Literature
The server dropped the tray of glasses
Right after saying, “Don’t worry I’m a professional.”
Rushy.
Could not out plates down fast enough
Before picking up new ones.
Meritoriously.
Feet bones cracklin
Pork ears
The following morning
IT sent an email.
Meanwhile, the coil leaked.
And my hair sits flat today.
And I smile.
At a memory.
You said noodles used to be tradeable.
(Funk & Wagner photo)
Alight.
A light
A’lit.
Alit.
A bit lit.
Branches bumble and shake snow on me.
Wet, excited dogs preparing to come in after a romp.
I slip about on tip toes.
Inside ampersand outside.
Hamhocks hog tie knots.
Due to recent disuse.
I disabuse them of their notion of stiffness.
To remind.
Renew.
A sun barely seen still strikes the sheets
Too brightly.
So much light.
Definition in musical notation.
Too lovely.
My appendenages blanch the blankets.
My duvet is a pacific northwestern grey sky.
I wore it in my flip flop dance of toss and turn all night.
Third pillow fastned tight between legs and arms.
A downy company warmed then warming.
Vigil in anticipation.
Of the bed not being an ocean, but perhaps a sea.
The release of tides of sheets leaves me drenched
In cold morning. I do not mind.
Flitting.
Humming.
The cat begs attention and food.
Stalking her way into my awareness.
The snow play of last night is a black and white still.
Outside my window.
I replay it in my mind’s eye.
Then a sun appears
And everything shimmers.
Shivers of strings
Of colors falling
On blanketed.
The chain letter of et al. saluted the Dear Gentleperson.
Lines of lives that move as
lilt, lag, loll.
Silicon sand and office rebrands.
We measured the sheets of snow in ankles,
While the neighbors line stood-up dominoes in rows.
And we all leveled latitudes,
gauged by arcing sways.
Time was askew and this manifested in the way I viewed things.
Things moved too slowly. I moved faster than the flow of the world.
Intermittent whiteouts/color bursts of vision only to return and have missed a few scenes.
I was caring for a young boy of about ten. There were no words exchanged.
He looked sallow, yellowish skin from poor nutrition.
Deep set, big dark saucer eyes.
It was an informal, novel arrangement for the short term.
He asked me there for the night?
His mother. His mother was aweful and possibly maleficent.
He lived in a trailer home, that connected to others like an aluminum apartment complex.
One story.
My cat kept plying at doors, as always.
The door to the connecting abode. She kept opening it and running inside.
I kept sneaking inside to retrieve her. Worried I’d get the boy in trouble with his neighbors.
I finally met the daughter girl of the neighbors. She was about 20 years old. Beautiful.
Suddenly, I’m her age too.
We attend school. We are friends, but it is hard and dangerous to have friends in this place, so we are very quiet.
Her home is immaculate and in the Thai decorative style.
Her mother wears very traditional almost ceremonial garb.
The mother watches me and her daughter but says nothing to me.
Never formally acknowledging me, but I feel comforted by this. Welcomed nonetheless.
The mother talks in mutters to her husband in a language, presumeably Thai, that I do not understand.
Those are the only words.
Me and the daughter never speak.
We draw geometric figures on the hardwood floor with chalk.
I notice a discoloration that is dried urine on the floor.
I worry my cat did this.
She writes, “my brother.”
I never meet him.
It stays grey outside, but now it is darker.
I return to the boy.
He and I take off running into the night.
Frenetic, nervous. Running. Like animals nervous before a storm.
We run for hours through meadows in dim moonlight.
Sparse trees here and there.
Everything is an aqua teal green.
You can feel a building electricity.
Like the accumulation of major internal static charges.
The boy stops. Freezes.
I’m running so hard I almost do not notice.
I stop, turn heel, and tear ass to be at his side again.
I make it to his immediate proximity.
The earth tremors. Isolated to the area immediately in front of us.
The earth tears open like a ripple over water.
A slight scar forming.
It is his mother.
Aweful. Pure force and energy. Intuited.
The boy is now catatonic, stood upright behind me.
There is a surge of fear followed by the security of knowing exactly what you are supposed to do.
Even if you have no idea how to do it.
Just do not let the boy touch anything.
The mom comes up from the ground in colors and consistency the like of a nebula and the root structure of an old tree. Explosions in the air like fireworks.
I just watch. The task is easy, if you do not panic.
~
It may snow today.
Metatext (analogue ; tape ; printed to paper)
Light falls upon pages.
Back light shines from digital pages.
Knecht leapt years ago into the black water of the river.
A leap of faith made in the face of a numinous bemusement.
A mæstro professing the art of conduction.
Cantos ; stanzas ; quatrains ; sections ; headings ; chapters ;
The function of any value such as x wilt result in a set of potential solutions.
f(x) : {set}, {set of the set}
yields Sentence G.
Godel’s lyric.
Taken from a song called Settes.
Cantos: sections dividing long poems.
– ORIGIN C16: from Ital., lit. ‘song’, from L. cantus
Dante sang poems in one hundred cantos.
The infernal first album of nine is the only one that hit the record charts.
Bemusing that he still writes lyrics and songs after his exile from Florence.
The courters and patrons of knightly chivalry frenzied in feigned, immodest outrage at the song of attack (quite poorly executed too, it is said) that
he played his Lady.
But he keeps on playing.
A fine equestrian he would have made.
Socrates and his diatribe will be with Dante shortly
Cursing Odsyyeus again, malifacent Man in Black: agent of injustice to Ajax.
The fellow-temple servants redeemed Parceval just yesterday.
Maestro Virgil’s rock n’ rolling opera
Nine lines feed nine recorders.
Eight channels receive live feed.
Three mixers temper.
A music master architects.
The 1 audits the confluence of the Take Stream.
The 1 who will stop the band,
called And the Band Played On,
only long enough to
allow them to listen.
Players eager to hear themselves.
Impetuous.
Feedback looping.
The impetus of the 1.
The effect of showing the parts their whole.
Any system aware that is under observation is changed by the very act of being observed.
An axiom accepted and admitted to be a theoretical, not practical, concern.
In theory the results may be nullified.
The axiom is ad hoc. Improperly derived.
Invalid even if accurate.
As Wittgenstein’s Mistress, it behooves me to ask this
Question for the Vienna Circle:
Now that you have observed that the act of observation changes the observed,
Do you ever worry for the assured changes in your method, institutions, experiments, results, or selves?
As you observe the knowledge of this observation affecting your observations and that which you observe?
Or is that just another theoretical problem too?
~
Just an observation from this lovesome dummy.
“Well, maybe I could do this too.” Neil Young after hearing the Beatles.
Wittgenstein is proud. No doubt.
“Neil Young Inducts Paul McCartney into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions 1999” on YouTube
In this six minute clip, he shares early experiences as a musician, as a musician going solo and the impact of The Beatles, particularly (along with many other musicians) his appreciation for Paul McCartney’s bass playing (“He played it left hand,” says Young. Just like Ziggy!).
As a Southerener (Deep South, to be clear) for over thirty years, The Rolling Stones album, Exile on Mainstreet, Neil Young’s Harvest most closely express the energy of the Dirty South, US. Amusing given neither outfit is American. Whatever an American is. <We were founded on philosophy, not history.>
I still remember the silly outrage I felt, when my father explained Neil Young was from Canada.
Canada?! They already have Joni Mitchell, though! I was so jealous. And disappointed that Young was no longer like me in this sense. Typical adolescent stuff, right? Giggle.
Southern Man and Alabama were outsider views?! Impossible. These had been Songs of Lament I could share in. This owed to me imaging that Neil Young’s perspective arose from living in the gothic American South. Whatever that is.
Suddenly (and without warning. Giggle), they were Songs of Condemnation.
Akin to the this sentiment:
As an older sister, I relentlessly hassle my little sister, but if anyone else so much as looks at her with crossed eyes s/he will be destroyed. That’s my effing sister!
Now I’m older and see the error in my thinking
He still sang the Song of the South.
Genius transcends and understands without experience. He’s in my pantheon of geniuses.
ROLL THE TAPE!
Young understands Wittgenstein’s concept of “the duty of genius,” which, as I read it, boils down to two things:
1. To believe there is no true or real difference between you and the great minds we celebrate (e.g. Abraham Lincoln, M.C. Escher, Johann Sebastian Bach, Umberto Eco, St. Augustine, etc).
2. To try to do your best at persuing a more robust mastery of abilities. Should you find a great passion, engage it and enjoy, but do not be discouraged by the heights others achieved.
It is not that you’ll never be that good. It is that everyone has the potential to be that good.
You just gotta try.
It is a sunny day in the Pacific NW.
I watch it through windows while I work.
I day dream about dreams from last night.
I stand up.
I sit down.
I look for something.
I think of something else.
I forget what I seek.
I still look for the forgotten thing.
It is not what I wanted anyways.
Where did I last see my attention?
Oh. I have left on it on you.
Again.
Back to back hits from The Isley Brothers.
For decades, white rock acts covered the most famed material of The Isley Brothers, particularly, “Shout” and “Twist and Shout“.
The Isleys decided turn about was more than fair play and decided to do the same to music made famous by white artists such as Stephen Stills, Eric Burdon and Neil Young.
The artists they chose to cover were not musicians that were apt to cover a song by the The Isley Brothers. In fact they were contemporary artists with unique voices and sounds they developed themselves. I like that these were the artists covered on Givin it Back. So many ways to interpret Giving it Back as an album title.
Slyly, titling this album Givin It Back, the Isleys prove they can re-enliven the music of others, thoughtfully. Distinguishing “a cover” and “a reinterpretation”.
Ohio/Machine Gun is my favorite gem.
CSNY might as well have written Ohio for the The Isley Brothers to perform.
And, I like CSNY’s version but when it is stood aside The Isley’s version, a certain, subtle social commentary forms. The songs speak to one another. The Isley’s version casts a subtle irony on the earnestly enthusiastic tradition of white protest music. Now, a naïveté tints the original.
The original release of Ohio, topical to the very hostile American political climate of the time, intended to make a statement, to shine light on injustice in order to produce change. It purports righteousness that slides toward self-righteousness when considered with The Isley Brothers rendition.
Among the songs they covered were “Spill the Wine”, “Love the One You’re With”, the social commentary medley of “Ohio” and “Machine Gun” (from Jimi Hendrix), “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor and Bob Dylan‘s “Lay Lady Lay“.
Their covers of “Love the One You’re With”, “Lay Lady Lay” and “Spill the Wine” became charted hits. Bill Withers plays guitar on the Isleys’ version of his “Cold Bologna”.
In 2015, Givin It Back was remastered and expanded for inclusion in the 2015 CD box set The RCA Victor & T-Neck Album Masters 1959-1983.
A good man first introduced me to this jam, and I wanna pass on the soul power!
Turned you on now I cant turn you off.
What a good, good feeling
A great sensation.
Oh you and me, baby, a good combination.
The story of Parzifal crossed my path while reading a Sufi meditation manual. It stated that Parzifal failed because of an incomplete mantle of light, leaving him exposed. He had gone it alone and did not have the band to back him up. And much like every new word, once uncovered, I see this mythos everywhere. So what up with that, huh? I did a little digging. Relax, more like playing in dirt. No one has to do real work here!
Within the mythos the following name variations exist
Percival-Knight of the Round Table in the King Arthur legend
Perceval-romance written by Chrétien de Troyes
Parzifal-romance retold by Wolfram von Eschenbach
Parsifal-Richard Wagner’s opera based on the written poems.
Parzifal is the retelling (ending included this time) of the unfinished romance of another, the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes whose poem is the earliest extant narrative, known from its prologue as Li contes del graal or ‘The story of the Grail,’ though he claimed that his own patron Philip, Count of Flanders, had lent him its ‘book.’
Wolfram von Eschenbach is heralded as the Medieval German narrative poet. Not too much is known about his life aside from things like how long it was (b.1195 to 1225ish) and other ticky tacky information such as his being born into a Bavarian family of the lower nobility. Mystery and intrigue do appear: He may have served a Franconian lord but as a ministerialis or ‘unfree’ knight bound to serve a lord. Qua knight, he defended his honor anywhere and was also able to change patrons, as he ended up finding his main patron not in his hometown but in Thuringia with its many Mæcenas, like Hermann I. Knights ministerial were the main bearers of the great efflorescence of secular poetry in Germany. Poetry emancipated from clerical domination during the first half of the Hohenstauffen period.
“Many passages of the original have virtually no syntactical structure–Parzival is definately no book–and so the bare act of translation has inevitably tidied them up.”
Translator A.T. Hatto (org.1980; reprinted 2004). Parzifal. Penguin Books. London, England. Foreward p12
Born to Louis II Landgrave of Thuringia & Judith of Hohenstaufen, Hermann I was born into Ludovingian nobility. He welcomed societies of letters and Minnesänger to his castle, the Wartburg. From 1172 to 1211, the Wartburt (‘watchtower’) was the most important princes’ courts. Eschenbach, in 1203, wrote part of his Parzifal here.
Minnesang is German for “love song.” This tradition flourished during the period of medieval German literature starting 12th century continuing into the 14th.
Minnesänger (aka minnesingers) referred to people who wrote and performed Minnesang.
A single song was called a Minnelied. These names rooted from minne, the Middle High German word for ‘love,’ which was the Minnesang’s main topic. This reflected part of a larger movement occurring during the High Middle Ages which included the Provençal troubadours and northern French trovères: a written lyrical love poetry, concerned within the tradition of courtly love and chivalry, sometimes vulgar, funny, intellectual, formulaic, even metaphysical.
For the French trouvéres, ‘courtly love’ expressed erotic desire as well as spiritual attainment (and all the spaces between them). A love at once illicit and morally elevating; passionate and disciplined; humiliating and exalting; human and transcendent.
Eschenbach asserts he follows the one “Kyot the Provençal,” sender of the ‘true version,’ that supplied additional material drawn from Arabic and Angevin sources. Many scholars consider Kyot to be of Eschenbach’s imagination, thus part of the fictional narrative. This ignites a controversy. Should the remarks be taken at face value or was he speaking in the way of scholars initiating paradigmatic change: not impassioned against his predecessor as much as being ironically respectful of the ones who came before him, even if he essentially mocked them while recapitulating them to his audience.
German composer Richard Wagner loosely based his opera in three acts, Parsifal (WWW 111).
Wagner’s spelling of Parsifal instead of the the Parzifal he had used up to 1877 is informed by one of the theories about the name Percival, according to which it is of Persian origin, Fal Parsi meaning “pure fool.“
Unger, Max (1932-08-01). “The Persian Origins of ‘Parsifal’ and ‘Tristan'”. The Musical Times. 73 (1074): 703.
ISSN 0027-4666
The above is incorrect. Just my opinion, in light of the below.
Trestles tower above, criss-crossing the distribution of mass.
Edified in engineering.
Precipice and Edge. High-sided to deep – plummet.
Span bridging here-to-there.
Anchored in shallow waves.
A shunt by-passing the river below, a detour for red blood celled cars.
Highways criss-crossing
Varicose veins over dirt legs.
Dusty and bumpy.
Tiring transport.
Arterial jams, backed-up traffic
Clotting main veins.
Blood pressure from cellular vehicular road-rage.
Parcigal learned the powers of personal appearance, nearly two decades past. She learned its ability to exploit and/or to be exploited, nearly a decade ago. Hell, all gals did where she was from, Alabam, the Dirty South. Personal appearance stood as the primary source of feminine efficacy (next to blood kin).
The place where they raised her never addressed that which she regularly pondered: the long game for pretty lady face.
This type of prettification during youth resulted in an aged-self prettifying to remain relevant, as a new generation of beautiful gals arose.
The true Tao seemed to be finding Beauty unmasked.
Bare face.
No jewelry.
Unadorned.
She started to let her face be as it is. Washed it, moisturized it, but that was all.
She became the appearance of the female she was.
She did this, going about daily public interactions, until she knew her face,
Became the female she is.
Then she wields the power of makeup’s masking properly. Not defensively.
Parcigal lived her dream of Art. She reinterpreted Myshkin anew, unbound to previous ties made.
Allegory.
Of course now, books are more often quoted than read.
The once enumerable is now innumerable.
Hypertextuality.
Parcigal recoils from monastic traditions. It is being one a crowd, faceless.
Initiation required heavy control over the individual’s entire life. Gives very little free will. They seperate sexes, assuming gals are even allowed at all. It imparts a tacit intent to shame the sexual nature of the h. sapien mammal. She does not doubt the resiliency of these traditions. But, her energy does not run properly in their circuits.
She recoils from secret societies and erudite traditions, because she distrusts agendas she agrees to but cannot fully see. It feels, in her mind, like blindly giving away power.
But she is wary. She is also extremely lovesome.
A lovesome nature required diligence.
What was the use of sensualism with a resonant partner?
Why was this primal magic so hidden?
Magnetism and electricity.
Conductors.
Conductive bodies are conducive to utilizing each resonant body.
By nature.
So, in her Fool way, she left her Ewer the note below.
The morning after she spent her first night in the handmade.
Before she snuck out (after two minutes of hard doting on his sky-eyes) without rousing him.
The sun begins to make cameo appearances.
The trail crew came through.
Cutting back.
Below is tribute to felled ones.
Ready to be reabsorbed into the ecosystem.
No waste.
The water rose.
See the fish (salmon) ladder flow from both sides
WrittenCasey 