Ironic

that we borrowed the term joie-de-vivre
from the French,
who are somewhat dour and surly
compared with the Italians.

The poetry of great prose.

"Above him the great dome made a lonely tumour above the ogre-king."

on the tomb of  Tamerlane or Timur in Samarkand, by
Colin Thubron in The Lost Heart of Asia.

Some mediæval 'Holy Women'

claimed that the foreskin of Jesus
'materialised' in their mouths -
like old rubber bands, perhaps,
or with the texture of a pre-latex condom -
but what did they do with it ?
[insert answer here]......................................
.................................................................
- and at least one Italian church
has a relic of St Joseph's Breath...

Art

which began as a kind of homage to nature
is now an insult,
being like gold taps in a bathroom
without running water and no WC -
or like the donning of a sable coat
in winter with nothing underneath.

The Savannah of Eden.

When food was no longer free for all
and equally shared - that was The Fall.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p057w3nm

Infinity

is as ridiculous an idea as Heaven
or Yahwe/God/Alla'h,
yet, like them, is what our civilisation is based on.
In an infinite hotel
which is fully (infinitely) booked
there is an infinite number of vacant rooms
- or so I'm told.
This sounds like sophistry
of the most outrageous, religious kind.

(My dog, Asterix, however,
who had seven years of irregular
under-feeding, when he spent
his days in a cage, and his nights
alone in spooky warehouse dark,
tells me
that he
understands infinity -
because it is located in his belly...)

Human Intervention.

Thinking (yet again) about Syrian refugees

arriving in Greece
land of Clytemnestra, Œdipus, Antigone, Elektra
...and Diogenes,
I wonder
what's so marvellous about survival ?

For Malcolm

I feel so privileged
and humble
eating your gorgeous
gooseberry crumble.

I am a Peculiar Person

who talks not only to himself
and to his dog
but also to his delicious
gooseberry crumble.

I hope that I will beckon Death

before She hits on me,
with adjutants and bully-boys
of pain and misery.

Afterlife

appeals to two opposed categories of human beings:
those who cannot imagine that their self-importance is temporary,
and those whose life is so wretched that their only consolation
is that a life-to-come might be a compensation.

The only route

to emotional independence
is by avoiding peer pressure.
This is especially difficult
if you're a parent, so if you want
to be emotionally independent
it is necessary to avoid peer pressure
by not being a parent.

Although I am certainly not an admirer,

I would venture to say that the main reason
for the widespread dislike of President Trump
is that he is incapable of hypocrisy.

Where are they ?

(Islamic State Do!)

Being so downright,

I don't think I have ever been upright
(as in upright citizen)
except in my teenage, year-long, religious phase,
when I was a sickening prig - polite,
and, very up-tight.

We are coming down with stuff -

but have hardly room to breathe
or laugh -
and so we seethe -

bothering only to study stuff
rather than our situations
or our mass, crass motivations.

I guess I'm too late.

In 1979 (aged 27) I was living with my German Sheepdog
as a part-time gardener on the 9,000 acre estate
of the Earl of Caledon, on the Irish Border.
I had read Jean Genet and Dostoyevsky,
but I don't think I knew anything about cocaine
apart from Cocaine Blues and a 1920s blues
that I cannot locate, but has been re-interpreted
by Jackson Browne.
I guess this is typical of a white middle-class nerd!

(listen also to the wonderful Memphis Jug Band's
Take a whiff on me.)

On the Fourth of July

European-Americans celebrate
their independence from England,
so most African-Americans don't have to work.
They can spend the day
celebrating each other
and commiserating with, maybe even praying for,
Original-Americans.

Before Independence,

New England (especially Maryland)
was a penal colony.
Three-quarters of the population
had been shipped from the British Isles in chains.
After the Independence of the USA,
Australia became 'home' to Irish Republicans,
vagrants, blasphemers and stealers of beans.

The difference between

All
and an infinite number is
Imagination.

In 1968

(the year of the Prague Spring, Pražské jaro, Pražská jar)
one in every nine Canadians was an immigrant
or refugee - mostly draft-dodgers, drop-outs
and deserters from the USA.
In 1970 Canada was the world's largest exporter
of small-arms.
There is no connection.
The "vibrant" Czech small-arms industry
is based in Brno, called Brünn
in the anti-nationalist Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Why you should never turn on an overhead air-duct on an aeroplane.

Aer Lingus* gave me the 'flu
- and this was mid-June, mind you!
Ten days in bed...
I wished I was dead
or at least was able to sue.

* [Aer Lingus is Ireland's snooty and deposed national airline,
now lowish-cost - if you book early.]

Western Values

exterminated these fine specimens, too.
(WVs always eliminate the toughest,
always want to bring down the alpha-males
whether lions, tigers or superior people.)

If it is warm enough (in summer, anyway) to live without clothes
on Tierra del Fuego,
not so far from Antarctica,
why are we forced and brainwashed to do so ?
For two reasons:
1. The nasty genital-obsessed Abrahamic religions which have taken over the world.
2. Without the huge areas of land devoted to growing cotton
     and the huge factories devoted to processing it
     and the huge factories devoted to fashioning it
     and the millions of underpaid workers involved in all this
     our nasty and criminally-wasteful capitalist system would collapse.

go to website =>

A dog's nose...

...can see in the dark.

And what is more...

children spread children.

Considering the Abrahamic religions,

I conclude than God is
misery.

Then - and Now.

click to enlarge

Adam Zagajewski, a celebrated poet, wrote:

"Only in marriage do love and time,
eternal enemies, join forces."

Well, he's not Rilke, not Miłosz,
but a middle-class
triumphalist Polish Catholic,
living in the USA,
so he would write
such populist, trite,
sub-militarist tripe.

Welcome to the Astérix Hotel *

Just one star.
*

* Himself, your * canine * trip advisor *

Buying a second-hand violin ?

Check that it doesn't look like this inside:
PVA and possibly sniffing-glue, missing linings and corner-blocks...

photo by violin-restorer Almina Kaselis

The benefit of Literature.

I have read perhaps 500 novels
and, although I understand people
(especially males)
better than I otherwise would have,
I am no better at coping with them
(and my own shortcomings)
than if I had not read a single one.

Until AI* saves the planet,

the more technology we rely on,
the stupider we will get.

* by this I mean the unlikely perfection of Artificial Intelligence,
not the god-playing practice of Artificial Insemination.

The basic problem with socialism

is that it is obsessed with labour
(hence The British Labour Party),
production, and consumption.
Thus it inevitably supports
the exploitation of 'resources',
whether human or non-human
in as crass a way as capitalism.

When the Lakota Sioux were asked

by the stupid, murderous
white Greedies if they would sell
"their" land, they gravely wondered if
"their" sky was included in the
(dishonoured) deal.

Not to mention the millions of buffalo slaughtered and left to rot.

Darrel Whitaker,

from Glenwood Springs in Colorado,
claims a sasquatch attacked him
and attempted to rape him
while he was walking in the woods...

   http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/

Hi there, Darrel (poor guy, what a name!) -
it happens to us all, sooner or later.
But the rest of us keep quiet about it.

I'm sure -

because I so love going to bed -
that I will be wonderfully happy when I'm dead,
enjoying the eternal bliss
of not having to arise and piss.

My four hints towards self-improvement.

Examine the intention.
Engage the attention.
Enter the unknown -
informed by the inknown.

How long will it be

before there are more dead
than living people on Facebook ?

Probably,

because I so love going to bed,
I will be wonderfully happy when I'm dead,
luxuriating in the eternal bliss
of not having to get up and piss.

"Only in America" ?

Economic growth:

the cancer of the world.

Unfortunately, 'Westerners'

are too brainwashed to understand
that what 'Islamists' object to
is less our sham democracy
and aggressively-consumerist 'way-of-life'
and more our multi-level
hypocrisy, which universal curse
of civilisation they want to replace
with their own - apparently even worse.

Possibly the most successful advertisement of all time:

A diamond is forever.

(Like ignorance and death.)

We are very bad at

imagining other people's imaginations.

A dog is hoping...

...that someone will come
and re-charge her bone.

Good to Know.

"If you choose to Reset Edge by deleting the whole Edge User environment
and run the PowerShell reregister commandlet to recreate a clean user environment,
Windows will automagically restore/repopulate the RoamingState folder for you
with data from the cloud."

Reflections on Flannery O'Connor.

Very many millions
are poorer than the dead,
for the dead owe nothing
to anyone, and they know
that life is no gift,
just indebtedness,
misunderstanding.

What dies with our bodies
is the construction of consciousness,
and beyond fragile awareness
nothing can be known,
nothing experienced.

Something we now forget

is that almost all people
(crown princes, viziers,
royal stewards, generals,
as well as tenant farmers,
slaves and servants)
were expendable
and easily replaceable.