I’ve somehow regained control of this account. I’m going to repost some poems I previously published on another Tumblr. Beyond that, I don’t know what I will do here. Does anyone still use this website?
My divine fire's dying. I get depressed, the people I like never like me; besides it's rotten when you think you've got a touch of genius and you don't know how things are going to turn out.
Evelyn Waugh, as quoted in Evelyn Waugh: A Biography by Selina Hastings
We are told, that in the sack of Athens the Goths had collected all the libraries, and were on the point of setting fire to this funeral pile of Grecian learning, had not one of their chiefs, of more refined policy than his brethren, dissuaded them from the design; by the profound observation, that as long as the Greeks were addicted to the study of books, they would never apply themselves to the exercise of arms.
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
What are the pros and cons of a woman taking the initiative with a potential intimate male companion? Asking for a friend.👆👉 👆👉
Well, as always you run the risk of being rejected. Though you might just get the man you want. The last woman I dated mysteriously fled to Pakistan, so what do I know?
Sir Roger Moore died today at the age of 89, after what his family described as a “short but brave battle with cancer.” Like most people, I just assumed that everyone who played James Bond is immortal, so this death is particularly damaging to the psyche. Moore is one of my favourite actors. Not just for his contributions to the Bond universe, for which he should receive our eternal gratitude, but for his work in Wild Geese, Sea Wolves, and Escape From Athena, to name a few. Not to mention his long-running role as Simon Templar on television show "The Saint."
News of his death broke like a thunderclap, leaving me absolutely shattered in a way I haven't felt since Christopher Hitchens died in late 2011. Like any normal child, I was raised with the Bond films, from Connery on through to Craig. Some of my fondest memories are watching Moore’s outings with my grandfather.
As it happens, a friend and I are slowly going through all the Bond films. Most recently we watched Moonraker, which despite being totally outrageous is something of a masterpiece. Next up is For Your Eyes Only, which I expect will be much more emotional than it otherwise would have been.
With the news of Moore’s passing still fresh, I got into a street fight with a hipster who did not even know who Roger Moore was. They said that given that Moore had 89 years relatively good health for most of his life and had a great career, we should all be pleased that he was able to go on that long. He leaves behind a wonderful legacy and all that. Besides, he hasn't acted in a film since 2011.
All of this may be true but it is beside the point. There are just some people who, just by continuing to live, make the world a better place, even if they are completely idle. Roger Moore was one of those people. The world is a much bleaker place without him.
I see you in the raindrops
scrawling messages on my window
asking how I'm doing
I command the wind
to clear them away
Those simple pleasantries are
questions I can't own up to
I don't know if it's because
I think you don't really care
or my answer is too damaging
My dreams play tricks on me
They say you'll lead me around
distant shores through the brushes
and the hedgerows
They say you'll hold the door open on the train
They say you'll appear out of the mist
and take my hand in dance
They say that life’s a long hallway
and you’re behind one of the doors
They say you'll return
I can never doubt my dreams completely
They always manifest somehow
Yet when I try indulge these dreams of you
I know I'm betraying myself
My dreams lose their authority
They become propaganda
The best drug I've ever taken
I'm not dreaming authentically anymore
My memory is long
My interests strange
My teeth are crooked
My posture stooped
I should be a character
in a Lovecraftian tale
tucked away in a library
stumbling upon horrors
too frightful to describe
instead I found you
ever present and wise
Last year I wrote about the notion of books being a source of pain. Not in the sense of being bopped over the head by one or suffering a paper cut, but just their mere presence in our lives bring us some kind of distress. At the time, I rejected this notion, describing it as “baffling.” Overall, I still stand by this view. Yet as I once more consider the problem of space in library, I’ve been forced to revaluate my views, if only slightly.
Unless I invent anti-gravity bookcases that can be attached to the ceiling, I have nowhere else to put more books except in boxes and piles. Over the last year, I’ve discarded perhaps ten books due to redundancy and have been fairly creative with the books on the shelves, stacking mass market paperbacks on their sides and leaving the larger books standing up straight. I’ve even put certain books on “special display” atop the bookcases in a bid to free up even more space. But creativity (or at least my creativity) has its limits. Now, if I wish to add a book to one of my shelves, I must remove a book, placing it in one of the eight piles of books growing in the corner. Five of which are already over one meter high and risking collapse.
Sometimes, an obvious redundancy will present itself and a simple swap can be made. Though such instances are rare. Instead, I must decide whether a particular book is causing me pain. Just trying to figure out what “pain” is in this context is difficult. I can look at a book and see what feelings it evokes in me, which memories come rushing forth.
I know two people who write inside each book their name, the year they bought it, and from where they bought it from. I might have done that once or twice, but I have a general aversion to writing in books. Besides, I have the strange talent of remembering where I got each of my books and can usually figure out the year, too, if I really think about it. Those things never invoke anything more than slight pangs of nostalgia.
Next, I consider what I thought of the book, if I have read it yet. (I’ve read roughly half of the books I own). If the book was truly terrible, and I have been fortunate to read so few of those, it never would have made the shelves to begin with. Though there are some exceptions to this rule. I study the Third Reich, so bile like Mein Kampf gets a pass because I need it sometimes as a reference. I’m a staunch anti-communist yet the Communist Manifesto, too, survives because it is an important book in a historical sense. A book of Nostradamus’ “predictions” has a place on the shelf for similar reasons. So simple “badness” is not the source of any pain either.
Let us then take a recent case and see if it yields anything. About one and half of my bookcases are devoted to what I’ve loosely labeled “People Who Think (Though Not Always Well).” PWT, for short. Divided into five sections: UFOs, the occult, philosophy, psychology, and religion, PWT is always stretched for space. What complicates things further is that all of these subsections overlap and defy easy classification. Even if there were space, the order would always be changing.
Yesterday, I received a copy of Keith Thompson’s Angels and Aliens: UFOs and the Mythic Imagination in the mail. This fine dawn of the ‘90s blue book on the mythical origins of strange things seen in the sky is a surefire fit for the UFO section. Expelled to make room was Douglas Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas, a hulking mass of book containing a collection of his articles on free will, memes, and the like governed loosely by the books subtitle: “An interlocked collection of literary, scientific, and artistic studies.” The fate of such interdisciplinary mosaics is the philosophy section. When I found the book two summers ago at the fire sale of a dead priest’s library (the books there were arranged spine up, in three rows spanning the entirety of a long, winding driveway), I was acting under the influence of a friend who told me Hofstadter best known work, Gödel, Escher, Bach, was important somehow. I have not thought about the book since.
Looking at it yesterday, I was filled with anger just looking at the poor book. If I’d had the time, I would have made one of those Downfall parodies where Hitler discovers the Metamagical Themas is taking up too much space in his library. The book was promptly removed and placed in one of the smaller stacks of books, awaiting an uncertain fate. A few books were shunted down a bit to the right and there was room of Angels and Aliens. I had secured peace for our time, or at least until next week when I’m expecting another book. The poor Metamagical Themas left because it served me no purpose. The disappearance of Immanuel Kant’s works gets at a deeper reason.
Kant, who is best known for never masturbating, found himself booted from my shelves at three a.m. this morning because of the messages it was sending me. Its spot lined up roughly with my face when I am lying down in bed. With just the faintest light, I can make out the title of one of the Kant books. The gold embossing reflects light very easily.
When I say Kant’s works were sending me messages, I don’t mean voices in my head or even the contents of the works themselves. Really, I’m sending them messages and they’re just bouncing them back, like sonar.
I have no interest in anything Kant has to say and find the people that drone on about him to be nothing more than charlatans who feed off increasingly elaborate justifications for being as depraved as they are. Kant becomes a symbol for my enemies and his position on my bookshelf is untenable. I will fight my enemies to the death but I don’t see why I should let them into my bedroom. So there is pain that carries with some books, the pain of my enemies watching me, invading my most sacred space, and me foolishly inviting them in.
The problem facing science is that a very substantial percentage of the population has had personal experiences, often at a significant emotional level, that run counter to the beliefs of science in general.
John B. Alexander, on the challenge that UFOs and other anomalous phenomena pose to science
Last night, I could not sleep. Maybe it was the wind (high wind without rain or snow to accompany it makes me very agitated) or maybe there was too much on my mind. Like anyone else, my thoughts invariably shifted to the Japanese writer Osaragi Jirō, particularly his essay "Sleepless Nights."
I came across Jirō via Patrick Krup's blog Anecdotal Evidence and had my wonderful university library send me a PDF of the two articles referenced. In "Sleepless Nights," Jirō describes the "bad days" where his reluctant nocturnal thoughts travel down a decidedly negative path:
“…all that comes to mind is my mistakes - things I’ve done that I wish I hadn’t - and I end up berating myself and feeling assailed by a keen sense that I must look like a fool, that I am lazy and a failure as a human being. All I can see is my faults. That kind of sleepless night is hard to endure. Having lived more than fifty years, I have made many blunders and been careless many times. Am I alone in this?"
Jirō certainly is not. At night we let our guard down. This is a double edge sword. In one sense our mind becomes much more curious. Suddenly everything is interesting. Random bits of trivia become of immediate interest. "When did so and so die?" "How many tanks does the Israeli army have?" At its peak, novels and poems are born out of this restlessness.
The other side is what Jirō describes. Our new found freedom of thought digs inward, recalling a wide array of forgotten terrors, pounding us with evidence like a good prosecutor making their closing argument, that we are rotten to the core. Even though we cannot sleep and the wind has us agitated we are passive. No sustained attempt is made to mount a defence. We just lie there until sleep says "Enough!" and grants us a reprieve.
Jarō says he can make his sleepless nights "more pleasant" by living "without cause for regret while the sun shines." The trouble, of course, is that we seldom know what we will regret until it is too late.
You can read bits and bites of Jarō’s essay (or “zuihitsu” as they are called in Japan) here.
you should commit suicide and here's why: you will die alone and live your life alone. i bet you spent christmas alone and will spend new years alone too.you will spend 2017 alone and 2018 alone and so on. end it all and avoid the pain of loneliness! I wish you all the best with it.
Oh but how can I be alone when I have you urging me to off myself every fortnight?
sometimes I dream of the snow
falling on my face
as I lie in desolate field of grey
looking up at the white lemon sky
it's all hazy and there's
crashing waves in my ears
the sun is blasting through
the cracks in the clouds leaving
what's on the periphery unseen
everything is warm, soft, relaxed
as I tilt my head, I see trees
lining the clearing where I lay
I see you emerge from the foliage
gun in hand, ready to put me away
"Merry Christmas, baby"
is all you say
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