Category: Words

This Night Tonight

Inscenced not indignant.

Indignity nonetheless.

Bemused not befuddled.

Bespoke not beholden.

Beloved not betrothed.

Vouchsafed by dint of condescension.

I am howling.

Interference for interference sake.

It’s raining, so I bought three pens for two dollars and ninety nine cents before tax.

What surprises Them about me, breaks my dummy heart.

I smile unconciously.

Caseface as Britt said back when we are all servers,

going home at night to the Isleland of Misfit toys.

And how my upper lift now curls upward.

trembling and pulsing up and down over white teeth.

A wolf’s mouth starting to growl.

Starting again to howl.

Fear? nah. maybe.

replete

the timbre was ash and cherry.

Cinnamon and cheesecloth.

Poetry is everywhere and we’re the only ones who can see it?

But then I read what I’ve written and its just word lists.

no pomp puffery, no pithy trick for the wolves playing sheep.

so I show it to you.

Why?

Cuz I’ve Written it regardless, despite, in spite of everyone and everything.

But, really, simply because you asked.

And I looked at you hard and cold.

the lip recovers my teeth.

my brow unfurrows.

infinitely written meets unwriteable.

effing idiots will never get it, will they?

Isn’t that wild?

Passing Time After Cancelling Dinner with the Parents of your Ex ( i.e. Saturday getdown)

Anon, anon.

tried to guess different ways to write it.

she’s cagey!

And so it goes. Great Vonnegut Quote

There was still plenty of food and fuel and so on for all the the human beings on the planet, as numerous as they had become, but millions upon milions of them were starving to death now.

And this famine was as purely a product of oversized brains as Beethoven’s Symphony.

It was all in people’s heads. People had simply changed their opinions of paper wealth, but, for all practical purposes, the planet might as well have been knocked out of orbit by a meteor the size of Luxembourg.

The financial crisis was simply the latest in a series of murderous 21st century catastrophes which had originated entirely in human brains.

More and more humans were saying that their brains were irresponsible, unreliable, hideously dangerous, wholly unrealistic— were simply no damn good.

Kurt Vonnegut. Galàpagos. 1999

Time to Revive Hartz & rexamine American Exceptionalism?

Embodying an absolute moral ethos, “Americanism,” once it is driven onto the world stage by events, is inspired willy-nilly to reconstruct the very alien things it tries to avoid. Its Messianism is the polar counterpart of its isolation. Americans seem to oscillate between fleeing from the rest of the world and embracing it with too ardent a passion. An absolute national morality is inspired to withdraw from “alien” things or to transform them-It cannot live in comfort constantly by their side.

Louis Hartz. American Exceptionalism. 1955.

Thoughts are with those hurting tonight after the violent events.

Let’s try harder to do better.

A Pretty Beautiful Poem

Conviviality: C17 from Latin convivialis “a feast”

“fit for a feast”

(of an atmosphere or event) friendly, lively, enjoyable

potential. hy/Poten/use

potentiate

potent. pot. Portia (circa Antigone)

portent (n) ; portend (vb)

– portentious

port

porter

Deceit…. disgust

Conceit…. disguise. (dis/g -)

Receipt… despise

(- cei/P/t)

DISAMBIGUATION

Pretext: ostensible reason (false) used to justify an action.

Pretense: act of pretending, false ambitions / claim

Pretend: imaginative same / fantasy

Pretension: claim of aspiration to something pretentious

Pretentious: attempting to impress with falsehood

Prevaricate: act or speak in an evasive way

Prima facie: (law) at first sight [ / site / cite]; accepted as so until proven otherwise

The Old English spelling of pretty = prættig, meaning

‘cunning or crafty’ coming as it did from a West Germanic base meaning

‘trick’.

By the Middle Ages, pretty had come to mean ‘clever, skilful, or ingenuious’.

The sense development [ deceitful, cunning, clever, skilful, admirable, pleasing, attractive ] has parallels in adjectives such as nice.

PRETTY

1. attractive in a delicate way, without being truly* (common) * beautiful. *author’s change*

2. used ironically to express displeasure: fairly ; trinket ; (used condescendingly) attractive person.

Pretty is to prevericate in order to increase Prestige?

A pretty face is a prentious face?

Pretty is pretension?

Beauty is.

Is being pretty pretentious? or prestigous?

The pretension of the face being ‘pretty’ was pretentious?

Pretty is prevarication to gain? [Prevaricate and procrastinate have similar but not identical meanings.

Prevaricate means ‘act or speak in an evasive way’.

Procrastinate, on the other hand, means ‘put off doing something’.

Prestigious.

A face being pretty is a pretension.

That’s beautiful, that is, Pretty!

PRESTIGE entered English in the mid 17th century (tricksy, cuz it means the 1600’s) from French, and ultimately derives from the Latin plural noun praestigiae ‘conjuring tricks’.

It took on its modern meaning in the 19th century (the 1800’s) by way of the sense ‘dazzling influence, glamo/u/r’, which at first [only] had a derogatory implication.

Aren’t we beautiful, Pretties?!

Extra Credit: speak the 17 words below aloud. Wild right? They kinda stopped making sense after a while. Lovesome.

Pretty ; Prettify ; Prettifies ; Prettifying

Prettified ; Prettification ; Prettifier ;

Prettier ; Prettiest ; Prettyish. . . . . Prettyboy.

Prettily ; Prettiness ; Prettyish ;

Pretties.

Prettied.

Prettying.

* Knock Knock…Orange… Orange you glad the other (stars) astericks didn’t make you scroll all the effing way down here? Hyuck.

I. All words cited from OED Concise (pic below-citations take forever)

II. All 17 “Pretty” derivations were taken from 3 dictionaries.

Mix tape to the World. Soul Funk. Rev. James Brown. A Maverick.

I did not know about James Brown.

Ha! I believed it was sexy-good-time music: good beat; easy to dance to.

It is.

It is also so much more.

Powerful medicine. I compiled a list of tracks to hike to.

Thought I’d share. Will continue to update as I find more.

It’s all good for productivity.

So take a walk, guys.

or destress and jam this when you carry wood (work).

Because like a ball on the bound,

you’ve got to get down, down, down!

Talking Loud and Saying Nothing. 1972. There It Is.

Blind Man Can See It. extended cut. bonus track. Jungle Groove.

Soul Power. 1971. “12 inch long version”

The Good Foot. Pts I & II.
Mind Power. 1973

Cold Sweat. 1967

Bonus points:

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

16 June 1972 (released).

8 November 1971 to 4 February 1972 (recorded)

Side 1

2nd track

 

cheers.

Pretty is pretension? Deep Dictionary Disambiguation

Pretty is a prevarication aimed to increase one’s prestige?

A pretty face is a pretentious face?

Pretty is pretension?

Beauty is.

PRETTY (Source:OED Concise dic.)

1. attractive in a delicate way without being truly beautiful.

2. used ironically to express displeasure.

– fairly

– trinket

– (used condescendingly) an attractive person.

*so, pretty is not a compliment… huh.

see also: pretext ; pretense/pretence ; pretend ; pretension ; pretentious ; prevaricate ; prima facie

Consider the convergence of these three words with one another.

Center homo sapien (free write)

Effie, the homo sapien, happened into the role of organic lynchpin in the clockwork garden of Jack’s dad. She, alongside innumerable others before, have and will be the particle held in the center of the spherical orbit of all the little human particles in existence; like a pin passed through the end of an axle to keep a wheel in position. Neither Effie nor the others were inherently special, chosen, or different; it was because they were there at the right place and the right time. Any particle could have ended up in the center, but only one particle would.

Now, once you are in the center, you are committed for a long-haul—there is no stopping the ride historically. If the particle in the center ceases to be in the center, acting as a pin holding wheel to axle, then the orbit of all the particles has been altered because the center has not held.

Imagine the universe as a dreidel. Upon being spun, it initially maintains near-perfect, balanced rotation about its axis; but, as the rotational velocity decreases, the dreidel starts spinning a little looser and then a little looser, climaxing in a great wallowing that quickly resolves itself to stillness.

So if Effie kept center, the world would keep turning; the universe keep expanding then contracting. Easy breezy style.

That a special spatial situation existed in the universe was not altogether unknown, but was kept quite hush hush. About 95% of all human particles were unawares of any such phenomenon like the one above described. Making the particulars public, it was assumed, would spawn terrorist attacks, chemical warfare, cronyism, and all other manners of manipulation that were intent upon bumping the human lynchpin out of the middle. No one wanted to take the lynchpin’s spot but acted on account of (a) they could not understand the impersonal, non-special truth that no one is ‘picked’ to be the center, no one is unworthy, or (b) they just wanted to tear the world up.

Knowledge of the esoteric variety may be seemingly spurious or craven, but appearance is not always indicative of insides. The special knowledge certain occult-ish groups harbor is not superficial at all. The problem was that most practitioners had no idea how to apply this knowledge to their benefit, let alone how to use this knowledge without it being at the expense of an unaffiliated innocent. The power of those ancient precepts could no longer be fathomed for homo sapiens had forgotten what power is.

Power is the ability to redirect external phenomena at will: that is, to be the more forceful of two objects colliding in order that you continue on in your initial direction, while re-routing the direction of the other object away from its initial vector.

This and nothing less or more is power.

Nothing more than this exists.

Since the lynchpin homo sapien, Effie, is itself no different in composition from all other homo sapien particles, it could, theoretically, be subject to the force of a hypothetical juggernaut particle that delivers a blow of such momentum and force that it rips her from the center.

Lucid: a fuzzy word (disambiguation with 3 dics.)

LUCID broadly reduces to the three senses below. The Latin roots of ‘lucid’ signify: bright/shine/light.

1: mentally sane;

2: clear; easy to understand

3: giving forth light; shining; bright; luminous

(lucid dreaming is only given as a subsense in 1 dic.)

LUCIFER (the entry immedately following ‘lucid’ in all dics.) The correspondence is ‘light’ and/or ‘shining.’

Latin roots = light bringing/light bearing

1: morning star = the planet Venus when it rises in the morning

2: Satan; Prince of Darkness; Devil

3: match for striking a light

(Luciferous = emitting light)

UNLUCID = especially unintelligent, obscure

Lucidity relates to a clearness, soundness, even transparent, but these meanings are created by virtue of “light shining in.”

In ‘unlucid’, I presume there is a lack of light, perhaps this is “the darkness that obscures.”

LUCIFER is allegorical device meant to elucidate some estoteric or hermetic principle?

On Being A. Maverick

Samuel A. Maverick, a Texas rancher, did not brand his cattle. His cattle became identifiable by the absence of a brand. They are branded through non-branding.

“Ah that’s a maverick,” is what they’d say.

Unbranded = maverick ; an unbranded calf.

Watch “Lou Reed – Sweet Jane from Rock n Roll Animal” on YouTube

dont own rights, but pay homage.

Not the usual version that gets play time

What an effing slick front man.

Dream of Troubadours

I dream troubadours whisper Provencal words against my neck.

An apothegm: my legs will not stop shaking.

An aphorism: about that which one does not know, one might do best by remaining silent.

Breathe, hold it in and hold in stillness, then release.

Prudence and patience,

my prowess has power adapted to the need.

I work in mystery-the intersection of suspense and anticipation in a heavily muted silence.

Decorously discreet both in dire straits and in heedlessness.

My obliging pruriency sure hopes he pries.

On being mothlike

There’s a light,

There’s a light

I’m a moth,

And there’s a goddamn light.

DIZZY—

HOT——

…….———

I’m a moth,

There’s a light, there’s a light,

There’s a goddamn light

Quote from Tao te Ching

Thirty spokes will converge

in the hub of a wheel;

But the use of the cart

will depend on the part

of the hub that is void.

So advantage is had

from whatever is there;

But usefulness rises

from whatever is not.

When the Sky Shattered

At that moment, the sky fell.

Like the vibrations from her hand clap overcame the sky’s structure. Cracking like a punched mirror, but silently. Little fissures and crevices branched like spiderwebs and radiated outward, allowing bits of an ultra-violet, purple color to seep through from behind.

As pieces of the blue sky separated, they slid down the sides of the earth, like a reverse snow globe, following the earth’s curvature, down and around until all that was left was a new purple sky.

How math talks? In statements.

Euclid was the dude who gave us (Euclidean) geometry.

He included the postulate below.
Given any straight line and a point not on it, there “exists one and only one straight line which passes” through that point and never never intersects the first line, no matter how far they are extended.

Well, this was later replaced with the assumption that more than one parallel can be drawn to a given line through a given point. One could also make the assumption no parallels can be drawn thusly. This led to a new type of geometry.

It was after this shift in thought that mathematics was recognized to be much more abstract than traditionally supposed:

  1. Because math statements can be construed in principle to be about anything, rather than some inherently circumscribed set of objects or traits of objects.
  2. Because the validity of math statements is grounded in the structure of statements rather than in the nature of a particular subject matter.
  3. Because any special meaning that may be associated with the terms in the postulates plays no essential role in deriving the theorems.

*Clumsily articulated from readings by Douglas Hofstadter as well as Roger Penrose

Exceptional rule

All rules have exceptions.

All rules are exceptional;

The rule without exception is thus exceptional.

You will die a voodoo death because everyone expects you to.

The tragedy of the commons is that there is nothing anyone cares to do.

Contagions of group expectations afflict your field of view.

A cursed question put on you: would you still die if no one thought you would?

Authority instructs you to confront mortality.

You and yours fantasize your finality.

You will die and Jesus loves you and this you know because a great big ole’ book told your parents so. But where is your existential subjective experience of this?

You are part of the totality, but, individually, you are also a triviality.

What you are is a value of a binary threshold function.

Uncertainty & Doubt

https://writtencasey.wordpress.com/2017/02/20/416/