My mind is my coffin

is a hide-
covered currach
drifting out
with the tide

As the world seems to enter 'the beginning of the end time'

I'm not entirely ashamed to say
that I found this interesting
and helpful.

Around the Second Millennium

we thought that the World-Wide Web
was the best thing since electricity:
an exciting, liberating, egalitarian
empowering invention. 
But now, for millions,
it's like a slow, seductive garrotte
round the brain,
which, day by day, increases
its and our tension.

My aunt used to say

that life was
one disappointment
after another. 
Many were caused by me.
I remember her tears.
She lived brightly
and sprightly
in excellent health
with all her teeth
for over 90 years.

This blog is not a journal.

Nor is it a commonplace-book.
It's somewhere in between...
an outlet for a chap who has been
an aspergerish over-sharer/communicator 
and almost obsessive truth-teller
since he left school and no longer
had to tell pathetically-transparent lies
about his punishments
to his long-suffering mother.

Today's blog, however, reports on my reading
of a few pages of a poor novel
set in pre-independence,
pearl-of-the-East Ceylon,
re-named in 1972 Sri Lanka: Isle of Splendour
(overtones of Shakespeare). 

Before that
it was called, by some, Sarandib, which
by a curious route gave us the word
Serendipity – which I thought was American
because I came across it first in a Deep-South novel.

Arabic Sarandib comes from Sanskrit Simhaladvipa:
Lion Island. And behold Sri Lanka's National Flag.

Berthold alias Bert Brecht,

was a pretty important 20th century playwright,
very political. He wrote great songs, fine poems and
(my favourite) The Threepenny Novel.

He is still pretty important, since his 
Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (1941)
is pretty relevant just now. And has been
much performed in recent years.

The play is about a Chicago mobster
who gets control of the city’s wholesale
vegetable trade through corruption,
intimidation and violence and murder:
a clear allegory of how a certain nondescript Austrian
had climbed to power during the 1920s and 1930s,
and founded a Thousand-Year Empire
on sand and hate and submission.

It was not staged until 1958, after Brecht's death.
But Mother Courage and Her Children, about
an enterprising, child-collecting refugee/
asylum-seeker during the Thirty Years' War.
was frequently performed during his lifetime and since.

For me, however, Brecht is like Shakespeare:

better on the page than on the stage.
Unlike Ibsen.

Here is his poem on Hell (from a page of my translations)

Considering Hell,
my brother Shelley thought
it must be much like London.
Since I live in Los Angeles and not London
I think Hell is more like
Los Angeles.

In Hell, too, there must be luxuriant gardens
with flowers big as trees
which of course wither at once
if not fed
with rich people's water.

And fruit-markets where great piles of fruit*
have no smell, have no taste.
And endless convoys of cars
as light as their shadows, faster than impulses -
gleaming conveyances in which well-fed people
go nowhere from nowhere.

And houses
built for the happy, thus standing empty
even when lived in.

The houses in Hell, too, aren't
all of them ugly,
but the fear of being dumped on the street
oppresses the suburbanites
no less than the shanty-town squatters.

*Cultivated by semi-slaves in Guatemala and Honduras.

Which reminds me of this poem by MTC Cronin
about Hitler in Hell:

In hell, Hitler is forced
to protect his anonymity.

He paints walls and cadavers
and sniffs fumes of the dead;

he eats the ashes of children
and drinks blood from a funnel;

hammered into his mouth
are many pulled gold teeth; but mostly
he sits forgotten on the chair
just inside hell's door.

*

An illustrated note on Hell.

Thus end today's commonplaces.

The Irrefutable Truth.

Technology
creates far more waste
than it can ever reduce.

Ever the aphorismic practitioner, I wrote this after reflecting on all the 'Mixtapes'
that I made on cassettes in the nineteen eighties and nineties, and then all the Compilation CDs
(tapes and CDs that I can't throw away)
and now never listen to because the radio/internet waves support dozens of compilation channels which
are surprisingly good.

The phallic African banana

was, in medieval times,

sometimes called the Fruit of Paradise

...long before United Fruit

established plantations & régimes

in Guatemala and Honduras.

Reflections

by Richard Baker

 

'Those who restrain desire

do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained*;
and the restrainer or Reason usurps its place
& governs the unwilling.'

William Blake did not do much to restrain
his own libido. Moreover, he...

'...always found that the angels have the vanity
to speak of themselves as the only wise.
This they do with a confident insolence
sprouting from systematic reasoning.'

(from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell')

*Perhaps due to low testosterone levels.

God is more sad

than angry. Sadder and wiser ?
Poor God!  And so he has abandoned us
to Judaism, Christianity and Islam
in that order. Plus our other own devices.

Façade detail, Modena Cathedral.
(Doesn't Adam have lovely feet ? )

'Baking News'.

As usual, the News Organ spends

five minutes telling us what has actually happened

in the war between the Shahatollah

and what the late latter called 'The Epstein Class'

plus Israël, ancient antagonist of all,

followed by 50 minutes of intense 

speculation which will be quickly

superseded by events.

Today is, of course,

Fossil Crinoid Day

Human life:

release
from sweet confinement in the womb
into the sad captivity
of the world.
And then, if you are very privileged,
a tomb.

 

Beautiful ? I prefer Monet...

 ...and a good Monet would be much cheaper.

Scientists have captured in unprecedented detail
a beautiful image  of the vast Milky Way galaxy,
of which our own solar system is a part.

Or how about this, closer to home and from the same online edition of The Guardian ?

Tardy self-diagnosis.

 If – instead of having my tonsils
and adenoids removed in 1948 –
I had been given TRT (alias ART).
I might have gained the energy,
stamina, muscles and memory
that other boys had, and which,
in my case, have diminished more
and more with my advancing years...
...might not have had a shut-down
for a decade...might not have been
a slow-on-the-uptake slow thinker...
might not now have brain-fog,
high blood pressure & cholesterol,
a Pacemaker, fatigue, poor balance,
deafness and ringing in my ears.

I have no pain whatever, it must be said.
I'm sometimes just a bit lame.
No way will I die in a hospital bed.

Fiction, prediction.

There once was a writer 

who wrote far too much.

and didn't really want to be read. 

He didn't like people too much,

and most of the time he sort-of

wished he was dead.

His name was not Kafka

nor Borges, nor Beckett.

It might have been Fred.

My latest piece of 'folk-art'.

65 centimetres wide and placed
in the little niche on the other
side of the street from my house
(my smallest piece of garden),
this limestone sculpture of a
wild boar and his family
(sold by my friend, executor and
brocanteur David Poirier,
at a very reasonable price),
has no provenance, but is likely to have
been chiselled somewhere in Quercy,
Rouergue or the Albigeois, SW France.

from Twenty-nine Things

You can Do with a Penis.

Quixotic or idiotic ?

Had it been possible
I would have written a letter
of appreciation of his short stories
to Kafka, and of praise for his portraits
to Vincent van Gogh.  As it was,
I wrote to blind Borges, blind Tolkien
(secretaries replied)
and to the splendid Alice Neel
not long after she died. 

Portrait of John Perreault

In the evenings

only
I feel so good after dinner
and a modest measure
of wine, that my socialist
disposition makes me want
to share the pleasure.

The Fall.

Adam and Eve
dropping from a Tree
in Autumn.
Among withered leaves
and a sloughed-off skin,
no tomb,
Fall Guy and Fall Doll.

'If computers can surmise, can they surprise ?

Can Artificial Intelligence
be creative ?

Memoirs aren't improved by total recall.

Is Artificial Intelligence
capable of curiosity ?
(a faculty largely suppressed in humans)

It can't have fun, 
enjoy, regret, or suffer,
or incline towards impetuosity.

The times they aren't a-changing

 very much. 

Leigh Hunt (who might even now be called a seditious agitator, and be arrested for supporting the Palestinian cause)
was sentenced to two years in prison for libel against the odious Prince Regent (later George IV), after publishing a critical article and satire in his newspaper, The Examiner, in 1812. 

In gaol from 1813 to 1815, he continued to engage with
literary figures and maintain a vibrant intellectual life.

ex-Prince Andrew (the youngest of the Mountbatten-Windsors),
and almost never in line for the throne)
was arrested the day before yesterday = 213 years later...
and was soonish released.
He will not go to prison.
Although he has rubbed shoulders with literary as well as deeply-unpleasant and vile figures (some of them also literary)
he does not have a vibrant intellectual life,
and, partly because of his sad sexual adventures,
not even a current wife.

© Wofl McGonagall, MMXXVI

COTERMINOUS [adj]

 – as when Lent and Ramadan
endure for the same forty days,
or as nearly as dammit.

Though not necessarily when
Israel starts a religious war
at the al-Aqsa mosque
built on the site where
the earth was last trod
by M'hamed.

I Bought a Second-hand Dogma

(don't we all in this vale of dark deceit ?)

It belonged to a lady with good taste
and slender wrists just like mine
(in contrast with my spathulate
thumbs that are not smartphone-friendly).

I wanted it to be (since, unfortunately,
I am not) black, elegant, easy to read -
o which end I took out its third
(seconds) hand, removing all guarantees
that might ever have been attached to it
as it was attached to its dead owner,
who is now even more of a loner than me...
now dog-less for five years

'Junior Dogma Quartz Original
Vintage Cr 3231-88', from the late seventies.

Width: 19 millimetres

The Future

means nothing
until it strikes,
arrives,
or sidles in.

Surely the Chinese are not really this stupid ?

They sell music-box mechanisms on eBay
(hundreds of them)
without informing us of the tunes that they play !

George Sand:

"Always resist those
who say Work hard
to live badly."

This is the state of social involution.

Laurent Binet wrote:
"Sport ?
A fascist conspiracy."

No fence:

No fear.

*

Right-minded
is left-leaning.

Would you believe

that my Fair Trade
coffee from Rwanda
is harvested from trees
tended by happy, trained
mountain gorillas ?

How I would like to !

Malcolm (64) has had a minor stroke.

But he's better now.

Another near-extinction.

The extraordinary whistling dogs are falling silent...

Their reddish fur and wolf-like features might fool you into thinking they’re foxes.

Their long backs and slender limbs might suggest a close relationship with cats.

They can’t bark, so surely they can’t be dogs… right?

But these are in fact the utterly adorable - bordering on unbelievable - Asiatic whistling dogs: the dholes.

And almost no one has heard of them, which is a true tragedy.

Because while they may not be able to bark the way domesticated dogs do, what really sets dholes apart is the noises they can make.

Clucks, screams and whistles cut through the forest as they carefully coordinate a hunt. These specialist canines are expert communicators as well as extremely social creatures, living and working together in tight-knit teams where each member plays a crucial role.

But their intimate families are being torn apart.

Across the globe, dholes are disappearing at a horrifying rate.

One by one, vicious snares see their whistles become whimpers, and humans introduce deadly diseases into their close communities, causing their clucks to go quiet.

These beautiful dogs are fading away.

In some areas, such as Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains, snares litter the ground. These cruel devices trap the limb of any poor dhole unfortunate enough to cross their path, tightening mercilessly as the helpless dog fights desperately to escape. But, more often than not, it’s already too late.

There are now fewer than 2,500 mature dholes left in the world. They are hurtling towards extinction.

If we don’t stand up for them now, we could soon lose them forever - they are in urgent need of your support.

And so are we.

We need your help to get essential equipment into the hands of those that need it most – to buy a ranger a fresh pair of boots, a new raincoat or a sturdy rucksack to replace those worn out by thousands of hours spent patrolling through challenging landscapes like the Cardamom Mountains, painstakingly sweeping and removing snares as they go.

Dholes are one of the world’s most extraordinary canines – together, we can ensure they don’t fall silent.

SAVING WILD DOGS IN CAMBODIA

 

Please help save dholes. If everyone reading this donates just £3, you could help get the rangers all the equipment they need to help bring these remarkable creatures back from the brink. Thank you.

    I DID.

 

DONATE NOW

 

You are receiving this email because I thought you should read it.

My relatively-small

environmental footprint
is not only a hundred thousand
times the size of the footprint
of a hunted hare,
but many hundreds of times larger
than that of a persecuted wolf or bear.

Big-power Bully

Pusher of Christian Values

Deprives Valentine

Of 1,800 years

Of sainthood

No society

that has to be policed
is worth perpetuating.

As for democracy, the Athenian
experiment was hardly worth the name,
run by mono-ethnic, high-born 'citizens' –
all of whom were males with military
training and experience
who eagerly suppressed Free Speech
as taught by Socrates.

Fairly far from the madding crowd,

the pogroms, the hate and the greed.

Golden Jackal, Jordan.

 

"It's happening round the corner.

 … Right now, somewhere, not very far away, someone is either being beaten, locked in a cupboard, being raped, being abused, being coerced into something they don’t want to do.”

– Tracy Emin, artist with bed.

Life without a bladder is “pretty heavy”, she tells me. Today, for example, when she got in the shower, she had a lot of bleeding from her stoma. Then there’s the whole business of the bag, which needs emptying into a loo maybe “every 15 to 20 minutes, or it might be OK for an hour. For a lot of people with urostomies, they don’t go to theatre, they don’t go to cinema,” she says. If you can’t get to a loo in time, it can overfill and burst, which isn’t great, especially if it happens in a public place. If she wants to do something as simple as take a nap at home, she says, even that’s tricky. “It wakes you up because of the pressure” and, worst case, “The bag will just fly off, and then all the urine will go everywhere. It’s 500ml of urine in a small bag, which doesn’t sound like much.” (It sounds like plenty, to me.)

She has bowel problems on top of everything else. “You’ve got the blood, you’ve got the shit, you’ve got the pills – it really can get you down, because you can’t be free...

Family Portrait

by Conrad Felixmüller.
How I love the German Expressionists
and the Weimar Republic! It was possibly
as Advanced as Civilisation will ever get.

'Glass Squid'

with upright tentacles folded.

Schmidt Ocean Institute

 

Splendid Acronym.

SOMNOT

Smelly Old Men Not Welcome.
I was not invited to lunch.

Faint odours of piss and scrotum
and fennel or camomile, or even vetiver.
are a good way, I firmly believe,
to reinforce social exclusion
– though social exclusion
is wonderfully easy to achieve.

Brothers and Sisters,

Let us give praise
to the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Amen!
Our sacred Serenity Pills are addictive,
and thus we are gratefully condemned
to Lifelong Contentment.
Amen!

And now let us sing in gratitude
Psalm One and Only:
Big Pharma in the sky,
Easing All Anxiety... 

Gisèle Pelicot

on her superbly brave decision
to have the trial of her vile pimp-husband rapist 
held in open court :

She said that if she had been 20 years younger: “I might not have dared to refuse a closed-door hearing.

“I would have feared the stares. Those damned stares a woman of my generation has always had to contend with, those damned stares that make you hesitate in the morning between trousers and a dress, that follow you or ignore you, flatter you and embarrass you. Those damned stares that are supposed to tell you who you are, what you’re worth, and then abandon you as you grow older.”

Meanwhile in another part of the wood:

France makes international appeal over ex-teacher accused of raping 89 children.

Police search for more possible victims of Jacques Leveugle, whose alleged crimes span many countries and date back to 1960s.

It would be better

to learn from
rather than merely
tolerate each other.
But for our petty brains
it's too much bother.

All eyes are on the happy parading planets.

 What will they be wearing ?

Unaccountably,
Planet Earth has been banned
allegedly for its more than sixty thousand
uninterrupted years
of sheer human nastiness.

'The Gaiety of Nations'.

There's not much of it about
not even in peaceful, super-democratic,
quadralingual, multi-ethnic
Switzerland.

We are amazed

by the ignorance of Germans
of what was going on
in the concentration-camp next door.
But do you want to know
what is going on
in the nearest abattoir ?

You don't even know where it is.

The old folks at home

in Mississippi now
remember with pleasure
the days of Jim Crow.

photo by Anuwar Hazanka

 

Obviously,

capitalism demands
conformity, not liberty
– let alone equality – 
and fierce competition
rather than fraternity

for all eternity.

America burning ?

No, just a scary sunset,
some derricks,
and a statue of hypocrisy

photo by Charly Triballeau

The Genital Olympics.

 

 Read all about it...