DISSIDENCE

I'm irresistible!

2012-01-31T01:52:00.000-08:00

In the 1960s

2012-01-30T02:05:00.000-08:00

we all imagined life getting easier,
fairer, more relaxed and comfortable;
we would work less
- or even not at all.

But capitalist progress
had a different goal:
to turn the whole world
into anxious workers
and debt-ridden consumers
controlled by fake democracies
and their crude smoke and mirrors.

On the death of a former lover

2012-01-29T07:37:00.000-08:00

"It is with a profound sense of sadness and loss..."
I read, on idly Googling my old friend William,
who was such fun to eat with in his early twenties,
and who said,
when he was fucking me with his sweet wee dick,
that it felt much more like me fucking him.
He liked my paintings for their unrefinement.
I painted him. You can see that portrait here.
Compare it with the obituary-photo.
An early work of his hangs in my bedroom -
I haven't looked at it for years...
Now shall go up the stairs.

From this week's 'New Yorker' magazine

2012-01-29T07:12:00.000-08:00

"Six million people are under correctional supervision in the U.S.
—more than were in Stalin’s gulags."
[People in the southern states see]
"... the prison system as essentially a slave plantation continued by other means."

Identity at seventy

2012-01-29T02:32:00.000-08:00

Who am I ?
I am: just anyone,
just a constant stream
of thought carried by
a ridiculously healthy frame
in the bewilderness.
And I am: I (or me, to be colloquial)
and cannot see
why anyone would want to be
more solid than mere fantasy
of self, a brief illogicality
encased in flesh and selfness.

The most elevated,

2012-01-28T02:07:00.000-08:00

exquisite,
varied and practised
human art
is the unfulfilment of promises.

For every hundred thousand men who do this...

2012-01-27T09:14:00.001-08:00

...there might be just one woman.

JungThink Floyd

2012-01-27T02:33:00.001-08:00

Each of us is lunar
incapable of presenting
the dark side.

GRV

2012-01-26T02:33:00.000-08:00

in these three consonants
the final three thousand years (and more)
of Homo sapiens:

they are the Indo-European
linguistic 'root' which gave us
Grave (Grab in German; Russian ГРОБ),
Groove, Engraving
and Graphic (ГРAΦEIH : to write
- for writing originally was engraved).
From writing, as from the killing fields
and tombs
nothing by Nature will be saved.

(NOTE: the three letters are, more properly, GhREBh-)

Within mere alphabets

2012-01-25T02:02:00.000-08:00

"lie all the arbitrary abracadabra"
of our thinking. This is why
we lack the global vision of the fly.

(with acknowledgement to A.O. Spare.)

Absolute proof that dogs appreciate music.

2012-01-24T06:26:00.000-08:00

In the bankosphere

2012-01-24T02:07:00.000-08:00

which upholds the cratosphere
there are only fuckers and suckers.
Everything else is mere material.

The Clever Animals *

2012-01-22T02:04:00.000-08:00

know that there is no time past
no time future
only the grinding present.
We are the only creatures that suffer
from the illusion of time -
because we cannot bear
to think we are of no consequence.

* Rilke, First Duino Elegy -..."die findigen Tiere".

Yet another definition.

2012-01-21T02:03:00.000-08:00

God is the pathetic invention
of people who demand a purpose in life
to control themselves (a bit)
and others (a lot), and consequently
have no sense of humour.

This is Spain today -

2012-01-20T08:58:00.001-08:00

and certainly tomorrow, also.

click to read about Spanish 'hunting dogs'

A Reflection on a Dead Tradition

2012-01-20T01:59:00.000-08:00

The non-breeding
saints and hermits
have been (of course)
outbred by the competitive
mobsters and their molls
who have reduced the world
to real-estate and walls.

Sacred Places :

2012-01-19T02:04:00.000-08:00

if only we had left
all places sacred.

For Jews

2012-01-18T02:12:00.000-08:00

the Sin of Sodom
was wealth: Avaritia.
It was a horrible irony
that Jews were forced
into the rôle
of moneylending,
while sodomy became
a polite word for anal penetration -
which was till recently
the the commonest kind
of birth-control.

Travesty

2012-01-17T07:42:00.001-08:00

is the neatest word
to describe
the Olympic Games.

I chose my grave

2012-01-17T02:45:00.000-08:00

nearest to the gate
for a rapid exit
at the Resurrection.

click on the photo

(I know it's January.)

2012-01-16T02:41:00.000-08:00

December evening -
in front of a nice log fire
I've no need of friends.

Jokes and missiles

2012-01-15T02:19:00.001-08:00

need good timing
and direction
to hit their targets.

I am not a nightmare water-closet

2012-01-14T01:47:00.000-08:00

A system ingeniously constructed
by (mainly anglophone)
psychopaths
to reward high-performing
psychopaths,
is, obviously, psychopathic -
and democracy is hardly relevant.

Rasputin and the Duchess of Windsor

2012-01-13T02:33:00.001-08:00

were two of the most maligned celebrities
of the twentieth century.
They had little in common -
except that each was a Rank Outsider
brought into a palace.
One was murdered by war-mongers.
The other was made a scapegoat
out of sheer malice.

Amazing fact:

2012-01-12T01:54:00.000-08:00

because of the rare
configuration of their palates
gorillas don't snore.

Can I be your virtual friend ?

2012-01-11T01:49:00.000-08:00

I just need a couple more photos.
The rest I can do for myself.

'Lesser animals'

2012-01-10T02:17:00.000-08:00

don't think, don't cogitate
but live in a continuum
of acuity.
Thinking is discontinuity.

(discuss)

About time

2012-01-09T02:03:00.000-08:00

Capitalism
which loathes loners, monks, hermits
and the self-sufficient has - ironically,
enantiodromically - created a system
uniquely favourable to dissidents,
thoughtful and intelligent drop-outs
(and, of course, criminals).

Since I (so unregretfully) left school
unemployable
I've had a quality of life which gave me
complete control of my time,
my wider environment, and
my more-than-adequate
below-the-poverty-line income.

I give thanks
to the taxes of those
whose whole identity was employment -
the surrender of their time
to banks.

2012-01-08T02:18:00.000-08:00

Professor Stephen Hawking

2012-01-08T02:00:00.000-08:00

(pictured above)
who is reputed to understand a great deal
about space, time, and string,
is reported as saying
that he does not understand women.
So much for science...
So much for heterosexuality...
So much for understanding...

I certainly don't understand
why women shave their legs
- to say nothing of labioplasty;
nor why men shave their faces,
run around chasing spheres,
are emotionally frozen
and watch horse-races.

It was Irish monks

2012-01-07T02:03:00.000-08:00

who first made spaces
between the words
in which we're now all lost.

Drones over London : All Under Control

2012-01-07T01:53:00.000-08:00

The surveillance,
crowd-control,
and anti-terrorism
industries will ensure
that the 2012 Olympics
(Games ? - Games ??)
will be the most-organised
since 1936.

2012-01-06T05:51:00.000-08:00

adapted from followeed

We are governed by rich people,

2012-01-06T01:44:00.000-08:00

gangsters fiddling with
'instruments', by yes-men
and con-men, by fences
and those who won't raise their heads
above parapets, by ditherers,
compromisers, hand-wringers,
hypocrites, Hollywood values,
stuffed shirts and gas-bags,
mealy-mouthed nincompoops, airheads,
short-termists, stupid and dodgy policemen,
wage-slaves in offices, people who devise
surveillance equipment, people 'of principle'
who don't care about poor people,
nitpickers, micro-accountants,
macro-accountants, the World Bank,
criminal transnational drug-firms,
and scientists who haven't the sense
to realise that everything which makes
more comfortable or extends our life
also lays waste the world.

2012-01-05T01:47:00.000-08:00

Let him have it, sista!

Life is not a gift,

2012-01-05T01:46:00.000-08:00

but an insult
to The Great Nothing...

How obscene
our mad
Anthropocene!

My dilemma

2012-01-04T01:33:00.000-08:00

The æsthetic of silence
confounds the ethic of witness.

Sometimes I feel

2012-01-03T03:44:00.000-08:00

like a wingless bird
How much worse
is it to be - like most -
a birdless wing ?

The more shameless

2012-01-02T01:53:00.001-08:00

the kleptocracy
the more severe
the punishment of petty theft.

The Less-accused.

2012-01-01T02:02:00.000-08:00

In the rich countries
people think they are poor
if they have to think
a little bit before they buy -
a new freezer, a new car,
an electronic game or gadget.

They haven't an idea
of what it is like to queue
for two days for a bag of flour
or a kilo of potatoes.
They are the desperately
poor in spirit,
who haven't an idea
of what they need.
They know only
the hierarchy of visible status
in the Empire of Greed.

'The false humility of hell

2011-12-31T01:39:00.000-08:00

is an unending, burning shame
at the inescapable stigma of our sins.'
- Thomas Merton, one-time resident of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val

But true humility in this life
starts with the shame of being human,
not the crime of being Christian.
- Anthony Weir, currently resident in Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val

What if,

2011-12-30T01:41:00.000-08:00

after death, we got exactly what we expected ?
Would we all be in our bubbles of bliss,
the religious in their antiseptic,
unforested heaven,
the wonderers perpetually wondering,
the thoughtless forever thoughtless,
and I, fulfilled by no existence at all,
the shadow of entropy ?

Training Humans: Hints for Dogs

2011-12-29T01:48:00.000-08:00

Remember that humans think they are pack-animals
though they are obviously herd-animals like sheep:
what the leaders do, all will do.
Give them small rewards for obedience.
Get them spayed as soon as your vet advises.
Never let them get into bed with you.
Never let them go through a door before you.
Never feed them before you have eaten.
And never, never leave them unsupervised
with children.

So obvious that it shouldn't need saying

2011-12-28T02:12:00.000-08:00

Education is education,
And bits of paper are bits of paper.
And rarely the twain do meet.

Some good titles for Richard Dawkins

2011-12-27T01:47:00.000-08:00

The Humanity Delusion
The Progress Delusion
The Intelligence Delusion
The Wealth Delusion
The Science Delusion
[add your own suggestions...]

скопeц

2011-12-26T01:50:00.000-08:00

Memo from a skopyets to Ludwig
Wittgenstein

It is not enough to be silent
about what we know nothing about,
better to be silent about being silent
in the cacophany of consciousness.

2011-12-25T03:26:00.000-08:00

Christmas

2011-12-25T02:32:00.002-08:00

like the medical-pharmaceutical industry
and the whole of humanity
has got waaay out of hand.

Germaine Greer on Christmas 2011 :

2011-12-25T02:32:00.001-08:00

"What's not to like
about a recession ?"

Greed will always rule.

2011-12-24T01:47:00.000-08:00

Needless to say,
the Landgrabbers of Israël
are crowding out
the shepherds of Bethlehem.
What do 'The Faithful' care,
with only hypocrisy to share ?

Most churches

2011-12-24T01:44:00.000-08:00

and indeed most religions
turn out to be
the Church of Me.

The ego-less
are also sinless.

It's amazing

2011-12-23T01:58:00.000-08:00

how we fall for smiles
even though they have
so often
been picked up from the floor
and rinsed like false teeth.

Often men mount women
from behind
so as not to have to face them,
or kiss them...
around them
a withered wreath.

Adam did not delve

2011-12-22T02:07:00.000-08:00

and Eve never span -
but the Daughters of Eve
bred Psychopathic Man.

Raison d'être - the cutting edge

2011-12-21T02:39:00.000-08:00

Doctors 'Play God'
on our behalf - mainly to benefit
the rich and Welfare State-indulged.

While human populations soar and devour,
how medical and other earthly powers
propose to save the planet from the ailment
that is us, will never be divulged.

Science

2011-12-20T01:57:00.000-08:00

Before we sought other knowledge
we first should have embarked on
knowledge of ourselves:
quiet studies 'in the field'.

Alas, it will come too late, long after
the arcana of particle physics, genetics
and brain chemistry are
only partially revealed.

One tree

2011-12-19T03:48:00.000-08:00

even in a city
is more beautiful
than any city.

So now the Americans have left

2011-12-18T02:55:00.000-08:00

the country that they trashed
and depopulated
and patched up with old tape...
while in another country that they trashed
and depopulated even more,
over a million victims
of Agent Orange
suffering, survive.

"All that Man is, all mere complexities..."

2011-12-18T01:41:00.000-08:00

Having denatured ourselves
we have devoted our brief and tragic
time upon the planet
to denaturing in one way or another
every other creature.

[The quotation is from Yeats' BYZANTIUM:
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.]

Bad poetry

2011-12-17T02:19:00.001-08:00

sounds quite good
when read aloud
especially upon a stage.
But good poetry
is best apprehended
slowly on the page.

I suspect

2011-12-16T11:57:00.000-08:00

that the Americanisation
of 'homosexual' behaviour
has caused more damage
than its criminalisation.

['Americanisation' = commercialisation, reification, polarisation.]

"History is bunk."

2011-12-15T08:49:00.000-08:00

The 'bunk' of history
is ideology: the sound
of axes being ground...

It was Henry Ford I who said
'History is Bunk'.

There are too many words on the wireless

2011-12-14T01:05:00.000-08:00

and too many pictures on telly
and so many people, and so few trees
that our minds have turned to jelly.

[WIRELESS : a quaint old word for Radio.]

The precious rich

2011-12-13T02:04:00.000-08:00

bestow yet more prizes now
for poetry - or rather
for poetic preciousness.
There are even precious
Poets-in-Residence.
Ah, the poets' bathetic desire to please -
will they ever get off their knees ?

Globalisation

2011-12-12T02:59:00.000-08:00

Culture

2011-12-11T02:06:00.000-08:00

is a structure
designed to keep us conforming
and prevent us from thinking.
The more elaborate the culture,
the more difficult it is
(even for a sage)
to think beyond the cage.

Schopenhauer :

2011-12-10T03:09:00.000-08:00

No man does no harm.
I have absorbed him
as an egg absorbs a sperm.

America

2011-12-09T02:10:00.000-08:00

is to capitalism
as Albania
was to socialism.

The 'communists' were right

2011-12-08T02:07:00.000-08:00

about capitalist societies.
The capitalists were right
about the 'communist' societies.
The Protestants are right
about the corruption of the
Catholic Church.
The toads are right about the frogs.
The hills are right about the bogs.
The Jehovah's Witnesses are right
about many things -
except life after death -

and those whom I have met
are generous to dogs.

Gloss on a poem by Paul Celan

2011-12-07T02:30:00.000-08:00

Whether time walks or flows or oozes
or even exists is difficult to say -
maybe it stumbles, strikes as we do
through our perception of it...

Time is much slower for flies
who will go on almost forever.
Maybe we surge from the womb
cracking its shells open like nuts
and then lose the kernels -
so there are seven billion different times,
different mandalas, mandorlas which never
return to the shattered shells
that are culture and consciousness.
Yet - in a nutshell - I can miraculously live
with my dying: along with the billions,
I never existed. It is long past the time
for me to sink into timelessless
gorged by and governed by flies.

Aloof,

2011-12-06T03:00:00.000-08:00

alone within us lies
the irresponsive silence
of smothered grief,
wherein our disregard
of life within the rotting leaf.

for Paul and Jindra

Rag-tree

2011-12-05T02:16:00.001-08:00

click photo to enlarge

How strange that money's made
from rags and trees
and not from gold
or skulls or peas
or skins - or mould.

How delicious to be seventy,

2011-12-04T02:44:00.000-08:00

solitary, smelly,
without microwave,
cellphone or telly,
without ever having
been a debtor!
I enjoy eleven hours
a day in bed.
Life just gets better.

The immutable stupidity of humans

2011-12-03T02:20:00.001-08:00

lies in our unshakeable belief that
it is better to do anything
than to do nothing.

The most pitiable people

2011-12-02T02:30:00.000-08:00

of our despicable species
are the Natural Outsiders who want
to become Unnatural Insiders -
and the Insiders who patronise
and demoralise them.

In the labyrinth of aspiration
victims cannot wait
to become perpetrators.

After

2011-12-01T03:02:00.000-08:00

birth by misadventure
the primly rosy path of progress
to magisterial, unimaginable entropy.

Meanwhile, as our toe-nails grow,
the Atlantic Ocean slowly widens.

'Life is a gift'

2011-11-30T07:18:00.000-08:00

like an exploding parcel.
The problem is
how to defuse it.

2011-11-30T07:13:00.000-08:00

The Permanent Members

2011-11-29T01:55:00.000-08:00

of the UN Security Council
are those who flood the world
with guns and bombs,
do deals with terrible dictators,
and continue to
manufacture WMD:
the grim hasteners of entropy.

Bewilderness

2011-11-28T02:11:00.000-08:00

Clothed,
we are only clothes.

Take it from me:

2011-11-27T02:45:00.000-08:00

It is easier to give up smoking
than shoplifting.
But shoplifting
(like financial fraud)
is also work.

"The Fall of Man" :

2011-11-26T04:18:00.000-08:00

Was it when
Adam and Eve
mentioned property-rights
and gave God the first
of many horrible frights
and he had to tell them to leave ?

Only a few of us are left

2011-11-25T01:56:00.000-08:00

who know the difference between
rifle and riffle
tend and attend
many and multiple
expect and anticipate
alternative and alternate
imply and infer
centre and epicentre
(there are two epicentres to an ellipse)
- meanwhile less has cast fewer
into permanent eclipse.

It is cheaper to buy a slave today

2011-11-24T02:29:00.000-08:00

than it was at the height
of the Atlantic slave trade.

Over 27,000,000 slaves are now
an essential part of the Global Economy
[according to a report in 'The Observer'],
and
there are 37,000 'Street Children' in Kabul.

Fewer humans, more humus.

2011-11-23T02:57:00.001-08:00

We are very little
more than the sum
of our consumption.

A quotation

2011-11-22T10:34:00.000-08:00

from 'Hans Fallada', alias Rudolf Ditzen -
who is not to be confused with György Faludy:

'Humans get used to any situation,
and I regret to say that
they get used most rapidly to degradation.'

Gloss on a poem by György Faludy

2011-11-22T02:37:00.000-08:00

Don't learn by heart these words of mine
Words are syllables gone mad. Opine
also is a word, and self
is an unsupported shelf,
and life is totally absurd
which is just another word.

Yet another Gloss on Emily D.

2011-11-21T02:24:00.000-08:00

Mind is not wider
than the sky!
Both are immeasurable...

and I,
as fragile
as a Great Auk's bone,
feel less stable
than a stone.

Isn't it strange

2011-11-20T04:18:00.001-08:00

how Happiness, like Luxury
has become Necessity ?

I remember

2011-11-19T02:22:00.000-08:00

when black Labrador dogs
were called Nigger.
In 1940s Belfast I saw no
people of any colour different
from untouchably pale.
(Even now, there are very few.)
But there were picture-books
at Sunday School.

Dogs have always filled me with delight.
I have always disliked being white.

One of my readers sent me this

2011-11-18T02:38:00.000-08:00

link...

It deserves even wider circulation.

On DNA Testing-kits.

2011-11-18T02:14:00.000-08:00

Children are property.
If not, why the obsession
with paternity ?
Why the unnatural,
irrational demand
for merely sexual fidelity ?

Mystery

2011-11-17T02:49:00.001-08:00

is history.
But dirt is always with us.
Poems are not even dirt.

A Big God

2011-11-16T02:31:00.001-08:00

is the inevitable idea
of those pathetic people -
winners as well as losers -
who demand a purpose to life -
and consequently have no sense of the ridiculous.

Religious Syncretism

2011-11-16T02:28:00.001-08:00

It is too easy for men

2011-11-15T02:22:00.000-08:00

in the death-camp of their distraction
to mistake violence and virulence
for virility.

Tantra and Narcissus*

2011-11-14T03:51:00.000-08:00

The only 'spiritual' sex is with yourself.
But remember to keep away from mirrors.

* Or do I mean PUER ÆTERNUS ?

Aliens

2011-11-13T03:14:00.000-08:00

even slightly more intelligent than we
would not be envious.

2011-11-13T03:11:00.001-08:00

Guerrilla Gardening

2011-11-12T04:32:00.001-08:00

Why can we not be individualists
AND
contribute generously
to the environment
and the community ?

Alas, very few of us

2011-11-11T03:14:00.000-08:00

are human beings.
Now we are nearly seven billion
human functions,
merely restless doings.