In praise of failure

Erasmus ---> in praise of folly?
folly - human capacity's completion
failure - human capacities exhausted?
futility - limitation of human capacities

critique ---> illusion of modern invincibility (Latour)
infallibility - destabilized by critique?
success - merely the clinical precision of critique?
limits-infinity - critique ad infinitum?

The road less taken

The road less taken..should have been...could have been...ain't there no more.
No going back now, man.
You are where you are, one bad turn and boom...ain't no return.
Don't look back here for advice, hindsight and all.
Don't know any of that...never heard of that, or that, or that...
I'm just eight, ya know...totally different, dude.
Quit looking back here, ain't no going back - for better or worse.
So how's the weather up in the inane these days?
Bland? Thought so.
Absinthe? That's some icky stuff you're into, don't ya get bored of it? Guess not.
You still alone? Yeah, never that much of a talker either.
Well, I gotta get back to Nintendo and Turtles.
The road less taken ain't for me, can't see it from here;
its still in front of you...to take, if you want.

Fresh Flesh

Great heights seen from abysmal depths,
moments pass without meaning,
yet they linger nonetheless;
faces etched onto a morose mind,
touching solitary nerves raw;
accursed scars conceal lost recollections,
of fresh flesh.

The middle view,
bore witness to manufactured serenity,
a luccite paradise,
where the wild was but a fading dream
and life was too familiar to be true.

Wading in clinical water,
filled with civil beasts gazing at a distance,
beyond day and night,
they crave eternity, as much as fresh flesh;
they brought the heavens down,
for amusement and pleasure;
the civil beasts proclaimed it to be good,
returned to luxury,
and there it rested.

Alas, the die was cast,
and there it appeared,
Decadence's meancing grip!

Ensnared in its vice,
struggling with atrophied limbs,
the collapse could not be resisted;
as the artifice neared its end,
innocent origins that never were,
would never be again.

The view from top,
facile and mundane,
beautifully inane;
light's source a divine orifice,
darkness its mate,
weaving eternity and void,
together again?

What was shall never be,
Fresh flesh and rebirth,
founded in the belly of sin.

Outrun the coast

Sitting quietly with his hands neatly folded and resting on his lap, he awaited the decision. The Council assembled to decide whether his behaviour merited expulsion. It was a sham and a show trial - vital to the appearance of due process. He wasn't naive. He knew the deal. The verdict had been rendered long before the pantomime. Their promise to withdraw the criminal charges was given in exchange to his willing participation and cooperation. He provided nominal consent - but he knew the deal.

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It was the fear of going his own way that chained him to that tiny apartment. He dreaded missteps; a sibboleth of shamed angst weighed heavily. Hence, he raged endlessly about nothing to nobody. He hammered on his keyboard, hoping that genius would emerge and destroy his world of entropy. Decayed by fruitless decadence, his mind had no choice but to succumb to banality. Exhausted from spewing vitriol at a virtual universe, he collapsed onto the floor. He laid on his rug, looked up at the white specks that formed the ceiling, and searched for inspiration at the threshold of his encasement. But there was no inspiration. It gave no response; only able to compound an already unbearable silence. The all-too familiar sterility of a chipping ceiling drove him to act. "Fuck it!" He decided to recover what had not been gnawed away and drove for the coast.

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"So what was the deal?" she asked trying to patch him up after the scuffle at the Dairy Queen.

"I asked her for extra M&Ms. She refused, so I punched the bitch. And then, the whole kitchen crew came out and kicked the crap out of me."

"Now why did you have to ask for extra M&Ms? You know M&Ms go right to your thighs," she said with a stern voice.

"But I had to have them. The softserve is so plain that I need the M&Ms to keep me awake," he whined. He would often whine to her in a sub-bratty manner. He was not getting any sympathy this time around.

"You know the second you lose your looks, get fat and shit - I'm leaving you."

"Good to know. I'm gone if I see a bulge on your belly - just to be explicit about it, don't expect me to be raising any bastards."

"Like I didn't know that," she laughed, all the while wrapping gauze around his skull. "Done."

She helped him up. He wobbled a bit, toppled into her, and fell on top. They shared a moment - a gaze of pure loathing followed by lust, like clockwork. On the hardwood floor, they did their usual, except for the application gauze to unconventional places - and certain orifices.

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MM was found unconscious, hanging on a length of rope in his room...tied to his feet. He walked in to the place and looked around the room. There was an envelope lying on the desk, addressed to "The rest of you fucks". He opened the envelope, assuming the identity of "the rest of you fucks" in the meantime. The letter was short and to the point.

Dear assholes,

Waste of rope. Waste of space. Waste of air. Waste of life. See ya.

MM

P.S. - If you didn't notice, I'm gonna hang my ass.


"Touche and shit," he told the unconscious man, who still floated in the world of the living...albeit upside down for the moment. He grabbed his machete, sliced the rope, and the would-be cadaver crashed into the floor face first. He checked on him, seeing if he broke his neck on the way down or whether the drugs did him in. Unfortunately, everything was in order.

"Lucky bastard." He tied a proper noose with the remaining rope, scribbled a diagram of a hangman on the back of the letter, tossed it on the table, and left the room.

Below the hangman was a message, "Up to you."

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"The noose! The noose! The noose!" The girl at the Dairy Queen shouted. "The fucking noose! Give him the noose. Let him burn in hell with the rest."

They continued to pummel him until he curled up into the fetal position. At that point, they saw their work and judged it to be sufficient. But as they turned to head back to the kitchen, the girl pulled out a pocket knife and moved on him. The fryer guy caught her before she got to the quivering pile lying on the floor.

"He punched you. He didn't try to stab you. You with that knife, that's not proportional."

"But I'm a woman who wears glasses. He accosted me for no fucking reason."

"Still all the same. Here, look at him. Don't you think this is fair enough." She nodded in agreement, then running to the washroom in tears. The others went back to their posts in the kitchen.

"There is no justice!" He shouted while getting up from the floor. "There is no fucking justice. If there was, I would get my M&Ms and you hardworking dickwads wouldn't have to suck dick to hold onto your minimum wage jobs."

They came back out, promptly continued the beating, and tossed him out the front door. He ended up landing beside his Porsche. He crawled in, wiped the blood from his eyes, and drove away.

The fryer guy peered out the window to see the red Porsche pull out of the driveway and let out a sigh. "There is no fucking justice."

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They walked out of the conference room and informed him of the news. "All the charges have been dropped." He pulled out his revolver and unloaded it contents into his temple.

"You can call off the hit."

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He hit the water and disappeared into the waves. He made it to the coast, at last -
never to return.

The universe is shaped exactly like the earth...
surely being watched...
shake the Eye's hand.

Balding Time

Are you disturbed how time can vanish, without trace, without warning? Time - despite your calendar and watch - can indeed be relative. Your mind may be free of distractions...for now. But the soon they will return to conspire against you. Soon time will slip by. It will appear repressive - demise looming large over all else. You ask, "What if I can't accomplish A or B or C, before its time to go?" And one day, you wake up to see the hair shed from your skull - soon it will be gone. Anxiety rises. Soon atavism and optimism are one in the same for the one who asks, "Can't I go back?" Uh-uh, there's no reset button to be found. No hope can be found in the past or the future. "Then how can I reverse course?" You have to go with the current, paddle along without peering back at the mounting wreckage of regret. "But what if the future is worse - what if I am doomed." You are doomed if you believe that. You are doomed if you let time-in-the-abstract obliterate the present. You are doomed if you believe in destiny alone; and that you are its helpless pawn. The day you wake up with a larger bald spot and wrinkles - smile, there's nothing you can do but smile and move on.

Provenance

Provenance is the origin or source from which something comes. The term is often used in the sense of place and time of manufacture, production or discovery. Comparative techniques, expert opinion, written and verbal records and the results of tests are often used to help establish provenance.