Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Tuesday 31 December 2019

It occurred to me recently

that bitterness
is a sure sign
of shallowness.

And also (a little later)
that the truly 'spiritual'
are invisible.

Monday 30 December 2019

A Day in the Life

Foremost in the morning
is the fearing.
In the evening
is the fill of feeling
good and almost true. 
And in between
is the knitting of the minutes
one by one,
knit one, purl two.


Sunday 29 December 2019

Beauty and the Beast














Joe Louis (representing white Americans, Jews and Democratic Values)
in 1938 before the boxing-match with Nazi German World Champion Max Schmeling
(representing, er...Nazi values such as the racial inferiority of coloured people -
an idea totally anathema to white Americans and Jews in the democratic
United States of America, especially in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, etc.).

Joe Louis won - along with American racism - though it has to be said that
American racism did not kill millions of Jews, nor cause the deaths
of tens of millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Serbs, Greeks...

Coloured American GIs (in segregated brigades) were amazed at their freedom of movement  in Europe, which is why so many stayed in Paris after the war...which is why Paris is
the Modern Jazz Capital of the World.

After the war (WW2in which both served) Schmeling, hired by Coca-Cola (Germany), became a millionaire.
Joe Louis, not hired by Coca-Cola (Atlanta, GA), did not.

Saturday 28 December 2019

I have a dozen plants in bloom (outside) this late-December,

including this Bidens hybrid and white cyclamen
in one of the troughs I have scattered about within 20 metres of my house,

















Chænomeles x 'Scarlet and Gold',
Winter Jasmine, very pale blue Vinca,
two other colours of cyclamen,
two varieties of rose, Iris foetida,
Schizostylis (also known as Kaffir Lily!),
Salvia x Greggii, Echeveria species...

This is not, however,  due to climate change.

Homage or Insult to Miss S. ?

Turtles on the trot
a lot
Turtles on the trot
A lot of turtles
on the trot
not on the spot
not on not in the pot
nor muck
not right to rot And tortoises
(not porpoises) Not
purposelessly
stuttuttering oyster-noises
(noise annoys terse turtles quite a lot)
Turtles run amok
all teetering and tottering they patter
through the snot
grown lot like spirtles pottering
in the which the pitier which the potter which the pot

Friday 27 December 2019

"After all these centuries

Jehovah lives in our darkness
like a worm in the intestines."

- Graham Greene, in The Honorary Consul

whose epigraph quotes Thomas Hardy :

"All things merge into one another -
good into evil, generosity into justice,
religion into politics."

Thursday 26 December 2019

"The sea of consciousness has come from naught.

From it only red herrings have been caught.
Although philosophers have claimed to plumb its depths,
from its oceanity scant wisdom has been brought."

- Omar Khayyám (trans. Dingo the Dissident)

Wednesday 25 December 2019

Omnivore.


A List of Some Foods He Enjoyed :

Aubergines/Eggplants
Olives
Squash
Globe artichokes
Turnips
Hummus
Plums, Pears, Apples
Sea Scurvy Grass, Spinach
Hunza Apricots,
Potatoes, Eggs, Bananas
Zabaglione, Melon Rind
Blackberries, Strawberries, Raspberries,
Stewed Rhubarb, Porridge, Gooseberry Crumble...



















The diet of most dogs is severely curtailed.

Tuesday 24 December 2019

Round and round

exhaustedly they go
justifying themselves to each other (and themselves).
Death is sweet release.

Monday 23 December 2019

A pamphlet

which argues the obvious:
that Jesus of Nazareth's original message
was anti-natalist as well as anti-hierarchical,
anti-property, anti-misogynist,
and (consequently) egalitarian:

Fraudulent Christianity

If you can't read French use

https://www.deepl.com/translator


Sunday 22 December 2019

I don't want to sound unpleasant

but I have found (with rare exceptions)
that the more you get to know people
the less you want to know them.
This is part of the lunacy of living.

Saturday 21 December 2019

Thursday 19 December 2019

Christian Evangelical Problems.

Many East Asian languages
"are barren in abstractions,
which provided the most appalling difficulties
when it came to translating Holy Writ.

"To give just one example,
he cited the text God is Love.
In Rhadés there is no word for God.
In fact, these people didn't get the idea [of God] at all
without a great deal of explanation.
And there is no word for Love.

"So the text came out in translation:
The Great Spirit is not angry."

- from Norman Lewis: A Dragon Apparent -
Travels in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, 1951.

This problem began conveniently to be solved
by the liquidation of "tribes" such as the Rhadés of Viêt-Nam
through slave labour for Michelin.
Then, after the French were expelled,
came the Americans
and carpet-bombing, Agent Orange,
total war...
now total capitalism
and slavery abroad.


Thursday 12 December 2019

I don't understand

why people (as I read in novels)
need others (or another)
to need them -
because it precludes the necessarily-voluntary in relationships.

Tuesday 10 December 2019

The problem I have with Literature

is that (like plants)
it is so much more interesting and relaxing
than actual people.

Monday 9 December 2019

Today's Neologism.

Indigeneity.

Maybe better than Indigenousness and Autochthonicity,
but unfortunate all the same, being so tellingly close to Indignity...

Lateral thinking.

Or do I mean global thinking ?




Sunday 8 December 2019

Friday 6 December 2019

The Glory of Western Medecine.

Though we live longer,
we may suffer longer
and more expensively from more.

According to an article in Aeon,
"...approximately a third of adults suffer from multiple chronic conditions,
wreaking untold havoc on healthcare systems and economies across the globe.
In developed countries, it might be closer to three in four older adults
who suffer from multiple conditions.
The proportion of patients with four or more diseases
is expected to almost double between 2015 and 2035 in the UK alone.
Frighteningly, these statistics don’t even account for chronic illnesses in children,
which are likewise on the rise."

Wednesday 4 December 2019

His best poem.


Prayer Before Birth


I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
  club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
  with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
     on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
  to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
     in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
  when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
     my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
        my life when they murder by means of my
           hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
  old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
     frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
         waves call me to folly and the desert calls
           me to doom and the beggar refuses
              my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
  come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
  humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
     would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
        one face, a thing, and against all those
           who would dissipate my entirety, would
              blow me like thistledown hither and
                 thither or hither and thither
                    like water held in the
                       hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me

Louis MacNeice

.

Tuesday 3 December 2019

"We all live in a..."

Reality Distortion Field.

I first heard this term in a broadcast discussion
about the President of the United States
and the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

But it could describe all seven billion
bubbles of human consciousness.


Monday 2 December 2019

Sunday 1 December 2019

Time.



Time was invented by railway companies
to keep trains running on it.