Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Thursday 30 April 2015

All the stuff


we have to play with !
We will never have enough -
and, competing, paying more and more,
we play less and less,
though everywhere for the taking
there is good old stuff galore.

from GrumpyPenguin on Tumblr

























Unfortunately, however,
there are not many stressful occasions
when this is possible.
And pissing on policemen (especially if you are not white
and at least middle-aged) might well create more stress,
or lead to death.

Wednesday 29 April 2015

As a vegetarian gets older


s/he starts to appreciate
Cold Shoulder of Human Being
(often garnished with contumely),
especially when it's rotten -
because it shows
that s/he is better-seeing
and has gotten
more honest,
bolder...

Because I sometimes talk to Death


and not to God
the latter says I am a Fraud.
The Former kisses me
on bended knee -
I hold my breath.

Tuesday 28 April 2015

Regular readers (Hi, Dina!) will know already


that I am a multi- even mega-privileged parasite
upon what Americans fear most:
a 'socialist' Welfare State.
This I pondered on today
as I talked to my GP
(doctor) whom I can usually see
with only 24 hours' notice,
because he is one of the last remaining
doctors with his own practice -
just like The Good Old Days
of Respect and Contumely.
Even in France this is a rarity,
and Saint-Antonin, the too-trendy village
which I have just abandoned, has no regular GP at all
for a population of two thousand.

But O, the shabby, cheap, veneered, worn
desk with damaged corners
that he has his computer on, poor man!
My vast desk is inlaid walnut,
and came, like the fine sideboard (on the right),
together with the house:

















Still, better that than be a doctor like the one I had in childhood
at his vast mahogany table, who, like my GP uncle
advised my (single) mother
to send me to a private school where I would
"have the corners rubbed off" me".

The Dark Ages

Many twelfth-century churches in Northern Spain
still have windows 'glazed' with sheets of alabaster
which make the interiors seem very dark to us.
But when those churches were built, common people's houses
had neither windows nor chimneys,
and the brightness of the churches attracted them.
It was too dark then.
It is too bright now.

more on the mediæval period here >>>

[Alabaster dissolves in rain,
which is why these windows survive only
in the drier parts of Northern Spain.]

...on the other hand -


there is no Sixth Extinction -
not for a while, anyhow.
On the other hand,
there is a big local-conservation problem.

click to read the argument


Monday 27 April 2015

A different kind of grain.

A search engine I used to look up
Against the Grain  
(not the unreadable A Rebours by J-K Huysmans)
came up with this:

https://wordpress.com/read/post/id/85111165/50/

Dear Terrorists

 and harmless Illegal Migrants Everywhere,
I, too, have been banned from Google-Plus
- and I'm just a bourgeois wuss !

Globalisation

It is the best of times.
It is the worst of times.
Even those below the 'poverty-line' in rich countries
can gad about the world (or much of it) at will
on ridiculously-cheap flights.
But even the self-sufficient in poor countries
are ever more restricted in their movements
as Europe, North America and Australia
turn into vast 'Gated Communities'.

Sunday 26 April 2015

from my fellow-blogger Dína


"Bůh lidem dal úsměv, aby mohli skrývat své pravé pocity."
which, in the language of Bohemian and Moravian shepherds means
(more or less)
God gave human beings the ability to smile so they can hide what they really feel.
But dogs also smile, and in smiling show that they are happy.
Maybe God made people smile in order to confuse everyone,
including dogs and other gods.

I gave up painting several years ago

but now and again I add a spot of paint or glue
or a found object to a found object
and give it a title.

This piece of metal found by the roadside
and hung on a barn wall is called :

Arabian Night

Saturday 25 April 2015

It's time to write your Living Will


(or legally-binding Advance Decision in Great Britain)
when you have to sit down to put your socks on.
And time to die
when you can no longer cut your toe-nails,
but just sit and cry.

On behalf of abused vegetables everywhere.



Dear Malcolm,
I know it's Synæsthesia Gone Mad
but I really felt for that poor leek
cowering in a corner, yesterday,
yellow and withered.
Vegetables like to be eaten as soon as possible
after they are wrenched from the earth,
not left decaying fast or slow
like African-Americans on Death Row.

Friday 24 April 2015

Ahura-Mazda ?

click picture to read message

Ecstasy is a state

or even a condition;
paradise is a topographical dream
invented alongwith perdition -
and ne'er the twain shall meet
much less copulate.

Thursday 23 April 2015

A man with a lovely face “and only his dog for company”

carves caves lovingly in New Mexico.

















If one is going to follow a passion,
it is best if it is not ‘to benefit society'
- for therein lies misery, if not catastrophe.

Very few humans are considered by other humans

to be useful when dead,
unlike most animals, even those few
who are used and abused when alive.

An Arctic ocean clam has lived for 500 years.

Wednesday 22 April 2015

Perhaps the fewer people you have to deal with















the happier you can be.

Market Forces

People in rich countries
can fly a thousand miles
for fifty euros.  But it costs
€2,800 for a refugee
to take an unseaworthy boat
five miles from Turkey to Greece
and then be drowned with fifty others.
People in rich countries
complain about the indignity
of low-cost flights.
Should Ryanair, EasyJet or Spirit
be induced to enter the lucrative
people-trafficking business ?

read more >>>


Tuesday 21 April 2015

On Compulsory Education.

"There is no such thing as a free lunch"
and no nation-state is benevolent
except in ways most useful to it,
and specific, and limiting, and limited.

Monday 20 April 2015

My self-exception

from the bred-in-the-bone
and Universal Games
of Mutual- and Self-Deception
is not my most endearing feature.
I have excellent parties on my own.

Sunday 19 April 2015

Erasmus wrote :

"Personally, in my sensible moments, I would not be any more pleased
at compliments from a friend than at being censured, even by an enemy,
so long as it was obviously not a matter of the cobbler not sticking to his last;
for compliments are nearly always harmful,
while adverse criticism is always beneficial.
If it is justified I learn from it, while if it should be wrong still I am sharpened, aroused, awakened, rendered more alert and cautious,
and emboldened to defend the truth.
Men are indeed spurred on less keenly by the longing for fame
than by the fear of disgrace."

- Letter 182 (to Christopher Fisher; March 1505; tr. R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson)

Saturday 18 April 2015

A life of ease

for some
is death -
for most
is as unimaginable
as a champagne-river.
Easeful death :
release forever.

Friday 17 April 2015

A hermit lives here.




















photo by Danila Tkachenko who writes:

   "I am concerned about the issue of internal freedom in modern society: 
is it actually achievable when you’re surrounded by social framework ? 
School, work, family – once in this cycle, you are a prisoner of your own situation.”

Thursday 16 April 2015

Imagination

is what democracies
and all societies who prize 'free speech'
seek to extinguish
through ever more thorough Education,

and is what keeps people going in other forms
of dictatorship and social manipulation.

Wednesday 15 April 2015

Tuesday 14 April 2015

The 1940s term 'pin-up' has fallen out of use -

probably because images are now everywhere,
especially on computer-screens.
Here, however, is My Pin-up of the Month
(thanks to the BBC).


In 'advanced' societies

people behave
as if they live
in fragmenting networks
of mutual contempt...

Monday 13 April 2015

On Dying Without Dignity.

















"Cancer has turned me into an old dog in a vivisection laboratory.
I let the oncologists do what they feel they must,
and then curl up in a dark corner waiting for them to do it again."

My shower-deflector.




















My new house has a long thin bathroom
with a bathtub, in which there is a shower.
Instead of a horrible, restricting curtain
I found this large canvas, which neatly rests
at an angle against the toilet-roll holder
so that all water flows into the bath.

About the painting:
the multi-referential title is Dragonautism
and the visual reference is Bosch's
Temptations of St Anthony.


Mothers at the end of their tether

in the past
murdered difficult
or damaged children -
and blamed wolves.
Now they have no such recourse
because there are no wolves.

Saturday 11 April 2015

Statistics.

Are there are more cowslip-flowers in April
in Quercy (a large chunk of south-western France)
than there are stars in the sky ?

André Bernold asked Samuel Beckett :

- What would you have done if you hadn't become a writer ?
- I would have listened to music.

(epigraphed in Frédéric Beigbeder's Holiday in a Coma)

Friday 10 April 2015

The first cuckoo

(which I heard today)
may have flown
all (or most of) the way
from Ouagadougou...

Thursday 9 April 2015

Wednesday 8 April 2015

From cheap detergent to wood-burning stoves

and Internet Service Providers,
capitalism condemns us
to a continual freedom of choice
- a requirement for perpetual decision-making
which is the subtlest of slaveries.

Tuesday 7 April 2015

A Reader Writes :

The human species on this planet
is like yeast in wine - which consumes all
its sugary resources and excretes
the toxic waste of alcohol. The result
then, through incompetence
or bloody-mindedness,
turns to vinegar - and gall.

(thank you Brian)

Monday 6 April 2015

There is hardly a single friend

that I have regretting losing -
at least since I was at my third-rate university -
and I have gladly lost many...

Sunday 5 April 2015

Grief

is a somewhat shallow
and demonstrative emotion,
despite the general belief.
There is bereavement
beyond - and long before - mere grief.

Saturday 4 April 2015

Decree :

That the Plazas de Toros
should be kept religiously
empty, unstained
by blood or adolescents' underwear.
Bulls, like true poets and
flamenco musicians,
are born and degraded,
not trained.

Thursday 2 April 2015

What we call and commend

as courage
is just a drive
we share with all other animals :
the urge and instinct to survive.
  Moral courage,
on the other hand,
dissociates itself
from the natural
banal desire
to stay alive.

Wednesday 1 April 2015

The basis of religion - and hence human behaviour


- is imagination :
people believe that imaginary minds without bodies
are more powerful - and know more -
than minds with bodies;

and the bodies of gods physically conceived
(Quetzalcoatl, Ganesha, Anubis)
are imaginary, often monstrous.
The powerful are very fearful.,
and, as for the rest of us,
there is nothing so comforting
as the abandonment of reason
for mindless idolatry.