ne old bolox

From: Phil Talbot <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat May 13, 2006  2:19 am
Subject: (No subject)  philtal_uk
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--- 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@...>
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@...> Add to
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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@...> Add to
Address Book
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@...> 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.
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@...> 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 ...
... 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?

From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@...>
Date: Sat Nov 5, 2005  2:41 am
Subject: Revized Re-edit 1b 04_11_2005
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 06:21:11 -0800 (PST)
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@...> Add to
Address Book
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 there own defence
they say: '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 all 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@...> 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.
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 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 everthing. 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 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 of 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
more 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.
When they treat you in manners divorcing you from
common human feelings, you treat them in manners
divorceing them from common human feelings.
These are 'feed-back' effects - 'mirroring' is another
way of putting it.
Handy Doer tried out his newly refound hands - 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 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' - deft Delft glass-work 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 there own defence
they say: '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 all 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.











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Does it make a[ny] difference ...?

Does it make a difference ...?
(50+/M/Tyneside,UK) 2014
 Does it make a difference ...?  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/12/02 10:06 am
 Does it make a difference whether this message is read or not read?[!]
 philiptalbot
 Friday, 4 October 2013
 Repetition is a Form of Change  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 [= 9 January 2002] 7:48 pm
 You can't read the same message twice - you change, it changes.
  You cannot read the same message twice - you change, it changes.
  Aristotle, Rhetoric.
 'It is difficult to punctuate Heraclitus's writing because it is unclear whether a word goes with what follows it or with what goes before it. Eg, at the very beginning of his treatise, he says:
 "of this account which holds forever men prove uncomprehending".
 It is unclear what "forever" goes with.'
  the same is present living and dead awake and asleep young and old for the latter change and are the former and the former change and are the latter
 disconnections combinations wholes and not wholes concurring differing concordant discordant from all things one and from one all things
 changing it rests and resting it changes
 we step and do not step into the same rivers
 we are and we are not
  
 It is wise to listen, not to me, but to the words. The words say: 'All things are one.'
  Although the words stay the same, they seem to change.
  Though the words stay the same, they seem to change.
  New Member  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 8:27 pm
 Hello ... pleased to meet you all - albeit marginally ... in a place on the edge of things that have no end and which is central and marginal and everywhere between at the same time and ...
  Love Philip. 
  The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 8:36 pm
 Although separated and virtual strangers, we walk and talk together and blend in thoughts, emotions and feelings and find missing parts in others and giving missing parts to others and we take upon us, together and alone, the mystery of things - all things strange familiar simple complex mixed singular high low bitter sweet sorrowful joyful ... and although it can seem like meaningless nonsense it does eventually resolve itself into a sort of sense.
  
 Does it make a difference ...?  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/12/02 10:06 am
 Does it make a difference whether this message is read or not read?
 The act of writing it has brought some difference
 (change)to the universe - and who can say what consequences that will have? (Tiny, trivial seeming acts can [perhaps occasionally, perhaps often, perhaps always] have wide-ranging consequences.)
 Readings would further complicate matters - and responses even more so. 
 Plotinus on Heraclitus  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/19/02 9:07 am
 Plotinus [Enneads]:
 Heraclitus who, by example, urges us to inquire into limitless matters, posits necessary exchanges from opposites and talks of paths up and down and around and
 "changing it rests"
 and
 "it is weariness for the same to labour freely and to be ruled"
 and he 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
  Reality is complex, messy, not clear-cut.
 So the way(s) into greater understanding of it cannot be simple, tidy, unambiguous.
 Heraclitus rambles through the borderlands between coherence and incoherence.
 Strange stuff emerges from that marginal zone.
 Lifting the veil ... opening the doors of perception ... and all that.
 It can be done - and doesn't require drugs.
 But it is (perhaps) a mistake to imagine that what is revealed when the veil is lifted is more real than what is perceptible when it is still in place.
 Reality is (most likely) multi-layered - all in all.
 No level of reality is likely to be more real than any other
  ... and when you think you've got it sussed, then is the time for caution ... scepticism ... humility ... that way you go on learning ... or developing ... or just changing ...
 Of reality we know nothing firmly ... it changes.
 It seems unwise to speculate at random about the widest matters. But what esle can we do?
 Ramble.
 (1) Wander disconnectedly in discourse, talk, writing.
 (2) Walk for pleasure and with pleasure, with or without a definite route, and with or without a clear destination
  Flame and Vortex.
 Both flame and vortex are example of dissipative structures - the maintenance of which require a continuous input of energy, and the effect of which is to dissipate that energy.
 In a vortex, the energy is the potential engery of the water, which is dissipated as the water falls.
 In a flame, the energy from chemical reactions is dissipated as heat.
 As soon as the energy stops, the form disappear.
  Shifting sands. Seething seas. Swirling skies.
 Sea sounds. Synaesthesia. See sounds.
  Of reality we know nothing firmly.
 It changes.
  ... changing waterways churn on while I ramble on ...
 The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/9/02 8:36 pm
 Although separated and virtual strangers, we walk and talk together and blend in thoughts, emotions and feelings and find missing parts in others and giving missing parts to others and we take upon us, together and alone, the mystery of things - all things strange familiar simple complex mixed singular high low bitter sweet sorrowful joyful ... and although it can seem like meaningless nonsense it does eventually resolve itself into a sort of sense.
 Re: The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/19/02 9:45 am
 With few exceptions (perhaps none), every person experiences conscience, self-respect, remorse, empathy, shame, humility, moral outrage, etc - to varying degrees, at various times and places.
 Out of this grows what seems to be a worldwide morality, including notions of altruism, justice, compassion, mercy ... even redemption.
 Unfortunately, small-scale personal familiarities, and a limited sense of common interest, narrow the range of moral sentiments - making them selective: applied to 'us' but not to 'them'.
 People give trust to strangers only with great effort.
 True compassion, applied to all humans (recognised as fully human - and of 'us'), is in short supply.
  
 Re: The Society of Heraclitus  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  1/19/02 9:52 am
 ... meeting as an anonymous strangers in lonely crowds ... throwing love around ... and it changes ... and perhaps it grows ... and perhaps it blooms ... tomorrow ... or tomorrow ... or tomorrow ...
  Leonardo's Heraclitean Vision  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/2/02 9:29 am
 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.]
  
 Re: Leonardo's Heraclitean Vision  philtal_uk
 (38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/6/02 7:29 am
 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.

 +++++

  Drafts ...
  Names change ... labels change ...
 Or, as the existentialist (concluding naturally, she believed) put it: 'Time passes, people change.'
 True enough.
 All in all ... it changes ... but the essence of it all remains the same ...
  So...
 The quaker, the catholic, the anglican [words meaning many things (and not necessarily indicating faiths), while also being merely nominal signifiers of particular, relatively insignificant, individualized human beings] wandered in and out of relative obscurity, and each others' and other people's lives, and noticed a few things that nobody had ever noticed before, and never would again, and missed many other matters that they might have noticed, but didn't.
 While the voices sometimes sang in their ears, saying that this was maybe all folly.
  'Six hands at an open door...'
 But...
 There might have been more, and the names might have been different, and ...
 The time might not have yet come ...
 Or it might have been and gone ...
 Or, next time, after a reshuffle, it might all be different ...
  One name might have been Zed ... who was a typically British delightfully mixed up mess ... iridescent, polyglottic, cosmopolitan ... a free-wheeling wild daisy ... daisy ... on an old-fashioned upright English bicycle ... riding to the unifying international news agency building through a changing London docklands on an island of sorts (which was nominally a home for dogs) and near the time centre at Greenwich ... and nearby lived mostly ignored people who would not recognise her as a fellow English rose because their own blooming possibilities had been neglected ... (and not far away in time and place, under a futuristic light railway bridge,  a multicultural ideas spreading news agent was murdered by ethnic nationalists with closed minds who couldn't escape from their past prejudices) ... Z was a far from unnecessary letter ...
  Another might have been M  ... a sharp-tongued, snub-nosed Scottish socratic ... passionate and compassionate ... much concerned about The Issues ... who liked dialectics in non-standard dialects ... and complained that talking to him could be like talking to herself ... and who wrote letters with reverse strip-teases in them ... she sat in bed writing to him and put on an extra jumper and extra socks and ... well he was cold-seeming ... and he had once sat on a bed with her when she was wearing a partly transparent nightie and he had pretended very carefully not to see through it ...
  Or there might have been another A ... a very sophisticated Irish named (and double-barrelled) self-styled working class lass ... who encouraged him to go with the flow with kind words and curving flowing limb motions ... and who walked alongside him in a slightly absurd part-falling manner (which might have had something to do with the vaguely ridiculous thick-souled shoes she was wearing) ... but with her, as with others, there seemed to be a mountainous obstacle course in the space between them  ... which even a veteran rambler could not find a route through .. or around ... and perhaps it was better to maintain a distance between ... 
  And ...
 You get the odd glimpse of the infinite complexity of it all ... but then you lose it ... and you go on with your small-scale guess-work ...
  So ...
 Call them what you will ... ally, catty, philly ... or make them up as you go along ... angels, imps, aliens ...  or (as it actually seems to go) rearrange bits of the previously existing into new patterns ...
  They travelled.
 Chilly awakenings under canvas. Buses that never turned up. Dreary, slow, often-stopping local trains. The dizzy kaleidoscope of landscapes and ruins. Cities that changed before their eyes as they stopped to stare for an instant. Seascapes and skyscapes. Ships coming in not laden with gold. Flowing patterns of lives in motion in a world in motion, with the increasing density of everyday experience seeming to render all experiences increasingly transient and superficial.
  And...
  Each found places there were satisfactory for a while, then unsatisfactory.
 So they went to other places - or to spaces between things that, for a while at least, they could call their own.
  And then one day, or it might have been many days, they seemed to find themselves among people clutching gods of sorts that they did not quite believe in any more, or which, one way or another, or in several (even many) ways did not satisfy all their needs of belief.
 It seemed to be a time of general and particular confusion ... or of reconsideration ... or of reviews  ... out of which a new synthesis of older ways of thinking might emerge.
  If the hypothesis of a fully transcendent creator implanting motion in the system of extended bodies were judged no long sustainable, then it would seem an instrinsic characteristic of the extended or spatial world that everything within it is constituted of particular proportions of motion and rest - which suggests that motion must be essential to and inseparable from the nature and constitution of extended things. The proportions of motion and rest within the system as a whole must be constant, since there could be no external cause to explain any change in the system; but within the subordinate parts of the system the proportions of motion and rest are constantly changing in the interaction of these parts among each other.
  Spin spin spin out the ever-changing (and ever so easy to misrepresent and misinterpret) system of Spinoza, or something like it.
  Minds in turmoil, how they longed to embrace simples. Many times they rushed towards them, desperate to hold on to solid forms. Many times they fluttered through clutching fingers, sifting away, like shadows, dissolving like dreams, and each time the griefs cut to the hearts sharper, and they cried out incoherent words, which winged into the darkness.
  Now down they came to the water's edge, streaming tears ... drops of sea-stuff returning to the world-wide waterway.
  Rumour has it that if you throw a cup of water into the sea and return a decade or so later to scoop up a fresh cup of water from the same (which is not of course the same) bit of the sea, then, despite all the churning and mixing that has occurred in the sea over the decade or so, the cup will contain some molecules of the water you threw into the sea at the earlier time. It seems unlikely, but statistical probabilities suggest it - there are more molecules of water in a cup (whatever its size) than there are cups (or the equivalent volume) in the sea.
  'I don't know what to say.'
 'No words. No words. Hush.'
  Hush.
 Sea sounds. See changes.
  So we made for the outer limits, where the worldwide waterway seemed to flow towards its end - though of course it was an illusion. Some said it was where the Cimmerians previously had their homes, a realm shrouded in mist and cloud, where the sun could never flash rays through the murk. Others said it was a just a small northern town in the middle of winter.
  Wandering on, bedlam melodies wandering through our minds ...
  ... we get by and keep on keeping on with a little help from our friends all is on little loves and small acts of kindness and big hugs pulling mussels from shells and pulling muscles in other words squeeze me you know how to do that Annie and get your gun she's passed it's a miracle her paint's all over town and Alison my aim is true I know this world is killing you and her and him and me and OK I was just Cathy's clown on a hillside desolate will nature make a man of me yet visions of swastikas two new pence to have a go and fall wanking to the floor and frigging in the rigging while there are footsteps on the dancefloor the next time I'll be true I heard on the grapevine that rumour had it that I just called to say I love you thank you for giving me the best day of my life and thank you for calling inquiries while I got stuck in the moment records stick stuck records bells on our fingers ask not whom we toll them for we shall have music wherever we go on go on go on at last the go on show at last but not the end there is no end to wandering I would go out tonight but I have not got a thing to wear but don't you forget about me as you walk on by if you see me walking down the street walk on walk on by with love in your heart and take a walk on the wild side and you just know that bitch won't fuck again but say it ain't so Joe say it Joe eh Joe Hey Joe where are you going with that gun in your hand excuse me while I take another face from the ancient gallery and kiss the sky often mistaken for kiss this guy kiss me kiss me you know how to please me yeah yeah kiss me in the milky twilight you wear that dress and I will wear those shoes and she was last seen the last time I ever saw her face wearing stop me stop me if you've heard this one before hey hey hey what's going on we're sailing off the edge of the world living like Fu Manchu there's nothing else to do maybe baby we know where we are going once in a lifetime on the road to nowhere or funky town or kook city and live life from a window just taking in the view all around the world looking for you and you just stayed in your room that day that day when we took off our clothes and you were crying and the stupid things you said and I said we were birds of paradise and you saw the whole of the moon pink pink pink moon no matter where I roam I will return to my British roses before the sky closes on them and open on others and no one will ever take me from she and she been a long time been a long time been a lonely lonely lonely long time under the northern skies waiting and wondering and wandering on for more life in a northern town wandering on and maybe tomorow maybe someday we'll get by ...
  ... jigsaw feeling ... has me reeling ... which may be lurching desperately ... or which may be a kind of dancing.
  What triangles ...
 The solitary sage of Walden (or there or there abouts - or some other place of concorde) pointed out that triangles of extraordinary size were set up when two people by chance (as it might seem) separated by many earthly miles looked at the same distant star at the same earthly instant ...
  What polygons of unthinkable complexity are formed when the consciousnesses of three or more (billions maybe) are linked up deeply for a single instant.
  And each individual consciousness is limitless ... set off at any instant in any direction in any individual mind, and you'll never reach an end to the association networks ...
  Beyond the outlines ... barely experienced, poorly remembered ... fragmentary details ... the bewildering spread of the simple seeming event ...
  Figures in a blended inscape and outscape ...
  Cathy and her clown walked together near the water's edge. Blurs from some perspectives, dots, or even less from others. Viewed from some places and times they become recognizable human forms, though mostly in outline, devoid of many details. Further perspective shifts reveal complexitity upon completity. It is possible to conceive of a multiverse perspective ... all possible perspectives at the same instant.
  Two little people on a coastal walk in a small town, on the margins, but at the centre of things ... So it is with all: any point, any person, any event, is central and marginal and everywhere in between.
  She is small and short-stepping. He is tall and long-striding. The long and the short of it. Big he who is not so big and small she who is not so small. They do not seem well matched. Their mortions are not very synchronized-seeming, as she is too fond of pointing out for his comfort (and hers perhaps too). She walks close to him, often bumping into him rather clumsily. Mostly she talks, he listens. A deluge of words. Waves crashing on to the shore. Her voice rises in pitch and and increases in tempo as she continues. She seems anxious to get things said, while she still has the chance, while there is still time.
  They walk in no particular direction, to nowhere in particular. Separate random walks are taking place, which, since they are walking together, in however an unsynchronised and clumsy and bumping manner, become a shared walk. They walk on the edge of land and sea, near a pub called the Water's Edge. Human naming systems help to make a sort of sense of things, providing reference points and an order of sorts.
  They seem on the edge of things, in a marginal zone, a place of transition. and they are nearing the edge of their time together. Soon they'll separate, perhaps forever. So it seems she has to get her words said. She talks of people on the edge of things, marginalised people, known as the underclass for want of a  more human label, whom she's encountered in the early stages of her training as a probation officer. It seems important to her to let him know of what she has witnessed. He's a bit puzzled by that. She's leaving him behind, but wants to fill his mind with her thoughts and experiences. She's planting trace memories perhaps.
  Another way of seeing it ... on the shores of the cosmic ocean a strangely beautiful well-matched asymetric couple mess things up.
  (This much seems true: new life comes from asymmetry - the evidence is all around. Fear death by symmetry - when all the complex, messy slightly disordered asymmetrical unities break up, and 'it' becomes a spread of equally distanced particle fragments drifting ever further apart.)
  Random walks
  The myriad contingencies of a short walk in a small town.
  But when you consider them with an open mind everything can seem to connect and every part seems integral to the whole.
  Sitting in my small town room, given strange powever by technologies, the workings of which I do not understand and never will, I seem to travel far, and seem to perceive many things.
  Common culture. It is in us all. Flowing through us all and being transformed by us all.
  All in all.
  All things might be written in a single book of love, of which creation is the scattered leaves.
  Organisations can form in the underground [and they can be forces for good - not terrorist networks], and they can communicate in undertones, and without the constituent parts having much  conscious awareness that they are a part of a larger whole.
  Birds flock together at appropriate times, but probably are not much aware that they are flocking.
  Perhaps we are often acted upon by organising forces beyond our understanding.
  This long watch, which dog-like he kept ... Soon the long wished for signs might relieve his passive toils ... beacons gleaming through long recurring nights ... Beacons .. which might only be cigarettes ... These walls could recall strange things .. and much else...
 Like a shrunken leaf ... that is not really dying ... all recycles .. flows .. changes ... feebly feeling  ... like a dream that walks by day ... the persuasive breath of memories involuntarily recalled ... mostly stirring the heart with songs .. sometimes sensed as beautiful .. sometimes not ...
  Like shapes in dreams he wandered through the years, seeming random, planless, his forethought in chains ...
  But the vision of the birds might yet work its end into bliss ...
  But contraries might yet blast darkly first...
  This way the part-time seer hymned, dubiously mixing doom and bliss, dark mingling with light ... and much confusion and obscurity ...
 Sharing with the way-haunting birds, which seemed to signal something ... he was responding to the strains .. which could not be merely sounds .. there had to be some meaning, some purpose in everything ... the singings sounded of sorrows and glad days ... and of good times that might yet shame the bad.
  Meanwhile ... a most unpleasant surprise was in store for the platonic prick ...
 ...just as the likely lass began yawning as he was telling her all sorts of amusing stories that had happend to him at different times and places, and even referring once to the Greek cynical philospher Diogenes, the weird sister appeared from one of the back rooms. Whether she had torn herself away from a cold collation, or from the little green drawing room, where some postgraduates' conversation had become more alarming to her, whether she had come of her own free will, or whether she had been thrown out of her previous environment in embarrassing circumstances, which she might or might not later reveal ... whatever the cause or collection of part-causes that had brought her from some other place to this place, she apeared to be cheerful and in the best of spirits. And she was holding on to ther arm of the devil's advocate, or one who was assuming that role, for the time being, and in the particular circumstances in which they now all found themselves. Yet he appeared unhappy. Maybe she had been dragging him along with her (and even perhaps attempting to pull him to the floor) for some time. Whatever the cause, assuming there was one, the poor putter-of-the-case-against certainly seemed discomforted, for he kept attempting to turn around, while his eyebrows beetled in all directions, and his eyes seemed to be searching for a way to excape from this amicable arm-in-arm promenade with the weird sister.
 It was, indeed, quite an intolerable situation. The platonic prick saw no ther way out of it than to gulp down quickly, with forced convivialtiy, two cups of coffee, with were, of course, laced with red wine, while he kept on telling the most unlikely stories. The devil's advocate became ever more disconcerted, but still could find no way of excape. The weird sister laughed and scowled at the fun of it all. The kindly quaker remained, as often, seemingly calmly silent.
  Bridge buildings ...
  Ally and philly were sitting together in a bar, which might have been called The Bridge (but that was actually another place, another time) and she began openly to speak her mind to him for once ... The wonderful flow of words enters him and fills him and swells him, and the words change her in his mind ... she'll never seem the same again. After an hour or two, he feels obliged to say something about himself, but when he attempts to interrupt her word-flow, she says, 'No ... I'll speak' ... and the wonderful warming and expansive words continue to come out of her, and to close the space between them, and to fill him with a her glow, which he will never forget, even though, for various reasons, they do not see much of each other afterwards.
  She was possibly the least malicious person he had ever met, but ally was the one person to speak negative things about catty into his ears - telling him that catty 'was just not worth it' and that he 'could do better than that woman'. And when he thought feelingly about it then, and for a long time afterwards, he saw multiple possible meanings in what she said ... but he could not accept the proposition that any human being was 'just not worth it', because all are worth it, or else all are worth nothing ... and maybe that was just quibbling ... but ... that was the way it was with him.
  Years later, (this year in fact) pally ally cropped up in India and Pakistan (this is no fiction) at a time of tension, when some feared the possibility of a nuclear war.  She was part of a leading world stateman's 'travelling entourage' (her words) ... to most a unnoticed face in a crowd ... but to the platonic prick she was a symbol of peace  ... she carried love with her and no hatred that he could imagine. And oddly enough (or not) tensions on the Indian sub-continent reduced afterwards, and the threat of nuclear war faded. Of course many others were involved. The key seemed to be: not the 'great' men's [there were, alas, still too few 'great' women on the world's stage] words and deeds ... nor even the charms (which were considerable) of his known female peace symbol ... but all those millions of little loves of little lives of mostly kindly mostly decent people who didn't actually want to slaughter others, or to be slaughtered themselves - maybe they all worked together, without quite knowing it, to calm things down.
  Meanwhile, the curious cat cared so much about the marginalized people whom she worked with (and for) that it once (or more) almost broke her. She saw hellish visions of 'bottomless pits of need and deprivation' ...
 And there can seem to be no end to the suffering in the private hells of even an affluent society.
 But even with such dispriting thoughts in mind to discourage her, she returned to work and did little things to help people and to fill up the void bit by bit.
  In the near past that was a long time ago cat wrote many letters to phil and complained that he never wrote enough to her ... it was a complaint that mixed fairness with unfairness, as most do ...
 In her letters, as far as he could remember, she only ever quoted him one line of poetry, from Tennyson's Ulysses:
    '... I am a part of all that I have met ... '
 As she might or might not have gone on to point out, the reverse it also true:
     ... All that I have met is a part of me ...
  The surprising thing was that while Cat and Al studied much the same subject in much the same place at much the same time, and wandered more or less contemporaneously in much the same streets of at least two other cities ... and had much in common ... and must have crossed paths occasionally ... and had even perhaps caused each other some hurt of sorts, via their connections through Phil ... they never fully met (unless a trick was missed) .. which is something a shame, because they had much good to share with each other ...
  It can seem like nonsense, but it does eventually resolve itself into a sort of sense ...
  All this was a long time ago. But what is a long time? The long and the short of it all. Big he who was not so big and small shes who were not so small. I remember little but much. I forget much but little. And I would do it again but in different ways. Repetition is a form of change. Nothing is the same twice, so nothing is the same ever. Say hello, wave goodbye. Wave goobye, say hello. In every meeting, the image of birth, a sort of coming together. In every parting, the image of death, a sort of falling apart. I never knew you well enough, you never knew me well enough. So it goes. Undertanding of other people is, like all understanding, never good enough. On it goes. On we go. Finding out more. Making new patterns, remembering and forgetting, building up and breaking down. Say hello, wave goodbye. Kiss and hug if you want to, do not kiss and hug if you do not want to. Something was taking its course, that much is certain, if no more. Whether we follow a course to birth or to death is uncertain. And that uncertainty clouds the issue of whether we act freely or follow courses determined for us. But there does seem to be free will on the local human scale. At any possible world junction there are many, perhaps limitless, possibilities open to us, and every instant brings us to a new possible world junction, when a small act of choice can make a huge difference. But if, whatever choices we make, the overall course of things is towards a break up of all unities, and so towards oblivion for all, then individual destinies seem trivial. If it is not to be futile, then we must find courses that lead somewhere, to some betterment, some resolution, some harmony, some development, or just some continuation. Maybe it comes down to faith, but that might just be wishful thinking.  But you never know - and maybe there's hope in uncertainty. No one, the pessimists or the optimists, really knows.  Humans are perhaps just too limited in understanding, and probably, however developed they become, always will be. That is the way it seems to be and maybe will remain. And so one cannot escape from the voices singing that this might be all just folly. But then folly is not the same as futility. And folly is at least amusing and out of amusement might come a more profound kind of comedy, which is a movement towards harmony, and when the motion is towards harmony then perhaps the easier it becomes to make approaches towards some ideal harmonic state - even if it is never reached. And actually achieving complete harmony might not even be desirable, because that might be the end of it all - after which no more for worse or for better.
  It seems foolish to speculate at random about the widest matters ... but what else can you do?