Solution

The basic problem of philosophy (from Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Plato) has been the mixture (often confused) of cause and effect. Past and present, to be exact -- future has no meaning. Time flows like a river (sage Heraclitus said); life is a long wretched stretch out of which we seek to extricate ourselves (thus Plato). So what do we do?

I have a solution: we kill ourselves. End it all. Who needs it anyway?

She walks

The scent of her hair was in my nose this morning.

Yes, this is a quaint opening to a poem, but no less real for that... The memories of the softness, the silken voice, the love that comes with eggs served at six AM ...

Whispering something soft and kind, like James Taylor said ... Nobody does such things anymore ...

Days of harshness and hardness, days of lax love, people with agendas, the crippling weakness that takes one over ...

I'd like to write a Whitmanian litany right now, but I just don't have the strength

You must forgive me

Deor (translation)

This is a highly interpretive translation of a 10th century (?) Anglo-Saxon poem that I have rendered in my own style. First there is my translation; below is the actual text of the poem as it appears in the Exeter Book (10th century CE).

Deor

Weland, ready for worms by swords’ cruel bite

Experienced a world of hardship

Agony was his only friend.

Friends fierce and heartless,

They wracked him with sorrow:

He nearly fell

King Nithad bested him!

Weland, the better man:

Nithad hamstrung him

And set him on the ground

That is in the past,

Soon will our troubles be.

Beadohild’s mind was tormented

By the death of her brothers;

But knowing she was large with child,

Little she cared for the outcome of that,

So great was her brothers’ burden

That is in the past, Soon will our troubles be

Matilda, too, we have heard of, How her troubles were deep and numerous, Love-pangs deprived her of blessed sleep

That is in the past, Soon will our troubles be

Theodric for thirty winters Held sway over Maeringaburg: Few were unaware of that!

That is in the past, Soon will our troubles be

Wolf-minded Eormanric ruled the Goths. What a grim king he was! Many warriors bound, Beset by sorrow, Prayed heartily for the overthrow Of that tyrant

That is in the past, Soon will our troubles be

In the darkness his soul finds solace, Thinking this is the only place for him. Turning to the Lord he finds That all the world is beset with sorrow: Such is the lot of men. But honor and glory come to some – To him, the question remains.

Now let me speak of myself: For some time I sang songs to the lord of the Hedenings. I was beloved!

Deor was my name. Winters passed in this prestigious state. My lord loyal Until Heorrenda Songmaster Bested me! And my protector no longer wants me. Like a lone warrior, I am left without sword.

That is in the past, Soon will our troubles be

Deor (Anglo-Saxon poem, ca. 900 CE) Welund him be wurman wræces cunnade, anhydig eorl earfoþa dreag, hæfde him to gesiþþe sorge ond longaþ, wintercealde wræce; wean oft onfond, 5 siþþan hine Niðhad on nede legde, swoncre seonobende on syllan monn. þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg! Beadohilde ne wæs hyre broþra deaþ on sefan swa sar swa hyre sylfre þing, 10 þæt heo gearolice ongieten hæfde þæt heo eacen wæs; æfre ne meahte þriste geþencan, hu ymb þæt sceolde. þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg! We þæt Mæðhilde monge gefrugnon 15 wurdon grundlease Geates frige, þæt hi seo sorglufu slæp ealle binom. þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg! ðeodric ahte þritig wintra Mæringa burg; þæt wæs monegum cuþ. 20 þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg! We geascodan Eormanrices wylfenne geþoht; ahte wide folc Gotena rices. þæt wæs grim cyning. Sæt secg monig sorgum gebunden, 25 wean on wenan, wyscte geneahhe þæt þæs cynerices ofercumen wære. þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg! Siteð sorgcearig, sælum bidæled, on sefan sweorceð, sylfum þinceð 30 þæt sy endeleas earfoða dæl. Mæg þonne geþencan, þæt geond þas woruld witig dryhten wendeþ geneahhe, eorle monegum are gesceawað, wislicne blæd, sumum weana dæl. 35 þæt ic bi me sylfum secgan wille, þæt ic hwile wæs Heodeninga scop, dryhtne dyre. Me wæs Deor noma. Ahte ic fela wintra folgað tilne, holdne hlaford, oþþæt Heorrenda nu, 40 leoðcræftig monn londryht geþah, þæt me eorla hleo ær gesealde. þæs ofereode, þisses swa mæg!

Wayland never made it

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The bite of Berenice means nothing when there's

Denise

Something I said one night made me worry that she was pissed ... She said NO ...

Music plays in many places, and most often in the mouths of the ones you hope to love

. The one you hope to love.

If that's not poetry, then what the fuck is?

I am the Last (a-la Lord Dunsany)

Whoo-hooing across Lethe

Cries ring out

Some schmuck wanting to board the ship

Getting a paddle to his sconce

If there is a kiss of Death, I want it. She withholds it, like some dominatrix cuckold ...

If I can enable myself to smear my body with the sweat and grime of innumerable sluts,

then please let me!

The Inescapable Part

Dying Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

~ Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"

There is, I think, a certain art to self-destruction: but only in retrospect. When one is in the midst of destroying oneself (as in the throes of alcoholic delirium tremens, for instance) there is not much in the way of art -- just a lot of painful sing-song voices and dancing about old times waiting for some non-existent savior to bring you another bottle.

However, in retrospect -- after the pain has become a distant, evolutionarily muted memory -- a certain odd beauty emerges, rather like one of those alien hybrid worlds of Lovecraft's work ... The intensity of the moment quiets and the sound of paramedics and sirens and the rush of nurses to get the IV in all become just a part of a tapestry ... that's it.

But the worst part of it all -- the inescapable part! -- is when the people we love no longer see this thing as a grand work of art, but as a simple refusal to live. And now here is where I'll get philosophical ...

Life on life's terms. -- I hate that phrase. It is spoken by the weak who pretend that Life is somehow an entity to be approached with reverence and awe like some sort of biblical manifestation of the deity. No! Life is nothing but a jumble of possibilities crammed into a very small personal space, with nowhere to go unless we drag them along with us on our unpredictable journey into the dark unknown, the boundless night, the pure chaos of non-being -- toward which we are all headed.

When Kurtz cried his famous line, "The horror! the horror!," he was not referring to anything inside or about him, but rather about the life-denying world that he tried to escape! Unsuccessfully, of course. The true artist wants to do two things at once: stay in the world and love it; and escape from it and laugh sardonically at its folly from a safe distance, or height. At worst, of course, the artist is like Byron's Manfred, pulled back from the precipice by the lowly chamois hunter. So what are we to do?

Remember to cry at Christmas (or whatever holiday you observe) for the family you've lost. But rejoice in the fact that you are INDOMITABLE.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware.

Out of the ash I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

Sylvia, her last word on the matter

It's Time

It's time to have a conversation with myself, one in which I invoke the great lord of language, and pretend to be one of them ...

It's time to allow myself a little leeway ... some sad setting of my sun that makes no sense to anyone.

It's time to wander the streets of my own sad mind, to stand in awe of what I've become, without striving to overcome.

It's time to ask a really tough question: Am I worthless? Probably, but that's good -- because this life is worthless.

Somebody somewhere said that personhood is not to be taken lightly ... it's a gift. I beg to differ. It's a curse. Promise me (oh my soul) never to fall into a sad state, one in which you give up ... promise me never to abandon the power that rises above you, on a daily basis ...

Shall I vie with Walt Whitman? I think it's time. Here I go:

There is no song better than the one I sing to myself, no life better than the one I lead ... no difference between my own ass and the tree, no time to ask why ... no dalliance of the flesh, no succor of the sad little stream of consciousness that I call Myself.

I staggered into a supermarket in Philadelphia (not California) and I wanted to know why this luscious whore was inviting me to a session. I didn't ask ... much to my everlasting sorrow.

I'm trying to imitate Whitman but I can't -- so I'll be Edward. Listen:

There is no song better than the one that spurts from my loins, and antagonizes the earth with a demand.

There is no song better than this classic little piece of self-righteous bullshit that I spew ... No better song than the one I am typing like a drunken fool ...

There is no song better than the hope for ONE MORE DAY ...

(Thanks Walt)

Not a reverie

"The fact is, if I were certain of anything, I would be inclined toward Manicheism," said Des Hermies. "It's one of the oldest and it is the simplest of religions, and it best explains the abominable mess everything is in at the present time. The Principle of Good and the Principle of Evil, the God of Light and the God of Darkness, two rivals, are fighting for our souls. That's at least clear. Right now it is evident that the Evil God has the upper hand and is reigning over the world as master."

~ J. K. Huysmans, La-Bas

This novel, the title of which is variously translated, in an effort to overcome the untranslatable (I simply consider it "The Depth"), is one of the finest expressions of spiritual struggle ever put to paper. If a novel can have a thesis, I would say that the thesis of La-Bas is: Those who long for the spiritual heights of blessedness, when frustrated in their quest, will seek the shorter, easier road of damnation. Indeed, the intellectual centerpiece of this work is the life and trial of the fifteenth-century Satanist and violator of children Gilles de Rais, who has never (in my opinion) received a better analysis than that provided by Huysmans, through his fictional mouthpiece Durtal.

It is a habit of religionists or "spiritual" people (of whatever stripe) to praise the Deity for every good thing that befalls them (without ever considering their own role in their own good fortune) and to exonerate the same Deity for every bad thing ... God always comes out smelling like a rose. Of course, there are more intelligent notions of the divinity, which allow for a multitude of divine manifestations (not all of which are beneficent) and see life as a struggle between several opposing forces -- some of which (usually the bad) require placating. But I ask: Why invoke Deity at all? Is it not enough to know that we exist in a hostile environment? That our efforts make little headway towards the utopia that we envision in our wild, ethically-centered dreams?

Perhaps the best we can do is throw up our hands and repair to a bell-tower, high above the stinking vapors of a degenerate society. Perhaps we should all just snuff it, and settle the question of an afterlife when we meet (tautologically) in the afterlife. Better yet, let's do as Baudelaire counseled, and just get drunk.

Awe ... shucks!

Irving Babbitt, (the curmudgeonly foe of Romanticism, but such a fine writer) made a valuable distinction between "awe" and "wonder." The former, he noted, is an emotion born of the experience of a certain "unity" or "manifoldness" that "transcends" the individual, making ethical consideration moot, in the face of the Sublime (cf. his Rousseau and Romanticism, 1919). The latter, he said, is the emotion felt by the unreflective observer who simply gapes in astonishment at that which he does not understand. To make an idol of this emotion, to write poems expressing the ineffable glory of nature, without any attempt to conceptualize Her, is (according to Babbitt) the height of anti-humanistic irresponsibility. Now I am a partisan of Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode," and I've spent a large portion of my life elucidating the works of 'mystics' like Plotinus, the Pseudo-Dionysius, various Gnostics, the Cappadocian Fathers, and others ... Yet I am sensitive to the need for a humanism, especially in our present era of religious warfare, sanctimonious politics, hero-worship, and cookie-cutter "persons" ... Analysis, deep introspection, a glorying in the uniqueness of the self, is likely a recipe for loneliness, but not insanity. In our present age, the one who stands apart and erects a monument that sluttish time cannot besmear, is one for whom awe easily turns to disgust. The great Classical writers, so admired by Babbitt, were disgusted with the density of their age, yet enamored of the possibilities. This is the entire point of aesthetically responsible existence: to aim for that which should be, while hating vigorously that which is.

When Charon picked up his last passenger (cf. Lord Dunsany's vignette, he smiled and cried ... Smiled at the end of his labors, and cried at the loss if his raison d'etre: that is a superficial reading. The more involved reading suggests a love of change, an attachment to the unexpected, which is the recipe for sublimity. Awe-inspiring events suggest a realm heretofore unexplored, possibilities untapped ... The tired self is energized with a new reason for being, a new direction, even if it is shudder-producing, fearful in the extreme ... We crave these things. It is what makes us human. To sail off into the wide seas, expecting death but hoping for some grand alteration -- not only of one's own life but of all humanity -- that is the stuff of humanism, of awe

Speaking only of myself, as I embark on this vast sea of logoi (my newfound sobriety and new acquaintances and ... yes, new-old love) ... as I embark, I recite a line (modified to myself) from one of my favorite poems: And though I am not that strength which in old days riled up my Christian colleagues at philosophy conferences, / that which I am, I am: one equal temper of antagonistic analysis / Made weak by drink and intolerance, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Prep quotes

"Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?"

~ Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California"

"Then the boat from the slow, grey river loomed up to the coast of Dis and the little, silent shade still shivering stepped ashore, and Charon turned the boat to go wearily back to the world. Then the little shadow spoke, that had been a man.

'I am the last,' he said.

No one had ever made Charon smile before, no one before had ever made him weep."

~ Lord Dunsany, "Charon"

Two Poems

Contra Marilynn: An Exorcism

I don't feel like forty

It cannot be

In me you may behold that time of year when the icy claws strike back, and rend the shroud that has been placed by unloving hands over my still palpating flesh.

The other day I said something to someone that made little sense, as usual

The other day I revealed something of myself that made no sense (to me)

This day I woke up, reveling in the absurd notion that I can embrace life in the iconic form of my ideal: flesh encapsulating Beauty.

I feel like a child, needy and silly and full of shit.

I feel like a young man, horny as hell.

I feel like an ecclesiastic, prepping souls for hell.

I DO NOT feel like forty.

If you say so, darling ... if you care to speak ... I'll shatter your tongue with forced fingers rude ...

Yes, logos does not contain an omega: I mispronounced it. But you ... you made an end worthy of a fiend. And I begin again, with an angel.

To One Who Comes After, and Ever Before

Certain songs make us feel like there should be no other songs, as though all other attempts are empty, annoying, and unfruitful. Springsteen's "Thunder Road" obliterates all other songs, at least while it is playing.

There is a woman who makes me feel like there is no other. Her name is not Lisa, nor Debbie, nor Barbara ... nor, even, Marilynn (the sacred one) ... Her name is that of a month, the cruelest, and I love her. No trope to be deciphered. A time and a place.

A romance of crippled souls? No. A new morning, unlike any other. She is a Grace, a Muse, and a problematical little entity that prospers as she inspires. I love her.

A silly man am I. She provides an antidote. But there is a little spot in Kennedy Park, a spot beneath a tree, a spot where I gave it all up ... a spot where I envisaged some grand work ... I asked her for an opinion, and like a piercing truth she stood ... Too pretty for words. I don't like beauty, but I love pretty. I love the work of an hour, when the gods laughed at our little gambit.

Section of a Work in Progress

The Literature of Atmosphere

Edward Moore, PhD

©2013

Atmosphere is the all-important thing, for the final criterion of authenticity is not the dovetailing of a plot but the creation of a given sensation.

~ H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature"

The English word ‘atmosphere’ derives from an ancient Greek word (ATMOS) meaning “vapor” and the Latin sphaera, sphere; literally, the word means the vapor surrounding our sphere, or globe, i.e., earth. When used in relation to a work of art, specifically literature, the term denotes an inescapable emotional or aesthetic force or style that permeates the work, giving it the necessary “staying power” that separates true art from mere production or entertainment. In our time, when post-modern influences have caused us to view any and every work of art as merely a production of a given moment, a set of signifiers whose meaning is culturally determined and therefore – ephemeral; in such a time it is important, I think, to find some element in works of art that can be owned by the person, subjected to his or her own unique stance in and toward the world, and rendered meaningful, in a manner irrespective of inter-personal communication and the ethical demands of such. In short, if I determine a particular work to be a masterpiece because I enjoy dwelling in its atmosphere, I have come as close as possible to a pre- or even (perhaps) non-linguistic appreciation of said artwork. Understanding fully that thought without language is impossible, I feel it is possible to approach closely to source of thought, in a non-linguistic fashion, by focusing on the atmosphere of certain works. This focus will, of course, lead to the necessary conceptualization that makes all experience meaningful and iterable. But as a touchstone for aesthetic value, atmosphere can serve as a solid ground upon which to establish a humanistic – as opposed to a cultural or ideological – theory of art. By “humanistic” I mean the natural set of responses that arise from a pre-reflective attitude toward the structured examples of life that we call art. I realize I am begging many questions here: nature as something stable and uniformly accessible; structure as strictly the result of a human (reflective, conscious) act; and art as an effort to save oneself from the miasma of meaninglessness that is destructive to all cultures (especially our present one, so-called). I beg some questions for the sake of this thesis: The desire to persist in being is born of the response to an atmosphere that calls the creative powers of the person forth, into a realm of possibilities.

When I was a young reader – I mean very young, single digits – I responded to poems and stories based upon their atmospheric impact. For example, Beowulf struck me as a “blue and white” work, a work of winter – a clear and enjoyable winter. The violence and sorrow of that poem were ameliorated by the atmosphere surrounding Heorot, the rough courtesy of the coastguard who first encountered Beowulf, the bright feast scenes in the mead-hall, etc. … As a child, these were the elements of the poem on which I focused, and these elements fueled my fantasy-life, which eventually led me to the professional study of literature, philosophy, and other conceptual artifacts of Western culture. Indeed, only later, after immersion in academia, did I find it necessary to interpret the poem on a variety of “culturally responsible” levels – all of which took me away from the initial impact of that masterpiece. I am not saying that a superficial reading of a great work of art is preferable to a profound study of such, a study informed by all the currents of contemporary philosophy, psychology, and critical theory; no, I am merely questioning whether theories of art dependent upon elaborate conceptual schemas are really preferable to the immediate accessibility given to us by the closest thing we can get to a pre-linguistic response to a linguistic construct: atmosphere.

The poems of Keats I found to be “brown” works, encrusted with the dinginess of early nineteenth-century atmosphere: coal and engines and ugly industrial towns. This, despite the fact that Keats inhabited an atmosphere far removed from the labors of the working-class. Nevertheless, my inherited notions of his era forced a sort of irony into my appreciation of his poetry. I recognized a master, albeit one who had lived in a rather aesthetically unpleasing period. Granted, a production like Lamia required the rather morbid cast of mind of a disillusioned industrial-era aesthete. I love the work, it moves me … but it cannot compare to the manor-house gentility of the Gawain-poet, whose purposeful archaism in an already archaic age moves me beyond words. The sight of the words on the page, the survival of runic letters like Þ and Ʒ lend an extra air of antiquity to poems that are products of a mindset far removed from my own. Identification is a wonderful feeling: when one can relate to a writer and feel the inspiration that caused him to put pen to paper. But the disorientation produced by an alien theme, a strange mind, an unfamiliar atmosphere – that is what cultivates the mind, and engenders a liberalism, a tolerance, that is necessary for the continuation of the human project, the “conversation of Western civilization” (as Rorty put it).

Reverie III.

"A Poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude ..."

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Floating on the surface of the wine-dark sea, Odysseus defied a god. Submerged, I defy ... A boatload of reading has left me with words and more words, time to spend ruminating, re-crafting others' moments.

I like to defy and argue, in the light of morning. But in the bleu du ciel (Bataille), or "the weight of primary noon" (Stevens), I find myself at a loss. When the sun is high in the sky, and my shadow (my second self, that seals up my discourse in a vault) beneath my aching feet -- then I swallow pride and listen ... to the voice of assholes.

Some people never shut up. They spit saliva laced with the semblance of words, and they deserve to have their tongue split, like some fellow from a lesser caste reciting the Mahabharata. These are the people who often get the most attention. Those with wisdom ... those for whom love is an option ... They are the ones who often retreat, when they should be spilling their bright illimitable souls to ... ME.

I'm listening to Bruce Springsteen now. A certain woman that I loved, long ago, couldn't stand him. But I find myself taken back (via "Thunder Road") to a moment at the top of a water tower in Sayrevile, NJ, when my little lady and I tossed beer bottles into a cemetery, laughed and fucked and had a blast. I loved her not, and she was immersed in some sordid family saga. But the wind rolled back her hair, and I was luxurious in my response. How much has changed! Chasing the Promised Land. It's been found, luxuriated in, and lost. So much the better.

Perhaps I'll put on some Beatles, and recall the lady who gave me a sense of forlorn love. A diner in Edison, NJ ... some quotes from Burgess (The Long Day Wanes) and a little footsie under the table ... Prophets crowd around in moments of joy -- with his finger ever at his lips, bidding us: Go fuck yourself -- AND SO: I have a memory of a motel at noon (yes, midi), where, with the aid of some scotch, I made a move ...

Hegel comes in somewhere. "The life of the spirit is not the life that shrinks from adversity, but in utter dissolution, finds itself" (Phenomenology of Spirit). Yes, I got his message. It took about a year, and some time at NYU, to get the sense that words are here for us to manipulate. I understand Hegel, Derrida, Heidegger, Plotinus, as well as the next guy ... Because I am able to work the words, motherfucker. Always the words.

Wifey-knifey came in (Where are you, Thomas Ligotti?) and extracted some pineal organ, rendering me a Christian ... Holy shit. I learned much in those years: the trinity is a trope for personhood; Christ is a lost soul who lived his poetry, knowing that writing is a dead man's task; the world is an arena in which most die and few laugh; and that I am a spectre of my childhood, haunting my own dreams. Thanks, God.

Some time elapsed. Amy, with the tiny feet and hair that forever effaced her pretty face. I know I was distracted, but Porphyry attracted me more than your luscious cunt. Funny how age gives us to think ...

And then: Marilynn. Silence decrees that the aged satyr speaks not. About her. A dirty word.

April. April. April ... Thrice in honor of the sacred number ... the triad, the tripod. But you need no invitation. Your name resonates and my love for you is timeless. In true Edward fashion, I shall give you a quote, as I fail in my own words, when you are around ... my light, my love, my little spark of eternal desire ...

"Serene will be our days and bright,

And happy will our nature be,

When love is an unerring light,

And joy its own security"

(Wordsworth, "Ode to Duty")

Another Fragment

"I admit that the sense of the beautiful, when it is developed by culture, suffices of itself even to make us, in a certain sense, independent of nature as far as it is a force. A mind that has ennobled itself sufficiently to be more sensible of the form than of the matter of things, contains in itself a plenitude of existence that nothing could make it lose, especially as it does not trouble itself about the possession of the things in question, and finds a very liberal pleasure in the mere contemplation of the phenomenon."

~ Friedrich Schiller, "On the Sublime"

Never have I experienced nature as something distinct from the contents of my mind at any given moment. Whenever I have been conscious of observing natural phenomena, it has always been for the sake of a mood, the desire to actualize my mood (so to speak) by way of symbols derived from supposedly external nature. Never have I sought to "posses" natural beauty, for it has always been my state of mind, at any given moment, that has rendered nature beautiful to me -- or not.

The desire to "possess" beauty is a desire born already of a malfunctioning personhood: the one who has a void to fill, as it were, and seeks to fill it by taking hold of something possessing an existence independent of himself is already caught up in the throes of an existence that has ceased to be self-referential, and therefore, meaningful. It is important to note that the terms person and individual are interchangeable, synonymous (notwithstanding attempts, mostly by theologians of personhood, to differentiate the two); the individual is one who is incapable of being parceled out to various contexts, for the sake of an end or purpose only tangentially related, at best, to his own desires. The person is the foundation of his own existence: that which, when tampered with, causes the entire meaning-producing edifice to crumble.

The demise of the truly ethical is traceable to a demise of genuine respect for personhood. Not -- I insist -- a respect that flatters as it subtly demands more of the person that is possible to give, without rendering the person a means to an end (however desirable for the stunted or weak among us). Nietzschean "supermen" or Randian heroes are not devoid of ethical insight or capacity. A highly developed conscience begins at the level of the "I" -- the ego, the willing power that draws breath even when exhaustion seems like such a welcome escape from the demand of personal cultivation.

"It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak."

(J. S. Mill, On Liberty, ch. 3).

A strong conscience develops "naturally," i.e., without demand from others. I was about to write "guidance" ... for even guidance (especially when it comes from those in power) is a subtle, insidious demand. No one, in good faith, can be a conscientious person if he or she is constrained by expectations to be so. This, of course, is a regurgitation of Ayn Rand, and other thinkers who have celebrated the glory of the person throughout history. I shall go further, however, and insist that a cultivation of personal "atmosphere" -- i.e., a maintenance of certain styles of thought, of aesthetic appreciation, of self-presentation -- is necessary if one wishes to rise above the ever-ascendant mediocrity (as Mill recognized) that plagues our society.

The style of contemplation that can immediately inject the contemplator into the atmosphere of the thing contemplated is the healthiest kind. Last night I witnessed a performance of Janacek's Sonata for Violin and Piano. Only by returning to an earlier period of my life -- a wainscoted room in which I labored over similar pieces, trying to sharpen my virtuosic blade, intent on conquering such a glorious instrument -- was I able to inject my own person into that performance, and experience Janacek's fine work not as one desirous of possessing his power, but only of one who has found his niche, and is perfectly content to allow other "world-historical beings" (to borrow Hegel's phrase) to be.

It was not, as the believers in Fate or Divinity might say, meant for me to be a concert violinist. No: I was simply meant to contemplate the phenomenon.

Reverie II.

"My life's a shadowless horse

If I can't get across

To you"

~ Marc Bolan (T. Rex)

Not too long ago, I was told by a certain Lady that I need to get off of my Dark Horse, by which she meant: resist the temptation to rebellion for rebellion's sake. Nowadays, horseless, I am ignored by the larger mass of humanity, it seems. So I think ...

As I sit here, in my little room, with Eliot, Whitman, Poe, Machen, LeFanu, the Bhagavad-Gita, some Old and Middle English lyrics, etc., by my side, -- as I sit here, I think of certain writers, creatures of an atmosphere opposed to the development of ethical existence (perhaps) but certainly amenable to -- and nurturing of -- silent meditation upon one's loves, and expression (in the form of linguistic constructs) of one's ego eimi ho On (cf. Exodus 3:14, Septuagint).

As I sit here ... and recall: Machen lived in a tiny garret, subsisting (quite like myself) on green tea, tobacco, and scraps of food snatched opportunely whenever hunger became a nuisance. And he wrote (as I do) under compulsion of boredom. Only difference: he had no laptop, no cellphone, no instant communication with/to so-called people ... He was alone. As I should be. But I write to others, seek acceptance, hope for love. Yes, I said it. Loneliness sucks. There's my 21st century provenance smacking its lips. Oh well ...

What would I do, I ask myself, if I were living in some attic in, say, Providence RI (Lovecraft land) with no phone, no computer, no persons? I'd probably go insane. So much for 21st century English letters. Belles lettres. I wish. To write something as propositional as Eliot's Waste Land , as circumlocutory as Whitman's Song, as claustrophobic as Poe's Amontillado tale, as cloying as Machen's Pan, as rending as LeFanu's Carmilla, as deeply gulf-defying as the Bhagavad-Gita, as brown and green and new and old and crisp as a morning with Mom yelling and the woods calling as the Anglo-Saxon and "Alliterative Revival" masterpieces ...

As all that.

What would it take? Some time spent in a dusty room, masturbating into sheets, drinking cold tea, eating salmon out of a can, reading the same lines over and over and over and over ... waiting for a theophany on the wall?

Perhaps just what life serves up. A shitload of disappointment. A plate of angst and emotion and sad eyes thinking of relief, of horrid testimony to some ancient era living only in foggy memory with a bit of eloquent phrases tucked on the side, with a friend who knows, a lady who blows, a tramp with a tattoo, a promise of life-after-death, some type of monster living on unknown and unknowable STUFF, regret teeming like wasps, slug-like growths on my paper, destroying the old days, laying waste to all that was ...

Overly dramatic

A whimper not a bang

The white flesh palpates, the small foot disappears for a moment, and I reach for the solace of her body. She was a succubus of the highest order, Huysmans would've loved her. I didn't, and I paid.

Alone again.

Et je ne trouve pas ma maison

Malaise

A free verse poem by Edward Moore ©2013

“…flesh without intellect, repellent to the eye, nose and imagination.”

~ H. P. Lovecraft

Intellectually inferior people make me sick to my stomach.

Those with no love for animal life make me sick.

I am sickened by the raw discourse of stunted minds, the lame clamoring of lost souls for whom religion is a claim …

I am sickened by the style of life that reduces all affirmative emotions to the status of breeding signals.

Too sick to do anything about it, I am sickened by the timelessness of stupidity, the universal appeal of the idiot.

Dostoevsky knew the formula: the lover of life so disgruntled and heartsick that he comes to hate the raison d’etre that has animated him for so long.

Whitman had a sense of the end of things.

“There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.”

Indeed, the end is already here, and always has been.

Life lingers in dark corners, bare rooms, minds plagued by self-doubt, recumbent illusions, dreams of perfection tainted by brown liquid …

Life persists in minds drawn to the past, where illustrious figures stomp across silent fields, dreams of childhood, when a wizard was possible …

Life persists in a little studio in Philadelphia, where an Arethusa flows her liquefied body across a hardwood floor strewn with cans, wires, and Sathanas-knows-what …

Life persists in a café on South Street, where memories of my wife scrape like the overgrown nails of some demonic baby …

Life persists in New York City, on a pissy bench where my last drop of brandy has found a home in my khakis.

Life persists in a park in New Jersey, a dead phone and someone handing me a beer.

Life persists in a bedroom by the shore, some repentant drudge asking me how I like my eggs …

Life is a clan of basking lizards who have forgotten that Brazil is not such a bad place to be, right now …

A savior is something of which I’ve written: a hand to draw forth the pus of a wound too deep for tears.

A savior like Seth, who is alien – HETEROS -and uniquely qualified to draw our minds to the place where they really need to be, beyond the sun ...

The noetic sun beyond the sun beyond the sun ...

Neoplatonic life purges this realm of its raw idealism.

Existential malaise gives me to stay, to drink, to love, to stand alone, to promise others, to pray to a god in whom I do not believe, to read Ayn Rand, to vomit over Bukowski, to steal a glimpse at the sweet showers of April, to answer the phone, to regurgitate post-modern formulae, to pretend to care about some bitch and her kid, to give a dollar to a bum, to eat pizza at noon, to stay sober in spite of myself, to ask for a loan, to pay it back, to stand up to a big dude (who could easily kick my ass) just to impress a chick (and to actually escape), to satisfy her, to satisfy myself, to remember just how the Vorspiel to Das Rheingold moves my heart, to illuminate some dark passageway for a friend (speaking of Dante), to silently await my own savior in the form of … in the form of … in the form of …

Hue, April Formosa, veni! Vocat aestus in umbram …

Giant palms shading our eyes, our hands tickling playfully …

Such a paradise is a dream, only.

Flesh should be the receptacle of Beauty, not of Intellect …

Mind is too vast to require a partner.

Fragment

"... when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts."

~ T. S. Eliot

The act of thinking, which produces thought(s) [there is no such thing as Thought, as an abstract entity] is concerned wholly with the formation of concepts -- and concepts are linguistic structures. In response to the seething morass of sense-impressions, emotions, and general existential turmoil encountered by us on a daily basis, we use language as a means to organize and control this chaos, to stave off madness, and ultimately to create a meaning that is both personal and communicable -- through tropes and various figures -- to the more-or-less attentive world of others.

Focused thus on making sense of the unweeded garden that is the life-world, we find (upon reflection) that we are interpreting our reactions, giving form to something (our emotion-based thoughts) that arose out of chaos. We are therefore creators, not knowers. To know means to see clearly. Surely, by knowing we become ourselves objects. to be analyzed and carefully fitted into some conceptual schema that we formulate, and yet which is somehow other than our creative self. To know myself means to objectify myself, to become other than the one doing the thinking ... This begs the question, of course: Is this even possible? My act of thinking is bound to my experience, the here-and-now.

"Life piled on life

Were all to little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things"

~ Tennyson, "Ulysses"

I cannot objectify myself. I cannot rest from ego trips. The name that I am become is a trope for all that is essential to life. A "power greater than myself"? No such thing. For others are capable of producing context, restraint, laws, the envy of accomplishment that drives the flower, etc. ... But only I am capable of providing the atmosphere that renders all this hule aesthetically pleasing. To whom? To myself. The only judge that matters.

Comfort in the form of a legislator independent of my thinking self is an illusion of salvation. Healthy people seek to be saved from themselves. Such are human beings, normal and part of a world that has evolved along more or less life-affirming lines. Exceptional people seek not to be saved, but rather to transform their personal atmosphere into an ideal realm into which to retire, at will, for the sake of prosperity in the only life worth living.

Wulf and Eadwacer (text and translation)

(Anglo-Saxon poem, ca. 990 CE)

Leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife;

willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð.

Ungelic is us.

Wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre.

Fæst is þæt eglond, fenne biworpen.

Sindon wælreowe weras þær on ige;

willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð.

Ungelice is us.

Wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode.

þonne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt,

þonne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde;

wæs me wyn to þon, wæs me hwæþre eac lað.

Wulf, min Wulf, wena me þine

seoce gedydon, þine seldcymas,

murnende mod, nales meteliste.

Gehyrest þu, Eadwacer? Uncerne earmne hwelp

bireð wulf to wuda.

þæt mon eaþe tosliteð þætte næfre gesomnad wæs,

uncer giedd geador.

…

Wulf and Eadwacer

(English translation by Edward Moore)

My people are watching him

Waiting to slaughter him

for a sacrifice

Should he come too close to the clan

We are estranged

Wulf is on one isle, I on another

Like a fortress is that fen-wrapped island

Slaughter-cruel men swarm that island

Waiting to slaughter him

for a sacrifice

Should he come too close to the clan

We are estranged

With wild hope my thoughts dogged my Wulf

During rainy weather I sat wailing

Disconsolate

Until battle-strong arms embraced me

Bringing both pleasure and pain

How I pine for you, my Wulf!

Desire has made me sick

It is our meetings I miss, not meals

Do you hear, Eadwacer?

Our wretched whelp is dragged to the woods by a wolf

That one tears apart what was never whole

The tale of the two of us, together

Beautiful Forms and Protean Minds

"... so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one ..."

~ Plato, Phaedrus

"Apart from self-knowledge, one of the most notable examples of intuition is the knowledge people believe themselves to possess of those with whom they are in love: the wall between different personalities seems to become transparent, and people think they see into another soul as into their own. Yet deception in such cases is constantly practised with success; and even where there is no intentional deception, experience gradually proves, as a rule, that the supposed insight was illusory, and that the slower more groping methods of the intellect are in the long run more reliable."

~ Bertrand Russell, "Mysticism and Logic"

Those blessed few that still read quality works of literature are surely aware of Plato's reflections on love in the Symposium, where he has Socrates explain the ascent form purely physical passion to the highest love, which we may call the erotism of the Intellect [I borrow the term "erotism" from Georges Bataille, who used it to refer to any passion productive of ecstasy, more or less]. Since the trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty was for Plato the highest level of contemplation (theōria) to which one may attain -- and since this trinity is fixed, stable, and eternal -- it goes without saying that operations of the Intellect cease at the moment this rapturous event occurs: union with that triune source of All. The thinking self need fear no disappointment, for there is nothing illusory about a purely noetic form, or Idea (according to Plato).

But then there are those non-Platonic folks (most of us, nowadays, I daresay) inclined to agree with Wallace Stevens, when he writes that "Beauty is momentary in the mind — / The fitful tracing of a portal; / But in the flesh it is immortal. / The body dies; the body’s beauty lives ("Peter Quince at the Clavier" IV.51-54). Indeed, the physical beauty of the beloved lives because it has passed through the eyes of the lover ("fitful portal") to be rendered back as a reality for both. (Is this not the theme of Shakespeare's Sonnets?) There is a type of mysticism in both the Platonic and the Stevensian notions of beauty and the love it inspires ... It is a mysticism of the momentary: the moment that is so sublime, it produces in the one experiencing it a sort of painful awareness of the ephemerality of all things, even (and especially) the most precious. Therefore, the desire to preserve that moment takes precedence over all rational thought, analysis goes out the window, and self-awareness takes a backseat to the instant fulfillment provided by that intuitive response which, as Russell pointed out, is so powerful precisely because it is so immediately convincing. The truth of beauty resides in the fact that we don't need ever to decide what is beautiful: the eyes are fixed, the heart pounds, the loins spring to life ... Who wants to engage in rational analysis at such a moment? Presereve it as something sacred! Worship it and sacrifice the self and its desires on the altar of the Other ... This happens to everyone, from concupiscent high school students to gently smoldering septuagenarians. We never learn. But would we have it any other way?

Back to Plato. "Know thyself" was inscribed on the lintel of his famous Academy. It is rather paradoxical that the highest achievement of his philosophical system (and he did have a system; cf. my Plato (Humanities Insights), 2010) was a merging of the self or person (hupostasis) with the transcendent source of All. To know thyself as such is to know oneself as a momentary spark of life, close to an illusion. To borrow a line from the late Lou Reed, "something flickered for a minute, then it vanished and was gone." He was referring to an orgasm, of course ... and Plato might as well have likened the human person to a spurt of cosmic seed -- albeit on infertile (illusory!) ground. Demeaning the self to such an extent, just to preserve the sacred fixity of our desire's object, is a rather large price to pay for "spiritual" comfort, or, more accurately, lack of disappointment with this coterie of desperate organisms we call human life.

Cold and calculating (inhuman!) is the one who analyzes every emotion, and beats him/herself up if that emotion doesn't pass the test of reason and logic. Such a one is doomed to an endless cycle of self-doubt, lukewarm friendships, and mechanical sex. Of course, such a one (assuming any such creature exists) will rarely, if ever, be disappointed; but the price is loss of those experiences that engender the tumultuous and conflicted and ever-generating work of art we call the human person.

The pain of having been deceived by one we love can be assuaged in several ways, the most common being the stock phrase "I never knew you!" (or "You are not the person I thought you were!"). When we say such a thing, we are practicing self-deception. The beloved was the "apple of our eye," the "cat's pajamas," the "bee's knees," etc. ... But then something happened, something changed -- and change, for a Platonist, is the worst lapse of all, for it is a lapse into non-being, or illusion -- and the person we love(d) is no longer t/here. Reason kicks into high gear, and allows us to explain this change as not really a change at all, but a coming-to-light (aufklärung) in the clearing of which our own self-deception (due to our failure to rationally analyze the emotion as it arose) is seen to be the cause of our disappointment. It is not the beloved who is at fault (even though s/he might be a charred imp of the pit) but our own fallible self. We promise ourselves, going forward, to be more rational in our dealings with beautiful forms and protean minds.

In the present age, filled as it is with willful superficiality, one is left to ask how reason might continue to speak. Intuition, even, is being dulled by the aimless flux of digital media and knick-knack "information." Heraclitus' river, at least, flowed steadily in a single direction. Certain catch-phrases now current, such as "It is what it is," or "Life on life's terms," indicate to me a separation of the self from the concrete reality in which it dwells. Many among us have become observers, though not with loving eyes -- nor even with bitter, resentful eyes -- but rather with indifferent eyes ... and that is far worse. An excessive emotional affectibility is preferable to the insensibility of the average non-poetic clone of our time. The best one can do is allow reason to make excuses for the volatility of one's nature, and to continue to yearn for and love beauty, in the flesh, and live a life of the mind that provides excuses, conceals sorrow, and shows forth only the best.

Reverie I.

Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine,

No friends at hand, so I poured alone;

I raised my cup to invite the moon,

Turned to my shadow, and we became three.

Now the moon had never learned about drinking,

And my shadow had merely followed my form,

But I quickly made friends with the moon and my shadow;

To find pleasure in life, make the most of the spring.

Whenever I sang, the moon swayed with me;

Whenever I danced, my shadow went wild.

Drinking, we shared our enjoyment together;

Drunk, then each went off on his own.

But forever agreed on dispassionate revels,

We promised to meet in the far Milky Way.

~ Li Po (Li Bai)

Some time ago, another place and another mind, I found myself alone on a bench beneath a tree in what I thought (in my Mr. Flood-like state) to be a public park. It was late at night, and I was temporarily homeless; the “temporary distraction” (as I euphemistically called the harpy with whom I had been living) had kicked me out of her apartment. I was unconcerned, for I had a full bottle of gin and the night was warm and clear: stars wheeling overhead, the gently swaying branches of a stable, thick-limbed tree … oh, and the bench was partially rotten, sagging comfortably beneath my lax body. ‘Twas like unto a hammock.

For some reason, I was not willing to admit that I was in a crisis. Like Li Po I had three friends, only mine were the tree, the bench, and my own supine self. Thus integrated into that private ecosystem, I realized that certain moments are emblazoned forever on the mind, and are set to become monuments of or to the self, which is always in motion, even if its vehicle is temporarily disabled. It is part of the human quest for meaning to seek a reason for every situation, to follow some sort of tracery leading (supposedly) to a grand unified theory of personal existence. Well …

I refuse to follow Herrick and compose a farewell poem to my beloved booze, for we know that he ended up composing a poem celebrating his return to his favorite inebriant (called “sack” back then). Jinxes are psychological realities, alas. I am instead merely subsisting on tea, non-trigger music, and a rather forced zeal to write. This much is clear, and was clear to me beneath that tree on the bench: some events in life are morally and ethically neutral. They can serve as raw material for later use, perhaps, but neither good nor bad (indifferent, perhaps, as in the Stoic ADIAPHORA, but only for the moment in which they arise) – they are signposts leading toward a plot of ground on which the creative mind will erect a shrine to its own unicity.

Labor of this kind is invariably lonely. Eventually, as Li Po understood, each will go off on his or her own, with some outrageous promise to meet again in some impossible place or circumstance. The melancholy produced by this inescapable operation of inter-human existence can be as intoxicating as the contents of a bottle – and as addictive.

In the morning, when I awoke to the sound of crackling police radios, and opened my bleary eyes to see two amused officers looking down at me, the transformation had already taken place above and around my sleeping form. ‘Twas no park, but the ornate (if poorly manicured) lawn of a private residence. Bottle of gin at my side (empty) and rotten bench nearly touching the ground … I was kindly permitted to return to the cavern of Shelob whence I had come.

So now what? Li Po was wise enough to simply allow the language to take the shape of the event. Organic subjectivity. How’s that for a designation? Resisting the lure of analysis is hard for me. Re-presenting the immediacy of a moment through language? Well-nigh impossible.

Where have all the great poets gone?

Nevertheless …

Beneath a tree, bottle in hand

Breeze and my breath and a smack of the lips

As the fire infuses my form, I greet the tree

My friend the bench makes three

Da Vinci’s Ginevra understood the gin

And I daresay the night does too

A moment to myself in the inky night

A discovery: careless collapse and joy are kindred

I hum to myself as a gnat tickles my nose

I smile at the unexpected even as I shiver at some thought

She: a phone call away

I: a universe to my Self

Tangled like Neaera’s hair, we’re not through yet

Tomorrow a steep descent, or perhaps salvation for both

...

That sort of thing was acceptable in 8th century China. The United States in the early 21st century? That’s another matter. “A half savage country” indeed.

It's hard to explain the Rig Veda to an Existentialist

(or is it?)

"In the beginning this One evolved

Became desire, first seed of the mind.

Wise seers, searching within their hearts,

Found the bond of Being in Not-Being

~ Rig Veda (Nasadiya) 4

Reverse this poetic formula, and say that the desire for meaning begets Mind, and that Mind is the blank space into which our desires spill their seed, hoping to fertilize the oblivious Absurd -- then one has likely "existentialized" an ancient Hindu text.

When one is counseled to find a power greater than oneself, for the purpose of recovering from a certain disease of the mind and allergy of the body, one can go in circles and call this Higher Power the act of mind that seeks a Higher Power, and so on ... It won't end. Desire -- the well-spring of all that is good, bad, indifferent, or just pointless -- depends upon a willing agent. Even when the desire is for absorption into the cosmic organism, or just plain dissolution, there is no meaning when the agent is absent. "Time is no healer," as T. S. Eliot put it, for "the patient is no longer here" (Four Quartets, "The Dry Salvages" III.). Eternity is no healer either, for the patient is as if he'd never been.

I've no patience with any religion, philosophy, or "spiritual" system that belittles the existential center, the Ego (in the Classical Greek sense of the term, and in Ayn Rand's sense) and calls for a shedding of all the temporal encrustations that make the person the "unique, unrepeatable entity" that is the only ground for morals and ethics -- even in a post-modern environment where those terms are endlessly abused, ironically invoked, or transmuted into other signifiers by the great alchemy of differance ...

"Never have I not existed,

[says Krishna]

nor you, nor these kings;

and never in the future

shall we cease to exist."

~ Bhagavad-Gita, Second Teaching

From an Existentialist point of view, this statement renders the entire concept of personhood (and it is a Western concept, stated in Greek as hupostasis) meaningless; for the person comes to be in time, orients himself to the world as one who is in the process of becoming, and experiences continuity with the rest of the world (the community of others, if you will) only by way of existing as his own foundation (literally "standing under") -- which is precisely the meaning of the ancient Greek term, which we receive by way of Latin as "subject" (of, to, etc.)...

The great void out of which I emerged (and which I conceptualize only through a desire to know myself, which is a creative act) and into which I shall someday return is the sole reference-point for my personhood. Anaximander called it apeiron. An anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet described it analogically as the storm-wracked night out of which a bird flies, to enter the mead-hall for a brief spell of light and warmth, only to return again to that darkness.

Somewhere we have lost, as a culture, the love of the light of this day, the here-and-now, that makes creativity and personhood (the two are so inextricably bound as to be near synonyms) a necessity -- if we are to glorify this world for it's own sake, and not for some utilitarian end. For "Life piled on life / were all too little," as Tennyson so movingly put it ... "and of one to me / Little remains" ("Ulysses").

Being-toward-death or Being-toward-salvation: the great dilemma separating the atheist from the Christian Existentialists. Sartre versus Kierkegaard. Heidegger versus Bultmann. Moore versus AA. And so it goes.

"He who is in the sun, and in the fire and in the heart of man is One. He who knows this is one with the One"

~ Matri Upanishad

That is to say, no person, no subject, no desire ...

Petite Dinosaur

She Walks Like A Petite Dinosaur

Through the spit-stained and crack-riddled streets of darkened Philadelphia.

But she is my angel.

She rips and tears and renders me helpless …

But she is my beloved.

Her mind is fused with a body that demands stimulus: her body and mind are one and she is whole. But she falters at the very edge of pure human experience, and makes art of her variable self.

She is pure in mind, but gored in spirit.

Her face is a reflection of that aeonic image of eternal production that makes artists of us all.

She sings like an angel and scrapes like a beast:

Her hair is perfect.

I tasted her for a moment and entered a portal beyond which lies a darkness that I simply cannot enter.

No: will not enter. I’m not going to offer explanations to Dante and Virgil …

My explanation is to this white space upon which I type these words.

The love of a man for a woman is a mystery and a chalice, one from which all should drink, sacramentally, liturgically, whatever the fuck you want to say …

But the purpose here is to remind myself of the mellifluous little lady (short and cute) that I’ve lost.

Scum seeps into the streets of every life that draws sustenance from this earth that feeds us all …

Walk away or stick around and get infected by the common sweat and all of its bacteria – all that oozes from the graying skin of dying humanity.

The purity resides when a rather naïve and fetishistic man places his mouth on a worldly goddess …

The body … oh, the body!

Memory tries, but it never fails, no matter how severe the eruption of tainted dreams into the sleeping brain of a bereaved body.

It Festers ... and we calll it Philly

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To be bored with oneself

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

~ Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, III.

This only makes sense if one is in a co-breathing relation with the world (what the ancient Stoics called SUMPNOIA) … If I have this “spiritual” sense that the entire cosmos cares about my (well-)being, and that somehow I belong (metaphysically) in the exact space and time I inhabit, then Whitman’s gorgeous, exultant poetry moves me.

But I don’t believe it.

Walt wanted to make love to the earth itself, to fuck the ground he walked upon, and to somehow find communion with the iconic goddess “Nature” by masturbating himself into some sort of union with his supposed source of All.

The concepts by which we live are phantasms of the mind … that sounds like a quote, or perhaps it’s something I picked up from my life-sustaining reading over these past several years.

In any case, the urge to bring forth new selves into the world is universal. But the self, as a concept, is unique and unrepeatable, but gloriously malleable!

The Church Father were right to call it/us : HUPOSTASIS

.

Listen: as I sit in a café in Greenwich Village, martini in hand, smiling at the roving pseudo-angels that inhabit such joints, I am one self.

When I speak at a conference, where people engaged in actual research are taking the time to listen, I am an other – not a different (specious distinction!) self.

“The Same and the Other”? Horseshit!

Whatever swinging-dick motherfucker who came up with that distinction deserves to have his balls cut off!

There is only the self and the perceived world.

Period.

Get it?

Good.

No real matter. The HULE of our Being rots away at its own petty pace, from day to bleeding day … >We all fail and fall ... “Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.”

Day by day I’m drained of theTHUMOS that once made me a force to be reckoned with.

That’s fine.

Peace falls like a shroud upon us all, eventually.

If we are quiet in our hearts.

Someday I hope to walk, drunk (as usual) through a park or some suburban pathway and find a dying goddess.

Poe himself said that there is nothing more beautiful than a dying woman.

But it takes a dying man to appreciate her.

And the boredom of imminent death is enough to draw togetherPSUKHOIthat would otherwise remain Monads.

Gnostic-like.

In her is the end of breeding. Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.

~ Ezra Pound, The Gardenblockquote>

I wouldn’t dare – at this point – to declare anything about Pound. His nature was of another order.

Harold Bloom would be proud: I acknowledge the anxiety of influence.

There’s just one person that I refuse to acknowledge …

She lurks like a succubus in the dark Huysmanian night and she will be exorcised.

Peace, my friends.

To my enemies:

Asphyxia.

The contrast of blue and green is enough to make a darkened soul hate its ignominy. The Descent of Aeneas into Hell (French, circa 1530, painted enamel on silver copper)

Now let’s see: what has passed in the past 24 hours that requires a written message? Not much.

I drank, listened to Springsteen, slept, and drank some more … Oh, I took a 5-mile run around the local park. BFD

Perhaps Wordsworth can help us figure out, for this one moment in time, just why someone pretending to be a poet writes.

Taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, I ask what is meant by the word Poet? What is a Poet? To whom does he address himself? And what language is to be expected from him? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them. To these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which are indeed far from being the same as those produced by real events, yet (especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and delightful) do more nearly resemble the passions produced by real events, than any thing which, from the motions of their own minds merely, other men are accustomed to feel in themselves; whence, and from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.

(William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1802) – my emphasis

That is where I disagree with Bill. “Immediate external excitement” is the be all and end all of life. I cannot recollect anything of emotional force in tranquility. I can only recreate the scene and, perhaps (if I’m poetically lucky) the atmosphere.

How very few theorists have dwelt on atmosphere! I mean real atmosphere: the kind that causes a suburban lane to suddenly transform into a track behind a mediaeval English manor house, where the Gawain-poet likely wrote.

When I read poetical texts of any kind, I look less for content than for atmosphere. I don’t particularly care for Piers Plowman, but the opening lines:

In a somer seson, whan softe was the sonne,

I shoop me into shroudes as I a sheep were,

In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes,

Wente wide in this world wondres to here.

Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne hilles

Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.

I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste

Under a brood bank by a bourne syde;

And as I lay and lenede and loked on the watres,

I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.

(William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, prologue)

These lines invoke a childhood past that never quite existed, but came close enough to the tenor of those ancient lines to produce a marked affinity. And that, to me, is sufficient to make a poem worth reading. I am no fan of allegory, which is why I cannot quite make it through the rest of Piers (nor the Faery Queene for that matter!). But I think, somehow, we all make an allegory of our respective lives. My descent into alcoholism can be described thus:

Because this beast, at which thou criest out, Suffers not any one to pass her way, But so doth harass him, that she destroys him; And has a nature so malign and ruthless, That never doth she glut her greedy will, And after food is hungrier than before. Many the animals with whom she weds, And more they shall be still, until the Greyhound Comes, who shall make her perish in her pain.

(Dante, Inferno, Canto I. – Longfellow translation)

If I tried hard enough (actually, it would be pretty fucking easy) I could allegorize my life as a struggle against this insatiable monster (the bottle of vodka in front of me as I write this), one to which I am rapidly succumbing, but yet still only on one knee! It is too easy to allegorize, which is why so much of mediaeval poetry is bullshit to a post-modern atheist. Yet I still love it for its atmosphere!

So here is my anti-allegorical tale:

One early morning, when I was about 10 years-old, I rode my bike to the edge of a brook near our street, parked my bike, descended the bank, and watched the water flow against the emerald green of the bank. I fell asleep, and when I awoke, a garter snake was warming itself on a rock nearby. I watched him sleep, and was amazed at his primitive beauty. Like a typical young boy, I tried to catch him, but he quickly slithered into one of the many rocky outcroppings along the bank. Now I could easily turn that into an allegory, but it was just an experience, a point in my life when my childish innocence had yet to be sullied, and my connection to nature yet to be mediated by all-powerful science.

Yes, that old-fashioned manner of speaking still applies.

And when I returned home, the excitement of that day became a tapestry of that day’s denotive texture and tinctured it with a silent sort of significance. (I’m being consciously alliterative and silly now, but still whistling-in-the-dark serious) …

When I recall those days, the obvious reference is to Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode.

But yet I know, where’er I go,

That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.

(lines 17-18)

For something in me that day spoke of a point of no return. Carrying my household gods on my back, I returned to that brook later … only to find: The snake still there, the same emerald bank, the same gently bustling water. But my eyes had veils over them, metaphorically speaking. Only when I was in the moment did it matter. All now is a memory. And memories are like assholes.

I may not agree that we are capable of relinquishing the “immediate excitement” of a moment while still remaining poets, but I do agree that something of beauty has left this world … but only because our (meaning MY) drunken eyes can no longer see it. When I embrace a woman today, I only feel a potential corpse. The days of feeling a warm example of the life-principle are long over. (If any reader of mine has read Dragonlance and I refer to Raistlin, she or he will know exactly what I mean!)

The manifestations and perambulations (my own choice of words) of the universe: it still goes on. As do I.

For worse.

I am, like Wordsworth said, affected by absent things as though they were present. It is a disease of the mind. The greatest poet of the 20th century (in my none-too-humble opinion) Sylvia Plath, said:

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.

Past and present, present and past, the point of immediacy which exists not. Too much fucking philosophy. Sylvia said it best. We don’t need Heraclitus or T.S. Eliot to tell us that the river flows and we are but tragic salmon. (Horrible analogy, but purposely so, like Lautréamont’s famous sewing machine). But I do need to make a point of this admittedly drunken ramble through a park filled with goose shit and crying brats, as I gulp from a bottle of Poland Spring water that is actually vodka. So here it is.

If ever I see the snake on the rock again, I shall recall my days of Gnosticism. If ever I meet a woman like Sylvia I won’t be a Ted Hughes but an Edward Moore.

And if ever I meet again the woman I truly (as if truth exists!) love, I shall tell her this (and so this day-long production ends):

Charon did not cry when the last soul reached the shore … He rejoiced, but with the melancholia of one who is alone, and has no purpose.

Sometimes it is good to have no purpose. At other times, despair becomes the wraith that smothers us in the night.

The poet creates a purpose, and it is his own.

That is why some of us continue to live.

All the learning in the world cannot compensate for the loss of the compassion that leads one to talk to a madman in Central Park at two o’clock in the morning. One may have to be drunk to do so … but by God (who doesn’t exist!) I’m better off for having been that person. Now that I recede into the dim caverns of my Avernian vodka, I hold on desperately, and as life recedes, my love for it increases.

Does that make me a poet?

Time is one No One’s Side

What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation.

~ T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

In an essay from 1919 Eliot said some shit about the personality being something that personality-strong persons should want (occasionally) to escape from … Load of shit (as far as I am concerned). He said:

“… of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”

If I could escape, even through art, from my personality (hupostasis) I would cease to be Edward. Fuck that! I’d rather be the drunken, rambling pseudo-poet that I am, rather than some plastic “artist” living as an artifact of his “tradition.”

So much for Eliot.

But what about REAL poetic theory? Is there such a thing?

My answer is yes. And I shall use my beloved as an example:

Sylvia Plath strangled her own life for the sake of her art … She watched her children crawl about like slugs as she wrote the masterpiece known today as Ariel. She died for her art, and I am prepared to do the same. Here’s what SHE had to say:

“… everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Eloquence (and proper grammar) might be absent from her statement, but the sentiment (all-embracing) is there!

Sylvia is telling us that the highest to the greatest is cause for poetry. A quick blowjob in a subway station, or a major fuck in a five-star hotel (you see where my mind is at!) … All are worthy of poetry.

She herself was worthy of poetry, and I’d like to write about her … I just don’t feel worthy. So here I am going to perform a shameless imitation of my beloved. Harold Bloom would likely approve (and for those who understand this reference, you get my silent applause). So here I

go: Listening to Van Morrison While Guzzling Vodka

A drink of water laced with vodka slows my soul But sets it moving Why does Born to Run suddenly seem like great poetry? Because I am drunk. Why do I think back to those golden days when I fed ducks in the parks and spoke cryptic words with my grandpop? Because I recall what it felt like to be HUMAN. Days take their toll, and love dies … What is a man to do? We … I … must remember that my soul resides only in this world: In the air, in the trees, the geese, the grass that tickles my feet … I must remember … I cannot. A veil has fallen. Something called …. Who fucking cares?!! A veil has fallen. My eyes are dim … not like Milton’s, but like a drunk who stares too long at Botticelli. So what, then? The world recedes and I call out to it with the only faculty I have left: my voice. No one answers. So I spit at the world and await a fight that I know will never come ….

And so my Sylvia awaits an academic reply. Sorry Sweetie, not yet … too much vodka in my system. Someday, my glorious angel, I shall do you justice in “academia” (whatever the fuck that means).

In the meantime, I shall lend you this:

“Curiosity killed the cat … Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and On the Road …”

OR BETTER YET: Sylvia’s Colossus and Ariel!

You surpassed all of them, my love … all of them.

I’ll see you when my love grows, Sylvia … It won’t be too long. We’ll soon embrace.

In the meantime, take my tribute as a poetic memorial (if such a thing exists – we’ll have to ask Shakespeare!) and remember:

A world of experience does not create a person. For no creator exists. Not even the world.

Let us love from beyond the grave, ghoulishly, if it must be …

Philadelphia: the crust of plebeian scum

In Philadelphia

“It's a town full of losers

Then we're pulling out of here to win”

~ Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road

When I first read Lovecraft as I child, I didn’t believe that towns could have personalities. How wrong I was!

A certain substance of impersonal conformism pervades the town of Philadelphia (it doesn’t deserve the appellation “city”)

Tattooed men and sluttish women

Those with various diseases, writhing forbidden in rooms not their own

A fellow with a penchant for philosophy and poetry fucking a bitch ten years older in a room with no hot water

Why?

Time takes its toll, and makes us all slaves to its sluttishness

My first orgasm was a revelation of otherness

My second was dirty

My third: PAINFUL

My fourth and final a gaze into eyes belonging to a dark demon, an eye of the pit, with no love, no mercy, nor any sense of inter-personal passion.

That gaze was celebratory of only the deepest spasms of the body

Not of the soul.

When the monsters showed up at the door and I stood my ground

Everyone surprised (including me)

I felt like a god!

They all ran off.

Me in my Armani suit and silk shirt scaring off dudes with big muscles

Who would’ve thunk?

But it happened.

I have only myself to thank.

I took the worst the world has to offer, and I gave back my own violence

Which is deeper and more powerful than anything lurking here in the sun.

After All … Wordsworth was Right!

Nature is the only source of poetry …. Although I AGREE WITH Coleridge that the language of the common peasant is not sufficient to convey the intricate pronomials of Nature that a reflective mind demands.

But Wordsworth, who said that “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility” (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1802) was more than right.

We sit and wonder why the world grins and smirks at us with a manner approaching derision

.

It is because we refuse to allow our bodies and minds to be taken away – into a realm of Lovecraftian space – by the immortal Beauty that lands itself before us.

One day I sat in a park, drinking vodka, and watched a couple (hand-in-hand) walk about the lake …

And I felt derision.

The next day, seeing the same spectacle, I felt hope.

Moods change, but people prevail.

Tomorrow may bring a monster or an angel, or a some half-life Ialdabaoth betwixt BOTH.

OK

In the meantime, Edward is here, dying, waiting for his beloved.

She is resolutely unavailable.

Screening Myself

In tight spaces lonely people meet

In the dark and moist areas of life people often come together

Momentarily

Too many people are afraid of a kiss, not because it will change anything, but because it won't

A note from a clandestine lover at a rehab is worth more to me than all the works of Beethoven

The musicality of proto-love cannot be granted access to the realm of art:

It is too beautiful to be called 'art'

It is the enamoration of lost souls (a cliché I know -- but true nonetheless)

A loving glimpse into the eyes of the Other that no one (not even a philosopher) can conceptualize!

Thank whatever Force holds this galaxy together ( I'm being Star Warsy silly now)

Permits such things

A certain woman, a Vietnamese woman with a name that I cannot pronounce, made me feel like a soul capable of embrace:

Oh! that it would come, and that Wordsworth and whatever poets called out to nature in her country lived today would applaud and call us blessed!

Grace Smothers

The first thing you must do is kiss the woman's foot

Then you must kiss her butt, and ask her respectfully not to sit on your face for too long

Or else you might not wake up

If she is cruel, and gets you to the edge of consciousness, only to revive you and start again, you know your fantasy has gone too far

In Fact, it's no longer a fantasy, but outright torture

The desperation felt by a suffocating man beneath a merciless woman cannot be described: only shown

Once upom a time I succumbed to this

: I thought I was about to check out!