On the assumption that these words have in some way weathered the
ravages of time do give them your hearing wending your way over the heap of
their inscription by your careful step what here appears haphazard collage has
in fact been designed according to an inevitability as great as any other for
here before you are many bricks in a ziggurat piled bricks not made by these
hands no but piled here in ziggurat alphabetical this anabecedarian ziggurat
from alpha to nowhere near omega as you'll see my beth as in aleph beth I was
that day outside the Chih-Shan metro station where I was trying to have a quiet
smoke before heading up to the office while next to me three gentlemen in house
slippers were yelling on their cellphones in Taiwanese three different
conversations all three yelling the same way the racket of it nearly burst my
skull got me to thinking about what Frederick said of the German language what
exactly did Frederick say and was the name Frederick if only he could have
heard this heard either this or that in the beginning the all was in one place
not a thing of the all did move nor was there any time across which any thing
could trace its line for the all was in one place immobile with neither time
nor space and a desire was conceived in the all for movement and the desire was
already movement two things commingling and conceiving three four things
colliding and making seven all things tracing their lines under the force of
desire which desire was left with the things themselves and the all retained
but memory of itself seeing all things fly off to the rhythm of desire knowing
and waiting for the things to begin to gather and this memory cast its shadow
over all the things and things did begin to gather in their shadow and their
movement became a play of shadow and light and we are this play some heretics
say while others chant
Every day just one potato
That's the diet for a Plato
Every night I drink my bottle
Soon you'll call me Aristotle
and
so with these others do I heave up this ziggurat alphabetical this testament in
clay or Clay Testament Envoi Poetics 1.2 Original sin, the fruit of the
fall, Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx
Yy Zz . , : ; ? ! " ' ( ) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Genesis
Adam was a short beast, with a thin line
of hair down his back, like a mane.
Eve had a thin line of hair down her back; it was like a mane.
In
those days, when you came into town, a stranger, you could always recognize
Adam and Eve, because they were the only ones without navels.
The first writing was by Cain, who started by drawing pictures on
his parents' bellies. Their
bellies were smooth, and had no navels.
Cain would ask them to lie back by the fire, and close their eyes, and
he would draw. When he was done,
they would open their eyes and look at what he had drawn.
Once Cain drew an unheard of thing. It was such a thing, that when God saw it, he let it stay on
Eve's belly as punishment. God
punished Eve for the evil sport she had fallen into. It could not be washed away, but stayed on Eve's belly. For they had fallen into an evil sport.
Exodus
It was during
the years in the wilderness. Moses
came down from Sinai and saw what Aaron had done in his absence.
And Moses said:
"What is this you have done!"
Aaron said: "You
know yourself what this people is like.
They said to me: 'Make us something to glitter in our heads. This God who led us up from Egypt--we
don't know what's become of him.'
So I said to them: 'Who of you is still shapely and comely?' And they came to me and showed me, and
I filmed them all. Then I gathered
the film and threw it into the fire.
And after awhile out came this calf."
The Gospel of Thom
Smit
I.
Once upon a
time was the Word. And the Word was without form, and void.
In short, the Word was many words, and
sometimes even things.
One could not tell the difference in any
place, for all words and things were different; they were all different from
each other, and they were even more different from the Word. And the Word, in its turn, was
different according to whom you asked, and in what words you asked.
What's more, all was such that one could
not fix one's eyes on any thing, or fix one's ears on any word, and expect it
even to stay the same as itself.
In short, all words were different from
themselves, and all things were different from any words, and also from each
other, and also from themselves.
Even one's eyes were different, the left
one from the right, and either eye was certainly different, very different,
from either ear; and the ears protruded from each side of the head: in short,
they were very different.
Then Thom Smit was born.
II.
And Thom Smit did grow to be a youth of fourteen years, and his
virtue did show forth in many ways.
And the people were astonished by his words, for he spoke as one with
wisdom, and not as one who watched TV.
Said he: "Just as our elders, weakened by years of
compromise, submit to the presence of those they loathe, so do our melons soak
the fouled waters of the plain, till they poison both themselves and those that
partake of them."
And: "Submit not to both these poisons. Though you eat the melons to the skin, yet leave the elders
to chew their own bitter rinds."
And Thom Smit did take ceramics class at the Pottery Barn of the strip
mall as you drive into town from Monona.
And he did throw him many a mean pot. And he did paint upon his pots designs and symbols, and the
people did look at what he painted, and did say, "What hath this
youth?"
For they said: "This youth is not like others, but hath him a
perversion of the head."
And the owner of the Pottery Barn in those days was named Chuck, and
Chuck did keep the pots of Thom Smit in the back, lest other youths should see
them, and lest they should speak of them unto their parents. For on the pots were many things that
youths should not see.
And some of Thom Smit's pots did the owner break outright, pretending
they had cracked in the kiln.
"For this one," sayeth Chuck unto his assistant, "this
one is surely too much; I will not even fire this one."
And Thom Smit did suspect Chuck of thus breaking his pots, and spoke
sorely unto him.
And Thom Smit did take him a can of maroon glaze, and did pour it into
the drawer of Chuck's desk.
And the can was a large can, and did foul the books and papers in that
desk, dripping even unto the floor.
And Thom Smit did break seventeen ceramic owls made by the ladies of St.
James Lutheran. And Chuck did see
him do it, and did hear him speak bitter words as he did it.
And Thom Smit was no longer welcome at the Pottery Barn, but did take up
tennis.
Said he: "Our world is all preprocessed, and full of fakes; fakes
upon fakes. The boredom of Formica
covers all things here, even unto death."
And
all of these things were when Thom Smit was still but a youth of fourteen
years.
III.
And it came to pass as Thom Smit was a young man that he went
forth like many of his generation to work as a barista.
And this work was as he was a student at the university in the town of
Madison; and the cafŽ in the which he did work was near upon the university,
and was often filled with people.
And the people of the cafŽ were of many sorts.
And Thom Smit did work next to the scribe of that place, and he did
serve forth the drinks unto the people.
And the prophet of that place in those days was named Cosmo di
Madison. And Cosmo di Madison did
preach the word of the Lord unto the people there. But the people heeded him not.
And Cosmo di Madison did resent the presence of Thom Smit at the
espresso machine, and did make him out to be a servant of Belial.
And Cosmo di Madison complained sorely to the scribe of that place, and
spoke many bitter words.
And the scribe of that place recorded the words of Cosmo di Madison, for
in those days did he note down all his words.
And it came to pass when Thom Smit heard the words against him, that he
did say unto Comso di Madison, and he said it unto his face: "A prophet
art thou not, but art rather a paranoid schizophrenic."
And: "The symptoms are obvious upon you, O Cosmo di Madison, and
all do know it. Thou art one who
barkest at the moon. Woof
woof!"
And Cosmo di Madison did not suffer the words of Thom Smit in silence,
but did rail against him to all that would hear.
And Cosmo di Madison would drink no drink made by his hands, but did
speak of such drinks as having a poison in them.
And one day Thom Smit did say unto Cosmo di Madison: "Today it
seemeth you have not taken your medicine, O great prophet, and so it is that
you speak forth loudly your prophecies, and the people heed you not."
And: "Today I have a hangover, O prophet, and care not to
hear you. So get you hence through
the door, or pay for your coffee like the others. If you cannot pay, so must you go hence to the street. For today I have a hangover, O prophet,
and care not to hear your prophecies."
And upon hearing these words a rage did come upon Cosmo di Madison, and
he did complain ever more sorely of Thom Smit, and did attribute to him many
conspiracies and sundry larcenies.
And the scribe did write down all his words, for in those days did he
write down all the words that the prophet did say.
IV.
From the Scribe's Journals:
Thom Smit--to think he is a student of engineering! He is blonde and small, of muscular
build. He's a great reader of
Gilles Deleuze, and considers himself a Nietzschean. It's lucky for me he's at the cafŽ. He's proving an excellent foil for
Cosmo di Madison. I've recently
got him reading Rabelais. --May, 1992
Cosmo di Madison now recognizes in Thom Smit a nemesis worthy of
the swiftest action. That I'm responsible for his being hired at the cafŽ is
generally known, and I confess it openly.
I should have seen the man's character for what it was. Needless to say, Cosmo di Madison has
forgiven this lapse on my part, pointing out that Pseudo-Sergeant Major Smit is
obviously a professional and had been trained by Kissinger's people specifically
to pull the wool over my eyes.
Cosmo di Madison himself was almost taken in. "At first I thought he was just a loser like all the
other losers. But it's worse than
that. He's a fucking imposter--ya hear me?" --July, 1992
Remarks of Cosmo di Madison on Thom Smit:
1. "That useless fucking bastard calls himself a fucking
lieutenant major, but he's just a fucking high school dropout drug addict who
couldn't tell his ass from a hole in the ground if his life depended on
it."
2. "How many customers do you think that fucking punk is
gonna short change before Mark [the owner] wises up and fires him?"
3. "You know he's got his finger in the till and he's
supplying all the barbiturates to Craig and Monkey Butt. Kissinger's got him working the joint
to make sure they do their job and try to drug me every fucking chance they
get. I wasn't born yesterday what
do you think! Pssh! That fucking Craig has been selling the
barbiturates on the side too.... Oh, don't act so surprised! You know it goes on."
4. "Mark needs to spend more time in his shop. I got enough stuff to do keeping the
customers clean. If Kissinger buys
out your staff, this place is finished, ya hear me? I won't come back.
Ya hear me? You just see
what'll go down then. Mark will
wish he never even heard of this town.
Ya hear me?"
V.
And soon after these things had come to pass, behold it did happen
that the spirit of the Lord came upon Thom Smit, and he began to speak in
parables.
And all at the cafŽ did wonder upon it, and did say, "What hath
Thom Smit, that he speakest thusly?"
And he did leave his work at the cafŽ, and ceased from his study at the
university.
And Thom Smit went forth to preach unto the people like Cosmo di
Madison, for the spirit of the Lord had moved him.
And Thom Smit did
wander the streets on the west side of Madison, whereas Cosmo di Madison did
preach in the downtown.
And Thom Smit preached the word unto the people of the west side, as you
head out of town toward Monona.
And the people heeded him not.
And thus it was that the people said amongst themselves: "Is Thom
Smit also one of the prophets?"
And these words are as a proverb even unto this day.
VI.
And Thom Smit built his house on sandy ground, and sowed his seed
upon the rocky wayside, and combed his hair with a goblet.
And he took a fox for a mango, and made of it a hairy puree.
And many did laugh at him, and said: "Thom Smit does not know his
ass from a hole in the ground."
And they said: "Thom
Smit could not find his ass with both hands."
But verily it was said unto them, and it was said by Thom Smit: "A
day shall come to pass when none shall be able to tell their ass from a hole in
the ground. And then shall a great
wailing be heard."
And he said: "Only those who from the very beginning could not tell
their asses from holes in the ground--only such as these shall enter the
Kingdom of Heaven. All others
shall be cast out, and their asses shall be grass, and they will know not if
they have been turned into a golf course, or what. Boy, will there be wailing then."
And he said:
"Those who mistake their asses for a wheelbarrow shall inherit the
earth."
And he said: "Blessed are they who try to catch flies in their
mouth. Blessed are they who would rather hang out in a juice bar than flay the
fox with the big boys."
And he said: "My father is a colonel and I am a sergeant
major. My father could thrash all
your male relatives with his left hand if he wanted. My father has forty-seven Cadillacs."
But the people heard him not, and they sent him packing from their patio
parties; and their daughters did tend to throw garbage at the back of his head.
But
verily, reader, can you tell your ass from a hole in the ground even now?
Acts
I. The eggs are white and have a yellow center.
I
am white and have a black center.
My
wife is ivory with an unknown center, perhaps red.
Our guest is light yellow, or olive, with a center of pure white.
Christ said: "My yolk is light."
Yes, but light what?
Valentinus: "Of a very light color indeed! Like a shimmering peach."
II. The first egg I crack has two yolks connected by a bloody
umbilical to the clear mucous membrane surrounding them. The crystal sphere.
Epistles
I.
Original sin, the fruit of the Fall, is not
passed on through blood or the soul, but through language.
The fallen world is the object of
language.
It follows that our being in language is
our being in sin. This does not
mean that we can live other than in language, but rather means that we must
live in language so as least to miss the mark.
The poet comes before the scribe. The poet's work is revelation of the
divine. The poet allows us to live
in language so that we may least miss the mark. The poet forms language so that it is the closest to
nonlanguage.
The poet makes use of, and perfects, those elements in language that are
not of language.
There is a possible accumulation in
language, a materiality, a hard rhythm at the heart of language heard best by
the poet. The poet follows this
rhythm until language breaks and cracks, having reached the top or bottom, the
left or right, the backwards or forwards, the inside or outside, the temple or
frontier of its range.
II.
The scribe loves
all that is getting out of hand.
He loves such because he knows, given the tininess of his own hands,
that everything has already gotten out of hand.
"Everything has
gotten out of hand!" says the scribe with pleasure.
And being that
everything is thus begotten, the scribe knows it to be most recognizable in its
thus-begottenness when it is not merely known to have gotten out of hand, but is
felt to be always and ever becoming out of hand.
"Hell! Best for it to be gloriously becoming
so!"--that is what the scribe says.
In fact the scribe
knows his hands to be so tiny that the only thing they can really grasp is the
stylus. And the scribe grasps this
stylus scriptively, which is to say in a manner that pays homage to the getting
there of all that is way out of hand, but not only in a manner that pays
homage, but in a manner also that is no manner, but is instead way
out of hand.
The scribe, then,
holds the stylus in his tiny hand, but knows that what the stylus leaves, the
marks the stylus leaves, are already out of hand the moment they are left, are
left as it were in homage to the loveliness of their getting out of hand, and
are also in their very leaving left out of hand.
From this you can see
that the scribe is in no man's hand.
He is hardly a hired hand.
That he kept grain accounts--don't believe it. Rather heaped he grain round Pharaohs conscripted. And will!
The scribe loves all
that is getting out of hand.
III.
God formed man of the clay of the ground and then breathed into
him the breath of life. The clay
of the ground as material and the breathing in of the breath of life: these
have been the focus of most concern in our literature and speculation. And the question of what the breath of
life may be has been recurrent.
But the question of the forming, the verb forming, hasn't raised our
attention in the right way. And
yet everyone knows--the Sumerians and Babylonians knew--that the pressing of
marks into the clay was the crucial part of this forming. It was the pressing of marks, the right
marks, that gave the clay the dignity needed for its reception of the breath of
life.
The clay as result of this writing is clay that may receive the breath
of life if only this breath be given it.
* * *
> > > A letter from the seventh edition of The Clay Testament addressed
to one Ivan as in Most Dear and Incorrigible. I write you for one purpose only: to save you, if only a
bit, the confusion. The following,
then, should suffice. This
collection is not. You shouldn't
as such, as it wasn't written in that.
I wouldn't even call it if I were asked. Though arranged in a rough, they remain quite
separate--letters, prosetry, brief essays, jokes, many painfully ironic in the,
say, that poor, sad Flaubert. You
wouldn't do well, then.
In finding this, rather think that you
have come upon an unlocked desk drawer in the office of some curious perhaps
unstable, you have looked into desk drawer found it full of all manner of
handwritten--cafŽ napkins, envelopes, scrap paper--understandably overcome by
the desire to steal the intention of finding out why further the suspicion that
you would perhaps be able through such scraps to look into what many would
doubtless call.
These few hints should set you on the
right track concerning the form and the place.
Sincerely,
Eric Mader-Lin
Madison
1992
I.4. Poem. Happily
I recover from the bottom of my bookbag the scribbled envelope I thought I had
lost. The text I copy here:
My tongue is a
little red wagon with one missing wheel.
My hand is a rusted
Plymouth on bricks in a weedgrown
lot.
My pen is the grave
of nothing's nothing.
This scribbled
envelope: a flower that's sprung therefrom.
I.5.
The desire to write on your body.
We will sit on the bed, oblivious, and
write upon each other's bodies with deft concentration. Nous nous Žcrirons.
I'll save some of the best for your
collarbones.
How long could this go on? For we are mere mortals, mere writers.
When all the skin of each of us is covered
with writing, we will begin filling in the empty spaces offered by margins and
loops.
On your body I will write a tiny poem, four
hundred lines perhaps, in the loop of a "d". This "d" will be found at the
end of the word sound, written earlier on the smooth outer curve of your
breast, itself the end of a poem.
When all these margins and loops are
filled, we must write more tinily yet.
(It is a difficult but necessary word,
tinily. In this it is like the
word anankschen.)
We take breaks to eat, make love or
read. And we write on each others
bodies:--s'Žcrire.
Our love a lesson in writing's grammar mu§
sein.
I desire to write the history of the [ ] on your body.
Where do I begin?
Down between your thighs, an inch from your
cunt, I copy the first verses of Genesis.
I move out from there in circles, or small
loops, up and down your body with a sharp little stylus.
And you yourself are writing on me. Nous nous Žcrirons.
Should I write the Ten Commandments on your
thumbnail, so that every ten days, when you clip your nails, a Commandment or
two will fall away? For good?
I am a shamefaced heretic of late. My writing has become a vice. I am taken into it.
Where do we go from here, love?
Finally they'll find our bodies entwined on
a rotten mat in a buried city.
HERCULANEUM CITY.
My papyrus cock will be folded neatly into
your papyrogyne--which means: your papyral cunt.
Our bodies, hollowed manuscripts, will be
only somewhat collapsed. Only the
thinnest surface skin of our bodies is preserved, written carefully with layers
of text.
Even the bones have shivered to dust, and
the lenses of our eyes have certainly shivered.
We'll be a heap.
I.6. A letter to Erik of August 31, 1991,
written in Madison. Erik: After
hearing that Timur was coming to Paris to join you. Hell, happens every day. I've included you in a brief literary. Or should I say if he gets
there.
Before I got to the
cafŽ on the day in question. He
waited for me to arrive because she told.
They had been discussing science, and he actually. The betterment of humankind, I
suppose. During their discussion
he made the comment you see as epigraph.
Let it be known that he said.
The infant quake in its cradle, the womb of woman close up, etc. "Science is everything," he
said.
Well.
I happened to step up
just as he was saying something about the marriage of science and philosophy:
he wondering which of the two.
"Both are
barren," I suggested.
"They've always had to adopt to keep up with the Joneses." "Ahh!" he said, eyes aglimmer
like those of a blue foetus slamdunking.
(Not exactly a passing simile this--but just think of that foetus!)
He stepped away and
then I heard from my love that he had potshat at Heidegger. She quoted me the epigraph, and, after
hearing such profanity quoted from the mouth of such a young and seemingly
intelligent--in short, after hearing technotheistic, I was moved to pen. I've enclosed with instructions for
Timus to first, aloud, with you on his right side, before the ancient enceinte
temple of N™tre Dame. He has given
me his word he. He said
"Mellow out." But I ask
you, what is the word?
I send this to you
for your more rabelaisian in the now thin city of Paris, and so that you will
maintain the proper.
With a pain
in my heart,
Eric
First! say I:
Orbus mundi in anus timuri est.
Meaning, and I quote:
--Acch! Everything is science.
--Timur to Hui-Ling, 30th July 1991
And Rather Say I--
Everything is your anus.
The sun circles round the rim of your anus,
the trees strut up and tickle your pinkish anusflesh.
Get my drift?
Everything is your anus.
Every morning I wake in your anus, and in
the evening I lie down to sleep therein.
Everything, but Everything, is YOUR ANUS.
When you eat poorly, a trillion years of
chaos rules the Universe.
We should call it the Anusverse!
Science is everything, but that everything
resides in anusum tuum, Timum.
Scientists are as the little white
bowelworms spread o'er the gaping plains of your anus's girth.
Their white coats should tie /
In the back /
Fed orangejuice concentrate /
By fat Aunt Jemammies /
On the verandah. (Actes anusi timuri, IV, ii, 132-7)
Their white coats should tie in the back,
But your Anus ties the tides'
times!
And writes the NEW YORK TIMES!
And prints it!
"All of your anus that fits to
print" --
Arts and leisure: your
anus. Editorial: anusorial tutorial. Business: Need I Say More? News: Timur's retention around the
Globe.
Nobody can scoop the Timurial
Times. They're on top of the
latest events. The hottest
breaking stories. A rift in the Gulf. Acid rainus. Tyranisanus.
Timur's anus wrecks.
--Scratch that! Stop
the pressing!
(Hemingway got "tight" they say,
But Timur's anus takes the day!)
In the morn wake I therein,
In the eve must I go there to rest.
If I run the whole day as fast as I can, I
make it just halfway to the verge of your left Cheek.
Don't you get it?
Anus of the centuries! Anus saeculorum! Anus toti mundi!
Your anus spews forth prophecies of all
things. Techniques and
technerooonies terribillissimi!
"Science is everything."
Oh certainly, certainement, sicherlich, seguro, naturlich. Yes we couldn't agree more. But everything is spelled--and don't
you forget it:
"T - I
- M - ' - S A - A A A - N - U - S!"
[note the elision, making you and "your
anus" one word. --Ed.]
Your anus pours forth portents and devices
unlimited. MTV rocks the cave of
Timur's anus. Operation Desert
Storm flies thereout barely a second and has already done its little
business. Number Two.
Your anus breathes forth the best of our
knowledge.
Speak again, O toothless one!
Our baited breaths wait for you to breathe your
words to Breathe your words to the rotting stones Breathe your words to the
rotting stones of this falling temple.
In short, in the moyen ‰ge it was Notre
Dame. In the New Day Dawning, it
is Votre Dam, Forever
Yours, Timur.
It is, t'be brief, YOUR ANUS.
I.7.
THE PROGRESS OF EVIL
The Fall continues
from anthropos (mythology)
to anima
(theology)
down to Self (psychology)
then further
to mind,
to brain,
(biology)
into language (Communication
Arts 101, Ad-
vertising
2, 0000)
At this moment--I swear--the waitress
steps up and asks me, saccharine: "OK.
Are we all
finished here? "
I don't know what to say to this.
Satan strolls the malls, an unsuspected
blip of light on the screen, 4 billion kms
of coiled
wire
filamented
glass
logy
I'm finally brought the bill--imagine
being
handed a bill at Peter's Gate--I've
spent:
$13.13. "How was everything here?"
What would you do? I consult my con-
science, put $14 on the table, stuff the
bill
in my bookbag, and walk.
4997 National Checking Co., St. Paul /// Server Table No. C5 Guests Date 30 177421 /// chic teriyaki 8.95
/// sushi 3.51 /// Coffee
Tea Milk // Thank You! Food // Beverage
// Sub Total 12.45 //
Tax .68 // Total 13.13
I.10. Simone Petrement's biography of
Simone Weil.
Weil wrote in "Morality and
Literature" (Cahiers du sud, 1944; article apparently written years
before) against "the usurpation by writers of the function of spiritual
guidance, for which they are totally unsuited." Petrement suggests that Simone believed that this abuse
could be corrected. "For
centuries the function of director of conscience had been exclusively in the
hands of the priests. They often
performed it atrociously badly, as the fires of the Inquisition testify, but at
least they had some title to it.
In reality, it is only the greatest saint who can perform it, as it is
only the greatest geniuses among writers.
But all priests, by virtue of their profession, speak in the name of the
saints, and look to them for inspiration, and try to imitate and follow
them. When, as a result of what
was called Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the priests had in fact
almost entirely lost this function of guidance, their place was taken by
writers and scientists. In both
cases, it is equally absurd."
Weil, at the end of Notebook IV (presumably the
idea for the article): "Literature and morality. Imaginary evil is romantic, fanciful, varied; real evil dreary,
monotonous, barren, and boring.
Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, fresh, marvelous,
intoxicating. Thus imaginative
literature is either boring or immoral (or a mixture of both). It manages to escape this alternative
only by passing in some way, by the force of art, to the side of reality--which
genius alone can do."
Father Clement, who gave Simone to
understand that she was a heretic, wrote that he was surprised by her physical
appearance (her dress, her voluntary lack of femininity).
The monk Vidal: "It has been written
that if she had been humble, she would have embraced the Catholic faith. I am not of this opinion. Simone Weil was not kept back by the
pride of the intellectual. She
submitted herself docilely to the truth she had discovered. But it was necessary for her to have
discovered it. A vigorous,
exigent, personal mind, which was rather thwarted and troubled by her very
great learning, it would have taken time for her to simplify her thought and
assimilate aspects of the truth unfamiliar to her mind."
Sister Colombe recalls a meeting with
Simone many years earlier. She
doesn't remember what was discussed.
"She came into this small parlor, enveloped in a large, sailor-blue
cape, a basque beret plopped untidily over her hair, which was a bit wild,
standing in a very self-effacing manner behind HŽlne [Honnorat, who introduced
them]. Yet her silence, the
quality of her attention--this is what I have not forgotten. What emanated from her above all, along
with her seriousness, was her authenticity. Afterward, much later, when reading her books, I remembered
this: she had the poverty of those who are searching." The poverty of those who are
searching. Credo ut intellegam. These two phrases are worth my recent
readings into [that Marxist in Christian garb] Guttierez and into the life of
that lamb Simone.
I.11.
Appearances indicate neither total exclusion nor manifest presence of
the godhead, but the presence of a god who hides himself. All things bear this mark. --Pascal
What is there to laugh about, in this
world, outside of God?
--Bataille
Energy is eternal delight. --Blake
I.12.
Dan Rather, viewing the early pool videos on the first night of the war,
talked of the "wicked beauty" of the U.S. fighter planes as they took
off from the runways in Saudi Arabia.
I have seen Satan bend over and blow a fart in enthusiasm at the
proposals of some local developers planning another mall on the edge of
Madison. The gas blowing out of
Satan's anus looks just like the blue flames blowing out of the back end of our
fighter planes as they leave the runway.
A wicked beauty.
I.13.
American and anti-American.
You're impressed by the blasting takeoff of the cruise missile. I'm more moved by the question of
subject and verb.
I.16.
Conserve the past; ignore the present; don't expect much from the
future.
In the sense of: Living so as to
understand some period in the historical past as it was understood by those
living in that period is to live more fully than to live trying to (further)
understand or engage oneself actively in current history. Why? The world has already come to an end. It is a silence.
I.20.
When one thinks of Bakhtin, one thinks of a sort of bodily saint. Or when one thinks of Rabelais.
I.22. Consensus is always deferred--even in
science. The utopian is the future
coming of absolute consensus. What
is a politics of disensus?
I.23. The writers are geniuses. They have power. They have shoes. Sometimes they get their hair cut.
I.28. The world is far away. I can neither touch it nor hear
it. I step across the street to
the park grass and begin to dig with the toe of my shoe. But it is not the world I am
scratching. The world is far away.
The end of the world has been spreading
rapidly. In some places, the world
is still kneaded in hands. In
others, it is glimpsed just receding.
But here, it is no longer.
Icons of the world are worn on teeshirts
and bumperstickers. Love your
Mother, etc. Women drive
jeeps with stickers: The Goddess is Alive and Magic is Afoot. But who do they think they're
kidding?
The world is far away.
I.29. Montaigne's are words to live by:
"L'ignorance qui se sait, qui se juge, et qui se condamne, ce n'est pas
une entire ignorance."
Ignorance that knows itself, that judges itself and condemns itself, is
not an entire ignorance.
I.30. Erasmus' Praise of Folly as the peek (sic)
of western awareness. Eckhart,
sure, but Erasmus is so much less pretentious. Marguerite Porete et soeurs.
I.31. The Renaissance is the crossroads of
Europe, and Europe has become the world code. As the world evaporates. Why? Read the
words of the world evaporating.
Pages crumbling like dust. Or
pages writ in titanium, but not a hand to touch them without shivering into
fits of leprosy. The devastating
word of Europe and the saving seed at its core. Rire, c'est propre ˆ l'homme. Laughter is proper to man.
I.38. I am reaching some kind of harmony. As I am increasingly aware of the
radical illusoriness of self-control or self-possession, I see more and more
clearly the power of quiet listening.
Quiet. Listening. Power in the few principles that are developing
from a quiet listening and what I am coming to call a cosmic humor. I am not falling into a mere
passiveness, for such would be a slightly less active conformism. I am not sure where or whence I am
falling. But there is an
increasing sense of harmony.
Harmony through falling.
Why? How?
I.39.
Know thyself.
Yes.
And here is what I know of myself: absolute raving stupidity. I'd have to memorize something to
remember it. Now I know why I
froze my shelf, and what was the wisdom in so doing. The hope is that my tiny brain, with its little cardboard
recesses and rubberband works, the cardboard soggy and the bands long since
starting to fray, will be able to hold this shelf within its borders, to hold
it with some kind of tenacity. But
here I'm reading Montaigne's Apologie pour Raymond Sebond in French, and I
recount to Hui-Ling the funny story about the elephant that moved half his food
over toward his suspect keeper, and she says: "You told me that once
before." It isn't even vaguely
familiar to me, however. But then
other things, later in the essay, seem to be somewhat familiar, and finally
four days or so after the elephant incident I go and look in my Frame
translation and what do you know but the first third of the Apology for Raymond
Sebond is covered with my notes!
I read it two years ago in English.
I am already 25. Weave.
I.40.
How can I write it? My hand
without fingers. Wrist
broken. How can I hold a pen? My wings tied in knots, swollen, untied
and then tied again--hour after hour.
My mind is a blade that can't hold an edge. So it is sharpened and resharpened. Sharpened and sharpened. Finally it is ground down to nothing,
to the handle. Start prying at the
handle to find more blade. Calme. The best I can imagine--calme. This has already happened. Forever. Calme. Sois
calme.
I.41.
MLA: More Literary Atrocities.
Men Loving Animals.
I.42.
Homo ordinaris.
I have a great understanding, of a kind
that is almost too much for me to bear.
And yet at the same time I realize that I am as stupid as a rock, in the
common sense of the word, among those around me.
My great understanding is truly not great,
but quite common. And nothing
special must be understood by my stupidity either, for it is the most everyday
kind of stupidity, the thickheaded kind.
A Brief
Comedy of Errors
in the Form
of a Correspondence
I.46. A letter to Eric of August 15, 1991, written in Paris by
Erik. Eric-- Two months ago you wrote me and it
could have been a day.
The avatar of God that you're trying to keep alive as the real thing is
just that ultimate trick of consciousness that makes humans aware of what an
absence can concretely mean under the sun, how this absence which delves into
the core of the matter can be transformed by yearning. And mourning. And its importance is arch, yes, not putting it in some
category of discount wares of the intellect, no.
You write of harmony and cosmic humor in a
way that freaks me out--even though I had felt that particular calm descend on
you before. At times I
understand. In those moments there
is no giving up, just a quiet acceptance of simple contentment on the road
traced out by unremitting Fate.
She is so good, she robs the trowel and the plumbbob, we don't have to
sully our hands. No giving up,
just a wink at the universe for its permissive insubstantiality, a quiet taking
stock of the derelict state of things, to begin with the toss away
who-caresness of the notion of state of things. To begin with. If we have to please a bureaucracy, we can invent some
justification for the way we checked the proper option. At other times, and that's most of the
time, when I hear gunshots, robbings, rapes and pillage from my window, all I
can see is the dissonance, and lust for an apotheosis of
dissonance that would really kick in the teeth of all the usurers of
reason--kick in the teeth of the western world so caught up in its empty
self-congratulations, in its quadrillion-byte imperial justifications.
The western world of my cash register
brained compatriots, and of the squalid, carnivorous university system so many
see as my last resort.
No matter the university, even if
its packing plant is far in some Third World country, so preciously out of sight. Meat packing plant. And on the examples go, and they get
closer to home base. In the U.S.
its the inner cities, in France the banlieues.
(Interesting inversion, hey Mr. Academic? Whaddya make of it?) In both cases, it's a turbulent,
uncultured poor youth that sees what of our centuries of thought, of our
treasures or scribbling, of our myriad pyramids of wisdom and knowledge? They see the wealth and the ruthless
criminals we call our leaders.
They see bucks, easily-gained bucks, well-hung bucks, and more
effortlessly-reaped bucks. And
they get an inkling of the cunning, of the baseness, of the violence of those
leaders and of those who lead those leaders. They speak up in a voice made of assault rifle bullets to
demand their share of the fabulous loot payable in gold chain, round off to the
nearest kilometer. Ask the Indian
about the presidents of the USA.
Ask the 100,000-plus dead on the island of Timor about the Intelligence
of the Central supposed Agency--flash goes prime-time missing every instant of
it, and CNN twenty-four hours--Very well thank you, just the sort of news we
ought to hear. And on it
goes. It's not about becoming a
peace activist as you once suggested, its not about caring an iota about
thousands of prisoners of conscience in Morocco, or about sulfuric acid
rainshowers stirred up by the world press--We'd like to thank Mr. Hussein
for his difficult role in this spiel--its just an incredulous
wondering. And a gaping-jawed
wondering. And an eye-stinging
day-long sick-in-the-head wondering.
Eric, I want to tell you in the
plainest of terms because I totally accept the wrenching, unfathomable
friendship between us, even though I remain paranoid about all these
revelations. I want to tell you: I
have almost given up on life. Discarded its pleasures. Dismissed its satisfactions. Given up on so many things that a list would be ridiculous. Surprised I am once in a while by the
warmth impacted by: a letter from a friend; a glass of whiskey; a better word
or sentence.
I want to tell you for some sick person's
own perverted reason--never completely there, you must understand--that you
mean a lot to me as a friend, that I trembled at reading your last letter, that
I wish there wasn't this hayfever and the heat and all that makes me choke on
the damp evening awareness. At
will!
Erik
I.47. A letter to Erik of July 22, 1991, written in Madison. Erik: I did something I rarely do and
actually read your letter from start to finish the moment it came, and I am writing
back while it is still fresh in my mind.
Things do not remain fresh long in my mind, for they are soon
contaminated by other things there.
She has a yellow toothbrush, and I
have a red one. Or is it the other
way around? I don't know. When I go to brush my teeth--and your
letter led me to realize I must brush them--I either take one or the other: I
either always take the red one or the yellow one. And so today, I trusted to intuition and took the yellow,
grabbing it before I had a chance to intervene in my choice. But the yellow looks strange in my
hand, and so I take the red. I
believe this happens every day, one way or another. In honor of Plato, I thought of buying a clear, Reach
toothbrush, thus ending the challenges of my most intimate moments. But no. I will continue in this vein. I won't ask which is hers, which is mine, but trust to my
intuition. But now she is looking
over my shoulder as I type. She
says: The yellow one is yours.
Your letters are full of detritus,
and so I will tell you of the importance of detritus to me. As you perhaps know, my job forces me
to walk the streets hours a day.
The best hours for thought, according to the great aphorist. But you spoke in one of your previous
letters of the totalitarian architecture of certain areas of the campus. Doubtless it is this, the faint buzzing
noise emitted by our archetexture, that forces my eyes to scan the ground as I
walk. And so every day I
meticulously scan the spaces between the sidewalks, and I am quick to spot
anything new. I keep a running
chronicle of the state of imperial advancement or decay of this or that
myrmecan empire. And the objects I
see, which catch my eye in the midst of thought, needs must take a place in my
thought. Detritus, fetishization. What do I do? I pick them up of course, the ones that I can lift that
is. I have assembled a little
sculpture garden, and a little rock garden. Let me tell you.
A piece of thick rusted coil and a fallen, red plastic seatbelt guide
have come together to figure the serpent on my desk. A broken cedarwood wheel and an almost perfect egg-shaped
pebble have resulted in a minimalist sculpture of the appearance of some sort
of fateful and deceptively simple game.
And the rocks! Oh, the
rocks! I have a history of
philosophy in rocks, one that works!
I brought my history to Amy's Pub one night in order to cheer up a
downtrodden Italian graduate, her on the verge of tears, myself going through
the history of philosophy. It
worked. She was cheered and even
somewhat enlightened. Well, she
was cheered for certain. She
called me the next day and thanked me.
And the history occupies a place on my bookshelf, though the Critique
of Pure Reason no longer does.
The advantage of this kind of work: when
they come to take you away (and they probably won't--there are no horses here
to reveal oneself by kissing; and only the exceedingly insane would want to
kiss a Buick) you can throw the rocks at them rather than try to explain. Detritus. And fetish.
Benjamin read literature in much the same
way, his Baudelaire stalking high-capitalist Paris in search of the
primitive. Benjamin of the
ten-thousand fragments. How will
they write the history of our time?
Max Jacob one-upped Apollinaire's
calligrams. Apollinaire's circling
around to draw a wheel or something, but Jacob writes: Le soleil est en
dentelle. I translate:
The sun is all in lace.
But my sun looks like the spider's web written with LSD. A note on translation.
You speak of my revelations, and of
how you are paranoid of them.
Well, I'll tell you something like a revelation. It hit me this morning: When
bourgeois die they all end up in heck.
You shouldn't be paranoid about this one,
though. You and I are not the sort
to end up in heck. We've paid our
dues. Our lives are one living
heck.
Cling to your fragments and play
with them. You will end up in a
gathering. I was swimming in the
most beautiful lake in our area, actually called Beaver Lake, no joke. The lake is beautiful because it is
protected by the upperclass families that live around it. They do all they can to prevent public
access to their little gem, using the argument, a true one, that motorboats
will ruin the ecological balance of the bay into which flows the lake's water
source. So the lake gleams
turquoise under the sunshine; it is sandybottomed and nearly weedless around
most of the shore. I was swimming
there with some friends and found my feet discovering the most fascinating of
rocks in the sand. First an almost
perfect woman's breast. "A
fragment of the lake nymph," I told them. "Oh, come on," said the Hong Kong feminist. But then I found a large, flat
pear-shaped rock with a hole for a navel.
We began to assemble her from fragments. In short, my fellow bathers joined in the recovery. But our willfulness broke the spell:
the Hong Kong feminist cut her foot, the Londoner got a lobsterish sunburn, and
I was the only one to find another piece, an almost perfect left ear. Listen.
Your city is a panorama of
fragments, some of the most revealing of them unprotected by the
authorities. What does it mean to
give up on life? As if life asked
you to hang on, part of some contractual arrangement. You write to me of the Timorites and the Gulf, the banlieues
and the urban underclass almost as a sort of absolute slap in the
face to life. Certainly a God is
here and a God is not here. What
does it mean?
I know you know Bataille's The
Sorcerer's Apprentice. But Erasmus' Praise
of Folly is sharper. Which is to
be expected.
Hui-Ling tells me of a notoriously
dissolute acquaintance of a relative of hers who is in his twenties and spends
all of his salary in video arcades.
If his father were equally dissolute, he would have spent his money on
alcohol and whores. If his
grandfather were equally dissolute, he would have done likewise but been a
soldier or a robber into the bargain.
Thus we witness the decay of decadence itself
Dmitri was saying to Alyosha: But
my destiny will be accomplished, and the deserving man will occupy his rightful
place and the undeserving one will vanish into his back alley forever--into his
filthy back alley, into his beloved back alley, a fitting place for him, and
will perish there in filth and stench of his own free will, and like it.
Typical last words between us before
drifting off to sleep.
She: "That sauce isn't thick
enough. Next time I hope I can
find a thicker one. I'll buy
Ragout again: it has a stronger taste."
I: "The world isn't thick
enough. Next time I hope I end up
in a thicker one."
When Mother Theresa visited America
from her constant presence with the poor in Dehli, she was asked what she
thought she was accomplishing coming to one of the world's richest nations, for
after all, said the press, "she was really interested in the
poor." "America is the
world's poorest nation," she said.
She also said: "We can be the
compassion of Christ reaching out to the suffering Christ." What would this mean here among the
world's poorest people?
As Christ said,
"[Meta]physician, heal thyself!"
I.49.
I have books. I have too
many books. I have 12 books.
I.50. Many of our mothers, trying to
protect us from danger and fear, would have us believe that the world is One
Big Mother, looking out for us though it be in secret. Thus there are millions of big babies
out there, drooling and spiritually hamstringed. Gah, gah, they tell you.
The world is a deadly machine that will
devour us. A set trap, with the
tightest of springs, and a trillion tiny mechanisms.
In the material realm, the grace of the
Father is nothing but the ability to laugh and dance in the tight steel jaws of
the world's trap. To laugh and
sing on our way to the slaughter.
I.51. The militarist language of current
literary criticism. One reads of:
strategies, tactics, doing violence to, undermining, borders, instability,
dismemberment, eruptions, dominant paradigms, approaches, interrogations,
manoeuvers, and on and on.
But how is it that, read in a certain manner,
this language leads one into the most radical peace?
I.52. Gargantua writes to Pantagruel of les
impressions tant ŽlŽgantes et correctes en usance, qui ont estŽ inventŽes de
mon eage par inspiration divine, comme ˆ contrefil l'artillerie par suggestion
diabolicque. [Printing so elegant
and correct in usage, which was invented in my day by divine inspiration, as
opposed to artillery, which was invented through the suggestion of the devil.]
--Pantagruel, VIII.
Gunpowder and the printing press both hit
Europe around the same time, as a sort of technological preface to the
Renaissance. Humanists wrote of
the former as an invention sent by the devil, and of the latter as one inspired
by God. They were certainly wrong
about that. It was Moloch that
taught the Chinese to make gunpowder, but Lucifer himself leaked the printing
press in Germany. (Luther and Lucifer, oddly similar
names those: needing but a lisp and a forgotten if to make them
one.) The Humanists saw gunpowder
disrupting the world, but didn't know that the presses would eventually misplace
the
world.
In the midst of theological debate, St.
Thomas More threatened justly to dump all the pisspots of Europe on Luther's
crown, but then lost his own head to the pisspot crown of Henry VIII.
The mournful and crankish Nietzsche later
remarked that the newspaper had undermined the atmosphere of prayerfulness in
German households.
The Renaissance: the battle of man, soon
lost, against gunpowder, the printing press, and other new invasions of
evil.
Warmly,
Eric
[1 .p] The scribe knows that one learns how
to write literature by reading literature, and how better to read literature by
writing it.
The scribe knows that more wisdom is gained
in writing literature than in reading it.
In the past, children were clubbed into
shape with the bones of their ancestors.
It was likewise with literature.
But where are the bones of our ancestors?
They have shivered into bits, and
crumbled. We will teach our children
to read these bits, hoping they will get some glimmer of their ancients.
The scribe is a collector of bits, a
teacher of the reading of bits.
Two Poems for
Suffering Russia
(Both written on the evening of August
18, 1991, and based on dreams of that morning.)
Dream after Reading in The Brothers
Karamazov
I.55. The Moscow streets are far below. St. Basil's has grown to seven times
its size. Some of the onion domes
have been replaced by crenellated castle towers. I'm lying on the top of one of these towers under a grey and
drizzly sky. In diameter the tower
is no larger than a large bathtub.
But there is no water in it, though the joints are all caulked and the
bottom is smooth. I peer down
through one of the crenellations and vertigo overcomes me. I'm suddenly afraid to move, lest the
tower crack and I go plummeting to the ground.
Dream After Dream After Reading
in The Brothers Karamazov
I.56. It is Christmas and I am watching a
film with the whole family. Part
of the film purports to be a sort of documentary about life in heaven. We are all delighted to see it. Not a documentary exactly, but
something like one man's home videos from heaven. One mustn't expect much more after all.
All the people in heaven are wandering
crones, completely out of their minds and lost in a Bavarian landscape. There is a monastery by a highway. The crones wander in for a bit, look
around, then go on their way. The
one who made the video shot up way too much tape filming the landscape out of
the window of a moving train. The
landscape is just like on earth, though the green of the trees and grass is a
bit on the fluorescent side. I
tell my uncle that the color is probably just a camera malfunction, but my
uncle looks at me with stern disapproval, and before the film is over I notice
that everyone has moved into the opposite corner from me, whispering to each
other with their anxious eyes.
I.60. Horrid Poem from My Youth. The following is a horrid poem from my
youth. Why do I even publish
it? Didn't Augustine burn his
Manichaean writings, setting a good precedent? But Chaucer didn't burn the Tales: he simply
recanted. And so I recant, for
what it's worth.
I feel a little odd evoking Augustine and
Chaucer here. I'm a small fish in
such company, hardly a minnow.
Whether I publish, burn or recant means little.
The young man
who wrote this dirge later chose to follow the same Jesus he here uses as a
vehicle for satire. This shouldn't
be so surprising. He who hates Christ
is closer to loving him than he who doesn't concern himself with him at
all. When reading through the
furiously "anti-Christian" writing of my late teens and early
twenties, I now remember the words in Revelation:
Write to
the angel of the Laodicean church.
The true and authoritative witness of the beginning of the creations of
God says amen. I know thy works;
thou art neither cold nor hot.
Would that thou wert cold or hot.
But insofar as thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I shall spew
thee out from my lips. For thou
sayest: I am rich; I have everything and need nothing; but knowest thou not
that thou art miserable, and poor and beggarly and blind and naked?
Words of the utmost importance for
us.
THE LASTING PIECE--A DIRGE
Motley is the only wear.
--Jaques
i. Picture, if you will, picture Jesus as a workman building a
house in a rich neighborhood going to the dogs because too many houses are
being built there, too many dinky houses that end up being painted yellow or
green or--heaven help us--yellow with green shutters. Picture Jesus in a grubby blue, grey, off-white flannel
shirt, his giant beer-swelled bulwark of a corpse lying on its side in a rather
beached position, and he has such a girth to his Entity that his legs stick out
as they would on dolls, the upper not having that luxury or irritation--we will
never know--afforded the more slim philistines our brothers across the
Atlantic.
It
is surmised by doctors and many healers as well (though we cannot vouch for
their knowledge here) that it is the outrageous method of conception so
fitfully employed by Jesus' mother Mary that has resulted in the active
physiological imbalance in Our Lord Christ which causes his all night bouts of
soul-swelling beer drinking, which have in turn led to his gruesome bowl.
"Think of the poor boy," as many of our wise parishioners are
heard to say, relaxing atop their white patio furniture. "Think of that poor boy."
As for us, we are not apt to employ the
paradigms of feminists and other sorcerers to the effect that unisexual
reproduction is healthy and common and, funny that they add this almost as an
afterthought--possible, given the correct nurturing of a little womyn
in a nyce lyttle magycal enfironment, one tending to, as they say, creative
mythologies and the death of syllogism.
Lord bless us but this is not the time nor the place for creatyve
mythologies as presently such can only lessen material, ergo real, production. This is not merely our own opinion, our
own "creation," as you more bacchic lesbians would insist, taking
your vision whether you know it or not from your phallic thyrsi--this is the
conclusion reached by the combined labors of Sphincter and Bourghese, 1964. We can only censure any overtly or covertly
snatchy insistences to the contrary, so help us God. (Cf. par ejemplo: D.S. Knight and Donna Ferentes: Reading
Train or Daisy Chain: Blanchot's La communautŽ inavouable. This work has struck the present auctor
with its powerful reading of the mysteriously silent and absent Shakespearean
character Train, whose uncanny presence/absence is frequently evidenced in the
Shakespearean stage direction Exeunt King and Train. To summarize, Knight is convinced by
textual evidence that Train was blond and somewhat hulking in gait. Further, Train's silence and ability to
jump from the text of one play to another is a clear Shakespearean anticipation
of current concerns with language, presence and absence, intentionality,
problems of subjectivity, the trace, speech and writing, heteroglossia,
glossolalia, glossolabia, annaluvia, Kristeva's private life, speech and peek,
hide and seek, hide and peep, langue and parole, parole and langue, parole meets langue, langue quiveringly
caresses parole, langue is finally out on parole gr‰ce ˆ ses efforts; which, to
use Riffaterre's expression, could be tellingly restated: Parole is finally
licked. But!-- Train's more frequent presence in
tragedies and histories argues for a rather gloomy cast of mind, and his
constant entrance and exit with kings suggests either a sycophant or a sort of
invisible looming assassin. Knight
brilliantly argues for the latter interpretation, pointing out that Train's
name anticipates the XIXth century mode of transportation associated with the
glory days of bourgeois rule in bloody England. What? Don't you
get it? Not yet awake, you bloody
seat-shining cafe ape? Are
you maybe dozing again in your little sandbox avant garde, face down on the
table, a string of drool linking you and your photocopied R. Barthes? You safe-sex never-piss-in-the-shower
cold-dicked modern! You
twelve-year-graduate-student little bourgeois milksop! You politically correct honey-lipped
teflon-twatted footnote-fondling backroom excuse for a woman! What? Don't you get it?
Knight argues that: i) Train has a sort of bourgeois thrust about him, a
sort of Tweedledeedum tweedledeedee, oh well, always me, dum te dum, etc.; ii)
his crisscrossing of Shakespeare's plays (like trains later crisscrossed
England) suggests a sort of bourgeois mobility; iii) the kings of England were
ousted by the bourgeoisie; iv) Train's silent presence just behind so many of
Shakespeare's kings cinches his character as assassin. But see also Eagle Terrortown: Recent
and Sundrie Bookes I Have Read and What I Recked upon Them.)
ii. Jesus is in charge of laying the foundation: a job in no way
tending to his spine, Herculean though it may be on better days, because it
requires so much bending. This
problem has been looked into by M. BŽdier in his seminal work, The Spine of
Our Good Lord Pontisface, Mouton Mifflin and Sons, 1968. The conclusion finally reached in
chapter XVIII, a somewhat belated conclusion, I found the text quite windy
myself, states that "Our Good Lord should drastically reduce his ale
consumption" and should spend "a couple good hours a day in an
extensive exercise program."
Several methods of weight loss are suggested in this dreary tome,
including the exercise bicycle and the rowing machine. It is our opinion, however, that he
would never consent to either of these methods, preferring rather, and this can
only be viewed by us as a last resort, astral projection.
iii. It is our duty now, in this
Dirge, to present to our readers some of the more piquing aspects of our Good
Lord Christ's average day in the employ of Chenequa Highlands Developing. The Good Lord rises with the sun each
day. (I beg a slight parenthetical
digressive here, as it is, I believe, in the order of things. Despite the contrary insistences of New
Agers, advertising executives, and Willy Street layabouts, the sun, in all its
nuclear glory though it be, is by no means the true Father and origin of that
blue-flanneled whale we tend to call Our Lord. Rather, as has been proven by St. Parsimonious in his early
work De nada, the Father of Christ is none other than "an area whose
bornes do not exist and whose center point is the sum of all points." Or, as the poet has He himself say
elsewhere: Ego tamquam centrum circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiae
partes; tu autem non sic.)
Jesus takes his lunch with the children, who make whale jokes in
languages he does not understand.
A
day on the job with our most sanctum Deis is reputed to rarely attain heights
less than miraculous. Whole armies
of ants have been seen pouring from the earth like magnificent chancres of
blood. Frequently as of late
houses have been observed to be completed months before schedule. It seems that instances of brick
levitation have been observed by Wallace, Crookes, Wagner, Butlerof, Varley,
Buchanan, Hare, Reichenbach, Thury, Perty, de Morgan, Hoffmann, Goldschmidt,
Sa’z, W. Gregory, Flammarion, Sergeant Cox and many others. It seems as well that Jesus is wont to
stop dead in his tracks on dirt roads and stare fixedly at the dust-covered
lower foliage in the ditch of the road until he has gleaned and processed every
single detail of the, to our feeble eyes, small scene he was so cosmically
pondering upon. In what is assumed
to be a prodigious fit of rimbaldian rebellion against Mother Mary, Jesus
Christ has been blamed (for there are eye witnesses who actually claim they
viewed him creating the little rapscallions) for the small bands of white
dwarf-like humanoids that have as of recently been conducting themselves so
scandalously in grocery stores and in the back windows of cars even when young
children are on board.
iv. The demise of our Lord Christ
can only be felt with the most painful sensation in all areas of our town save
those few where older pagan traditions still reign. Our women's keening will undoubtedly go on into that dark
night until the stars fall from the sky like dead, dry pistils in the dead,
frozen heart of fall. That Shanny
O'Keogh was roaring boy drunk at the wake has been finally substantiated by the
frequency of reports to the positive.
We are sure our dearest Benefactor will find it in his celestial heart
to forgive him. That the Good Lord
will resurrect in three days has yet to be proven, and many of our more
circumspect citizens are hoping that it won't happen in this lifetime or the
next.
A letter of
exhortation to a friend to encourage him to seek. And he will reply: but what use will seeking be, nothing
appears. And reply to him: do not
despair. And he would reply that
he would be happy to find some light.
But that according to this religion even if he were to believe in this
way it would do him no good. And
that being the case he may as well not seek. And at this point reply to him: the machine.
--Pascal
pris
I.62. Notes given to Jody at the CafŽ ˆ
Propos an Essay by C.S. Lewis entitled 'When Lilies Fester': Concerning the
Body, the Machine, and Capitalism.
Paragraph on p. 48 beginning "Lastly..." Lewis says earlier that political rule
is better the more it is based on humble, pragmatic goals. Here he speaks of "our
rulers." I would say: our
rulers now are not men and women, but decentered, mediated, mechanized
forces. Yeltsin. Think of the Machine. The fear of totalitarian nightmare
regimes under the aegis of science.
When one writes machine in lower case letters, however, as in a
machine, one imagines the most pragmatic of devices, simple and without
claiming [2 pp.]
I.69. Move cleanly through the world, like
a knife.
No.
To be here is to be as a bruise on being.
I.70. In this fallen world, writing must be
under-stood as something like throwing a deck of cards into the air. One must accept it that the cards will
land on their own.
I.71. I go out in an olive felt hat and
baggy pants, looking like an Italian communist.
The hat is crumpled and I bought it from a
woman down the street who looks like Simone Weil.
I try to come up with a means to talk to
her. Should I tell her I had a
dream wearing the hat?
--We were an expedition lost in the
Himalayas. The evergreens were of
a green so dark they were almost purple.
There was a space of unbearable [ ], a direction in which none of us dared
look, though we kept our pace towards it, unsteady.
--Was she herself the guide? Or was it Che Guevara?
Ridiculous.
I.72. Sometimes there is little else but
the intense desire to sink into the earth.
I.73.
In War and Peace, Prince Andrei, going off to fight Napoleon, is given
for good luck a tiny silver cross on a chain. He puts it around his neck.
Hundreds of pages later, Andrei is found
dead on the battlefield, with a little gold cross around his neck.
Tolstoy's error is the novel's secret key,
its hard, gemlike center.
--How may I also die upon an earth that
will turn my silver cross to gold?
Where is this earth into which we may fall?
I.74.
From taboo to the beautiful to the sublime to the uncanny to the
tiny. Not with a bang but a
peppercorn.
I.75.
Ja, die Sprache spricht.
Aber ihre Schwester--sie weint.
Sure, language speaks. But
language's sister--all she does is yummer. --After Heidegger.
Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
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