Subject: Re: B-Grade Stuff
Facing apparent checkmate - or worse, perhaps, stalemate - or just
dying of terminal loneliness and frustration - do you resign to get
it over with? or just go through the motions until the whole process
(which can seem to be mostly beyond your control) comes to an end of
some sort?
Sooner of later the pieces and the board will crumble to dust, and
the dust will scatter, and no one will be able to tell that a game of
chess was ever played where the board and pieces once were ... and no
one will ask who played it, or when it was played, or where it was
played, or how it was played, or why it was played ... and the small-
scale seeming events will not seem to matter then, and will not even
be known about as an event then ...
... but traces will remain ... and consequences will still be
reverberating widely ...
And when I resign and go into a torpor ... which can last months,
even years ... I do eventually wake up again ... to find that I had
not resigned after all ... and to find that, to my surprize, some
progress seems to have been made after all [of course that might be
an illusion ... or wishful-thinking] ... and I think: well maybe soon
it will reach a more satisfying resolution ...
... and then I think: that is some fucking hope ...
But when it just seems like a matter of waiting .. and enduring for
the sake of endurance .. there does not seem much point in struggling
on ... there has to be more recognitions and fellowship-sharing
feedbacks to make it seem more worth it ... otherwise it seems like a
futile exercise ...
From: "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date: Fri Jun 28, 2002 3:13 am
Subject: Re: B-Grade Stuff
What's up?
Wazzzaaap?!
Hey, hey, hey ... wot's ga'an on here then pets?
Perhaps something is taking its course ...
Perhaps something is working itself out ...
Perhaps some local difficulties are being sorted more
satisfactorily ...
And hey nonny nony ... it might even be better in future ...
In Blackadder, what did the foolish Northumbrian aristocrat Percy
make when he turns his clumsy hands and small brain to alchemy. The
strange substance that emerged was completely beyond description. But
like every creator, Percy had to give his creation a name: 'GRUE' is
what he comes up with, as I recall.
In Northumbrian legend, what happened to the fabled Lampton Worm when
it got hoyed down a well? It grue and it grue and it grue ... and it
got geet big googly eyes ... and then went out and about ... and ate
cows and sheep and things. Most people ran away from it because it
seemed too terrifying and dangerous. But one brave noble northern
lad managed to struggle with it and overpower it. Contrary to rumour
he did not then kill it and chop it up into bits. He took it to some
Lampton Worm good behaviour classes (there are whisperers for Lamptom
Worms as well as for dogs and horses - though their services aren't
required quite so often) and it learned better ways.
Sometimes, when we are caught up in difficult situations, and facing
unsolvable seeming problems, we can feel paralysed and unable to
decide what to do next.
When he and Baldrick were stuck in another fine mess, Blackadder
said: 'This is the stickiest situation since Sticky the stick insect
got stuck on a sticky bun.' Blackadder then got lost in his own
problems and never said if - and if so how - Sticky got out of his
messy problem. I'll now tell you what happened to Sticky next:
... Stuck on the bun, Sticky had plenty of time on his feet (he had
no hands, remember), and he had plenty of food too. So he just stuck
there, eating the odd bit of sticky bun from time to time, and
relying on the rain (which was plentiful in his part of the world)to
provide him with something to drink. (The rain, it has to be said, in
some ways also worsened his plight - because it made the bun even
more sticky.)
Years past, so many that he lost count of them - which was a good
thing for him, because, as a stick insect, he was not supposed to
live much more than one year ... so if he had known his real age, and
that his natural life-span had been long-overstretched, he might have
dropped dead in his sticky spot [Would he have died of shock at the
knowledge that he was still alive when he should have been long-dead?
Or would he have died of natural causes? How could the inquest have
made up its mind?]
Perhaps there was something to be said for the sticky bun diet,
because although it made him fatter, it made him fitter in other
ways - and above all it kept him alive, if inactive. And perhaps
there was something to be said in favour of inactivity, because stuck
as he was, Sticky had time to think and feel ... and to look around
him at the beautiful world that had been there to see and enjoy all
along but which, when he was more active, he had never seemed to have
had time to notice properly.
Eventually the bun was used up (that is the way it goes with all
resources / energy sources) - or, rather, the bun had blended with
Sticky as he ate it. He was now not really a stick insect any more.
He was a gummy kind of sticky runny funny bunny thing. When he caught
sight of himself in a raindrop that served as a mirror (it distorted
him, of course, but it gave a reasonable impression of what he might
look like)he was quite surprized. He barely recognized himself - and
spent some time grieving for his lost past self. Then he cheered
up. 'I am now what I am now,' he thought, and left it at that. Then
a further thought - it might even have been a memory - passed through
what passed for his little sticky mind. He thought of - and even
seemed to see - a yummy runny funny bummy female of his kind.
'Well,' he thought, 'I might have changed, but I've still got my six
legs, I can still walk. Perhaps it is time for me to go off and
search for that funny bummy runny thing.'
But then he paused for another moment, just as he was about to set
off, ... and had second thoughts.
'Perhaps wandering around it not the best way to find her. I've got
the natural notion that she might have the better motion. Perhaps I
should be the one who just sticks around waiting for her to come
first. Then we might be able to come together, and stick together,
for an extended period. ... So ... I'll just wait some more.'
Thus settled on a plan, he settled down to more sticking around. But
then his sticky bunny tummy felt rummy, it gave off a rumble, which
translated into the question: 'But what am I going to do for food now
that the sticky bun has run out?'
With the urgent, and, as time passed, ever-more-pressing issue of
food on his mind (and not in his body), he reconsidered his options.
And there, I believe, we still might find him: ... considering
alternative possibilities ... and waiting for something more
substantial to turn up in his actual world ...
In the Odyssey, dutiful wifie Penelope stays at home while feckless
hubby Odysseus goes off travelling for all sorts of exciting and
risky (and even risque) adventures. While he is away indulging
himself, she spends her time weaving patterns, which might be
stories, and which, strangely perhaps, seem to correspond with his
wandering courses.
In a modern rewrite, roles might be reversed, to widen perspectives,
and to improve mutual understandings.
[Though, of course, alternative storylines are always possible ...
and the one in which Penelope and Odysseus travel together might be
the most mutually satisfying and enlightening.]
From: "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date: Fri Jun 28, 2002 3:42 am
Subject: Re: B-Grade Stuff
'For the flowers-to-come - thankyou?!'
Yes ...
... because that is what it is all about ... trying to do something
to keep the flowers coming for future generations ... so that they
can keep on keeping on growing and blooming ... hopefully in better
ways ...
And, of course, one can never be sure of success ...
But then, strange as it may seem to some/many, there is vitality ...
and hope ... in that uncertainty ...
And when you are absolutely sure about anything ... then you are
almost certainly mistaken ...
...
...
...
The 'ongoingness' of 'it all' is a problem for some people, many
even ...
They long for a clear-cut, unambiguous conclusion [natural or
otherwise] ... a final 'sort' to things ... that 'makes complete
sense' of 'everything' ...
But such an absolute ending is probably (almost certainly - perhaps)
not coming ... soon ... or ever ...
...
...
...
And when the absolutist end-timers, with their 'concluding' visions
come out to play ... the results tend to be quite deadening ... for
themselves and for many others ...
And since the 'end-timers' conclusions are faulty and flawed [they
are mostly the products of limited human minds after all - however
much the dogmatic believers might claim divine or supernatural
inspiration] nothing much is achieved by their extravagent - and
often violent - gestures ... and there tend to be general
regressions, rather than progressions, in consequence ...
...
...
...
The 'being-and-nothingness' existentialists [of varying types] have a
lot to answer for ...
'It all' does not compress down to all-too-terribly-simple either/or,
them/us, good/bad, etc, clear-cut distinctions ...
There are always wider alternative, multiply variable, alternative
possible ways ...
...
...
...
And yes ...
... this might just be B-grade stuff ...
... but ...
... this is the story of what happens ... until the sky closes ... on
me and my special roses ... and daisies ... and other bloomers ...
... and then spreads us out again ... to open other flowers [which
might be pretty plant parts ... or which might be other that things
that flow in the scheme of things ... or which ...]
...
And when we are gone ... and spread out ... leaving only vague traces
[but probably many consequences] behind ...
... others will take up the story ...
... that is the way it comes and goes ...
... that is the way it flows ...
From: "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date: Sun Jun 30, 2002 3:56 am
Subject: Re: B-Grade Stuff
Visions of birds ... and other moving images ...
This looks like B-movie stuff to me ...
The Birds, in the Hitchcock version, ends with uncertainty.
The family gets into the car and drives off into and through a
landscape filled with birds.
Are they driving towards safety? or into more danger?
Apparenly Hitch originally planned to take the journey further -
perhaps to show the re-emergence of the new world after the apparent
catastrophe. But budget, or time, or perhaps just dramatic economy,
chopped off the planned extended ending.
And the ending as it stands seems hopeful enough to me - the
previously aggressive birds seem pacified (they don't do much more
than peck the humans as they make their way on foot to the car), and
perhaps by that stage the humans are learning better how to live more
mutually with the birds and other natural agents. A landscape filled
with birds is not necessarily an omen of doom - and could even be a
sign of better things to come (they are supposed to be 'our feathered
friends' after all).
What is the real human fear of / resentment against the birds? It is
not, I think, that they are much of a threat to us, or serious rivals
for the 'control' of the planet. [But the 'lords of the air' might
carry some residual resentments against us - when the world was up
for grabs after the end of the dinosaurs, it was our ancesters rather
than theirs who seized the day and grabbed much of the land power -
andnow we are depriving them of more and more nesting places, and
even wrecking their egg-filled nests from time to time.] Perhaps our
occasional ill-feeling towards the birds is just because they can fly
free whenever they chose to do it - whereas we have to wait in the
departure lounge for the planes, helicopters, etc, to arrive and
depart with us on them.
As it happens, a bird cannot actually get off the ground whenever it
wants. Conditions on the take-off site and in the air, as well as the
bird's own physical limitations, can prevent take-off. And birds have
to learn/ be taught how to fly - it soes not seem to be an
instinctive ability, as with, say, the flight of flies. Bird flight
might even be regarded as as much of a consequence of cultural
inheritance as of genetic inheritance.
If you watch herring gulls in the later summer, you see the
fledgelings learning / being taught how to fly. And the young birds
seem reluctant fliers. They spend much of their time wandering
around on the ground - the adult birds providing protective air cover
above. And the adult birds seem to have to give the young ones a
great deal of encouragement to get airbourne. The whole gull
community [of related and unrelated birds] seems to come together to
get the yound birds into the air [so much for 'selfish genes'?] And
they make a huge amount of dreadful (to human ears - though beautiful
to the gulls, perhaps) noise when they are doing this - causing mych
irritation to the local human population. It can sound like a lot of
ugly, infernal shrieking and crying (a horrible howling of the
yahoos, perhaps). But, in a strange seagull kind of way, I suspect
there is a lot of tough but tender gully kind of love in all that
herring gull howing - which helps to get the young ones upwards and
outwards.
...
...
...
And then one day I found a video of the film Players on a junk stall
in the market place that is a foraging ground for the town's gulls
(it is a kind of mutualism: we make a mess and they eat some of it -
and leave some messy droppings behind in return). And clutching this
video tape in my hand, I had the strange thought-feeling that it
might just be a sign of a widespreading future rebirth - based
perhaps on some particular and more general humbling.
I've never seen Players (I did not have enough money to buy it from
the junk stall that day - and by the following week it was gone), but
according to my video guide [Mick Martin, Marsha Porter, Derrick Bang
(1998)] it is a no-star rating turkey - a trashy tennis drama of
little artistic merit. 'Ali MacGraw is the bored mistress of
Maximilian Schell; she falls for tennis pro Dean Paul Martin. Rated
PG (parental guidance) - sexual scenes.'
And where are Ali and Max now? and who ever was Dean Paul Martin (and
was he any relation to the comic/crooner Dean Martin?)?. Time pushes
all down the cast list - the stars fade ... and all become extras in
the scheme of things eventually ... which is all they ever were
anyway, contrary to what the egotists and meglomaniacs might want to
think.
In an unlikely twist, Players features Catherine as an extra - a
barely glimpsed face in the crowd of an on-court tennis scene. I know
this because she told me (I have never seen the film) and I trusted
her word. The film was made in the late 1970s - so the Catherine
visible in that film was her as she was in her mid-teens. And it was
the vague and unlikely-seeming connection with Catherine that made me
pick up the trashy tennis drama video from the small town market
stall juk stall that day a few years ago.
Traces of her found in obscure things in obscure places - and locked
away unless you can find the right ways of seeing. You cannot see
what is stored on a video tape unless you have a video player, tv
screen, electricity supply, electricity distribution system, power
generation system ... and original energy source. And that is the way
it goes with all 'information' - it requires context, and does not
make sense in isolation, and it requires energy, inclination (and
time) to extract it.
But what you see on the screen can be deceptive or just surprizing -
and you often have to rely on the words of others to explain it to
you (and you have to trust their words).
I once sat with Catherine and her family watching their home movies.
And just who was that unrecognizable samll girl with naturally
straight hair and spectacles? They informed me that it was an earlier
version of the young woman sitting beside me, with naturally curly
hair and, at that moment, no specs.
She was long-sighted and I was short-sighted. She often took off her
specs to watch films. When I watched films I needed spectacles to see
that distant screen. When it came to reading books close up the
roles were reversed. But there are flaws in vision and there are
other human flaws - both of us were prone for reasons of vanity to
not wearing our specs when we should have been wearing them
['Boys/girls don't make passes at girls/boys who wear glasses.' ...
and all that.]
Vision is an odd thing ... and who can say whether the short-sighted
or the long-sighted have the better vision ...and of course vision
tends to change with time, like everything else.
From: "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date: Tue Jul 2, 2002 3:30 am
Subject: Re: B-Grade Stuff
B-movie stuff ... terse dialogue ... cheap essential scenery ...
casts of non-star players ... much left to the imagination ... modern
medieval mystery plays perhaps ...
The Full Monty ... a strip-tease tragicomedy ... dancing in the
northern dole queues ...
A group of people lacking proper paid employment take to stripping
for a living ... but parading without clothes for other people's
entertainment - and who knows what other reasons? - is not a very
dignified way for complex, educated, grace-filled people to earn a
living, is it?
A Bridge Too Far [or ... Monty's Masterplan ... or ... I was Monty's
Double ...] ...
The role-playing general was stung by the criticism that his schemes
to beat the death-worshipping nazis were too stolid and slow - and
even when they worked, the dull dog-fight caldron confrontations
disatified the romantics, who wanted something more dashing ...
So he tried for a more daring plot twist [though the name he gave it
sounded somewhat suburban: Operation Market Garden] ...
a stiletto [type of shoe? or type of knife?] into the nazi heart ...
Lightly armed paras [paratroops? or parapsychologists? or
paraphrasers?] leapt from the skies to capture bridges [let the lust
of the eye for the spectacular overcome you as you see the sky and
landscape transformed as those daring doers leap from planes] ...
Meanwhile, heavily armed tankers followed up on the roads, occupying
land, filling gaps, transforming things [see the woods change as they
blast them to pieces]...
But the result was not the hoped for miraculous clear-cut victory ...
it was 'only' a partial success / partial failure ... which seemed
unsatisfactory to many ... and the war continued ...
Who was to blame for the absence of greater success? ...
Was it the most advanced paras? ... who could not stick it out for
long enough - or, reasonably enough perhaps, were not willing to die
senselessly, badly fed and under-supported ...
Was it the apparently dawdling, well-supplied tankers [who went by
the name of 30 Corp - aka XXX CO (they might have been dawdling,
under-caring love markers)] ... who seemed to stop at way-points too
often to stuff their faces ... who seemed to like their creature
comforts too much ... who seemed unwilling to take too many risks
themselves - and left others to endure more of the suffering ...
Was it those who were supposed to be maintaining the communication
systems? [Truth be told, the tankers and the paras did not talk to
each other enough to keep each other informed of relative progress -
it was a particular instance of a general failing.]
Or was Monty to blame for all that went wrong? [After all it is
always easier to evade personal responsibilities, and scapegoat some
other individual.]
Or was the failure to achieve as much as might have been achieved no
one's fault really? - just the way it went ...
Awakenings ... a seemingly short-sighted, diffident doctor refuses to
abandon neglected people [whom 'the system' has apparently given up
on] ...
He performs careful, tentative experiments using a new drug [that
might just be a form of kindness] to rouse people suffering from
chronic sleeping sickness ...
'It's a fucking miracle!' says an earthy observant nurse as she sees
what seems to be a general awakening ...
But ... most of the sufferers fall back to sleep again eventually ...
or the use of the drug has to be modified because of some potentially
alarming side-effects ...
It was not quite 'a fucking miracle' perhaps ... but something was
achieved by giving the sleepers periods of more vitality and
liberty ...
...
...
...
'Kindness has the most favourable effect,' said Philippe Pinel, a
late-18th/early-19th century enlightened reformer of mental health
care ...
In 1793 Philippe was appointed physician at Bicetre, a hell-hole into
which Paris thrust its mental illnesses. His first act was to order
the removal of chains from the people detained there with mental
health problems. When he told the city's prison commissioner of his
plans, the arsehole jailer replied: 'Are you not yourself mad to free
these beasts?'
Philippe replied: 'I am convinced that these PEOPLE are not incurable
if they can have air and liberty.'
The people at Bicetre gained some freedom from chains and some more
fresh air. The first person to be unfettered had lived in chains and
darkness for 40 years. When he saw the sky for the first time in
decades he said: 'How beautiful.'
Finding his policies justified at Bicetre, Philippe went on to reform
Salpetriere, where women branded 'demented beyond cure' were kept in
shackles. He removed the chains, and organized exercises, concerts,
reading, visits and other liberations.
Philippe did not work in isolation ...
At much the same time, Vincenzio Chiarugi was releasing from chains
people with mental health problems in Italy ...
In England, the Quaker York Retreat 'simply' practised 'kindness'
towards mental health sufferers ...
But ... 200 years on, despite some general improvements, millions of
people (billions even) still live in chains (one way or another) and
suffer deprivations of general and particular manufacture ...
... because (perhaps) ... some greedy people want too much for
themselves ... and many mistake liberty for self-indulgence (which
always comes at a cost - to other people, and, eventually, to
self) ... and not enough is shared ... and too many people seemingly
lack the courage, or cannot be bothered (or just have no inclination)
to make even the smallest substantial sort of reach-out-to-the-other
personal gestures ...
Cryptic coda ...
'The Royston horse and the Cambridge MA will give ground to no-
one' ... there are no Royston horses or Cambridge MA's visible in my
neck of the woods ... but lots of signs of people not giving even
inches of ground ... and when you give them an inch, they take miles
from you ... and when you make concessions, the cunts just seem to
take advantage of you, or trample all over you, or take you for
granted ...
From: "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date: Thu Jul 4, 2002 3:10 am
Subject: Re: B-Grade Stuff
B-movies often contain sublime elements that raise them above the
main features.
Thursday, 24 October 2013
This is mostly superficial rubbish, but there is the odd moment or two worth preserving [perhaps] ....
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by yahoogroups.com. Learn more
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:39:48 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] 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> Add to Address Book
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 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 ... happy with their share of the
carve-up ... loaned Allawi a few ... just for the sake of
'respectability' ...
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:01:29 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] (unknown)
The fictional character Prospero said farewell to magic in The
Tempest.
The real person Shakespeare said farewell to the theatre with The
Tempest.
So the stories go.
Truth or illusion though?
Fact is, not enough is known of Shakespeare's real life to say for
sure that The Tempest was his final completed play.
He did say fare-well to the theatre at a relatively young age - that
seems sure enough. And the registers of births-marriages-deaths
provide firm evidence that he died shortly after retiring from the
theatre.
It does seem possible that having 'exhausted' all his theatrical
possibilities [having been through the variations of tragedy, comedy,
tragi-comedy, history, etc, etc, etc ...] he 'gave up the ghost' ...
as 'twere ...
Finishing a study of the [rather young-dying] Spinoza [whose 'system'
is too rational to correspond to/with all observable realities, in
fact, but which is internally coherent - and as such 'complete in
itself' (i.e. within its own frames of reference)] a while back, it
occurred to me that there were dangers in 'completing' a systematic
work ... after which ... what next? ...
Similarly ... Dante died shortly after 'completing' his internally
coherent epic Comedy ... Goethe died shortly after 'completing' his
Faust ... Proust died shortly after 'completing' his 'rememberances
of
things past' / '[re]searches of/for 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 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> Add to Address Book
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 19:35:26 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes
Type-casted Caliban cried out tempestuously: 'This island's mine!'
That perhaps under-stated it.
'I am a fucked up schizoid mess and getting ever more fucked up
schizoidedly by the day,' he further cried, to bring out from the
undercurrents of
consciousness a few more points of potential interest.
The 'injustices' - against others as much as self - were driving him
crazy.
Yet sanity had little to be said for it, because others 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
even more quickly really.
But did it come to this sad state solely because he could not cope
with rejection?
In the images of separations, images of universal entropy.
In the images of meetings, images of universal harmony.
Everyday reality was somewhere in between, of course.
Hi-Fi Low Techy Fallootin' Fugues.
Narratives - even messed up ones - can hold things together.
Against Stereo-Typing.
Humpy Dumpy was resting in pieces.
He could not even get his own name write.
And he did not know where he was really let alone why he was
there.
Was Humper in the dumps because cross-tongued Frumpy Dumpling had
cruelly duped him, dumped him, and left him behind in the lurch?
Or was him left pi calculating [... and it never seems to end ...
{Who ate all the pis? 'Me Sir!' cried the greedy mathematician - and,
as
evidence of his misdeeds, a trail of decimal points dribbled from
mouth-to-plate ... or plate-to-mouth ...] because his negative
numbers had added up to a more positive one leaving him behind in
paralytic in a ditch while she got on with more actively catalytic
reactions?
To further discomfort Himpy Dimpy, Faggy Hagface then tossed in the
suggestion that he was a closetted Mr Humphreys and that she had
given him his freedom because he could not say 'I'm free!' himself.
Sometimes Hummer just took the up-the-arse insults silently - it was
after all only another cheap and spiteful little castrating power-
play by the
female-of-the-species to keep the downed down-trodden decent enough
man down [and
good hetero liberals never denied suggestions of their 'gayness',
anyway, because they were true to some degree - no one is
entirely 'this' or 'that' - and because, for those for whom it is
more wholly true and of their nature, 'gayness' was not something to
be denied].
Non-P.C. Hummer knew that poor bugger beggar as he was, he was not,
in fact, much of a bugger bummer.
'Actually, I don't like cocks up my arse, if that is what you mean,'
is what he actually said to her when she suggested he was a secret
homosexual, and what she actually replied - for she had a stock-in-
trade for every occasion - was: 'Actually most of them don't do
that.' How she obtained that inside knowledge was never revealed -
but
if it was from fag-break gossip with her camp followers, then it is
suspected in the passive voice that they were not telling her the
full unscatalogical truth.
Homeboy should have though there and then: 'I will never be a well-
served sir with that saggy faggy hag - Miss Slow Come might have a
nice pussy, but she is nothing but an old dog really, and will
never learn more pleasant tongued tricks.'
But Himbi? [the man was a walking question mark] never learned to
hate her and dismiss her properly. That too was a mistake for one who
thought herself more naturally 'passionate' - anyone who could not
hate, she claimed, was somehow lacking in the full-range of feelings.
Sometimes he gave her words too much over-due attention, that was
sure. Her critical words on his lack of hate stumped him for a long
time ...
Whenever he was at a loss for a new way forward Hammy put himself
under the influence of the consumerist want-makers ...
Being pissed-up was a piss-poor way to live well but, well ... it
seemed he had to
drink the dark stuff because the darker-still-stuff was not really in
him.
'I am not a bitter man' - he said, finding a parroted version of the
gift of the gab while drinking the dregs of two cans of snug-fitting
stout unladylike associations - and more than Tucan play the game of
pretending to be 'pure genius!.
'Drink!' the fake Irish father-figure said in a travesty of a
stereotype that was quite amusing occasionally, but not when overdone.
Instead he cried: 'Francis!'
'No! Anon, anon, sir!' was the reply.
He was no saint, nor was meant to be - nor no Hamlet either, though I
see you smirking knowingly - but he was a fair part-time imitator of
a kindly one - he did not have to pretend not to hate, because,
simply, he did not hate much ... and that was no fault [or indicator
of limited emotional range].
Hanky Dampy pulled himself short with a snort.
Hang on ... is this not getting too soppy?
[Or should that be 'sloppy'? With wet ones you never could tell. He
said 'soppy', she said 'sloppy', so there 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,
whilet 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 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> Add to Address Book
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:51:31 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes
Chirpy quirky qwerty cheap cheep ...
... moods can change very quickly for the worse though ...
... sight of a poster with the word 'partnership' changed mine far
for the worse a few minutes ago ...
... got me to thinking ... 'they' talk 'partnership' when what 'they'
seem to mean is 'exploitations' ...
... certainly more often been offered 'rip offs' [at my expense] than
partnerships, personally ...
... 'temptestuous' minds are difficult to live with of course -
as 'she' [in various forms] taught me ...
Restarting bombastically ...
The actual singular state is foul and stinking.
Pontential of pluralistic partnership is likely to be much more fair
and sweet-smelling.
That is just possibly 'wishful thinking', 'of course' - and what look
appear like 'sweet-smelling deals' on first glance can turn out to
be 'rip-offs' [always read the small-print].
But if Charles can get married 'unconstitutionally', then I should be
allowed to do so too - because 'rights' apply to all citizens not
just one.
[And the Cosmopolitan Republican rightly asserts his human right to
be an expanisve-minded
'citizen' (of the world), not a 'subject' of an, in fact (not merely
opinion), not very
impressive narrow-minded royalist national state.]
And my true 'queen' will be a truly equal partner - not some
subservient 'princess consort'.
But adazzle them dimmly deft Dicky ducky ... because they are not yet
properly prepared for the really 'brighter stuff' ...
A useful staging device is the 'conceit' - whereby the audience
[potential or actual] can never be quite sure whether you are 'merely
fooling' - or even just plain mad - or not.
This seems like a 'conceit', but ...
I am reluctant to share my 'powers' more widely, and that is fact,
because I don't really trust 'them'.
By 'them' I mean [generally and specifically ] 'oppressors'
AND 'oppressed' - because 'they' can seem too interchangeable.
The 'oppressed', given power, all too easily [experience teaches]
become 'oppressers' themselves - this is an all too common pattern of
human history.
Sketchy fictional illustations ...
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero represents something like
an 'enlightened dictator' and/or a 'kindly tyrant', as it were. His
use of power over others is mostly kindly, but he does treat Caliban
very harshly - and that is troubling, because it seems 'over-done'
and 'unnecessary', and seems to involve a failing in 'fellow-feeling'.
But if roles were reversed, would Caliban treat Prospero more kindly?
It seems unlikely - and Caliban O'Kitty taught me that ...
That is 'only' fiction, though, and I am neither Prospero nor
Caliban, nor meant to be either.
But ...
I do know a 'thing or two' about the way 'power' works.
What to do with such powerful 'knowledge' [even if it is
only 'potential' knowledge]?
Ideally, I would share it around - power is a great
potential 'fertilizer', and, like garden manure, seems to work best
when spread around quite thinly, as someone said to me, almost
quoting someone else, the other day.
But I don't really trust 'them' with the potentially enhanced power -
partly because I don't trust myself with it.
'So' ... I 'tweak' the 'system' here and there ... rather than seek
to force a large mass-flow change of direction ... 'safer' that way,
I tend to think ...
One of my 'big ideas' - which I have not really worked out yet, but
have a kind of outline understanding of - is that 'key elements' of
the really 'big ideas' are as likely to be found in the minds
of 'anonymous' - though named and identified, within their local
contexts - and seemingly 'lowly' people, as in the minds of 'famous'
and more obviously 'high-status' people.
Like all 'big ideas' this one is not entirely original - it owes a
lot to the Christian notion of 'sublimity', for example, but I would
not want the Christians to think in a conceited way that they
deserved all the credit for it: because they adapted it, in their
turn, from other people's thinking.
There seems to be a life-enhancing/life-protecting 'defence' against
the physically powerful in this 'big idea' - namely, 'they', nor
anyone else, could ever really tell who really carries the elements
of the really 'big ideas' - so if 'they' destroy ANY
individual, 'they' might be destroying key elements of the
really 'big ideas'.
In other words [to get somewhat cryptic seeming, but not
really], 'we' put 'it' together between us - based on mutual
recognitions of personal 'uniqueness', and of the value of our
differing talents, and of the potential 'deeper understandings'
within EVERY individual human consciousness.
When people deliberately destroy ANY unique individual, they are
potentially doing huge damage to humanity possibility generally -
because that individual might carry a truly essential component of
the 'key' to human possibility generally.
What I am searching for, 'of course', via such 'speculatory' ideas,
is a way to protect vulnerable individual human beings against
persecution - to the point of destruction - by groups or other mass-
flow processes ...
And that is all just 'wild unworldly dreaming' though, isn't it?
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Yahoo! DomainKeys has confirmed that this message was sent by yahoogroups.com. Learn more
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:39:48 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] 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> Add to Address Book
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 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 ... happy with their share of the
carve-up ... loaned Allawi a few ... just for the sake of
'respectability' ...
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:01:29 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] (unknown)
The fictional character Prospero said farewell to magic in The
Tempest.
The real person Shakespeare said farewell to the theatre with The
Tempest.
So the stories go.
Truth or illusion though?
Fact is, not enough is known of Shakespeare's real life to say for
sure that The Tempest was his final completed play.
He did say fare-well to the theatre at a relatively young age - that
seems sure enough. And the registers of births-marriages-deaths
provide firm evidence that he died shortly after retiring from the
theatre.
It does seem possible that having 'exhausted' all his theatrical
possibilities [having been through the variations of tragedy, comedy,
tragi-comedy, history, etc, etc, etc ...] he 'gave up the ghost' ...
as 'twere ...
Finishing a study of the [rather young-dying] Spinoza [whose 'system'
is too rational to correspond to/with all observable realities, in
fact, but which is internally coherent - and as such 'complete in
itself' (i.e. within its own frames of reference)] a while back, it
occurred to me that there were dangers in 'completing' a systematic
work ... after which ... what next? ...
Similarly ... Dante died shortly after 'completing' his internally
coherent epic Comedy ... Goethe died shortly after 'completing' his
Faust ... Proust died shortly after 'completing' his 'rememberances
of
things past' / '[re]searches of/for 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 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> Add to Address Book
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 19:35:26 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes
Type-casted Caliban cried out tempestuously: 'This island's mine!'
That perhaps under-stated it.
'I am a fucked up schizoid mess and getting ever more fucked up
schizoidedly by the day,' he further cried, to bring out from the
undercurrents of
consciousness a few more points of potential interest.
The 'injustices' - against others as much as self - were driving him
crazy.
Yet sanity had little to be said for it, because others 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
even more quickly really.
But did it come to this sad state solely because he could not cope
with rejection?
In the images of separations, images of universal entropy.
In the images of meetings, images of universal harmony.
Everyday reality was somewhere in between, of course.
Hi-Fi Low Techy Fallootin' Fugues.
Narratives - even messed up ones - can hold things together.
Against Stereo-Typing.
Humpy Dumpy was resting in pieces.
He could not even get his own name write.
And he did not know where he was really let alone why he was
there.
Was Humper in the dumps because cross-tongued Frumpy Dumpling had
cruelly duped him, dumped him, and left him behind in the lurch?
Or was him left pi calculating [... and it never seems to end ...
{Who ate all the pis? 'Me Sir!' cried the greedy mathematician - and,
as
evidence of his misdeeds, a trail of decimal points dribbled from
mouth-to-plate ... or plate-to-mouth ...] because his negative
numbers had added up to a more positive one leaving him behind in
paralytic in a ditch while she got on with more actively catalytic
reactions?
To further discomfort Himpy Dimpy, Faggy Hagface then tossed in the
suggestion that he was a closetted Mr Humphreys and that she had
given him his freedom because he could not say 'I'm free!' himself.
Sometimes Hummer just took the up-the-arse insults silently - it was
after all only another cheap and spiteful little castrating power-
play by the
female-of-the-species to keep the downed down-trodden decent enough
man down [and
good hetero liberals never denied suggestions of their 'gayness',
anyway, because they were true to some degree - no one is
entirely 'this' or 'that' - and because, for those for whom it is
more wholly true and of their nature, 'gayness' was not something to
be denied].
Non-P.C. Hummer knew that poor bugger beggar as he was, he was not,
in fact, much of a bugger bummer.
'Actually, I don't like cocks up my arse, if that is what you mean,'
is what he actually said to her when she suggested he was a secret
homosexual, and what she actually replied - for she had a stock-in-
trade for every occasion - was: 'Actually most of them don't do
that.' How she obtained that inside knowledge was never revealed -
but
if it was from fag-break gossip with her camp followers, then it is
suspected in the passive voice that they were not telling her the
full unscatalogical truth.
Homeboy should have though there and then: 'I will never be a well-
served sir with that saggy faggy hag - Miss Slow Come might have a
nice pussy, but she is nothing but an old dog really, and will
never learn more pleasant tongued tricks.'
But Himbi? [the man was a walking question mark] never learned to
hate her and dismiss her properly. That too was a mistake for one who
thought herself more naturally 'passionate' - anyone who could not
hate, she claimed, was somehow lacking in the full-range of feelings.
Sometimes he gave her words too much over-due attention, that was
sure. Her critical words on his lack of hate stumped him for a long
time ...
Whenever he was at a loss for a new way forward Hammy put himself
under the influence of the consumerist want-makers ...
Being pissed-up was a piss-poor way to live well but, well ... it
seemed he had to
drink the dark stuff because the darker-still-stuff was not really in
him.
'I am not a bitter man' - he said, finding a parroted version of the
gift of the gab while drinking the dregs of two cans of snug-fitting
stout unladylike associations - and more than Tucan play the game of
pretending to be 'pure genius!.
'Drink!' the fake Irish father-figure said in a travesty of a
stereotype that was quite amusing occasionally, but not when overdone.
Instead he cried: 'Francis!'
'No! Anon, anon, sir!' was the reply.
He was no saint, nor was meant to be - nor no Hamlet either, though I
see you smirking knowingly - but he was a fair part-time imitator of
a kindly one - he did not have to pretend not to hate, because,
simply, he did not hate much ... and that was no fault [or indicator
of limited emotional range].
Hanky Dampy pulled himself short with a snort.
Hang on ... is this not getting too soppy?
[Or should that be 'sloppy'? With wet ones you never could tell. He
said 'soppy', she said 'sloppy', so there 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,
whilet 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 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> Add to Address Book
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:51:31 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes
Chirpy quirky qwerty cheap cheep ...
... moods can change very quickly for the worse though ...
... sight of a poster with the word 'partnership' changed mine far
for the worse a few minutes ago ...
... got me to thinking ... 'they' talk 'partnership' when what 'they'
seem to mean is 'exploitations' ...
... certainly more often been offered 'rip offs' [at my expense] than
partnerships, personally ...
... 'temptestuous' minds are difficult to live with of course -
as 'she' [in various forms] taught me ...
Restarting bombastically ...
The actual singular state is foul and stinking.
Pontential of pluralistic partnership is likely to be much more fair
and sweet-smelling.
That is just possibly 'wishful thinking', 'of course' - and what look
appear like 'sweet-smelling deals' on first glance can turn out to
be 'rip-offs' [always read the small-print].
But if Charles can get married 'unconstitutionally', then I should be
allowed to do so too - because 'rights' apply to all citizens not
just one.
[And the Cosmopolitan Republican rightly asserts his human right to
be an expanisve-minded
'citizen' (of the world), not a 'subject' of an, in fact (not merely
opinion), not very
impressive narrow-minded royalist national state.]
And my true 'queen' will be a truly equal partner - not some
subservient 'princess consort'.
But adazzle them dimmly deft Dicky ducky ... because they are not yet
properly prepared for the really 'brighter stuff' ...
A useful staging device is the 'conceit' - whereby the audience
[potential or actual] can never be quite sure whether you are 'merely
fooling' - or even just plain mad - or not.
This seems like a 'conceit', but ...
I am reluctant to share my 'powers' more widely, and that is fact,
because I don't really trust 'them'.
By 'them' I mean [generally and specifically ] 'oppressors'
AND 'oppressed' - because 'they' can seem too interchangeable.
The 'oppressed', given power, all too easily [experience teaches]
become 'oppressers' themselves - this is an all too common pattern of
human history.
Sketchy fictional illustations ...
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero represents something like
an 'enlightened dictator' and/or a 'kindly tyrant', as it were. His
use of power over others is mostly kindly, but he does treat Caliban
very harshly - and that is troubling, because it seems 'over-done'
and 'unnecessary', and seems to involve a failing in 'fellow-feeling'.
But if roles were reversed, would Caliban treat Prospero more kindly?
It seems unlikely - and Caliban O'Kitty taught me that ...
That is 'only' fiction, though, and I am neither Prospero nor
Caliban, nor meant to be either.
But ...
I do know a 'thing or two' about the way 'power' works.
What to do with such powerful 'knowledge' [even if it is
only 'potential' knowledge]?
Ideally, I would share it around - power is a great
potential 'fertilizer', and, like garden manure, seems to work best
when spread around quite thinly, as someone said to me, almost
quoting someone else, the other day.
But I don't really trust 'them' with the potentially enhanced power -
partly because I don't trust myself with it.
'So' ... I 'tweak' the 'system' here and there ... rather than seek
to force a large mass-flow change of direction ... 'safer' that way,
I tend to think ...
One of my 'big ideas' - which I have not really worked out yet, but
have a kind of outline understanding of - is that 'key elements' of
the really 'big ideas' are as likely to be found in the minds
of 'anonymous' - though named and identified, within their local
contexts - and seemingly 'lowly' people, as in the minds of 'famous'
and more obviously 'high-status' people.
Like all 'big ideas' this one is not entirely original - it owes a
lot to the Christian notion of 'sublimity', for example, but I would
not want the Christians to think in a conceited way that they
deserved all the credit for it: because they adapted it, in their
turn, from other people's thinking.
There seems to be a life-enhancing/life-protecting 'defence' against
the physically powerful in this 'big idea' - namely, 'they', nor
anyone else, could ever really tell who really carries the elements
of the really 'big ideas' - so if 'they' destroy ANY
individual, 'they' might be destroying key elements of the
really 'big ideas'.
In other words [to get somewhat cryptic seeming, but not
really], 'we' put 'it' together between us - based on mutual
recognitions of personal 'uniqueness', and of the value of our
differing talents, and of the potential 'deeper understandings'
within EVERY individual human consciousness.
When people deliberately destroy ANY unique individual, they are
potentially doing huge damage to humanity possibility generally -
because that individual might carry a truly essential component of
the 'key' to human possibility generally.
What I am searching for, 'of course', via such 'speculatory' ideas,
is a way to protect vulnerable individual human beings against
persecution - to the point of destruction - by groups or other mass-
flow processes ...
And that is all just 'wild unworldly dreaming' though, isn't it?
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
So much for the 'open[n]ess and honesty' of the 'professional' media classes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNONlNLUVvU
unless you 'disable' 'comments'
any old[e] [potentially foul/fowl-minded] fool can ...
ryte none-sense on your u-tube webspace
+
but was big sis. Lis. 'naked' under the duva that day, that day so many years ago ...?! and so on ...
+
all of this was a long time ago, but what is a long time in the short scale of the individual human life? and what is a short time in the long scale of the 'significant instant'?!
I forget much, but remember a little, and remember little, but forget much, and ...
+
and Catherine wrote to Philip: 'what I want to be in relation to you is a reader of your books'
and he replied: 'I won't write those books just to spite you!'
and she replied: 'may/might I suggest "ravings of a madman" as a title? - or has that been done already?'
and he replied: 'I like the question marks, anyway - and i [id, off me 'ead, gett't?] also like the sub-clause beginning 'or', because that suggests some sort of 'desperate ennui' ...
+
In other words, they come, they go, and you can delete 'comments' on your YouTube entries easily enuf ... without them causing 'offence' 2U, nor you 2 them ... and so it goes on ...
unless you 'disable' 'comments'
any old[e] [potentially foul/fowl-minded] fool can ...
ryte none-sense on your u-tube webspace
+
but was big sis. Lis. 'naked' under the duva that day, that day so many years ago ...?! and so on ...
+
all of this was a long time ago, but what is a long time in the short scale of the individual human life? and what is a short time in the long scale of the 'significant instant'?!
I forget much, but remember a little, and remember little, but forget much, and ...
+
and Catherine wrote to Philip: 'what I want to be in relation to you is a reader of your books'
and he replied: 'I won't write those books just to spite you!'
and she replied: 'may/might I suggest "ravings of a madman" as a title? - or has that been done already?'
and he replied: 'I like the question marks, anyway - and i [id, off me 'ead, gett't?] also like the sub-clause beginning 'or', because that suggests some sort of 'desperate ennui' ...
+
In other words, they come, they go, and you can delete 'comments' on your YouTube entries easily enuf ... without them causing 'offence' 2U, nor you 2 them ... and so it goes on ...
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
pass me another cigarette please and do you have a light please
More Mere Mare Satire?
Gals We Be Guys ...
By Mr Tom Smithy Shy [not his real name] ... with a little help from
his 'friends' [... and among the things she did not seem to realize
was that I am content enough to go along with the myth that I am
an 'only' an alcoholic manic depressive - because that gives a swift
soft-option, reality-side-stepping, 'get out clause' to others and
self when the going gets really tough ...]
Are you sitting uncomfortably ... then let's begin again with a
freshly paraphrased variation on an favourite old theme ...
The Head was endeavouring to get to the heart of some apparently base
material offence. She asked a fundamental seeming question: 'You are
telling me that she enflamed your front bottom with a bum son
burrner?'
'I am telling you that she burnt my bottom witha a bunsen,' corrected
the Mistress of Science [Hons (Dunelm)] biology teacher, strictly
speaking as ever.
Ms Ursula Umbilical ['umanities, 'ons ('xon)], the girls' school top
dog, sighed with such depths of knowing resignation that only a life-
time in a female-principled scholastic environment could engender.
Tiring of the basically fundamentally trivial matter of burnt bulky
biological bottoms, she switched her gaze out of the window to
observe how some of screaming queen cream of young British womanhood
were progressing on the playing fields of Rada Minor Public School.
They seemed to be enjoying a rather jolly good hookey hokey hockey
match: Probables versus Possibles. But then ...
A piercingly 'orrible 'owl - that might have been mistaken for an
owling hoot - rose above the background bedlam to shatter any
illusion of earthly paradise. The source was soon identified: a
stout hermaphrodite figure who had cheated his/her way into the
school was to be seem visibly prone and writhing. No foul had been
whistled, indicating that this was a fair play part of the game, and
the other players just bullied off elsewhere, ignoring her/him.
Ms Umbilical turned away from this tender scene with satisfaction
filling her mind. Quite clearly, her charges were well advanced in
the development of their natural instincts and being properly
prepared for the harshness of the world beyond the school gates.
Ms Dode Deedes, the biology teacher, felt a tremor ripple through her
as the Head's attention returned to the abuse of her tender backside.
'You believe the action in question to have been deliberate?'
inquired Ms Umbilical sternly.
'At certain levels of consciousness ...' Ms Deeds began, straying off
her own subject and into another ... and then she realized the
dangers of this and so paused ... and then simply answered
precisely: 'Yes'.
'You are quite certain the action had no direct connexion with
whatever experiment the form was then collectively engaged in?'
Ms Deedes again paused ... in order that no factual error should be
contained in her next statement [she was not known as 'Stickler In-
Deedes' for nothing] ... before replying, deliberately: 'Quite'.
'As a matter of fact, in what was the form then engaged, Ms Deedes?' the
Head wondered.
'Testing control solutions for unwanted nucleic acid traces,' was the
accurate scientific reply.
'This was a reproductive possibilities test, in other words?'
'Exactly.'
The Head tried out her sigh once more and found it satisfyingly
slightly further regressed into extreme cynical world-weariness.
'That explains everything,' she said. 'Do sit down while we consider
potential complications.'
'I cannot sit down.'
'Oh? ... no of course not, your bottom bits are red raw and sore,'
the Head said matter of factly without fellow-feeling or sympathy.
By silent agreement Ms Deedes remained standing while Ms Umbilical
began lecturing: 'Prudence Pubescent is a high-spirited girl of good
family. You well know my opinions on these matters: individually and
collectively we must be careful to avoid repressing womenhood's
natural reproductive instincts. How often must I remind staff of
this?'
Ms Deeds suddenly flushed hotly at the suggestion of personal
biological unprofessionalism and/or gender betrayal.
Ms Umbilitcal continued: 'Remember my address On Balance to the
assembled multitudes just this morning. I said, in case you have
already forgotten - and memories are so short-term, if find these
days - that ttwo side of our nature call for equal balanced
development, viz: emotional; physical. When balance is lost, actions
indicative of some internal tension will inevitably occur. Your
lesson, quite clearly, had become too coldly scientific, thereby
suppressing the natural vitality of young Prudence. Naturally she
enflamed your buttocks as a consequence.'
Although much provoked by this accusation of profesional ms-practice,
Ms Deedes held her peace and said nothing - and kept her job as a
result. Her silence did though seem to confirm the Head's more
general point about too rationalistic science repressing true nature.
Considering the matter of Ms Deedes enraged back parts now closed, Ms
Umbilical picked up the required Health and Safety Executive
documentation ... and walked over to the fireplace, mumbling as she
did some garbled fragments of Heraclitus as she did so, as if in
invocation. She then threw the over-bureaucratic assessment of human
ms-fortune into the flames.
For some time Ms Umbilical stared into the flames.
'Not creative enough!' she suddenly cried, and the matter of Ms
Deedes' burnt arse ws finished.
Ho ho ho ... very satirical ... eh?! ...
Footnote Reference text: Hume, Enquiries, XII, III ... 'If we take in
our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance,
let us ask: "Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning
quantity or number?" No. "Does it contain any experimental reasoning
concerning matters of fact and existence?" No. commit it then to the
flames: for it can contain nothing by sophistry and illusion.'
To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 12:48:59 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] Loose Talk ... costing nowt much really ...
From time to time and mostly without knowing it - unconsciously it
might be said - assorted significant others slip me bits of theeir
nihilism/ennui/depression/[call 'negative vibes't what you will]
and 'say' to me, in effect: 'Help me out with that.' [They never
say 'please' of course ... and offer few thanks when I do 'enlighten'
them a little.]
Anyway ... me I put my faith in creativity ... because if you keep
working at it ... you find through it releases from 'The Prison' ...
and even if they are not lasting ... well ... at least you
have 'escaped' for a while ... and found some more ways and means of
better living that take you into the future in an improved state ...
albeit hestitantly ...
... er ... but ...
... have you ever fallen in love with someone you should not have
fallen in love with? ...
... er ... but ...
... ever fallen in love with someone, but not quite enough? ...
... er ... but ...
... every just wanted a fuck and abused the concept of love - or even
friendship - in the process of getting it ...
... er ... but ...
... the motives of any given sex act are often very varied when you
consider them ... and can boil down to something as banal
as 'politeness' ... 'well ... he/she asked nicely ... and I did not
like to say 'no' ...' ...
... er ... but ...
... without love it is mostly frustrating and too creatural ...
that's what I think anyway ...
... er ... but ...
... is 'love' for real or just something we try to talk ourselves
into believing in? ... if you can ask that question sincerely then it
is not 'real' for you ... because when you are in love there is no
doubt about love's existence really, even if the intensity of its
hold over you rises and falls ...
... it can be something we sort of talk ourselves into believing
sometimes though ...
... er ... but ...
... the weirdness and the ambiguities of 'The Absurdity' can also
help to keep me going in the some of worst times, truth be told ...
Imagination dead, imagine that! Well it might bring an end to a lot
of frustration and boredom and despair when you think about it:
because much frustration, boredom, despair, etc, comes from comparing
and contrasting the perceived actual and the imagined possible ...
and their is always a huge gap ...
Probably hunger and other physical cravings would not end if we
became more brain dead ... and that might be just as bad when you
think about it ... imgine ... a real 'dog's life' ... eg ..
Anyway ...
Admass incorporated modern travesty of St Valentine's day long over
with [... just lingering traces of fake correspondences
between 'love' and consumer product ... with the loved person not
properly embraced ... makes 'love' just another disposable ...
etc ...] ... and a less commercialized Easter Day to come ... 'so' I
could conceivably start talking about 'love' seriously again ... Why
bother though? ... it can seem such a devalued notion ...
... and oddly, many people find 'love' - even of the platonic kind -
more embarrassing to talk about than sex ... Oh yes, lest I forget
there was a marketing-type survey recently that 'proved' that 'lust
is the new love' ... No one asked me though, and I would have been
with the minority on that one ...
Why not some pornography though? It debases humanity, without a
doubt, but we seem to enjoy the debasement - there can be
something 'sublime' [highs out of lows, and all that] in it, that
much is true anyway.
Muses of pornography: a Pig and a Tart.
They promise a lot - everything even [in the 'ultimate orgasm' etc]
but never really quite deliver much lasting satisfaction ... so aid
the drift towards ennui ... then ... nihilism ... then ...
Without love you see ...
Porn can be mostly harmless bits of fun though ...
And more uplifting alternatives are possible ...
'The dance along the artery
the circulation of the lymph
are figured in the drift of the stars
ascend to summer in the tree
we move above the moving tree
in light upon the figured leaf
and hear upon the sodden floor
below, the boarhound and the boar
pursue their pattern as before
but reconciled among the star ...'
Today's good sexy writing award goes to TS Eliot ... even though many
might not recognize it as 'sexy stuff' ...
And when you think about fluid dynamics, restless rhymatics, and such
like, well it must be possible to create a more elevated/elevating
sort of porn ...
But you sometimes have to give 'em a little bit more of what they
might fancy in more prosaic terms of course ... it might be
instructive though - you never know - or it might just be impurely
clinical.
When a preorgasmic state is induced by delicate stroking of the
clitoris with finger- or even tongue-tip, rhythmic muscular straining
engenders a descent of the uterus by up to one inch - or
approximately two-point-five CM. Anterior vaginal wall is
repositioned by similar distances - and there is likely to be a
copious flow of secretions. The resulting rearrangement of the mouth
of the cervix means that if full penetrative intercourse follows soon
afterwards, and ejaculation occurs, not only are the mutual
sensations experienced during mixed clasping and thrusting and
internal kissing more pleasurable, but conception - if possible
within variables of ovarian cycles - is more likely. In simpler
terms, she comes down to meet him, as he reaches up to meet her, so
they really do get closer together, and nearer to breaching the gap
between two people ... and so to making one out of more-than-one. In
these and other such ways, nature has its ways of telling us things -
things way beyond words really. And love makes it more likely,
because, for amongst other reasons, partners who really love each
other become just as interested in the other's satisfactions as in
their own ... [a lot of fuckers are just fucking themselves really]
so it is not so much a question of 'was it good for you too?' as ...
when it was, you should not have to ask really ...
Anyway ...
Oh ... I am becoming such a tedious preachy bourgeois formalist ...
aren't I?! ...
...
Pass me another fucking cigarette, please ... and do you have a
fucking light, please? ...
Gals We Be Guys ...
By Mr Tom Smithy Shy [not his real name] ... with a little help from
his 'friends' [... and among the things she did not seem to realize
was that I am content enough to go along with the myth that I am
an 'only' an alcoholic manic depressive - because that gives a swift
soft-option, reality-side-stepping, 'get out clause' to others and
self when the going gets really tough ...]
Are you sitting uncomfortably ... then let's begin again with a
freshly paraphrased variation on an favourite old theme ...
The Head was endeavouring to get to the heart of some apparently base
material offence. She asked a fundamental seeming question: 'You are
telling me that she enflamed your front bottom with a bum son
burrner?'
'I am telling you that she burnt my bottom witha a bunsen,' corrected
the Mistress of Science [Hons (Dunelm)] biology teacher, strictly
speaking as ever.
Ms Ursula Umbilical ['umanities, 'ons ('xon)], the girls' school top
dog, sighed with such depths of knowing resignation that only a life-
time in a female-principled scholastic environment could engender.
Tiring of the basically fundamentally trivial matter of burnt bulky
biological bottoms, she switched her gaze out of the window to
observe how some of screaming queen cream of young British womanhood
were progressing on the playing fields of Rada Minor Public School.
They seemed to be enjoying a rather jolly good hookey hokey hockey
match: Probables versus Possibles. But then ...
A piercingly 'orrible 'owl - that might have been mistaken for an
owling hoot - rose above the background bedlam to shatter any
illusion of earthly paradise. The source was soon identified: a
stout hermaphrodite figure who had cheated his/her way into the
school was to be seem visibly prone and writhing. No foul had been
whistled, indicating that this was a fair play part of the game, and
the other players just bullied off elsewhere, ignoring her/him.
Ms Umbilical turned away from this tender scene with satisfaction
filling her mind. Quite clearly, her charges were well advanced in
the development of their natural instincts and being properly
prepared for the harshness of the world beyond the school gates.
Ms Dode Deedes, the biology teacher, felt a tremor ripple through her
as the Head's attention returned to the abuse of her tender backside.
'You believe the action in question to have been deliberate?'
inquired Ms Umbilical sternly.
'At certain levels of consciousness ...' Ms Deeds began, straying off
her own subject and into another ... and then she realized the
dangers of this and so paused ... and then simply answered
precisely: 'Yes'.
'You are quite certain the action had no direct connexion with
whatever experiment the form was then collectively engaged in?'
Ms Deedes again paused ... in order that no factual error should be
contained in her next statement [she was not known as 'Stickler In-
Deedes' for nothing] ... before replying, deliberately: 'Quite'.
'As a matter of fact, in what was the form then engaged, Ms Deedes?' the
Head wondered.
'Testing control solutions for unwanted nucleic acid traces,' was the
accurate scientific reply.
'This was a reproductive possibilities test, in other words?'
'Exactly.'
The Head tried out her sigh once more and found it satisfyingly
slightly further regressed into extreme cynical world-weariness.
'That explains everything,' she said. 'Do sit down while we consider
potential complications.'
'I cannot sit down.'
'Oh? ... no of course not, your bottom bits are red raw and sore,'
the Head said matter of factly without fellow-feeling or sympathy.
By silent agreement Ms Deedes remained standing while Ms Umbilical
began lecturing: 'Prudence Pubescent is a high-spirited girl of good
family. You well know my opinions on these matters: individually and
collectively we must be careful to avoid repressing womenhood's
natural reproductive instincts. How often must I remind staff of
this?'
Ms Deeds suddenly flushed hotly at the suggestion of personal
biological unprofessionalism and/or gender betrayal.
Ms Umbilitcal continued: 'Remember my address On Balance to the
assembled multitudes just this morning. I said, in case you have
already forgotten - and memories are so short-term, if find these
days - that ttwo side of our nature call for equal balanced
development, viz: emotional; physical. When balance is lost, actions
indicative of some internal tension will inevitably occur. Your
lesson, quite clearly, had become too coldly scientific, thereby
suppressing the natural vitality of young Prudence. Naturally she
enflamed your buttocks as a consequence.'
Although much provoked by this accusation of profesional ms-practice,
Ms Deedes held her peace and said nothing - and kept her job as a
result. Her silence did though seem to confirm the Head's more
general point about too rationalistic science repressing true nature.
Considering the matter of Ms Deedes enraged back parts now closed, Ms
Umbilical picked up the required Health and Safety Executive
documentation ... and walked over to the fireplace, mumbling as she
did some garbled fragments of Heraclitus as she did so, as if in
invocation. She then threw the over-bureaucratic assessment of human
ms-fortune into the flames.
For some time Ms Umbilical stared into the flames.
'Not creative enough!' she suddenly cried, and the matter of Ms
Deedes' burnt arse ws finished.
Ho ho ho ... very satirical ... eh?! ...
Footnote Reference text: Hume, Enquiries, XII, III ... 'If we take in
our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance,
let us ask: "Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning
quantity or number?" No. "Does it contain any experimental reasoning
concerning matters of fact and existence?" No. commit it then to the
flames: for it can contain nothing by sophistry and illusion.'
To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 12:48:59 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] Loose Talk ... costing nowt much really ...
From time to time and mostly without knowing it - unconsciously it
might be said - assorted significant others slip me bits of theeir
nihilism/ennui/depression/[call 'negative vibes't what you will]
and 'say' to me, in effect: 'Help me out with that.' [They never
say 'please' of course ... and offer few thanks when I do 'enlighten'
them a little.]
Anyway ... me I put my faith in creativity ... because if you keep
working at it ... you find through it releases from 'The Prison' ...
and even if they are not lasting ... well ... at least you
have 'escaped' for a while ... and found some more ways and means of
better living that take you into the future in an improved state ...
albeit hestitantly ...
... er ... but ...
... have you ever fallen in love with someone you should not have
fallen in love with? ...
... er ... but ...
... ever fallen in love with someone, but not quite enough? ...
... er ... but ...
... every just wanted a fuck and abused the concept of love - or even
friendship - in the process of getting it ...
... er ... but ...
... the motives of any given sex act are often very varied when you
consider them ... and can boil down to something as banal
as 'politeness' ... 'well ... he/she asked nicely ... and I did not
like to say 'no' ...' ...
... er ... but ...
... without love it is mostly frustrating and too creatural ...
that's what I think anyway ...
... er ... but ...
... is 'love' for real or just something we try to talk ourselves
into believing in? ... if you can ask that question sincerely then it
is not 'real' for you ... because when you are in love there is no
doubt about love's existence really, even if the intensity of its
hold over you rises and falls ...
... it can be something we sort of talk ourselves into believing
sometimes though ...
... er ... but ...
... the weirdness and the ambiguities of 'The Absurdity' can also
help to keep me going in the some of worst times, truth be told ...
Imagination dead, imagine that! Well it might bring an end to a lot
of frustration and boredom and despair when you think about it:
because much frustration, boredom, despair, etc, comes from comparing
and contrasting the perceived actual and the imagined possible ...
and their is always a huge gap ...
Probably hunger and other physical cravings would not end if we
became more brain dead ... and that might be just as bad when you
think about it ... imgine ... a real 'dog's life' ... eg ..
Anyway ...
Admass incorporated modern travesty of St Valentine's day long over
with [... just lingering traces of fake correspondences
between 'love' and consumer product ... with the loved person not
properly embraced ... makes 'love' just another disposable ...
etc ...] ... and a less commercialized Easter Day to come ... 'so' I
could conceivably start talking about 'love' seriously again ... Why
bother though? ... it can seem such a devalued notion ...
... and oddly, many people find 'love' - even of the platonic kind -
more embarrassing to talk about than sex ... Oh yes, lest I forget
there was a marketing-type survey recently that 'proved' that 'lust
is the new love' ... No one asked me though, and I would have been
with the minority on that one ...
Why not some pornography though? It debases humanity, without a
doubt, but we seem to enjoy the debasement - there can be
something 'sublime' [highs out of lows, and all that] in it, that
much is true anyway.
Muses of pornography: a Pig and a Tart.
They promise a lot - everything even [in the 'ultimate orgasm' etc]
but never really quite deliver much lasting satisfaction ... so aid
the drift towards ennui ... then ... nihilism ... then ...
Without love you see ...
Porn can be mostly harmless bits of fun though ...
And more uplifting alternatives are possible ...
'The dance along the artery
the circulation of the lymph
are figured in the drift of the stars
ascend to summer in the tree
we move above the moving tree
in light upon the figured leaf
and hear upon the sodden floor
below, the boarhound and the boar
pursue their pattern as before
but reconciled among the star ...'
Today's good sexy writing award goes to TS Eliot ... even though many
might not recognize it as 'sexy stuff' ...
And when you think about fluid dynamics, restless rhymatics, and such
like, well it must be possible to create a more elevated/elevating
sort of porn ...
But you sometimes have to give 'em a little bit more of what they
might fancy in more prosaic terms of course ... it might be
instructive though - you never know - or it might just be impurely
clinical.
When a preorgasmic state is induced by delicate stroking of the
clitoris with finger- or even tongue-tip, rhythmic muscular straining
engenders a descent of the uterus by up to one inch - or
approximately two-point-five CM. Anterior vaginal wall is
repositioned by similar distances - and there is likely to be a
copious flow of secretions. The resulting rearrangement of the mouth
of the cervix means that if full penetrative intercourse follows soon
afterwards, and ejaculation occurs, not only are the mutual
sensations experienced during mixed clasping and thrusting and
internal kissing more pleasurable, but conception - if possible
within variables of ovarian cycles - is more likely. In simpler
terms, she comes down to meet him, as he reaches up to meet her, so
they really do get closer together, and nearer to breaching the gap
between two people ... and so to making one out of more-than-one. In
these and other such ways, nature has its ways of telling us things -
things way beyond words really. And love makes it more likely,
because, for amongst other reasons, partners who really love each
other become just as interested in the other's satisfactions as in
their own ... [a lot of fuckers are just fucking themselves really]
so it is not so much a question of 'was it good for you too?' as ...
when it was, you should not have to ask really ...
Anyway ...
Oh ... I am becoming such a tedious preachy bourgeois formalist ...
aren't I?! ...
...
Pass me another fucking cigarette, please ... and do you have a
fucking light, please? ...
Friday, 18 October 2013
Restarting sort of sub-Milton-i-cally ...
Restarting sort of sub-Miltonically ...
[Ref txt Samson Agonistes]
A little onwards lend your guiding hand to those still hesitent near-
blind steps of mine though the darkness. And a little further on
still. But is it merely for more mirey endurance? Or is it possible
to have real hopes of getting out of the dark mire and into a better
place that has some chance of birghtness in and around it? There I
might find a truer home, or if not that at least a place to rest more
properly - were some rearrangment to relieve me from my present
senseless seeming toiling task. Too servile I have become to those
who do not respectfully use the power that they have over me. Daily,
in my isolated share of this common prison, in chains designed by
self and others, I scarecely freely draw enough breath and real
sustenance to last another day of unwholesome unhomesomeness ...
Not really eyeless in Gaza am I. Downfallen, dumbeddown, dupedamned,
dogended, devalued, demeaned, drudged. Why aye! Legless in Gazza-
land I lie.
The fates have not been as kindly as they might have been. And even
if, surely enough, others suffer more than me, that is no relief
really, and is really part of my own suffering.
Mustn't grumble though ...
...
Re realistic role re-modelling ...
In Sentimental Education, Flaubert [northern provincial reclusive
eccentric bachelor of arts ...]
set out to wrtie the 'moral history' of his generation. It is a work
based on personal experiences but not strictly autobiographical. It
stretches the literal truth, but remains fact-based and within the
bounds of general probability. Great care is taken to authenticate
actual historical detail. The authorial 'voice' is 'detached' and
ironic. It is 'about' love and passion in changing times.
The 'actions' represented are strangely and ambiguously passive. A
sort of hope flows through the work, but it seems to represent the
defeat of idealism. Democrats are not flatteringly represented, but
autocrats get a hammering. It mocks human ignorance and stupidity
generally and particularly. It celebrates quirky individuality and
small acts of love and kindness and fellow-feeling. Flaubert was
pessimistic about the possibility of 'progress'. He
thought 'progress' would only be possible when/ if more perople
learned how to live more honestly and open-mindedly, without
absolutist dogmatic beliefs - which most people appeared reluctant to
do.
Flaubert: 'You're always having deal with arseholes, being lied to,
deceived, slandered and ridiculed, but that is to be expected, and
you thank heaven when you meet exceptions. That's why I never forget
the tiniest scrap of happiness that comes my way from friendly
gestures, or even a smile.'
Clearly, Flaubert's 'sentimental' education is not a sloppy/soppy
study.
As for its underlying philosophy: 'I don't know what the two
words 'mind' and 'matter' mean. Nobody has any direct experience of
either. Maybe they're two abstractions created by 'intelligence'?
In brief, I consider 'materialism' and 'spiritualism' both equally
absurd assumptions.' [Spinoza was his favourite philosopher, by the
way.]
He was a 'realist', in a word.
[Ref txt Samson Agonistes]
A little onwards lend your guiding hand to those still hesitent near-
blind steps of mine though the darkness. And a little further on
still. But is it merely for more mirey endurance? Or is it possible
to have real hopes of getting out of the dark mire and into a better
place that has some chance of birghtness in and around it? There I
might find a truer home, or if not that at least a place to rest more
properly - were some rearrangment to relieve me from my present
senseless seeming toiling task. Too servile I have become to those
who do not respectfully use the power that they have over me. Daily,
in my isolated share of this common prison, in chains designed by
self and others, I scarecely freely draw enough breath and real
sustenance to last another day of unwholesome unhomesomeness ...
Not really eyeless in Gaza am I. Downfallen, dumbeddown, dupedamned,
dogended, devalued, demeaned, drudged. Why aye! Legless in Gazza-
land I lie.
The fates have not been as kindly as they might have been. And even
if, surely enough, others suffer more than me, that is no relief
really, and is really part of my own suffering.
Mustn't grumble though ...
...
Re realistic role re-modelling ...
In Sentimental Education, Flaubert [northern provincial reclusive
eccentric bachelor of arts ...]
set out to wrtie the 'moral history' of his generation. It is a work
based on personal experiences but not strictly autobiographical. It
stretches the literal truth, but remains fact-based and within the
bounds of general probability. Great care is taken to authenticate
actual historical detail. The authorial 'voice' is 'detached' and
ironic. It is 'about' love and passion in changing times.
The 'actions' represented are strangely and ambiguously passive. A
sort of hope flows through the work, but it seems to represent the
defeat of idealism. Democrats are not flatteringly represented, but
autocrats get a hammering. It mocks human ignorance and stupidity
generally and particularly. It celebrates quirky individuality and
small acts of love and kindness and fellow-feeling. Flaubert was
pessimistic about the possibility of 'progress'. He
thought 'progress' would only be possible when/ if more perople
learned how to live more honestly and open-mindedly, without
absolutist dogmatic beliefs - which most people appeared reluctant to
do.
Flaubert: 'You're always having deal with arseholes, being lied to,
deceived, slandered and ridiculed, but that is to be expected, and
you thank heaven when you meet exceptions. That's why I never forget
the tiniest scrap of happiness that comes my way from friendly
gestures, or even a smile.'
Clearly, Flaubert's 'sentimental' education is not a sloppy/soppy
study.
As for its underlying philosophy: 'I don't know what the two
words 'mind' and 'matter' mean. Nobody has any direct experience of
either. Maybe they're two abstractions created by 'intelligence'?
In brief, I consider 'materialism' and 'spiritualism' both equally
absurd assumptions.' [Spinoza was his favourite philosopher, by the
way.]
He was a 'realist', in a word.
you can fool me easily enough ... but you cannot fool god-or-nature
08_06_2004
Dear 'private diary',
I do hope that no one reads this and takes what is written as evidence of 'psychosis' ... or whatever ... because as I had actually spelt/spelled out explicitly on a few occasions it this is an open sketchy notebook - with 'raw id' elements - ... so what is written here is rather impressionistic and subjective and 'of the moment' and not to be taken as is an indicator of 'conclusive states' ... or whatever ...
...
Anyway ... Venuse Observed ... well it was by some today ... but not by me or the natives in my neck of the woods ... because it was cloudy and there were lightning-thunder storms ...
... still ... wihtout historical conext ... and some astronomical and other forms of understanding ... the 'transit' of Venus 'over' the Sun was only a brief black spot to look at for a while ...
... in other words: what you know does colour what you see ... and what you look for ...
...
As it happens clouds and storms was quite venus-like in some ways ... because it is a hot cloudy stormy planet ... runaway greenhouse effect and all that ... and there is no life there as a consequence ...
...
Lessons to be learned ... if you have a mind to learn them ... include ...
Astronomy teaches you patience ... [8 years to wait for the next transit of Venus ... more than 100 years after that] ... and humility ... [you cannot control the clouds, etc] ...
... and ... well imagine the Earth as Venus like ... cloudy [so you never could see the sun] ... stormy ... too hot for life ... way it might go if we do not pay more attention to the way we are wrecking the environment ... but that is another story ...
... as is the possibity that 'earth systems' might well wipe out humanity before we became too much of a threat to Earthly life continity ... and that is a direct warning ...
...
Anyway ... sexing up the dossier ... Venus could not be properly observed because she was s frigid cow and kept her legs shut ...
...
... but that is just 'psycho-babble' ...
...
Anyway ... one reason I do not comply fully with the 'caring' parts of the psychiatric and psychological research networks is that stuff they learn is fed - albeit mostly unwittingly - to the less caring parts ... eg the corporate advertizers ... and the military establishments ...
... consider the deliberate and systematic [and that is what it was] mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq by American, British and other forces ... now ... there was a truly dreadful lot of psychiatric and psychological understanding went into that ... not just into the humiliation and torture techniques ... but also into the manipulations used to get the humiliators and torturers to do the disgusting deeds ...
... but that is a long story ...
...
Anyway ...
... decisions ... decisions ...
... despite the fact that I have been pushed to the political margins by circumstances I remain more mainstream and moderate in my political opinions than is generally understood ... I am certainly still a parliamentarian of sorts anyway ...
... I would not vote Labour again for the forseeable future though ...
... certainly not with Tony Blair as leader ... he is no longer trust worthy ... he misled the country over the reasons for going to war ... he ordered an illegal aggressive war ... true Labour leaders just don't do that sort of thing ...
... and the local MP who is a Blair lackey and an arrogant elitist tried to trick me - and others - personally ... so I would never vote for him again ...
... what are the alternatives though ... ? ...
... every time I look at one of the slimline 1992 10p piece [some short changing going on there surely] I am reminded of 'Black Wednesday' ... and that the people who almost bankrupted the country then were never properly called to account for it ... and that all of them seemed to personally prosper, actually ... some signs of some deep systematic corruption there, I rather think ...
...
Anyway ... the reasons people have for supporting or not supporting one party or another are often quite odd seeming ...
... take the Liberal Democrats for example ... I would never even consider voting for them ... because ... C. was a Liberal Democrat ...
... this might seem very irrational but ... an ex-girlfriend was a disloyal lying cheat ... and a Liberal Democrat ... so I have it in my mind by a sort of association that the Liberal Democrat party is full of disloyal lying cheats ... absurd, I know, but that is the way it goes ...
... and anyway ... it is a party of watered down social democracy ... diluted greenery ... that has abandoned most of its former principles Liberalism ...
...
Cookie was an odd enigmatic one ... wasn't he? ... Navigator ... Venus Observer ... Continent Discoverer ... Diplomat ... etc ... actually impossible to label satisfactorily ... same goes for eveyone in fact ... but that is another story ...
...
... eventually Cookie got careless in his diplomacy ... or else just got tired of 'enduring' [I know that feeling ... even though I am not actually actively suicidal ... my resources are used up ... and I have more or less given up the ghost ...] ... and Captain Cook got killed by some angry natives ...
... anyway ...
... where was I ... ? ... lost in the past ...
... while in the present ...
... so much bad faith bullshit about ... and too many people who just don't seem to give a damn about anything much except themselves ... [it is not 'all about' individuals and families ... or 'selfish genes' ... (oh ... and by the way ... the new fascists are a serious threat because they do have a new agenda based on corruptions of 'selfish gene' theory) ...]
...
Meanwhile ...
... oddly enough I do not take kindly to - or find myself inclined to give more trust to - people who lie to me and try to cheat me ... and I do not think that is a symptom of paranoia ...
... but anyway ...
... as I have said often enough ... you can fool me easily enough ... but you cannot fool god-or-nature ...
Dear 'private diary',
I do hope that no one reads this and takes what is written as evidence of 'psychosis' ... or whatever ... because as I had actually spelt/spelled out explicitly on a few occasions it this is an open sketchy notebook - with 'raw id' elements - ... so what is written here is rather impressionistic and subjective and 'of the moment' and not to be taken as is an indicator of 'conclusive states' ... or whatever ...
...
Anyway ... Venuse Observed ... well it was by some today ... but not by me or the natives in my neck of the woods ... because it was cloudy and there were lightning-thunder storms ...
... still ... wihtout historical conext ... and some astronomical and other forms of understanding ... the 'transit' of Venus 'over' the Sun was only a brief black spot to look at for a while ...
... in other words: what you know does colour what you see ... and what you look for ...
...
As it happens clouds and storms was quite venus-like in some ways ... because it is a hot cloudy stormy planet ... runaway greenhouse effect and all that ... and there is no life there as a consequence ...
...
Lessons to be learned ... if you have a mind to learn them ... include ...
Astronomy teaches you patience ... [8 years to wait for the next transit of Venus ... more than 100 years after that] ... and humility ... [you cannot control the clouds, etc] ...
... and ... well imagine the Earth as Venus like ... cloudy [so you never could see the sun] ... stormy ... too hot for life ... way it might go if we do not pay more attention to the way we are wrecking the environment ... but that is another story ...
... as is the possibity that 'earth systems' might well wipe out humanity before we became too much of a threat to Earthly life continity ... and that is a direct warning ...
...
Anyway ... sexing up the dossier ... Venus could not be properly observed because she was s frigid cow and kept her legs shut ...
...
... but that is just 'psycho-babble' ...
...
Anyway ... one reason I do not comply fully with the 'caring' parts of the psychiatric and psychological research networks is that stuff they learn is fed - albeit mostly unwittingly - to the less caring parts ... eg the corporate advertizers ... and the military establishments ...
... consider the deliberate and systematic [and that is what it was] mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq by American, British and other forces ... now ... there was a truly dreadful lot of psychiatric and psychological understanding went into that ... not just into the humiliation and torture techniques ... but also into the manipulations used to get the humiliators and torturers to do the disgusting deeds ...
... but that is a long story ...
...
Anyway ...
... decisions ... decisions ...
... despite the fact that I have been pushed to the political margins by circumstances I remain more mainstream and moderate in my political opinions than is generally understood ... I am certainly still a parliamentarian of sorts anyway ...
... I would not vote Labour again for the forseeable future though ...
... certainly not with Tony Blair as leader ... he is no longer trust worthy ... he misled the country over the reasons for going to war ... he ordered an illegal aggressive war ... true Labour leaders just don't do that sort of thing ...
... and the local MP who is a Blair lackey and an arrogant elitist tried to trick me - and others - personally ... so I would never vote for him again ...
... what are the alternatives though ... ? ...
... every time I look at one of the slimline 1992 10p piece [some short changing going on there surely] I am reminded of 'Black Wednesday' ... and that the people who almost bankrupted the country then were never properly called to account for it ... and that all of them seemed to personally prosper, actually ... some signs of some deep systematic corruption there, I rather think ...
...
Anyway ... the reasons people have for supporting or not supporting one party or another are often quite odd seeming ...
... take the Liberal Democrats for example ... I would never even consider voting for them ... because ... C. was a Liberal Democrat ...
... this might seem very irrational but ... an ex-girlfriend was a disloyal lying cheat ... and a Liberal Democrat ... so I have it in my mind by a sort of association that the Liberal Democrat party is full of disloyal lying cheats ... absurd, I know, but that is the way it goes ...
... and anyway ... it is a party of watered down social democracy ... diluted greenery ... that has abandoned most of its former principles Liberalism ...
...
Cookie was an odd enigmatic one ... wasn't he? ... Navigator ... Venus Observer ... Continent Discoverer ... Diplomat ... etc ... actually impossible to label satisfactorily ... same goes for eveyone in fact ... but that is another story ...
...
... eventually Cookie got careless in his diplomacy ... or else just got tired of 'enduring' [I know that feeling ... even though I am not actually actively suicidal ... my resources are used up ... and I have more or less given up the ghost ...] ... and Captain Cook got killed by some angry natives ...
... anyway ...
... where was I ... ? ... lost in the past ...
... while in the present ...
... so much bad faith bullshit about ... and too many people who just don't seem to give a damn about anything much except themselves ... [it is not 'all about' individuals and families ... or 'selfish genes' ... (oh ... and by the way ... the new fascists are a serious threat because they do have a new agenda based on corruptions of 'selfish gene' theory) ...]
...
Meanwhile ...
... oddly enough I do not take kindly to - or find myself inclined to give more trust to - people who lie to me and try to cheat me ... and I do not think that is a symptom of paranoia ...
... but anyway ...
... as I have said often enough ... you can fool me easily enough ... but you cannot fool god-or-nature ...
on going B- grade stuff
... Oedipus destroyed his own powers of vision ... he saw too
much ... that was his problem ...
To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 10:50:35 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] (unknown)
... Oedipus destroyed his own powers of vision ... he saw too
much ... otherwise ... that was his problem ...
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[Problem of selection ... coz most of this is stuff not worth remembering ... occasionally, however, out of the swampy piles of crap, something interesting emerges ...]
To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 22:12:22 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] Giving the game away? ...
Giving the game away ...
As I have said before, I regard this space as virtual open notebook.
I am not really sure why I use it really.
Intentionality is a real mystery ... we tend to 'justify' our actions
rather than really 'explain' them.
Notebooks are rough and tumble, mix-up and jumble, messy sorts of
things. And their contents are often quite ugly in various ways.
People do seem to like to peep into other people's notebooks - often
in the hope of finding something revolting or disturbing or
ridiculous or in some other way unsavoury. Perhaps such peeping is a
bit like lifting up stones in order to be disgusted but strangely
delighted by the usually hidden creepy crawlies and other oddities
that are revealed.
And when people invade your private spaces without telling you, they
have right to be offended by what they find there. Nor should they
rush to conclusions - eg a momentary outburst of spleen is not a
considered and 'for all time' final judgement [although having it
written down in a semi-permanent form can make it seem so,
admittedly].
Most of this stuff is only sketchy momentary crap really. And
sometimes I am very drunk when I fill this space with words. I am
sober tonight, as it happens.
Once upon a time she peeped into one of my more truly private
notebooks, kept in a personal drawer. I was out of the house at the
time. In the notebook, along with a lot of other stuff, there were a
few sentences briefly describing an erotic dream I had had while
sleeping alongside her. The 'dream-girl' had not been her, of
course. [This was in fact the only appearance that particular 'dream-
girl' was ever to make in my dreams. It was a sort of one-night
stand.] I had written it down mostly because I was puzzled by it, I
think - though it must also have been a sort of confession.
Anyway, naturally enough, after invading my private spaces, she later
shrieked out the sugggestion that it had been a great act
of 'deliberate' cruelty by me, towards her, to write those sex dream
notes and then put the private notebook away in a personal
drawer ... 'knowing' that, when I was out of the house, she would
open that drawer, take out that notebook and read the 'dream-girl'
notes. She probably had a point. And it was part of the evidence
she piled up against me as she moved towards her conclusion that my
nature was 'fundamentally twisted'.
[I think she was also troubled that she had not been tuned into the
dream while it was actually happening - we did share dreams,
literally, and in many postitive ways; but she was also very good
at 'thought-policing' it has to be said {I am still in the process of
rounding up the many 'spooks' she left behind in my consciousness,
truth be told!}]
And of course I read her private notebooks too - when she carefully
left them lying around close to my hand. They were actually a great
disappointment, as I recall - the crueller, more revolting and
grossly personally insulting and upsetting stuff was in the letters
she sent directly to me!
...
Restarting sort of sub-Miltonically ...
[Ref txt Samson Agonistes]
A little onwards lend your guiding hand to those still hesitent near-
blind steps of mine though the darkness. And a little further on
still. But is it merely for more mirey endurance? Or is it possible
to have real hopes of getting out of the dark mire and into a better
place that has some chance of birghtness in and around it? There I
might find a truer home, or if not that at least a place to rest more
properly - were some rearrangment to relieve me from my present
senseless seeming toiling task. Too servile I have become to those
who do not respectfully use the power that they have over me. Daily,
in my isolated share of this common prison, in chains designed by
self and others, I scarecely freely draw enough breath and real
sustenance to last another day of unwholesome unhomesomeness ...
Not really eyeless in Gaza am I. Downfallen, dumbeddown, dupedamned,
dogended, devalued, demeaned, drudged. Why aye! Legless in Gazza-
land I lie.
The fates have not been as kindly as they might have been. And even
if, surely enough, others suffer more than me, that is no relief
really, and is really part of my own suffering.
Mustn't grumble though ...
...
Re realistic role re-modelling ...
In Sentimental Education, Flaubert [northern provincial reclusive
eccentric bachelor of arts ...]
set out to wrtie the 'moral history' of his generation. It is a work
based on personal experiences but not strictly autobiographical. It
stretches the literal truth, but remains fact-based and within the
bounds of general probability. Great care is taken to authenticate
actual historical detail. The authorial 'voice' is 'detached' and
ironic. It is 'about' love and passion in changing times.
The 'actions' represented are strangely and ambiguously passive. A
sort of hope flows through the work, but it seems to represent the
defeat of idealism. Democrats are not flatteringly represented, but
autocrats get a hammering. It mocks human ignorance and stupidity
generally and particularly. It celebrates quirky individuality and
small acts of love and kindness and fellow-feeling. Flaubert was
pessimistic about the possibility of 'progress'. He
thought 'progress' would only be possible when/ if more perople
learned how to live more honestly and open-mindedly, without
absolutist dogmatic beliefs - which most people appeared reluctant to
do.
Flaubert: 'You're always having deal with arseholes, being lied to,
deceived, slandered and ridiculed, but that is to be expected, and
you thank heaven when you meet exceptions. That's why I never forget
the tiniest scrap of happiness that comes my way from friendly
gestures, or even a smile.'
Clearly, Flaubert's 'sentimental' education is not a sloppy/soppy
study.
As for its underlying philosophy: 'I don't know what the two
words 'mind' and 'matter' mean. Nobody has any direct experience of
either. Maybe they're two abstractions created by 'intelligence'?
In brief, I consider 'materialism' and 'spiritualism' both equally
absurd assumptions.' [Spinoza was his favourite philosopher, by the
way.]
He was a 'realist', in a word.
To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 23:50:41 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] Re: Giving the game away? ...
> He was a 'realist', in a word.
...
Too much 'understanding' has been expected of me [note passive voice].
And I have very little 'understanding' really.
But, anyway, that is more or less incidental, because I am more or
less finished anyway.
I have used up too many of my 'recoveries' already, and cannot have
many left. [Each of us has only a limited number of 'recoveries' in
us.] I have visited 'the void' too often, in other words.
Anyway.
So it goes.
Makes no difference really anyway.
Catatonia beckons soon enough, I reckon.
No one is to blame really.
But that folks, anyway, for your kindly disregards.
And you are well advized, I think, to protect yourselves - because,
come to 'the crunch' every else will [even though self-protection is
no protetion really]
...
Anyway ...
...
Meanwhile, I will continue to go on, of course, for the 'sake'
of 'amusement', or whatever, until some 'bitter' solitary end.
...
One hears public discourse by the supposedly 'authoritative', and one
often cannot believe how close it is to mere gibberish - one would at
least expect some semblance to sense.
There we had the 'chairperson' of the British Labour Party today ...
for example ... saying that the invasion of Iraq by US-UK forces
was 'legal' ... 'because' ... the British prime mininster said it was
legal.
Sorry folks, but legality is not whatever some 'authority' figure
decides it is. There are previously established standards of legal
conduct. You cannot just make them up as you go along. If you do
something that breaches an established standard of legality, then it
is illegal.
That is legally and justly the way it goes.
Also today I heard several 'knowing' [ho ho ho lol] voices suggesting
that it was somehow 'childish' for people to object to the FACT
British and American 'intelligence' serices had been intercepting
PRIVATE telephone conversations of the Secretary General of the
United Nations - prior to the ILLEGAL US-Uk invasion of Iraq.
The 'adult thinking' [please note a slight trace of irony in that
phrase] behind this seemed to be something like this: ... this is
just the way of things in the present world, to object to it
is 'childish'.
Well boys and girls, you are well advized that if the 'adults' are
fucking things up in disgraceful ways, then you should not admire and
copy their ways.
It is in fact highly infantile to be playing childish 'peek a boo
games' when one is supposedly a responsible adult in a position of
power - especially when one has power of life and death over others.
Real adults - even if they seem somewhat adolescent - see through the
reality avoidances of such behaviour patterns.
Anyone who thinks it is in any way justifiable to be bugging the
private telephone conversations of the Secretary General of the
United Nations IS NO ADULT.
It is a matter of fact that the British Prime Minister had the power
to STOP such bugging - truth be told it probably started before he
came to power. He chose not to do that.
Watching Tony Blair at his 'open' press conference this week - when
the issue of the peek-a-boo games played between himself,
British 'intelligence' and the Secretary General of the United
Nations, came out into the open - was rather like watching a teenage
adolescent male who had been caught wanking. [They deny the reality
of what they have been up to, don't they?!]
Tossers, like those in power now - openly and more covertly - are
truly a pathetic bunch, aren't they now?! ...
But to suggest as much is just 'childish' nonsense of course is it
not now?
p.s. Before the 'sisterhood' gets all too 'virtuous' ... if Ms Short
and Co. really think that they are so much more 'virtuous' than Mr
Blair ... then ... they are mistaken ...
p.ps. Why is it that I am able to write such 'open' notes as
these ... while the 'knowing' Ms CAEO'K and other members of
the 'sisterhood' do not seem to be ... ? ...
To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 01:05:00 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] Re: Giving the game away? ...
... on the day that he retired, the shopkeeper who had been selling
me cigarettes for years suggested that it might be a good idea if I
gave up smoking 'for the sake of my health' ...
... in other words: ... he had profited himself at my expense and now
could pretend to care about my well-being, in other words ...
...
... that is the sort of shitbag specimen of 'humanity' I have been
dealing with for most of my life ...
...
... I hate the fucking lot of you ...
... well that is what you want to hear, isn't it ? ... with such
statements in mind you can dismiss me as of 'fundamentally twisted'
nature ... is not that so ... ? ...
... fuck off you cunts and wankers ...
To: heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 20:17:57 -0000
Subject: [Heraclitus Society] Re: Giving the game away? ...
Representatives of shark.com.incorp take many forms. They can be very
pleasant and plausible sounding, for example, like the representative
of Durham.University.U.K.Incorporated, who 'phone me this afternoon
begging for money while pretending to herself and me that she was
doing something else. Personally, after considered reflection, I
could not recommend that particular 'cash strapped' [trace of irony
there] 'university' to anyone. The quality of its 'services' are
poor. And the quality of its graduates is notoriously bad. they
tend to be self-serving and unreliable, experience suggests. They
are know above all else for their untrustworthiness.
Take Durham graduate Ms Katherine Gun, for example. She was employed
by the British government in relatively good faith as a translator
for the 'security' services. She signed the Official Secrets Act.
When you take on such a job you know you are going to be asked to do
some quite 'dodgy' things. Her employers had a right to expect
loyalty from her. If you cannot trust your 'own' people, then who
can you trust. A world without any sort of trust is an entirely
paranoid world. Anyway, while still taking taxpayers' money for her
work, Ms gun 'leaked' details of an American request for the
British 'security' services to get involved in 'dirty tricks' at the
United Nations prior to the illegal U.S.-U.K.-led attack on Iraq.
The result was a diplomatic 'furore'. A 'mole hunt' was launched
within the 'security services' and Ms Gun eventually owned up to
being the source of the 'leak'. Only then was her employment ended.
i say this without much irony: digging out the 'dirty tricks' of
the 'security' services should be left to those of us who disapprove
of most of their mostly dubious modes of operation on principle. To
take the money for working for the 'security' services and then to
betray trust while still doing so does seem an act involving some
essential bad faith.
p.s. Regular readers of this irregular space might already have some
awareness that my ethical ideas are somewhat more complex then 'them
bad, us good'. And I allow for ambiguity and apparent contradiction -
because that is just the way it goes, it seems to me. So, for
example, I can disapprove on principle of the sort of habitual 'dirty
tricks' that is part and parcel of the work of the 'security'
services, but nevertheless also disapprove of the breach of trust by
Ms Gun that brought details of such 'dirty tricks' out into the
open. Loyalty should count for something, in other words.
p.ps. Personal experience has taught me not to trust Durham
University [Incorp.] graduates with names sounding like 'Katharine'.
Of course it is wholly irrational to tar all 'Katharines' with the
same brush. But there are some notable parallels between Ms Gun's
betrayals of trust and those of Ms O'Kelly.
p.pps. Read your original reference texts very carefully, boys and
girls. For this group, the core texts are the fragments of
Heraclitus. You should not expect to encounter clear-cut 'simples'
when visiting a website bearing the name of that most 'difficult' of
Greek philosophers. [And don't mistake me for a completely
naive 'adolescent' fool!]
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