that, C., I think that perhaps you were being somewhat presumptuous - and/or assuming presumptuousness on my part.
… 'therapist' … well … I have not seen your CV for a long-time, and so I am not sure that you are actually qualified to work with me - and, as you will well know, it takes some time for both parties to assess whether any therapist-client relationship can work …
… 'lover' … well … time passes, people change … and rates of time-travel vary … To be frank, I have little clear idea what the late-30-something [now early-40-something!] C. is like - nor can you have a clear idea what the [more or less] equivalent Philip is like …
… 'friend' … well … your ruling out of friendship was a great shame, I think, because I believe friendship of some sort is always possible between more or less any two people.  I note that you add 'true', which does resonate a bit.  You will have your own perspectives, but from my perspective, it does seem fair to say that there was a time, after we split as couple, when you were nominally my friend, but not perhaps an entirely 'true' one - I do feel that you empowered yourself at my expense, to some extent - though there were faults on both sides, of course, as there always are.
You said that what you really wanted to be in relation to me in future was a reader of my books - which I still haven't written, and possible never will.  Remember what I can be like, C., when I say that I might not write those books just to spite you!  More seriously [?], there are just too many B-grade  [ and worse] books in circulation already, and I am not much inclined to add to the clutter of the second rate.  I would not attempt to publish until I was sure enough in my own mind that I had achieved something better than average - and that I was not just publishing for reasons of 'vanity' one way or another.  Matters of quality count for a lot in my idea of 'books' - and should, I believe, count more widely in this age of excess quantity [when humanity is being reduced in/by/to 'numbers games' - in many senses].
Anyway, all that said, if you do want to read a sort of 'work in progress', try popping into the web-site http://groups.yahoo.com/group/heraclitussociety/. 
It is a sort of open notebook where I have been dumping raw crap for the past year or so, and probably will continue to do so for a few more months - before moving on …
[Your suggestion 'Ravings of a Madman?' is perhaps not a bad title for the fragments I have put on that  website - I liked the question mark anyway.  Though my own working title is 'Fragments in Vulgar Script' - which is a paraphrase of Petrarch, by the way.]
To tell you the truth, C., I am not really sure what a book is these days, anyway.  Our culture has become so spread-all-over-the-place, and the old  stable forms are breaking up, if you get what I mean.  [By the way, if you have become a pro-therapist, then my guess is that you aren't going to be short of clients in the coming years - there are growing numbers of 'scattered' and confused people about.]  And then I have the idea - picked up from Dante, Shakespeare, etc - that the entire world - universe even - is a sort of book, or mystery play [or maybe B-movie!] to which we all contribute a few significant actions and lines … here and there …
Among the 'books' on my shelves, one of my favourites is the collection of letters you sent me in the mid-80s. You were an excellent spontaneous letter writer, C., and I still dip into those letters irregularly for illumination [rather than for reasons of nostalgia - to which I am not actually much given].  When I have written to you over the past couple of years, it was, in part, with a view to prising out more letters from you.   Although there are hordes of wordsters 'out there', very good correspondents are actually quite hard to find. 
As it happens I have recently found a few.  You might remember one, M., a Scottish woman who sat beside me at the editorial training centre in Newcastle.  She remembers you.  M. was one of several 'alternative possibilities' I met when I was seeing you.  I stayed loyal to you - and hence effectively rejected her - because I loved you and because I valued faithfulness very highly - and still do.  [While you seemed to dismiss my genuine, decent, faithfulness as 'mere dependency' - suggesting on more than one occasion that I was just 'dull and dutiful', and even putting it down to a 'low sex drive' {you did tend to speak your mind! - in ways that were both stimulating and hurtful - and I will speak mine now: maybe you had difficulty believing that someone loved you and wanted to remain faithful to you.}
Anyway, M. went off to A. after Newcastle, and we continued to exchange the occasional letter - which on the terms of our relationship was almost an act of unfaithfulness by me, especially when you regularly complained that I did not write to you enough.  M. grew up to be quite a big time international freelance journalist, who is a perceptive, complex and insightful worldly observer.  Actually she works for the O. occasionally, and knows L. vaguely - both of us felt for her when we read her recent piece on her lost child.  I hope the recent expected birthing event went well.  Please pass on my regards and best wishes Lisa - if you would like to. [Emotions are never sweetly - or otherwise - clear-cut, though, are they? - both M. and I are childless, and felt some jealousy when we looked at the picture of L. with her healthy first son.]
It is interesting to discover how others perceive you, even remotely and after a long time.  M. tells me that she saw you as very 'possessive' of me and thought you did not like me mixing with other women - though she admits tinges of envy might have influenced her perceptions.  She suggests, quite perceptively, I think that this apparent 'possessiveness' might have suited me much of the time, because if freed me from having to get closely involved with other people.  As for you and me together, she saw us as a somewhat aloof, 'superior' and 'knowing' couple, rather more adult seeming than most contemporary couples she remembers from that time  And she told me that we seemed to regard her and contemporaries as 'juveniles' - that is how she felt anyway when in proximity to us.
This quite surprized me when I first heard it, but reflecting on it, I had to agree with her.  You and I were in many respects a pair of adolescent clowns, C., but we actually did have quite highly mature levels of shared insights for people of our ages [then].  And - rightly or not - we did regard ourselves as more 'advanced' in some ways than others of our age.  I think it comes down to that last year in Durham, when we were more or less 24-hour-a-day constant companions, and did not mix much with others.  We had blended quite a lot mentally - if not physically [we never quite got that right, did we?!]- and had gotten to know each other's mental processes in ways that were quite unusual for early-20-somethings, I suspect.  At the time M. knew us, we were almost in some ways more like a somewhat stale middle-aged couple rather than a young pairing, don't you think C.?
[Incidentally, when I have lacked a really top class therapist in recent years I have found that I can detach off from the rest of my consciousness a sort of combination of the best bits of you and me, and I have found this imaginary {I am not so schizoid as to think 'it' real!} combination an excellent 'therapist'.  Sometimes I imagine that a grander, more whole, version of this 'therapist' is what we might have become … {ah! … if only …} … had we not been, individually and together, such a pair of wreckers - but that his just a passing thought.  I have actually gained some quite good real-world therapeutic support over the last couple of years.  But there are always gaps in one's support networks, don't you think C.?]
Moving on …
Briefly, this is my recent history: I worked in London for a couple of news agencies until 1991, when I had the first of a series of breakdowns [during the first Gulf War, incidentally, which appalled me because it was so clinical and 'unreal' - the second seemed to me even more ghastly because of all the media spinning gimmicks, etc].  I retreated back to South Shields, and spent the 90s effectively as a student again - but without gaining much more in the way of formal qualifications.  I then had 3 or 4 massive breakdowns in some very distressing circumstances in 2000 ['millennium madness'?!], ending up in a mental hospital intensive care unit [no sharp objects, 24-hour observation] at the end of that year - which was almost literally 'the void'.  Since then I have made gradual but slow progress, helped by group therapy, a very good community psychiatric nurse, and the odd good psychiatrist [though most of the NHS shrinks I have encountered have not impressed me much.].  For the last year or so I have been working in a community centre - care in the community in the best sense of a mutual aid of supporting others while getting support oneself.  I have actually found informal community therapy has worked better for me than more formal professional kinds. [And I have been more or less left to devise my own care programme recently, since my nurse 'disappeared' due to work-related stress - so many examples of that in the public service, don't you find C.?  Even when the people are good, committed and well-motivated, the systems are shitty - and so many people end up stressed out or just going through the motions.]
Otherwise, I am [in my more grandiose moments!] helping to redefine socialism from the bottom up for the 21st century - well someone has to do it! … and making other small contributions to the 'book of love' that is - or might be - the grand scheme of things …
Finally, a few more words on friendship.  I remember you very fondly [mostly] and although I have some residual bitterness towards you [and many residual regrets and guilts as regards my own behaviour towards you] I will always regard you as an essentially very good and delightful person.  And while I might be a 'raving madman', I am a [mostly] harmless and considerate one.  I would be very interested to hear your news on a no complications basis.  [It does not seem to occur to some people that they can establish boundaries and / or push away unwanted attention simply by giving factual details - 'I am married with kids and don't want my family disturbed' … or whatever.]  Bits of you will always be part of me in some ways, and I will always regard you as a true enough friend, even if you no longer acknowledge my existence.  I do think it would be a shame if we never communicated again.
Anyway, C., I hope have a happy 40th birthday, which is, I believe, on May 13th. Take care.
P.
p.s. I long carried the crazy [?] notion that I 'owed' you a night in the police cells after an arrest in embarrassing circumstances for a minor public order offence.  Well … I now have two on my record to spoil my CV with …I won't bore you with the details … but .. Quits eh?!
[We were indeed a pair of adolescent clownish melodramatists in some respected, but in imagination, at least, I can transform the younger you and me into performance philosophers - philosophical clown prince and princess, if not quite king and queen.  And we sometimes set up interesting little real-world pseudo-parables.  One night we had a drunken row in Durham market place - over you dancing with some gay guy at Klute night club [My incredible shrinkers seemed to get lost in labyrinths of psychobabble when I tried to tell them this story!].  Things degenerated into a vaguely physical tussle, and you ended up on the ground at one point - did you fall? did you jump? did I push you? or did we get our combined timings 'right'? [or should that be 'wrong'?]  {Questions with more general resonance, perhaps}.  We separated, and you wandered off drunk, lonely, confused, and ended up at the Samaritans building.  The Samaritans [for whom your father worked, as I recall] turned you away on the grounds that they only gave a telephone-to-telephone services - so much for person to person human caring, eh?.  You lay down in the gutter outside the Samaritans building and stared up at the stars [so you later told me].  The Samaritans apparently phoned the police to 'take care' of  you, and -such unworldly preoccupations as star-gazing when drunk and depressed seemingly being a public order offence, according to Durham constabulary at that time - the cops turned up and arrested you.  Meanwhile, those same cops were failing to prevent me from committing a more serious seeming offence a hundred yards or so away - breaking and entry.  Missing you just a few minutes after we had parted, I had gone off in search of you, and failed to find you.  I went to your flat in Western Hill [or was it The Avenue at that time?  - I am not quite sure].  You weren't in, so I climbed over the wall and forced the window of your room.  I waited a long time [ who knows how long at this distance?], but you did not return  - and I went back to my own place in Gilesgate, assuming bitterly [and of course wrongly] that you'd gone off with the gay guy you had been dancing with [whose name I can't even remember]  Perhaps both of us spent sobering nights in cells one way or another that night.  {And matter of factly, I do seem to have spent a lot of my life in 'prisons' of one sort or another, and I don't think I am alone in that respect.  In my case, it has just turned out that way … no one is to blame really … but I don't recall making the decision to imprison myself …}]
p.p.s  Please find enclosed some bits and pieces for you birthday - it is mostly trivial juvenile chaff [well I am not 40 until July - and anyway I have papers to prove I am somewhat diminished in my adult responsibilities] so don't take it too seriously - though there is maybe the odd serious point in it.  Hope you have/had - depending on when you get this - a good birthday.  Take care - from one ageing, but still youngish, true enough friend. … to another …
From:  "M..." <m...@...>
To: "'Phil Talbot'" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: 
Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 22:26:24 +0100
   
So how did you do in the local elections Philip? You seem to have
hedged
your bets partywise....surely one of your candidates came through?
Sorry
taken so long to reply but every day is a slog at the moment. Final
exams start next Friday and I still have a mountain of work to get
through. I did take yesterday off however to tottle down to Brighton.
The weather was fantastic and any little trip just now feels like
escape
from prison. Already decided no PhD for me after this. If I can't get
onto a vocational training scheme (educational or clinical), I just
haven't the stamina or inclination to push on another three years.
Fingers crossed something suitable comes up....
Let me know how the elections were for you...
M.x
-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Talbot [mailto:philtal_uk@yahoo.com]
Sent: 18 April 2006 17:03
To: m...@...
Subject:
It's a while since I wrote to you, M., and I am just wondering how
you are.
Are you due to take your degree finals soon? - if so,
good luck!
I was laid low with 'nice' mix of flu [non-avian!] and depression for
most of Jan-Feb-Mar. Now perking a bit in the spring sunshine. When not
lying flat on my back, I am spending much of my active time at the
moment 'tarting' myself politically in the local elections - i.e.
acting
as an agent for a Lib-Dem candidate in one Shields ward, while also
actively supporting a Green candidate in another, and a Respect
candidate up in Newcastle. [Supporting person not party in each case,
actually, lest I be thought a man without loyalty/principles!].
Otherwise, having finally saved up the court costs, I
am preparing for bankruptcy ... and looking forward
hopefully to a pleasant summer of impoverished
irresponsibility ...
Best Wishes, Philip
p.s. Have you been up to visit your family in F. recently M.?
[If so, I do hope you washed your hands after
wrestling with the local swans (which I am led to
believe - by totally unreliable news reports - is a
popular pastime up there)!]
Date: Sun, 7 May 2006 20:17:42 +0100 (BST)
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: 
To:  "M..." <m...@...>
   
They all lost M.! - though at least saved their
election deposits, which is an improvement on last
year, when the independent anti-war candidate I was
agent for lost his. [Is that 'spin' or 'emphasising
the positive'?!]
Meanwhile I was actually made bankrupt on 28 April
2006 [a date I will have to write on many a form for
the rest of my life, I guess], which is something of a
relief actually. Unless I am suspected of fraud, I
should be freed from bankruptcy in about a year.
Anyway, hope exams go well for you. Keep in touch when
you've time.
Philip
>
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Date: Sun, 7 May 2006 20:19:43 +0100 (BST)
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> 
Subject: Post-election snippets
To: A...@...
   
Former Minister for Communities and Local Government
now has 3 anti-Labour Independents as his local
councillors in his 'home' Westoe ward of South
Shields.
My friends in South Tyneside Friends of Earth say
present Minister for Environment is suspected of being
no real friend of the Earth.
When former Communities and Local Government minister
was observed at count watching his Labour local
government candidate lose in his 'home' ward,
observers [mostly unmalicious actually] noted he was a
strange rather sickly colour - more medically informed
people than me present suggested possibility of liver
and/or kidney problems.
Me-myself-I was tarting about politically in local
elections - agenting a Lib-Dem, while also actively
supporting a Green and a Respect [all lost! - but at
least saved deposits]. I was made bankrupt last week
too, as an added bonus! - so there goes my mainstream
political career into the gutter!
Hope you are well,
P.T.
p.s. A... moves from CPC to DPE - upward motion? or
side-ways shuffle?
Send instant messages to your online friends
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
From: "A..." <A...@...> 
To: "'Phil Talbot'" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Subject: RE: Post-election snippets
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 19:08:08 +0100
   
Thanks for this news. All respect to you for involvement in local
elections.
I am very pro people who buck the trend of national apathy to get
involved.
And saving deposits ain't bad so well done.
Will keep close eye on DM.
I am well, thanks for asking. And yes new title was promotion, which
was
mildly cheering at the time.
Sorry re bankruptcy - but perhaps (she said hopefully)  it was
something you
wanted that eased the burden of cash difficulties? I gather from others
that
this can be the bonus.
Hope you are well also
Best wishes
A...
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Fri, 12 May 2006 15:19:05 +0100 (BST)
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> 
To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
   
--- In heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com, Phil Talbot
<philtal_uk@...> wrote:
>
> ... mind the gaps ... when you leave a void ... the
> spammers and junk-merchants will fill it with any
old
> crap ...
>
> --- In heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com,
> "nuala-alexander458@" <nuala-alexander458@>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hows everyone doin? Hope u all are doing as good
as
> me. Just found this great thing       when i was
> checking around the other day. Have a look 
> http://www.youknowureallywantto.info/deld
> >
>
>
>
> Unpicking and reknitting patterns, and ...
[After Goethe]
Uncertain shapes, visitors from the past, with whom I
moved long ago (so long), seeming like hazy fleeing
visions, now, at last, in strange ways, I can move
with you again - but must I also let you go?
Out of the mist and murk you rise, swirling dancers,
breaking up, coming together, breaking up again, as is
conjured by magic (though it may be only be memory and
technology, in truth) - lost youths almost recreated.
You bring back lost time (some happy, some sad, mostly
mixed), repeating journeys through life's labyrinthine
mazes. Old friends reunite, old griefs revive, old
loves reform, then break up once more. It is as if
faded legends are being replayed and reconstructed for
new times.
Dear past companions (and the many more walk-on
faces), cut from my life by fate or mutual
indifference (or just the way things turned out), you
cannot hear my present dissonant music.  Most of you
who listened quite closely to my earlier off-key
singing are far off now - and your answering echoes
have long been silent.  Now my babbling is heard by
who knows whom? Name-listed, but to me mostly
anonymous throngs replace known people scattered to
the world's ends (or merely to other town and cities).
Like all, I know many and know much, but know few and
know next to nothing - the long unstructured learning
that is 'just' living brings wide fellow-feeling and
understanding … and much confusion.
Vanished and never-to-be worlds seem real to me today,
while all that I now inhabit and possess seems far
away…
… carry on the dancing on and on …
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat Nov 5, 2005  2:39 am
Subject: Revized Re-edit 1a 04_11_2005
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
[Undated - and more or less out of any time-and-place
context.]
This is mostly superficial rubbish, but there is the
odd moment or
two worth preserving, for the time being, for future
[re-]consideration.
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 14:44:23 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] (unknown)
... our revels are soon enough easily ended ... these
shallow small-minded self-serving actors, as I
foretold you ... are easily de-constructed ... and
scattered into thin air ...
... only serious stuff from now on then? ... hardly!
... because that is not my style! ...
xxxx murked the spat ... which is what they aimed for
...
... as far as mainstream media [ie time-serving
prostitutes telling stuff they know to be untrue for
money] would have you believe, the Iraqi elections
were free and fair ... but evidence is piling up that
they were not ...
...
Shakespearian fictions make me wonder about how real
world people can be conjured into and out of existence
...
... like voters for example ...
... biggest corruption of the electoral process in
Iraq of course was in Falluja ... where 'antis' were
literally slaughtered ... and entire streets of
hostile voters reduced to rubble ...
... now that was disgusting beyond measure and a
corruption of all 'democratic values' ...
... but not content with that ... they went further
...
... on the level of mere statistical manipulation ...
Allawi was an exile and CIA stooge who had no popular
support base or party structure on the ground in iraq
...
... yet he got 13% of the vote the official voting
figs suggested ... which just was not true ...
... looks like Shi'ites and Kurds ... seemingly
satisfied, if not happy, with their share of the
carve-up, they seemingly loaned Allawi a few ... just
for the sake of 'respectability' ...
... too cynical?! ...
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:01:29 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] (unknown)
The fictional character Prospero said farewell to
magic in The Tempest.
The real person Shakespeare said farewell to the
theatre with The Tempest.
So the stories go.
Truth or illusion though?
Fact is, not enough is known of Shakespeare's real
life to say for sure that The Tempest was his final
completed play.
He did say fare-well to the theatre at a relatively
young age - that seems sure enough.
And the registers of births-marriages-deaths provide
firm evidence that he died shortly after retiring from
the theatre.
It does seem possible that having 'exhausted' all his
theatrical possibilities [having been through the
variations of tragedy, comedy, tragi-comedy, history,
etc, etc, etc ...] he 'gave up the ghost' ... as
'twere ...
Finishing a study of the [rather young-dying] Spinoza
[whose 'system' is too rational to correspond to/with
all observable realities, in fact, but which is
internally coherent - and as such 'complete in itself'
(i.e. within its own frames of reference)] a while
back, it occurred to me that there were dangers in 'completing'
a systematic work ... after which ... what next? ...
Similarly ... Dante died shortly after 'completing'
his internally coherent epic Comedy ... Goethe died
shortly after 'completing' his Faust ... Proust died
shortly after 'completing' his 'rememberances of
things past' / '[re]searches of/for/into lost time[s]'
... Joyce died shortly after 'completing' his 'work in
progress' ...
Quite often, you can see something similar happening
with people's everyday life-narratives ...
... after 'completion' ... what next ... ? ...
The Tempest is a 'marvellous' [in many senses] work of
literature, though.
And 'deceptively' [literature being, amongst other
things, an 'art of illusion'] simple ...
In the 'mind-stream' of the 'collective consciousness'
... the narrative[s] and the characters transform into
other narratives and characters ...
The Tempest is a 'comedy' ... but it is rarely
laugh-aloud funny ... it is a deeply serious work
disguised as 'romantic' froth ...
Prospero is ... or might be ... Lear gone beyond the
passionate ravings of tragedy ... or ...
Anyway ... to my way of thinking ... there is
something to be said for 'incompleteness' ... at least
life goes on that way ...
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 19:35:26 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes
Type-casted Caliban cried out tempestuously: 'This
island's mine!'
That perhaps under-stated it.
'I am a fucked up schizoid mess and getting ever more
fucked up schizoidedly by the day,' he further cried,
to bring out from the undercurrents of consciousness a
few more points of potential interest.
The 'injustices' - against others as much as self -
were driving him crazy, in short.
Yet sanity had little to be said for it, because
others, mistaken for sane 'respectable' people,
behaved in ever more paranoid crazy manners
themselves.
He was the one who owned up to his paranoid craziness
- and got type-casted 'a raving madman' by the likes
of Kareless Katrina and others.
'This island's mine!' he cried again ever more insane
seeming.
But was he referring to an isolated state or a wider
territory?
And was the 'commonwealth of imagination' the more
rightful 'birthright' of the formally educated and
qualified Prosperos or of the informally educated and
unqualified Calibans?
Schizoid confusion?
The integrity of the personality threatened with/by
fragmentation.
Too much of everything. Too many demands made on him.
Too much expectation.
The world closes in on him, so he retreats from it.
Narratives - even mixed up and crazy seeming ones -
help to hold things together.
Depersonalizing Preludes.
'Anon anon, my dears, forgive me my little trespasses
- and bigger ones, too, if that is how they are
judged.'
The pseudo-franciscan serving man [but was he really a
houseboy? or was he not more truly a stud? - in minds
where truth and illusion mix to build new realities,
he might be both] was a bit slow sometimes.
They misjudge him, you see.
They think he thinks his mind's a racer.
He believes he knows it takes time for things to sink
slowly into his dense mind.
Rush him, otherwise overload him, and he cracks up.
And he is lacking creature comforts.
Poor Tom's a-cold and a-lonely.
He drinks pretending it will warm him and people his
isolation - but only to ruin himself really.
But did it come to this sad state solely because he
could not cope with rejection?
In the images of separations, images of universal
entropy.
In the images of meetings, images of universal
harmony.
Everyday reality was somewhere in between, of course.
Hi-Fi Low Techy Fallootin' Fugues.
Narratives - even messed up ones - can hold things
together.
Against Stereo-Typing.
Humpy Dumpy was resting in pieces.
He could not even get his own name write.
And he did not know where he was really let alone why
he was there.
Was Humper in the dumps because cross-tongued Frumpy
Dumpling had cruelly duped him, dumped him, and left him behind in
the lurch?
Or was him left pi calculating [... and it never seems
to end ... {Who ate all the pis? 'Me Sir!' cried the
greedy mathematician - and, as evidence of his
misdeeds, a trail of decimal points dribbled from
mouth-to-plate ... or plate-to-mouth ...} ...] because
his negative numbers had added up to a more positive
one leaving him behind in paralytic in a ditch while
she got on with more actively catalytic reactions?
To further discomfort Himpy Dimpy, Faggy Hagface then
tossed in the suggestion that he was a closetted Mr
Humphreys and that she had given him his freedom
because he could not say 'I'm free!' himself.
Sometimes Hummer just took the up-the-arse insults
silently - it was after all only another cheap and
spiteful little castrating power-play by the
female-of-the-species to keep the downed down-trodden
decent enough man down [and good hetero liberals never
denied suggestions of their 'gayness', anyway, because
they were true to some degree - no one is entirely
'this' or 'that' - and because, for those for whom it
is more wholly true and of their nature, 'gayness' was
not something to be denied].
Non-P.C. Hummer knew that poor bugger beggar as he
was, he was not, in fact, much of a bugger bummer.
'Actually, I don't like cocks up my arse, if that is
what you mean,' is what he actually said to her when
she suggested he was a secret homosexual, and what she
actually replied - for she had a stock-in-trade for
every occasion - was: 'Actually most of them don't do
that.' How she obtained that inside knowledge was
never revealed - but if it was from fag-break gossip
with her camp followers, then it is suspected in the
passive voice that they were not telling her the
full unscatalogical truth.
Homeboy should have though there and then: 'I will
never be a well-served sir with that saggy faggy hag -
Miss Slow Come might have a nice pussy, but she is
nothing but an old dog really, and will never learn
more pleasant tongued tricks.'
But Himbi? [the man was a walking question mark] never
learned to hate her and dismiss her properly. That too
was a mistake for one who thought herself more
naturally 'passionate' - anyone who could not hate,
she claimed, was somehow lacking in the full-range of
feelings.
Sometimes he gave her words too much over-due
attention, that was sure. Her critical words on his
lack of hate stumped him for a long time ...
Whenever he was at a loss for a new way forward Hammy
put himself under the influence of the consumerist
want-makers ...
Being pissed-up was a piss-poor way to live well but,
well ... it seemed he had to drink the dark stuff
because the darker-still-stuff was not really in him.
'I am not a bitter man' - he said, finding a parroted
version of the gift of the gab while drinking the
dregs of two cans of snug-fitting stout unladylike
associations - and more than Tucan play the game of
pretending to be 'pure genius!'.
'Drink!' the fake Irish father-figure said in a
travesty of a stereotype that was quite amusing
occasionally, but not when overdone.
Instead he cried: 'Francis!'
'No! Anon, anon, sir!' was the reply.
He was no saint, nor was meant to be - nor no Hamlet
either, though I see you smirking knowingly - but he
was a fair part-time imitator of a kindly one - he did
not have to pretend not to hate, because, simply, he
did not hate much ... and that was no fault [or
indicator of limited emotional range].
Hanky Dampy pulled himself short with a snort.
Hang on ... is this not getting too soppy?
[Or should that be 'sloppy'? With wet ones you never
could tell. He said 'soppy', she said 'sloppy', so
their sentiments were clearly not well matched - and
the Letts Diary indicted clearly when they called the
whole thing off.]
Cynicism just averted, the drippy droppy kid drip
dropped more drab drops over spilty milky.
Honky Downbeat had no groove in his soul, that was his
problem, she said.
Hinky Deadly had no variety either - he was like a
stuck record.
Hunky Deadpan smirked at that further
misrepresentation by Hagface Hogwash.
Hikey Downwind tripped over his own triping feet once
more - he was such a clumsy ass soler, wasn't he?
But though he had many a fall, Hokey Download never
actually fell completely arsehole into manhole - and
that absence of serious stepping mishap told him
something: he might be no jungle boy bodily
rhythmn-wize, but he had a bit of the jungle in him -
and like every other human had human bits that had
started stepping out on two feet in Africa. He did not
know the hip movements well, but he knew a few leg
movements.
[In other words, factually: after some very long and
desperate periods of depressive torpor - during which
no one came to my assistance - I started to walk
again.]
Hiho Dorky was not the lord of the dancers, it had to
be admitted, but for a few hours most days he managed
to foot quite fleetingly. He still could not talk the
talk much, but he could at least walk the walk a bit.
[In a rare interlude of pleasantry, Mellowing Minxy
said to Hurted Downcast that, on more than one
occasion, when she had watched him just walking across
the room, and seen what a great mover he really could
be, she had felt more than a little bit shakey and
trembling - and almost moist with appreciation. (Such
interludes were all too rare treats as life-time went
on.)]
As he emerged from his hole more often, and got out
and about more and more, Hidebound Dumbo began slowly
to rethink things relatively speaking - the motions
seeming to change the course of his thought-flows.
Hardcore Humanist certainly became less Rigid Atheist
as he experienced with his own senses that there
surely were in the realms of observable things truly
more heavenly and earthly stuff than had be dreamt of
in his previous philosophies of being and non-being.
On a more everyday level, Haughty Dismissive slowly
came to realize that while he had been brought up to
be a comprehensive kind of man, he had slipped up
badly into snobbery somewhere.
It occured to him that he had become a snob -
dismissive of the 'lowly' many - in a vain attempt to
please the 'likes of her' - and like many a false-self
bad-faith move, that had been true to no one.
He came down to earth with a bump.
Humbler - if never completely Humble - Bumbler then
ate some cheaper but more cheerful pies - and even
learned to enjoy sparrow songs for the first time in
his life.
He seemed to see that many of the people he had been
born among, and grown up with, secretly knew that he
looked down on them - but that many of them put up
with that sort of thing because they did not have high
enough opinions of themselves.
Then he seemed to see that there was even more to it
than that - and that it was not that clear-cut, and
that no one had a really true measure of the relations
between self and others.
They thought that he thought that he was better than
they were, while he thought that they thought that he
was worse than them.
He thought that they thought he was uglier than them,
but they thought that he thought that he was more
attractive than them.
And as for cleverness ... he thought that they thought
that he thought he was clever - which he did, it had
to be admitted, but he was clever enough to know that
he was not as clever as they thought he thought
himself to be.
If asked: 'How clever do you think you are?'
'Not clever enough,' was his clever-clever reply.
They were all quite clever these human sorts really,
and they knew that, and he knew that, they were
differently clever, each in their own ways. That is
what he really thought anyway.
He was such an irritating clever-clever clogs, though,
wasn't he?
So why then did ever so clever-clever clogs often clog
up into an almost silent state?
Perhaps it is because he knows that he is not quite
clever enough to find the really clever words he'd
like find - and if he, who could use words more
cleverly than many/mosty, clogged up to wordless
inarticulation, then what hope was there for
articulation by people who believed, rightly or
wrongly, that they are less clever than clever clogs?
It was all very frustrating, because he had a thing or
two that might be generally useful to teach - and
there were some/many who might in fact like to learn a
few more things from the likes of him, who are quite
clever, aren't they, now, really?
Clover Clags could not find an answer to sort of
twisted question, so he shut up again - and might
rightly be accused of disappearing up his own
arsehole.
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:51:31 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger
Exercizes
Chirpy quirky qwerty cheap cheep ...
... moods can change very quickly for the worse though
...
... sight of a poster with the word 'partnership'
changed mine far for the worse a few minutes ago ...
... got me to thinking ... 'they' talk 'partnership'
when what 'they' seem to mean is 'exploitations' ...
... certainly more often been offered 'rip offs' [at
my expense] than partnerships, personally ...
... 'temptestuous' minds are difficult to live with of
course - as 'she' [in various forms] taught me ...
Restarting bombastically ...
The actual singular state is foul and stinking.
Pontential of pluralistic partnership is likely to be
much more fair and sweet-smelling.
That is just possibly 'wishful thinking', 'of course'
- and what look appear like 'sweet-smelling deals' on
first glance can turn out to be 'rip-offs' [always
read the small-print].
But if Charles can get married 'unconstitutionally',
then I should be allowed to do so too - because
'rights' apply to all citizens not just one. [And the
Cosmopolitan Republican rightly asserts his human
right to be an expanisve-minded 'citizen' (of the
world), not a 'subject' of an, in fact (not merely
opinion), not very impressive narrow-minded royalist
national state.]
And my true 'queen' will be a truly equal partner -
not some subservient 'princess consort'.
But adazzle them dimmly deft Dicky ducky ... because
they are not yet properly prepared for the really
'brighter stuff' ...
A useful staging device is the 'conceit' - whereby the
audience [potential or actual] can never be quite sure
whether you are 'merely fooling' - or even just plain
mad - or not.
This seems like a 'conceit', but ...
I am reluctant to share my 'powers' more widely, and
that is fact, because I don't really trust 'them'.
By 'them' I mean [generally and specifically ]
'oppressors' AND 'oppressed' - because 'they' can seem
too interchangeable.
The 'oppressed', given power, all too easily
[experience teaches] become 'oppressers' themselves -
this is an all too common pattern of human history.
Sketchy fictional illustations ...
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero represents
something like an 'enlightened dictator' and/or a
'kindly tyrant', as it were. His use of power over
others is mostly kindly, but he does treat Caliban
very harshly - and that is troubling, because it seems
'over-done' and 'unnecessary', and seems to involve a
failing in 'fellow-feeling'.
But if roles were reversed, would Caliban treat
Prospero more kindly?
It seems unlikely - and Caliban O'Kitty taught me that
...
That is 'only' fiction, though, and I am neither
Prospero nor Caliban, nor meant to be either.
But ...
I do know a 'thing or two' about the way 'power'
works.
What to do with such powerful 'knowledge' [even if it
is only 'potential' knowledge]?
Ideally, I would share it around - power is a great
potential 'fertilizer', and, like garden manure, seems
to work best when spread around quite thinly, as
someone said to me, almost
quoting someone else, the other day.
But I don't really trust 'them' with the potentially
enhanced power - partly because I don't trust myself
with it.
'So' ... I 'tweak' the 'system' here and there ...
rather than seek to force a large mass-flow change of
direction ... 'safer' that way, I tend to think ...
One of my 'big ideas' - which I have not really worked
out yet, but have a kind of outline understanding of -
is that 'key elements' of the really 'big ideas' are
as likely to be found in the minds of 'anonymous' -
though named and identified, within their local
contexts - and seemingly 'lowly' people, as in the
minds of 'famous' and more obviously 'high-status'
people.
Like all 'big ideas' this one is not entirely original
- it owes a lot to the Christian notion of
'sublimity', for example, but I would not want the
Christians to think in a conceited way that they
deserved all the credit for it: because they adapted
it, in their turn, from other people's thinking.
There seems to be a life-enhancing/life-protecting
'defence' against the physically powerful in this 'big
idea' - namely, 'they', nor anyone else, could ever
really tell who really carries the elements of the
really 'big ideas' - so if 'they' destroy ANY
individual, 'they' might be destroying key elements of
the really 'big ideas'.
In other words [to get somewhat cryptic seeming, but
not really], 'we' put 'it' together between us - based
on mutual recognitions of personal 'uniqueness', and
of the value of our differing talents, and of the
potential 'deeper understandings' within EVERY
individual human consciousness.
When people deliberately destroy ANY unique
individual, they are potentially doing huge damage to
humanity possibility generally - because that
individual might carry a truly essential component of
the 'key' to human possibility generally.
What I am searching for, 'of course', via such
'speculatory' ideas, is a way to protect vulnerable
individual human beings against persecution - to the
point of destruction - by groups or other mass-flow
processes ...
And that is all just 'wild unworldly dreaming' though,
isn't it?
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 06:21:11 -0800 (PST)
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger
Exercizes
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
To moderate the 'tempestuosness' I reduce myself - it
is also known as 'self-restraint'.
Reducing self further: 'I am a word-processor.'
Even word-processors are lost for words some days.
Being lost for words is a troubling state.
It can feel like catanoia is coming on - which is a
terrifying prospect.
Been to that 'hell' all to often unwillingly - and
don't know how many recoveries I have left in me.
I have had to pull myself out of that 'void' all too
often already - and unassisted [human kindness might
work, but the drugs don't work for me - the shrinks
will, however, never stop bugging me with power-plays
in attempts to fit me into their overly reduced
biochemical schemes of things ... which further
depresses me ...].
Perking up with refreshments from old memory clusters.
Clever Clogs remembered a telling conversation with a
previous old helping hand and occasional ally Sean.
Clever Clogs [aka 'I'] was supposed to be celebrating
a bit of good-fortune/achievement - getting a job
which many others, including Sean, had wanted
themselves - but Clever Clogs certainly seemed
unimpressed by his own achievement/good-fortune. It
seemed nothing to him, a matter of no importance,
futile even. And this was not false modesty at play,
it was something else. It was like: 'I achieved this
... which you could not achieve ... but ... guess what
... it means nothing much too me ...'
'You worry me!' was Sean's telling response.
It is 'worrying' indeed when a man of many abilities,
much potential, and despite his many faults, an
essentially kindly nature, seems to want to do nothing
but waste his life.
He seems to be saying: 'Well ... nothing matters much
really does it?'
And maybe 'hokey cokey' is 'what it is all about',
after all.
In the patterns, and the dramas, in the motions, and
the break-ups, in the part-indentifications, and the
transient hand-in-hand person-to-person, link-ups, of
the clumsy dance, that anyone can do, even the
clumsiest of dancers - without much embarrassment, and
without falling arse-over-tit ... and even if that
happens it can be incorporated into the dance - in the
circle that is never regularly circular ... images of
'it all' perhaps ...
Or perhaps it is only a playful parody of 'gang-bang'
possibilities.
Some have even suggested it is a dark and dangerous
travesty of the anglo-catholic mass.
In some variations - not my personal favourites,
because too suggestive of determinism - the word
'taxi' is introduced.
Free will? or Determinism?
Significant signifier? or trivial time-killer?
[Apparent digression. Life's little ironies. Or a
random sampling. Or ... One day awhile ago, I tapped
'hokey cokey' into the Google search engine, and whose
name should appear on the first page of 'hokey cokey'
reference texts that Google spun up for me that day?
Lo! ... it was hokey cokey world weary cynic - these
days, apparently (I may be badly misjudging her from
limited subjective perspectives, of course) - Ms Big
Al. {The same search does not produce the same results
sequences now, because there has been a reshuffle in
the 'hokey cokey' scheme of things on the google web
crawler.} Anyway, there, by a hokey cokey googly
spinning shuffle, popped up an expressive report by
little Ms Alice dabbling in a wonderland of hokey
cokey steps in a capital mayoral election - or Mr
Norris was changing trains again. I wonder how many
get the allusions these days. Problem in the 'spread',
I suspect. And the 'density'. There is much real
possibility of a truly cosmopolitan 'common culture'
emerging from the 'spread', but the 'canon' of
previously shared reference points are being
fragmented. Something like that seems to be happening,
anyway. Perhaps it is just a problem of excess. They
come. They go. And, O.K., I was a green-eyed,
lost-possibility-regretting, highly subjective and
somewhat twisted observer of these matters, true
enough, but she never seemed to have the same male
partner from one month to another. But was that sort
of discontinuity really female 'liberation'? And it
was as if the gals, like the guys, had learned nothing
from the guys and gals who'd followed similar
essentially frustrating behaviour patterns for
centuries. Mr Norris, by the way, had five mistresses
on the go at one time, but did not seem satisfied with
any of them. The Wife of Bath had five husbands in
church, and many more outside. With the guys you could
say, well, it's perhaps just a sperm excess problem -
we've got millions to spare and are driven on by who
knows what to want to spread them as widely as
possible. So we are constantly reviewing the
possilities and the actualities and given the chance
... But what might it be with the gals? - a few
hundred thousand eggs, I suppose, might account for
something, but that, like the sperm numbers games, was
just numbers stuff which does not seem to explain
anything much very well. Who then devised this
torment? Love? In all this possibility examination,
and
partner switching [coupling and un- coup- ling] for
real, a search
for love was going on then? Or searches for something
else? Or ...
Perhaps it is a problem of too much choice. Though not
a 'fundamentalist' of any variety, really, I, like
many another, when faced with too much choice, and in
a state of confusion, return to the fairly fixed
reference points, including reference texts -
something solid to hang on to, perhaps, to reorientate
within/around. All the literary texts of all the ages
are now available on-line or in print in an original
language or translation of your chosing. But no one
has the free time to read them. And when you have so
many options, how can you concentrate on anything for
long? - or really appreciate anything properly. The
'process' drives you on ... and pesters you with ever
more 'greeds'/'needs' you never knew you had ... and
... Motion blurs of busy lives in an accelerated
culture. Too much of everything. Overfilled 'to do'
lists. But I/we/they also complain of being 'bored'
all too often too! Numbers games are so unsatisfying
long-term though. Yawn. Ennui. Darker matter treated
lightly. 'Not another one,' he sighed as he turned to
deflower the 75th - or whatever - of the nth number of
willing virgins
Uncle Osama had promised him for being a willing
participant in the essentially nihilistic
suicidal/murderous terrorism act. We are such
contrary fellows as facile adolescent fantasies are
made of. Being distracted from distraction by
distraction. Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2. The
'damned' pursuing essentially futile questing
activities in the spread of 'hell'. 'Darkness
visible'. 'False philosophy'. There is always a
counter-point though. Running in reverse flow to such
'fall stories' ... uplift stories. Prometheus showed
the lowly humans the light of the fire of arts and
crafts, and trusted them, having 'seen the light', to
use the 'fire' of expanding knowledge to raise
themselves up to higher states still. That is a strong
challenge to the 'you are damned to lives misery for
eating from the tree of knowledge' type of 'fall
story', I suspect. Or is it only another bit of
scatter-brained spin? And when the Wife of Bath saw
he'd never finish reading from his accursed book,
suddenly she tore three or more or less pages from it,
and was caught with such a blow that she could barely
hear him say into her ringing ears: 'Alyson, my
dearest love, with the help of god-or-nature I'll
never strike you again.' To which she replied: 'That
is all too easy for you to say, but do you really mean
it? And now, if you'll kindly listen, I will get on
with my own tale, which I will tell in my own way, in
my own time.' He did then try to suggest to her that
her approach was too subjective, but she was no longer
listening, perhaps because he had unwittingly deafened
her ...]
I do doubt hokey cokey is what it is all about
actually - though it is possible.
One apparent proof of free will is not to do something
you want to do.
And there is wasting your time on apparently trivial
stuff, and there is biding your time while waiting for
moments charged with more potential than the
present one.
[Irritating Clever Clogs does always have a new line
of thought - or spin - to turn to, doesn't he?]
Humkey Turnkey had had too many major 'fall'
experiences himself, and still spent too much of his
life lying around listlessly resting in pieces, that
had to admitted - but he was not waiting for all the
king's/queen's horses to gallop along to his rescue
[after all, he was a republican, so could not have
accepted their assistance anyway - voluntary citizen's
assistance might have come in useful, but that is
another matter].
Anyway, he was all too often inexplicably immobilized
and fragmented, that is fact enough.
Whether he chose the immobilized fragmented state, or
whether it chose him, as it were, is an open question.
In one such resting in pieces state of immobility,
Homkey Turkey found himself further considering the
bits and pieces of his reduced existence - rather idly
at first, but then ...
The sense of the spread of the bits scattered around
his disorderly resting place suddenly, stangely, more
carefully considered, began to give him a sense order,
and of the wider spreading scheme of things ...
And even if it all looked very disorderly there were
apparent patterns in the spread ...
'Chaos' was possibly properly considered an illusion
brought on by a failure to observe the patterns and
dramas of of the scheme of things properly.
Turning to his own bits and pieces once more, one more
perked up morning, Himkey Turbid saw to his uplifted
surprize that his bodily bits and pieces were not in
such a bad state as he often imagined - he was indeed
of the pessimistic hypochondriac tendency, and all too
prone to imagining worse states than actually existed.
Actually, his body was still a mostly fucked up mostly
useless mess, but his hands were at least working that
day.
In depressive states, you can, literally, lose the
proper use of fully functioning hands.
When he tried his hands out that day, he found, to his
relief, that their functions had survived the general
torpor and were still functioning.
The discovery of working hands might seem no great
discovery to many, but to an excessively depressive
over-working head-worker, the finding of still working
hands are real delightful surprizes.
He had had working hands before, but ...
Handpush Downy, among others, had dismissed him as
just not touchy-feely enough - and, again, her and
others' words had perhaps had too much effect on his
self-image.
He had been too receptive to others' false-self
type-casting, in other words.
['Over-receptiveness' was a general problem of his -
it might also be labelled 'over-sensitivity' - and
once 'they' sense you are 'receptive' you do find they
dump a lot of stuff on you.]
When they don't reach out to touch you, you don't
reach out to touch them. [Matters of fact learned
from/by painful
experience.]
When they treat you in manners divorcing you from
common human feelings, you treat them in manners
divorceing them from common human feelings.
As I, the children, and W.H. Auden know [simply,
i.e. 'unknowingly']: '... those to whom evil is done,
tend to do evil in
return ...' Words to that effect. Actions like that.
These are 'feed-back' effects - 'mirroring' is another
way of putting it.
Meanwhile, having escaped from one set of
mirror-images, Handy Doer
turned to others, and tried out his newly refound
hands - not
entirely self-referentially, though not on other
people [he had
become reduced by self and others to 'untouchable'
status, and so
others were 'untouchable' by self too] but on things -
and seemed to
find new measures of many substantial things.
He got quite handy in arty and crafty ways, is another
way of putting it.
None of the things he created with his own hands were
brilliant - nothing he ever did really satisfied
Highseek Demander - but he definitely discovered
hidden handy abilities he never knew he had in him -
and he realized the same must be possible for
everyone.
The spead of undiscovered talents ...
The 'wasted' - because 'denied' or otherwise
underdeveloped - talents ...
Handed Down-determination then turned his hands to
hands-on
science - again something he never thought he had much
aptitude for.
Unworldly flowing abstract ponderer became hands-in
dirty-handed pond-dipper ... and in the wet and the
dirt and the slime discovered more than mere
imagination could ever have dreamt of.
Lacking research grants, the charity shops and market
stalls and junk emporiums provided his equipment -
much of which was dismissed by others as kids' stuff,
or merely 'rubbish'.
It was surprizing to discover what he could discover
with a £1 'kids' microscope.
Things there to be seen all along, but never seen
before by humanity - everyone has unique capacities to
make unique discoveries.
Good role models ...
Following the example of the exemplary fellow beings
...
Working with a microscope of his own making - with
less power than microscopes dismissed by later
throwaway wasteful societies as 'kids stuff' or else
just 'junk' - almost unclassifiable and often
mispelled or otherwise misunderstood deft Delft
glass-worker Leeuwnehoek discovered, among other
things: blood cells;
spermatozoa [his own presumably - it is a pleasurable
relief to see them still swimming healthily as every
hypochondriac male-gaze microscopist will tell his
private diary {and the production of the research
material is not without its pleasures too}]; bacteria;
nematodes producing live young; plant cells; the
difference between spring and summer wood of trees;
the fact that higher temperatures and higher light
levels produce more durable woods in hardwood trees
and the reverse in softwood trees; that freshwater
protozoa can survive being dried up; parasites of
frogs; the fluke of sheep's liver; that plant extracts
and sulphur dioxide function as pesticies;
practicalities of conception in mammals ...
And that was only a start ...
In tiny drops of sludge, he saw living worlds come to
life and then die out ... and then come back to life
... and ...
He saw creatures more mysterious than anything you'll
ever see in a monster movie - and wondered why people
wasted so much time on the fantasy stuff when real
life was so much more interesting and truly
mysterious.
He saw the cuties too ... the little herbivore
creatures who want nothing more out of life than a bit
of green stuff to nibble on, and a few pals to mess
about sexually with.
What he saw, above all else, was life just being
lively - never quite understanding itself, being a
mystery surrounded by more mysteries, and usually just
muddling on in the mostly muddy stuff ... and trying
to make the most of it ...
Feeling a bit more alive himself as a consequence of
such lively observations, he put the life in and on
himself on the microscope slide for closer
examination.
He saw his own cells up close and personal for the
first time really [he had perhaps gone through the
motions of doing this earlier at school - but had
never really taken in 'the vision'] - and they
certainly seemed to contain a lot more than 'selfish
gene' stuff to him.
[Reduce me no further, please clever Dicky Doorkins,
and pals - because the environment and the culture and
a whole lot of other stuff you cannot account for - or
reduce away - 'say' to me, in limitless ways, that
there is a whole lot more to self and others than
being a mostly determined 'machine' for the
replication of 'selfish genes'. (In their own defence
they say words to effect of: 'that was only the popularizing metaphor ... the bulk of the argument within its fuller framework
was not so reductive'. But ...]
And ... he saw his lifelong companions the face-mite
family for the first time.
[You get them as a baby from your parents and other
family members when they nuzzle you affectionately. As
you grow older, your family face-mites cross-fertilize
with those of other human family face-mites - as you
nuzzle other loved ones affectionately ...]
And ... he saw his own sperms still swimming about
healthy enough - despite all those 'power of
suggestion' warning on the cigarette packets, etc
[determinisism-defying free 'will to live' must come
into it - though I have no way of proving that ... and
pass me another cigarette please ... and do you have a
light please? ... (Addict? or FreeWiller?)]
There is more to self and others than this wanky
geekery, Wanky Geek [aka 'I'] began to suspect.
The arts and the sciences are supposed to be two
separate cultures.
But Humbling Bumbling, the small town near nobody,
brought them together in his small way in his small
room.
He's a mostly modest and reserved and restrained
fellow, but he likes to explore the limits.
And he finds, time and time again, that there are
none.
What seem to be sharp divisions, turn out, on closer
examination to be blurs - and not blurs indicating a
limit to resolution ... but a new threshold to be
crossed ...
What seem to be clear-cut distinctions turn out to be
mere oversimplifying wordplays - or bits of facile
spin.
What seem to be final conclusions, turn out, on closer
analysis, to have been strange collections of
misunderstandings, under-/over-estimations, and/or
failures to see, feel, or otherwise sense, and then
properly express, things that were there to be sensed
and expressed - and shared - ... to say nothing of
much that was only plain ignorance and stupidity.
Each basic advance was effected by a more or less
abrupt and dramatic change: the breaking down of
frontiers between related territories, the
amalgamation of previously separated frames of
reference or experimental techniques; the sudden
falling into pattern of previously disjointed data.
'... you put your whole self in ...
... your whole self out ...
... you do the hokey cokey ...
... and you turn about ...
... that's what's it's aal aboot ...
... see?! ...
... o'ok'y'ho.key,cokey ...
... oh! ...'
The clumsy irregularities did tend to suggest free
will rather than taxis ... but ...
As he became more truly open-minded and more deeply
aware of his own reasonably honest uncertainty
himself, he became more and more impatient with
closed-minded people claiming 'certainties' they did
not have.
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to
Address Book
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 06:21:11 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger
Exercizes
Repetition is a form of change ...
You cannot [in reading or writing] repeat the same
text twice ... it
changes ... you change ...
But is the revized version more 'authentic' than the
unrevized one ...
Depends on ... context ... relative good/bad faith ...
factual
accuracy [or not] of purported statements of fact ...
many other
things ...
Anyway ...
To moderate the 'tempestuosness' I reduce myself - it
is also known as 'self-restraint'.
Reducing self further: 'I am a word-processor.'
Even word-processors are lost for words some days.
Being lost for words is a troubling state.
Perking up with refreshments from old memory clusters.
Clever Clogs remembered a telling conversation with a
previous old helping hand and occasional ally Sean.
Clever Clogs [aka 'I'] was supposed to be celebrating
a bit of good-fortune/achievement - getting a job
which many others, including Sean, had wanted
themselves - but Clever Clogs certainly seemed
unimpressed by his own achievement/good-fortune. It
seemed nothing to him, a matter of no importance,
futile even. And this was not false modesty at play,
it was something else. It was like: 'I achieved this
... which you could not achieve ... but ... guess what
... it means nothing much too me ...'
'You worry me!' was Sean's telling response.
It is 'worrying' indeed when a man of many abilities,
much potential, and despite his many faults, an
essentially kindly nature, seems to want to do nothing
but waste his life.
He seems to be saying: 'Well ... nothing matters much
really does it?'
And maybe 'hokey cokey' is 'what it is all about',
after all.
In the patterns, and the dramas, in the motions, and
the break-ups, in the part-indentifications, and the
transient hand-in-hand person-to-person, link-ups, of
the clumsy dance, that anyone can do, even the
clumsiest of dancers - without much embarrassment, and
without falling arse-over-tit ... and even if that
happens it can be incorporated into the dance - in the
circle that is never regularly circular ... images of
'it all' perhaps ...
Or perhaps it is only a playful parody of 'gang-bang'
possibilities.
Some have even suggested it is a dark and dangerous
travesty of the anglo-catholic mass.
In some variations - not my personal favourites,
because too suggestive of determinism - the word
'taxi' is introduced.
Free will? or Determinism?
Significant signifier? or trivial time-killer?

'... you put your whole self in ...
... your whole self out ...
... you do the hokey cokey ...
... and you turn about ...
... that's what's it's all about ...
... see?! ...
... o'ok'y'ho.key,cokey ...
... oh! ...'
The clumsy irregularities did tend to suggest free
will rather than taxis ... but ...
As he became more truly open-minded and more deeply
aware of his own reasonably honest uncertainty
himself, he became more and more impatient with
closed-minded people claiming 'certainties' they did
not have.
To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> 
Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 15:19:05 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] (unknown)
   
--- In heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com, Phil Talbot
<philtal_uk@...> wrote:
>
> ... mind the gaps ... when you leave a void ... the
> spammers and junk-merchants will fill it with any
old
> crap ...
>
> --- In heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com,
> "nuala-alexander458@" <nuala-alexander458@>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hows everyone doin? Hope u all are doing as good
as
> me. Just found this great thing       when i was
> checking around the other day. Have a look 
> http://www.youknowureallywantto.info/deld
> >
>
>
>
> Unpicking and reknitting patterns, and ...
… carry on the dancing on and on …
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 14:44:23 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] (unknown)
... our revels are soon enough easily ended ... these
shallow small-minded self-serving actors, as I
foretold you ... are easily de-constructed ... and
scattered into thin air ...
... only serious stuff from now on then? ... hardly!
... because that is not my style! ...
xxxx murked the spat ... which is what they aimed for
...
... too cynical?! ...
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:01:29 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] (unknown)
The fictional character Prospero said farewell to
magic in The Tempest.
The real person Shakespeare said farewell to the
theatre with The Tempest.
So the stories go.
Truth or illusion though?
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to
Address Book
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 19:35:26 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes
Type-casted Caliban cried out tempestuously: 'This
island's mine!'
That perhaps under-stated it.
'I am a fucked up schizoid mess and getting ever more
fucked up schizoidedly by the day,' he further cried,
to bring out from the undercurrents of consciousness a
few more points of potential interest.
The 'injustices' - against others as much as self -
were driving him crazy, in short.
Yet sanity had little to be said for it, because
others, mistaken for sane 'respectable' people,
behaved in ever more paranoid crazy manners
themselves.
The integrity of the personality threatened with/by
fragmentation.
Too much of everything. Too many demands made on him.
Too much expectation.
The world closes in on him, so he retreats from it.
Narratives - even mixed up and crazy seeming ones -
help to hold things together.
Depersonalizing Preludes.
'Anon anon, my dears, forgive me my little trespasses
- and bigger ones, too, if that is how they are
judged.'
Humpy Dumpy was resting in pieces.
He could not even get his own name write.
And he did not know where he was really let alone why
he was there.
Was Humper in the dumps because cross-tongued Frumpy
Dumpling had
cruelly duped him, dumped him, and left him behind in
the lurch?
...
[And she did it ... DISHONESTLY ... DISTANTLY ... DISGUSTINGLY ... REALITY-AVOIDINGLY ... INHUMANELY ... IMPERSONALLY ... on the FUCKING TELEPHONE ... for which reason [among others]: I do not trust that 'medium' [of 'mass communication'/'popular infatuation' ... SO DON'T FUCKING ACCUSE ME OF BEING 'OUT OF TOUCH' [with 'the modern world' or whatever]  ... just because I do not sign up to your fucking 'mobile' options ... YOU FUCKING ignorant-humanity-debasing ARSEHOLES! ... {'Might I suggest "Ravings of a Madman?" as a title?' she wondered!} ...]
...
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to
Address Book
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:51:31 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger
Exercizes
Chirpy quirky qwerty cheap cheep ...
But adazzle them dimmly deft Dicky ducky ... because
they are not yet properly prepared for the really
'brighter stuff' ...
A useful staging device is the 'conceit' - whereby the
audience [potential or actual] can never be quite sure
whether you are 'merely fooling' - or even just plain
mad - or not.
This seems like a 'conceit', but ...
I am reluctant to share my 'powers' more widely, and
that is fact, because I don't really trust 'them'.
By 'them' I mean [generally and specifically ]
'oppressors' AND 'oppressed' - because 'they' can seem
too interchangeable.
The 'oppressed', given power, all too easily
[experience teaches] become 'oppressers' themselves -
this is an all too common pattern of human history.
Sketchy fictional illustations ...
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero represents
something like an 'enlightened dictator' and/or a
'kindly tyrant', as it were. His use of power over
others is mostly kindly, but he does treat Caliban
very harshly - and that is troubling, because it seems
'over-done' and 'unnecessary', and seems to involve a
failing in 'fellow-feeling'.
But if roles were reversed, would Caliban treat
Prospero more kindly?
It seems unlikely - and Caliban O'Kitty taught me that
...
That is 'only' fiction, though, and I am neither
Prospero nor Caliban, nor meant to be either.
But ...
I do know a 'thing or two' about the way 'power'
works.
What to do with such powerful 'knowledge' [even if it
is only 'potential' knowledge]?
Ideally, I would share it around - power is a great
potential 'fertilizer', and, like garden manure, seems
to work best when spread around quite thinly, as
someone said to me, almost
quoting someone else, the other day.
But I don't really trust 'them' with the potentially
enhanced power - partly because I don't trust myself
with it.
'So' ... I 'tweak' the 'system' here and there ...
rather than seek to force a large mass-flow change of
direction ... 'safer' that way, I tend to think ...
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to
Address Book
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 06:21:11 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger
Exercizes
Repetition is a form of change ...
'... you put your whole self in ...
... your whole self out ...
... you do the hokey cokey ...
... and you turn about ...
... that's what's it's all about ...
... see?! ...
... o' hokey hokey kokey ...
... oh! ...'
The clumsy irregularities did tend to suggest free
will rather than taxis ... but ...
Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 19:01:08 +0100 (BST)
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> 
Subject: RE: Post-election snippets
To: "A..." <A...@...>
Ta A.
re 'apathy' - Can I therefore take it as Red that you
are thinking of switching to the 'other side', i.e.
becoming an active politico, rather than a 'mere
observer' of that endangered-seeming species?! - it is
not a bad time to make such a move, given DC is
presently picking up 'talent' for his 'A.List'!
[Aspirant 'turn-coats' are well advized to avoid Blue
Party B.List, though, because they can get savaged by
the dyed-in-the-wool dames and dinosaurs out in the
sticks. Poor Tory guy parachuted into Jarrow last
year, eg, was 'genuinely decent and nice bloke',
according to communist friend of mine who was also
standing there. Others, more unkindly, described him
as 'token black'- yet others were heard to say even
worse things about him. Jarrow Blues certainly did not
seem to take to their candidate much - some saying
publically that what they really wanted was a 'local
candidate' (and there was no racism intended by that,
of course). Usually the practice with the Tory
no-hoper in Jarrow is for  parachuted-in candidate to
be offered hospitality by locals for the election
duration. But strangely none could find a spare room
for him - and there seemed to be no decent rooms
available in local inns either. So he ended up staying
at the YMCA - and being left to canvass the streets of
Jarrow almost entirely on his own. Tory vote crumbled
too, oddly enough - with many True Blue
Little-Englanders-Upon-Tyne seemingly preferring
UKIP-er to 'one of their own'.
(Needless to say, I remain unconvinced that Blues are
genuinely widening their colour-range! - or otherwise
'evolving'.)]
re 'bankruptcy' - Yes, it was mostly a welcome relief
from escalating debt, but social conventions dictate
that one has to present it to the world as a terrible
thing, and suggest that one is thoroughly ashamed of
one's irresponsibility, etc ...
P. [red-faced, blue-eyed, yellow-jaundiced,
green-tinged, black-economied]
p.s. - for sake of 'balance' - Northern parochialism
is, of course, not confined to Right-Wingers ...
e.g. This from an unreported speech at a public
meeting by a present Red MP and former prominent
left-wing union official: 'Those bastards [i.e. the
Blairites] came up here, stole our party from us and
are destroying our local culture.'

Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 20:57:27 +0100
From: philiptalbot@beeb.net 
Subject: email accounts
To: philtal_uk@yahoo.com
   
yahoo offers an increasingly piss-poor email facility -
slowed by a sludge of ads ... and other crap
suggest you switch asap to beeb.net, which offers much better
services that does not take a lend of users
Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 15:03:47 +0100 (BST)
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> 
Subject: Re: email accounts
To: philiptalbot@beeb.net
   
you are a divided-minded contradictory - some might
even say schizoid - sort of character, who says and
does some very strange seeming things ...
however ... I have also heard it said that the
competition for the most eccentric character in yur
home town is hotly contested ... and you are not even
in serious contention .... 
Send instant messages to your online friends
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
[... '... I am going to sit right down and write myself a letter ... and make believe it came from you ...' ... words/actions to that effect ...]
From:  "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Dec 5, 2002  5:01 pm
Subject:  Re: ... ongoing B-Grade stuff ...
Polyglottic, iridescent, cosmopolitan Zed, a rainbow alliance in
herself, who had the gift of many tongues, but was not prone to
shouting about it, quietly called to attention the ignorant
obliviousness of most Europeans, and others, to the crucial Islamic
elements [including the residues of alchemy] in their own culture ….
So …
It should have been no surprise that when in Spain she was seen as if
one of their own …
Ibn Hazm, almost a thousand years dead, but still one of the most
well spoken correspondents, partly explains:
"…The fresh springing of herbs after the rains, the glitter of
flowers when the night clouds have rolled away in the hushed hour
between dawn and sunrise, the plashing of waters as they run through
the stalks of golden blossoms, the exquisite beauty of white-castles
encompassed by verdant meadows - not lovelier is any of these than
union with the well-beloved, whose character is virtuous, whose
disposition laudable, whose attributes are well matched in beauty.
Truly that union is a miracles of wonder surpassing the tongues of
the eloquent, and far beyond the range of the most cunning speech to
describe: the mind reels before it, and the intellect stands abashed
…"
Ibn wore a dove's necklace without ostentation, and was in many other
ways a man of quietly noble temperament …
"I am a man who has always been uneasy about the impermanency and
constant instability of fortune. Concerns of this sort have occupied
me during the greater part of my life, and I have preferred to spend
it in pursuing these matters studiously, rather than in looking for
delights of the senses, or the accumulation of grat wealth, which
many seem to prefer."
But he was not cold or devoid of emotion ….
Or … as one of his anonymous Moorish soul brothers put it for him …
" … when weary sickness on me lies unending, and successive griefs
revisit my unsleeping eyes, in love's pangs I find strange reliefs …"
… which is not a uniquely Spanish Islamic experience, one is inclined
to think …
…
Closer to home …
Z's true sister A [and a sort of soul sister of mine - well we were
born on exactly the same day, more or less] was a good sport and
liked to watch the footing Hotspurs, who tended to nobly value
stylish aesthetic moves above mere victory for the sake of victory,
any old way, fair or foul …
… and she footed it finely herself … from united pressing
internationals … to more domestic matches of the day …
[Some people read and write the credits … and try to pay off debts of
gratitude … but the wider world credit / debit problems do seem to be
growing … so many essentially self-serving … and personal pocket
lining … so much owed to the poor many … and cheap financial
compensation schemes - and other cosmetic fripperies - won't settle
it … real justice is increasingly in demand …]
Zed once said that she had not experienced face-to-face racism in
Spain, despite it crypto-fascist near-past … but said she had
experienced it on my home turf, despite its prided socialist
credentials … which greatly shamed me …
In defence of my homers, I suggested that, for local background […
and spreading …] cultural reasons, she would not experience such
obnoxious stuff in my home town … but I was not entirely convinced by
my own words … and neither was she, most probably …
[Meanwhile … out in the metropolitan fringes … gabby Ms Cyclothymia,
who thought herself a smooth-tongued and flawless speaker, and was
all too free with her condemnations of others' mouthed slips, but all
too prone to putting her foot in it herself, went shopping at
the 'Paki shop', and thought nothing amiss in that - well 'they'
never complained about it, did 'they'? …
No outright racism is suggested … but it was ever so shockingly
impolite of one who prided herself on her mannered superiority … and
perhaps characteristic of her reductive dismissiveness of many who
were not herself …
Still … we all make verbal slips … and they are not the worst of
crimes …]
Family matters mattered greatly to Zed ... but it was not all
individuals and family to her - their was such a thing as wider
society …
And when I asked her and A. where they came from, they replied, as
one: The World …
And the long dead poets remind one and all that the human family is
The Family, which does not stop at the doorstep … or the town
boundary … or the county line … or the border crossing …
Humanity has one kind of mouth but many voices … often changing in
tunes … ageless songsters… declaiming deathless melodies … homing in
and zooming away … trying jesters' japes … trialing tragicians' tear-
jerks .. singing the choicest selected songs in varying voices ...

Onely and manily ...
... at some times and places ...
... strains of folk culture ...
... and semingly more sophisticated stuff ...
... weaves together ...
... to form something closer to 'fusion' ...
...
In the maqumah form, for example, the fine graces of formal rhymed
and rhythmned verse ... and the untidy galmour of impromptu seeming
free composition ... of apparently unstructed tales ... came
together ... as some would put it ... in a mysterious mix of
alternate prose and verse ...
...
... and out of the near mess emerged something like a mouthpiece ...
who was, some might say, in fact a familiar figure in popular story-
telling ... the clever and witty seeming vagabond ... or wanderer ...
or ...
Among the old masters of the maqumah was Al-Hariri, of Basrah ... who
sang about 900 years ago ... and still sings in some senses ...
... crying to compassion ...
... against fortune's fickleness ...
... howling against a background noise ...
... of raucous rancour ...
... lamenting calamities that shattered ...
... personal rocks ...
... and did even more damage ...
... elsewhere ...
... breaking up frames of reference ...
... at foundations ...
... splitting stems ...
... breaking boughs ...
... and ...
... in many other ways ...
... other-wise ...
... fucking up favourable fruits ...
...
And he cried out curses on those who, seemingly wanting creative
generosity, or simply enough kindness, seemingly set out to destroy
for the sake of destruction.
Said the narrator:
Now the surrounding company seemed more inclined to ascertain the
wanderer's condition - not perhaps out of much concern for him/her,
but rather perhaps so as to find out what he/she might have
concealed, in order to sift truth from falsehood among her/his many
reported claims, and/or to see what personal benefit there might yet
be there to be had from access to her/his ramblings.
So they said [or seemed to say]: 'We know by this time the apparent
abundances of your trees, but please kindly make it now known to us
their sources, and withdraw more of the veils that surround your
nurseries.'
He replied: 'For goodness's sake, learn for yourselves to discern
better better from worse!'
Then he departed ... or seemed to ... on a twisting curl, which hung
down, as if to hurl his heart away from bliss, and further towards
the abyss ...
... possibly ...