Retro Per Spectives or Bither blither blather blog blog ..b log ...

Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 15:12:16 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] Bither blither blather blog blog ..b log ...
   
Bither blither blather blog blog ..b log ...
I should be writing sonnets, but circumstances are against me, and I
don't have the talents required anyway, so I am stuck in
messy, formless, free verse - if that [pissy poor prose?!].
Sometimes I seem to be fending off chaos.
Sometimes it is only keeping the disorder under some kind of control.
'Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.' Like that line. Says a
lot in a little. Contractions and expansions. Spend a
lot of time on them. The patterns beneath the patterns.
Microcosm. Macrocosm.
Something like that.
Small. Big.
Put more simply.
Reducing. Expanding.
Depression. Mania.
Downs and Ups.
Understanding limits.
All that talk from Bush last week about 'freedom'. Wonder if he
understands its limits.
Odd too to hear a self-proclaimed Christian suggest freedom was more
important as a driving force than love.
People get embarrassed talking about love in public though.
Perhaps he just does not feel its power.
And without love, power is only power.
Meanwhile, at all times importance of chronology.
Timing and dating systems hold things together.
Make a date. Meet up. Agree something between you.
Microcosm. Macrocosm.
Churchill and Stalin, old-style and new-style imperialists of that
time, some day, 1940s, made a date and met up to agree
between them some of the post-world-war-two settlements.
Small. Big.
To illustrate some large portions of borderland changes between them
they used the small-scale symbols of match-sticks. A mm
forward or back of the match-stick on the table determined
disruptions to thousands of other human lives - including many
deaths.
In the absence of true democracy, someone had to make the decisions,
I suppose.
'I have seen them, the death-bringers.'
You wonder how many get the references.
The Church of St Thomas The Martyr, Saturday, 22 January 2005.
Connexions.
Anglo-catholic verse-drama and marxist-lennist musical reviews.
It is odd how things connect up.
There are many kinds of jesuits, one way or another.
But who decides the dates? I wonder.
Today, 40th anniversary of Churhill's death.
One up for the establishment for getting that on the editorial lists.
Today, some 'experts' concluded was the most depressing day of the
year in much of the northern hemisphere. Some sense to
that - seasonally affected disorders ... weekend-over-...-Monday-
morning-feelings ... weakening of new year resolutions ...
and likely to be [as it is in my neck of the woods] cold, wet,
grey ...
The power of suggestion.
Other people's schemes.
You accept the democratic reality of the modern world yourself.
You find that others do not - and take advantage of your acceptance
of the democratic reality to empower themselves at your
expense.
You find yourself caught up in other people's schemes.
Matchstick motions.
Give them a mm ... they will take ...
Some truth in all faith systems though.
But no faith system is entirely true though.
Dishonesty/conceit of all/most/many faith systems in some core
assumption that the particular supported faith system is 'the
one true way'.
Reality denail in that - to say nothing of the self-elevations of
those who regard themselves as the great truth-knowers of
the 'one true way' ...
Always other ways ... always alternatives ...
Truth is all-in-all ...
God is just everything ...
[Marginal 'glosses'... NB, apparent ambiguity of 'just' ...  a
reductive meaning 'merely', 'only', etc ... an expansive
_expression of an ideal [e.g. suggestive of form of 'justice'
etc]   ...]
Big and Little.
Thinking of a key, each confirms a prison.
Pity that Alison choses to imprison herself in the Westminster
village.
Fat slag is now a willing participant in the mad reactionary war
against the 'migrants' - though perhaps only doing her job
like a good little nazi.
Sensible to know your limits though.
Kitty's silly sing-song-for-the-day: Dante, Inferno, 26.
One of its theme's is 'understanding limits'.  
Also an inspiration for Tennyson's Ulysses, by the way - the one poem
she could quote from memory, incompletely, as it
happened.
Refusals to accept limits.
It is probably fair to say that I am more of an extremist than she
is, but also probably fair to say that I learned limitless
extremism from her.
You 'have' to blame someone, don't you?
And I was her favourite scape-goat for a while.
Time passes. People change.
Perhaps May Baby sensed something then which I did not quite get at
that time - viz that it really does not make any
difference who you are partnered too, because love is to be found in
all, perhaps.
Probably her thinking-feeling was not so 'elevated' though.
Just wanted something to fill the void like so many other, perhaps.
And any old prick will do for a slut.
Cat's got her tongue, but choses not to use it.
The long and the short of it.
The neverending road. 
Oh yes, I must never forget, the 'end-timers' dislike the idea of
endlessness - which makes them potentially very dangerous,
because they might be inclined to force 'conclusions'.
Meanwhile.
Random seeming walks.
Rambles really.
Beckenham High Street.
Been there.
Though I chose not to stay on probation - collected my credit/debt
date-stamp instead.
'All the lonely people, where do they all come from?'
Well, they don't spontaneously appear in an isolated state.
They are separated from networks of love by circumstances ... or
other people's bad faith ...
Snapshots.
Soundtracks.
Leo he say: '... and I was just a boy, giving it all away ... day by
day ...'
Something like that.
So easy for an over-filled mind to forget things.
Problem of cultural density.
So there I was, trying to remember my personal identification number
so I could withdraw some money from my card account -
assuming there was some money there, wherever 'there' might be in
electronic money exchange systems.
The insubstantial pageant of modern finance.
Most not forget to visit the citizens' advice bureau soon to start
personal bankruptcy proceedings.
No big deal. Just another statistic.
What was it now?
The year that one ditched me followed by two little ducks, quack
quack quack ...
After Aristophanes, The Birds.
Characters include Hopefulness and Trustfulness, translated and
transliterated.
Back to the future.
Old Comedy for New Times.
Ho ho ho.
Not forgetting more preludes and fugues.
Humpy Dumpy was resting in pieces ...
Measuring out his dazed days in a Prufrock like manner in coffee cups
and cigarette stubs.
Anything can be used as a time-unit - pace the snooty critic who
suggested that Dylan
Thomas had over-stretched the limits of the possible by
suggesting 'grief' as a possible time-unit [as in 'a grief ago',
etc].
A missed opportunity ago ...
So many ...
Always further chances though ...
Ms Unspellable has yet to turn up for that cup of coffee yet ...
'... and I was just a boy ... giving it all away ...'
First two numbers of one of my PINs ... last two numbers of the year
the print workers strike at Wapping began ...
An event that brought a lot of cultural, social and economic changes
in fact.
They come ... they go ...
Out with the old, in with the new.
And as for 'principles' ... the system consumes them for its own
amusement ...
There is many a one who said they would never work for Murdoch
because of Wapping corruption of decent cultural values ...
and many of those ones later did ...
Clickety click ... who give a fuck for two ducks? ...
They are only fucking quackers anyway ...
Catch 22 - ... the system will devour you one way or another ...
'And what would happen if everyone thought your way?'
'Then I would be made to think otherwise'.
Essence of moral corruption = 'everyone else does it, so ...'
The mass media tart, she claimed your heart, while ...
Just playful flirting, not meaningful hurting ...
And they write me off anyway.
I was a bit premature in ejaculating the Burns ditty her way, though,
it has to be admitted, because his day is the 25th of
January, if I am not mistaken, and that was Burns's birthday, not his
deathday, as it happened.
And so ... it was only 40 years ago that Churchill died, was it?
I was surprized to learn that, because I thought it was earlier.
I did not know that I was alive at the same time that he was - though
our paths did not cross directly, because he did not
visit my neck of the woods much, nor I his, and at the time we were
still alive together I was just crawling and even
perhapsn toddling about in a gradually expanding subjective world,
while he was, I imagine, tottering about in a gradually
shrinking subjective world of his own [how powerful were
his 'matchstick motions' then? I wonder ...whirlygig of time brings
in its revenges ... etc ...].
Anyway ... without a sense of shared ongoing ['transcendental'
even] 'common world', it is only meaningless solipsism ...


To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>  Add to Address Book
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 16:15:04 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] [We]b log
   
[We]b log
Turn and turn again, Dick Twittyturn.
Dick kept turning back to politics and then away from it and then
back again and ...
... from the perspective of the wider scheme of things, politics
could seem too small-scale - and even rather trivial.
Particularly off-putting was the way political discourse tended to
shrink to [actually completely 'unwordly' - for all the claims
of 'realism' by the politicals] 'terrible
simples': ... 'them' ... 'us' ... etc ...
And there seemed no point in attempting to do politics within messed-
up/corrupted systems anyway.
[Ref. Plato, Letter 7]
Meanwhile, 'higher metaphysics' could seem so much more significant
than 'base politics' somehow.
Similarly, 'lyric-poetry' perhaps - though many would dismiss it as
froth of little consequence.
And [pace the 'Bookville' people who have been bugging me recently]
thinking is actually a form of activity - not an inactivity.
[In other words, 'thinking' and 'doing' are not in actuality
seperable.]
And, as a matter of fact, 'metaphysicians', along with other bigger-
scale thinkers, including deeply/widely thinking-feeling writer-
artists, actually can change minds - and therefore social realities -
in ways that are more truly 'revolutionary' than those of
practical/activist politicians.
But then ...
... it has to be admitted that the 'polis' is where we live on the
human scale - and that political wrangling towards fresh
agreements/arrangements is what we do, mostly, on the human scale, in
many/most areas of our lives.
And, in any case, when we are outside of stabilizing 'political'
[widest sense] networks, we are nothing much really - and human life
is chaotic, solitary, brutal, nasty and short.
[Ref. Aristotle. Hobbes. Etc]
But then ...
... when you engage in political activity, you can never be sure
whose interests you are acting in/for.
...
In the last remotely friendly conversation Dick had with his little
kitty Catty Wailer, she was howling aloud about some of the gross
social injustices she had witnessed in the everyday world during
her 'street level' activity.
And she was trying, indirectly, to direct him back towards a non-
'hypothetical' active life in politics.
It seemed that - having gained more personal experience of the
practical difficulties of 'street level' society - she had gained
more understanding of how - when the systems are messed-up/corrupted -
however 'good' the beings at 'street level' might be, their efforts
to change things for the better are mostly wasted - at best being
just 'amelioratives'; at worst in some/many ways unwittingly helping
to sustain the messed-up/corrupted systems.
'Therefore' - she mewsed around-and-aboutly - real 'higher level'
political changes to 'systems' seemed to be required to make
significant improvements at 'street level' more possible.
The cat then purred out some flattery to Dick - even suggesting that
he did have some major talents that might be used to help bring about
significant changes in political direction on a wider scale.
But then - as ever - flattery soon turned to criticism: ... how
frustratingly indolent Dick could seem - as if he was 'resigned' -
and how frustratingly unwilling Dick seemed to be to use
those 'talents' of his that might have wide-spreading beneficial
effects.
As if in defence of himself, Dick pointed out that 'timing' is vital
in politics - and when the times were/are 'out-of-joint',
his 'talents' were perhaps better used in other ways.
And, meanwhile, while, for a long while, he seemed to spend long time-
units apparently inactive - as if lost in aimless 'hypothetical
contemplation' - he was, in fact, very 'active' in word and in deed,
in many ways.
p.s.
Among the places 'boundless' Ulysses visited during his restless
questing wanderings was the deeper labyrinths of the Home Secretary's
mind [Ulysses could sneak in there easily enough - because, as
comments he had made while Education Secretary clearly indicated, the
Home Secretary was ignorantly dismissive of - and therefore oblvious
to - the 'classics'].
And what a dark and oppressive and dangerously paranoid realm it
seemed to be - with too many too terribly simple 'denied reality'
personal 'imagos' being kept under 'in-house' arrest [one way or
another].
It was not a pretty place, to put it mildly - nor one that suggested
a happy 'state of affairs'.
This was somewhat troubling to myriad-minded Odysseus, because the
mind of the Home Secretary could fairly rightly be regarded as
representative of the 'mind of the state' - given that much of said
state's murkier stuff flowed into it.
Ulysses further wondered wanderingly: what had 'they' poured into the
Home Secretary's mind - to mix and blend with his more personal murky
understuff - to cultivate ... such paranoid publically over-
stated 'threats' to national security ... ? ...
p.p.s.
There is the reality.
There is the representation of reality.
And the two never exactly match up.
Even an accurate representation is a mere approximation to reality.
Sometimes the gulf between the reality and representaion is huge.
What I am hearing these days from the mouth of the Home Secretary in
the form of representations of the scale of the 'terrorist threats'
to the British state seem far removed from the real 'terrorist
threats' to the British state.
He's 'crying wolf', in other words.
Someone was telling 'whoppers' to the British people, in other words.
['Of course', I, and those like me - who point out that the 'terror
threat' is not as great as the 'power elite' pretend it is (mostly to
preserve - and even enhance - their own power) - represent 'Trojan
Horses' - and even ignorant hom. sec. Charles C. will know enough
classics to get that classical allusion.
{What kind of fool am I to spin against myself? - one who is wise
enough to play the fool perhaps, and/or one who has some
understanding of the way escalating paranoia works.}
Anyway ... you can scare yourselves into greater paranoid states if
you like ... and lose touch with fellow feeling and common humanity
the process ...]
p.p.p.s.
States that fail to recognize - or otherwise 'waste' - citizens'
talents, waste themselves.

To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>  Add to Address Book
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 16:40:20 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] Re: [We]b log
   
Nasty Stuff? ...
or ... Let Us Play Truth and Illusion ...
or ... Playing The Person Not The Policy ...
or ... The Arrogant Elitists Call Themselves 'democrats' But Have
Nothing But Contempt For The Broad Mass of Humanity, really ...
or ... just a bit of sketchy puerile dross ...
Migrant-child Boy David [aka 'honorable' MP for South Shields,
aka 'arrogant elitist', aka an occasional visitor to the town
he 'represents', aka an 'alien presence' ...] told Goliath
[aka 'democratic popular will' properly understood] that he was
popping down to the Whiteleas Social Club for a 'pie and a pint'.
The boy David was not a regular visitor to those parts - though he
pretended to be, and had many fake photo-opportunity pictures
to 'prove it' - and did not quite understand the customs of the
locals.
He was surprized to find that babies were not raffled at the social
club - life in the northern parts being 'cheap' to his way of
thinking.
So ... finding he could not win a baby at the northern social club
raffle, he went to visit his bossom pals in his soul-land of
America ... and bought one at a baby-farm instead ...
This presented certain technical problems ... including that he was
supposed to be a leading light in a government that was being 'tough'
on immigration ... but a few dollars/quids spread around here and
there ... and a few strings pulled ... got Baby Baba through the
immigration controls with little difficulty ...
... and into the homeland that David's daddy had himself emigrated to
in ... as had David's wife, in fact ... David brought Baba ...
... not to live in the town he 'represented' ... that was not good
enough for David or American wifie or Baba ....
... and not to be educated at the schools David pretended were the
best possible for other people's children - they were not good enough
for David or American wifie or Baba ...
...
Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... David's 'soul-mate' George was
plotting terrible terrors ...
... or a game called 'Spot the Terrorist' - he failed to look in the
mirror ... so lost ...
Meanwhile ... David's other power-elite buddies ... like Mickey
[aided and abetted by little Ali.] were playing a nasty little game
called 'purge the migrant' ... Mickey's dadda escaped the purge, so
Mickey himself was let in too ... ditto David's dadda ... ditto
David's wifie ... ditto David's Baba ...
... truth and illusion boys and girls ... do you know the difference
any more ... ? ... 

To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>  Add to Address Book
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 17:07:38 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] Re: [We]b log
   
Sketchy ... fragmentary ... notes on Holocaust Memorial Day ... and
Other Memorial Days ...
...
... for some/many of us ... all days are 'memorial days' ...
memorable one way or another ...
... and all 'crimes against humanity' are 'crimes against
humantiy' ...
...
... there are not 'special' classes/types of 'victims' ... 'just'
human beings ...
...
... it was not a 'worse' crime because it was done against Jewish
human beings ... [sometimes that seems to be the suggestion]
...
Between actuality [= the past = memory] ... and possibility [= the
future = imagination] ... the fleeting instant of 'the present' ...
which is 'going' as we are experiencing it ... and usually barely
experienced ...
...
... for some/many of us, the entire second world war was
a 'holocaust' ... of which the slaughter of the Jewish people were a
part ...
...
... the part of the 'holocaust' that was the slaughter of the Jewish 
has been used to deny realities about other parts of
that 'holocaust' ...
... there were no entirely 'good guys' in that 'holocaust'
... nor no entirely 'bad guys' ...
... no entirely clear-cut 'them'='good'/'we'='bad' distinctions can
be made ...
... the slaughter of the Jewish people part of the general second
world war 'holocaust' was a terrible crime against humanity ... but
so were all the other parts ...
... no nation or ethnic grouping can rightly claim 'special' victim
status ...
... no nation or ethnic grouping can rightly claim 'special' hero
status ...
...
... no one alive at that time had an entirely 'good war', in fact ...
... many people ... of all nations and cultural and ethnic groups ...
did have a truly 'bad' war ...
 
To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>  Add to Address Book
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 14:44:31 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] 31.01.05
   
I don't care how they gloss it ... the 'blood price' of the elections
was too high ... and ... when British planes crash between American
air bases I get suspcious ... and ... in any case, 'democracy' cannot
be imposed on people ... they have to creat it themselves ...
Meanwhile ... meantimes ...
'... Mindgames ... keep on playing those mind games ... lifting the
veil ...'
I do wish they understood their own schemes as much as they pretend
they do ...
Psyche-ing them out of their ignorance and 'denial' ...
Blair [no first name terms for him] 'confessed' on t.v. last weekend
to a teenage 'crush' on Grace Kelly [who looks nothing like Cherie,
by the way, one can't help noting ... more like 'Anji'
perhaps ...] ...
Tad retro that ...
The things that 'actors' hide though...
Hitch. observed that the 'thing' about Grace and his other 'homely
nordic ice maidens' was the 'illusion' of suppressed sexuality ...
Anyway, that is by the by, and a distraction, because the association
I am heading towards has as a reference point another Kelly...
Blair is surely distanced from 'grace' these days for reasons of his
own 'bad faith', including his contributions to the 'departure' of
that other Kelly ...
'The play's the thing ... to capture the conscience of the king ...'
... something 'rotten in the state' ... led to that 'mysterious'
death ...
And the full circ's. of David Kelly's death are just not going to
disappear in webs of spin and 'denial' ...
... the truth will be 'outed' eventually, and the 'guilty' will be
properly identified ...
But O' how easy it should be fucking 'out-kelly' the shallow-minded
Blair ...
Impossible do to it directly though, present power relations being
what they are ...
So ...
'... by indirections find directions out ...'
Refence point Number One ... Kelly's eye ... ho ho ho ...
Another one in the eye ...
And before one ... zero ... and O is not nothing though, but a
signifier of something ...
Something in O'Kelly's eye ...
'... like a scurvy politician who seems to see ...'
She pretended to understand more than she did, and
reached 'unnatural' conclusions.
The association of ideas.
Sterne.
Tristram Shandy.
'Pray my dear husband have you not forgotten to wind up the clock?'
It should not be forgotten that women can be better at spinning
distractions - and 'avoidances' - than men.
Who knows why anyone of good faith would want to use such 'tactics',
but nevertheless ...
The association of ideas.
So, while sitting in the cafe room with the large-paned windows
through which there was an excellent expansive view of the bridge, I
said in passing to Sean that I was a big liker of Sterne, which was
not quite true, because I had never found the time up to then to read
him completely, if it were actually possible to read
Sterne 'completely', his whole theme being,
as 'twere, 'incompleteness', and at that moment or one shortly before
or after, young Gavin, who had great expectations, pipped in that,
although he was behind in his English Literature course work, he
nevertheless had a pressing urge to do fresh modern translations of
the ancient classics, whether Greek or Latin was not specified, or
else I am forgetting which, and Sean agreed that that was an
agreeable desire, while I, who had little Latin and no great Greek,
disagreed silently, not having the words to articulate my thoughts at
that moment, at which point witch O'Kelly cackled out some catty
laughter, suggesting all of us were merely wasting our time, one way
or another, and, as she later explained she herself had a great
desire then and later to leave the 'hypothetical life' behind and do
something more 'active', which was laughable in other ways, including
that subjectively/relatively speaking she was quite fat and in other
ways 'unfit' and so more physically suited to the contemplative than
the active life, as I had actually been thinking earlier, but not
without affection, when watching her puff her way from distant to
near while she was walking towards me and the others across the
bridge on the way to the room where we all now sat apparently idling,
but were not in fact, and I seemed to sense something else then that,
although dismissable as merely 'hypothetical', and although it almost
escapes my mind now, nevertheless still seems significant, so ...