that we share one of our most striking
and destructive features
with only one of all the other creatures :
the axolotl.
NEO-NIETZSCHEAN NOTES
that we share one of our most striking
and destructive features
with only one of all the other creatures :
the axolotl.
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.
'Women will always be penalised for not looking
the same as when we were young,
whereas men just grow beards, don’t they?'
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 ?)
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.
“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 ;-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
In Belarus,
the Belarusian language
has been banned
by the Belarusian dictator.
an evolutionary rather than
a tribal advantage
we would be mutually intelligible
like other species.
(The only word we really need
is ENOUGH.)
is what is streamed, injected
into children's heads
and out into their children's heads.
the best friends* are those whom you have never met
but communicate (even commune) with on the Internet.
*apart from dogs
LAWFARE
1. Oppression of citizens by use of trumped-up charges.
2. Litigiousness by disgruntled people or groups.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
for us to stop telling each other
how wonderful our brains are
instead of how terrible their effects.
The only tragedy is being born
human, from which all other tragedy
and comedy emerge.
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...
in the looting of the Presidential palace
in Brasilia by a neo-fascist mob
were by the Brazilian painter
Emiliano Di Cavalcanti.
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.
do not suffer from priapism
or nymphomania
or compulsive-addictive promiscuity,
but, sadly, from
simple (or complex) dissatisfaction,
if not continual disappointment.
Jim’s belief was that science should be used to achieve what he called a sustainable retreat from the Earth.
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:
of the mind by foreign powers.
Bit by bit you and your world
become fully occupied.
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!