The Temptations of Blue Peter

From: philtal_uk
Date: Fri Feb 15, 2002  10:03 am
Subject: The Temptations of Blue Peter
The Temptations of Blue Peter (or pseudo saintly singleton upon Tyne).
They try to tempt him, but goodman trueman has none of it.
But is he a real good soul? or just a polite faker?
Scotty had a little nightie and her small cherry tips could be seen through it.
But he seemed not to see them.
Or did he really?
You could never tell with him.
He seemed a nice one, but was he a bit of an evil one really?
Or (worse perhaps) was he just dull and dutiful?
She got the half grapefruits out to test him further.
He seemed impressed and even licked his lips a bit.
But was he doing it to remove a bitter aftertaste or a newly sweet one?
You could never tell with him.
Faker or shaker?
Coffee always gets them up ... but not him it seemed, and the sloppy git just sat there blandly.
Was he a shitster beneath it all?
He often got all mixed up in his own mind, what with all these incredible things he found
himself accused of - why he even ended sentences with dangling participles.
That was the problem with the ones with the dangling bits, they never knew the proper places to put them, or kept it up for long
enough.
The things he was accused of never ended ... why he even slopped on a lavatory seat to make some mark of
disrespect (and he'd always done his best to be a more careful bog pisser than many of his kind).
[And goodness gracious me ... wasn't liberal whitey a terrible racist too?]
Anyway, it was black coffee in bed ... and that was the way he liked it wasn't it? but if that was so, why
did he sometimes have it milky whitey, or all creamy frothy, of with spit and what on Earth was it Baldrick
put on the top of the darling officer's homemade brew?
There always seemed to be little distractions to be reconsidered ... and there always seemed to be fresh
intruders.
And pat she came, like the catastrophe in the old comedy.
[He seemed to know his Shakespeare did the young old boy, but was he just a copyist or a true lover]
Was it a dragon of a mother or a bag of wind or a pair of thundering Welsh thighs with valleys and hills
between them? It seemed one and it seemed all, and from time to time it seemed to change from place to place.
From: philtal_uk
Date: Fri Feb 15, 2002  10:26 am
Subject: Re: The Temptations of Blue Peter
So in came the Welsh duchy and she unzipped it ... and out came the words that never seemed to stop
flowing in a juicy sort of joyful way ... and was she another Irish joy-see one, even though she had an obvious
Welsh voice and name?
[At this point, another intruder opens the door looks in and closes it again - and she's
got a Welsh name and an Ulster accent.]
You can never tell with these British thing-gys, they are never quite one thing nor another.
[And as for the thin guys ... they were really fat boys trying to climb out of their
skin - the spots gave it all away ... the real selves would burst out, poisonously or not, sooner or
later.]
Poor Scotty couldn't get a word in, but she knew that pictures were often better than thousands of words. So she
went to the prop cupboard and there she found it, the album with all the proofs of life ... or maybe it was
just a book of snap dragons.
She opened up the flaps and showed him a beautiful one in the lotus position.
It was, or seemed to be, a 78-year-old female Captain Beefheart Fan.
But that proved nothing other than there's nowt so queer as straight folks who camp it up
because they are bored, or for some other unlikely reason ...or maybe just maybe because faking it can sometimes
reveal reality more clearly than doing it for real, as others might believe.
Welsh dutchy had never stopped speaking, even when he seemed more interested in gazing at Scotty's treasured bits. Then it was almost
like magic (but he still didn't believe in that of course) for her wild and whirling words seemed to conjure
into existence an album of her own.
He now had two open flap flip books on his lap and couldn't make up his mind which to try first. Maybe he'd just have
to think about it for a while longer, or maybe he should try out some touchy feely gestures.
From: philtal_uk
Date: Fri Feb 15, 2002  10:37 am
Subject: Re: The Temptations of Blue Peter
Poor half dead white male wasn't feeling too well.
Heat seemed to have dried up his brains, and while he'd had a breakfast of sorts he was still hungry
and thirsty.
Coffee and a half-grapefruit isn't much for a real hard leader of men is it?
It was almost as if they were telling him that he was a bit on the flabby side ... while he was laughing at the fat ones in
other times and places and even once slapping one on the belly, not playfully, but with what must have
seemed a bit of malice in it, but then that was a reflex response to some other minor cruelty directed at him over
some trivial seeming, but no doubt important to someone else, fault or flaw or gaping sin line that might
send one and all to hell, but just as likely, when you reflecton it, to rise them all to heaven, somehow,
somewhere, someday ... and when and if we get there it might turn out to be no sort of there that we could ever
understand as a there ... it might just be, well, somehow, for better or worse a bit different.

From: philtal_uk
Date: Fri Feb 15, 2002  10:52 am
Subject: Re: The Temptations of Blue Peter
... and when they were all laughing at some crude bit of nonsense that was quite funny actually, the
Welsh puritan, who looked a bit Irish and must have had some Scot and English and all sorts of other bits in
her, and who liked a laugh in other circumstances, said she really didn't find the joke very funny and
was really quite offended by it ... and the likely lad said: 'She's the moral minority' ... and they all
laughed at her ... but the joke wasn't funny any more, because laughter was now separating rather than bringing
together ... and in her discomfort she carried the secret discomfort of them all, which was that they didn't want to
live in a world in which the decent moral people were sometimes apparently in the minority ... and while there is
much to be said for levity, including the coarse seeming kind ... the anti-comical voice is not an
unnecessary one ...

From: philtal_uk
Date: Fri Feb 15, 2002  10:57 am
Subject: Re: The Temptations of Blue Peter
... it's not always a barrel of laughs - and that would be unbearable in its own way, as the anti-comical
voice reminds us from time to time ...
... but it's not always a valley of tears - and the horrible howling yahoo makes a serious point from time to time ...
+++++
Cor High Lights  philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 12:58 pm
The fatties decided to solve the slimming problem by going on a sponsored scoff for charity. But the event was a fiasco, and the judge stormed off with custard pie all over his face. Some kindly fans enjoyed his discomfort, and paid the scoffers a few extra pounds. The fatties were rewarded with icecream. The observer believed in being charitable - but not too kind (and it was Lent remember).
[But when was he going to get more than a cheap sweet treat? (He heard it said regularly that all that mattered was the result, and that worried him a bit, because that was not all that mattered.)] 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 1:34 pm
I was conceived around the time of the Cuban missile crisis, so I never had much of a future ... that's what I actually imagined for a long time ... but maybe I was mistaken ... the bombs have missed me for 38 years and still counting now ... and although it has often seemed mostly solitary and frustrating, and not amounting to much, it hasn't been a waste of time (I hope) ...
There was much love making going on in the autumn of 1962. Most of it was done in private, which is probably the best way, but some of the results got out. Many might imagine that it came as a flood of relief when the tension was all over. My guess is that it went on before, during and after. [And as a matter of natural fact, it must have!]. There's a good chance that it was the love makers who in many small ways spread positive feeling to calm the crisis - rather than the crisis being turned off by the powerful-seeming decision makers. Whatever was the case, those of us born in the 60s can stake a claim to being children of love - even if our own parents (and even we ourselves when we grew up) were too square and conventional seeming to be full hippies.
...
The baby born at Woodstock ... what is he or she doing now? And what of Mr Port-O-San Man? He had a shitty job, but he liked to mix with the kids having mostly harmless fun, and gave them just that extra bit of comfort with soft toilet paper. The bit extras, the tillys, can make such a difference.
Of course all children of all decades are love children one way or another. But the love can seem to be diminished so easily.
 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 2:00 pm
The fall reoccurs in some ways every day in the everyday.
I was walking with a young woman down a side street. Walking in the opposite direction were a small boy (I think) and his mother (I assume) hand in hand. The boy fell, and the mother, presumably lost in some personal preoccupation, shouted loudly without any apparent sympathy: 'Get Up' (but in a Geordie accent - which translates to something like 'Gerrup'). The boy got to his feet, silently as a recall, but there might have been forgotten tears, and they walked on together. When my walking companion and I (who were not hand in hand) had walked on a few paces, I let out a loud long laugh. I did not seem to have to explain to her why what we had just witnessed was so terribly funny (i.e. not funny at all).
A few years later, during a telephone conversation I had with her when I was perhaps a bit depressed, and my voice was trailing away to near silence (it might 'just' have been shyness), she said to me abruptly 'Buck up'. (I suspect she might have spend too long in the House of Commons listening to Margaret Thatcher.) I didn't laugh then, and held it as a minor grudge against he for years. But it seems quite funny today (tomorrow it might be a slightly different story). And maybe we all need to be reminded to buck up from time to time. (Maggie had many purposes maybe.) And apparent, or even actual, indifference can sometimes be kindly - giving us rests from intense emotions and helping us to endure difficult times.
When catty and I walked hand-in-hand down the street [Which was my idea, even though I was, according to her, 'not very tactile' and 'reluctant to show affection to her in public' (there was some truth in that one, I'll admit) and ... oh yes, don't forget it, adult handholding was just sloppy/soppy childishness.] she had the habit of dragging her feet and then pulling downwards, as if intent on toppling us both over. She laughed playfully and scowled aloud, at the same time, while she was doing this. She never quite managed to topple us. 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 2:09 pm
The anti-comic voice adds this ...
The two tears of kitschness (a word I can never spell without having doubts about it) according to Milan Kundera:
the first says, 'I'm moved.'
the second says, 'Isn't it so moving that I am moved?'
[The kitsch world, Kundera goes on to say, is a world without shit in it - the world of propaganda ... and advertising perhaps as well (though the ads sometimes take you close to the bogs).]
A further voice, the persuasion of which is uncertain, adds this:
What does the third tear say? 
Re: Say it ain't so, Jo   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 2:31 pm
Late Political News.
The long time ago that was about 8 years ago, during the Labour Party leadership election, there was a tediously polite debate between the contenders, who included the now British prime minister, the now British deputy prime minister and yet another English rose called Margaret [Who could be abrasive, but was not the same political Margaret as the one seen as a rose by some, a witch by others, and a mixture by many, and who was deposed from power with a mixture of tears and laughter a few years previously.] The only memorable moment came when the now deputy PM made a throwaway wise little joke about the dangers of loving each other to death. Then he gritted his teeth and mouthed a few more bland pleasantries.
And one of the few exciting moments in the 2001 British election came when John the stocky deputy
flung a haymaker punch at a bulky agricultural labourer (with a timelessly unattractive seeming fish-themed haircut) who had just thrown an egg at him.
Punchers and eggers-on rarely kill each other. And when one big bloke makes a move towards another 'it happens' as I heard a heavyweight boxer say the other day. There's no wishing humans into a better nature than is possible at this time. Dust ups will happen from time to time and just have to be minimized - and where possible ritualised.
And while women might like to see men a touch more tender and considerate, they presumably still like to see some aggressive possibilities. (Maybe I'm just guessing - or filling in some space and time.) Weeds aren't always attractive. 
Greetings from a nNorthern Skies   philtal_uk
(38/M/Tyneside,UK)  2/16/02 7:58 am
Greetings 

An out-dated Manufactured Bogey-Man Scare-Story ...

An out-dated Manufactured Bogey-Man Scare-Story ...
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 12:31:42 +0100
An Itar News on the Hoof Agency EXCLUSIVE
Intrepid brave not holed up in the Green Zone reporter
Doug. McClure reports from somewhere in Tora Tora,
Tickrit-Baghdad.
Birth of New Really Real al Qaeda ™
Bin QucQoo al Maniac, the most dangerous man on earth,
as noted by the number of Qs in his name, today
declared the launch of New Really Real al Qaeda™.
Bin QucQoo emerged from his cave in Tora Tora Mountains, in Tikrit-Baghdad, climbed onto a rock, and set out his agenda in a long declaration that he read out taking at least five hours.
He declared that he hates the West so much that he has
declared war on dusk, and went on to denounce the Sun
for perpetually (every day) defecting to the West for
its night outs.
Also hated by bin QucQoo are: spam, fish and chips,
voting, unicycles, anything beginning with ‘demo’, buy
one get one free (because it has ‘free’ in it) and upon
mentioning this bin QucQoo went berserk and declared
that any words beginning with D, F, V will be banned
from use henceforth, adding these are consonants
anyway, and the change over should not be all that
difficult.
Bin QucQoo, to adulation of his supporters, whom he had
hastily assembled by promises of a hot dinner, and a
couple of cents, declared Zarqawi not fearsome enough
because he only has one Q, then he called upon
Zawahiri to go and find himself a Q from somewhere.
Finally he declared that bin Laden is all hot air, and
thinks because he has a ‘bin’ he can be frightening,
further bin QucQoo proceeded to produce and circulate
some sketches of himself pulling teddy bears heads
off, and robbing piggy banks from various infants, and
children, explaining that the photos had been sent for
development, and complaining that digital cameras are
to blame for the lack of easy access to developing old
instamatic photos. However Bin QucQoo then asked,
where on record is any photos of bin Laden pulling off
the head of any teddy bear? Calling bin Laden a wuss,
bin QucQoo went onto declare that his suicide plumbers
had worked on New Orleans levees, and also his crack
squad of scary men had thrown fire crackers in old
peoples’ homes and shaved their cats’ whiskers off.
Bin QucQoo then went back into his tent inside the
cave and pulled off a seeming tent pole which turned
out to be a howitzer and proceeded to move into the
neighbouring cave to set up his new HQ, declaring New
Really Real al Qaeda™ cares not one jot for small
arms, since these are for girlimen, explaining away
the short haul move due to his bunions playing havoc
with his feet. Before retiring for his dinner, bin
QucQoo sent the following message for the people of
the world; ‘be afraid, very afraid, very, very afraid,
very, very, very afraid, there are more plumbers where
those came from, and they will cause not only leaks,
flooding, but also urinate in your header tanks in
your lofts’.
Ends item
+
News Flash ... bin QucQoo Lives!
An Itar News on the Hoof Agency WORLD EXCLUSIVE
Dateline: a dark and dangerous scarey back-passage in
down-town Baghdad, some distance from the safety of
the Green Zone, 08_06_2006 20:20 gmt
by intrepid reporter Doug McClueless
Itar News on the Hoof can tonight exclusively reveal
that we have uncovered totally true evidence that
really real really new al Qaeda leader bin QucQoo al
Maniac is now officially 'The Most Dangerous Man On
Earth'.
Several Itar News staff today really saw and really
handled absolutely authentic stick-man cartoon
flick-book footage that proves conclusively bin QucQoo
is still alive and plotting.
With today's death of his old rival al Qaeda bogey-man
al Zarqawi, this means that bin QucQoo now has no
serious challenger for the 'World's Most Dangerous
Man' title.
Unquestionable subliminal messages buried in the
cartoon flick-book go on to proclaim: 'Unlike that
weakling al Zarqawi, bin QucQuc is too tough to die!'.
The subliminal messages then go on, for hours, at
interminable length, to give a detailed denunciation
of bin QucQoo's late rival scarey-man Zarqari [along
with the rest of his neighbourhood] for 'being too
weak not to get blown to tiny pieces by massive
American bombs'.
The subliminals finally accuse Zarqari of 'one final
act of unscariness': 'Despite his weak living body
being blown completely to smithereens by the massive
American bombs, Zarqari's corpse remained weakly
intact, in a totally unterrifying manner, and allowed
itself be photographed - with unburnt beard, and with
only a few minor facial burns and grazes - and
fingerprinted for the infidel media to gloat over.'
Any doubts about the flick-book's authenticity were
quickly removed by a hasty forensic analysis of
fingerprint evidence on it. This showed totally
conclusively that it was drawn and first flicked this
afternoon by bin QucQoo himself - before being passed
at terrifying speed around the dirty hands of the
millions of anonymous members of his frightening
network hiding in scarey places all over the world.
Ends Item
+
‘bin QucQoo is CIA stooge,’ says whistle-blower
Another Itar News on the Hoof WORLD EXCLUSIVE
Dateline: a CIA whistleblower's hide-away hole,
somewhere in Canada between Qerbek and the 49th
Parallel, 10_06_2006 20:06 gmt
[Editors please note: the CIA whistleblower was not
paid any fee by Itar News for the interview
transcribed below - except, for the record, for his
standard CIA salary, which we pay him weekly, in cash,
using funds siphoned through to us through an illegal
CIA horse-crap-dealing money-laundering scheme.]
by poop-scoop-sniffing press hound Dog McClot
Itar News can today exclusively reveal that The
World's Most Dangerous Man bin QucQoo al Maniac is in
fact a CIA agent hired to subvert the activities of
other CIA agents in a highly secretive
'back-blow-to-blow-back' operation.
The plot - code named 'Operation QuoQup' - was revealed
to us during a clandestine interview in his hide-away
with on-the-run CIA [Canuck Intelligence Agency]
French-Canadian whistle-blower Duval Quintessence.
The interview was conducted on a '(nod and wink) no
naming of names (if you know what I mean?)' basis by a
team of anonymous reporters, over several days, in Mr
Quintessence's Canadian bolt hole. It is transcribed
in full below. [All names used are in fact real, but
have been changed to protect the anonymity of our
source.]
Interview Transcript:
Anonymous Itar News Reporters: In your own words, can
you please tell us Duval - if we may call you that -
when you first encountered The World's Most Dangerous
Man bin QucQoo al Maniac?
Duval Quintessence: Je premier a rencontré le Plus
casier de l'homme Dangereux de Le Monde al QucQoo Fou
Furieux le jeudi dernier, pourtant il a été appelé
alors El Faf Fuq Bin Falafel Faluki. Me fixe A ça
travaillait secret comme un cheval-merde vendeur dans
une ville de l'un-cheval - je ne peux pas donner
l'emplacement exact pour sécurité raisonne - sur la
borderlands de la République de Mooslamania.
AINR [slowly and loudly]: WE - ARE - SORRY - BUT - WE
- DO - NOT - SPEAK - YOUR - BRAND - OF -
CANADIAN-FRENCH - AND - SO - WE - DID - NOT -
UNDERSTAND - A - WORD - OF - WHAT - YOU - HAVE - JUST
- SAID.
[The interview was then suspended for several days
while a translator travelled - by helicopter, plane,
train, bus, taxi, husky-cart, and on foot - from the
Itar News International Media Centre in Kazakhstan -
exact location secret - to Mr Quintessence's remote
Canadian hideaway - C/O Cannock Intelligence Agency
(CIA), Husky House, 1 Mountie Parade, Qubeq/Winnipeq,
Canada, (Zip:) QQ 1Q. With the translator's
assistance, the interview then resumed.]
AINR [through translator]: Can you please tell us
Duval - if we may call you that - in your own words
when you first encountered The World's Most Dangerous
Man bin QucQoo al Maniac?
DQ [actual words]: Je premier a rencontré le Plus
casier de l'homme Dangereux de Le Monde bin QucQoo al
Fou Furieux le jeudi dernier, pourtant il a été appelé
alors El Faf Fuq Bin Falafel Faluki. Me fixe A ça
travaillait secret comme un cheval-merde vendeur dans
une ville de l'un-cheval - je ne peux pas donner
l'emplacement exact pour sécurité raisonne - sur la
borderlands de la République de Mooslamania.
DQ [actual translator's translation]: Me first met
Dangerous Man of The World bin QucQoo al Furious
Madman on Thursday last, yet he was called then El Faf
Fuq Bin Falafel Faluki. Me then worked secret like a
horse merde seller in a city of the one horse (I could
not give exact site for security argues otherwise) on
sidelines of Mooslamanian Republic.
DG [corrected translation]: I first met The World's
Most Dangerous Man bin QucQoo al Maniac last Thursday,
though he was then called El Faf Fuq Bin Falafel
Faluki. At that time I was working undercover as a
horse-crap salesman in a one-horse town (I cannot give
the exact location for security reasons) on the
borderlands of the Republic of Mooslamania.
AINR [untranslated]: And how did you recruit him on to
your agency's payroll?
DQ [adapted translation]: He was at that time down on
his luck, being the less successful of two
horse-traders in the one-horse town. So I made use of
my cover as a horse-crap salesman, and sold him some
horse-crap, which, there being a shortage in the
product locally, he was then able to sell on at a
considerable profit to himself. This put him in a
compromised position - because unlicenced horse-crap
sales are prohibited in the Republic of Mooslamania
(along with all the other basic freedoms we take for
granted in the non-Mooslamania world). So I threatened
to inform on him to the local branch of the
Mooslamania Horse-shit Trading Standards Office. Their
reputation is fearsome in those parts, and the moment
I issued the threat he was reduced to quivering wreck
and was completely under our control from then on. I
whisked him out of Mooslamania, using our horse-crap
trader courier network, and he was put through the
standard one-day CIA Stooge Intensive Grooming program
right here - I should really have said 'there' there,
to maintain my cover and all that [I am sure you will
strike that from the record, and generally tidy what I
say up in the editing] - in Husky House, Canada.
AINR [untranslated]: And then, under his new identity,
he was returned to Mooslamania, via the secret
horse-crap trading courier network, and was put to
work immediately in active CIA stooging?
DQ [untranslated] Qui.
AINR [untranslated]: Thank you very much for your time
Mr Quintuple. Do you require payment in used dollar
notes as usual or could we modernize our financial
arrangements to include debit card facilities?
DQ [untranslated]: Pas de commentaire.
Ends Item

A True Enough His/HerStory, Book 1, Section 1, draft 1 ...

A True Enough His/HerStory, Book 1, Section 1, draft 1 ...
One day, at about midday, I woke, bathed, breakfasted, donned a blue-themed outfit, and lit another cigarette.
'Out! Out! Brief Candles! Such fleeting moments of apparent enlightenment!'
And so it was that in a smokey haze, I found myself in a somewhat vaguely abstracted state, as if recalling bardic'ly confuzed lines that had almost actually passed between some him-and-her/her-and-him at some indefinite time.
'How much do you love me?'
'There's beggary in the love that can be measured!'
'I die to be loved so imprecisely!'
'Then you die for someone more adept at co'kmanship than myself, dear lady! You should have died hereafter, there would have been time for ...'
At this point I broke off from a travesy of MsMelodrama's diverting attempts to make a tragic mockery of my comedy, and attempted a return to romance.
Unfortunately, so voided had my inscape become, that romance proved impossible, and all too rapidly turned to rather dark-tinged lowly forms of irony/satire travestied from [as if?!] Lucian.
Said another: ''tis no matter!'
I almost agreed.
But then ....
On another day shortly after midday, I heard on the grapevine - or perhaps it was UncleBeeb's MrJeremiadVine show - that rumour had it that recruits were being sought among what sounded to me like 'ne'rdowells' for a futile-seeming quest on a SpaceTimeShip, to be known as TheSearchForTheFoolsParadise.
I thought myself more than a little well qualified to volunteer for this quest.
And so it was that, years later, having been-there-got-the-tee-shirt available exclusively - and for a bargain fee, VAT and P&P excluded - only on that quest, and getting on for one hour after midday one day, I re-read the following personal (b)log-entry: ...
Thursday 16 August 2007 (Eurocentric Dating System (EDS))
On this day, starting from an uncertain place at an, in fact, uncertain date from near the Pillars of Heracles, we sailed with a fair-to-middling wind into the Atlantic.
There we landed at a previously uncharted island peopled by tax-exiled offshore traders.
Shortly after landing we were greeted by a self-proclaimed financial market expert who cried: 'Beware! Beware! Here be bears! Here be bears!'
Thereupon MrDavidCoverdale, a tax-exiled Tyneside-born lead singer of the rock group sometimes known as Whitesnake, who had a hideaway on that island, appeared, as if from nowhere, and said: 'Fear not! Fear not! For I know how to dance bears into harmlessness - having recently, strangely but truly, had a real life invasion of such creatures into my house, albeit in another part of the world.'
And in such unlikely ways a day of surprizes on the island of tax-exiled offshore traders unfolded.
It has to be admitted that, whatever the truth of such interventions, the motives of our voyage remain uncertain.
A certain intellectual restlessness, a passion for novelty, a curiosity about the limits of the cosmic ocean and the beings who might dwell within - or even beyond - it. Perhaps such motives drive us on.
With a view to pressing on further into our formless quest, we delayed on the island to provision and water our spacetimeship on a generous scale.
This gave me the opportunity to review the crew which circumstances/chance had thrown me in with.
They seemed to be of mostly motley make-up, and, for this and other reasons, I had some sense of 'fellow-feeling'.
There was, for example, the ElvisCostello impersonator also known as MrDeclanMcMurphy, and others whose musical interests, as well as their years, roughly corresponded to/with my own.
A search of the stores we had brought with us revealed we were well provisioned with a good supply of vinyl records.
The playing of these items on a more often than not unstalbe spacetimeship brought a mix of melancholy and merriment, as well as much earnest discussion on the seemingly crucial issue of whether '70s and '80s rock music sounded more 'authentic' in the hissing and crackling medium of vinyul rekords and torntibles than in some digitally remastered form.
With such disorientating transition issues to deal with, we clearly needed some skilled and well-spoken navigators and link-people to guide us.
There was to be found on our mission control airwaves at least one fine navigation guide sometimes known as MsHalfEmptyHalfFullMonty.
She was misquoted in another today's log as saying: 'I am 69 and when I saw the man urinating in my rose garden I rushed out ... and to my surprize found myself pressganged into a lunatic spacetimeship enterprize ...' 
The navigation guide's first mate was sometimes known as MsPosh.CassGreen.
She was misquoted in the same log as saying: 'And next up my channel is that shuddder-in-my-loins MrWillyClinton.'
The log then recorded this verbatim statement: 'MrWillyClinton: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman! - whose moniker is MsPosh.CassGreen."'
With scenes involving such potential steamy-seeming-scene-stealing-semenators to be incorporated, it was clear that our spacetimeship required an imaginative upgrade ... perhaps into a some sort of slappyhappyslippysloppysloop-like vessel ... ecstatically and otherwise(E)specially strengthened for some long and arduous passages, with baggage allowances made for fuckers, suckers, friggers, wankers, allsortsofsocalledsodomites, to say nothing of other mild perversities, and needlesstosay diversely allowed-for distorts of consentual adult play-making/mating.
In the new improved vessel of our wildest dreams we carried on, for at least another day and night.
We were carried quite quietly along as if on a soft breeze, while the crew were mostly distracted by self-and-other-indulgent pursuits.
'Well ... with a void seemingly before and after us there seems bugger all else to do,' one crew member was heard to tartly observe.
I was almost inclined to agree.
But then ...
As if to frustrate further the forementioned types of fore-and-after-play, on the next day's dawn, the previously soft stellar winds rose to a harsh tempest.
Caught up in this heavy cosmic turbulence, with inexplicable dark materials and inscrutable particle-wave ripples in the background, we found ourselves unable to control our vessel.
And so we surrendered ourselves to the elements ... let the ship run ... and were storm-driven for more than eleven weeks ...
On the eightieth day a sun came out quite suddenly and surprizingly, and we found ourselves close to a lofty wooded island, round which the waves were murmuring gently, the storm having almost fallen by this time.
We brought her to land, disembarked, and, to recover from our long tossingly turbulent voyagings, lay a considerable time idle on shore.
At last we made an attempt at a fresh start.
Some previously attention-demanding impetuous teens or twenties numbers of crewmates fled the womb of the spacetimeship to pursue their own courses.
This left the maturer-seeming remaining rest of us with more freetime to fill.
So ...
Leaving a thirty-or-forty-something of our number slumbering in drugged/drunken states, pretending they were guarding the ship, a soberer fifty-or-sixty-or-something of our party set off on a tour of inspection of the mysterious island.
We had advanced about half-a-mile/a-kilometer inland through woods, when we came upon a brazen phallic-shaped pillar, inscribed in characters that seemed like Greek to to most of us, but which however were worn and dim and difficult to decipher.
A classically educated former public school boy/girl disclaimed:'It most truly and absolutely surely reads: "Heracles and Dionysus reached this point"'
Those of us more comprehensively educated expressed some scepticism.
Not far off from the pillars there were two footprints on rock-forms.
One footprint might have been an acre in area, the other being smaller.
The classical scholar conjectured that the latter was Dionysus's, and the other Heracles's.
A wag who had spent schooldays at the back of the classroom retorted: 'You mean BigDick and LittleDick!'
We did obeisance, according to bent, with laughter or disdain, to these observations and proceeded.
Before we had gone far - would you believe it? - but we found ourselves falling into a river which ran wine-filled.
It flowed full and copious, and might have been navigable in parts, had we not all got rather rapidly drunk on the free bounty it offered us.

This river of wine, the classicist maintained, was sure evidence of Dionysus's sojourn in these necks of the woods.
It was just as surely sufficient evidence to convince others in our party that the inscription on the pillar was an authentic indicator of TheArgumentForDesign.
The rest of us were too pissed on the free wine to care much about such speculations.
The following day, in a hugely hungover state, we took some painkillers and resolved to find the source of the wine river.
We followed the river up, and discovered, instead of an expected fountain, an unexpected lake.
Signs around the lake read in a dozen or more IndoEuropean language systems: 'Produce of the European Union - if you journey here from one of the union's disadvantaged economic zones, you are entitled to help yourselves.'
This proved an offer that could not be refused by most of our party.
Nearby were planted a number of huge vines covered with grapes.
From the root of each there issued a trickle of perfectly clear wine, the joining of which made the river.
It was well stocked with great fish, which a trade expert assured us were of the species known as 'CashCowedOpportunity', usually abbreviated to 'C.O.D.'.
They resembled wine both in colour and taste.
Catching and eating some, we at once found ourselves intoxicated.
When we sobered up, some biologists in our group dissected the fish and found them full of wine-lees.
While this biological investigation was taking place, it occurred to some of the  more temperate members of our party to mix these C.O.D.winefish with more ordinary seawater Haddock - more ordinary cod being in short supply in those parts as in others because of overfishing - thus diluting the strength of the spirituous food.
Well fishily fed and wined/watered we now crossed the river by a ford, and came to more vines of a most extraordinary kind.
Out of the ground came a thick well-grown stem; but the upper part was a woman, complete from the loins upward.
They appeared like a deranged artist's representations of a wanton lady in the act of turning into a tree just as a libertine enters her.
Perhaps for this reason it occurred to a deranged tabloid journalist present in our company to name this newly discovered vine PeteyKateyFlappyFlippyFloppyDohurtyMossy.
From the finger-tips of PeteyKateyFlappyFlippyFloppyDohurtyMossy sprang vine twigs, all loaded with grapes; the hair of their heads was tendrils, leaves, and grape-clusters.
They greeted us and welcomed our approach, talking in slurred forms of all the languages of Earth.
The PeteyKateyFlappyFlippyFloppyDohurtyMossy plant-forms went so far as to kiss us on the mouth - and whoever was kissed staggered like a drunk.
But the plantforms would not permit us to pluck their fruit, meeting any attempt to do so with cries of pain.
Some of them made further amorous advances; and one of my comrades who yielded to these solicitations found it impossible to extricate himmself again from their embraces - man-became-one-with-plantform, striking root, fingers turned to vine twigs, tendrils grew all round, and embryo grape-clusters were soon to be witnessed.
Seeing no alternative, we reluctantly left the man-plantform there in metamorphized state and hurried back to the ship, where we told our tales to the druggies and drunkards who had remained there, including the tale of our friend's experiments in viticulture.
'I saw it all without going with you,' replied one unimpressed psychaedelic experimentor.
The others expressed varying degrees of interest, incredulity and/or indifference.
Then, after taking some casks ashore and filling them with wine and water, we bivouacked on the sand for one final beach-party blowout on this intoxicating island.
Next morning we set off before a gentle breeze.
About midday, when we were out of sight of the island, a vortex suddenly came upon us, which swept the ship round and up to a height of some three hundred and fifty Earth miles above any form of solid ground.
She did not fall back into the usually mostly predictable cosmicoceanmedium, but was held suspended aloft in a unfamiliar reality randomizing medium, and at the same time carried along by a stellarwind which struck and filled the sails.
For a whole week we pursued hair-raising courses in these totally unpredictable state(s), consuming all our stocks of the wine to sooth our nerves.
On the eighth day we spotted a potential landfall.
It was an island with vapour for sea, glistening, spherical, and bathed in light.
We reached it, cast a relieved anchor, and landed.
Inspection soon showed that it was inhabited and cultivated.
In the daytime nothing could be discerned outside of it; but night revealed many neighbouring islands, some larger and some smaller than ours.
There was also another land below us containing cities, rivers, seas, forests, and mountains.
This we concluded, tentatively, to be the Earth, from which some said we had intially set out on a date sometimes recorded as Thursday 16 August 2007 (EDS).

Begin Again ... Begin Again ... As if once was not enough ...

Begin Again ... Begin Again ... As if once was not enough ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jul 4, 2002  12:56 pm
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
Deep kindness is rooted in deep kindness … or … how a better sense
of essential inter-relatedness makes us better beings …
While my genes were being bombed in England during World War Two,
hers were safer in Ireland.
My genes survived life down the mines, hers the Irish potato famine
(which almost certainly was not a cruel British plot).
And so it goes … for all surviving sets of genes - chance meetings,
lucky survivals in times of mass death, strange events that might be
planned or might not.
Everyone alive today carries genes that have survived events such as
the Black Death, the Great Plague, the Slaughter of the Innocents.
And they all meet up somewhere in the past - in common ancestors.
There were creatures once who were the first humans - or at least so
human-like that we would not recognize them as something essential
different to ourselves. They might have had names like Adam and Eve,
or their names might have been something else - and they most likely
had private pet names for each other that no one else ever learned.
And so it goes for our relations with the rest of the living world.
Go back far enough and you find a common ancestor.
Something like a shrew - or perhaps more like a hedgehog - was
perhaps the common ancestor of all the mammals, including humans,
alive today. Those little creatures were the 'meek' who inherited
the Earth when the giant dinosaurs died out - though they probably
had to struggle with the birds before the matter of the 'dominant'
land animals was settled (perhaps a deal of sorts was done - nature
seems to like mutualistic deals - whereby they became lords of the
air, we became lords of the land, while the sea was mostly left to
the fish (though the dolphins might dispute that).
Actually, the question of 'dominant' species seems to come down to
issues of scale. On the everyday human scale, it is perhaps true to
say that we 'rule' the Earth (though wider Earthy nature might
contradict that - and give us our comeuppance one day). On a smaller
scale it is the ants. On a scale 'below' the ant world it is the
microbes who 'dominate' (and the disease -causing bugs remind us of
their mostly unseen wide-spreading power on regular occasions). … etc
…
Could there be a scale 'above' humans? It is possible - but there is
no direct evidence for it yet. And the SETI type searches for
extraterrestrial life have proved surprisingly fruitless so far. If
the galaxy was, Star-Trek -like, buzzing with high technology life,
then one would expect it to be easy to tune into - somewhat like a
radio … turn the dial and there is plenty of organized static, which,
although seeming not to make much sense, is a sure sign that there is
life out there somewhere. But the SETI searches have not found that
sort of thing. Maybe they have been looking in the wrong way, or in
the wrong place, but it is very surprising that they've draw what
seems to be a total blank (give or take one or two ambiguities).
Perhaps the origin of life is so unlikely that it has only emerged
once in one relatively obscure seeming part of the universe - it is
possible (and if so, that puts us in a position of incredible
responsibility - to preserve life and to spread its better natured
possibilities widely).
The further you go back, the more connections you find, the more you
see the essential relatedness of all things, and the more common
ancestors you find.
At some time, probably quite soon after the origin of the Earth,
there were the first living things. No one is quite sure what they
were, or how they arose, Perhaps they emerged spontaneously from an
unusual combination of dust, water, atmosphere and sunlight - or some
other unusual combination. Perhaps they arrived, liked seeds, from
some other living planet. Or perhaps they required some 'mind-over-
matter' or 'hand-of-god' intervention to get them going.
However it started - and there were perhaps a number of false starts
before life as we know it got going properly - life soon took off,
and spread widely. Look around: it's everywhere. And in the most
unlikely places … cracks in pavements … rocks in the arctic … a
human being's forehead …
Face mites live in the sweat pores of human foreheads, feeding on
little bits of oil and other apparent detritus, and doing us no real
harm. And face mite families and human families tend to live
parallel lives. You are not born with your resident face mite
population, you get them from close facial contacts with your parents
and other relatives - who got theirs in similar ways. You spread
your face mites by close facial contacts with other human beings.
Face mites cross-fertilize when humans cross-fertilize. On her face
now, face mites that are the cross breeds from our facial encounters.
Fertility is a strange thing, and occurs in mysterious, but perfectly
natural, ways.
Before there was life there was dead matter - boiling down (for the
sake of simplicity) to atoms - but with levels below that (and the
particle physicists, as far as I am aware, have yet to found the
fundamental 'lowest' level of matter).
We share atoms as we share everything else. Name any person, living
or dead, and you have atoms that were once in them in you now.
Everyone has little bits of Jesus in them - or anyone else (divine or
otherwise) you might want to name or imagine.
So long as life goes on, we never separate completely.
Bits of her everywhere … around me and within me .. and around and
within everyone else.
You don't have to be a wild unworldly spiritualist to see things
mystically … and you don't have to abandon physical matter in your
speculations … atomic theory contains as much extraordinary mysticism
as wild-seeming supernatural or metaphysical speculations … everyday
physical existence is far from humdrum …
Where do you begin and where do you end?
The skin is not a barrier that separates us from the world - it is
just a way station in a complex neverending flowing process. We
spread on widely, way beyond our fingertips or hair-endings.
'Simple' atoms were made, most probably, in, or shortly after
the 'Big Bang' event that, quite probably, started it all - whether
or not some divine intervention was needed to get things started is
open to debate, and probably always will be.
More complex atoms are made in stars - during nuclear reactions.
The most complex atoms tend to be made in supernovae explosions -
massive bangs that are, effectively, the deaths of stars. Other new
complexities grow out of those apparent death-like events - the
blasts send energy busts into space, causing turbulence, moving
things about, setting up local denser association of matter, higher
energy places, where new stars are born.
And so it goes on … lives, deaths, changes, meetings and partings,
minglings and mergings, break-offs and breakouts - all under the
influence of forces that are within control in some respect, out of
control in others - … by time and chance, by free will and
determination by accident and design …
… so it flows …
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jul 4, 2002  12:59 pm
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
Today it is Independence Day - which is enjoyable in a childish sort
of way, but strikes me as mostly overblown blockbuster crap … [of
course, that is just the personal prejudice of a peace and quiet
loving small town British near-nonentity] …
It does not look much like Day of the Dead ( … zombies … paranoia …
violent men with guns and other weapons … )
Perhaps it is The Birds again today …
… repetition is a form of change …
… you cannot watch the same movie twice … it changes … you change …
you notice different things …
In Hitchcock's The Birds, Tippi [whose career was to some extent made
and then to some extent wrecked by Hitch - a complex man, with an
roving eye for the birds, who apparently led a quiet, respectable
family-centred life] sits in the playground.
Tippi looks extraordinary in her green costume suit.
[I do identify with Tippi when I see her on the screen … and it has
been suggested to me recently that I
am 'transvestite', 'transsexual' and even 'male lesbian' (I
understand that Tippi is a bit of an icon for the dykes) …. I'll
admit to all three - especially the last (such paradoxical notions
delight me) - but only in imaginary parts … singly, or even in
combination, such labels are not the 'real', 'complete', 'essential'
me … Simplify me (if you must) when I am dead - and time reduces us
all - but living humans, myself and all others, are too complex for
such simplistic labellings.]
Tippi seems worried about something. She is smoking nervously, taking
lots of rapid puffs from her cigarette. Such body language is widely
understood as a giveaway sign of tension. And we viewers know why she
should be worried. We can see what she cannot see: the birds are
massing on the climbing frame behind her.
Then she glances round … does a little double-take … and sees what we
can see. A look of extreme terror appears on her face … and she runs
for it - … not, it turns out, to save her own beautiful skin, but to
alert and protect the children at a school nearby …
But gatherings of birds should not perhaps be regarded as sinister
things. They are social animals, and like to get together for a
twitter from time to time.
In Aristophanes's The Birds, a gathering of birds marks the start of
the creation of a new society by a small group of few human
eccentrics. Some dismiss it as cloud-cuckoo-land - head in the clouds
daydreaming … or insanity even. But perhaps it is not such an
unworldly or insane idea - and even if it is a little made, well at
least it is harmless and gentle enough.
In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes, who is a bit of a joker by trade,
describes his idea of what love is all about. Humans were, he says,
once more whole than they are now - and could be made more whole
again in future. Lov, he says, is the force that drives us on to
search for our missing pieces - to see if we can put something better
together for the future.
+++++
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jul 11, 2002  5:14 am
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
ABC's lexicon of love ...
... if only it were as easy as a...b...c...
...
From bittersweet prissy kissy missy k-k-k-katie's l-l-l-lexicon of
love words: '... I see death in your eyes ...'
Thank you, my darling, everlastingly, for you kindly regards.
It was just everyday, throwaway, knockabout stuff, of course ...
But careless talk costs lives ... or, at least, wastes much potential
good life time lost in contemplation of the words ...
And when such stuff from a loved one is not counterbalanced by more
vitalizing visions ...
Well ... it kinda gets you down ...
And you spend a lotta time analysing it ...
...
...
...
But then one day you wonder ...
... was the nihilism really greater in me than in her? ...
And that becomes an ongoing question ...
For the record, it was not me who wrote an essay starting with a
crassly reductive Camus quote about suicide being (or non-being)the
only philosophical question.
L'etranger reduced too much to terrible simples ... didn't get enough
of it ... and missed out on the joys of expansive minded, multiple-
questioned, generous-spirited philosophy as an unnatural
consequence ...
And when you look into someone's eyes, what you see is partly a
reflection of yourself ... n'est pas?
...
...
...
Kitty's follow-up: 'You never make me feel wanted.'
If such a charge is made against you, then you are guilty as
charged ... but ...
'NEVER' my dear?
Absolutes lead astray ... and more likely to hellish realms than
heavenly ones ...
...
...
...
Not so ancient Irish history ...
Like many cosy liberal middle-class Anglo-Irish catholics, Kitty
O'Pity was rather moved (or was it just kitschly 'touched'?) by the
IRA hunger strikers who killed themselves in the 1980s ...
It seemed like (or could be turned into) principled martyrdom - but,
to be frank, it looked like a monstrous bit of mass stupidity to
me ...
And was not suicide supposed to be against the religion? - no one
forced them not to eat.
...
...
...
The bourgeois pretenders do like to enjoy vicariously the unnecessary
premature deaths of others, don't they?
Unnecessary rock and roll suicides ... Sid and Nancy ... Jimi ...
Janice ... Jim ... Kurt ... the list goes on ...
They die for our entertainment ...
What a truly repugnant truth that is ...
...
...
...
Stick to fictions ... it's safer ... no one really dies in the trashy
books and B-Movies ...
...
...
...
While in the real world, eggers on perhaps carry as much of the guilt
as the wild doers - or lonely self-killers ...
And when I think about the corpse-strewn battlefields ... I wonder
about the fair shares of the guilt that should be linked to them ...
Mostly violent male principles principly? ... or an equal share to
femail principled eggers on? ...
Maybe the wailing women of Troy ... and generations of followers ...
enjoyed their griefs too much ...
...
...
...
Bless 'em all ... bless 'em all ... the long and the short and the
tall ...
and forgive 'em all ... because they barely seem to know what they
are doing and saying much of the time ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jul 11, 2002  5:43 am
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
Some festive light relief ...
To parties they go, mix, leave, and in some ways come back again and
in some ways never come again.
I walked up the hill to the party with the tall, slim, elegant, quiet
woman from Cambridge. We exchanged some private words.
I spend much of the party talking to the short, chubby, clumsy,
talkative woman from London. As ever, she had extraordinary ideas to
share. That night it was that there was no essential difference
between pretending to be drunk and actually being drunk - and to test
the hypothesis she started the night pretending to be drunk and then
got more and more literally drunk as the night wore on. We also
exchanged words on the subject of whether cliches assisted thoughts
and feelings or stifled them. 'It makes you think, don't it?' was
among the considered phrases.
I walked down the hill from the party with a large group of people
including an indescribable bear-like Anglo-Italian Ferrari-man
anthropologist. An empty bus appeared at the side of the road (or was
there all along). It a prop the prankster anthroplogist had to made
use of ... in an instant he was in the cab ... and we were all going
on a summer holiday ... for a few more instants ... and then we
walked on with tedious realism, leaving him to catch us up.
A few weeks later (or it might have been earlier) Ms Choosy gave me
a card inviting me to a party at an obelisk site that was far from
the pyramids - but which always called them to my mind because the
Cleopatra of my imagination lived there. The invite said: 'Please
bring a botle but not a friend.' So I brought two friends and no
bottle. But one of the friends almost did not make it ...
On the way he had made a crude joke combining Cocky Cleo's wandering
eye and my seemingly unrequited devotion to he. Fists almost flew,
but I held back - it was just a joke, and he was normally a good
comedian.
There are bad jokes. And when people get the context and timing
wrong, and don't show enough fellow feeling, they can almost totally
spoil happy comical days and nights. Not everything is a potential
laughing matter - and people who seem intent on making a mockery of
everything can seem nihilistic rather than harmonizing.
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jul 11, 2002  2:34 pm
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
To get your bearings in a state of some general confusion, it seems
that from time to time you have to plumb the depths … your own and
others' …
… and there is perhaps much unfortunate and unpleasant stuff to
dredge through yet…
Haughty boy liked to listen to the sweet sounds and to watch the
graceful motions of Ms Oboe d'Amore …
… but he never touched her …
There always seem to be fresh diversion cropping up…,
In this week's front page exclusive, the expressive oboist justly
represents the painful sounds of rape victims…
It is a terrible issue … and rapists deserve lengthy confinement when
their guilt is beyond reasonable doubt …
But matters of consent are often ambiguous … and the feelings in
consenting acts are often mixed …
The simples issues are sometimes terribly reduced to: … the society
for cutting up men insists that all men are rapists given the chance …
It is not necessarily naturally so … and generalized false
accusations make the gentler men feel generally despised and
distrusted … and can be paralysing…
And can there be raping of minds?…
It is possible to go too far in penetrating others' inners …[And TSE
regularly reminds me that humans cannot stand too much reality.]
Nevertheless …
Sometimes the oboe player did sound out her bleak midwinter worries
in public …
She had watched film actors play out the squalid deaths of Sid and
Nancy in the Chelsea Hotel room, and she had been appalled by it …
but a little bit of her had been drawn to the sordid attractions of
such filthy finalities …and that troubled her …
So she slipped her concerns to the haughty seeming ponderer - as they
sat smoking their cigarettes … sharing an ashtray …and … through the
poisonous cigarette fumes that passed between them … and the minutes
off their full lifespans they were taking from themselves and each
other in the process …perhaps they were enjoying some mildly sublime
Sid and Nancy moments of their own …
The shared bits of bleaker missed her and his misty musings slipped
into a dark back room of his mind … and in the many years that
followed, during which he went through many living deaths himself, he
got the squalid possibilities out to examine from time to time … and
sometimes to play with - it has to be admitted that parts of him
relished the darker, more squalid stuff …
Eventually …
He answered that she had perhaps been fortunate only to have seen the
fictional version - there was worse to be witnessed in the verite
footage in the DOA documentary on which Alex based his fictionalised
film.
It seemed safer (and kinder) to keep darker possibilities in the
realm of ritualised fiction - away from actuality.
It was notable that, with the exception of the Gary playing Sid, the
actors in Alex's film did worse role-playing jobs than the real Sex
Pistols did when playing themselves. The real Sid [not his real
name - he was a John, dear in some respects, not so dear in others …
like all Johns perhaps] seemed to forget that he was playing a role
in the Sex Pistols plot. He played it too much for real … and the
deadly consequences were murder and suicide - vile, pathetic or
tragic, according to judgement.
Partly happily, partly sadly, the other Sex Pistols survived into
tragicomical flabby middle-age and beyond …
So it flowed …
Revision questions for life-long learners:…
Is there a nihilistic death drive locked in a neverending struggle
with erotic life-drive?
Do squalid images of dissolution and death on the small scale
represent possible eventual universal dissolution and death on the
grand scale?
Perhaps …
But life does seem to have a slight edge over death …and in the
struggle against the dying of the light, the tragicomedy of the grand
scheme of things does seem biased towards the comical direction …
with the force of love tending it that way …
The bleak post-punk northern Joy Division got it wrong … it is not
love that tears us apart … it is the absence of love …[And Ian of
that often joyless sounding group died another unnecessary rock and
roll death when he was torn apart by too many lost transmissions and
too much isolating distance from love.]
And while she occasionally played a few bleak tunes, Ms Oboe d'Amore
usually played more uplifting ones … and was always delightful when
flower gathering .. even when wandering on wastelands …
….
Be [re]assured … my aim is true …
… free willing life-lovers can plant more and more seeds … and deny
the nihilistic death-worshippers more and more ground - both
externally and internally …
…
…
…
Quakery side-thoughts: …There was much that was quakerish in the
haughty seeming boy's ways of thinking. … But he was often puzzled by
how much quakerism he seemed to have absorbed without direct
instruction. … Truly, it seemed, when there was loving and friendly
commonality of general outlook, much could be communicated between
minds without speaking or other direct communications. … That
possibility surprised him greatly. Neverthless, much seemed lacking
when communication was not more direct. …
…
…
…
Life's little ironies: …
Catty was the biggest Elvis Costello fan, but Ally got my favourite
of that fake-named Elvis's songs. Ally bought Pretenders albums in
an attempt to get some more rock cred, but Catty got more of the
haunting Birds of Paradise tune. Yet it is all the English roses,
spreading (because nature does not observe petty human national
boundaries) to beautiful cosmopolitan bloomers, who get the best of
bittersweet The Pretenders pieces. [Meanwhile, too many of that
group also died premature rock and roll deaths … although thankfully
Chrissie still sings on in her beautiful off-key way …]
And … for the records … the wind cries yet another name in my
favourite Jimi song. [While Kitty got the wrong Jimi - not
Sommerville, you faggy haggy fool, but Hendrix! (Does she still like
to keep the crop-haired blondie's hanging on the telephone?)]
…
…
…
But … when all is said and done in this present ridiculously
serious /. seriously ridiculous sequence … and if humanity makes it
to what might be a mysterious achievement … with all the expansive
and generous good will in the world ... should we be space-ship
building? … or diving for pearls? … and is it not possible to do
both? - with potentially endlessly wonderful consequences …

+++++

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

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


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

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

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

ne old bolox

From: Phil Talbot <philtal_uk@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat May 13, 2006  2:19 am
Subject: (No subject)  philtal_uk
 Offline
 Send Email 
--- In heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com, Phil Talbot
<philtal_uk@...> wrote:
>
> ... mind the gaps ... when you leave a void ... the
> spammers and junk-merchants will fill it with any
old
> crap ...
>
> --- In heraclitussociety@yahoogroups.com,
> "nuala-alexander458@" <nuala-alexander458@>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hows everyone doin? Hope u all are doing as good
as
> me. Just found this great thing       when i was
> checking around the other day. Have a look
> http://www.youknowureallywantto.info/deld
> >
>
>
>
> Unpicking and reknitting patterns, and ...
[After Goethe]
Uncertain shapes, visitors from the past, with whom I
moved long ago (so long), seeming like hazy fleeing
visions, now, at last, in strange ways, I can move
with you again - but must I also let you go?
Out of the mist and murk you rise, swirling dancers,
breaking up, coming together, breaking up again, as is
conjured by magic (though it may be only be memory and
technology, in truth) - lost youths almost recreated.
You bring back lost time (some happy, some sad, mostly
mixed), repeating journeys through life's labyrinthine
mazes. Old friends reunite, old griefs revive, old
loves reform, then break up once more. It is as if
faded legends are being replayed and reconstructed for
new times.
Dear past companions (and the many more walk-on
faces), cut from my life by fate or mutual
indifference (or just the way things turned out), you
cannot hear my present dissonant music.  Most of you
who listened quite closely to my earlier off-key
singing are far off now - and your answering echoes
have long been silent.  Now my babbling is heard by
who knows whom? Name-listed, but to me mostly
anonymous throngs replace known people scattered to
the world's ends (or merely to other town and cities).
Like all, I know many and know much, but know few and
know next to nothing - the long unstructured learning
that is 'just' living brings wide fellow-feeling and
understanding … and much confusion.
Vanished and never-to-be worlds seem real to me today,
while all that I now inhabit and possess seems far
away…
… carry on the dancing on and on …
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@...>
Date: Sat Nov 5, 2005  2:39 am
Subject: Revized Re-edit 1a 04_11_2005
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
[Undated - and more or less out of any time-and-place
context.]
This is mostly superficial rubbish, but there is the
odd moment or
two worth preserving, for the time being, for future
[re-]consideration.
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@...> Add to
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 in
Iraq of course was in Falluja ... where 'antis' were
literally slaughtered ... and entire streets of
hostile voters reduced to rubble ...
... now that was disgusting beyond measure and a
corruption of all 'democratic values' ...
... but not content with that ... they went further
...
... on the level of mere statistical manipulation ...
Allawi was an exile and CIA stooge who had no popular
support base or party structure on the ground in iraq
...
... yet he got 13% of the vote the official voting
figs suggested ... which just was not true ...
... looks like Shi'ites and Kurds ... seemingly
satisfied, if not happy, with their share of the
carve-up, they seemingly loaned Allawi a few ... just
for the sake of 'respectability' ...
... too cynical?! ...
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@...> Add to
Address Book
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:01:29 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] (unknown)
The fictional character Prospero said farewell to
magic in The Tempest.
The real person Shakespeare said farewell to the
theatre with The Tempest.
So the stories go.
Truth or illusion though?
Fact is, not enough is known of Shakespeare's real
life to say for sure that The Tempest was his final
completed play.
He did say fare-well to the theatre at a relatively
young age - that seems sure enough.
And the registers of births-marriages-deaths provide
firm evidence that he died shortly after retiring from
the theatre.
It does seem possible that having 'exhausted' all his
theatrical possibilities [having been through the
variations of tragedy, comedy, tragi-comedy, history,
etc, etc, etc ...] he 'gave up the ghost' ... as
'twere ...
Finishing a study of the [rather young-dying] Spinoza
[whose 'system' is too rational to correspond to/with
all observable realities, in fact, but which is
internally coherent - and as such 'complete in itself'
(i.e. within its own frames of reference)] a while
back, it
occurred to me that there were dangers in 'completing'
a systematic work ... after which ... what next? ...
Similarly ... Dante died shortly after 'completing'
his internally coherent epic Comedy ... Goethe died
shortly after 'completing' his Faust ... Proust died
shortly after 'completing' his 'rememberances of
things past' / '[re]searches of/for/into lost time[s]'
... Joyce died shortly after 'completing' his 'work in
progress' ...
Quite often, you can see something similar happening
with people's everyday life-narratives ...
... after 'completion' ... what next ... ? ...
The Tempest is a 'marvellous' [in many senses] work of
literature, though.
And 'deceptively' [literature being, amongst other
things, an 'art of illusion'] simple ...
In the 'mind-stream' of the 'collective consciousness'
... the narrative[s] and the characters transform into
other narratives and characters ...
The Tempest is a 'comedy' ... but it is rarely
laugh-aloud funny ... it is a deeply serious work
disguised as 'romantic' froth ...
Prospero is ... or might be ... Lear gone beyond the
passionate ravings of tragedy ... or ...
Anyway ... to my way of thinking ... there is
something to be said for 'incompleteness' ... at least
life goes on that way ...
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@...> Add to
Address Book
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 19:35:26 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] Tempestuous 10-Finger Exercizes
Type-casted Caliban cried out tempestuously: 'This
island's mine!'
That perhaps under-stated it.
'I am a fucked up schizoid mess and getting ever more
fucked up schizoidedly by the day,' he further cried,
to bring out from the undercurrents of consciousness a
few more points of potential interest.
The 'injustices' - against others as much as self -
were driving him crazy, in short.
Yet sanity had little to be said for it, because
others, mistaken for sane 'respectable' people,
behaved in ever more paranoid crazy manners
themselves.
He was the one who owned up to his paranoid craziness
- and got type-casted 'a raving madman' by the likes
of Kareless Katrina and others.
'This island's mine!' he cried again ever more insane
seeming.
But was he referring to an isolated state or a wider
territory?
And was the 'commonwealth of imagination' the more
rightful 'birthright' of the formally educated and
qualified Prosperos or of the informally educated and
unqualified Calibans?
Schizoid confusion?
The integrity of the personality threatened with/by
fragmentation.
Too much of everything. Too many demands made on him.
Too much expectation.
The world closes in on him, so he retreats from it.
Narratives - even mixed up and crazy seeming ones -
help to hold things together.
Depersonalizing Preludes.
'Anon anon, my dears, forgive me my little trespasses
- and bigger ones, too, if that is how they are
judged.'
The pseudo-franciscan serving man [but was he really a
houseboy? or was he not more truly a stud? - in minds
where truth and illusion mix to build new realities,
he might be both] was a bit slow sometimes.
They misjudge him, you see.
They think he thinks his mind's a racer.
He believes he knows it takes time for things to sink
slowly into his dense mind.
Rush him, otherwise overload him, and he cracks up.
And he is lacking creature comforts.
Poor Tom's a-cold and a-lonely.
He drinks pretending it will warm him and people his
isolation - but only to ruin himself really.
But did it come to this sad state solely because he
could not cope with rejection?
In the images of separations, images of universal
entropy.
In the images of meetings, images of universal
harmony.
Everyday reality was somewhere in between, of course.
Hi-Fi Low Techy Fallootin' Fugues.
Narratives - even messed up ones - can hold things
together.
Against Stereo-Typing.
Humpy Dumpy was resting in pieces.
He could not even get his own name write.
And he did not know where he was really let alone why
he was there.
Was Humper in the dumps because cross-tongued Frumpy
Dumpling had
cruelly duped him, dumped him, and left him behind in
the lurch?
Or was him left pi calculating [... and it never seems
to end ... {Who ate all the pis? 'Me Sir!' cried the
greedy mathematician - and, as evidence of his
misdeeds, a trail of decimal points dribbled from
mouth-to-plate ... or plate-to-mouth ...} ...] because
his negative numbers had added up to a more positive
one leaving him behind in paralytic in a ditch while
she got on with more actively catalytic reactions?
To further discomfort Himpy Dimpy, Faggy Hagface then
tossed in the suggestion that he was a closetted Mr
Humphreys and that she had given him his freedom
because he could not say 'I'm free!' himself.
Sometimes Hummer just took the up-the-arse insults
silently - it was after all only another cheap and
spiteful little castrating power-play by the
female-of-the-species to keep the downed down-trodden
decent enough man down [and good hetero liberals never
denied suggestions of their 'gayness', anyway, because
they were true to some degree - no one is entirely
'this' or 'that' - and because, for those for whom it
is more wholly true and of their nature, 'gayness' was
not something to be denied].
Non-P.C. Hummer knew that poor bugger beggar as he
was, he was not, in fact, much of a bugger bummer.
'Actually, I don't like cocks up my arse, if that is
what you mean,' is what he actually said to her when
she suggested he was a secret homosexual, and what she
actually replied - for she had a stock-in-trade for
every occasion - was: 'Actually most of them don't do
that.' How she obtained that inside knowledge was
never revealed - but if it was from fag-break gossip
with her camp followers, then it is suspected in the
passive voice that they were not telling her the
full unscatalogical truth.
Homeboy should have though there and then: 'I will
never be a well-served sir with that saggy faggy hag -
Miss Slow Come might have a nice pussy, but she is
nothing but an old dog really, and will never learn
more pleasant tongued tricks.'
But Himbi? [the man was a walking question mark] never
learned to hate her and dismiss her properly. That too
was a mistake for one who thought herself more
naturally 'passionate' - anyone who could not hate,
she claimed, was somehow lacking in the full-range of
feelings.
Sometimes he gave her words too much over-due
attention, that was sure. Her critical words on his
lack of hate stumped him for a long time ...
Whenever he was at a loss for a new way forward Hammy
put himself under the influence of the consumerist
want-makers ...
Being pissed-up was a piss-poor way to live well but,
well ... it seemed he had to drink the dark stuff
because the darker-still-stuff was not really in him.
'I am not a bitter man' - he said, finding a parroted
version of the gift of the gab while drinking the
dregs of two cans of snug-fitting stout unladylike
associations - and more than Tucan play the game of
pretending to be 'pure genius!'.
'Drink!' the fake Irish father-figure said in a
travesty of a stereotype that was quite amusing
occasionally, but not when overdone.
Instead he cried: 'Francis!'
'No! Anon, anon, sir!' was the reply.
He was no saint, nor was meant to be - nor no Hamlet
either, though I see you smirking knowingly - but he
was a fair part-time imitator of a kindly one - he did
not have to pretend not to hate, because, simply, he
did not hate much ... and that was no fault [or
indicator of limited emotional range].
Hanky Dampy pulled himself short with a snort.
Hang on ... is this not getting too soppy?
[Or should that be 'sloppy'? With wet ones you never
could tell. He said 'soppy', she said 'sloppy', so
their sentiments were clearly not well matched - and
the Letts Diary indicted clearly when they called the
whole thing off.]
Cynicism just averted, the drippy droppy kid drip
dropped more drab drops over spilty milky.
Honky Downbeat had no groove in his soul, that was his
problem, she said.
Hinky Deadly had no variety either - he was like a
stuck record.
Hunky Deadpan smirked at that further
misrepresentation by Hagface Hogwash.
Hikey Downwind tripped over his own triping feet once
more - he was such a clumsy ass soler, wasn't he?
But though he had many a fall, Hokey Download never
actually fell completely arsehole into manhole - and
that absence of serious stepping mishap told him
something: he might be no jungle boy bodily
rhythmn-wize, but he had a bit of the jungle in him -
and like every other human had human bits that had
started stepping out on two feet in Africa. He did not
know the hip movements well, but he knew a few leg
movements.
[In other words, factually: after some very long and
desperate periods of depressive torpor - during which
no one came to my assistance - I started to walk
again.]
Hiho Dorky was not the lord of the dancers, it had to
be admitted, but for a few hours most days he managed
to foot quite fleetingly. He still could not talk the
talk much, but he could at least walk the walk a bit.
[In a rare interlude of pleasantry, Mellowing Minxy
said to Hurted Downcast that, on more than one
occasion, when she had watched him just walking across
the room, and seen what a great mover he really could
be, she had felt more than a little bit shakey and
trembling - and almost moist with appreciation. (Such
interludes were all too rare treats as life-time went
on.)]
As he emerged from his hole more often, and got out
and about more and more, Hidebound Dumbo began slowly
to rethink things relatively speaking - the motions
seeming to change the course of his thought-flows.
Hardcore Humanist certainly became less Rigid Atheist
as he experienced with his own senses that there
surely were in the realms of observable things truly
more heavenly and earthly stuff than had be dreamt of
in his previous philosophies of being and non-being.
On a more everyday level, Haughty Dismissive slowly
came to realize that while he had been brought up to
be a comprehensive kind of man, he had slipped up
badly into snobbery somewhere.
It occured to him that he had become a snob -
dismissive of the 'lowly' many - in a vain attempt to
please the 'likes of her' - and like many a false-self
bad-faith move, that had been true to no one.
He came down to earth with a bump.
Humbler - if never completely Humble - Bumbler then
ate some cheaper but more cheerful pies - and even
learned to enjoy sparrow songs for the first time in
his life.
He seemed to see that many of the people he had been
born among, and grown up with, secretly knew that he
looked down on them - but that many of them put up
with that sort of thing because they did not have high
enough opinions of themselves.
Then he seemed to see that there was even more to it
than that - and that it was not that clear-cut, and
that no one had a really true measure of the relations
between self and others.
They thought that he thought that he was better than
they were, while he thought that they thought that he
was worse than them.
He thought that they thought he was uglier than them,
but they thought that he thought that he was more
attractive than them.
And as for cleverness ... he thought that they thought
that he thought he was clever - which he did, it had
to be admitted, but he was clever enough to know that
he was not as clever as they thought he thought
himself to be.
If asked: 'How clever do you think you are?'
'Not clever enough,' was his clever-clever reply.
They were all quite clever these human sorts really,
and they knew that, and he knew that, they were
differently clever, each in their own ways. That is
what he really thought anyway.
He was such an irritating clever-clever clogs, though,
wasn't he?
So why then did ever so clever-clever clogs often clog
up into an almost silent state?
Perhaps it is because he knows that he is not quite
clever enough to find the really clever words he'd
like find - and if he, who could use words more
cleverly than many/mosty, clogged up to wordless
inarticulation, then what hope was there for
articulation by people who believed, rightly or
wrongly, that they are less clever than clever clogs?
It was all very frustrating, because he had a thing or
two that might be generally useful to teach - and
there were some/many who might in fact like to learn a
few more things from the likes of him, who are quite
clever, aren't they, now, really?
Clover Clags could not find an answer to sort of
twisted question, so he shut up again - and might
rightly be accused of disappearing up his own
arsehole.
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@...> Add to
Address Book
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:51:31 -0000
Subject: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger
Exercizes
Chirpy quirky qwerty cheap cheep ...
... moods can change very quickly for the worse though
...
... sight of a poster with the word 'partnership'
changed mine far for the worse a few minutes ago ...
... got me to thinking ... 'they' talk 'partnership'
when what 'they' seem to mean is 'exploitations' ...
... certainly more often been offered 'rip offs' [at
my expense] than partnerships, personally ...
... 'temptestuous' minds are difficult to live with of
course - as 'she' [in various forms] taught me ...
Restarting bombastically ...
The actual singular state is foul and stinking.
Pontential of pluralistic partnership is likely to be
much more fair and sweet-smelling.
That is just possibly 'wishful thinking', 'of course'
- and what look appear like 'sweet-smelling deals' on
first glance can turn out to be 'rip-offs' [always
read the small-print].
But if Charles can get married 'unconstitutionally',
then I should be allowed to do so too - because
'rights' apply to all citizens not just one. [And the
Cosmopolitan Republican rightly asserts his human
right to be an expanisve-minded 'citizen' (of the
world), not a 'subject' of an, in fact (not merely
opinion), not very impressive narrow-minded royalist
national state.]
And my true 'queen' will be a truly equal partner -
not some subservient 'princess consort'.
But adazzle them dimmly deft Dicky ducky ... because
they are not yet properly prepared for the really
'brighter stuff' ...
A useful staging device is the 'conceit' - whereby the
audience [potential or actual] can never be quite sure
whether you are 'merely fooling' - or even just plain
mad - or not.
This seems like a 'conceit', but ...
I am reluctant to share my 'powers' more widely, and
that is fact, because I don't really trust 'them'.
By 'them' I mean [generally and specifically ]
'oppressors' AND 'oppressed' - because 'they' can seem
too interchangeable.
The 'oppressed', given power, all too easily
[experience teaches] become 'oppressers' themselves -
this is an all too common pattern of human history.
Sketchy fictional illustations ...
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Prospero represents
something like an 'enlightened dictator' and/or a
'kindly tyrant', as it were. His use of power over
others is mostly kindly, but he does treat Caliban
very harshly - and that is troubling, because it seems
'over-done' and 'unnecessary', and seems to involve a
failing in 'fellow-feeling'.
But if roles were reversed, would Caliban treat
Prospero more kindly?
It seems unlikely - and Caliban O'Kitty taught me that
...
That is 'only' fiction, though, and I am neither
Prospero nor
Caliban, nor meant to be either.
But ...
I do know a 'thing or two' about the way 'power'
works.
What to do with such powerful 'knowledge' [even if it
is only 'potential' knowledge]?
Ideally, I would share it around - power is a great
potential 'fertilizer', and, like garden manure, seems
to work best when spread around quite thinly, as
someone said to me, almost
quoting someone else, the other day.
But I don't really trust 'them' with the potentially
enhanced power - partly because I don't trust myself
with it.
'So' ... I 'tweak' the 'system' here and there ...
rather than seek to force a large mass-flow change of
direction ... 'safer' that way, I tend to think ...
One of my 'big ideas' - which I have not really worked
out yet, but have a kind of outline understanding of -
is that 'key elements' of the really 'big ideas' are
as likely to be found in the minds of 'anonymous' -
though named and identified, within their local
contexts - and seemingly 'lowly' people, as in the
minds of 'famous' and more obviously 'high-status'
people.
Like all 'big ideas' this one is not entirely original
- it owes a lot to the Christian notion of
'sublimity', for example, but I would not want the
Christians to think in a conceited way that they
deserved all the credit for it: because they adapted
it, in their turn, from other people's thinking.
There seems to be a life-enhancing/life-protecting
'defence' against the physically powerful in this 'big
idea' - namely, 'they', nor anyone else, could ever
really tell who really carries the elements of the
really 'big ideas' - so if 'they' destroy ANY
individual, 'they' might be destroying key elements of
the really 'big ideas'.
In other words [to get somewhat cryptic seeming, but
not really], 'we' put 'it' together between us - based
on mutual recognitions of personal 'uniqueness', and
of the value of our differing talents, and of the
potential 'deeper understandings' within EVERY
individual human consciousness.
When people deliberately destroy ANY unique
individual, they are potentially doing huge damage to
humanity possibility generally - because that
individual might carry a truly essential component of
the 'key' to human possibility generally.
What I am searching for, 'of course', via such
'speculatory' ideas, is a way to protect vulnerable
individual human beings against persecution - to the
point of destruction - by groups or other mass-flow
processes ...
And that is all just 'wild unworldly dreaming' though,
isn't it?

From: "Philip Talbot" <philtal_uk@...>
Date: Sat Nov 5, 2005  2:41 am
Subject: Revized Re-edit 1b 04_11_2005
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 06:21:11 -0800 (PST)
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@...> Add to
Address Book
Subject: Re: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger
Exercizes
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
To moderate the 'tempestuosness' I reduce myself - it
is also known as 'self-restraint'.
Reducing self further: 'I am a word-processor.'
Even word-processors are lost for words some days.
Being lost for words is a troubling state.
It can feel like catanoia is coming on - which is a
terrifying prospect.
Been to that 'hell' all to often unwillingly - and
don't know how many recoveries I have left in me.
I have had to pull myself out of that 'void' all too
often already - and unassisted [human kindness might
work, but the drugs don't work for me - the shrinks
will, however, never stop bugging me with power-plays
in attempts to fit me into their overly reduced
biochemical schemes of things ... which further
depresses me ...].
Perking up with refreshments from old memory clusters.
Clever Clogs remembered a telling conversation with a
previous old helping hand and occasional ally Sean.
Clever Clogs [aka 'I'] was supposed to be celebrating
a bit of good-fortune/achievement - getting a job
which many others, including Sean, had wanted
themselves - but Clever Clogs certainly seemed
unimpressed by his own achievement/good-fortune. It
seemed nothing to him, a matter of no importance,
futile even. And this was not false modesty at play,
it was something else. It was like: 'I achieved this
... which you could not achieve ... but ... guess what
... it means nothing much too me ...'
'You worry me!' was Sean's telling response.
It is 'worrying' indeed when a man of many abilities,
much potential, and despite his many faults, an
essentially kindly nature, seems to want to do nothing
but waste his life.
He seems to be saying: 'Well ... nothing matters much
really does it?'
And maybe 'hokey cokey' is 'what it is all about',
after all.
In the patterns, and the dramas, in the motions, and
the break-ups, in the part-indentifications, and the
transient hand-in-hand person-to-person, link-ups, of
the clumsy dance, that anyone can do, even the
clumsiest of dancers - without much embarrassment, and
without falling arse-over-tit ... and even if that
happens it can be incorporated into the dance - in the
circle that is never regularly circular ... images of
'it all' perhaps ...
Or perhaps it is only a playful parody of 'gang-bang'
possibilities.
Some have even suggested it is a dark and dangerous
travesty of the anglo-catholic mass.
In some variations - not my personal favourites,
because too suggestive of determinism - the word
'taxi' is introduced.
Free will? or Determinism?
Significant signifier? or trivial time-killer?
[Apparent digression. Life's little ironies. Or a
random sampling. Or ... One day awhile ago, I tapped
'hokey cokey' into the Google search engine, and whose
name should appear on the first page of 'hokey cokey'
reference texts that Google spun up for me that day?
Lo! ... it was hokey cokey world weary cynic - these
days, apparently (I may be badly misjudging her from
limited subjective perspectives, of course) - Ms Big
Al. {The same search does not produce the same results
sequences now, because there has been a reshuffle in
the 'hokey cokey' scheme of things on the google web
crawler.} Anyway, there, by a hokey cokey googly
spinning shuffle, popped up an expressive report by
little Ms Alice dabbling in a wonderland of hokey
cokey steps in a capital mayoral election - or Mr
Norris was changing trains again. I wonder how many
get the allusions these days. Problem in the 'spread',
I suspect. And the 'density'. There is much real
possibility of a truly cosmopolitan 'common culture'
emerging from the 'spread', but the 'canon' of
previously shared reference points are being
fragmented. Something like that seems to be happening,
anyway. Perhaps it is just a problem of excess. They
come. They go. And, O.K., I was a green-eyed,
lost-possibility-regretting, highly subjective and
somewhat twisted observer of these matters, true
enough, but she never seemed to have the same male
partner from one month to another. But was that sort
of discontinuity really female 'liberation'? And it
was as if the gals, like the guys, had learned nothing
from the guys and gals who'd followed similar
essentially frustrating behaviour patterns for
centuries. Mr Norris, by the way, had five mistresses
on the go at one time, but did not seem satisfied with
any of them. The Wife of Bath had five husbands in
church, and many more outside. With the guys you could
say, well, it's perhaps just a sperm excess problem -
we've got millions to spare and are driven on by who
knows what to want to spread them as widely as
possible. So we are constantly reviewing the
possilities and the actualities and given the chance
... But what might it be with the gals? - a few
hundred thousand eggs, I suppose, might account for
something, but that, like the sperm numbers games, was
just numbers stuff which does not seem to explain
anything much very well. Who then devised this
torment? Love? In all this possibility examination,
and
partner switching [coupling and un- coup- ling] for
real, a search
for love was going on then? Or searches for something
else? Or ...
Perhaps it is a problem of too much choice. Though not
a 'fundamentalist' of any variety, really, I, like
many another, when faced with too much choice, and in
a state of confusion, return to the fairly fixed
reference points, including reference texts -
something solid to hang on to, perhaps, to reorientate
within/around. All the literary texts of all the ages
are now available on-line or in print in an original
language or translation of your chosing. But no one
has the free time to read them. And when you have so
many options, how can you concentrate on anything for
long? - or really appreciate anything properly. The
'process' drives you on ... and pesters you with ever
more 'greeds'/'needs' you never knew you had ... and
... Motion blurs of busy lives in an accelerated
culture. Too much of everything. Overfilled 'to do'
lists. But I/we/they also complain of being 'bored'
all too often too! Numbers games are so unsatisfying
long-term though. Yawn. Ennui. Darker matter treated
lightly. 'Not another one,' he sighed as he turned to
deflower the 75th - or whatever - of the nth number of
willing virgins
Uncle Osama had promised him for being a willing
participant in the essentially nihilistic
suicidal/murderous terrorism act. We are such
contrary fellows as facile adolescent fantasies are
made of. Being distracted from distraction by
distraction. Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2. The
'damned' pursuing essentially futile questing
activities in the spread of 'hell'. 'Darkness
visible'. 'False philosophy'. There is always a
counter-point though. Running in reverse flow to such
'fall stories' ... uplift stories. Prometheus showed
the lowly humans the light of the fire of arts and
crafts, and trusted them, having 'seen the light', to
use the 'fire' of expanding knowledge to raise
themselves up to higher states still. That is a strong
challenge to the 'you are damned to lives misery for
eating from the tree of knowledge' type of 'fall
story', I suspect. Or is it only another bit of
scatter-brained spin? And when the Wife of Bath saw
he'd never finish reading from his accursed book,
suddenly she tore three or more or less pages from it,
and was caught with such a blow that she could barely
hear him say into her ringing ears: 'Alyson, my
dearest love, with the help of god-or-nature I'll
never strike you again.' To which she replied: 'That
is all too easy for you to say, but do you really mean
it? And now, if you'll kindly listen, I will get on
with my own tale, which I will tell in my own way, in
my own time.' He did then try to suggest to her that
her approach was too subjective, but she was no longer
listening, perhaps because he had unwittingly deafened
her ...]
I do doubt hokey cokey is what it is all about
actually - though it is possible.
One apparent proof of free will is not to do something
you want to do.
And there is wasting your time on apparently trivial
stuff, and there is biding your time while waiting for
moments charged with more potential than the
present one.
[Irritating Clever Clogs does always have a new line
of thought - or spin - to turn to, doesn't he?]
Humkey Turnkey had had too many major 'fall'
experiences himself, and still spent too much of his
life lying around listlessly resting in pieces, that
had to admitted - but he was not waiting for all the
king's/queen's horses to gallop along to his rescue
[after all, he was a republican, so could not have
accepted their assistance anyway - voluntary citizen's
assistance might have come in useful, but that is
another matter].
Anyway, he was all too often inexplicably immobilized
and fragmented, that is fact enough.
Whether he chose the immobilized fragmented state, or
whether it chose him, as it were, is an open question.
In one such resting in pieces state of immobility,
Homkey Turkey found himself further considering the
bits and pieces of his reduced existence - rather idly
at first, but then ...
The sense of the spread of the bits scattered around
his disorderly resting place suddenly, stangely, more
carefully considered, began to give him a sense order,
and of the wider spreading scheme of things ...
And even if it all looked very disorderly there were
apparent patterns in the spread ...
'Chaos' was possibly properly considered an illusion
brought on by a failure to observe the patterns and
dramas of of the scheme of things properly.
Turning to his own bits and pieces once more, one more
perked up morning, Himkey Turbid saw to his uplifted
surprize that his bodily bits and pieces were not in
such a bad state as he often imagined - he was indeed
of the pessimistic hypochondriac tendency, and all too
prone to imagining worse states than actually existed.
Actually, his body was still a mostly fucked up mostly
useless mess, but his hands were at least working that
day.
In depressive states, you can, literally, lose the
proper use of fully functioning hands.
When he tried his hands out that day, he found, to his
relief, that their functions had survived the general
torpor and were still functioning.
The discovery of working hands might seem no great
discovery to many, but to an excessively depressive
over-working head-worker, the finding of still working
hands are real delightful surprizes.
He had had working hands before, but ...
Handpush Downy, among others, had dismissed him as
just not touchy-feely enough - and, again, her and
others' words had perhaps had too much effect on his
self-image.
He had been too receptive to others' false-self
type-casting, in other words.
['Over-receptiveness' was a general problem of his -
it might also be labelled 'over-sensitivity' - and
once 'they' sense you are 'receptive' you do find they
dump a lot of stuff on you.]
When they don't reach out to touch you, you don't
reach out to touch them. [Matters of fact learned
from/by painful
experience.]
When they treat you in manners divorcing you from
common human feelings, you treat them in manners
divorceing them from common human feelings.
As I, the children, and W.H. Auden know [simply,
i.e. 'unknowingly']: '... those to whom evil is done,
tend to do evil in
return ...' Words to that effect. Actions like that.
These are 'feed-back' effects - 'mirroring' is another
way of putting it.
Meanwhile, having escaped from one set of
mirror-images, Handy Doer
turned to others, and tried out his newly refound
hands - not
entirely self-referentially, though not on other
people [he had
become reduced by self and others to 'untouchable'
status, and so
others were 'untouchable' by self too] but on things -
and seemed to
find new measures of many substantial things.
He got quite handy in arty and crafty ways, is another
way of putting
it.
None of the things he created with his own hands were
brilliant - nothing he ever did really satisfied
Highseek Demander - but he definitely discovered
hidden handy abilities he never knew he had in him -
and he realized the same must be possible for
everyone.
The spead of undiscovered talents ...
The 'wasted' - because 'denied' or otherwise
underdeveloped - talents ...
Handed Down-determination then turned his hands to
hands-on
science - again something he never thought he had much
aptitude for.
Unworldly flowing abstract ponderer became hands-in
dirty-handed pond-dipper ... and in the wet and the
dirt and the slime discovered more than mere
imagination could ever have dreamt of.
Lacking research grants, the charity shops and market
stalls and junk emporiums provided his equipment -
much of which was dismissed by others as kids' stuff,
or merely 'rubbish'.
It was surprizing to discover what he could discover
with a £1 'kids' microscope.
Things there to be seen all along, but never seen
before by humanity - everyone has unique capacities to
make unique discoveries.
Good role models ...
Following the example of the exemplary fellow beings
...
Working with a microscope of his own making - with
less power than microscopes dismissed by later
throwaway wasteful societies as 'kids stuff' or else
just 'junk' - almost unclassifiable and often
mispelled or otherwise misunderstood deft Delft
glass-worker Leeuwnehoek discovered, among other
things: blood cells;
spermatozoa [his own presumably - it is a pleasurable
relief to see them still swimming healthily as every
hypochondriac male-gaze microscopist will tell his
private diary {and the production of the research
material is not without its pleasures too}]; bacteria;
nematodes producing live young; plant cells; the
difference between spring and summer wood of trees;
the fact that higher temperatures and higher light
levels produce more durable woods in hardwood trees
and the reverse in softwood trees; that freshwater
protozoa can survive being dried up; parasites of
frogs; the fluke of sheep's liver; that plant extracts
and sulphur dioxide function as pesticies;
practicalities of conception in mammals ...
And that was only a start ...
In tiny drops of sludge, he saw living worlds come to
life and then die out ... and then come back to life
... and ...
He saw creatures more mysterious than anything you'll
ever see in a monster movie - and wondered why people
wasted so much time on the fantasy stuff when real
life was so much more interesting and truly
mysterious.
He saw the cuties too ... the little herbivore
creatures who want nothing more out of life than a bit
of green stuff to nibble on, and a few pals to mess
about sexually with.
What he saw, above all else, was life just being
lively - never quite understanding itself, being a
mystery surrounded by more mysteries, and usually just
muddling on in the mostly muddy stuff ... and trying
to make the most of it ...
Feeling a bit more alive himself as a consequence of
such lively observations, he put the life in and on
himself on the microscope slide for closer
examination.
He saw his own cells up close and personal for the
first time really [he had perhaps gone through the
motions of doing this earlier at school - but had
never really taken in 'the vision'] - and they
certainly seemed to contain a lot more than 'selfish
gene' stuff to him.
[Reduce me no further, please clever Dicky Doorkins,
and pals - because the environment and the culture and
a whole lot of other stuff you cannot account for - or
reduce away - 'say' to me, in limitless ways, that
there is a whole lot more to self and others than
being a mostly determined 'machine' for the
replication of 'selfish genes'. (In there own defence
they say: 'that was only the popularizing metaphor ...
the bulk of the argument within its fuller framework
was not so reductive'. But ...]
And ... he saw his lifelong companions the face-mite
family for the first time.
[You get them as a baby from your parents and other
family members when they nuzzle you affectionately. As
you grow older, your family face-mites cross-fertilize
with those of other human family face-mites - as you
nuzzle other loved ones affectionately ...]
And ... he saw his own sperms still swimming about
healthy enough - despite all those 'power of
suggestion' warning on the cigarette packets, etc
[determinisism-defying free 'will to live' must come
into it - though I have no way of proving that ... and
pass me another cigarette please ... and do you have a
light please? ... (Addict? or FreeWiller?)]
There is more to self and others than this wanky
geekery, Wanky Geek [aka 'I'] began to suspect.
The arts and the sciences are supposed to be two
separate cultures.
But Humbling Bumbling, the small town near nobody,
brought them together in his small way in his small
room.
He's a mostly modest and reserved and restrained
fellow, but he likes to explore the limits.
And he finds, time and time again, that there are
none.
What seem to be sharp divisions, turn out, on closer
examination to be blurs - and not blurs indicating a
limit to resolution ... but a new threshold to be
crossed ...
What seem to be clear-cut distinctions turn out to be
mere oversimplifying wordplays - or bits of facile
spin.
What seem to be final conclusions, turn out, on closer
analysis, to have been strange collections of
misunderstandings, under-/over-estimations, and/or
failures to see, feel, or otherwise sense, and then
properly express, things that were there to be sensed
and expressed - and shared - ... to say nothing of
much that was only plain ignorance and stupidity.
Each basic advance was effected by a more or less
abrupt and dramatic change: the breaking down of
frontiers between related territories, the
amalgamation of previously separated frames of
reference or experimental techniques; the sudden
falling into pattern of previously disjointed data.
'... you put your whole self in ...
... your whole self out ...
... you do the hokey cokey ...
... and you turn about ...
... that's what's it's all aboot ...
... see?! ...
... o'ok'y'ho.key,cokey ...
... oh! ...'
The clumsy irregularities did tend to suggest free
will rather than taxis ... but ...
As he became more truly open-minded and more deeply
aware of his own reasonably honest uncertainty
himself, he became more and more impatient with
closed-minded people claiming 'certainties' they did
not have.
To: tempestuous@yahoogroups.com
From: "Phil Talbot" <philtal_uk@...> Add to
Address Book
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 06:21:11 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: [tempestuous] Re: Tempestuous 10-Finger
Exercizes
Repetition is a form of change ...
You cannot [in reading or writing] repeat the same
text twice ... it
changes ... you change ...
But is the revized version more 'authentic' than the
unrevized one ...
Depends on ... context ... relative good/bad faith ...
factual
accuracy [or not] of purported statements of fact ...
many other
things ...
Anyway ...
To moderate the 'tempestuosness' I reduce myself - it
is also known as 'self-restraint'.
Reducing self further: 'I am a word-processor.'
Even word-processors are lost for words some days.
Being lost for words is a troubling state.
It can feel like catanoia is coming on - which is a
terrifying prospect.
Been to that 'hell' all to often unwillingly - and
don't know how many recoveries I have left in me.
I have had to pull myself out of that 'void' all too
often already - and unassisted [human kindness might
work, but the drugs don't work for me - the shrinks
will, however, never stop bugging me with power-plays
in attempts to fit me into their overly reduced
biochemical schemes of things ... which further
depresses me ...].
Perking up with refreshments from old memory clusters.
Clever Clogs remembered a telling conversation with a
previous old helping hand and occasional ally Sean.
Clever Clogs [aka 'I'] was supposed to be celebrating
a bit of good-fortune/achievement - getting a job
which many others, including Sean, had wanted
themselves - but Clever Clogs certainly seemed
unimpressed by his own achievement/good-fortune. It
seemed nothing to him, a matter of no importance,
futile even. And this was not false modesty at play,
it was something else. It was like: 'I achieved this
... which you could not achieve ... but ... guess what
... it means nothing much too me ...'
'You worry me!' was Sean's telling response.
It is 'worrying' indeed when a man of many abilities,
much potential, and despite his many faults, an
essentially kindly nature, seems to want to do nothing
but waste his life.
He seems to be saying: 'Well ... nothing matters much
really does it?'
And maybe 'hokey cokey' is 'what it is all about',
after all.
In the patterns, and the dramas, in the motions, and
the break-ups, in the part-indentifications, and the
transient hand-in-hand person-to-person, link-ups, of
the clumsy dance, that anyone can do, even the
clumsiest of dancers - without much embarrassment, and
without falling arse-over-tit ... and even if that
happens it can be incorporated into the dance - in the
circle that is never regularly circular ... images of
'it all' perhaps ...
Or perhaps it is only a playful parody of 'gang-bang'
possibilities.
Some have even suggested it is a dark and dangerous
travesty of the anglo-catholic mass.
In some variations - not my personal favourites,
because too suggestive of determinism - the word
'taxi' is introduced.
Free will? or Determinism?
Significant signifier? or trivial time-killer?
[Apparent digression. Life's little ironies. Or a
random sampling. Or ... One day awhile ago, I tapped
'hokey cokey' into the Google search engine, and whose
name should appear on the first page of 'hokey cokey'
reference texts that Google spun up for me that day?
Lo ... it was hokey cokey world weary cynic - these
days, apparently (I may be badly misjudging her from
limited subjective perspectives, of course)- Ms Big
Al. {The same search does not produce the same results
sequences now, because there has been a reshuffle in
the 'hokey cokey' scheme of things on the google web
crawler.} Anyway, there, by a hokey cokey googly
spinning shuffle, popped up an expressive report by
little Ms Alice dabbling in a wonderland of hokey
cokey steps in a capital mayoral election - or Mr
Norris was changing trains again. I wonder how many
get the allusions these days. Problem in the 'spread',
I suspect. And the 'density'. There is much real
possibility of a truly cosmopolitan 'common culture'
emerging from the 'spread', but the 'canon' of
previously shared reference points are being
fragmented. Something like that seems to be happening,
anyway. Perhaps it is just a problem of excess. They
come. They go. And, O.K., I was a green-eyed,
lost-possibility-regretting, highly subjective and
somewhat twisted observer of these matters, true
enough, but she never seemed to have the same male
partner from one month to another. But was that sort
of discontinuity really female 'liberation'? And it
was as if the gals, like the guys, had learned nothing
from the guys and gals who'd followed similar
essentially frustrating behaviour patterns for
centuries. Mr Norris, by the way, had five mistresses
on the go at one time, but did not seem satisfied with
any of them. The Wife of Bath had five husbands in
church, and many more outside. With the guys you could
say, well, it's perhaps just a sperm excess problem -
we've got millions to spare and are driven on by who
knows what to want to spread them as widely as
possible. So we are constantly reviewing the
possilities and the actualities and given the chance
... But what might it be with the gals? - a few
hundred thousand eggs, I suppose, might account for
something, but that, like the sperm numbers games, was
just numbers stuff which does not seem to explain
anything much very well. Who then devised this
torment? Love? In all this possibility examination and
partner switching for real, a search for love was
going on then? Or searches for something else? Or ...
Perhaps it is a problem of too much choice. Though not
a 'fundamentalist' of any variety, really, I, like
many another, when faced with too much choice, and in
a state of confusion, return to the fairly fixed
reference points, including reference texts -
something solid to hang on to, perhaps, to reorientate
within/around. All the literary texts of all the ages
are now available on line or in print in an original
language or translation of your chosing. But no one
has the free time to read them. And when you have so
many options, how can you concentrate on anything for
long? - or really appreciate anything properly. The
'process' drives you on ... and pesters you with ever
more 'greeds'/'needs' you never knew you had ... and
... Motion blurs of busy lives in an accelerated
culture. Too much of everthing. Overfilled 'to do'
lists. But I/we/they also complain of being 'bored'
all too often too! Numbers games are so unsatisfying
long-term though. Yawn. Ennui. Darker matter treated
lightly. 'Not another one,' he sighed as he turned to
deflower the 75th of the nth number of willing virgins
Uncle Osama had promised him for being a willing
participant in the essentially nihilistic
suicidal/murderous terrorism act. We are such
contrary fellows of facile adolescent fantasies are
made of. Being distracted from distraction by
distraction. Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2. The
'damned' pursuing essentially futile questing
activities in the spread of 'hell'. 'Darkness
visible'. 'False philosophy'. There is always a
counter-point though. Running in reverse flow to such
'fall stories' ... uplift stories. Prometheus showed
the lowly humans the light of the fire of arts and
crafts, and trusted them, having 'seen the light', to
use the 'fire' of expanding knowledge to raise
themselves up to higher states still. That is a strong
challenge to the 'you are damned to lives misery for
eating from the tree of knowledge' type of 'fall
story', I suspect. Or is it only another bit of
scatter-brained spin? And when the Wife of Bath saw
he'd never finish reading from his accursed book,
suddenly she tore three or more or less pages from it,
and was caught with such a blow that she could barely
hear him say into her ringing ears: 'Alyson, my
dearest love, with the help of god-or-nature I'll
never strike you again.' To which she replied: 'That
is all too easy for you to say, but do you really mean
it? And now, if you'll kindly listen, I will get on
with my own tale, which I will tell in my own way, in
my own time.' He did then try to suggest to her that
her approach was too subjective, but she was no longer
listening, perhaps because he had unwittingly deafened
her ...]
I do doubt hokey cokey is what it is all about
actually - though it is possible.
One apparent proof of free will is not to do something
you want to do.
And there is wasting your time on apparently trivial
stuff, and there is biding your time while waiting for
more moments charged with more potential than the
present one.
[Irritating Clever Clogs does always have a new line
of thought - or spin - to turn to, doesn't he?]
Humkey Turnkey had had too many major 'fall'
experiences himself, and still spent too much of his
life lying around listlessly resting in pieces, that
had to admitted - but he was not waiting for all the
king's/queen's horses to gallop along to his rescue
[after all, he was a republican, so could not have
accepted their assistance anyway - voluntary citizen's
assistance might have come in
useful, but that is another matter].
Anyway, he was all too often inexplicably immobilized
and fragmented, that is fact enough.
Whether he chose the immobilized fragmented state, or
whether it chose him, as it were, is an open question.
In one such resting in pieces state of immobility,
Homkey Turkey found himself further considering the
bits and pieces of his reduced existence - rather idly
at first, but then ...
The sense of the spread of the bits scattered around
his disorderly resting place suddenly, stangely, more
carefully considered, began to give him a sense order,
and of the wider spreading scheme of things ...
And even if it all looked very disorderly there were
apparent patterns in the spread ...
'Chaos' was possibly properly considered an illusion
brought on by a failure to observe the patterns and
dramas of of the scheme of things properly.
Turning to his own bits and pieces once more, one more
perked up morning, Himkey Turbid saw to his uplifted
surprize that his bodily bits and pieces were not in
such a bad state as he often imagined - he was indeed
of the pessimistic hypochondriac tendency, and all too
prone to imagining worse states than actually existed.
Actually, his body was still a mostly fucked up mostly
useless mess, but his hands were at least working that
day.
In depressive states, you can, literally, lose the
proper use of fully functioning hands.
When he tried his hands out that day, he found, to his
relief, that their functions had survived the general
torpor and were still functioning.
The discovery of working hands might seem no great
discovery to many, but to an excessively depressive
over-working head-worker, the finding of still working
hands are real delightful surprizes.
He had had working hands before, but ...
Handpush Downy, among others, had dismissed him as
just not touchy-feely enough - and, again, her and
others' words had perhaps had too much effect on his
self-image.
He had been too receptive to others' false-self
type-casting, in other words.
['Over-receptiveness' was a general problem of his -
it might also be labelled 'over-sensitivity' - and
once 'they' sense you are 'receptive' you do find they
dump a lot of stuff on you.]
When they don't reach out to touch you, you don't
reach out to touch them.
When they treat you in manners divorcing you from
common human feelings, you treat them in manners
divorceing them from common human feelings.
These are 'feed-back' effects - 'mirroring' is another
way of putting it.
Handy Doer tried out his newly refound hands - not on
other people [he had become reduced by self and others
to 'untouchable' status, and so others were
'untouchable' by self too] but on things - and seemed
to find new measures of many substantial things.
He got quite handy in arty and crafty ways, is another
way of putting it.
None of the things he created with his own hands were
brilliant - nothing he ever did really satisfied
Highseek Demander - but he definitely discovered
hidden handy abilities he never knew he had in him -
and he realized the same must be possible for
everyone.
The spead of undiscovered talents ...
The 'wasted' - because 'denied' or otherwise
underdeveloped - talents ...
Handed Determination then turned his hands to hands-on
science - again something he never thought he had much
aptitude for.
Unworldly flowing abstract ponderer became hands-in
dirty-handed pond-dipper ... and in the wet and the
dirt and the slime discovered more than mere
imagination could ever have dreamt of.
Lacking research grants, the charity shops and market
stalls and junk emporiums provided his equipment -
much of which was dismissed by others as kids' stuff,
or merely 'rubbish'.
It was surprizing to discover what he could discover
with a £1 'kids' microscope.
Things there to be seen all along, but never seen
before by humanity - everyone has unique capacities to
make unique discoveries.
Good role models ...
Following the example of the exemplary fellow beings
...
Working with a microscope of his own making - with
less power than microscopes dismissed by later
throwaway wasteful societies as 'kids stuff' or else
just 'junk' - deft Delft glass-work Leeuwnehoek
discovered, among other things: blood cells;
spermatozoa [his own presumably - it is a pleasurable
relief to see them still swimming healthily as every
hypochondriac male-gaze microscopist will tell his
private diary {and the production of the research
material is not without its pleasures too}]; bacteria;
nematodes producing live young; plant cells; the
difference between spring and summer wood of trees;
the fact that higher temperatures and higher light
levels produce more durable woods in hardwood trees
and the reverse in softwood trees; that freshwater
protozoa can survive being dried up; parasites of
frogs; the fluke of sheep's liver; that plant extracts
and sulphur dioxide function as pesticies;
practicalities of conception in mammals ...
And that was only a start ...
In tiny drops of sludge, he saw living worlds come to
life and then die out ... and then come back to life
... and ...
He saw creatures more mysterious than anything you'll
ever see in a monster movie - and wondered why people
wasted so much time on the fantasy stuff when real
life was so much more interesting and truly
mysterious.
He saw the cuties too ... the little herbivore
creatures who want nothing more out of life than a bit
of green stuff to nibble on, and a few pals to mess
about sexually with.
What he saw, above all else, was life just being
lively - never quite understanding itself, being a
mystery surrounded by more mysteries, and usually just
muddling on in the mostly muddy stuff ... and trying
to make the most of it ...
Feeling a bit more alive himself as a consequence of
such lively observations, he put the life in and on
himself on the microscope slide for closer
examination.
He saw his own cells up close and personal for the
first time really [he had perhaps gone through the
motions of doing this earlier at school - but had
never really taken in 'the vision'] - and they
certainly seemed to contain a lot more than 'selfish
gene' stuff to him.
[Reduce me no further, please clever Dicky Doorkins,
and pals - because the environment and the culture and
a whole lot of other stuff you cannot account for - or
reduce away - 'say' to me, in limitless ways, that
there is a whole lot more to self and others than
being a mostly determined 'machine' for the
replication of 'selfish genes'. (In there own defence
they say: 'that was only the popularizing metaphor ...
the bulk of the argument within its fuller framework
was not so reductive'. But ...]
And ... he saw his lifelong companions the face-mite
family for the first time.
[You get them as a baby from your parents and other
family members when they nuzzle you affectionately. As
you grow older, your family face-mites cross-fertilize
with those of other human family face-mites - as you
nuzzle other loved ones affectionately ...]
And ... he saw his own sperms still swimming about
healthy enough - despite all those 'power of
suggestion' warning on the cigarette packets, etc
[determinisism-defying free 'will to live' must come
into it - though I have no way of proving that ... and
pass me another cigarette please ... and do you have a
light please? ... (Addict? or FreeWiller?)]
There is more to self and others than this wanky
geekery, Wanky Geek [aka 'I'] began to suspect.
The arts and the sciences are supposed to be two
separate cultures.
But Humbling Bumbling, the small town near nobody,
brought them together in his small way in his small
room.
He's a mostly modest and reserved and restrained
fellow, but he likes to explore the limits.
And he finds, time and time again, that there are
none.
What seem to be sharp divisions, turn out, on closer
examination to be blurs - and not blurs indicating a
limit to resolution ... but a new threshold to be
crossed ...
What seem to be clear-cut distinctions turn out to be
mere oversimplifying wordplays - or bits of facile
spin.
What seem to be final conclusions, turn out, on closer
analysis, to have been strange collections of
misunderstandings, under-/over-estimations, and/or
failures to see, feel, or otherwise sense, and then
properly express, things that were there to be sensed
and expressed - and shared - ... to say nothing of
much that was only plain ignorance and stupidity.
Each basic advance was effected by a more or less
abrupt and dramatic change: the breaking down of
frontiers between related territories, the
amalgamation of previously separated frames of
reference or experimental techniques; the sudden
falling into pattern of previously disjointed data.
'... you put your whole self in ...
... your whole self out ...
... you do the hokey cokey ...
... and you turn about ...
... that's what's it's all aboot ...
... see?! ...
... o'ok'y'ho.key,cokey ...
... oh! ...'
The clumsy irregularities did tend to suggest free
will rather than taxis ... but ...
As he became more truly open-minded and more deeply
aware of his own reasonably honest uncertainty
himself, he became more and more impatient with
closed-minded people claiming 'certainties' they did
not have.











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