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From the Old/New Bloggers Blog of [Pseudo-Sub-] Literary Anecdotes [similarities to The New Oxford Book Of Literary Anecdotes/Allusions are almost entirely unintended]: Might I suggest "Ravings of a Madman?" as a title?' she wondered. Dame Catherine Cookson began her voyage [from laundry girl in a workhouse] to dame-hood in South Shields Public Library, where she came across a volume of Lord Chesterfield's 'Letters To His Son' [1837]. Although he was originally addressing another, Lord Chesterfield seemed to speak directly to the then unenobled - and otherwise 'unlettered' - Ms C. 'If you improve and grow learned everyone will be fond of you and desirous of your company,' he 'said' to her. She later recalled: 'I would fall asleep reading the letters and awake round three o'clock in the morning my mind deep in the fascination of this new world, where people conversed , not just talked. Where the brilliance of words made your heart beat faster.' May 2003. Dear C. Thank you for the lovely card you sent to me around the time of my last birthday. [It actually arrived two days late - on my father's birthday - I was due on his birthday, but arrived two days early, presumably to establish my individuality from the start.] The card was a nice gesture, which meant a lot to me. Some of the things you said in it were controversial enough to justify a reply. You said that you have moved on [but haven't we all?!] and that you could not be my 'therapist, lover or true friend'. In writing that, C., I think that perhaps you were being somewhat presumptuous - and/or assuming presumptuousness on my part. … 'therapist' … well … I have not seen your CV for a long-time, and so I am not sure that you are actually qualified to work with me - and, as you will well know, it takes some time for both parties to assess whether any therapist-client relationship can work … 'lover' … well … time passes, people change … and rates of time-travel vary … To be frank, I have little clear idea what the late-30-something [now early-40-something!] C. is like - nor can you have a clear idea what the [more or less] equivalent Philip is like … 'friend' … well … your ruling out of friendship was a great shame, I think, because I believe friendship of some sort is always possible between more or less any two people. I note that you add 'true', which does resonate a bit. You will have your own perspectives, but from my perspective, it does seem fair to say that there was a time, after we split as couple, when you were nominally my friend, but not perhaps an entirely 'true' one - I do feel that you empowered yourself at my expense, to some extent - though there were faults on both sides, of course, as there always are. You said that what you really wanted to be in relation to me in future was a reader of my books - which I still haven't written, and possible never will. Remember what I can be like, C., when I say that I might not write those books just to spite you! More seriously [?], there are just too many B-grade [ and worse] books in circulation already, and I am not much inclined to add to the clutter of the second rate. I would not attempt to publish until I was sure enough in my own mind that I had achieved something better than average - and that I was not just publishing for reasons of 'vanity' one way or another. Matters of quality count for a lot in my idea of 'books' - and should, I believe, count more widely in this age of excess quantity [when humanity is being reduced in/by/to 'numbers games' - in many senses]. Anyway, all that said, if you do want to read a sort of 'work in progress', try popping into the web-site http://groups.yahoo.com/group/heraclitussociety/. It is a sort of open notebook where I have been dumping raw crap for the past year or so, and probably will continue to do so for a few more months - before moving on … [Your suggestion 'Ravings of a Madman?' is perhaps not a bad title for the fragments I have put on that website - I liked the question mark anyway. Though my own working title is 'Fragments in Vulgar Script' - which is a paraphrase of Petrarch, by the way.] To tell you the truth, C., I am not really sure what a book is these days, anyway. Our culture has become so spread-all-over-the-place, and the old stable forms are breaking up, if you get what I mean. [By the way, if you have become a pro-therapist, then my guess is that you aren't going to be short of clients in the coming years - there are growing numbers of 'scattered' and confused people about.] And then I have the idea - picked up from Dante, Shakespeare, etc - that the entire world - universe even - is a sort of book, or mystery play [or maybe B-movie!] to which we all contribute a few significant actions and lines … here and there … Among the 'books' on my shelves, one of my favourites is the collection of letters you sent me in the mid-80s. You were an excellent spontaneous letter writer, C., and I still dip into those letters irregularly for illumination [rather than for reasons of nostalgia - to which I am not actually much given]. When I have written to you over the past couple of years, it was, in part, with a view to prising out more letters from you. Although there are hordes of wordsters 'out there', very good correspondents are actually quite hard to find. As it happens I have recently found a few. You might remember one, M., a Scottish woman who sat beside me at the editorial training centre in Newcastle. She remembers you. M. was one of several 'alternative possibilities' I met when I was seeing you. I stayed loyal to you - and hence effectively rejected her - because I loved you and because I valued faithfulness very highly - and still do. [While you seemed to dismiss my genuine, decent, faithfulness as 'mere dependency' - suggesting on more than one occasion that I was just 'dull and dutiful', and even putting it down to a 'low sex drive' {you did tend to speak your mind! - in ways that were both stimulating and hurtful - and I will speak mine now: maybe you had difficulty believing that someone loved you and wanted to remain faithful to you.} Anyway, M. went off to A. after Newcastle, and we continued to exchange the occasional letter - which on the terms of our relationship was almost an act of unfaithfulness by me, especially when you regularly complained that I did not write to you enough. M. grew up to be quite a big time international freelance journalist, who is a perceptive, complex and insightful worldly observer. Actually she works for the O. occasionally, and knows L. vaguely - both of us felt for her when we read her recent piece on her lost child. I hope the recent expected birthing event went well. Please pass on my regards and best wishes L. - if you would like to. [Emotions are never sweetly - or otherwise - clear-cut, though, are they? - both M. and I are childless, and felt some jealousy when we looked at the picture of L. with her healthy first son.] It is interesting to discover how others perceive you, even remotely and after a long time. M. tells me that she saw you as very 'possessive' of me and thought you did not like me mixing with other women - though she admits tinges of envy might have influenced her perceptions. She suggests, quite perceptively, I think that this apparent 'possessiveness' might have suited me much of the time, because if freed me from having to get closely involved with other people. As for you and me together, she saw us as a somewhat aloof, 'superior' and 'knowing' couple, rather more adult seeming than most contemporary couples she remembers from that time And she told me that we seemed to regard her and contemporaries as 'juveniles' - that is how she felt anyway when in proximity to us. This quite surprized me when I first heard it, but reflecting on it, I had to agree with her. You and I were in many respects a pair of adolescent clowns, C., but we actually did have quite highly mature levels of shared insights for people of our ages [then]. And - rightly or not - we did regard ourselves as more 'advanced' in some ways than others of our age. I think it comes down to that last year in Durham, when we were more or less 24-hour-a-day constant companions, and did not mix much with others. We had blended quite a lot mentally - if not physically [we never quite got that right, did we?!]- and had gotten to know each other's mental processes in ways that were quite unusual for early-20-somethings, I suspect. At the time M. knew us, we were almost in some ways more like a somewhat stale middle-aged couple rather than a young pairing, don't you think C.? [Incidentally, when I have lacked a really top class therapist in recent years I have found that I can detach off from the rest of my consciousness a sort of combination of the best bits of you and me, and I have found this imaginary {I am not so schizoid as to think 'it' real!} combination an excellent 'therapist'. Sometimes I imagine that a grander, more whole, version of this 'therapist' is what we might have become … {ah! … if only …} … had we not been, individually and together, such a pair of wreckers - but that his just a passing thought. I have actually gained some quite good real-world therapeutic support over the last couple of years. But there are always gaps in one's support networks, don't you think C.?] Moving on … Briefly, this is my recent history: I worked in London for a couple of news agencies until 1991, when I had the first of a series of breakdowns [during the first Gulf War, incidentally, which appalled me because it was so clinical and 'unreal' - the second seemed to me even more ghastly because of all the media spinning gimmicks, etc]. I retreated back to South Shields, and spent the 90s effectively as a student again - but without gaining much more in the way of formal qualifications. I then had 3 or 4 massive breakdowns in some very distressing circumstances in 2000 ['millennium madness'?!], ending up in a mental hospital intensive care unit [no sharp objects, 24-hour observation] at the end of that year - which was almost literally 'the void'. Since then I have made gradual but slow progress, helped by group therapy, a very good community psychiatric nurse, and the odd good psychiatrist [though most of the NHS shrinks I have encountered have not impressed me much.]. For the last year or so I have been working in a community centre - care in the community in the best sense of a mutual aid of supporting others while getting support oneself. I have actually found informal community therapy has worked better for me than more formal professional kinds. [And I have been more or less left to devise my own care programme recently, since my nurse 'disappeared' due to work-related stress - so many examples of that in the public service, don't you find C.? Even when the people are good, committed and well-motivated, the systems are shitty - and so many people end up stressed out or just going through the motions.] Otherwise, I am [in my more grandiose moments!] helping to redefine socialism from the bottom up for the 21st century - well someone has to do it! … and making other small contributions to the 'book of love' that is - or might be - the grand scheme of things … Finally, a few more words on friendship. I remember you very fondly [mostly] and although I have some residual bitterness towards you [and many residual regrets and guilts as regards my own behaviour towards you] I will always regard you as an essentially very good and delightful person. And while I might be a 'raving madman', I am a [mostly] harmless and considerate one. I would be very interested to hear your news on a no complications basis. [It does not seem to occur to some people that they can establish boundaries and / or push away unwanted attention simply by giving factual details - 'I am married with kids and don't want my family disturbed' … or whatever.] Bits of you will always be part of me in some ways, and I will always regard you as a true enough friend, even if you no longer acknowledge my existence. I do think it would be a shame if we never communicated again. Anyway, C., I hope have a happy 40th birthday, which is, I believe, on May 13th. Take care. Philip. p.s. I long carried the crazy [?] notion that I 'owed' you a night in the police cells after an arrest in embarrassing circumstances for a minor public order offence. Well … I now have two on my record to spoil my CV with …I won't bore you with the details … but .. Quits eh?! [We were indeed a pair of adolescent clownish melodramatists in some respected, but in imagination, at least, I can transform the younger you and me into performance philosophers - philosophical clown prince and princess, if not quite king and queen. And we sometimes set up interesting little real-world pseudo-parables. One night we had a drunken row in Durham market place - over you dancing with some gay guy at Klute night club [My incredible shrinkers seemed to get lost in labyrinths of psychobabble when I tried to tell them this story!]. Things degenerated into a vaguely physical tussle, and you ended up on the ground at one point - did you fall? did you jump? did I push you? or did we get our combined timings 'right'? [or should that be 'wrong'?] {Questions with more general resonance, perhaps}. We separated, and you wandered off drunk, lonely, confused, and ended up at the Samaritans building. The Samaritans [for whom your father worked, as I recall] turned you away on the grounds that they only gave a telephone-to-telephone services - so much for person to person human caring, eh?. You lay down in the gutter outside the Samaritans building and stared up at the stars [so you later told me]. The Samaritans apparently phoned the police to 'take care' of you, and -such unworldly preoccupations as star-gazing when drunk and depressed seemingly being a public order offence, according to Durham constabulary at that time - the cops turned up and arrested you. Meanwhile, those same cops were failing to prevent me from committing a more serious seeming offence a hundred yards or so away - breaking and entry. Missing you just a few minutes after we had parted, I had gone off in search of you, and failed to find you. I went to your flat in Western Hill [or was it The Avenue at that time? - I am not quite sure]. You weren't in, so I climbed over the wall and forced the window of your room. I waited a long time [ who knows how long at this distance?], but you did not return - and I went back to my own place in Gilesgate, assuming bitterly [and of course wrongly] that you'd gone off with the gay guy you had been dancing with [whose name I can't even remember] Perhaps both of us spent sobering nights in cells one way or another that night. {And matter of factly, I do seem to have spent a lot of my life in 'prisons' of one sort or another, and I don't think I am alone in that respect. In my case, it has just turned out that way … no one is to blame really … but I don't recall making the decision to imprison myself …}] p.p.s Please find enclosed some bits and pieces for you birthday - it is mostly trivial juvenile chaff [well I am not 40 until July - and anyway I have papers to prove I am somewhat diminished in my adult responsibilities] so don't take it too seriously - though there is maybe the odd serious point in it. Hope you have/had - depending on when you get this - a good birthday. Take care - from one ageing, but still youngish, true enough friend. … to another … From: "M..." <m...@...>  To: "'Phil Talbot'" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>  Subject: RE:  Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 22:26:24 +0100 So how did you do in the local elections Philip? You seem to have hedged your bets partywise....surely one of your candidates came through? Sorry taken so long to reply but every day is a slog at the moment. Final exams start next Friday and I still have a mountain of work to get through. I did take yesterday off however to tottle down to Brighton. The weather was fantastic and any little trip just now feels like escape from prison. Already decided no PhD for me after this. If I can't get onto a vocational training scheme (educational or clinical), I just haven't the stamina or inclination to push on another three years. Fingers crossed something suitable comes up.... Let me know how the elections were for you... M.x  -----Original Message----- From: Phil Talbot [mailto:philtal_uk@yahoo.com]  Sent: 18 April 2006 17:03 To: m...@... Subject:  It's a while since I wrote to you, M., and I am just wondering how you are. Are you due to take your degree finals soon? - if so, good luck! I was laid low with 'nice' mix of flu [non-avian!] and depression for most of Jan-Feb-Mar. Now perking a bit in the spring sunshine. When not lying flat on my back, I am spending much of my active time at the moment 'tarting' myself politically in the local elections - i.e. actingas an agent for a Lib-Dem candidate in one Shields ward, while also actively supporting a Green candidate in another, and a Respect candidate up in Newcastle. [Supporting person not party in each case, actually, lest I be thought a man without loyalty/principles!]. Otherwise, having finally saved up the court costs, I am preparing for bankruptcy ... and looking forward hopefully to a pleasant summer of impoverished irresponsibility ... Best Wishes, Philip. p.s. Have you been up to visit your family in F. recently M.? [If so, I do hope you washed your hands after wrestling with the local swans (which I am led tobelieve - by totally unreliable news reports - is a popular pastime up there)!] Date: Sun, 7 May 2006 20:17:42 +0100 (BST) From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Subject: RE: To: "M..." <m...@...>  They all lost M.! - though at least saved their election deposits, which is an improvement on last year, when the independent anti-war candidate I was agent for lost his. [Is that 'spin' or 'emphasising the positive'?!] Meanwhile I was actually made bankrupt on 28 April 2006 [a date I will have to write on many a form for the rest of my life, I guess], which is something of a relief actually. Unless I am suspected of fraud, I should be freed from bankruptcy in about a year. Anyway, hope exams go well for you. Keep in touch when you've time. Philip >  > Yahoo! Photos - NEW, now offering a quality print > service from just 7p a > photo http://uk.photos.yahoo.com > Date: Sun, 7 May 2006 20:19:43 +0100 (BST) From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Subject: Post-election snippets To: A...@... Former Minister for Communities and Local Government now has 3 anti-Labour Independents as his local councillors in his 'home' Westoe ward of South Shields. My friends in South Tyneside Friends of Earth say present Minister for Environment is suspected of being no real friend of the Earth. When former Communities and Local Government minister was observed at count watching his Labour local government candidate lose in his 'home' ward, observers [mostly unmalicious actually] noted he was a strange rather sickly colour - more medically informed people than me present suggested possibility of liver and/or kidney problems. Me-myself-I was tarting about politically in local elections - agenting a Lib-Dem, while also actively supporting a Green and a Respect [all lost! - but at least saved deposits]. I was made bankrupt last week too, as an added bonus! - so there goes my mainstream political career into the gutter! Hope you are well, P.T. p.s. A... moves from CPC to DPE - upward motion? or side-ways shuffle? > Send instant messages to your online friends  > http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com  From: "A..." <A...@...> To: "'Phil Talbot'" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Subject: RE: Post-election snippets Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 19:08:08 +0100  Thanks for this news. All respect to you for involvement in local elections. I am very pro people who buck the trend of national apathy to get involved. And saving deposits ain't bad so well done. Will keep close eye on DM. I am well, thanks for asking. And yes new title was promotion, which was mildly cheering at the time. Sorry re bankruptcy - but perhaps (she said hopefully) it was something you wanted that eased the burden of cash difficulties? I gather from others that this can be the bonus. Hope you are well also. Best wishes A...  > Visit our websites: '...' The NMA: Opening Up Newspapers http://www.nmauk.co.uk Any views or opinions are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of ... Newspapers. The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material.If you are not the intended recipient of this message please do not read ,copy, use or disclose this communication and notify the sender immediately. It should be noted that any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. E-mail communications may be monitored. Date: Sun, 14 May 2006 19:01:08 +0100 (BST) From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Subject: RE: Post-election snippets To: "A..." <A...@...> Ta A. re 'apathy' - Can I therefore take it as Red that you are thinking of switching to the 'other side', i.e. becoming an active politico, rather than a 'mere observer' of that endangered-seeming species?! - it is not a bad time to make such a move, given DC is presently picking up 'talent' for his 'A.List'! [Aspirant 'turn-coats' are well advized to avoid Blue Party B.List, though, because they can get savaged by the dyed-in-the-wool dames and dinosaurs out in the sticks. Poor Tory guy parachuted into Jarrow last year, eg, was 'genuinely decent and nice bloke', according to communist friend of mine who was also standing there. Others, more unkindly, described him as 'token black'- yet others were heard to say even worse things about him. Jarrow Blues certainly did not seem to take to their candidate much - some saying publically that what they really wanted was a 'local candidate' (and there was no racism intended by that, of course). Usually the practice with the Tory no-hoper in Jarrow is for parachuted-in candidate to be offered hospitality by locals for the election duration. But strangely none could find a spare room for him - and there seemed to be no decent rooms available in local inns either. So he ended up staying at the YMCA - and being left to canvass the streets of Jarrow almost entirely on his own. Tory vote crumbled too, oddly enough - with many True Blue Little-Englanders-Upon-Tyne seemingly preferring UKIP-er to 'one of their own'. (Needless to say, I remain unconvinced that Blues are genuinely widening their colour-range! - or otherwise 'evolving'.)] re 'bankruptcy' - Yes, it was mostly a welcome relief from escalating debt, but social conventions dictate that one has to present it to the world as a terrible thing, and suggest that one is thoroughly ashamed of one's irresponsibility, etc ... P. [red-faced, blue-eyed, yellow-jaundiced, green-tinged, black-economied] p.s. - for sake of 'balance' - Northern parochialism is, of course, not confined to Right-Wingers ... e.g. This from an unreported speech at a public meeting by a present Red MP and former prominent left-wing union official: 'Those bastards [i.e. the Blairites] came up here, stole our party from us and are destroying our local culture.' Fri, 12 May 2006 15:19:05 +0100 (BST)  From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com  --- In heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com, Phil Talbot <philtal_uk@...> wrote: > > ... mind the gaps ... when you leave a void ... the > spammers and junk-merchants will fill it with any old > crap ... >  > --- In heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com, > "nuala-alexander458@" <nuala-alexander458@> > wrote: > > > > Hows everyone doin? Hope u all are doing as good as > me. Just found this great thing when i was > checking around the other day. Have a look > http://www.youknowureallywantto.info/deld > > >  > >  > Unpicking and reknitting patterns, and ...  [After Goethe]  Uncertain shapes, visitors from the past, with whom I moved long ago (so long), seeming like hazy fleeing visions, now, at last, in strange ways, I can move with you again - but must I also let you go? Out of the mist and murk you rise, swirling dancers, breaking up, coming together, breaking up again, as is conjured by magic (though it may be only be memory and technology, in truth) - lost youths almost recreated. You bring back lost time (some happy, some sad, mostly mixed), repeating journeys through life's labyrinthine mazes. Old friends reunite, old griefs revive, old loves reform, then break up once more. It is as if faded legends are being replayed and reconstructed for new times. Dear past companions (and the many more walk-on faces), cut from my life by fate or mutual indifference (or just the way things turned out), you cannot hear my present dissonant music. Most of you who listened quite closely to my earlier off-key singing are far off now - and your answering echoes have long been silent. Now my babbling is heard by who knows whom? Name-listed, but to me mostly anonymous throngs replace known people scattered to the world's ends (or merely to other town and cities). Like all, I know many and know much, but know few and know next to nothing - the long unstructured learning that is 'just' living brings wide fellow-feeling and understanding … and much confusion. Vanished and never-to-be worlds seem real to me today, while all that I now inhabit and possess seems far away … carry on the dancing on and on … From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Date: Sat Nov 5, 2005 2:39 am Subject: Revized Re-edit 1a 04_11_2005 To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com  [Undated - and more or less out of any time-and-place context.] This is mostly superficial rubbish, but there is the odd moment or two worth preserving, for the time being, for future [re-]consideration. From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 14:44:23 -0000 Subject: [tempestuous] (unknown)  ... our revels are soon enough easily ended ... these shallow small-minded self-serving actors, as I foretold you ... are easily de-constructed ... and scattered into thin air ...  ... only serious stuff from now on then? ... hardly! ... because that is not my style! ...  xxxx murked the spat ... which is what they aimed for ... ... as far as mainstream media [ie time-serving prostitutes telling stuff they know to be untrue for money] would have you believe, the Iraqi elections were free and fair ... but evidence is piling up that they were not ... ... Shakespearian fictions make me wonder about how real world people can be conjured into and out of existence ... like voters for example ...  ... biggest corruption of the electoral process in Iraq of course was in Falluja ... where 'antis' were literally slaughtered ... and entire streets of hostile voters reduced to rubble ... now that was disgusting beyond measure and a corruption of all 'democratic values' ... ... but not content with that ... they went further ... ... on the level of mere statistical manipulation ... Allawi was an exile and CIA stooge who had no popular support base or party structure on the ground in iraq ... ... yet he got 13% of the vote the official voting figs suggested ... which just was not true ... looks like Shi'ites and Kurds ... seemingly satisfied, if not happy, with their share of the carve-up, they seemingly loaned Allawi a few ... just for the sake of 'respectability' ... ... too cynical?! ...  To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:01:29 -0000 Subject: [tempestuous] (unknown)  The fictional character Prospero said farewell to magic in The Tempest. The real person Shakespeare said farewell to the theatre with The Tempest. So the stories go. Truth or illusion though? Fact is, not enough is known of Shakespeare's real life to say for sure that The Tempest was his final completed play. He did say fare-well to the theatre at a relatively young age - that seems sure enough. And the registers of births-marriages-deaths provide firm evidence that he died shortly after retiring from the theatre. It does seem possible that having 'exhausted' all his theatrical possibilities [having been through the variations of tragedy, comedy, tragi-comedy, history, etc, etc, etc ...] he 'gave up the ghost' ... as'twere ... Finishing a study of the [rather young-dying] Spinoza [whose 'system' is too rational to correspond to/with all observable realities, in fact, but which is internally coherent - and as such 'complete in itself’ (i.e. within its own frames of reference)] a while back, it occurred to me that there were dangers in 'completing' a systematic work ... after which ... what next? ... Similarly ... Dante died shortly after 'completing' his internally coherent epic Comedy ... Goethe died shortly after 'completing' his Faust ... Proust died shortly after 'completing' his 'rememberances of things past' / '[re]searches of/for/into lost time[s]' ... Joyce died shortly after 'completing' his 'work in progress' ...  Quite often, you can see something similar happening with people's everyday life-narratives ... ... after 'completion' ... what next ... ? ...  The Tempest is a 'marvellous' [in many senses] work of literature, though. And 'deceptively' [literature being, amongst other things, an 'art of illusion'] simple ... In the 'mind-stream' of the 'collective consciousness ... the narrative[s] and the characters transform into other narratives and characters ... The Tempest is a 'comedy' ... but it is rarely laugh-aloud funny ... it is a deeply serious work disguised as 'romantic' froth ... Prospero is ... or might be ... Lear gone beyond the passionate ravings of tragedy ... or ... Anyway ... to my way of thinking ... there is something to be said for 'incompleteness' ... at least life goes on that way ... To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 19:35:26 -0000 Subject: [tempestuous] Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes  Type-casted Caliban cried out tempestuously: 'This island's mine!' That perhaps under-stated it.  'I am a fucked up schizoid mess and getting ever more fucked up schizoidedly by the day,' he further cried, to bring out from the undercurrents of consciousness a few more points of potential interest.  The 'injustices' - against others as much as self - were driving him crazy, in short. Yet sanity had little to be said for it, because others, mistaken for sane 'respectable' people, behaved in ever more paranoid crazy manners themselves.  He was the one who owned up to his paranoid craziness - and got type-casted 'a raving madman' by the likes of Kareless Katrina and others. 'This island's mine!' he cried again ever more insane seeming. But was he referring to an isolated state or a wider territory? And was the 'commonwealth of imagination' the more rightful 'birthright' of the formally educated and qualified Prosperos or of the informally educated and unqualified Calibans?  Schizoid confusion? The integrity of the personality threatened with/by fragmentation. Too much of everything. Too many demands made on him. Too much expectation. The world closes in on him, so he retreats from it. Narratives - even mixed up and crazy seeming ones - help to hold things together. Depersonalizing Preludes.  'Anon anon, my dears, forgive me my little trespasses - and bigger ones, too, if that is how they are judged.' The pseudo-franciscan serving man [but was he really a houseboy? or was he not more truly a stud? - in minds where truth and illusion mix to build new realities, he might be both] was a bit slow sometimes. They misjudge him, you see. They think he thinks his mind's a racer. He believes he knows it takes time for things to sink slowly into his dense mind. Rush him, otherwise overload him, and he cracks up.  And he is lacking creature comforts. Poor Tom's a-cold and a-lonely.  He drinks pretending it will warm him and people his isolation - but only to ruin himself really. But did it come to this sad state solely because he could not cope with rejection? In the images of separations, images of universal entropy. In the images of meetings, images of universal harmony. Everyday reality was somewhere in between, of course.  Hi-Fi Low Techy Fallootin' Fugues.  Narratives - even messed up ones - can hold things together.  Against Stereo-Typing.  Humpy Dumpy was resting in pieces. He could not even get his own name write. And he did not know where he was really let alone why he was there. Was Humper in the dumps because cross-tongued Frumpy Dumpling had cruelly duped him, dumped him, and left him behind in the lurch? Or was him left pi calculating [... and it never seems to end ... {Who ate all the pis? 'Me Sir!' cried the greedy mathematician - and, as evidence of his misdeeds, a trail of decimal points dribbled from mouth-to-plate ... or plate-to-mouth ...} ...] because his negative numbers had added up to a more positive one leaving him behind in paralytic in a ditch while she got on with more actively catalytic reactions? To further discomfort Himpy Dimpy, Faggy Hagface then tossed in the suggestion that he was a closetted Mr Humphreys and that she had given him his freedom because he could not say 'I'm free!' himself. Sometimes Hummer just took the up-the-arse insults silently - it was after all only another cheap and spiteful little castrating power-play by the female-of-the-species to keep the downed down-trodden decent enough man down [and good hetero liberals never denied suggestions of their 'gayness', anyway, because they were true to some degree - no one is entirely 'this' or 'that' - and because, for those for whom it is more wholly true and of their nature, 'gayness' was not something to be denied]. Nevertheless, 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 thought 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 neither, though I see you smirking knowingly - but he was a fair part-time imitator of a kindly one - he did not have to pretend not to hate, because, simply, he did not hate much ... and that was no fault [or indicator of limited emotional range]. Hanky Dampy pulled himself short with a snort. Hang on ... is this not getting too soppy? [Or should that be 'sloppy'? With wet ones you never could tell. He said 'soppy', she said 'sloppy', so their sentiments were clearly not well matched - and the Letts Diary indicted clearly when they called the whole thing off.]  Cynicism just averted, the drippy droppy kid drip dropped more drab drops over spilty milky. Honky Downbeat had no groove in his soul, that was his problem, she said.  Hinky Deadly had no variety either - he was like a stuck record.  Hunky Deadpan smirked at that further misrepresentation by Hagface Hogwash.  Hikey Downwind tripped over his own triping feet once more - he was such a clumsy ass soler, wasn't he? But though he had many a fall, Hokey Download never actually fell completely arsehole into manhole - and that absence of serious stepping mishap told him something: he might be no jungle boy bodily rhythmn-wize, but he had a bit of the jungle in him - and like every other human had human bits that had started stepping out on two feet in Africa. He did not know the hip movements well, but he knew a few leg movements. [In other words, factually: after some very long and desperate periods of depressive torpor - during which no one came to my assistance - I started to walk again.] Hiho Dorky was not the lord of the dancers, it had to be admitted, but for a few hours most days he managed to foot quite fleetingly. He still could not talk the talk much, but he could at least walk the walk a bit. [In a rare interlude of pleasantry, Mellowing Minxy said to Hurted Downcast that, on more than one occasion, when she had watched him just walking across the room, and seen what a great mover he really could be, she had felt more than a little bit shakey and trembling - and almost moist with appreciation. (Such interludes were all too rare treats as life-time went on.)] As he emerged from his hole more often, and got out and about more and more, Hidebound Dumbo began slowly to rethink things relatively speaking - the motions seeming to change the course of his thought-flows. Hardcore Humanist certainly became less Rigid Atheist as he experienced with his own senses that there surely were in the realms of observable things truly more heavenly and earthly stuff than had be dreamt of in his previous philosophies of being and non-being. On a more everyday level, Haughty Dismissive slowly came to realize that while he had been brought up to be a comprehensive kind of man, he had slipped up badly into snobbery somewhere. It occured to him that he had become a snob - dismissive of the 'lowly' many - in a vain attempt to please the 'likes of her' - and like many a false-self bad-faith move, that had been true to no one. He came down to earth with a bump. Humbler - if never completely Humble - Bumbler then ate some cheaper but more cheerful pies - and even learned to enjoy sparrow songs for the first time in his life.  He seemed to see that many of the people he had been born among, and grown up with, secretly knew that he looked down on them - but that many of them put up with that sort of thing because they did not have high enough opinions of themselves.  Then he seemed to see that there was even more to it than that - and that it was not that clear-cut, and that no one had a really true measure of the relations between self and others. They thought that he thought that he was better than they were, while he thought that they thought that he was worse than them.  He thought that they thought he was uglier than them, but they thought that he thought that he was more attractive than them.  And as for cleverness ... he thought that they thought that he thought he was clever - which he did, it had to be admitted, but he was clever enough to know that he was not as clever as they thought he thought himself to be. If asked: 'How clever do you think you are?' 'Not clever enough,' was his clever-clever reply. They were all quite clever these human sorts really, and they knew that, and he knew that, they were differently clever, each in their own ways. That is what he really thought anyway.  He was such an irritating clever-clever clogs, though, wasn't he?  So why then did ever so clever-clever clogs often clog up into an almost silent state?  Perhaps it is because he knows that he is not quite clever enough to find the really clever words he'd like find - and if he, who could use words more cleverly than many/mosty, clogged up to wordless inarticulation, then what hope was there for articulation by people who believed, rightly or wrongly, that they are less clever than clever clogs?  It was all very frustrating, because he had a thing or two that might be generally useful to teach - and there were some/many who might in fact like to learn a few more things from the likes of him, who are quite clever, aren't they, now, really?  Clover Clags could not find an answer to sort of twisted question, so he shut up again - and might rightly be accused of disappearing up his own arsehole.  To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:51:31 -0000 Subject: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes  Chirpy quirky qwerty cheap cheep ... ... moods can change very quickly for the worse though ... ... sight of a poster with the word 'partnership' changed mine far for the worse a few minutes ago ...  ... got me to thinking ... 'they' talk 'partnership' when what 'they' seem to mean is 'exploitations' ...  ... certainly more often been offered 'rip offs' [at my expense] than partnerships, personally ...  ... 'temptestuous' minds are difficult to live with of course - as 'she' [in various forms] taught me ...  Restarting bombastically ...  The actual singular state is foul and stinking.  Potential 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 theworld), 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'/’conceits’ - which I have not really worked out yet, but have a kind of outline understanding of - is that 'key elements' of the really 'big ideas' are as likely to be found in the minds of 'anonymous' - though named and identified, within their local contexts - and seemingly 'lowly' people, as in the minds of 'famous' and more obviously 'high-status' people.  Like all 'big ideas' this one is not entirely original - it owes a lot to the Christian notion of 'sublimity', for example, but I would not want the Christians to think in a conceited way that they deserved all the credit for it: because they adapted it, in their turn, from other people's thinking.  There seems to be a life-enhancing/life-protecting 'defence' against the physically powerful in this 'big idea' - namely, 'they', nor anyone else, could ever really tell who really carries the elements of the really 'big ideas' - so if 'they' destroy ANY individual, 'they' might be destroying key elements of the really 'big ideas'.  In other words [to get somewhat cryptic seeming, but not really], 'we' put 'it' together between us - based on mutual recognitions of personal 'uniqueness', and of the value of our differing talents, and of the potential 'deeper understandings' within EVERY individual human consciousness. When people deliberately destroy ANY unique individual, they are potentially doing huge damage to humanity possibility generally - because that individual might carry a truly essential component of the 'key' to human possibility generally. What I am searching for, 'of course', via such 'speculatory' ideas, is a way to protect vulnerable individual human beings against persecution - to the point of destruction - by groups or other mass-flow processes ...  And that is all just 'wild unworldly dreaming' though, isn't it? Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 06:21:11 -0800 (PST) From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com  To moderate the 'tempestuosness' I reduce myself - it is also known as 'self-restraint'. Reducing self further: 'I am a word-processor.' Even word-processors are lost for words some days.  Being lost for words is a troubling state. It can feel like 'catatonia' 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-identifications, 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 perhaps 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 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 spread 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 pesticides; 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, Dicky Doorkins, and pals - because the environment and the culture and a whole lot of other stuff you cannot account for - or reduce away - 'say' to me, in limitless ways, that there is a whole lot more to self and others than being a mostly determined 'machine' for the replication of 'selfish genes'. (In their own defence they say words to effect of: 'that was only the popularizing metaphor ... the bulk of the argument within its fuller framework was not so reductive'. But ...)] And ... he saw his lifelong companions the face-mite family for the first time.  [You get them as a baby from your parents and other family members when they nuzzle you affectionately. As you grow older, your family face-mites cross-fertilize with those of other human family face-mites - as you nuzzle other loved ones affectionately ...] And ... he saw his own sperms still swimming about healthy enough - despite all those 'power of suggestion' warning on the cigarette packets, etc [determinisism-defying free 'will to live' must come into it - though I have no way of proving that ... and pass me another cigarette please ... and do you have a light please? ... (Addict? or FreeWiller?)]  There is more to self and others than this wanky geekery, Wanky Geek [aka 'I'] began to suspect. The arts and the sciences are supposed to be two separate cultures. But Humbling Bumbling, the small town near nobody, brought them together in his small way in his small room. He's a mostly modest and reserved and restrainedfellow, 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 ofmuch that was only plain ignorance and stupidity. Each basic advance was effected by a more or less abrupt and dramatic change: the breaking down of frontiers between related territories, the amalgamation of previously separated frames of reference or experimental techniques; the sudden falling into pattern of previously disjointed data.  '... you put your whole self in ... ... your whole self out ... ... you do the hokey cokey ... ... and you turn about ... ... that's what's it's aal aboot ... ... see?! ... ... o'ok'y'ho.key,cokey ... ... oh! ...' The clumsy irregularities did tend to suggest free will rather than taxis ... but ... As he became more truly open-minded and more deeply aware of his own reasonably honest uncertainty himself, he became more and more impatient with closed-minded people claiming 'certainties' they did not have. To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 06:21:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: Re: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes  Repetition is a form of change ... You cannot [in reading or writing] repeat the same text twice ... it changes ... you change ...  But is the revized version more 'authentic' than the unrevized one ... ?! Depends on ... context ... relative good/bad faith ... factual accuracy [or not] of purported statements of fact ... many other things ...  Anyway ...  To moderate the 'tempestuosness' I reduce myself - it is also known as 'self-restraint'.  Reducing self further: 'I am a word-processor.' Even word-processors are lost for words some days. Being lost for words is a troubling state. Perking up with refreshments from old memory clusters.  Clever Clogs remembered ... 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 ‘a lot of it’ if not 'it all' perhaps ...  '... oh hokey cokey kocey ...’  The clumsy irregularities did at least tend to suggest free will rather than taxis ... but ... > Unpicking and reknitting patterns, and ... ... carry on the dancing on and on … From: "Philip Talbot" 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! ... 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. Humpy Dumpy was resting in pieces. Was Humper in the dumps because cross-tongued Frumpy Dumpling had cruelly duped him, dumped him, and left him behind in the lurch? [And she did it ... DISHONESTLY ... DISTANTLY ... DISGUSTINGLY ... REALITY-AVOIDINGLY ... INHUMANELY ... IMPERSONALLY ... on the FUCKING TELEPHONE ... for which reason [among others]: I do not trust that 'medium' [of 'mass communication'/'popular infatuation' ... SO DON'T FUCKING ACCUSE ME OF BEING 'OUT OF TOUCH' [with 'the modern world' or whatever] ... just because I do not sign up to your fucking 'mobile' options ... YOU FUCKING ignorant-humanity-debasing ARSEHOLES! ... {'Might I suggest "Ravings of a Madman?" as a title?' she wondered!} ...] The clumsy irregularities did tend to suggest free will rather than ‘taxis’ ... but ... Date: Thu, 18 May 2006 20:57:27 +0100  From: philiptalbot@beeb.net  Subject: email accounts To: philtal_uk@yahoo.com   yahoo offers an increasingly piss-poor email facility - slowed by a sludge of ads ... and other crap suggest you switch asap to beeb.net, which offers much better services that does not take a lend of users Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 15:03:47 +0100 (BST)  From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: email accounts To: philiptalbot@beeb.net  you are a divided-minded contradictory - some might even say schizoid - sort of character, who says and does some very strange seeming things ... however ... I have also heard it said that the competition for the most eccentric character in yur home town is hotly contested ... and you are not even in serious contention ....  Send instant messages to your online friends  http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com [... '... I am going to sit right down and write myself a letter ... and make believe it came from you ...' ... words/actions to that effect ...] From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@y...>  Date: Thu Dec 5, 2002 5:01 pm Subject: Re: ... ongoing B-Grade stuff ...  Polyglottic, iridescent, cosmopolitan Zed, a rainbow alliance in herself, who had the gift of many tongues, but was not prone to shouting about it, quietly called to attention the ignorant obliviousness of most Europeans, and others, to the crucial Islamic elements [including the residues of alchemy] in their own culture …. So … It should have been no surprise that when in Spain she was seen as if one of their own … Ibn Hazm, almost a thousand years dead, but still one of the most well spoken correspondents, partly explains: "…The fresh springing of herbs after the rains, the glitter of flowers when the night clouds have rolled away in the hushed hour between dawn and sunrise, the plashing of waters as they run through the stalks of golden blossoms, the exquisite beauty of white-castles encompassed by verdant meadows - not lovelier is any of these than union with the well-beloved, whose character is virtuous, whose disposition laudable, whose attributes are well matched in beauty. Truly that union is a miracles of wonder surpassing the tongues of the eloquent, and far beyond the range of the most cunning speech to describe: the mind reels before it, and the intellect stands abashed …" Ibn wore a dove's necklace without ostentation, and was in many other ways a man of quietly noble temperament … "I am a man who has always been uneasy about the impermanency and constant instability of fortune. Concerns of this sort have occupied me during the greater part of my life, and I have preferred to spend it in pursuing these matters studiously, rather than in looking for delights of the senses, or the accumulation of grat wealth, which many seem to prefer." But he was not cold or devoid of emotion …. Or … as one of his anonymous Moorish soul brothers put it for him … " … when weary sickness on me lies unending, and successive griefs revisit my unsleeping eyes, in love's pangs I find strange reliefs …" … which is not a uniquely Spanish Islamic experience, one is inclined to think … … Closer to home … Z's true sister A [and a sort of soul sister of mine - well we were born on exactly the same day, more or less] was a good sport and liked to watch the footing Hotspurs, who tended to nobly value stylish aesthetic moves above mere victory for the sake of victory, any old way, fair or foul … and she footed it finely herself … from united pressing internationals … to more domestic matches of the day … [Some people read and write the credits … and try to pay off debts of gratitude … but the wider world credit / debit problems do seem to be growing … so many essentially self-serving … and personal pocket lining … so much owed to the poor many … and cheap financial compensation schemes - and other cosmetic fripperies - won't settle it … real justice is increasingly in demand …]  Zed once said that she had not experienced face-to-face racism in Spain, despite it crypto-fascist near-past … but said she had experienced it on my home turf, despite its prided socialist credentials … which greatly shamed me …  In defence of my homers, I suggested that, for local background [… and spreading …] cultural reasons, she would not experience such obnoxious stuff in my home town … but I was not entirely convinced by my own words … and neither was she, most probably … [Meanwhile … out in the metropolitan fringes … gabby Ms Cyclothymia, who thought herself a smooth-tongued and flawless speaker, and was all too free with her condemnations of others' mouthed slips, but all too prone to putting her foot in it herself, went shopping at the 'Paki shop', and thought nothing amiss in that - well 'they' never complained about it, did 'they'? … No outright racism is suggested … but it was ever so shockingly impolite of one who prided herself on her mannered superiority … and perhaps characteristic of her reductive dismissiveness of many who were not herself … Still … we all make verbal slips … and they are not the worst of crimes …] Family matters mattered greatly to Zed ... but it was not all individuals and family to her - their was such a thing as wider society … And when I asked her and A. where they came from, they replied, as one: The World …  And the long dead poets remind one and all that the human family is The Family, which does not stop at the doorstep … or the town boundary … or the county line … or the border crossing … Humanity has one kind of mouth but many voices … often changing in tunes … ageless songsters… declaiming deathless melodies … homing in and zooming away … trying jesters' japes … trialing tragicians' tear-jerks .. singing the choicest selected songs in varying voices ...  Onely and Manily ... at some times and places strains of roughedged folk culture and seemingly more sophisticated stuff weave together to form something closer to a 'fusion' of 'high' and 'low' ... in the 'maqumah' form, for example, the fine graces of formal rhymed and rhythmned verse ... and the untidy glamour of impromptu seeming  free composition ... woven into apparently unstructed tales ... came together ... as some would put it ... in a mysterious mix of alternate prose and verse ... and out of the near mess emerged something like a mouthpiece ... who was, some might say, in fact a familiar figure in popular story-telling ... the clever and witty seeming vagabond ... or wanderer ... or ...  Among the old masters of the maqumah was Al-Hariri, of Basrah ... who sang about 900 years ago ... and still sings in some senses ... crying to compassion ... against fortune's fickleness ... howling against a background noise ... of raucous rancour ... lamenting calamities that shattered ... personal rocks ... and did even more damage ... elsewhere ... breaking up frames of reference ... at foundations ... splitting stems ... breaking boughs ... and ... in many other ways ... other-wise ... fucking up favourable fruits ...  And he cried out curses on those who, seeming to lack creative generosity, or simply enough kindness, seemingly set out to destroy for the sake of destruction. Said the narrator: Now the surrounding company seemed more inclined to ascertain the wanderer's condition - not perhaps out of much concern for him/her, but rather perhaps so as to find out what he/she might have concealed, in order to sift truth from falsehood among her/his many reported claims, and/or to see what personal benefit there might yet be there to be had from access to her/his ramblings. So they said [or seemed to say]: 'We know by this time the apparent abundances of your trees, but please kindly make it now known to us their sources, and withdraw more of the veils that surround your nurseries.' He replied: 'For goodness's sake, learn for yourselves to discern better better from worse!'  Then he departed ... or seemed to ... on a twisting curl, which hung  down as if to hurl his heart away from bliss and further towards the abyss ... possibly ...