Thinking of its current president,

and pop cvulture* generally,

I wonder why dazzlingly talentless superficiality

rules the USA ? 

Perhaps something very bad happened in the 1950s : 

maybe the whole country, not just the dreadful Lou Reed, 

was subjected to re-programming through ECT

by the FBI in collusion with the CIA...

*deliberate mistake

We are all "Born Losers".

In a world which we are turning into a vast replica
of our inner, incandescent, stupefying cave of noise,
we move like ever-fainter shadows.

And Jesus said: "I have overcome the world."
And Paul wrote: "What communication does light have with darkness ?"

And I worship landscape.
What else do we actually have ?

We are all hypocrites, and most of us are stupid,

and in the Anglosphere's Advanced Civilisation
we have reached a point where the words
intimate and intimacy
(like too many others)
have a crassly-sexual connotation.

Mixing my metaphors.

Since we were both young,
but not in the same decade,
David Benatar and I have shared the view
that human beings live
in a sad little evolutionary cul-de-sac
in a larger bio-chemical stew.
And there's no going back.

This limp-wristed homosensual

was two days short of 80
when he performed this !

Thankyou, yet again, YouTube !

Christ!  If only I had met Claudio in a public lavatory !

PAPI - a not-outrageous generalisation

about white Anglophones :
prudish
assertive
prurient
intrusive.

I have been thinking

that, in music, rubato is the most important thing,
so wonderfully subtle
and so integral to Indian Classical music.
My feeling about this may be connected with my tantric attitude to orgasm:
the more delayed and prolonged the better.
In European Baroque music there is too little rubato -

which (I discover) means “robbed” ... or even "rapined" ...
like stealing not just time, but time's virginity...those eleven days… 
those wonderful 11 days that never happened.

One of the tragedies

of the French Revolution
was The People's reluctance
to recognise, much less worship Reason.

(20 Brumaire, Year II.)

Proverb of the Day

Chi va piano va sano.

Jesus said:

"Because you scapegoating fuckers are crucifying me
I'm going (while slowly dying) to create
a religion of spirit-sucking, hypocritical
sophistry and hate."

And so it came to pass.

'Love'

that seeks reciprocation
is less honest than a begging-bowl.

Cloud formations over the North Pacific ocean, 18th January 2018

The line

between Sacred and Profane
is not clear-cut, but serpentine.

Red rosebud in January

Motes and Big Splinters.

If you dare contradict a Christian
s/he will accuse you of the Sin of Pride.

My Sufi 'Thought for the Day'.

Laughter shrinks the willy.
If wisdom has not crushed you,
you are not yet wise.

The result of a simple search on "Bing".

• 
  
  Better stick with Google !

• Parkinsons Disease

  
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One of the most appalling

Pauline crimes against
the earth beneath
and the sky above
was his patristic and sophistical creation
of a Protean abstract
we have linguistically reduced to  'Love'.

Maybe his disgruntlement
with mere happy affection
and simple joie-de-vivre
led him to found a religion of schism,
interference, intolerance, hate and disconnection...

read more on Biblical words for Love  >

Nearly as much as modern diet,

sheer Normality
gives people cancer, diabetes,
permanently-painful backs,
Parkinson's, Alzheimer's,
strokes and heart-attacks.

Few things give me more pleasure

than giving pleasure to pleasant people
- even humans.

Somehow, I was untouched

by the terrible necromancy

that turns children into Adults,

and so, aged seventy-six

I'm still nineteen.

Montaigne might have said

that

is not nearly as great as the misery of not being told anything.

A note from my live-in companion.

"I really don't understand why he is forever sweeping the floor and his precious rugs.
All that's on them is my lovely hair which falls out and floats about so naturally and continuously.
It is one of the beautiful things about my [main-constituent] breed.

"Maybe he has the Continual Sweeping Disorder that is...sweeping...the world ?

"Replies on a dog-ear, please."

Cultures of Achievement

and property
perish horribly.
Cultures of non-achievement
and generosity
last for dozens if not hundreds
of millennia.


(I am currently reading Peter Matthiessen's
1965 book "At Play in The Fields of the Lord"
a battered, tattered copy of which I found
in the Little Local Library in the Street.)

One of the benefits

for the older male
of living in south-west France
(& Spain & Italy and the southern rest)
is that he can piss behind any parked car
or in any corner
without risk of arrest.

My blog is 'going viral' in Algeria.

An e-mail.

From: Aeneas Dardanos <*****@gmail.com>
Subject: Bektashis

Dr Mr Weir,
I came across your website 'beyond the pale' sometime ago and I was wondering what connections
do you have with the Albanian Bektashis?
I'm an Albanian interested in Sufism.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Flamur

=======

Dear Flamur,

Many thanks for writing to me.  I’m sorry to say I have no connection with the Albanian Bektashis.  Albania always intrigued me, not just because of the unlamented Enver, but because it is a miracle it exists at all, even in its very reduced state.

As soon as it was possible to visit it – via cheap flight from Corfu – I went, but only twice, to Sarandë and Gjirokastër.  Subsequently I acquired an Internet Friend from Vlorë who had emigrated to the US in 1992 . I think she was vaguely connected to the Nomenklatura – she showed me pictures of her very beautiful family house…  Anyway, through her I deepened my interest in Albanian culture, especially poetry since World War 2.  I had read Kadarë, then Fatos Kongoli in translation to either French or English…and so on to the Bektashis, because I, like you, for a long time (like many atheists!)  have had an interest in Sufism.   You may have seen translations I have made of Rumi on my site, as well as a lot of translations of modern Albanian poetry.

I also read a very interesting little-known book from the 1920s called “Two Vagabonds in Albania”.  Their “Two Vagabonds in Languedoc” is equally interesting and original and full of forgotten history.

I never got far in learning Albanian, as you can see, but Zana sent me texts and literal translations, and I also had dictionaries.

I have always been an  outsider, and still live mostly alone, aged 76 – now in SW France.  (I had once considered Albania between Vlorë and Sarandë, but being an EU citizen and always having loved France and the very good connections by air between Ireland and France, made me choose the latter.)  Zana came to visit me in both Ireland and France, and I took her daughter out to dinner (in an Uzbek restaurant!) in Paris a few times when I travelled via Paris (which I don’t do now).  Zana, like a lot of immigrants, does not like the USA.  I have a Lithuanian friend who is selling up and coming to SW France with her dog, because she can’t stand America anymore.  Like many immigrants, including Zana, she divorced fairly soon after arriving in the USA, but “kept herself well above water”.  Zana, however, though originally a research chemist, had to live on low wages and so is still stuck in the US.  Though now she has a permanent, Palestinian boyfriend who conveniently lives in a nearby flat: the perfect arrangement !

Gjithë të mirat,

Anthony (alias Ujku)

Flāmur : flag or banner or standard

Also first-person plural present passive indicative of flō

I like your pseudonym!

Switching to Jesus.

Honor thy father...

... if nor thy mother.

Differences of Culture within a Culture.

The French for semi-detached
as in a house, is jumelée : twinned,
joined together side to side.
The English prefer detachment,
and if that is not possible,
then semi-detachment of some kind.

The French express their aggression with their driving.
The English (and Irish) express theirs with their drinking.

In France the hunters with dogs
are inferior to the middle class
who generally resent their outrageous rights
and behaviour (dating from the Revolution),
and often regard them as 'right-wing scum' .

In England the hunters on horseback with dogs
looked haughtily, expensively
down on the several classes below them.

Meanwhile, in America...

Jesus of the Sauna.

My very good friend
(who has never been a milkman)
puts on clean socks,
hitch-hikes for 30 miles
on half-price Wednesdays
to a convivial sauna
and sucks on friendly cocks.

Against 'Free Choice'.

Entering a public library
is nearly as bad entering a supermarket.
So many books, so much choice - paralysis.

In a nearby French village there is a little bookcase
mounted on a wall - just a small cupboard, really,
with glazed doors - in which people
(English, Dutch, French - even German, Danish and Finnish readers)
leave books - maybe taking others out, or not.
Because of the limited choice
I have found by chance dozens of great books there
that I would never have noticed,
found or chosen in a 'proper' public library.

Dogs have been doomed

Since Time Began
(when they were wolves)
to watch humans eat.
I have always been attracted
to the despised.

I sniff their feet.

Not surprising, really.

"Apart from the colonisation of other planets in our galaxy,
Elon Musk's other ambitions include:
converting automobiles, households and as much industry as possible from fossil fuels to sustainable energy;
implementing a new form of high-speed city-to-city transportation via vacuum tube;
relieving traffic congestion with a honeycomb of underground tunnels fitted with electric skates for cars and commuters;
creating a mind-computer interface to enhance human health and brainpower;
and saving humanity from the future threat of an artificial intelligence that may one day run amok and decide, quite rationally, to eliminate the irrational human species.

"So far, Mr Musk, 46, has accomplished none of these goals."

from The Times, London, November 25th, 2017.

The Earning of Leisure by Labour

is one of the driving forces
behind turbo-capitalism.
Another is the continuous creation
of an unemployed (but unleisured) underclass
through technological innovation.

And what are the common Leisure-dreams ?
Donning expensive gear
to do silly things in groups and troops and teams...

I can't see much pleasure
in their Leisure.

*  *  *

Capitalism also depends on private property.

Marvellous Murmuration

of  Starlings.

click for a video