Tag: writers

It is like that?

Because we are perceivers, that is why?

There is only causation because we create it?

We created the Why?

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We have an inborn propensity to see causation. We attribute our perceptions to external causes, but some perceptual representations are internal, for instance, optical illusions.

[Consciousness] is an evolved user-illusion, a system of virtual machines.

David C. Dennett. The Evolution of Minds: from bacteria to Bach. 2017

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The voice of knowledge wants to know what everything means, to interpret everything that happens in our lives.

DM Ruiz & DJ Ruiz. 2010, p124 & 13. ISBN 978-1-878424-61-7

happy birthday, Monster.

I’m a bulldog for R.E.M being recognized for the amazing punks they are.

Southern Gothic Punk.

The album Monster turned 25 years old the other day.

What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?

/I was brain-dead, locked out, numb, not up to speed
I thought I’d pegged you an idiot’s dream…/

Yeah, /I never understood tha frequency (uh hum)/ either.

/Richard said, “Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy”…

I couldn’t understand/

‘Til recently.

Well, the last time I saw Richard was Detroit in ’68.

And he told me: all romantics meet the same fate.

⊙

What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? Remaster. Given as a present to listeners,

along with a delightful, contextualization presented by original and remaster producer Scott Linn.

An awesome, quick interview.

He wanted “to take another crack at it.”

I dig both.

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Re: Strange Currencies

David Foster Wallace really dug it during one particular book tour.

Read all about from the words of (a very thoughtful) other.

I.e. read it in many fewer words than DFW would have described it in, with hardly any footnotes. Giggle.

This particular anecdote is my favorite from the entire book.

/I don’t know why you’re mean to me./

/The fool might be my middle name./

/Take you there and make you mine./

/These words will be mine./

/I tripped and fell./

/I wanna feel it now./

/You know with love comes strange currencies; and here is my appeal:

I need a chance. A second chance. A third chance. A fourth chance…

[Insert magical, hard to decipher words here]

To catch myself and make it real./

Everything and more.

“Are You Happy Being A Schmuck? Lou Reed, Sydney 1975”

No rights: homage.

I am a part-time many things, but a full-time rock n’ roll animal.

While I am on record as not enjoying hearing musicians talk about their music, there are several notable exceptions that make the rule.

Neil Young, Johnny Lydon, Michael Stipe, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie.

But, my absolute favorite musician interviewee is Lou Reed.

This captures some of his essence.

This captures all the bizarreness of journalism and media.

Unposted Letters Containing Letters.

I found an old letter

I had

written you.

Unposted despite having postage.

I let it age for you, ewe.

I could no longer read my own hand.

In my cans, no-one speaks, as I scribble this idyll for the popular, un-idle, idol.

Casting pods like fishing nets

sewn by hand.

Longhand and cool-handed.

Nothing in my hands.

A

Little something kept on-hand.

The noon approaches and I remember the rattlers.

Snakes giving fair warning: kindly, don’t tread on me.

Whispers of wisteria wander.

Shouting sprouts ready to be snapped then snatched from stems.

Quiet quilts covering made-up beds.

Panting pansies parched for water to partake.

What’s the plan?: he asks.

Wait and see?: I sheepishly speculate.

Why do you do what you do?: he asks.

Because, I can. The difference between ‘could’ & ‘should’ still alludes, though.: I say.

I walk the aisles of miles between your vines. I share the plants’ oxygen and they rebirth my breath.

Gaseous exchanges of my alveoli.

Nitrogen; Oxygen; Carbon Dioxide.

Periodic tabling with held breath.

Breathe, you; I hold my breath, not for you, dear sorrel,

I hold my breath for naught

other than myself,

for my next step.

I take the rite of alternating left foot/right foot,

Of being pedestrian.

I told him: I’m better on my feet.

The voice came through my cans

and said: I function better with the sun in my eyes.

I misheard it as something filthy and smile in realization of my mistake.

My eyes are moons whence comes all of tomorrow’s noons.

Day-suns.

Ræ-moons

floating in bluə-day skies,

stormy and grəy, like your

Sky-eyəs over a

choppy, white-capped səa.

Quote Like Song Lyrix Stuck in my Head

Eclecticism is self-defeating not because there is only one direction in which it is useful to move, but because there are so many: it is necessary to choose.

THE INTERPRETATION OF CULTURES: Selected Essays. Geertz, Clifford. Basic Books, Inc., Publishers. New York, 1973.

The poetics of “defamiliarization”: Umberto Eco’s On Literature.

The poetics of “defamiliarization”

Representing something in such a way that one feels as if one were seeing it for the first time, thus making the perception of the object difficult for the reader.

“Ratios of revision”

“Nonextraneity of structure in art.”

extraneous: irrelevant or unrelated to the subject/of external origin (Concise OED, 2008)

Structure of words in a poem/story become art in that they are a looking-glass house, a skeleton key, a scaffold.

An example of the aesthetics of structure creating art in unexpected places. Like the table of contents of a book on aesthetics.

Luigi Pareyson’s Aesthetics (Milan: Bompiani, 1988)

Section 3 of Chapter 3 is titled: “The parts of the Whole”

Chapter 3 is titled: “Completeness of the work of art”

subsection 10 of Chapter 3 Section 3 is entitled: “The essential nature of each part: structure, stopgaps, imperfections.

“In this sense the relation that the parts have among themselves do nothing but reflect the relation that each part has with the whole: the harmony of the parts forms the whole because the whole forms their unity.“

As regards “stopgaps in literature”:

“It can be a banal opening, which can be useful for finding a sublime ending.”

The Chestnutt Mare

Callæbus eqqus is an Open (printed) Book.

Be content with the content? Slide your saucerful full of secrets over here?

Disappointed roundtable debators believed that

She had been animal

And mineral

And element,

And Creature,

And Cretin.

And a camællia.

The wandering star gent is part sugar-foot.

A real Achilles heel for him when it melts in the rain.

Sugary sweet

But, highly soluable.

Death and the Lover.

But, she knows him under different handles.

They rotate who leads the dance to each saraband song.

Often swapping pieces of clothes

Endless variations.

Her suspension of choice made him slay her.

What choice?

Can anybody make anybody do anything?

The difference between clumsy, specious interference and kind, capable manipulation?

Fuzzy adjustments.

She lays the pen aside in such a heat of words.

He called her to come to him from an ocean away. In her stomach and heart, she already then felt bits of twine string loosely drape. Cordons that began slithering into knots pulling tighter and tighter.

She felt it and she said so.

“I promise I feel those sweet fingers clasping at my heartstrings. That is all I promise in the right-now. But, darling, I fear I love you.” she said

How much emotional energy, she wondered? She ought not be fearful of loving, but this one was something else in her mind. This man was impeccable.

In love vs. I love.

One (N) to the right of (I)

is all it takes.

The difference between loved and beloved.

Fitted and bespoke.

She knew quick that she loved deep. And, still could not abstain from diving head first. No one had ever spoke of weal to her before. She wanted to court him and please him and displease him. But, then her imagination spun some daydreams she presented to him. A bombardment of her ideas presented in delicious, but inexperienced confusion. In retrospect, she shuddered at how giddy the effort must have seen. She felt sad like maybe she blew the idea and made herself look ridiculous. Then she grinned and found a laugh, because at least she tried.

She closed her eyes, imagined he could hear her speak and she said aloud,

I’ve not known eyes like yours, or words used like yours. You are special and rare. The way you move through time. The way time moves through you.
You wear it, those lines, on your face. You will only grow more captivating. I am too old to be this young. You’re so well aged. It could sweet. And even naughty.

The cost of a swoony swoon. The dreams of a romantic mystic. The desires of a feral bitch rising from within. Howling and sniffing.

Then she heeded the call and he was the Genuine article.

Arriving on pins and needles; visiting on tenterhooks; finally

She left slain.

Embarrassingly taken aback by how he puts his hands in his denim pants pockets. Adored. Astir in wonderful calmness, he made mere moments eons with just a bit of string or a yarn to spin. Captivating her wonder. A dream of an artful life

She could recall none other that spoke to her as he did.

In fact, he spoke to her about those things most amazing.

He spoke of passions because he knew them too. His laugh endeared. And his smile was usually close-lipped.

She returned home. Visitors at her home. A small party. A confusing dissonance. Time fell strange.

Three days after returning home, she knew with certainty that she wanted to return to him. She wanted to be by him. Partners in art and crime.

She wanted to

Suggest it might…

Concede it must….

Surrender her nerves with a hard swallow

Submit to hot tears.

She wants a new life with him. Silly girl. She knows though, she can do it on her own and feel proud but she could be in love and do it.

Silly. She feels unhip. But, she knows exactly how she feels. And, she knows it may be just a pretty lie she tells herself.

Yet, her intuition just smiles and whispers: it could be sweet. There are so many possible movements to take on this chessboard, that it becomes a real treat when you have a moment where you know exactly what you want and you can accept that it may not happen.

The difference between I don’t think so and I hope so.

Again, alone in her room, she closed her eyes, imagined he could hear her speak and she said aloud,

“I think I see you the way you wish the world would see you, dearheart. You look fine in these eyes. Fingers such as yours come carrying currents. Diligence meets nuanced, indicating well-honed. Your voice, its quiet, clear enunciation draws my ears. I feel you pull slowly on my vibrations. Shifting energetic threads like braiding hair. Bringing to balance the diabolus.

Worth all risk.

She came from a place of dinosaurs.

She moved to a shiny silicon land where lives occur in hands and eyes look down at screens. People speak in hashtags now. A girl 5 years younger laughed as she told her she listens to CD’s in her car. The last physical format to kill off, I am a CD in a digital town.

So, a compact disc chances upon a cassette tape.

Taken from the Three Lives: The Rainmaker p. 459

“…all that was beyond reality penetrated almost violently into the boy’s senses. And sense impressions are a deeper soil for growing memories than the best systems and analytic methods…Knecht had more to learn by his feet and hands, his eyes, skin, ears, and nose, than his intellect…No doubt they were really seeking the same ends as the science and technology of later centuries, but the went about it in an entirely different way. But one thing was utterly impossible for them: not in their most audacious moments would it have occurred to them to meet nature and the world of spirits without fear, let alone to feel superior to them. Such hubris was unthinkable, they could not have imagined having any other attitude but fear toward the forces of nature. The various systems of sacrifice kept fear at bay. A man who had been able to ennoble his fear by transforming part of it to awe had gained a great deal.”

[Title Here]

Being bereft of aberration is abhorrent,

In itself.

I am the whence of a will.

Wilt do.

Wilted

Camællias suddenly come into ripe blossom

Bloom.

I danced in blue light at least an hour that night.

I stumbled between songs.

I slip but don’t fall.

Felled the tree before the hanged.

And a fool found herself upside down,

A head full of clouds and reservoirs of water.

Camel-ist.

Hiding eyes

Laughter.

In the dark, a cardinal dances on his branch.

Like a Stellar’s Jay.

Top 3 Pars/zifal Quotes

By pity guided,

The guileless fool;

Wait for him,

My chosen tool.

Richard Wagner. Parsifal

(The keynote of Parsifal is Ecstasy.)

Parzifal: I scarcely move, Yet I swiftly seem to run

Gurnemanz: my son, thou seest Here SPACE and TIME are ONE.

Parzifal. Wolfram von Eschenbach. Translated by A.T. Hatto

I’m Wolfram von Eschenbach. I’m a bit of a minnesænger.

Spring Haunches

Leopard Branch grows a summer coat of kudzu,

Not yet claustrophobic

It will not be humid enough.

Not like in Bamaland.

His legs drape mossy of either side of the foreside.

Hips rested just so.

Tail winding round the trunk of his supportive tree.

Head resting.

Possibly but not necessarily asleep.

A Knecht a’kneeled Before Flame

He saw how Joseph was annealed by the fire…[and] felt the ordeal more than Joseph. P241

Sounded overwrought to me. Then I bothered (sic. concerned) myself with actually looking up

/annealed/

I was being educated on several levels. I first read the sentence such that I thought I knew more than I did. I imagined /annealed/ to be some form of a bow or a kneeling position, a kiss the ring, smell the glove. A posture taken when the situation demands you take yourself seriously. If you can imagine such a thing! Or that you undertake to do something trivial quite meticulously. For the sake of the process itself. By your choice. You take part with and in. Or, when ritual, tradition, culture, bestows us a transcendental catharsis by allowing us to take very specific actions with others undertaking them alongside, as well. A hymn sung by a choir. Suddenly, lighting a candle is holy. Yet, lighters and matches abound. Fire is easy to come by but it was not always so.

Blind spot.

Shocking how much meaning we can contain. There are so many pearls that some readers start arguing over the appraising of an irregular pearl. It is all about finding, examining, analyzing, and drawing conclusions about the relative value. Waiting to find that big money shot pearl. A yup.

“awe, more valuable. made of pearl but unique, collectors edition. Gesture, essence. and articulation.”

“Worthless. It’s shape isn’t paradigmatic of the standard pearl. Misinformed. Monstrous, devalues the other pearls to even be in the same bowl with them.”

Who let the pigs out? Who? Hoo hoo?

Too much monkey business for me. We as a species have moved on. Or did I miss the train and am now out of joint?

The Glass Bead Game: Magister Ludi. 1990. First Owl Books Edition. $18.00 USD/$24.95 Canada. That seems really inexpensive as I think back on it now. At five hundred and fifty eight total pages, it is a trek but no death march. As with any trek, though there will be days. But, then there will really be days! Am I right, a hyuck, hyuck.

The length is not the deterrent. The printing of the book intimidates. At least my copy. That is why I bought it. It looked too heavy for a book that size. A thing that is larger than physics allows but your eyes empirically cannot deny. Your brain’s rational processors will fill in the reasons that ‘you can’t trust your eyes.’

A phone booth and doctor.

A House of Leaves.

A ship ever at sail on a foreign sea, the life of the house mouse lost.

S/he loses their position in the home.

You lose something you did not know could go missing. The notion of home? An ending spoiled. Don’t let the little ones hear. Something you cannot unlearn but surely there is room for doubt and maneuver. Doubt suffers where there is little room

Something you took for granted. Because there is so much to see and so many things vying for the pleasure of your (everone’s) attention at all times. We cannot process the amount of information we physically can conceive us. We get by and brains fill in the blanks. The way you discover your new car’s blind spot.

《《 》》

Crash. Ah, hell.

《《 》》

But what was to be done? Can you judge yourself for not knowing that your vehicle is afflicted with a blind spot? Sure, but where that at? If you want me I’ll be in the bar. Speculating on some dreamy nonsense. The thing you did not see in your rearview & side mirrors (electric-adjustable, I’d wager) as you merged lanes, was, by dint of optical physics, unseeable. You cannot adjust for and account for such a variable.

The publishers did not eff around. There is a deliberate concern for both style and balance in the margin setting and lettering layout. There is room to scrawl. If you are into that sort of thing. I am! The luxury of the thick white broadband’s conjunction into right angles about the four verticies gains further dimensionality by its opposing page.

The reflecting pool in the palm. Narcissus finally went mobile. Each page appears with its predecessor and/or successor in symmetry. Consider the leaf of the sheet itself. Two page numbers and each bearing letter matricies yet on but one page. One page in the book holds two pages. Think about that. There ain’t ya’ll entertained? If that is not magic, then ya’ll doin’ it wrong. I see gods contained and present amongst the multiform streams. IHS Bacchus first. Then as Janus. Holding us in the present, pressed fast between the past and the future tense. So the text on each side of the page gives rise to leaf between your fingers as you turn the page.

Let us say, maybe, five hundred and forty pages are geometrically identical in dimension, same squares, same squares. Matrix array with its vectors contained in those critical margins. Two koi ponds reflected about the same axis of symmetry. Simpatico. The more you read, the more the very confined area with unnecessarily tiny pt. font, single spaced. Tight, trim, orderly. And you are drawn in and held fixed in that little space. Rapt. Enraptured.

And then the ratio expands. The page does not seem so small.

The biggest hinderance to the book’s popularity in America was a poor original cipher of the German language. But translating the lyrical prose of Hesse is probably like trying to translate a Japanese character into ‘the English word for it.’ You can pull it off but the English Equivalence is questionable. Americans are poorly positioned to be strong readers of such heavy, often erudite, ultimately, ironic tomes. We do not get the geographical exposure to other cultures.

Hell, we didn’t get the joke.

It fell for it too! The joke of being so dreadfully stoic that the reader would not dare think you were givin’ a ribbin.’ This is a book; An effing long one; I found all these pearls. I’m rich. Made-man. This is a book of power not jokes for blokes.

Sigh. Now, your cracking me up.

The good news is, if you do ever get the joke, it makes you smile and laugh out loud. Then shake your head. Hold on.

Although, states are arguably the same as little countries.

A discussion of the rather interesting history of this book finding expression in the English language

The day the aerobarges arrived

The robbers hasten their liquor store evacuation, the day the sky barges arrived. Turns out, there was no need.

《》

Effie was aset at the burled wooden desk, plate of blackberries, the culprits bleeding on her fingers. The barges drifted past. She heard them before she saw them. The cat had been fretting all morning. This reduced her surprise at the surprising.

She heard old music. Old timey. Pressed for phonograph. Tinny music. The kind men in fur coats would Charleston to, while drinking: alumnus attending the homecoming game of his alma mater. Girls twirl like it is the 1920’s. Reservedly untoward. The dance is all in the eyes.

This flashes in her mind, a daydream of orientation. Her curiosity piqued, she makes for the front room, with its huge picture windows, framed by newly painted, unadorned white walls.

Picturesque, but now the Douglas firs partially obscure her view of the aerostrocities. They move at a painfully slow knots per hour.

Ima grab those blackberries. They are not in rush and I’m hungry as eff.

She pops them ala popcorn into her mouth, watching. Her neighbors begin to venture outside. Some voluntary evacuation necessitated by a craving for speculation. The steely comfort of hearing someone else acknowledge the surprising, and then say, “I think it must be…”

Their words crackled like burning logs, the freezing air making every word they spoke become the smoke. Hazy veil from the heat source warming their fear. Tirefire.

Effie watched them, too. Actors on the stage.

To call a stone panther.

The braches on boughs broke.

Lying lifeless. Casualties of the white out.

Lost soldiers, abandoned by their unit.

Under the weight they could not withstand.

Only now revealed

Sheets melted.

Perfect circle encircling more circle.

Inside.

There is a blackstone panther, she re-enlivens each night

A path of sprawling

Stalking prowl.

The little girl awaiting her bus told me so.

She tugged my coat and pointed as I passed: I see her at night.

Does she have a name, I ask?

She just nods and waves.

Passing,

I smile and turnaway.

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