Well, that's a relief !

'First, you invent yourself,

then you get to believe your invention,'
wrote John le Carré. But most of us
are at least partly invented
by at least one other's wish and intention,
whether accepted or resented.

When is a civil war 'within control' ?

Only when one side is winning.

 

The Future

near you.

Surtsey

I remember the awe and wonder
when Surtsey arose
from the deep blue yonder,
amongst the Vestmannaeyjar

off the Icelandic coast.

I even bought (or stole) a book
of chronological photographs.

Surtsey erupting from the sea-bed.

read more >

Surtsey now.

Full of Healthy Goodness

Lemon Blueberry Oat Boosts
(always remember to read the packet)

I think I'll stick with plum crumble plus cinnamon.

The future. The face

 of the planet.

La France Profonde.

 

The clever

fools who want
to live forever
(maybe on the moon)
will harbour
in their blood and guts
and brains
more and more dementifying
microplastic
unless somehow
in their perverse ardour
they (pretty soon)
take steps and pains
to make themselves immune
and able to trip eternal light fantastic.

Sea, rock, sky.

 

Northumbria.

Costa Brava.

Thoughts

are mind-farts that can
too easily become
incontinence/deep shit.

Samhain de-hallowed.

The nearest that kooky
Cocacolons can get to the numinous :
 'spooky'.

Ghost-turnips,-pucas,-fortune-telling-and-evil...>

Missing the point.

'Indigenous' peoples,
whether in Australia or North America,
had no concept of ownership,
especially of land.

Which is why it wasn't desecrated,
pillaged and destroyed.

Thucydides.

Being somewhat deaf,
I may have mis-heard,
but I think

to anthropion 
τό ανθρώπιόν
was a word he coined
to encompass human
-ness, the human condition,
and human behaviour,

but definitely not
Roman-Christian
humanity/humanitas 
in its religiously
self-congratulatory
sense, which arose much later.

In these blogs

is ineptly outlined
my woolly anti-doctrine of
Ineffective Nihilism,
which does nothing
to combat or resist
or even recognise
Effective Altruism.

On the opposite side of my street.

 

Still-life.

photo by Yamazawa Eikoeiko

 

Still-Life

by Don McCullin.

Unicorns,

I am led to suppose,
don't have dilemmas. 

Such fortunate creatures !

The Central Hospital, Montauban.

My recent experiences
reminded me of lines by world-famous
Seamus Heaney, whose poetry
I have never liked. This mediocre poem,
for example, is ruined
by the jarring, laboured
'eyebeams threaded laser-fast'.

For me, the only good experiences
were the jolly, jolty trundlings 

by ambulance and trolley,
flat on my back as a dozen
cheerless ceilings passed.

The the operation itself, 

during which I was conscious and intrigued,
proceeded with blows and punches
to get the pacemaker in position, flesh-fast...

As usual,

after the clocks go back,
I forget to turn lights off when going to bed,
and start lighting the wood-stove
to micro-add more to the wholesale
collapse of the world.

Two glasses of wine

with my evening meal
give me a pounding headache
within sixty minutes.
It's not unusual, but
it's more common for old people
to have a next-morning hang-over.
So I've reduced to one,
followed by two glasses of water.

Recently deceased,

 "The most beautiful boy in the world"
sixteen years old,
(white, characterless, passive
and, to me, fairly repulsive
in the celebrated film of Death in Venice)

claimed that Luchino Visconti “
didn’t give a fuck” about his feelings.  

“I’ve never seen so many fascists and assholes
as there are in film and theatre,” said Björn Andrésen.
“Luchino was the sort of cultural predator
who would sacrifice anything or anyone for the work.”
And, one should add, for his desire and ambition.

Much older is much more beautiful.

Is human language over-rated (by humans) ?

 

read more >

A line from Tennyson

was the motto of my dispiriting school:
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield"
- especially on the vicious rugby-football field.

Striving for the sake of striving
is the foundation of our culture
with which we cannot help conniving.

I am the greatest

threat to Effective Altruism
by my Declaration
of Ineffective Nihilism.

A wave

is as good as
a few banal words
about weather.

 

The apotheosis of colonialism.

 

I'm all ears.

photo by Henry Szwinto

 

Dear Asterion,

Life is the Dragon.

 

Today's typical environmental news.

environment/2025/oct/21/

I have never had a decent camera.

It's just one of God's punishments for being alive.
Apart from being alive.

But here is a fine photograph
of a corner of his one-room flat,
taken on an obsolescent phone
(donated by one of his bourgeois acquaintances)
by my necessarily-minimalist friend
in London.

photo by Dennis Greenwood

'Sexuality' and 'Gender'

are of little consequence
when you feel that you
have been co-opted into
the wrong species
on a planet in the
wrong part of a universe. 

As for 'Identity',
it's just my passport.

Cleopatra bathed

in asses' milk
which went quickly sour.
I'll have to make do instead
with a salty, caramel
cornflake-shower.

Throw them in the Seine !

Jordan Bardella, the president of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party, said: “The Louvre is a global symbol of our culture. This robbery, that has allowed thieves to take the jewels of the French crown, is an unbearable humiliation for our country.”

 

For animals

terminally addicted to novelty
war is deliciously appealing
after too much peace.

Fungus on a spider.

Gibellula fungus

 

Walls don't have ears.

But some walls have microphones,
and some walls have mice,
and mice have ears.

Cells in a rat's liver.

 First, catch your rat...

photo by Francisco Lázaro-Diéguez

Too deeply felt.

I can't understand
how so much erotic activity
is underhand
as well as below the belt.

Bad painting missing.

Someone else's treat.
If I found it
I would leave it on the street.

Commerce existed

for thousands of years
before capitalism,
which is commerce
with menace.

But, Mr Blake,

there are so many millions
of unkind buildings.

Trees are so kind
and we are so blind.

Painterly.

Audun Rikardsen/Wildlife Photographer of the Year/PA

Awesome.

Indeed, I am awed
by the profligacy of
eighty billion neurons
in the human brain
determining
a creature so flawed.

"These are crazy times.

In Russia, they have always been
crazy times."

"In fact, the disposal of vast numbers
of human beings is just about
the only dynamic the country has ever known."

– Last Rights, Tim Sebastian, 1993.

Boreholes are the Future.

(Not to mention perpetually-burning
coal-seam fires.)

Homo-eroticism

offers the opportunity
for more art than urge
– simultaneously.

The food industry, a promotional photo.

So we are fed
into the feeder.
Human history's
Follow the leader.

Toadpoles

 

photo by Shane Gross

Follow your Weleda

 
Is anyone surprised ?  Most fashion and cosmetics
companies have fascistic leanings: Chanel, L'Oréal,
Belenciaga, Vuitton, Dior, Boss and others.
After all, they sell to the rich.

War, Religion.

A mosque in Gaza.

Americans

are insanely anti-intellectual
except when intellect produces
dumb domination ever more effectual.

And so it goes.

 

On Kafka.

I see no mystery in The Trial.
Joseph K's crime was to be human.

Men who know too much.

Pelicot said of Dogan’s appeal: 

"I think it is indecent."

The trial continues.

Gisèle Pelicot, a brave woman known too much,
should replace Joan of Arc
in the French psyche.

But no way is it likely.

Yours, Martin.

Sending postcards is so passé,
old hat, vieux-jeu...

So I was thrilled to get a card today
out of the blue, so to say,

with pictures of Scottish Lochs on one side,
and on the other this plaintive message
accompanying an unfranked stamp:

I’ve mainly spent the past few weeks
looking joylessly at my knees
as I hiked [presumably on a bike,
so not a tramp]]
through the Highlands
which [rugged surfeit]
was interrupted by the occasional
Trail Friend and Stunning View.
It could almost have been worth it!

Sickening.

This is not why
I read The Guardian
every day.

Outrageous.

You might surf for hours under the heading
'Dejeuner sur l'herbe with naked men'

but, amongst the hackneyed
reproductions of the paintings
by Manet and Monet,
and the film of that name by Jean Renoir,
a Renault advertisement by Doisneau
and variations, rude and (by Picasso) crude
jokes upon the theme (Dalí didn't dare)

you may find only these with even one male nude. 

Moderna Museet, Stockholm.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream ?

On the planet of the blind
Artificial Intelligence
is King.

After rare rain

in the Atacama Desert, Chile.

 photo by Lucas Aguayo

 

That tedious cliché 'The West'

 
does not necessarily include the USA,
but now must include Ukraine, the Baltics and the Balkans.

Martyrdom Denied.

If only I could have found a Cause
worth blowing myself up for
I would have joined it years ago. 

More for contumely than applause.

"The right side of History."

Excuse me,
but there is neither right side
nor bright side of history.
It is all wrong.

And there is no "redemption", either.

A Question,

 

Eat your hearts out, Burke and Hare.*

It's no surprise that the world's chief
supplier and consumer of pornography
is the world's chief supplier and consumer
of cadavers (corpses) and body-parts.

I've willed my desiccated body
to Toulouse University.
For its quick transport I actually paid.
I wouldn't care what anyone would do
to or with my body**, from anatomy-instruction
all the ways to necrophilia, but I am outraged
quite simply (as always) by the trade.

* https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize

** After all, like a good primate,
I've eaten my deep-fried psoriatic skin-flakes,
nose- and ear-pickings, drunk my urine,
once even tried a tiny piecelet of my shit...

In Arcadia

 Egos are quite small.

Chronic Fatigue and Post-covid Syndrome.

 I used to have some symptoms of the one
(especially continual fatigue and depression)
with bouts of energetic ataraxia;

now I have symptoms of the other.
Preparing for bed is quite a bother. 

Gastric revolt, sometimes brain fog so bad
I have had to work out how to turn on the kettle
and turn off the laptop; I'm almost always cold;
the type of tiredness that makes me hope
I can die quickly, quietly from fatigue.
Currently I need to rest half-way
as I pull myself up the stairs,
and have difficulty getting out of the car
and up the 50-metre slope to it.
Yet I can drive. 

Listening to the radio,
updating websites and composing blogs
make me feel a little more alive.

Last week I even managed to saw two logs,
but I simply don't have the energy
to trot out my symptoms my doctor
or to become a victim of the Wellness Industry.

My latest bargain second-hand buy
folds and fits in the front well of the car.
I don't think I'll use the plastic tray.

Our heroes

reflect our views on life.
My first hero was Theseus
because (for some deep, impenetrable reason)
I was fascinated by his encounter with Procrustes. 
Then (impenetrably) I loved the Minotaur.

For years I had no hero (hated patriarchs)
until I discovered van Gogh (and painting),
and, subsequently, Rosa Parks.

Now this senescent,
quietist seeker, finder of ataraxy,
considers Volodomyr Zelenskyy*
a hero, though that could be because
the former joker is so admirably sexy.

*who, in the words of Winston Churchill, had greatness thrust upon him.

Re-incarnation

might be in the past.

If Kali forbid! I were to be
reborn I would like to return
as a sterile spermatozoon
of a happy, hairy man.

The Work Ethic

is based on the assertion
that idle dreaming
leads to subversion.

Unintentional haiku

by Frankie Boyle (Meantime 2022, page 130)

Moon, the cloudy white
eye of a disinterested
universe.

The sheer shallowness

of Western culture revealed itself i
n the vapid, culturally-restricted
and almost totalitarian
"counter-culture" which it accommodated

and I observed as an anti-counter-cultural 
drop-out.

“Every sort of contradiction can be found in me,”

 - Michel de Montaigne.