pHILOLOGIST 16tH cENTURY*

Agnolo Bronzino(Italian, 1503-1572) Portrait of Cosimo 1 de’ Medici as Orpheus

rEBUSES/rICKETS/rEBUSES*

On the effects of thermodynamics on the brain of a philologist with rickets: the world is all there is, all there is, is of the world, the world is this and that and that and this, the world is a whirling ball of rebuses without end. The world is rebuses of a world once thought of by a philologist with rickets. Thermodynamics is the world, a whirling ball of rebuses. Whirling rebuses are worlds. Is, are the world is, are rebuses of rickets in the brain of a philologist with rickets. The effect of thermodynamics on rickets is the world, the world of this and that and rickets and whirling. Whirling is the world of rebuses without end. I need more sleep.

sLAKING*

I have awakened to a pineal-headache; self-consciousness does such things, such awful merciless things; Hegel’s smithy, where metals are pounded into oddities, a retinue of alchemy and hammering, a cooper’s barrelhouse of awls and bungs. Perhaps a tincture of quinine and Quaalude will slake the pining, a panacea for consciousness, alchemy and faulty representations.

cAMPING iN sIBERIA*

fORGETFUL rEMEMBERING*

Forgetting how to remember is a chore, as is remembering how to forget. The immanence of forgetful remembering, remembering forgetfulness. Now that I am a doctoral student forgetting is much easier, as is remembering all that I have forgotten to forget, this binary of forgetful remembrance. The history of philosophy forces one to be forgetful, to forget all that we were taught, the tutoring of past, present and future. To be forgetful in this manner is to remember that forgetting is the principal of the philosophy of history, the historical history of forgetful remembering. Forgetfulness, in this manner, can be likened to a cessation, a suspension of will and knowledge, a deferral of belief and opinion, a remembering how to forget. In context, then, Plato’s forms, his Ideal of ideals, is as new as that first breath of air, the parturition of air, knowledge, belief, opinion and will, a newly opened birthing canal, a way out, a way back in, a forgetful remembering, a remembered forgetting. Trying to force Plato into the twentieth century, into an ideology of non-immanence, a dialectical non-historicism, recentness, is like trying to regain that first breath of air, trying to remember the forgetfulness of that first breath, that first expression of wilfulness.

jAMES jOYLESS jOYCE*

pHILOSOPHICAL cUCKOLDRY*

Good morning, please commode your mucking-boots at the door, remove all partial and full dental-plates, prosthetic stemmers, hairpieces, and wipe that silly smile off your face. While a guest at the theta-not-theta syllogism hotel, you will be required to suspend all belief in commonsense, logic, formal and informal, deductive reasoning, inference, axioms and dialectics, material and immaterial. Here we regale in the Socratic monologue, the soliloquy, the deferral of rational discourse, the blather of blather, yes, philosophical cuckoldry.

aRILOSYLLOGISM*

Table 5.1: Truth tables for AND, OR and NOT AND

A
B
A B
false
false
false
false
true
false
true
false
false
true
true
true

OR
A
B
A B
false
false
false
false
true
true
true
false
true
true
true
true

NOT -
A
false
true
true
false

pENGUIN'S sYLLOGISM*

What is this cuneiform, this Platotectonic? Plato salad with a sprig of fennel and pullet-peas, {an} Aristotelian rue with cumin and allspice, a Lockean bouillabaisse with navy curd and barberry on the side. Evidence to the contrary, I am quite mad, mad indeed. Who thinks such things, such dalliances, such commode-O-thoughts? I rue the day that Aristotle connived me into believing that this is that and that is this, and set me assail on the Barbary host, with Bingaman’s toga, a Penguin’s Syllogism and pyloric glumes.

eTERNAL rECURRENCE*

This is a conniving, this is my head. I awake all too often to a connivance, a despotism in the Cartesian ganglia, next to the pineal gland, abutting the hypothalamus, in the anterior abacus of my head. I have mean dopamine, a despotic mean unruly dopamine; a mealy mouthed mean unruly dopamine; perhaps a psychopharmacological salve, a mustard and bean curd poultice; or a bouillabaisse of Fluvoxamine; a tincture of Maleate and lye to balm the bitterness in the charnel of my head. Obsessive compulsive disorderly conduct, that is all I can expect of the day, an eternal recurrence of the same, same.

rECONSTRUCTING dECONSTRUCTION*

http://www.remue.net/article.php3?id_article=352

tAKING iNTO cONSIDERATION*

This, this time marks the umpteenth time that I have marked the umpteenth time. At this rate, and taking into consideration the 3rd law of thermodynamics, I will reach total entropy within the hour, perhaps sooner. I must confess, however, that I have no idea what the 3rd law of thermodynamics is, nor care to for that matter, how little it matters whether I do or not is moot, pejorative at best, that is, this marks the umpteenth time…

cARTESIAN wAX*

My contrapuntal-machine is whirling in the cones and stirrups of my ear, a cornucopia of whizzing and buzzing. This hardening, this cementing, this calcification is driving me mad, madder perhaps. I hear things, noises, sounds, banging and chipping, a collateral crashing, a dissonant clashing in the incompetence of my ears. My un-deafening machine scallops sound into bite-size monads of re-amplified noise, turning sense into nonsense, nonsense into sense, senate into insensate. I poke Q-tips in the quail of my ears, exhuming curds of paraffin, an autism of sounds buffered by Cartesian wax, a Platonic form of the form of forms, a cuneiform of forms, a formless form of forms. Going deaf is a quietening silence, a stone quickening in the calm of my ears, a soundless sounding, a dissonant clashing, this constant whizzing and buzzing, this whirling whirl of black noise, this hardening.

tABULA rASA*

Kurt Gödel

cOUNTING tO sIX*

Can I have six; no I can’t, of course not, not six, that would be absurd. Five, yes five is okay, fine is in line with the numeric alchemy of my nominalise, but six, never, never six. What are you crazy; mad in the tete, a mad hatter in the head mad, a crazy mad in the tete madman? Six is out of the question, were there a question to begin with, a question at all. Never question innumeracy; it’s beyond questioning, questionless, without question, plain and simple. If you ask a question, don’t expect an answer, because there won’t be one, no answer, no question, fini. Can I have four, or three or two or three four five seven, yes, why not, of course, have them if you want, all of them if you so desire. But not six, no not six, never six, stay clear of six, keep away, far away from six, far, far away. Can I have six? No you can’t, you won’t; never ever will you have six, never. Fuck it then, I’ll have five, four three two, four five three two, maybe one, no not one, that’s a one with a five that makes six, and six, well you know, six I can’t have, never ever six, mad hatter six, mad as a hat in the head six, an alchemy, a nominalise of numeric sixes, a covey of sixes wearing little hats, mad as a hatter, madder than one plus five equals six mad, that fucking mad, mad, perhaps madder still, that mad, perhaps.

eYETEETH*

He’s missing his front teeth, the middle ones and eyeteeth. I’m having them all removed, he said, before an infection sets in and ruins my gums. I stopped brushing them after he put his cock in my mouth, he said, I was twelve. My psychiatrist said that I stopped brushing my teeth because my mouth was dirty and would never ever be clean again, no matter how hard I brushed. I said, no, it’s because I won’t allow anyone to dirty my mouth again, never ever. I Googled him, he said, and discovered that he had become a pillar of our community, a social activist for children’s rights, a rich pederast who dirties little boy’s mouths.

mADNESS aND wIND*

There is enough wind today to blow a super kite to Uranus and back; blusters of windy wind; bluffs of wind, a gale-force wind that blusters and bluffs. The wind is separating the leaves from the marrow, the twigs from the branches, the stemming from the stipule. This is a Uranus wind, so strong and efficient that it will surely blow us all to Uranus and back, like super kites bluffing and blustering in the bluestone blue sky. If Beckett were still drawing breath, he would approve of this windy wind day, flying his own super kite, tugging gently on the string, pulling the bobbin close into his chest, heaving with delight and faro. I recall flying a box-kite, a Chinese cube with a fiery red tail, reeling the string into the bobbin of my chest, my friends jumping for joy, faces red with madness and wind.

aBSOLUTE aBSOLUTE*

The absolute is impossible? What does this mean? Is the concept, the very idea of the absolute impossible to apprehend, to grasp and conceptualize in our mind, or is the very concept, the notion of the absolute impossible, without meaning, a meaningless hermeneutic. As an Ideal, in the Platonic sense, perhaps so, as a pragmatic, a prescriptive tool, it is meaningless, a paucity of both thought and concept. The absolute is absolute absolutely, what does this mean; nothing, it is foreign to our language, our concept and use of language. How would I use the term absolute in a sentence, other than as an authoritative edict, a diktat, a conjugative term used to subjugate and instil fear, a despotism. If the absolute is impossible, then it follows that absolution is impossible, the very notion of free will shifts away from an authority, an authoritative voice, a despotism, to a self-reflective authority, an inner voice that is, in itself, absolute, and therefore capable of absolution. Without the capacity for self-reflection, an inner voice, what some call an inner conscience, the very notion of absolution would be meaningless, a paucity of thought and edict, a referent without a reference, a hermeneutical impossibility, an absolute impossibility. The only way to encourage and instil meaning in the term, the word, the concept absolute, is through a transcendence, a faith in a transcendent authority, a voice, an inner voice, the voice of a god, a god come to through reason based in faith, an absolute faith in reason and god. If there is an absolute this is where it is to be found, apprehended, conceptualized and used as a pragmatic tool, a way of life, a meaningful meaningfulness.

tHE sICKNESS uNTO lIFE*

I saw him again to day, shunting through traffic looking for a way out, or was it a way back in. There is an unmasked urgency about him, the urgency of a crack addict sick for medicine, the very panacea that caused the need, the urgency for the cure, which is the poison that causes the panacea that causes the sickness that necessitates the cure. His face is drawn and sallow, a face without a face, a face within the absence of a face, the faceless face, the face of urgency, the absence of calm and rest, the need for entropy, an entropy that only the cure can cure, the sickness unto death, the death unto sickness, the half-life of the addict in motion, a shunting urgency with neither an effect or a cause, but a ineffectual causation of effects. Imagine, if you will, when the urgency to urinate overwhelms your every movement, you’re every thought, the absence of auxiliary movement and thought, a casualty affected by the causation of neither, but neither one nor the other. An addict’s life is such, an urgency within an urgency, an urgency without a cause or effect, a shunting, an unmasking, a sickness unto life, the panacea that necessitates the poison that necessitates the cure that is the sickness unto death.

rUPERT'S sISTER*

Rupert Thompson had a clubfoot and coal black hair. I was not invited to his tenth birthday party, as no such party was to occur, his father having spent his pay on horses and Tankary Gin. Rupert’s sister had wide spaced eyes and a pug nose and chewed elastic bands, her eyes squinty and vacant. Rupert’s father, slough in his newspaper chair drinking gin gimlets from a coffee cup, paid little notice of his daughter, preferring that she didn’t exist, was a figment of his wife’s imagination, an aberration. The first time I saw Rupert’s sister she was standing at the end of they’re hallway framed in a dark halo, her jaw working an elastic band furiously, a thread of spittle cupping her chin. I invited Rupert to my tenth birthday party and let him have the second piece of my cake; I gave the first to his sister.

bONE aND bRAILLE*

pODIATRY*

A blue steel rainy day, a marrow bone simmering in the pot of the sky. Mister Thompson’s wife had podiatry problems, corns and peapods, a Braille of flora growing in the nooks and crannies between her toes. She used pumice stone, scrubbing the hard nubs with vinegar and Epsom, but to no avail, as the corns and peapods persisted and continued to flourish in defiance of her lavations.

tHE mECANO-sET*

pLUMBERS' sMEAR*

David Thompson never wore a hat, cap or toque, preferring to go bare-headed, his navy cut tugging at the corners of his ears. He had a mecano-set with tin I-beams and scaffolding for shimming windows and doorframes. I, on the other hand, had a log cabin set with plastic timbers and copper brads, and a tiny mallet for driving nails into kindling and pretend I-frames. David Thompson almost died from whooping cough, the cilia of his lungs frayed and yellowed with tinker’s shavings, the cold spot on the top of his head allowing too much noise and confusion into his thoughts. David Crab and I set my log cabin set on fire with butane and wooden matches, and sat huddled in the corner of his basement laughing, next to his father’s ratchet set and a barrel of plumbers’ smear.

mISAPPROPRIATION*

The word terror has been appropriate by the new right. Whatever terror meant or signified before is now moot and irrecoverable. Terror: fear, horror, fright, dread, shock, panic, alarm; reign of terror, terrorism, intense fear and loathing; intense or overwhelming fear, violence or the threat of violence carried out for political purposes, a rabid dog that has become the terror of the neighbourhood; an annoying, difficult, or unpleasant person, particularly a naughty child. Act of Terrorism = Peacetime Equivalent of War Crime. Seems to rub both ways, the line between combatant and non-combatant obliterated for political/economic gain.

1 vENETIAN cUBIT*

bEYOND tHE cUBIT*

I saw a cubit of alcoholics this afternoon, a ream or two so beyond prohibition I thought they’re heads would cave in from the weight of their wontedness. When skin gets so thin, diaphanously thin, wheat-thins thin, it’s a wonder blood doesn’t spurt from a knuckle or the end of a finger, an exsanguinations’ ex-corporeal, an iron rich covey of blood and tissue. Having been a drinker of harsh spirits and cheap wines I have an insider’s appreciate of alcoholic deterioration, one I missed by the hair of the dog, tomato juice and an egg yolk sunny side up, a mouthful of sterno and bootblack, a draught of warm Guinness and rarebit. The only bruising I have is from banging into the bedstead, feet scalloped in the rigging of my bedclothes, face shunted into the pillows.

dA/fORT/fORT/dA*

I again awaken to a state of penury, not a Drachma, Euro, English Pound or Stirling to be found. I fear this has become habitual, a state of statelessness, an insatiable satiability. Money and I are unkindly bedfellows, as we never see eye to eye, but are stigmatic with a stigmatism that sees no future or past, a myopic myopia. There is no ‘notwithstanding clause’ in my intellectual treatise, so a recounting is always in order, an abacus with neither a string nor bobbin, a Fort/Da that returns, but of its own accord, playing by its own rules, the eternal return ad hoc nausea. Even this short exposition has been written and rewritten until the feeling is right, which it never is, never will be. OCD disallows such frivolity, a simple rhythm and cant. You will repeat until repetition repeats itself, and then some, and then some, and then some...

tHE mEDIAN*

Mister Thompson drove his sedan into the median, taking out a lamppost, a construction sign, two post boxes and stray dog without a collar, redesigning the way an engine fits under the hood. The securities de Quebec found a stray vodka bottle underneath the front seat, a child’s milk straw and a crumpled letter to Santa Claus on the dashboard next to a flying Jesus.

pORTICO uCS.*

dAVID tHOMPSON'S bIRTHDAY pARTY*

When I was ten I was invited to David Thompson’s tenth birthday party, where I ate a slice of cake that had a coin wrapped in wax paper in the centre, after which we all went in his father’s sedan to the theatre to see The Planet of the Apes, me with my newfound coin stowed away at the bottom of my trouser pocket, the wax paper crinkly and wet with icing. To this day, some thirty eight years later, I still look for coins wrapped in wax paper when I eat cake, even though they made a remake of the Planet of the Apes and David Thompson’s father has had his driver’s license revoked.

mORDANT aCHE*

It’s raining and my radium shoulder plug is aching, so it is, a coppice tamped into place with a surgeon’s mallet. As radium has no self-consciousnesses or a sentient care in the world, I see no end to this painful rejoining, this mordant ache, the smarting in the joist of my shoulder, this menacing menace.

aND tHE rOOF fELL-iN*

wHAT I rEMEMBER*

Do you remember eating Captain Crunch and watching Bugs Bunny and your mother fretting over the gas bill? Do you recall the look on your father’s face when the roof fell-in the rain spoiling his newspaper and your mother fretting over property taxes and ironing? Do you remember your grandmother’s coughing and the red crease on the cone of her face and your father’s newspaper spoiled with rain? I remember eating celery caulked with Cheese Whiz and beetroot and meat and potatoes boiled in the same pot. I remember the television breaking and my father hammering the top with the heel of his hand and my mother fretting over my grandmother’s coughing. I don’t remember the hospital bed in the dinning room and the goitre on my grandmother’s neck and my father’s newspaper spoiled with rain and the roof falling-in and my mother fretting over property taxes and rain. I do, however, remember eating Captain Crunch and watching Bugs Bunny on the television and meat and potatoes boiled in the same pot and the look on my father’s face when the sky fell-in spoiling his newspaper with rain.

bRAND nEW tEN-sPEED*

I think in catchalls, in ergative whooplas, an unwilling wilfulness. I insist on nothing, and feel much the better for it; as was I to insist on anything, anything at all, my insistence would fall on deafened ears, my own, a caudal of stirrups and cones, flutes and bone spurs, a ploughshare of transitive’s and intransitive transitive’s, a trans-verbal Begonia compote. Perhaps sleep will help dull the chattering in the landscape of my head; perhaps not. Perhaps nothing will; perhaps everything will, a ploughshare of this and that, a caudal of trans-verbal intransitive’s, a creel-bag full to brimming with stones and fluke bones, an insistence on insisting. Nothing: not an iota or a mote, not a mustard poultice or a brand new ten-speed, nothing.

aPb*

aLFRED dOBLIN*

rWf*

aLEXANDERPLATZ, bERLIN

tHE cAPTAIN*

wALKABOUT aBOUT*

I have been summarily invited to the year-starting party and fete at the College this coming Wednesday, tomorrow, the day before Thursday: pizza, perigee and volleyball, an odd peripatetic for sure. My dear dearest friend Maggie has completed here doctoral thesis down-under and will be making her return rightsideup soon, without having seen a kangaroo or a marsupial, how odd indeed.

cITING tHE cITATION*

He represents the representation of citation, the citation of representation. In this manner all representation is citation, citing the citation of the representation, which is the conational representation of the citation, the representational citation of the conation. I, on the other hand, represent the representation of conation as the citation of citation, the citing of the citation, the representation of the citation of citation. My mind is a blunderbuss, short-armed and full of pebbles, an excerpt, a mention, a reference extracted from a citation, a conational citation of representation, a blunderbuss without a shove-stick or powder-sac.

rEALISM rEPRESENTED*

mISREPRESENTATION*

The world as will and misrepresentation: chicanery, shamanism, bad faith and those nasty blotches and stains, principals without principle. Next time we’ll get it right; separate the chaff from the seediness, the world from the depiction of the will, the witlessness from the wit, the bunghole from the stopper.

lEOPOLD dLOPOEL*

sOMNAMBULISMS*

One two three four five thousand that’s my pocket comb a gift from my mother for the birthday I never had. Give it here you dirty bastard. Give it here over here you lousy bastard. Here give it here…one two three four five…here. Five four three two one thousand that’s my picket comb gibe it here over there here you crummy bastard…my pocket picket comb…a gift from my birthday for my mother. Give it here you lousy bastard here there here my comb my pocket picket comb here. Gibe it give it here my comb for the birthday I never had. I never had a pocket picket comb one two three four five thousand. Give it here…

wALPURGIS nIGHT (wALPURGISNACHT)*

The sky: a witch’s cauldron, crow’s wings, toadstools, a carious trickery, a scullery without the rub-stone, an avulsion of gray marrow bone gray; Saturday September 9th two thousand and six; the eternal return, this [a} teleological wasteland, a rub-stone without the Braille, this {a} foundry, a Coventry of trickery and misdirection, a witch’s playground.

Witches (in chorus)

Now to the Brocken the witches hie,

The stubble is yellow, the corn is green;

Thither the gathering legions fly,

And sitting aloft is Sir Urian seen:

O`er stick and o`er stone they go whirling along,

Witches and he - goats, a motley throng,

Voices

Alone old Baubo`s coming now;

She rides upon a farrow sow.

eTHER*

crow’s
wings
skimming
the
surface
of the
sea
drawing
stickmen
in the
sky
a
corpse
dredged
up
from
the
bottom
black
as
crow's
feathers
and rain

bLACKSTRAP bLACK*

bOOTBLACK bLACK*

Black coffee blackens the stomach, blackstrap molasses black, black as the long night of the soul, bootblack black, blacker than blackened black, black. Another word stripped of its meaning, a tropism without a trope, a semantic stifling; syntactical censoriousness. I once owned, though my parent’s bought them for me, a pair of bootblack Oxford shoes with black laces and black soles. I remember how the sand and salt, left over from winter’s chill, crunched beneath my shoes as I walked scurrying to school, my books tied in a bundle on my back, bootblack back. I beat up a guy who tried to beat up my brother, who in turn beat up another guy for simply standing there watching. Some days are longer than others, bootblackedened and blackstrapped, blacker than black, blacker than the long night of the soul, that black, black.

cLOSE yOUR eYES pLEASE*

nOT-sO-fREE-wILL*

Having written myself into a teleological wasteland, a Bradley(lian) corner, I must seek out an erasure, an epistemic wipecloth. If I could but close my eyes and rethink the process, all would be well, but as I can’t (Kant) I have no other recourse than to Oedipal-eyes. I asked today what the difference is between something that is given to us by God and something that is inherent, or not given to us by God. Are they the same thing, a twinning, two sides of the same coin? If we are given free-will by God, then can we know who the giver is? If we can, then aren’t we giving back what the giver gave us, the ability to exercise our will freely? It seems to me that give and inherent are the same thing, identical twins with identical nominal value, a given give giver. All things, then, are given and therefore not inherent, unless inherent means to be given, which I doubt it does. If God is the giver of all things, free-will, intellect, will and the capacity to exercise said gifts, the given gives, then are we really given anything at all, or is the given really the give, the God who gives give to the given? I am giving myself a splitting headache, a give given by me the giver, given my capacity, or gift, to exercise my free-will, which is given freely, but never given back to the giver, the give given giver given. Now the words give, given and giver have lost all meaning for me, they are as senseless as the free-will I have been given, yet can never give back to the giver, or for that matter, know who the giver is, because if I knew who the giver was, or is, I would be the giver, identical to the give given giver give. I hate metaphysics and the fact that I am so darn crappy at it. I best stay with counting and recounting, tabulating and re-tabulating, correlating and re-correlating, as they are things, actions of my not-so-free-will, that I seem to have some control over, albeit a puerile and vacuous one, a not-yet-given given control of.

pORTICO-sALAMANCA*

bIBLIO-sALAMANCA*

sALAMANDRIDAE*

My first class tomorrow as a PhD student is on the philosophy of Salamanca; I hope there's no swimming involved, (Salamandridae family).

The University of Salamanca, one of the oldest universities in the world (founded 1218), was a prominent Dominican bastion in the late Scholastic period. It was one of the homes of Thomistic theology, even after the doctrines of St. Thomas Aquinas were disintegrating elsewhere in Europe first under the Scotist and Nominalist onslaughts, and then from the Reformation.

bOILER-rOOM rOOM*

bIG sTICK bIG*

The inside of my skull is a boiler-room and OCD the not so stationary engineer, the one with the big stick. Like a baseball bat in a dustbin banging off the sides like a rapier, a big stick that big.

pRE-pOST-mODERNISM*

I forgot to register with the registrar yesterday, an O.P. omission, as I am off to the Dominican College to study pre-post-modernism and Aquinas, not necessarily in that order, though I suppose Aquinas trumps pre-post anything.

mY bORSTAL*

mY aLHAMBRA*

It just dawned on me that it is morning, and once again I have awakened to repetition, this cursed Turing machine whirling in the cogging of my head, vectors, Alhambra’s and into’s, an unsettled unsettledness, a convulsive convulsiveness, this unmerciful mercifulness. I say, I write, I intone Alhambra, a citadel and palace in Granada, Spain, built for Moorish kings in the 12th and 13th centuries, as my headspace is neither a citadel nor a palace, but a gaol, a borstal, a Skinnerian box without an escape-hatch. Welcome to my Thurberesque world, my Walter Middian Middlemarch, my Wasteland, my Granada, my Alhambra.

sKYtREEsKY*

aLLIUM sCHOENOPRASUM*

A cobblestone stone gray sky, a piecemeal meal of clouds scuttling across it, the sky, the mutton gray bleak sky, sky; a mal de teat sky, a confluence of gray marrow bone sky, boiled in the same-such pot with a day-old soup bone, sky day today sky, sky, a cobblestone stone gray sky. I am tired of looking agape at the sky, this gray marrow soup bone sky; a sky scudded with mealy piecemeal clouds, a potboilers sky, sky. What has Nietzsche taught me, I ask myself, me-my-myself me? That intellectual blindness is a curse, an excuse for imperialism and bad manners. That metaphysics is unreasonable, alchemy, an excuse for intellectual blindness, a curse on humanism, a supernatural free-for-all, principia algebraic, mathematical trifoliate(ism). That Freud was right, that the unconscious is the seat of the soul, the ex-machines-dues, the sabot that jigs the apparatus, the ghoul in the contraption, the chive in the hetman.

fACING rEFACING*

rESURFACING fACING*

rESURFACING tHE sURFACE*

No Prussian blue sky today; no robin’s egg blue blueness. A creel gray sky, clouds lined up like sheep to the slaughter, pickaxe separating hank from shoulder. I walked in a hobble--legs curtsied and spayed--feet arching, a cutthroat sky skipping stones across the cumber of my forehead. My radium pop-in is aching; the stave-pin that holds everything in place is loosening, separating cacique from shim-joist. Aaron Copeland made delightful music, Doctor Copeland the coaster in the plug of my shoulder.

pIXEL dISASSOCIATION*

pHOTO bY jUNA@

a bASTARD wING*

Alulae, blasphemy, crossways, drachma, egress, flutist, gingivitis, hackneyed, imperious, jack-o-lantern, keelhaul, Loman, matriculate, nil, obstreperous, pixilation, queasy, Rasputin, scrofulous, timidity, ukulele, viviparous, Wallenstein, xylophone, yammer, (over)zealous.

bROWN lOAFERS*

If I had it my way, which of course I never will, I’d eating nothing but chocolaty bonbons and salted nutmeats. I’d smoke nothing but hand-tailored French cigarettes, drink the finest cognacs and wear the softest yarns and cashmere. As it is, I eat pastas and day-old bread, smoke bargain basement cigarettes, drink faucet water and wear thrift store cast-offs and brown loafers.

bOSCH'S fAIR*

vIA eRA sMARRITA*

Fuck me it’s raining, a driven rain, a heaving precipitous rain. When it rains, which it does regardless of my pleas to the contrary, the ache in the hollow of my shoulder is mercenary. Titanium, a corrosion-resistant silvery metallic chemical element that occurs in rutile and ilmenite and whose strength and light weight make it useful in the manufacture of alloys for the aerospace industry, I was forewarned, is an exemplary conductor of dampness, humidity and precipitation. So, fuck me it’s raining, like a slag-oven in Alighieri’s Hellhole. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, che la diritta via era smarrita.

fORT/dA/fORT/dADISM*

tHE iNEXPRESSIBLE*

Good morning, Doctor. Might I not beg you to loosen the truss around my bobbin? I dreamt, yes indeed, but not dreams or rebuses, but rather a Mardi Gras of unconscious gratifiers, a blissful Fort/Da with helix and thread. All screams are primal, an inherent need to express the inexpressible, a Will to Power, a Nietzschean yeah-say. Janov knew this (did he not?) and used it to heal distemper and angst, the primordial squeal. I’d rather repress the irrepressible and be done with screaming all together. Such is such, I suppose, or some such nonsense and decanter.

nOT tHE lIFFEY*

bEDZINS aND cOW'S bRAINS*

He once ate cow’s brains, so he told me, fricasseed with Spanish onions, leeks and a pullet of garlic. He said they tasted like porridge without the brown sugar, placental, mushy and bland, but overwhelmingly pleasant. An aftertaste, he said, that left him feeling rheumy and ill at ease. I asked him, I did, if he’d ever eaten sweet breads or a kidney stropped in blackstrap molasses, or a mouthful of peas shucked by a Bedzin? He said no, he hadn’t, but that he'd once met a Bedzin at a bordello in the north of France, on a skulduggery trip with a guy named Phil Scrofulous who had unappealing body odour and half an ear.

aQUAINTED wITH aQUINAS*

The callus on my lighter thumb is a wasteland of horror. What would Aquinas say if anything at all? Thomistic irreverence, I know, but one of the first order, a transcendent transcendence, a theism without a deity, a first-principle, an analogous analogy; from beneath the scuttle of my thoughts a notion without a precept, a moralistic immorality, a agnostic agnosticism. Now that I am rereading Aquinas I know how first-principles work, they are firstly, the scaffolding on which Babel rests, the dais deism. There is something comforting about this, faith taken in faith, a comforting comfort, a reprieve from the day-today day. Now that I have Aquinas I have a belief in faith, a faithful faith in faith.

sLEEPLESS sLEEP*

cOW'S sTOMACH*

I can’t but I wish I could sleep. I wish I could wish myself to sleep, to sleep the sleep of the naturalised and distaff. I crave to sleep, a yearning to aspire to sleep. But instead I sit here smoking Gauloises one after the other, tars, benzenes, lipids and neurotoxins spoiling the tripe of my lungs. What is sleep but the absence of wakefulness, the difference between walking erect and stumbling in a somnambulistic stupor, an opposition to rousing and rekindling? Perhaps I have been asleep all along but didn’t know it, didn’t know the difference between waking and stifle. Now that I do, I suppose being awake isn’t as hideous an avocation as I first thought, asleep as I was, in a stifling daze, lipids and benzenes and neurotoxins eating away at the cow’s stomach of my brain.