People who like do do things in groups

tend to 'group-think'.

Group walks
Everyone talks
Nobody stops
to examine
the moss or the rocks...

Facing the future

– in comfort.

Wet Mess by Murdo MacLeod.

Absolutely fabulous.

 

A poem I transdapted from the Danish nearly 60 years ago:

after Grethe Risbjerg Thomsen's

En nat, måske en martsnat

With every passing moment
I die a little bit.
I carry death within me
through every day I live.

One night – perhaps a March night -
mild, with mist and rain,
I’ll step into the twilight
and never die again.

No: more likely 1954.

 

What would Orwell think now ?

We, in our millions, are (of course)
not brainwashed.
We have been very efficiently (but stressfully)
turned into parroting sponges to soak up
sad and destructive American Values,
along with not-quite-fake philosophy and news.

Alas!

the ignorance of the Educated – novelists
and journalists and even restaurant-reviewers
all 'high-to-middle-brows' –
who think that all cattle
(except for the occasional bull)
are cows.

 

No job too small.

Michelangelo
(di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni)
sculpted a snowman
on request (or at the behest)
of one or other of the Medici.

DH Lawrence wrote

three of the best poems in English.
In his two-volume
Collected Poems (1928)
the second part
was of verses unrhymed,

some of them refreshingly short
- just three or four lines;
some of them soppy,
others refreshingly
worse than my blogs.

I can find only one on the web*
- but I have sent off for a second-hand copy
of the abovementioned collection.

* NOTE: The oft-quoted lines about the non-connection
of a bird to self-pity are only half of a longer poem.

Worst of all –

 

If YouTube's bizarre recommendations

are anything to go by,
we'll either all be wiped out next year
- or never.

The Big Question is 
human cultural bias.
In overview it is at present
mostly American and inanely
acquisitive and optimistic.
Even the USA's most-apparent
enemies have it...so...
what's to hope for ?

The death of fun.

The more competitive
that people and societies
are, the less playful, too.

Being a difficult person

is not easy,
especially when you are downed
by diarrhœa and gastric reflux
– and fall over from time to time.

The Dark Reflector
(whom I treat sometimes as a dunce
asked if I wanted a cuddle,
but, really, it was the other way round:
he wished to receive one, for once.

Who? Me?

Interesting snippet.

Although the Romans had no theory of sepsis or antisepsis,

and, of course, no knowledge of distillation of wine to spirit
(which is antiseptic), they cleaned wounds with turpentine,
which is a fairly violent antiseptic.

Can any imagined communion

with a god, goddess or great spirit
(below, next-door, above)
compete with the felt,
if temporary, entheogenic union
of emotional, erotic love ?

 

The violinist returning home at night.

photo by Queenie Cheen, 2020.

 

'Sociability' :

the inability to be alone,
lacking interesting pursuits,
a fear of silence ?

The Bank of Mum and Dad

I listened to a broadcast on the radio about it
and how it conferred 'hereditary advantage'
in social systems said to be meritocracies,

and how it is becoming more and more important and divisive
as 'advanced' societies become less egalitarian.

I thought it amazing that no mention was made
of the empty piggy-banks of the millions
of 'single mothers', 'mums-alone'
who have to work to just manage on their own
even without the financial, social
and emotional impediment of children.

W.W.W.A.C.A.

We are the Xaters of Xmas
the time of maXimum emotional
and in-house seXual abuse,

grotesquely accompanied by gifts,
alcoXol and Xeartless bonhomie.     
Xideous eXcess consumption,
spyware gadgets, electronic toys... 

fun-time penetration, humiliation
of cornered and intoXicated women
plus sundry ineXperienced girls and boys.

But Xmas is the best time to be sick.

Seeing Both Sides

As a never quite 'in-the-closet'
queer man, I have been cajoled
and Put Under Moral Compulsion

by at least two women
during trips abroad
into fucking them ineptly,
with affection and revulsion
(trapped gigolo or reluctant whore ?)

because they had paid for
dinner, bed and breakfast,
hire-car, and even more.

John Updike was wrong.

America is not
a vast conspiracy to make you happy
but a vast conspiracy to make you angry
that you're not as happy as you think
you ought to be.

Furry ?

 Not really.

Aeolidia papillosa

Industrialised People-herding

first began
in the early 19th century
when folk were herded
into trains, then ships,
now onto aircraft...
and anti-social web-platforms
and their compartments...

Multi-image insects in flight.

by Xavi Bou.

Banded Orange Heliconian

Today's news.

 

Nothing new, same old...

but...

Appalling tragedy.

Lifetime and Bedtime.

Not-quite-most of my life
has been spent in bed.
I used to go at 10 pm
and then get up at nine;
now (in Central European Time)
I retire at 9 pm feeling good
and rise, feeling bad, at eight.
Recently I have started
to have a little lie-down
in the afternoon.
For the eternal sleep
I can hardly wait.

"Call me Frozen Crusoe"

on the melting ice-floe
of paralysing news-reports.

Not a blind-drunk boys-only

out-of-their-heads weekend,
nor legless in Ostia.

In Darkest Peru

 a newly discovered Blobfish.

You don't care what goes down your drains.

There's an awful lot of plastic in our brains !

Three years before I was born
the cold, calculating Dr Asperger
labelled a sometimes-socially-disabling condition.

I still don't know the proper use of lies
nor how to irrationally normalise.

He knew nothing of 'sabotaged cognition'.

Since then 'They' have discovered ADD, ADHD
and bi-polar depression
some symptoms of which have socially affected me...

but it is the categorising, 'consumer society'
(damn its infected eyes!),
not I, that's hurtlng to perdition.

This is how I often feel:

Forget the gold, forget the myrrh –

Frankincense

is now so in demand

by the loathsome cosmetics industry

that trees are being hacked to death

for frankin-contraband.

VainGlory, an aspect of Superbia.

 

"A US state department spokesperson"

"told the Guardian that a total of 140 Palestinians had been resettled in the United States in the past five years, and only 31 in the year since the conflict in Gaza began..."

'Palestinian' is not recognised by the Americans or the Israelis as a nationality.  Therefore they have to declare themselves Jordanian...

Another thought on our nearest relative

Perhaps,

Just as Western European diseases almost wiped out pre-Columbian peoples of America,

so might infections carried northwards out of Africa by invulnerable, smooth-skinned Homo pseudo-sapiens,

wiped out their colder-climate enemies, partners, pals,
the hairy, sensitive Neanderthals.

On the other hand,
the reason might have been hormonal:
Sapiens was (and is)
super-testosteronal.

It's fairly disturbing

to look at a beautiful photo
of a terrible place.

A Syrian prison after being emptied.

An even more beautiful detail.

I have known some

people who were genuinely false.
They did not know any other way to be.
Is this a paradox ?

World's richest man - and demented troll.

"If you’re following him on X,
then Elon Musk’s UK is a terrifying place.
Civil War is inevitable, he writes.
According to what he posts and retweets,
it’s a Stalinist country where the unhappy citizens
scream out for another election.
The people of Britain have had enough
of a tyrannical police state” he posts."

Has he dared to visit ?
The ignorant idiot does not realise that
if he were resident in Britain he would
be an earl and sit in the 'stalinist' House of Lords.

learn more >

I am unsurprised.

 

They went on to do much worse
mainly on other continents
when they became civilised.

Sometimes I think

that knowledge
is imposed opinion. 

Inevitably,

most of us
are mediocre.

Life is such
a dismal joker.

Anarchy works

 in small ways.  Why not largely ?

'Paths of Desire' vs Paths of Planners.

I was sure

that the line
Walls were made for knocking down
had been written (perhaps by Moses)
and was well-known,

but on consulting Messrs. Google
I found entries only along the lines of

Design advice for knocking down internal walls. In order to comply with fire regulations, the new structural support will need to be boxed in, which will typically result in a drop of 200mm-250mm in ceiling height. This is why you often see....blablablabla

"That love loves fidelity...

is a myth woven by men
from their insecurities." 

- David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Cut it off!

There are too many humans in the world.

In the untiringly self-praising 'Land of the Free'

(the largest producer and consumer
of humourless, unbridled pornography**)
the word cunt
is pretty well taboo
and a cock (or cockerel)
is called a rooster.
and it is indecent to talk
of satisfying masturbation.

"The puritan's obscurantisms of one period
provide the pornographer's extenuations of the next."
- Anthony Powell.

I was in my teens when Bill Haley's
Rock around the Clock came as an affront
to many tender ears, including mine.
I preferred Sibelius and Ravel
and Scottish ballads and Lonnie's
version of Rock Island Line sung
at the Castle Street folk-club. 

Few honky-whiteys knew that Rock
meant Fuck, just as Jazz & Jizz
(& Jass and Jasm) meant Sex
and poor old Bessie's Sugar-bowl
was her oft-raided Cunt.  

~~~

** 'Out of the 193 people interviewed who felt they could not control their consumption of pornography, more than 93% reported struggling with depression. “Very worryingly, more than 40% say that, at times, they feel like ending their life,” said Paula Hall, psychotherapist.'

'Some people might be masturbating 10 times a day, up to three or four hours a go. They’re physically in pain,' said Peter Waddington of Relate (formerly the UK's Marriage Guidance Council).

 

Masks.

 Mexican, Tuvan & Fang.

Wow! I am appreciated,

if only as a statistic.
.

Unfortunately, I find many articles
in The Guardian (under the rubrics of Culture,
and Lifestyle) pretty trashy.  Some are
badly written or imported entirely from
the right-wing New York Times. There is far
too much reporting on the USA, and far too little
on Africa and Europe. I scroll
swiftly past the Sports and Stupid Recipes
for Rich Folk section.  I subscribe
mainly for the serious analyses and photos.

Hobby-horse racing.

"The sport has also been found to help young people
with symptoms of autism and ADHD,
giving them a chance to connect with other young people
articularly those with a love of horses."

 

Seventy years too late for me. And I prefer donkeys.
I liked fencing (because of the footwork)
but of course was rather inept.

Ding-dong hairily on high...

Shocking Chinese trade in human body-parts.

The annual Christian orgy-time is here,
and Temu are selling these beautiful Christmas-tree 
‘Elephant ornaments' 

but, given the difficulty of finding enough
male elephants to satisfy demand, 

they more likely have been removed from the corpses
of homeless old men, of which there may be
hundreds of thousands in China.

What's wrong with escape ?

The oppressed do it.
War-prisoners do it.
People whose lives
are torn to shreds
do it.
A good reason for suicide
is to escape the all-pervading
outer madness, as well as
the little madness in our heads.

The music that I hear

is tinnitus, which sounds
both near and far away,
accompanied by almost-random
ear-worms. It is not oppressive.
I run from drummers.
They display and beat for mummers.

'If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away.'

Photo of the Day.

Aleppo, Syria.

photo of Assad mural by Mahmoud Hassano

It has to be said

that this totemic building is far
from being the finest Gothic* cathedral going

photo by Sarah Meyssonier

much less the finest medieval one. In fact
some more modestly astounding
provincial churches
are not even cathedrals.

Church of Notre-Dame-la-Grande Poitiers.

*The best bits of Notre-Dame in Paris
(on the West doorway) are Romanesque!

Winter haiku.

Bleak December rain,
new moon – and only one sock
in the wash – again.

more haikai >

This may not be

the entire poem.
But I don't think it matters.
It's just words to me.

(Between dog and wolf = twilight)

Numbers.

On the face of it
The Gates Foundation is entirely
laudable/admirable/worth all our admiration/commendable
in saving the lives of 10,000
anonymous children in Africa.

Mr Gates himself has bewailed
the short-termism
of (even serious and uncorrupt) governments.

But let us consider his own.

Many of those anonymous ten thousand
will move to ever-less-sustainable,
ever-more-dissociating, anonymising cities,

and on to fighting their way
through border-controls, civil wars and 'conflict-zones',
past kidnappers, swindlers and traffickers,
afflicted by dehydration, hunger, bites and stings

to the smug paradise of Europe,
the Paradise of Things. 

To brighten you up

 on a drear, Temuescent November day:

A tee-shirt with your name or photo on it
was something most of you young people
left behind at nursery school. 

(When I was young T-shirts didn't even exist.)

But Temu men are a throwback,
or perhaps a missing macho link

– or they just missed out on nursery school
and all other formal education.

Or they are all Chinese.

Never mind the spelling.
Admire the butch tattoos, the sexy pose.
$5.99 from Temu.

I wonder where he went after the photo-shoot.
Or is he AI-generated ?

Food for gender-oriented thought...

Sapiens and Neanderthalensis –

which way round ?
either way,

Cunning eclipsed intelligence.

Party Food.

Pastry-wrapped
prolapsed rectums:
a fabulous new Eating Xperience!

Creepier than Taylor Swift.

 

Da Vinci's Saviour of the World.

Millions, perhaps billions,

of parents in the many unfortunate lands
don't seem to realise
(or are prevented from realising)
that if a child is attached to a 'cuddly toy'
(or inanimate intimate)
it is missing something important.
And so the 'cuddly toy' industry enlarges
and expands.

Three cheers for "Plucky Little Belgium".

The criminalisation of sex-work
is itself a crime.

read more >

Under France's Third Republic (1870-1940), sex-work was de-criminalised and medically supervised.  Charles de Gaulle, a tyrannical prude with an even more prudish wife, re-criminalised it on assuming power in 1945.  

No Immaculate Conception

The Queen of Sparta might have tried
herbal remedies such as silphium or scammony,
rue or hellebore, early in the pregnancy;

might have tried jumping
or tumbling down the stairs,
taken hot or icy baths, or both,
but probably could not have summoned
the regally-appointed
medicine-man to do the business,
nor even stolen to a secret cave
to meet a helpful woman
or talented male slave.

If she felt that she had been defiled,
she obviously decided to 'just go through'
with it as millions did and do,
stagger on and go
with the thankless flow
towards her mythic, unregretting fame –

unless enthralled, spell-struck,
or thrilled less fleetingly than he,
the queen felt yet more privileged
than she was already...or just normally,
involuntarily maternal.
 
In any case,
the Olympian shape-shifter's fuck
(or fucks) led to hubris-hallowed towers of flame
and bodies turned to ash throughout
our nasty little history,

and towards a less-painterly end of time
than that foretold by Old Mad John.

So much for Ravished Leda
and the Götterdämmerung.





https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Leda/leda.html

SILPHIUM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion