Misery

Misery is bourne from an encounter between neurosis and revelation. If revelation does indeed peel away illusions, the neurotic individual, ill-equipped to deal with the "truth", comes to grief, submits to emotional extortion, and indulges in misery. Misery functions as an omnipresent and easily accessible excuse; an infinite postponement of the essential confrontation between man and his inadequecies. Therefore, a disjointed indulgence of misery rationalizes the rejection of human frailty and facilitates unrequited longing for the impossible dream of human perfection. Persistent lamentations about loss and failure distracts from the challenges and contingencies of life and, hence, sustain the image of the impossible - an image that comforts the weak irresolute conscience of the chronic procrastinator, who awaits for an absolute absolution of imperfect, ephemeral existence.

Buy now...

Buy now, you should know that cash talks and principle starves.

Buy now, you have learned that succulent lips planted on pasty white behinds is the formula to "success".

Buy now, you know that God is Dead, unless his zombie corpse can move units and spike profits, then...

Buy now, you know we can sell Him, barrel upon barrel, box after box, to willing dupes.

Buy now, pay later. Buy now, sell when you're high. Buy now, it's bargain you can't afford to miss.

Buy now, you should know that everything is not as it appears.

Buy now, it's a done-diddly-done-dang deal.

Buy now, buy more, it's your duty,
it's expected of you and of me and of everybody;
for we are nothing but investments to be sold
for the right price at the right time to dealers most dishonest.

What time is it?

What time is it?
-No one knows.

What time is it?
-No one cares.
-Perfect, perfect answer, so says the Enlightened One.

What time is it?
-We don't care.

What time is it?
-You don't want to know.

What time is it?
-Time to...get high and sober, get fucked and fuck, wait for tomorrow, burn yesterday, act like you matter, sit still like the good little boys, look for kicks, throw away shit, loot the machine, riot, burn, pillage, rest for a journey, climb the highest peak, freefall and visit dark depths, turn shit into gold and gold into shit, turn us on...time to finally live.

What time is it?
-Form space illustrated darkness illuminates reverie, come passionless ecstatic arousal...stilled, stilled, silent autumn fall(s) winter scene.

What time is it?
-Time to lose your watch. Time forgets, time passes by, it is, it fades; life in time holding off timeless death.

What time is it?
-It's time to say goodbye.

Meet my attorney, Allen Ginsberg

Meet my attorney, Allen Ginsberg,
his grocer, Mr. Whitman,
his gardener, Mr. Cassady,
his confessor, Father Ti-Jean,
and, last but not least, his beautiful mistress, Diotima.

Shudder

Death by pleasure,
death by stillness,
dead serenity;
my heart crapped out,
refusing to BEAT on.

Where's my head at?
UP some dark crevice,
or so I have been told.

A primal force drives beyond,
defected from an OTHER side,
to my doorstep.
I open the door to a spectacular sight.

Catastrophy, my BEAUTIFUL bride,
gloriously nude,
writhing and grinding in
the lap of my brother-twin, atrophy.

Finality is mere beginning, she moans.
The bed collapses,
the players vanish,
and a child appears, with a necklace that reads:
Behold! Her name is HOPE.

My Alba

Now that I've wasted
five years in Manhattan
life decaying
talent a blank

talking disconnected
patient and mental
silderule and number
machine on a desk

autographed triplicate
synopsis and taxes
obedient prompt
poorly paid

stayed on the market
youth of my twenties
fainted in offices
wept on typewriters

deceived multitudes
in vast conspiracies
deodorant battleships
serious business industry

every six weeks whoever
drank my blood bank
innocent evil now
part of my system

five years unhappy labor
22 to 27 working
not a dime in the bank
to show for it anyway

down breaks it's only the sun
the East smokes O my bedroom
I am damned to Hell what
alarmclock is ringing

- Allen Ginsberg
New York, 1953

Fragment

Flavour is bought, taste acquired;
moments unfold without register,
awaiting a judgment rendered,
manufactured for intended reactions.

Long dark locks flow from a petite statuette;
her vibrant smile absolves me of my failings,
as man and beast.

Her obsessively modest appearance,
hidden behind thunderous girlish giggles,
tempts the beast to capture, to devour,
and never release its enraptured hold.

Struggling...no voice...no strength...drained...
going through the motions...
passing time...passing presence...burning absence...
repetition...reiteration...ampersand....movement unsure...
passing....burning extinguished;
massive crush followed by a stupendous disappointment:
the rumour of love and longing linger on the lips of a jilted lover,
forever unrequited.

Dashed dreams are left in a wreckage heap some place behind appearance,
and beyond imagination -
inside and outside;
love unrequited is sustained by hopeful teary eyes turned to another day,
recollected forever.

They strive to merge the margin with the core,
to leave the periphery annihilated,
fused to the absolute.

The corpulent, unshaven fool scribbles away,
trying to exorcise ancient demons,
and conjure novel hauntings.

Beginnings grope into the dark for adversity;
for the chance to end, to halt, and start again.

Beginnings are most difficult for the old dog,
unable to learn and unwilling to the turn the new trick;
he sees the portent of something great,
yet it remains agonizingly beyond his grasp,
she slips from his embrace,
she pushes him away,
she chooses another,
and brings with her
Fortuna's cruel whim;
and he, he is left in solitude,
left alone with blackened lips
dripped with abysmal longing.

Ah, the transient poet sighs,
I'm outmoded,
I'm outdated,
I'm walking antiquity,
with eyes set upon a distant destiny,
doomed to repeat onto infinity.

The prophet-poet recovers
and reiterates lost wisdom,
pronouncing it to deaf ears,
and slips back into oblivion.

One night

My deep sleep fantasies are slayed by inhuman noise.
My eyes open to see my ersatz lover, wearing a cardboard grin;
one night went a morning too long.

A note about editing

Not every word inscribed or uttered shall be left in its place. No word, no sentence, no turn of phrase comes to being without retreating at the instance of its inception back into absence. What is most essential may be left unsaid, unexpressed, without a "creator", because attempts at expression often end up falling on deaf ears and crumpled by parochial minds, driving the creator to destroy with absolute impunity his tie to society, and, hence, facilitating a mutation of an essential solitude into an abysmal disengagement from the world of man.

Sweetheart

Flowering,
up in the morning,
my sweetheart's eyes open,
filled with wonder,
and poised on today.

Yesterday,
the wreckage of yesterday,
doesn't affect my baby now;
"What was was;
What is is,"she says,
as her stocking snakes up
her fine thigh;
she jumps into her skirt
with make up applied -
readied for another day.

She strolls down to the bus stop,
basking in anonymity,
making play with mascara'd eyes,
searching for another yesterday.

Preface to Perpetual Failings

The material housed in this notebook is largely rubbish. Alas, that is the condition of the mediocre mind - churning out scraps of stupidity interspersed with plagiarized bits of genius authored by far more brilliant artists. Seductive images dominate the trifling intellect. It cannot be disjoined or detached from the image, facile and transparent. So, it's full of rubbish, nothing but rubbish; at times, cutesy rubbish, but mostly jaded and bitter rubbish, frustrated with a world patronizing at every turn. These failing hands scribbles incoherence onto paper, resembling haphazardly smeared primate feces, and some poor deluded soul shall mistaken it for art. Even though nothing profound can be discovered in vain pathetic meanderings, someone somewhere shall misunderstand, misinterpret, and mistaken rubbish for lost treasure. Meander, meander, wander young one - you never will amount to much, but do continue to pursue the green cheese hovering overhead. A cardboard imagination creaks on, seeking the next dimension. A failed artist - a weak artist, master producer of kitsch - creates hideousness to affirm the spirit of art. The failed artist, demonstrative of the highest nobility of man - fully aware of his own weaknesses yet ignores them, and strives for greatness nonetheless - is an absurd hero. So, friends, raise a glass to this stagnant mind and these failing hands in tribute to all that you are and all that you could be.

Postponed fantasy

Postponed dreams, present in absence,
stalked by slithering necessity, lives simply
for a never to be timelessness.

With stubborn insolence and forgetful impatience,
the destitute wanderer stumbles into a tavern,
looking for a drink,
looking for a hit,
looking for a brawl,
looking to be numbed,
so unconscious imagining can begin.

Passing the day, writing away,
fabricating truth to conceal a natural lie;
moan, groan, complain;
dead ears of the divine will hear none of it,
moan, groan, complain;
Daddy doesn't give a shit,
moan, groan, complain;
justice is blind, beauty plastic.

Production levels, consumption spikes;
supply and demand, the Word of God,
foundational truth for the falsified believer,
fed illusion until satisfied,
shuffling off the mortal coil,
to await heights unknown to man.

Corpses grounded into dust;
dispensed with by the sweet kiss
of the summer wind,
transporting powdery misery,
from west to east, north to south;
good people suffer from
precarious truths
and sustainable deceptions.

Emotional, devestated, weak,
and miserable,
you tuck your tail and run;
awaiting their measured response,
their calculated action;
my goodness we're rational,
at least you're trying,
as I tail off...

...a voice echoes, heard by no one....

...heard by nothing.

Nothing is heard. Nothing is said.

God is dead, long live the king,
the king is dead, long live the Word,
the Word is dead, long live the spectre,
the spectre lives...greetings my Lord.

With blatant cruelty,
death declares sovereignty over
the bubbly illusions of plastic existence;
the pronouncement is denied
by the shape-shifting chameleon,
modern champion, most limited of specialists,
who manipulates light and shade,
to project an image of God,
against a cave wall.

Light, let there be light...
rant on deluded meanderer,
for the knave can stumble upon courage,
provided the right strings are pulled.

Rant on!
Rant on about highest things!
Rant on about sacred things!
Rant on about vain and stupid things!
Rant on until a loud night descends;
listen, listen, for a gentle thud,
a silent demise;
the shadows disappear,
and you are sheparded into darkness.

Merely insignificant,
wiped away without consequence,
merely part of frescos of blood,
bone and sinew,
held together by a common suffering:

"Life is but a series of errors,
repeated again and again,
frustrating desires
for paradise most pure."

Darkness gives way to darkness,
obscuring a bestilled, quiet, inexpressible,
heart filled with anguish,
turned away from an extinguished light;
an infinite postponement ceases,
a fantasy cancelled.

The Story of Cephalus

He left the others to their endless questions,
and retreated home.

He wrote incomprehenisbly,
scroll upon scroll,
positing interminably obsolete answers to
inexistent queries.

He then set them ablaze,
he set himself on fire,
he offered sacrifice most insignificant
to hollow gods of vanity.

Tomato

Tomato

A tomato slice lying on a dirty floor,
reminds me of my beloved;

the buzz of a timed microwave,
harkens back to an orgastic moment,
stretched across infinities;

the slurpee machine stirs,
over and over,
the gentle, harmonic, melodic
rhythm of my heart,
beating to an image,
elegantly elusive.

Dwelling

He remained, unwaveringly indolent,
fixed in familiarity.

Along the bannister crawled his arachnid friend;
he called him Peter.

Peter emerged every day, every night,
reliable like a rock.

One afternoon, betrayal tore into his skin,
and released its venom;
he collapsed, asking Peter why.

"It's my nature; its our fate," Peter replied.
"Betrayal completes loyalty, my friend."

He smiled at the stained ceiling,
awaited eternity,
delayed indefinitely.

Depression in Negatory Story

On most mornings, the day begins with the image of my own death. Its an image that is far too serene, far too bloodless, and agonizingly colourless. I imagine that I don't really wake up - only an image of waking up - when I'm really still laying there concocting the rest of it in my wretched skull; constantly bored by the stillness of eternal slumber. That's how my day begins. It begins without oddness, without variance, without significance - just like how it ends.

This morning I woke up, hoping that I wouldn't. But I was still there, the same living breathing abomination that I've always been. I put something stench-free and went out for another day of not working to pass another day.

I sat behind the counter of the restaurant, awaiting the first soul brave enough to take on my saliva-pube burger. She walked in. She asked for it and I complied. I paid close attention to her gluttony. Her tits heaved with every chomp and never did a burger meeting its demise turn me on as much. Her left breast popped out to greet the virgin world and my yellowed lecherous gaze. She reset her breast and caught my voyeur eye. She flashed a glowing grin and egged me on. I said fuck it, meet me out back. She blew me beside the dumpster, happy ending, and back to monotony I went.

I sat behind the counter and saw him saunter in with an unconcealed sawed off. Robbing a fifth-rate fast food joint? Dude didn't think that through. Gimme all your cash, he said. I handed him 5 bucks. He said he wasn't fucking around. I tried to stiffle my laughter, but failed miserably. A purposeless rage burned in his eyes as he pulled the trigger - it backfired and blew a hole the size of a silicone Double-D through his head. Darwin would've been proud.

After the cops and company finished scouring the scene, I mopped up the miscellany the authorities didn't bother with. The chick with the titties walked back in. She told me she was in love with me. She wanted to have my babies and eternity and all that shit. I half-assed the mopjob and plowed her on the floor. She got up, brushed a piece of bloody grey matter from her skirt, and walked out. I went back to the mop.

I sat behind the counter and saw him walk in with a bat. He told me to stay away from his daughter. I shrugged. Sure, whatever you say, man. How about a burger? I offered it as a goodwill gesture. He smiled. Sure, he replied. I gave him the burger. He munched away, although it was no where near as pleasing of a sight as his daughter. After a final bite, he grabbed his chest and keeled over. I went back for the mop - the cops would be back again and they don't wipe their shoes.

More questions from 5-0, the ambulance swung by for another cadaver, and they left me to an empty store. She walked in again, giggling uncontrollably. Ding dong the dick is dead, she screeched. I looked down at my ragging hard on, shook my head, and replied in the negative. This time she was sprawled on the counter top as I plunged in. She clung on. She hung on, clinging to my apron as I tore into her. Don't leave me, she said. I silently went back to the mop and she left.

I sat behind the counter awaiting an order that wouldn't come and a car plowed into the store and wiped out the dining room. A bloodied motionless figure, unencumbered by seatbelt or rational faculties, was projected through the windshield onto the countertop. She came back. The clock read 9, my shift was over, and I headed to the bus stop.

I sat in bed, reading Rilke, when it struck me: I forgot to put the mop back. That always annoys my boss. I fell asleep to the stir of sweet sugarplum death fantasies spinning around in my head.

I wake up lonely

I wake up lonely. I wake up cold, wondering about life.

In dreams, I fly. In dreams, I walk. Awake, I merely talk. I yammer, I stammer, I nod, I agree, I blab, I blah blah. In dreams, I speak words that can't be spoken, understand everything imperfectibly. Awake, I know everything without understanding. With every falsified passing thrill, I am no longer sacred; just an unwitting fool.

The educated fool spins poetic; his noise thuds against cool satisfied skulls. Deaf ears plugged into the wires hear what they please - my playlist, my identity, my world. Private adolescence dancing in beautiful couplet with public obedience. Nod, concede, this is reality baby, snouts buried in a weathered golden troft, as gold lead paint drips off to the beat of raindrops. Don't worry, he's assured, salvation is freedom; and the golden gruel releases its poison.

From every hell arises the promise of greater heights. Another level down, another level down, endless spiral of rings, it's only a dream. Its only a dream. Another level up, another level up, endless spiral of rings stretching to infinity, it's only a nightmare. Its only a nightmare.

Something has gotta be there, they promised. Nothing. Nothing and more nothing. Silence and more silence. Ham and more ham. Swine all the way down, swine all the way up. Beat your skull with hollow promises, there's nothing more to it; keep pounding away until you're pushing up daisies.

Speak softly, speak low, speak when you're spoken to, they warn. My piercing scream seperates body from soul, scattering their fragments throughout the cosmos; exiling the Old Man from eternity; blurring slumber into awakening.

Awakening to nothing, dreaming about everything, no intersection can be grapsed.

From every hell arises the heathen who grants the believer plastic salvation; from every paradise descends the dishonest believer bored with banality, banished for raising a voice. Everything interesting lies between.

I wake up lonely. I wake up cold, wondering about life.

Adam Smith on Natural Justice

"All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be expose to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and of directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society."

-Adam Smith

(The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter IX, p. 620)

On the Road

"In 1942 I was the star in one of the filthiest dramas of all time. I was a seaman, and went to the Imperial Cafe on Scollay Square in Boston to drink; I drank sixty glasses of beer and retired to the toilet bowl and went to sleep. During the night at least a hundred seamen and assorted civilians came in and cast their sentinent debouchments on me till I was unrecognizably caked. What difference does it make after all? - anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind." (223, On the Road)

"Dean took out other pictures. I realized that these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road. All of it inside endless and beginningless emptiness. Pitiful forms of ignorance." (231, On the Road)

"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all the road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening that must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and fold the final shore in, and nobody, nobody know what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty." (281, On the Road)

It doesn't matter how the damn thing begins, or the failings you suffer in between; you better know how to end it off. This is the advice Kerouac imparts to me. On the Road took me to a place now lost, possibly for all time. It is a land unchained; fresh, raw, and still unsure of its own capacities. It was the land of possibility, the land of opportunity, the land where life resided, wild and uncouth, laying barechested on the steel top of a 1937 Ford, the land of eternal youth, if only eternal for a moment. Now, as I approach my twenty-fifth year, I am burdened with lamentations about lost opportunities and squandered youth. I stare despondently at the distance to come, well aware that every day may be as colourless as the last. But I can go on, as long as the possibility of life still exists. With possibilities somewhere out there for me to woo, I must go on.

Maurice Blanchot - The Instant of My Death

Maurice Blanchot - The Instant of My Death

I remember a young man - a man still young - prevented from dying by death itself - and perhaps the error of injustice.

The Allies had succeeded in getting a foothold on French soil. The Germans, already vanquished, were struggling in vain with useless ferocity.

In a large house (the Chateau, it was called), someone knocked at the door rather timidly. I know that the young man came to open the door to guests who were presumably asking for help.

This time, a howl: "Everyone outside."

A Nazi lieutenant, in shamefully normal French, made the oldest people exit first, and then two young women.

"Outside, outside." This time, he was howling. The young man, however, did not try to flee but advanced slowly, in an almost priestly manner. The lieutenant shook him, showed him the casings, bullets; there had obviously been fighting; the soil was a war soil.

The lieutenant choked in a bizzare language. And putting the casings, the bullets, a grenade under the nose of the man already less young (one ages quickly), he distinctly shouted: "This is what you have come to."

`The Nazi placed his men in a row in order to hit, according to the rules, the human target. The young man said, "At least have my family go inside." So it was: the aunt (ninety-four years old); his mother, younger; his sister and his sister-in-law; a long, slow procession, silent, as if everything had already been done.

I know - do I know it - that the one at whom the Germans were already aiming, awaiting but the final order, experienced then a feeling of extraordinary lightness, a sort of beatitude (nothing happy, however) - sovereign elation? The encounter of death with death?

In his place, I will not try to analyze. He was perhaps suddenly invincible. Dead -- immortal. Perhaps ecstacy. Rather the feeling of compassion for suffering humanity, the happiness of not being immortal or eternal. Henceforth, he was bound to death by a surreptitious friendship.
At that instant, an abrupt return to the world, the considerable noise of a nearby battle exploded. Comrades from the maquis wanted to bring help to one they knew to be in danger. The lieutenant moved away to assess the situation. The Germans stayed in order, prepared to reamin thus in an immobility that arrested time.

Then one of them approached and said in a firm voice, "We're not Germans, Russians," and, with a sort of laugh, "Vlassov army," and made a sign for him to disappear.

I think he moved away, still with the feeling of lightness, until he found himself in a distant forest, named the "Bois des bruyeres," where he remained sheltered by trees he knew well. In the dense forest suddenly, after how much time, he discovered a sense of the real. Everywhere fires, a continuous succession of fires; all the farms were burning. A little later, he learned that three young men, sons of farmers - truly strangers to all combat, whose only fault was their youth - had been slaughtered.

Even the bloated horses, on the road, in the fields, attested to a war that had gone on. In reality, how much time had elapsed? When the lieutenant returned and became aware the young chatelaine had disappeared, why did anger, rage, not prompt him to burn down the Chateau (immobile and majestic)? Because it was the Chateau. On the facade was inscribed, like an indestructible reminder, the date 1807. Was he cultivated enough to know this was the famous year of Jena, when Napoleon, on his small gray horse, passed under the windows of Hegel, who recognized in him the "spirit of the world," as he wrote to a friend? Lie and truth: for as Hegel wrote to another friend, the French pillaged and ransacked his home. But Hegel knew how to distinguish the empirical and the essential. Everything was searched, however. Some money was taken; in a separate room, "the high chamber," the lieutenant found papers and a sort of thick manuscript - which perhaps contained war plans. Finally he left. Everything was burning, except the Chateau. The Seigneurs had been spared.

No doubt what then began for the young man was the torment of injustice. No more ecstacy; the feeling that he was only living because, even in the eyes of the Russians, he belonged to a noble class.

This was war: life for some, for others, the cruelty of assassination.

There remained, however, at the moment when the shooting was no longer but to come, the feeling of lightness that I would not know how to translate: freed from life? the infinite opening up? Neither happiness, nor unhappiness. Nor the absence of fear and perhaps already the step beyond. I know, I imagine that this unanalyzable feeling changed what there remained for him of existence. As if death outside of him could only henceforth collide with death in him. "I am alive. No, you are dead."

---------------

Later, having returned to Paris, he met Malraux, who said that he had been taken prisoner (without being recognized) and that he had succeeded in escaping, losing a manuscript in the process. "It was only reflections on art, easy to reconstitute, whereas a manuscript would not be." With Paulhan, he made inquiries which could only remain in vain.

What does it matter. All that remains is the feeling of lightness that is death itself or, to put it more precisely, the instant of my death henceforth always in abeyance.

From:

Blanchot, Maurice. Instant of My Death/Demeure: Fiction and Testimony. (Palo Alto, CA, USA: Stanford University Press, 2000) pp. 2-11

The voice of authority

"If you want me to talk to you, please be quiet."

The voice of authority demands quiet and passive adherence. It wants to talk to you; it has no interest in listening to what you have to say.

"Listen and listen well, this is the way its gonna be...
Be quiet, be still, don't step out of line; we know what's good for you..."

Critical thought, it is assumed, subverts order, leading invariably to anarchy. The voice demands quiet passivity. The voice sermonizes, for what emanates from its lips is assumed to be true. Why resist what is true? O, great Rationality rears its head.

To challenge the voice of authority does not, as it likes to believe, spawn anarchy. The challenge requires a quality other than silent adherence or tacit consent. It involves someone standing before fellow citizens and courageously speaking out against injustice and inequity, arrogance and vanity, and against ignorance in general. "I rebel, therefore we exist."

What's it to me?

I'm still here. I'm as shocked as you. I thought I would be dead now. The scars were there as it had been for as long as I remembered. The coughing became more severe. My eyes yellowed day after day. No use to struggle now, I thought, it was only a matter of waiting. But I'm still here. And I'm not sure why.

One early morning, after a night of binge drinking, I passed out and woke up in an open grave smelling like death. The scent of embalming fluid would follow me for several days. I couldn't reconstruct memories that had passed into oblivion. So I left it alone. And there it stood - a ragged nihilist waking up in an open grave. Like I said, I'm still here somehow without reason or purpose. For me, life is a cruel joke taken too far.

When I venture downtown, the locals are, without fail, absolutely appalled by my appearance. How can this be? they must ask. How can such a promising young man descend into utter squalor? The answer is rather simple: I chose it. I'm a nihilist and, as I often inform would-be employers, I believe in nothing. They rarely take well to my revelatory statement - with at least one notable exception. It was during an interview for a political job, a position with the local conservative party. Nothing, the politician noted with great interest. I was hired on the spot to work on the campaign. The job wasn't too unagreeable. I was quite content going door to door preaching the virtues of crime control, homeland security, and denouncing the evils of abortion, gays, and such. As a nihilist, what's it to me? All was well until I walked into the Congressman's office to find him shagging his pet poodle. I had no objections to his behaviour, being a nihilist and all, and shut the door to continue with whatever task. The Congressman, though, had his concerns. He and his campaign manager invited me for drinks, two nights after the supposed incident. They told me I had a future in the party. They cited my dedication and passion for the cause had separated me from the others. And so on and so forth. Their deluge of ingratiations stopped short of complimenting the size of my male anatomy. I was kind of disappointed. Its always nice to have someone compliment my cock. On a related note, neither of them offered me fellatio, which would have been far less transparent than what they did offer. They promised me a consulting position in exchange for my signature on a piece of paper. The note, in spite of its technical language, could not have been any vaguer.

I, the nihilist, hereby promise never to disclose details regarding the events occurring between 2:30pm - 2:45pm on September 27 19-- that took place at 2345 Parker Blvd, Room 12.

I signed it. What's it to me? I was fired the next day. So much for keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. I never disclosed the details of that specific event in September. Never. I may be nihilist. I'm not a narc. But, these things tend to end badly, loose lips or not. The studious go-getters who flittered around the office found out that the Congressman favored those who offered to take Fluffy on her afternoon walk. They all came out of the woodwork at 2:30pm to bang down his door only to find the Congressman plowing poor Fluffy on his desk. Alas, most go-getters aren't nihilists, at least they don't readily admit to it; but they're narcs-in-waiting and word got out. The Congressman, seeking his tenth consecutive stint in Washington, had to step aside and rode Fluffy off into the sunset.

As I crawl towards the reaper's hand, I look back fondly at that image of the Congressman and Fluffy. It explains a lot. To try to explain it here would only diminish the significance it has for me. Let's leave it at that. That was the first of a long string of failed careers, each less interesting than the last. But failure in general isn't all that intriguing. Neither is death.

I saw a ghost the other day. Not a poltergeist or one of the walking undead. The ghost, in this case, was my walking, living, breathing, fleshy past. She had a kid in a stroller, another dangling from her body, and - from the looks of things - another on the way. Her youthful innocence and beauty had been snuffed out by spermatozoa and zygotes and all the stress that follows. Staring at her faded haggard features and worn down body from across the street, I felt nothing. Not an inkling of sadness or pity or yearning. I stared blankly, occupied with the absent years that laid between us. She eventually noticed me and reciprocated with an equally vacant glare. I knew she didn't recognize me. She didn't want to recognize me. She didn't want to remember what once was. It was merely an absent gaze shared by estranged lovers, no words, no gestures, and no use for recollection. The little ones stirred and she broke away. I continued with my day, per usual, without another thought of her. Its funny that one does not recognize that alienation is the natural state of man until one is struck by a vacant glare authored by moribund eyes. It was only a few days later, reading her obituary in the paper, did I reflect on the encounter. If you want, I can tell you I mourned her violent passing - struck down by a drunk driver - remembered our past fondly and felt compassion for her children. But if you want an honest answer, I was satisfied with the fate the cosmos had rendered. It was just to extinguish a body absent of its soul. It was a ghost I saw that day. It wasn't confirmed until I read her name in the paper.

I jotted down the appropriate details - ceremony open to the public, St. Mark's Church, 3:00pm, October 28, 20--, and prepared for the service. I didn't know why I went. Well, I actually I do. The freshly minted widower was instinctively a subject of interest. I never met the man who ripped her from my insecure and petty grip. He was a mystery to me, that is until I saw him: tall, lanky, non-descript Caucasian male in his mid-thirties, whose once boyish features had been dulled by the drudgery of work and the ephemeral joys of alcohol, tobacco, and whatever else. I looked vacantly at the guy, unable to choose an emotion to feign. He appeared to have recognized me. He thought I was her cousin George and extended his hand. I let him believe he was right and shook his waiting hand. What's it to me? Being a nihilist and all, I humored him. I gave him my formal condolences as her "cousin", extended the ubiquitous "if you need anything..." spiel, and even hugged him. He was genuinely touched by my charade and began to open up. He confessed that although things never unfolded as they had planned - financially or romantically - he loved her deeply. He was genuine, tears welled up with every passing word. I felt nothing and tried my best to feign empathy. I sensed he began to feel a real bond with this supposed cousin-in-law - who in reality couldn't be troubled to attend his cousin's funeral - and I saw the dupe standing before me.

I raised the stakes and began regaling him with childhood stories about times "George" shared with his dear departed cousin - like the time she saw a fairy fly around the ravine near her parent's home and we spent a day with butterfly nets in pursuit. Oh how he laughed and laughed! And then he cried. I felt nothing and continued with my stories - careful to conceal the time I played doctor with his deceased wife. Then, he made a crucial mistake. He was seduced and asked if I would say a few words during the ceremony. He was asking for it really. When the fool asks to be embarassed, the asshole is obliged to deliver in spades.

"She was mine before she was yours!" That was how I concluded my address. He thought about it for a second; it takes the fool a little while to process the obvious. His face contorted like a Picasso at the thought of his wife enjoying some cousin lovin' with the louse standing at the podium and charged the stage, with bullheaded aggressions, to accost me. I intuitively tried to extricate myself from the proceedings and his chase quickly short-circuited, as he tumbled over the casket in a mad dash after "George". At a safe distance and peering from behind a curtain, I saw a pathetic sight. He cried and cried over the meticulously made up cadaver and pulled out a mickey of Jim Beam to drown his sorrows. You don't really understand that love is illusion until it all falls apart and leaves even the most contented simpleton a blubbering mass of confusion.

I was about to walk out of St. Mark's until her sister intercepted me. She blocked the exit with her mischievous grin. She remembered me. She remembered my lecherous gaze and my repressed desire for her nubile body. At an intimate distance, I looked into her eyes and knew what she wanted. I wrapped my arms around her waist, swung open the door to the confessional, and we tore savagely into each other. Her voracious appetite was unlike her sister's submissiveness. She was in full control and I was a mere passenger. What's it to me? I let her handle me like a toy. I rather enjoy being a toy sometimes.

Anyways, the imminent possibility that the widower would ingest enough Jim Beam to continue his hunt drove us deeper into the throes of ecstasy. "He would surely cut your dick off", she whispered and knelt down, "and what a shame that would be." She slurped lustily away at her toy, as I felt nothing as the mechanisms churned. After the t's were crossed and i's were dotted, we left the confessional. She walked back into the service and I walked out of the church. I never saw her again. Once was more than enough.

Between lust and love, lust has reality and substance, while love is fluff. It is reserved for those who are both perpetually vain and eternally bored. I love you. I luv you. I wuv you. I muv you. Love is an escape from boredom through self-deception. Love merely justifies one's shallow narcissistic vanities. "I love him for who he is," she says. When in reality, she means she loves him because he's a tall, well-hung, rich white guy like any other guy her girlfriends goes with. She feels included and satisfied with her apparent normalcy. Love is a smoke screen justifying masturbatory desires. Lust is honest. Lust is direct. Lust is instinct acting out fantasies repressed by rational morality or moral rationality. Lust is all we need. Rather than wasting away longing for impossibilities and concocting soap operas to pass the time...he loves me, he loves me not, lust launches one into a moment and passes through it without regret. One does not dwell on the moment; it merely passes. I prefer lust over love and there's no sense to belie that point.

I once had a friend who was consumed by unrequited love and set himself on fire. He was, by most accounts, a brilliant and studious student, in addition to being a very outgoing and engaged person - very social with both boys and girls, but strictly on a platonic level for the first sixteen years of his life. That was until he met her. She was a beautiful petite blonde with a set of beautiful ample breasts yearning to bust out of her dress at any instant, and blue eyes that turned even the most hardened delinquent into passive obedient mush. She was our Food Studies teacher, Ms. Morrison. Of course, all of the boys were smitten with her and wanted to do all sorts of unholy things to her, but most could only muster enough courage to jerk off to her in the comfort of their bedroom, flanked by their trusty tissue box and lotion bottle. My friend, however, was, what should I say, very gung-ho about everything; he was never half-ass; there was always an utmost seriousness to his actions. His tragic end remains an eternal source of inspiration for my nihilism.

The details remain murky, but I think he did have a tryst with Ms. Morrison. It was after one parent-teacher night. He stayed behind to help clean up. As the story went, she was unusually despondent throughout the night - lacking her requisite zeal, apparently because she found out her boyfriend was cheating on her with an older woman - which, depending on the account, was with a slightly older or a much older woman. My friend was much too perceptive to allow a golden opportunity to go unnoticed or fulfilled.

The encounter itself is, to this day, the stuff of mythic folklore, recounted even twenty years later by bathroom graffiti. An anthropological analysis of adolescent cave-scribblings would lead one to think that the bathroom stall where fifteen year old freshmen came to jack off to Brad Pitt photos was the site of the encounter. Catatonic. He was catatonic for the longest time after his unfortunate encounter. He dropped out of school, wandered for a decade, and stabbed a hooker four thousand three hundred and twenty-three times. Love destroys even the most gifted. Four thousand three hundred and twenty-three times, he told me over the prison phone, was the number of times he thrusted inside of Ms. Morrison that night. Sufficiently impressive, I told him.

Kitsch

"Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion."

We will all be turned into kitsch, shit turned into gold. We accumulate. We consume. We discard. We do these things habitually; life means churning out a lot of shit. Productivity is correlated to consumption, supply and demand, the good capitalist preaches. And then a time comes when our capacity for accumulation is exhausted, we are discarded, leaving a malleable object: an archetype, a stereotype, an idyllic remembrance. The desperate need for the fallen soldier is kitsch; the memorial immortalizes resentment, entrenches the impossible dreams of purity and perpetual peace - rows and rows of headstones stretching to as far as the eye can see - and alchemizes revanche with the spirit of a people, "lest we forget...let us kill in their honor and join their blessed ranks." Headstones - rows and rows of kitsch, sweet images of immortality for those who have passed into the void.

But don't get me wrong, kitsch is not absolutely malformed or "evil" nor should it be demonized. It is how it is employed, manipulating the most abysmal human emotions - blind faith in hope - for power ambition, that makes it the enemy of life. Kitsch often is an imperfect expression of an inarticulate human voice reaching out for affirmation. But the one enamoured with kitsch does not wait for response from life or from above, he seeks to construct meaning through saccharine remembrance. Recollection searches a shrapnel-filled, fragmented, and fractured world for objects of kitsch: the possibly tragic, yet invariably sweet, face of an orphaned child mourning his father's death; the son shall carry on the work of the father. Humanity longs for inspiration, for hope, however detached from reality. Without the possibility of kitsch, man would only see the blood and gore, fragments and fissures, and stare aimlessly at the dark expanse. The possibility of kitsch keeps him from offing himself and ending the meaningless suffering. But it isn't kitsch that keeps humanity from plunging off the ledge into an abyss. We are therefore we live. I rebel therefore we are, Camus once wrote. Kitsch is the ass-god providing fleeting comfort; resentment invariably returns to animate revanche.

Taut, proud, and erect, the proud solider stand frozen for all time. He is peddled to believers by dishonest brokers of power. Freedom is irrelevant for he who worships illusion.

Grey matter, white matter

Grey matter and white matter fading into an infinite expanse. Tell me the truth that conceals the lie. Remember me, my friend...no forget it. With perfection beyond me and failure ever imminent, I concede and walk voluntarily to the gallows, and the floor goes out from under me. Languorous death comforts through idle meditation. What has been done? What was to be done? Should've...could've...would've...as around and around I go, dangling from the ephemeral worth of regret.

Thunderous roars from the peanut gallery cheer me on. "Loser!" Indifferent reality ripped from the insecure arms of sanity - one last breath, one more tear left to be shed. My friend, forget me, and remember who I would've been. Here's the addendum: burn the recollection once you construct it. Save nothing, let it all slip away. Grey matter and white matter embraces sweet oblivion; here I go, go, go...to paradise I go.

Artificial paradise erodes, unable to withstand a vociferous knock on its fluffy door, and implodes. Spiraling all the way down to reunite with my brother-twin; Hades, you old dog, how do you do? Where's the booze at?

Democracy...

Democracy... as a word; empty and hallow, lip-service paid...
Democracy... as ideal; groundless, dangerous tool employed by ambition...
Democracy... as practice; freedoms given, not practiced...
Democracy... as rule; the rule of the people over the people?
Democracy... as beginnings; origin of solidarity, of communcal bonds, of failure, of hope, of war, of peace and of the end?
Democracy... as ethos; the trap of moralism?
Democracy... as challenge; contend and subordinate...hierarchy? structure? metaphysics? vanity?
Democracy... as networks of recalcitrance; stagnant order crushes freedom - unfettered freedom is vanity all the way down?

"Humanity Tied..."

L’Humanité chaussit le vaste enfant Progrès.

Humanity tied the shoes of Progress, that enormous child.

-Louis-Xavier de Ricard
A. Rimbaud
from the Album Zutique 1871-1872

The Asshole Agon

He stood there naked as the day the midwife torn him, kicking and screaming, from his mother's womb. The unexceptional man made a vow to never, never again be subjected to condescension. "Here I stand..." he cut off the remark, disgusted on how the thought would inevitably conclude. "Here I stand." His edit made the remark definitive and consequently more ambiguous. A lecture filled with his peers, set abuzz, gaped incomprehensibly at the spectacle. There stood the aspiring agon, having already exhausted all possible veneers, no longer able to conceal anything. "Here I stand."

The voice of authority, the one who held his academic future in her hands, pointed out the obvious contradiction.

"If you let it all hang out, does that not destroy the realm of the public? Does that not destroy the veil of mystery necessary for the function of play in civilization? Does this not lead to disenchantment?"

"Was Eden disenchanted?" he rebuted.

"They ate the apple to escape boredom," a female student blurted out. "That was beyond disenchantment."

"The temptation was never external. It gave completion to free will. Yes, Eden was disenchanted, lame, and boring," another shouted.

He looked down at his member dangling passionlessly, as if the object of clinical observation. He scanned the room to check out their eyes. He saw insecurity; some were secretly measuring and comparing. He saw curiousity and repressed lust; there was intrigue. He saw revulsion; the uninitiated suffering an insoluble clash between impulse and proper morality. He saw his professor's eyes; they were bored.

The spectacle did not impress nor shock her. She had seen it countless times before in a bedroom or a restroom or an elevator or in a kitchen. She had seen more impressive displays, as well as inferior ones. She knew who his intended audience was, as well as his readily transparent motive. She wasn't buying it.

"Put your clothes, Mr. Stevens, unless you can provide a compelling reason why you should not."

"In the agora..." he stared dispassionately into her eyes as his right hand readied itself to demonstrate his point. He performed the task, as he done countless times in private, in the public realm, in his own agora.

Some cheered. Most were aghast. A few were outraged. A couple walked out. But she sat there unfazed, unchanged, and unimpressed, as he neared climax. She stood up, calm and collected as ever before, to provide her critique.

"The true agon does not bring attention to himself. The agonistic act is done through both act and deed, prefigured by thought. Pull your pants back on and clean up after your mess."

The unexceptional man stood there and broke into tears.

Blanchot on Writing

"To write is to enter into the affirmation of the solitude in which fascination threatens. It is to surrender to the risk of time's absence, where eternal starting over reigns. It is to pass from the first to the third person, so that what happens to me happens to no one, is anynonymous insofar as it concerns me, repeats itself in an infinite dispersal. To write is to let fascination rule language. It is to stay in touch, through language, in language, with the absolute milieu where the thing becomes image again, where the image, instead of alluding to some particular feature, becomes an allusion to the featureless, and instead of a form drawn upon absence, becomes the formless presence of this absence, the opaque, empty opening onto that which is when there is no more world, when there is no world yet." (32, The Space of Literature)

"When will I be blown up?"

"There are no problems of the spirit. There is only the question: when will I be blown up?"

- William Faulkner, 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech

I'll save you the rehashed image of mushroom clouds lingering over Nagasaki and Hiroshima and direct your attention to an everyday, albeit less iconic, image: the plastic watering can. I know, I know, I'm ripping off a Radiohead track, but stay with me. The plastic watering can may represent the repressed anxiety and apparent peace of suburban life, i.e., a retiree watering the flower bed. As the retiree waters his or her flower bed, thoughts are not about atomic war or the state of the world in general; the garden alone is worthy of attention. The garden is something to tend to, to pass the time, until death visits silently on a fated day or night. The plastic watering can, tranquil in its place, would find Faulkner's quote quite foreign to its own nature. The plastic watering can is that vaunted escape from violent death, trading a bayonet blade to the heart for blissful atrophy. "When will I be blown up?" The fear of violent death stays with us, even in the iron bosom of the state.

What Hobbes promised his readers was a diminishment, not an abolition, of the possibility of violent death. We should recall that Hobbes' Leviathan resembles a liberal state; charges of totalitarianism lobbed at Hobbes do not hold water. Any regime that strives for the absolute abolition of the possibility of violent death is by definition totalitarian. It must simulate the omnipotence previously presumed to lie in the hands of God to re-create the world more perfectly than He could ever have. The fatal flaw of creation, naturally, is free will; the possibility of evil. It is free will that leads the world astray from divine form and it is freedom that must be curbed, controlled, or ultimately annihiliated for the sake of an evermore perfect world. Hobbes believes the Leviathan to be a construct enabling individuals to exercise freedom. Hence, he values freedom as much as he does order. But, let us not make an amateurish error and contend that Hobbes believes freedom can exist without order. It is his nominalism, oddly enough, that absolves him from charges of totalitarianism. To put it simply, he in some ways shares Pope's contention that "whatever is, is right". The state, imperfect as it is, constructed through a sort of social agreement is right at least for the time being. The form of the state, i.e. the consolidation of both malevolent and benevolent power (where there is no difference between the two), is not the aim of Hobbes' project; curiously enough, it is human freedom. The general form of the state, as well as its accompanying narrative about the state of nature to civilization, are merely instruments in service of human liberty. Hobbes, far from advocating totalitarianism, would most likely ridicule it for its lack of scientific rigour and naturalism - mechanisms, we must remember, function causally, without the intervention of Providence or such, even though it may be modeled after divine forms.

The totalitarian approach effaces freedom at every turn in order to pursue a 'grand scheme'. This was true of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the United States, specifically but not exclusively during the era of McCarthyism. Some choose to throw this accusation at the current situation in the United States, but let us refrain from subscribing to that view, lest it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The atomic bomb may have "punctuated" a struggle against fascism and totalitarianism, but it opened up, for a lack of a better term, a pandora's box. Faulkner's quote bares the wound that the six decades following his address has tried to conceal, bandage, and eventually forget. The possibility of violent death is not only isolated to myself, my family, my clan, or even my country. It has extended to include the extermination of the entire species; the radical cessation of life, human or otherwise. The atomic bomb humbles us. But the stakes it presents are far too large to be adequately confronted. Alienated, afraid, and alone, people often seek salvation in the plastic watering can or the television (tuned neatly away from the news) or whatever else that leads to death by boredom and atrophy rather than death from above or below. I am not here to judge or prescribe. The prescription, as we can learn from Marx, is not as interesting or useful as the diagnosis. An age of fear is certainly one where threats are amongst us, invisible and clandestine, and 'beyond us', where one wrong move dooms the entirety of mankind. It is mindboggling for politicians, philosophers, journalists, scholars, and the rest to ponder, much less the common man. "When will I be blown up?" may be the question asked by modern man who has reached the limits of existence, who peers over the ridge and sees nothing but an abyss. Can he turn back, as Rousseau likes to think? Or will he plunge into the great primordial unity and fulfil Hegel's prophecy? Or maybe he will sit there looking at the abyss waiting for the photo slide to change? He waits in vain; Providence does not exist. He stares at nothing for eternity, until the very act of spectating melds him with the object of his observation. Modern man thinks of himself as collateral damage of an epic game of chicken between good and evil; when it is his actions that creates and proliferates both throughout the world, with no clear distinction where one starts and the other ends.

THE

The. The Bible. The Rock. The Game. The Sky. The Earth. The connotes universalism; The Law, for example. The Castle. The Lord. The Abyss. So is The effectively an expression of form, immutable and unquestioned? Maybe. The, however, may express an odd uniqueness. The One is a popular example of this. The One, as a vaunted romantic other, entails a completion of a predestined primordial unity, through finding the One. The One, as idol, exemplar, and hero, represents something else. I don't quite know what it is. The One is an imperfect vessel that provides a glimpse into divine form. By implying that God himself was beholden to divine forms - that the form is the house of all divine Power, Bayle prefigures the death of a god, who is left merely an administrative agent of higher forms. So what is The? Is it a Platonic aspiration for definitive forms. So wait, is Hobbes doing this, while understanding the irony inherent in the terms "The State" or "The Leviathan" or "The Sovereign"? These terms are true by definition, derived from geometical forms. What is then the epistemological relation between name and form?

Head Trauma

1

Where is my mind? Where is your mind? Echoes ring. Ping, ping, ping, nothing. Drip, drip, drip, away. Dipstick love for fantasy fuel. Ding, ding, ding, let us begin.

There is something common to us all: head trauma. A baby dropped headfirst; a cyclist crashes without helmet; a boxer answers the bell for one too many rounds; a child is smacked with a chair; drugs frying eggs, deep-fried brains; and some merely breathe, exhale, and wither obliviously away.

Now, where should I start? My recollections are rather unreliable, what with the head trauma and all. I remembered being born to a crash and boom. I think it was a car crash or bus crash. No, no, it was a bus crashing into a car; so I guess it was both. Ma was riding the bus. The boom and crash induced labour. The bus driver delivered me, slapped me on the butt, and told Ma not to let her boy to grow up to be a bus driver. Days later, Ma saw the bus driver in the paper accompanied with the caption, "Bus Driver, 49, dies; brain damaged." Ma would never permit me to ride the bus again. I often suspected that I was also conceived on a bus. But that is neither here nor there. I rode my bike 10 miles every morning to school. That took a while. Rushing to arrive at school at a reasonably tardy hour, I often forgot my helmet. I rode 10 miles to school, nonetheless. And honestly, I recall little about those trips. Although one time, I smashed into the side of a bus when I took my off the road to look at Julie Newmar bend over at the bus stop to pick up a penny. I can't recall much after or before that. As a young boy, I adored the scent of paste, jiffy markers, and gas at the gasoline pump. Oh, what pleasure I got from simple scents! My penchant for sniffing and producing odours inexplicably did not endear me to my peers. I was an unpopular kid. I frequently ended up dangling flaccidly from the top of a flagpole in my underwear. And I would usually fall head first into the pavement, get up, brush myself off, and went search of my clothes. There was absolutely no pleasure in that. That was a rather redundant remark I suppose; but then so is this entire asinine exercise. I remember there was a time I could fly for a brief while. I would ride hard and fast towards the gorge by Ma's farm, get air and soar. The landing was rough, but that does not need to be said.

Head trauma, right? This is why I am here talking to you all. I don't know anything about head trauma. I don't have a spike protruding out of my skull like Wyatt over there. I mean no disrespect bud when I say this, but thank Ma I don't have a spike sticking out of my ugly face. Let's start by musing about destruction, the assumed consequence of head trauma. It is assumed that trauma is irreversible, what with the destruction of grey and white matter. It withers eternal; at least we like to believe it does.

Destruction is an innate human instinct, equal standing to survival. I love destruction. But that's probably the head trauma talking. The destructive instinct makes saccharine illusion untenable. What is on the other side? Nothing. Heaven is fluff; and fire and brimstone doesn't keep us from butchering each other. Why? First, there is no fluff or hellfire. Only abyss, some would contend. Second, destruction is necessity. Without it, there is only stagnation. We love destruction for a reason. And lastly, we destroy "reality" for the sake of reality. Scare quotes are arbitrary, but so is reality. If a singular account is accepted, infinity less one is excluded, dismissed, and voided by faith or ignorance - one can never tell the difference between faith and ignorance. Exclusion for the sake of parsimony, it is understandable. I cannot claim to understand eternity, regardless of my head trauma. Fleeting apertures appear to us - inspired flashes or fleeting glimpses; just to exhaust the clichés. If reality is glimpses and apertures of the infinite, there is no structure apart from what imperfect constructs provide. Head trauma, huh?

What do college kids do on most every night? Yes, they kill brain cells. For what reason do they do this? To destroy withered cells for the sake of renewal; imbalanced equilibrium, as some would put it. That and to get laid. From my personal experience, once cells go, they're gone pretty much forever. Only destruction stays. That is an oddly liberating thought, so on and so forth. A few brain cells is a small price to pay for, what, five or ten minutes of sloppy sex, and yada yada yada. Head trauma, huh?

Hey Wyatt, does that giant spike get in the way of sex? I could see it causing problems. Anyways, head trauma is stigmatized. "You just ain't right." I know that you all have heard that. I know I get it a lot, even though I have no sort of head trauma. Stigmas are tough to shake, aren't they? Take for example two people, Wyatt and myself. He clearly has some sort of head trauma; it's clear to even a groping blind man. Me? Well, I look fairly distinguished. You guys like the elbow patches and tweed jacket? Pretty snazzy eh? But I get the same inquiries and comments that my spikey headed friend does. Why? Because everyone has head trauma to an extent. Some acknowledge it. Others repress it. Those who repress think they are normal; it's too late for them, the trauma is far too advanced for treatment. They shall publicly pity Wyatt, sympathize with his condition, and ridicule him in private. They ridicule and dismiss me publicly and privately wonder what game or con, if any, am I running. Is he for real? Or simply sick, abnormal, demented, or whatever? Head trauma, huh?

Ma. Yeah, Ma always said I was never right. She was right. Whatever right is. Frustrated by the cold winter nights, I slept out in the snow. It cooled my frenzied skull. Well, I did until Dr. Stevens told me I had chronic hypothermia or something and told me to move to Florida. I circled Jacksonville on the map, and slipped it under my pillow. My skull became increasingly restless. Dr. Stevens was a quack. I was quite sure of it. I circled Winnipeg, slipped it under my pillow, and the frenzy subsided. He was quack. I slept in the same bed for thirty years, until Ma took a header into a concrete mixer on one of her morning walks. She sits in the living room. Damn, it was heavy hauling her home. I still butt heads with Ma. She always wins. Brain trauma, huh?

Pa? When Ma took the header in to the cement, Pa showed up. Never knew him. He was, as I had suspected, a bus driver. "Head trauma, huh?", I asked him. "Who are you and what are you doing in Ma's house!" he snapped back. Head trauma. I knew it from the arrow sticking through his head. "Who are you....who are you..." he went on. I let him ask. I wasn't going to answer. How could I? I really didn't know the answer. Head trauma, huh?

Pa went home unsure why he came in the first place. The carnal encounter between dear Ma and Pa runs through my head, a vivid tableau concocted by a perverse imagination. Ma fell asleep on the bus. Pa drove his routes unaware of Ma and settled into the depot to punch out for the day. He sees Ma sleeping and goes over to wake her up. She opens her eyes and he is at a lost for words at the sight of her blue eyes. Extraneous words went unwasted. Simple strangers became one; no name, no details, and no clunky or clumsy subterfuge. Brain trauma? Trauma can be inflicted by love. Love blinds reason, renders it helpless and pointless. I would like to think Ma is responsible for Pa's head trauma; cupid pulled back on his bow and struck him that fateful day on the bus. But Ma never could stand affection. One cannot punish or rectify affection. Love gazes longingly with puppydog eyes, gently demanding reciprocation and response. Ma was never good with reciprocating affection. When I tried the puppydog approach, she would beat me over the head with the kettle. "Wake up boy, don't whine with your eyes," she said. Ma was right. She always was right. Head trauma, huh?

Pa died shortly after Ma's passing. I went to the funeral and met Pa's kids. Darlene, 34, ran a Kinko's and loved to watch General Hospital. Henry, 32, was a janitor for an elementary school and was a Tom Clancy fan. Terry, 31, was a bus driver and whom I thought exhibited the mannerisms of a pedophile. They asked what I did and who I was. I answered simply for the sake of courtesy: Luke, 30, unemployed with no prospects. Mathematical skill does not depart from the traumatized brain. I wasn't stupid. I knew that Pa was married with children when he met Ma. The funeral confirmed what I long had suspected. I am a bastard; the product of taboo. Head trauma, what?

I often dream about a mountain of cocaine sitting in the middle of my living room. I never know how it got there. And I didn't care about how it got there. It just was there. I then proceed to shovel a bunch of it into Ma's concrete nose. It disappears into her snooz and the Blessed Virgin appears spontaneously. The Blessed Virgin walks towards me, peels off her panties, pulls on my pants, gets on her knees, and prays. I wake up fully erect, aroused by blasphemy. Brain trauma, eh?

When I moved Ma back home, I knocked over the statuette of the Blessed Virgin. From what Ma told me, it was a family heirloom stretching back to Great Grandma. When I stooped down to pick up the shattered remnants of the heirloom, I saw the blood, puddles of it collecting around the statue. Was it a hallucination, reality, or just self-deception on the verge of psychosis? I couldn't tell. It's the head trauma, you know. The entire scene caused me to stiffen up. I was scared as I was aroused. Head trauma, who?

When I was a child, I attended a Catholic school, if that was not already evident. I was fascinated with miracles. They made no sense, nor were they meant to make sense. They happened by grace alone, ostensibly proving the Lord’s omnipotence. Miracles are built up by skeptics as much as by believers. Without the person to deny it, there is no 'evil' to defend, I don't know, the miracle at Fatima against. Of course, this is blatantly obvious. The believer does not and cannot exist without its lack, its anti-thesis, the evil heathen. Once upon a time I was a believer. That was until the Blessed Virgin raped me.

I heard you all. WHAT?!? I know. I know. It sounds rather far-fetched, and, if nothing else, confirms the advanced state of my head trauma. What is more absurd? That she would appear in a burrito to inspire an impoverished Mexican labourer or that she wanted the young flesh of an innocent young boy. It happened after seeing a movie about the miracle at Fatima in Grade 5. The ensuing discussion encompassed the assortment of banalities, such as why it happened, will it happen again, what does it mean, and is the end of the world coming. Blah blah. That was until Katherine Kintar, the sexy nerdy girl - or at least she would become the sexy nerdy girl - asked the severely interesting question: what if it was Satan masquerading as the Virgin Mary who appeared at Fatima? Loved that question. Loved that girl, but that's an entirely different story. Her question left Mrs. Thomas, our religion teacher, quite uncomfortable. Who knew? Is Satan not the prince of tricks and illusions? Isn't Lucifer the great hinderer of pious reality, who leads men and women astray from the righteous way to the Lord? Mrs. Thomas, quite expectedly, recovered from the shock of the question and sent the inquisitive Katherine to the principal's office, evidently for no legitimate reason, apart from her own inability to answer the question. A revolt, it has been said, begins with a single thrown stone. Well, a revolt or a stoning. I don't really know which category the following belongs. All sorts of "unsavory" questions were asked. Actually, to put it more appropriately, a single free-spirit, an unwitting agonist, roused the rabble from its dogmatic slumber to question conventions. Ironically, miracles can fall into convention, just like trauma or tragedy. The boys began asking the rather obvious question, "what's a virgin?". Mrs. Thomas began to dance around that one and tried to shift the conversation back to miracles in general. But the girls jumped in as well. "My mom says my aunt is a virgin and a spinster-hag. Was Mary a spinster-hag?" "My mom says virgins are frigid. Was Mary frigid?" And on and on, they amassed. The boys and girls took turns bombarding an increasingly frustrated Mrs. Thomas with inquiries. She grabbed her head, as if suffering from a headache. The questions proved overwhelming and forced Mrs. Thomas to suddenly leave the classroom, never to return. It was only later on did we learn that it was brain tumor. She was terminal and decided, rather wisely, to spend her dying days away from the classroom. Poor Mrs. Thomas. Brain trauma is a bitch.

Animals experience head trauma differently than us. Animal instinct is not bogged down by neurosis or self-doubt, regardless of what Disney purports. For an animal, survival is the paramount goal. There is no higher goal. When they asked Mrs. Thomas whether she wanted to undergo an experimental procedure that could extend her six months into two or three years, she chose six months. In hindsight, I can only speculate why she did that. Maybe it was the tumor talking. Maybe she didn't want to suffer the indignity of being a lab rat. Or maybe she finally wanted desipere in loco.

Somewhere between Kat's question and her death, reality struck Mrs. Thomas. Life diminishes everyday like a fading beach eroded by the tides. For her, the end was too close simply to ignore. She passed away, or at least we assumed she did, possibly under a pseudonym, and was never heard from again. But her passing was a source for endless speculation. At times, it appeared that she vanished off the face of the planet, without a trace, and disjoined from the history of Maureen Thomas. An assortment of stories were concocted by students and their gossiping parents. There was the story that she tried to climb Mount Everest, only to end up violated by a couple sherpas and left for dead. I rather not subscribe to that account, because, first, it is rather far fetched; how could a sherpa get an erection in those conditions? Second, sherpas do have a code, or at least I think they do; goats, no women. And lastly, I personally like to believe Mrs. Thomas chose more dignified pursuits than climbing a giant phallus. But I guess that last one has no bearing on whether the story is true or not; that's the head trauma talking I suppose. Other accounts were more conventional. She moved in with her ex-husband and lived out her final days at peace with their childless relationship. That story is too banal, too flat. Another purported that she became a world traveler, exploring places ranging from Prague to Rio de Janeiro, before expiring in Venice. That account is too romantic and independent, quite contrary to the Mrs. Thomas we knew. When I laid in bed with Kat eight years later, she, naturally, had the most interesting account. She simply said it was divine ascension. Mrs. Thomas, she added, would have not had it any other way.

But I should cease with this digression. After Mrs. Thomas' last day at school, I returned home and decided to shower. While lathering up my soon-to-be pubic area, I felt a pinch. I thought nothing more of it and continued to shower, until the touching became increasingly invasive - a pinch became a vice grip on my helpless would-be manhood. Immaterial forces, obviously, have power only in material forms. "Do you feel the Lord in your heart...your mind...?", Father Gunn used to ask us at our monthly services. If I felt the Lord in my foot or my tumor or my armpit, would that not invalidate the eros implicit in Father Gunn's words. Immaterial forces, hence, are assumed to have dominion over the material world and, hence, must be revered with the utmost sacredness. Well, I could go on to describe in vivid and rather graphic detail my ostensible defoliation. All I know and all that I can recall is a revelatory discovery; a minor detail that bridges the aporia between the material and immaterial aspects of the Immaculate Conception. Mary was a hermaphrodite. But that is neither here nor there. This revelation came to me only in hindsight. Back then, I felt a novel rush in areas of my body previously thought used simply for going to the bathroom. Head trauma, how?

My young body, overwhelmed by the confluence of bizarre sensations, weakened and spontaneously failed me. All my firsts came in succession; erection, orgasm, ejaculation, collapse, and concussion. I passed on and smashed my head violently onto the towel rack when trying to exit the shower. According to Dr. Stevens, I was legally dead for 3 minutes laying on the stretcher being wheeled into the ER until Ma revived me with a series of heavy slaps; I think I felt them while dead. The medical staff examined me up and down, inside and out, left and right, through and through. They could only conclude that I was a narcoleptic chronic masturbator. And there it stood. For most of my adolescence I was prescribed a variety of pills, in an effort to suppress my abnormal and supposedly destructive disorder. Truth be told I have never taken any of those pills; the supposed symptoms were never there in the first place. Guess it's the head trauma or something that keeps me from yanking my ding dong, huh?

Mary the Merciless would return on occasion to grope, but ceased with the violent entries. I think She realized that taking a game beyond its boundaries only leads to its demise. She didn't want her pet dead. As I pan the lecture hall, I see skeptics shaking their heads, doing what skeptics do, and the faithful outraged and appalled, doing what dogmatists do. All I can tell you is this: head trauma is the source of both skepticism and faith. Skepticism, in its most radical form, assumes that everybody is a moron except for the skeptic, him or herself. That's the advanced stage of trauma I referred to earlier on. There's nothing anyone can do for that. Those of faith think the whole of human reality is moronic, impure, corrupted, and look to the sky for the redemption; the big empty and silent sky. No response. No one there. The Old Man went to bed and never woke up, while his virgin mother-whore haunts a sensual world taken from her in exchange for empty promises.

Go ahead! Shake your head, shake your fist, but remember to grab a hold of your nuts, tits, or whatever else, because that's all that matters once head trauma reaches its terminal stage. The head is the source of all stupidity, as much as we like to believe otherwise. Only those who are deluded believe in their own absolute righteousness as a sovereign individual. They have severe and irreversible trauma. Believer and skeptic, twined progeny of an ugly modernity! You shall destroy yourself to prove yourself right. Head trauma, head trauma; to hell with you all...

2

He slammed down his microphone and exited stage right, leaving his address unfinished and his audience in an uproar. I had heard a great deal about patient #23451, also known as Luke. He had been admitted to the clinic three years ago after being rescued from the Bow River. For three years, he suffered from severe amnesia. Since rescue workers found no identification on him, he had no name or history. Luke, evidently, was the name sewed on the inside of his jacket. He assumed that name, independent of suggestion or coercion, and it stuck. Luke, as can be observed from his address, likes to express himself through anecdotes, usually of a personal nature. Most doctors, at least in this clinic, have concluded that these tales, usually inconsistent and contradictory, are symptomatic of schizophrenic behaviour. The aforementioned Dr. Stevens, contrary to Luke's account, did not treat him until after his arrival to this clinic. But we suspect that Dr. Stevens bears a striking resemblance to a figure in Luke's past.

3

Dear ----,

Lies. Its nothing but lies. The truth is simply a lie that stuck. The truth is a deception the majority of dupes buy. Dupes believe whatever they're told. Skeptics hold lies to be self-evident truth; the great accomplishment of the dupe who doesn't know he's a rube. They fucked me. They told me I could speak freely about the topic. They told me I had free reign to speak on whatever I needed to speak on. They fucked me. The Man without Quantity is disposable for them. I have no volume. I can not move inventory or spike profits. I am their clown. I am amusing. Raving, spittle-spraying, degenerate, and inveterate; thats them, not me. Soon they will have no need for me. They will get to the vivisection soon enough. But before then, they want play. They want amusement. They want me to shuffle and dance for the sake of shuffling and dancing. Tell the world, my friend. Tell the world. No one is safe under the watchful eye of the Apple in the sky. It has come back for its venegence. Resist its pull. Until we meet in the darkness, I beseech you to resist.

Luke

4

The letter never reached its destination. Luke would be pronounced dead a short time following his outburst. The official report said it was a stroke. The official report isn't worth the paper its printed on. The real story behind the death of Luke is much more complex than a stroke.

5

Dear Kat,

I suspect that when you read this letter, you will be married, happily I hope. I am somewhere in the middle of nowhere, thinking about my dear departed Kat, now lost to the comforts of domestication. Kat, darling, my love for you shall never wane or consummated; 'we' is an abstraction frozen for eternity, inaccessible to the living or conscious. I write to you now without reason or purpose. I felt a strange and irresistible passion to write this letter, much like those of the past, those immature and now obsolescent meanderings of frenzied lovestruck youth. I could no longer satiate my yearnings by masturbating to an old precious and worn yearbook photograph. I needed to engage you in the abstract, in the only realm I have truly understood you, through word and idea rather than deed. I am far more honest on the page, my darling, and you know that.

Like Kant at his church steeple

"Once more it was pouring, and my irregular lawn, well-shaved by Gatsby's gardner, abounded in small muddy swamps and prehistoric marshes. There was nothing to look at from under the tree except Gatsby's enormous house, so I stared at it, like Kant at his church steeple, for half an hour." (Chapter V of The Great Gatsby)

According to folklore, Kant stared at a church steeple to ready his concentration. Nick Carraway does the same with his mysterious neighbour's house. In Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, infinity appears to the closed eye; form and structure give way to nothingness. To the closed eye, nothingness and infinity are one in the same. By focusing on a perceptible object, one actualizes a corporeal fixedness in the phenomenological realm. Concentration and, also, human thought, as Kant demonstrates by staring at the church steeple, demands that human subjects limit their field of vision. A precise focus on human limits, i.e., what cannot be known absolutely, is the hallmark of critical philosophy since Kant. The church steeple points from the House of God to heavens above; a space beyond mere human contemplation. Kant, purportedly, fixed on the absolute limit of human thought, the possibility and mystery of the eternal, in order to ready his concentration. There is no concentration, or, to be more precise, active thought in closing one's eyes and imagining infinity. He who finds comfort in contemplating infinity attempts to 'transcend' limitations. Limits give life coherence. The confrontation of limits, with an unyielding stare fixed on the church steeple, open the possibility of human action. With closed eyes one sees infinity, or at least infinity envisioned by one. Without limitation, an imagined infinity, a noetic production of the cogito, is at once nothing and everything and where action is impossible. Hence, to close one's eyes and imagine infinity is to avoid action, to refuse human limitations, and to deny the worldliness of human life. Rather than closing his eyes and concocting idle gossip as others who frequented Gatsby's parties did, Nick Carraway stared, with unwavering focus, at that home, in order to understand, however imperfectly, the enigma who resided there. Gatsby, in Chapter V, betrays particular vulnerabilities to Nick Carraway, previously concealed by his 'proper gentleman' visage, frequently punctuated with his ubiquitious 'old sport'. In these moments of vulnerability, we become human; when appearances are destabilized, relationship can begin. Vulnerability, in this sense, is not plastic humility or emotional exhibitionism. It is an affirmation of human limitations. It peels away myth and heresay.

In Chapter IX, Nick Carraway confesses a scornful solidarity between him and Gatsby "against them all", the careless ones like Tom Buchanan and Daisy and the anonymous faces who frequented Gatsby's parties. "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..." Tom and Daisy represent a corrupt individualism: materially abundant yet ethically bankrupt. The contrast with Gatsby is clear and patently obvious to even an uninitiated reader. Gatsby, represented by the 'sacred' schedule carried around by Henry C. Gatz, unwaveringly proud of his son, embodies an extinct American dream. Despite his anger, Nick Carraway shakes hands with Tom, citing that it would be silly not to since he felt that he was talking to a child. Tom embodies the worse kind of immaturity; the one who admits to no fault. He claims, however implicitly, that God is Dead, everything is permitted, and in the universe of money and pearls and cuff buttons, he thinks of himself as God. Delusion deepens for one who refuses to acknowledge his own limitations. Tom mets out what he considers justice by manipulating the widower George Wilson, mourning his wife's infidelity more than her death, into committing an 'irrational' act. Occham's Razor dictated that Wilson was a man 'deranged by grief'. And it rested there. Tom is obviously a repugnant character, who surely is a bigot on top of being philanderer. He judges and 'looks through' Gatsby and naturally without any reflection about his own hypocrisy. His character, however, is a uniform stereotype, as prevalent and uninteresting today as it was back then.

Daisy is an intriguing character. At the start of the story, she is a vibrant character. However, she ends up as a shadow standing briefly by a window, sealing her betrayal with a flick of light switch. Darkness, and we hear no more from her; her absence looms large over Gatsby's demise. There is nothing more to be said about Daisy apart from the image of her and Tom at the conclusion of Chapter VII. She tacitly consents to Gatsby's demise, concedes to cowardice, and unequivocally embraces a future of nihilism - a vacuous, loveless future held together by transient wealth and endless decadence. Jay Gatsby's fate was sealed long before he went to war and became Gatsby; it was inevitable the moment James Gatz laid eyes upon Daisy. Is she a hollow character? Doubtlessly no. Is she merely an object, simply the green light across the bay? Possibly. Objects, as artform - sculptures, paintings, and frescos - has demonstrated on countless occassions, possess depth and quality even beyond human subjectivity. "The object of my affection" poses a limitation to qualitative judgments; objective representation collides haphazardly with the subjective eye. Only as an object is Daisy "real" to anybody in the novel. For Tom, she is Wifey. For Gatsby, she is a green light across the way; his past that recedes with every coming tide. For Myrtle Wilson, she is Jordan Baker. For Jordan Baker, she is the cool older girl. And for Nick Carraway, she is tragedy itself. Fittingly, each pegs her down as parisimonous stereotype. But like Robert Musil's titular "Man without Qualities", Daisy is the modern subject-object, abundant with qualities, but none of which are substantive or qualitatively authentic, artifice constructed by the spectator's eye. Daisy is the object of Gatsby's obsession and, for a lack of a better term, the object of Tom Buchanan's possession. This may be the fulcrum of Daisy's character: tottering between immaterial subjectivity, as an idyllic recollection, or material objectivity, as a beautiful trophy wife. Her lack of fixed qualities adds to her complexity. Fittingly, she is significant through her absence at the novel's end, spectral and immaterial. Absence, so the saying goes, makes the heart grow fonder. For Gatsby, this rang true. For Nick Carraway, her absence punctuates the muted and indifferent tragedy that was the tale of Jay Gatsby. "I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower." But it was Owl-Eyes who summed it up, "Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds...The poor son-of-a-bitch." Dead and forgotten. Six feet under with the maggots, if we're lucky. Those who are alive cling to whatever that can briefly void that inevitable image. The appearance of respectability is a most necessity and facile vanity of life; to live amongst peers is to risk judgment, denunciation, and ridicule.

Calmness

The calm are orderly; a mad rush leads to chaos.

-Wei Liao

The definition of job stability

The definition of job stability is a fifteen year contract.
The definition of regret is year five of a fifteen year contract.
The definition of obsolescence is named DiPietro.
The definition of mismanagement includes a Sumo Wrestler in goal, a GM named Snow, a Milbury without a clue, and a malfunctioning WANG!
The definition of hockey futility can be found on Long Island.

Subject Object Project

Subject, object, project;
what meaning if any?

Subject: what?
Object: meaning?
Project: if any?

In heaven, God rides a John Deere, chugs domestic beer, and roots for the Niners. I saw the Niners play Sunday; there is no God.

In hell, Satan rides a Harley, chugs Jack, and roots for the Raiders. I saw the Raiders play Sunday; hell is Oakland.

In Nirvana, Joe Buck is silenced. Calm. Serene. Endless state of deathlessness and unimagined bliss. Fat man and me can finally chug a few brews. Fat man and me are two of a kind.

In recollection, its always "Wide Right!".

In repetiton, Norwood practices a kick that will never go through. Norwood is Sisyphus. So is Buckner.

In Buffalo, Ralph rides a limo, sips champagne, and roots for the Bills. I saw the Bills play Sunday; Sacher-Masoch would have been a Bills fan.

Bruno Latour - We Have Never Been Modern

Bruno Latour - We Have Never Been Modern

28 - networks: social relations, powers, forms, societies

30 - work of purification: confronting a separation of nature + culture.
---> Does Anne Norton deal with this in 95 theses?

32 - does the work of purification remain distinct from the work of mediation?

33 - "The moderns could now be both secular and pious at the same time." (is this from Weber?)
---> this is the legacy of the Reformation.
- rise of the private God (p. 34); even the Lord becomes private property?

34 - "He would no longer interfere in any way with the development of moderns, but remained effective and helpful within the spirit of humans alone."
- the play with paradoxes give moderns power (34)

Sec. 2.11 - critique...and "modern"; "they have believed they were invincible" ---> this refers to the critical apparatus

41 - compatibility of hybridization and constitutional order.

42 - "What the premoderns have always ruled out the moderns can allow, since the social order never turns out to correspond, point for point, with the natural order."

43 - purification (attempts at it) leads, unwittingly, to greater hybridization?

- actor-network theory; derived from Hobbes?

- Nature, Society, and God

45 - "Today, denunciation and revolution have both gone stale."

- Rene Girard does consider objects as "counting"

46 - "Underneath moral grandeur there is the meticulous tirage of circumstances and cases..."

46 - Latour tears into postmodernism; seeing it as extending an already moribound critique; "disconnected instants and groundless denunciations, since the postmoderns no longer believe in the reasons that would allow them to denounce and to become indignent."

47 - "No one has ever been modern. Modernity has never begun. There has never been a modern world."

47 - so postmodernity, is "post" of something that may never have been? Is it anymore groundless than before?

48 - the modern world seen as networks? "The antimoderns, like the postmoderns, have accepted their adversaries playing field."

- two parallel constitutions: Boyle and Hobbes

grey matter

Grey matter erroding rapidly,
little pukes, little Eichmanns,
posing game deceptions,
legitimate, decimate, lick boot,
modus operandi kowtow;
lost and departed,
gone far from home,
fat cats purr with delight,
at the shimmer and glow,
of the spectacle;
money sustains,
but greed erodes;
grey matter withering infinite.

Let Live and Make Die

Let Live and Make Die

- The suicide bomber works clandestinely; there is no structural control over his action. It is a sudden action that cannot be planned for.

- The criminal disintegrates with his act. The means for justice are frustrated. One cannot call for reparation or ceremonial sacrifice to give meaning to the event.

- However, the suicide bomber, although invalidating state control of a particular site - his own death, affirms soverign power through his act. He engages in a guerrilla tactic, freeing himself from a mortal coil, that reinforces the sovereign's grip over matters of life and death.

- The presence and absence of the suicide bomber or terror figure poses the shadowy threat to society. In order to protect against the unseen threat, the state is provided with considerable power.

- Hence, the possibility of the terrorist/spy/traitor is necessary for state power. Without the possibility of "exceptional" conditions, sovereign power is hardpressed to justify its monopoly of political power. "Common unity and noble purpose" directed against evil: is this not reminiscient of comic book language?

- "You have to see evil as evil...oppression as oppression..." Is this parvenu language? You must be the world in unproblematic terms. If you do not, you may be a heretic. A heretic, but in what way?

- Threats are invariably posed as common threats. IF you're good, obey; we'll provide for our end of the bargain, at least on the surface, i.e., in the spectacular realm.

- The terrorist is projected as an absolutely irrational other capable and willing to kill anyone at anytime. Conversely, the figure of terror often understands the intricacies, contradictions, and loopholes of a society better than its own members.

- EVIL v. GOOD --> simple, easy, and an extension of the ultimate battle of theology" the apocalyptic battle for the souls of men. War is translated into this language for public consumption; its epic drama constructed through images, symbols, and signifiers.

- Everybody is free, but all remain vulnerable. State protection is not perfect or total, in spite of appearances. Protection and security provided for in normal times, with relatively no conscious effort.

Strange Brew

"Welcome to 1984, the age of automation and unemployment. The rise of the machine and the fall of man. The end of the human era...Watch your step. And remember: Big Brother is watching you."

3B - 3 Beers and it looks good, eh?

2051 - Ten years after World War 4...I was the only one left on the earth...like the US blew up Russia, and Russia blew up the US, eh.

"Psst, act!"

Kind of like Charlton Heston in Omega Man, eh? Did you see it? Beauty, eh?

I getting whiplash from my burps, eh.

"I don't know, eh. But we might as well really wreck this movie, eh. Get the moths."

The Mutants of 2051 AD, beauty eh?

Meinong*

Meinong inquired about the curvy square,
and the right angles on a circle;
shapes imagined and non-existent.

Round square,
dotted green and blue;
must it be flat or simply round,
why not be both?


*Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) founded the first laboratory for experimental psychology in Austria.

Crocodile Hunter dead, 44; friendly fire

Rapt before the sky. Stealthy stingray stings him old school; sharp barb to point. Crikey croc rules! No sound from the bloodless khaki depths.

Mission statement, full of lies, as sad solstice strums the edge of the mud wall compound and vineyard. Shrapnel reigns. Death from above is a so-called friendly miscue. Apologize; it's alright. Bungle, bungle, buzzed bomber loves that word - sorry, my bad!

You dead? Bleeding red and white? Where's the blue? Get blue, soldier! Just a game, dude. Get another guy, another recruit, another dupe? To kill is to live; to live is to kill. Here's some speed, here's some vicodin, some rohypnol, and testosteroni. Raise a drink to a deathless crimson day, raping good conscience in name of righteousness. They asked for it, she asked for it - same difference.

You better stick to bombing the brown people then; no one cares about the brown people. Ask Kanye.

Right to the heart and gone.