Since 1967

I have been prescribed drugs
for frequent Moderately Depressive States.

These included
Chlorpromazine (Largactil, a drastic neuroleptic)
Trifluoperazine (Stelazine)
Paroxetine (Seroxat),
Doxepin (Sinequan),
Sertraline,
Trazodone (I slept for 14 hours).

They either had no effect or else unpleasant ones.

I tried St John's Wort and Tryptophan
to no effect.

Duloxetine (Cymbalta) had a good
result for a month or two.
Likewise Citalopram and Escitalopram.

Eventually,
after realising that what I really had
was Mild to Moderate Bipolar Disorder
(undiagnosed, of course) I bought
from the Netherlands one-gram capsules
of little 'Truffle-mushrooms'
sclerotia of Psilocybe tampanensis
to be taken once every 4 days.
They are not illegal or 'scheduled drugs'.

Within a week my mood-swings became
only slight, that is to say 'normal',
and my general feeling was
'quite good to very good'.  
My creativity, which for years had lurked
underneath my low mood, returned.

Finally, a medicine – a natural
medicine – which worked!

Where I used to live in Northern Ireland,
Psilocybe semilanceata used to grow prolifically.
Harvesting them in the quiet autumn fields
was beautiful. When I ate them,
whether five or fifty, I always
had the same beautiful semi-erotic experience:
I would take off all my clothes,
go into the chilly garden
and sit upon the grass, smelling the trees
and shrubs, sniffing my armpits,
'absorbing power from the earth'
through my arse (or ass).
For someone un-inclined to sodomy
and deodorant
it was a lovely, strange thing that came to pass.

I suffer from

Mental Cascade –

which is when thoughts

tumble over and erase thoughts.

The Irish love peat:

which is (next to wood)
the most polluting and least
efficient source of heat.

Helena Bonham-Carter, actor:

 'Women will always be penalised for not looking 
 the same as when we were young, 
 whereas men just grow beards, don’t they?' 

The Cult

of Romantic Love,

instituted in eleventh-century
Aquitaine, glorifies a mild-to-moderate
Adolescent State

and has become 
a cultural obsession, which has infantilised
millions of adults.

Because I am in love with Entropy
I rejoice. 
(Is Love a form of Entropy ?
or is Entropy the ultimate form of Love ?)

A good place to live

is one where you never feel lonely
on your own.

Mastering the art of Silence
is an essential part
of the élitist art of living.

'Depression'

“is not an illness, it is not a sickness.
It is a state of disconnection,”

writes super-solipsist Dr Ray Osheroff. 

Well, who would have thought it ;-)

Simplicissimus.

In a reasonable and just society
the most unpleasant work
should be the best rewarded.

But the sense of fairness
in humans becomes ever fainter.

from my Tumblr feed

(most of which is paintings posted by 'alongtimealone-2')

'Ne jamais sortir des Nombres et des Êtres' (Baudelaire)

Marx's  definition of capitalism needs to be updated :-

An economic system now based on gambling
and the absolutism of Winners (Saved)
and Losers (Damned)

in which those who do the most essential work*
are rewarded the least, while the
profiteers and gamblers get ever richer
and pillage the planet more and more.

*public services, cleaning, caring....

Hard work, of course, stops people from thinking.

Accelerated Entropy.

In 12th century Europe,
monks considered wealth to be
not just a sin
but a crime against humanity.

How things have changed,
thanks to the Propaganda of the Rich.

When I was a child

I wanted everyone to be my friend.
In my senescence
the most I can expect
is invisibility.
My best friend always was
and still remains
my body.

The latest 'misery memoir'

is a film from Steven Spielberg,
who complains of anti-semitism
in Arizona when he was young.

His grandparents were Ukrainian Jews.

As the Germans were starting their 'elimination' of 2½ million Jews in Ukraine, another 1½ million were evacuated by Stalin to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan on terrible train journeys that could take over a month
like those to the Gulag. 

Many died on the way. 
Many more died on arrival. The station at Almaty was littered with bodies...

The Insanity of Autocracy.

In Belarus,
the Belarusian language
has been banned
by the Belarusian dictator.

A long time ago

We were reduced
to inventing agriculture
because already
we were too many.

If language had been

an evolutionary rather than
a tribal advantage
we would be mutually intelligible
like other species.

(The only word we really need
is ENOUGH.)

The only Artificial Intelligence

is what is streamed, injected
into children's heads

and out into their children's heads.

If you prefer reward to physical propinquity

the best friends* are those whom you have never met
but communicate (even commune) with on the Internet.

*apart from dogs

When people declare

other people to be 'animals'
they don't mean tortoises
or kittens, do they ?

Excellent neologism.

 LAWFARE

1. Oppression of citizens by use of trumped-up charges.

2. Litigiousness by disgruntled people or groups.

Let's face it :

most 'art' – as proclaimed
by cliques of élites – is crap.

My three favourite Ukrainians are:

1. No-longer-comedian Volodomyr Zelenskiy.

2. Non-Ukrainian-born, non-penguin Andrei Kurkov.

3. Ukrainian-born poet Yunna Petrovna Morits, who, like Kurkov, writes in Russian and who may identify as Non-Ukrainian.*

* Living in Moscow, Yunna Morits has written poems in favour of the war against her homeland.

Criminality.

Every culture is criminal.
The more complex, the more criminal.

Dirty Work - 1

Dirty Work - 2

Political murk.

Flags and banners >
Tear-gas and truncheons >
Political murk.

Cynical smirk.

Newspeak.

The homeless have now been re-named

'unhomed'.

Snowflakes.

I hated circuses
because I thought the clowns aggressive
and the animals pitiful.
I couldn't appreciate
the antics of the acrobats and jugglers.

But I loved the dwarves.
Still do.

I have always hated 'dirty jokes'
and sexual innuendo
except when they were witty
(which they rarely are).
Likewise noisy (audible toothache) musack
and mind-quenching songs.
Lipstick makes me shudder.

I guess that I'm a snowflake.

Snowflakes, all individual, all unique
are all identical when trodden underfoot.

When I was a quiet little boy

I loved to go with my grandmother
to visit old ladies (her friends)
in their fascinating Victorian houses. 
Now I'm an old man
in a beautiful house, happy
that nobody comes to visit. 

'Buried News'

is Good News*.

This week, the first
drug-manufacturer
and laboratory
on the African continent
opened in Morocco.

*But maybe not for the pharma-cartels of Europe and the USA.

Limited Military Intervention.

At the end of the 12th century
the king of England decided
to make a Limited Military Intervention
(via Wales) in Ireland.

At the beginning of the 21st century
the king of England still rules over
a part of Ireland.

Vladimir Putin, eat your heart out.

* * *

You are right, however, in seeking to resist
American Power.

But you are too stupid to realise that you can resist it only
with 'Soft Power', which through your military obscenities

you have ineluctably destroyed.
And America will continue profitably
infantilising us all to the very end.

Top-Down Pseudo-Aid.

Most of the money donated to White aid agencies
operating in sub-Saharan Africa is spent on
running the agencies and paying their staff. 

Almost none goes to the poor.
This does not surprise me. 
People would rather give 20 €$£
to Action Aid (or whatever)
than 1 €$£ to the homeless person in a doorway.

top-down-solutions >

I have the narrative memory of a goldfish.

I can watch a film 3 times
and each time is like the first.

I can read a book 3 times
unaware that I read it before.

I can summon up from memory
very little of my life's narrative: just
a few dramatic incidents.

But I can remember the names of plants
in three languages, can remember maps
and landscapes, and how I felt
about people that I met.

This was not much use in my final
university exams, when I could remember
very little of the little I had read
of what Schopenhauer wrote.

It might be a good idea

for us to stop telling each other
how wonderful our brains are

instead of how terrible their effects.

There is no tragedy in nature.

The only tragedy is being born
human, from which all other tragedy
and comedy emerge.

The Serbo-American poet, Charles Simic

has just died.

COUNTRY FAIR
for Hayden Carruth

If you didn't see the six-legged dog,
It doesn't matter.
We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,

One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be out at the fair.

Then the keeper threw a stick
And the dog went after it
On four legs, the other two flapping behind,
Which made one girl shriek with laughter.

She was drunk and so was the man
Who kept kissing her neck.
The dog got the stick and looked back at us.
And that was the whole show.

*

WATERMELONS

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

*

from PARADISE MOTEL

Millions were dead; everybody was innocent.
I stayed in my room. The President
Spoke of war as of a magic love potion.
My eyes were opened in astonishment.
In a mirror my face appeared to me
Like a twice-cancelled postage stamp.

I lived well, but life was awful...

People don't like too much choice –

which is one reason why men
choose beer rather than wine.

A New (to me) Meaningless Word :

Intersectionality.

Some of the paintings vandalised

in the looting of the Presidential palace
in Brasilia by a neo-fascist mob
were by the Brazilian painter
Emiliano Di Cavalcanti.

How can we hope

for continuing Biodiversity
after eliminating Humanodiversity
so thoroughly ? 

One of the last Tasmanians

Where it's at.

 

New York Subway (Métro) by Chris Maliwat

In a consumption-obsessed society

 the only good thing about poverty, perhaps
is the lack of choice.

Royality.

Prince Harry: he got frostbite on his willy.
Prince William: he has fallen out with Harry
because of the woman he did marry.
It all seems very commonplace and silly.

* * *

The business of celebrity is a profitable death cult,
dooming those it deifies.
Especially Diana, Princess of Wales.

People who 'want sex all the time'

do not suffer from priapism
or nymphomania
or compulsive-addictive promiscuity,
but, sadly, from
simple (or complex) dissatisfaction,
if not continual disappointment.

Ah, another happy Entropophile !

 

John Gray on James Lovelock:

 Jim’s belief was that science should be used to achieve what he called a sustainable retreat from the Earth.

Today's wonderful picture:

two spotted salamanders being absorbed by a northern pitcher plant
in Algonquin provincial park, Canada.

photograph by Samantha Stephens 

Tinseltown

is the best example
of capitalist totalitarianism.

Clever me ?

In The Guardian's little daily word-game
this morning I did terribly well in my first attempt
to create a long word containing the letter-group ART.
But there's something wrong with the statement below:

'Education' is colonialism

of the mind by foreign powers.
Bit by bit you and your world
become fully occupied.

Save the Bats!

Bring on the dark!
the restful, egalitarian, loving dark;
the primordial, comforting dark.
The greatest evil is blindingly,
evangelically, colonisingly bright.
Put out that spark!
Save the Dark!

A matter of dominion.

Old, talentless, white –
my future's not very bright.
As it gets dimmer
I'll get even thinner
and slip gently into the Night.

Walking out of movie-shows.

Few people leave cinemas before a film ends
(it seems they'd rather suffer what they paid for)
much less soon after one begins,
as I did with Atonement
based on an unreadable book of the same name.

I also fled The Company of Wolves
and Taxi Driver. Maybe one or two more.

I could not stand a much-praised play
(Translations by Brian Friel)
and dragged my companion
out of the National Theatre in London. 
I also abandoned Berg's Lulu at the Royal Opera House.

Last week I escaped a film
in two languages, stupidly 
called Godland* in both English and French:
a tedious study in dreariness, partly about

mutual incomprehension between Icelanders and Danes
during Denmark's cruel colonisation
(described by the great Halldór Laxness),

whose subtitles (in French)
came 9 seconds after
the words they were translated from

– and fell over a stout woman's legs,
sprawling on the floor
in an ungainly exit.

*The Danish title is Vanskabte Land,
which means 'Lost, Disappeared and/or Forbidden Land'.

It seems strange to me

that smugness
is never listed amongst the sins
of Muslims and Christians.

For that matter,
neither is hypocrisy.

Public grief

for famous people who have died is
a harmless example of the 'madness of crowds'.

Private grief for someone released
from toxic life is the sucking pain
just under the heart, sustained by self-pity.
We are worth less than the air we pollute.

(This is something that almost everybody will refute.)

Trans-sexualiity.

Billie Eilish is very concerned with|
an overwhelming,
definitively liquid male fantasy, 

and says that she
feels 'very male in her power'.

(The words to her songs are
nothing to write home about –
not much literary power there
– but then that's quite normal
with 'pop-songs'.)

She has nothing to do with
the worrying  trans-sexual bandwagon.

She reminds me of
Northern Albania's splendid
Sworn Virgins.

Having been famous since she was sixteen
she is also a 'victim' of
imposter syndrome

which is illustrated on Wikipedia by
this Kwakwaka'wakw transformation-mask.

New Year Bit-torrenting.

As I write this I am downloading
a British TV series (A Spy Among Friends)
in little parcels from computers in Latvia, Lithuania,
Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Israel, Bulgaria, France,
Ukraine, Moldova, Thailand and Kazakhstan.
They come and go, like friends, or spies.

This, I suppose, is the most-attenuated form of friendship,
or as much community of interest as I can expect.