Pharmakon 2: Socrates and Phaedrus

Socrates and Phaedrus were in conversation.

‘I agree,’ said Socrates, ‘only so long as an argument which endorses speech is based on the appreciation of speech as an art. Here and there I’ve heard some saying that speech leads to spoken falsehoods – lies, if you prefer – and rather than being an art, speech is considered artless. I have a Spartan friend fond of saying: “Without truth, there can never be an art of speaking.”’

And Phaedrus replied: ‘We need this argument. Let us bring some to hear what they have to say about this.’

Thereupon Socrates stood and hailed his noble brood, and called upon them to convince Phaedrus that he would never become a competent speaker unless he paid closer attention to philosophy. And he called upon Phaedrus to respond.

************

For the sake of convenience, we have been working in metaphor. But we can see that the metaphor belongs to a system. If spoken wisdom has a father, this is because it is a living being, an animal born, growing, and belonging to our emerging, abiding, swaying existence. This understanding permits us to regard the spoken word as a living being which conforms to the needs of the immediate situation, to the questions and demands of its interlocutors, capable of adapting in order to maximise persuasiveness and control.

Spoken wisdom is not merely a living creature, it is a created organism. It requires a head and a tail, and neither heads nor tails can be written down. This can be seen in the continuation of Socrates’ and Phaedrus’ dialogue.

************

‘Well Phaedrus,’ said Socrates, ‘I am ignorant of how to write. It seems to me that the writer simply writes down whatever springs to mind. Do you know how the writer arranges thoughts into some kind of order? What is the structural principle behind composition?’

Phaedrus blushed.

‘Really,’ he said, ‘it’s very kind of you to think me capable of such an accurate insight into the method of writing.’

‘True enough,’ said Socrates, ‘though surely you will agree that spoken wisdom requires a head and a tail, as well as all other parts which comprise a created organism?’

************

Here we can see that Socrates insists that a speech must have a beginning and an end, and it must begin at the beginning and end at the end. He was clearly dissatisfied with Lysias, who had attempted to swim on his back upstream through the current of his own speech. He began with a lover’s speech, which should have been delivered at the end. The significance of this is enormous, but as it is obvious, we will not belabour it. Hence, spoken wisdom behaves like a person, who is at once present and has an origin.

Pharmakon 1: Yamanu and Djeheuty

Yamanu received his old acquaintance Djeheuty, who had come all the way from Naucratis to show Yamanu his latest discoveries. Among these was a concoction derived of various herbs and fluids which had the curious property of improving memory and wisdom. And he pulled out a flask and offered Yamanu an appraising swig.

Yamanu looked sceptically at the flask, and said: ‘Why should I? There’s nothing wrong with my memory, and I should think nobody would question my wisdom.’

‘True enough, on the face of it,’ replied Djeheuty. ‘But this will improve your ability to write down your instructions.’

‘Instructions?’ said Yamanu. ‘What instructions? What writing? I need no writing. My word is Law.’

‘No,’ said Djeheuty. ‘My master’s word is Law. Your words are merely an interpretation of the Law. You must write them down, or you are liable to forget them.’

And Yamanu figured that this was probably true, after all. He nonetheless regarded Djeheuty with some suspicion.

‘Is it poisonous?’ he asked, gesturing at the flask.

‘Very possibly,’ replied Djeheuty. ‘It is not just a concoction, it is both artwork and artefact.’

‘Well, that may be,’ replied Yamanu, ‘but I am receiver of this gift, and it will be I who decides the value of your discovery.’

‘You speak like my father,’ said Djeheuty. ‘I did not like him. All he did was reject, belittle, abandon, disparage. He, like you, was suspicious of writing.’

************

From the tale of Yamanu and Djeheuty, it should be obvious to all that the articulation of wisdom belongs to a father, much like a son belongs to a father. This is no metaphor. A father speaks; writing is only necessary in his absence.

Let us note some of the ways a father can be absent: he can die of cancer or be hit by a car while riding his bicycle. He can be stabbed several times in the lungs by a stranger and lie in the street watching his lifeblood bubble from his chest, his child can take revenge and push him unsuspecting from a cliff. And then from whence will we find our wisdom? Or must we get by without it?

It was Socrates who pointed out that the writing down of wisdom is misery, whether pitiful or arrogant. But I will add that this is born both of the distress of the orphan who has no father to speak wisdom, and of the perfidy of the orphan who sought wisdom beyond the father in the first place.

Hence Yamanu’s suspicion was legitimate: the gift of writing is poison.

But really, it behooves us to acknowledge that the orphan, whose welfare cannot be assured, is the same as a letter of the alphabet: this letter, once it is inscribed on paper, is no longer a son. It has no origins. But the same letter when spoken has a father. It lives through this father, while the letter written down is half-dead. The spoken letter has no thoughts of murder or revenge.

The tale of Yamanu and Djeheuty proves that the responsibility for wisdom belongs to those who accompany the father; that is, the letters he speaks. They protest, they answer questions and – unlike wisdom written down – they respond when their father is present.

And then there was max...

Would You Believe Me If I Said:

'This is My Love'?

An Ode to Canadian Love

My love, when I first saw you,
You wore a crumpled jacket over a spine like a koleso,
You wore a baseball cap and scowled at the world from beneath it,
You smoked too many cigarettes and sang songs to yourself
From a dank Aeroportian room.

O my love, I didn’t like you then:
You were too fearsome and spoke in cant,
But one day you did a funny little dance for me,
And then another one, and you sang a song,
And smiled like a child and almost charmed my pants off.

My love, my pravoslavnyi Jewfuck,
Do you remember that strange orange day last summer?
When you called me ‘sexy-legs’ because my legs were sexy
And I called you ‘hot-haunches’
Even though your haunches weren’t particularly hot?
I loved you that day; you bought me a beer
But refused to drink one yourself:
You said it felt wrong for your body
To be corrupted with toxin
When your soul was filled with
A pure, clean
Love.

Then you lit a cigarette and winked at me.

My love, can you forgive me?
When I said I came to Russia to study weather patterns I lied,
I came looking for you and a good shaverma
I found one of them, my love.
Now I’m ready to go home
To where the snow is much whiter.

your turn pal, we had an agreement, eh?

bunny boy, to be illustrated by max

Bunny was very sad.
He did not like being a bunny.
His mother made him eat cooked carrots every day.
He had far too many brothers and sisters.
And his ears were very big.
"I don't want to be a bunny anymore," bunny boy said to his folks.
And Bunny left home.
The first place he went was to a family of Turkish crocodiles who had just moved into the neighbourhood.
“I’m sick of being a bunny,” he said to them. “Do you think I could be a crocodile with you guys?”
“Yeah, of course, anyone can be a crocodile,’ papa crocodile said. “All you have to do is eat little girls and smoke.”
Bunny thought about it for a while and then decided to give it a try.
“I don’t like girls,” he said, “and I’ve never tried smoking, but I’ll give it a try.”
He didn’t like it. He couldn’t bring himself to eat little girls, even if he didn’t like them, and smoking made him feel sick and uncool.
So he hopped away.
After a while he came to a family of sloths who were having a nap in the afternoon shade.
“I’m sick and tired of being a bunny and a crocodile, can I try being a sloth?”
He waited for a response for a long time but never got one.
So he hopped away.
Next he came to the elephants. They squirted Bunny with water and laughed. It was fun for a while, but at night he got cold and shivered. And he just wasn’t strong enough. And he wasn’t tall enough. Basically it just didn’t work at all. So he left.
The bear family was very nice, very nice indeed. Mother bear went to loads of trouble trying to teach him what to do. She showed him how to find berries, and how to catch fish in the river, and how to climb trees properly, and nagged him constantly about picking up his socks and putting away his toys and kissing her good night and eventually Bunny got pretty sick of that too. So he left.
The camels were cool, but he didn’t like when people got onto his back.
The birds were friendly enough, but Bunny didn’t like they way they were always pushing him out of the nest. He was covered in bruises.
At the end of the block there was only one more family. He was afraid to go there. His father had always warned him that they weren’t reputable. Bunny didn’t know what that meant, but his father looked serious when he said it.
“Disreputable,” he said, squeezing up his eyes.
It was the family of rats.
They lived in the dump where all the city animals threw their garbage.
“Hey you disreputable rats!” Bunny said. “I’m sick of being a bunny and a crocodile and a sloth and an elephant and a bear and a camel and a bird! Especially a bird! I think the rat life is probably pretty exciting in a dirty way, can I give it a try?”
“Yeah dude!” All the rats squealed and screeched.
Bunny loved it. You never had to wash. And you could eat garbage all day long.
It was all a bad little boy bunny could want.
But after a while even eating garbage stopped being cool. Not to mention the rats being rude all the time. Being rude was ok if you knew it was wrong, but the rats didn’t seem to know that.
So Bunny didn’t know what to do. He’d been everywhere – where else could he go!?
All the other animals were strange! And they didn’t seem to understand his specific needs.
Bunny spent the next years wandering through the countryside alone.
He searched for something to make him happy but he couldn’t find it.
He climbed mountains and trees. He swam in mountain rivers and waterfalls. He hunted for food and when he didn’t catch anything he ate leaves. But nothing satisfied him.
Nothing, until one day there it was on the side of the road.
It was a girl bunny, and a carrot!
“Mama Mia!” he cried. “That’s it, that’s what I need!”
And they lived happily ever after and had lots of little bunnies, and ate carrots every day.
It was perfect. Just what Bunny needed.

Smolny sobor

Next morning, I brave the cold air and board a bus that takes a group of students to Smolny Cathedral. It’s a massive blue and white building, badly deteriorated, which would have been truly lovely were it not for the scaffolding that covers it. I’m sure it’ll look even better once the restoration is finished, but I don’t think that will happen while I’m in Russia. We circuit the cathedral, and enter the ex-monastery behind it.
An abrupt, business-like Russian woman gives me an evaluation test and places me in a class. She turns back to her desk, evidently expecting me to leave. Foolish woman. After twenty seconds passes and she realises I haven’t moved, she snaps:
‘That is all!’
‘No,’ I reply, with a wistful sigh. ‘No, I don’t think it is.’
She looks half puzzled and half pissed-off.
‘What? What?’
‘Well, y’see, me old mucker,’ I say in English, ‘I’m not taking group classes. I’m taking individual tuition. So, I think you’ll have to make a few changes here and there. Sorry to be a bore.’
Of course, she can’t understand most of what I said, but she does understand the vital bits. She makes a flustered phonecall downstairs, then tells me that I’ll have to wait until 2 o’clock – two and a half hours away. I ask her if she wants to play cards. She looks confused, and I explain it a bit more simply. Good lord, the woman actually smiles. She tells me she has work to do. I tell her I was only joking.
I leave Smolny and make my way west a few blocks to the statue of Dzerzhinsky, who set up what would eventually become the KGB. The statue has become known in recent years as a rallying point for some of the more nostalgic authoritarians such as the neo-nazis, but it’s deserted today, apart from a lone Russian feller, who slips up on the ice and takes a spectular fall onto his arse. I offer a hand, but he is embarassed, and hurries away. I continue on to the yellow Tauride Palace, built by Catherine the Great for Potemkin, but better known to me as the place where the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet unwittingly plotted each other’s deaths. I guess you could say the Petrograd Soviet won by remaining influential longer, but while most members of the Provisional Government fled to Western Europe, many original members of the Petrograd Soviet were executed for ‘treason’ or committed suicide to avoid this fate.
I eat a cheese and berry pastry, drink a strong and mildly disgusting black coffee at the Karavay bakery, and watch the people hurry past. There are people walking everywhere in this city. I have yet to walk much further than twenty metres without passing someone, even when it’s snowing.
Back to Smolny through through the Institute gardens where a bust of Engels angrily glares across the way at a bust of Marx, who scowls back with equal ferocity.
I finally corner the administrator, who confesses that she has lost the correspondence where I claimed to want individual tuition, and has also lost my HIV test. She rewrites the contracts, then rewrites them again after I point out several fundamental mistakes, and having signed them, I depart for home.
Emerging from Primorskaya, I see a pack of twenty dogs idling about in the middle of the intersection. All the traffic patiently waits for them while they sniff, yip, and snap at each other. I realise they are literally a pack of stray dogs, wandering the streets looking for food. One of them barks loudly, and they all trot off down towards the Smolenka river. They’re having a great old time. Dogs love dogs.

The snow and the beard

In university girls didn't take to me immediately so I started using the pages I had written my stories on to roll cigarettes or for toilet paper. It didn't change the way girls acted towards me right away. But I would say that in the end it did. It definitely did.

I wanted to eat every day, but only once a day. Sometimes I didn't eat at all. I was busy smoking my stories. I spent all my money on tobacco and sometimes people bought me lunch. Lunch is the meal you need if you plan to eat only once a day, because, obviously, it is strategically located. Though, of course, it's even better if it's a late lunch.

So what else does a person need besides a late lunch, tobacco, and stories to smoke the tobacco in?

Not a lot, really, though perhaps love?

Life is possible without love. Life is infinitely more complicated without tobacco.

For a while I went without a beard. If you had asked me a month ago about what happened you would have been asking for trouble and tears. Now I can talk about it with some measure of calmness.

One day as I was walking on campus I attempted to light one of my stories, which I had rolled very poorly (as poorly, you could say, as the stories had been written!), and the flame went running up the paper and onto my beard. When I finally did make it to class that day, with my beard shaved away, the girls all started noticing me. I don't know if it was the absence of the beard, or the bravado of my new beardless attitude: now that the beard had disappeared nothing seemed to matter. I suppose it was a bit of both.

Anyway, it was snowing nearly everyday, and I found myself beardless. And not only that, but with very promising amorous prospects as well.

The day after I lost my beard a girl looked at me while I was settling into a seat in the back corner of the library. And the look was playful.

That night the wind blew so hard outside my window I thought it was going to break the glass and fill my room with snow. So I slept on the floor in the kitchen.

The next day when I sat down in my spot with the bad kids at the back of my Russian class, another girl looked at me and smiled outright.

If you always get food caught in your beard, then it becomes a reflex to wipe it away when someone smiles and points at a spot – you don't even think about it.

'I don't have a beard,' I said. 'What could you possibly want?'

She looked away in confusion.

The next day it was the same thing.

So much confusion.

Eventually, I grew accustomed to the attention and adapted. I started chatting to people in public and giving high fives. I stopped reading books, and started dancing.

I danced in clubs and in my kitchen after dark, and left the books in my back pocket for everyone else to see.

On a good day it was 'Faust.' On a lesser day it was 'Notes from the Underground.'

But that was purely accidental, and I hadn't thought of it purposely. I had long since stopped thinking of things. Thinking was a thing of the past. Now we danced.

But I still had no money, and actually, while on the outside everything seemed all wonderful and interesting and universitylike, dancing just made everything worse. When I had a beard I could stay at home and read and I felt no compunction about it. Now I absolutely pined after the nightlife.

At first I started hanging out and letting other people pay, but all the people who had previously supported me because I fit their image of the starving bearded artist now despised me. And the people who danced, though it's certainly not my place to judge, didn't care that much about others, though again, it's not my place to judge, I really just didn't understand their culture.

So I wound up staying at home in the end.

And that was just dreadful. And I started to lose my marbles.

I wore my scarf at home because it was so cold, and that wasn't the same as the time I wore my jeans to bed just to see what it would be like. I thought – I wonder what it would be like to go to bed in my jeans. And so I did it. I must say didn't like it.

I did, however, enjoy the scarf. I enjoyed it thoroughly, though, as they say, it was done for necessity. It was really cold.

My socks all had holes in them, 'though I don't mind in the least. It lends me a Victorian dignity,' I thought.

At this time I started elbowing people in crowds. And if people were looking in the other direction I would make faces when they coughed. One time I was walking through the fruit section just looking and smelling, and a kid cut me off and grazed me with his basket. So I lost it and in my rage smacked him and he went flying into the avocadoes. Someone saw me do it and grabbed me by the jacket and a crowd gathered. I started to cry and got really mixed up and said it was an accident and that I had just wanted to scare him. And then I said that he was a common thief and that I had seen him here many times stealing fruit and that I could no longer bear the thought of fruit being stolen and that I was no nark so I took justice into my own hands. I said a lot of other things which I won't repeat because they might make you uncomfortable. The people became so uncomfortable and embarrassed they let me go and gave me a lot of free food. Which was a godsend actually, because I had very little money and was surviving on mustard and bread. And tobacco, of course.

This incident changed things and for a while I didn't act out because I was too afraid of punishment. I retired to my cave and gnawed at my wounds in privacy.

One night I broke down and bought a bottle of Gin and drank it straight. My roommate kicked me out because he was bigger than me and teetotal. It was snowing outside and the flakes were coming down big and light.

'Look at the snow,' he said. And threw me out.

I walked around in the darkness and breathed deeply, it was very beautiful, and ended up passing out somewhere along the way under a bush.

I seemed to have dropped my cigarettes there so the next day I went back to get them but I couldn't find the bush.

I had all these memories from the night, standing looking in windows, walking along in the wet snow making up poems that were very beautiful, reciting them aloud.

It occurred to me that if I could find the spot again not only would I be able to smoke but I would also be able to remember some of the poems and they'd win her over, whoever she was. But I never did. Which is a mystery to me. Where had I gone? And more importantly, where were my cigarettes?

When I went home my roommate threatened to break my rib bones if I ever got in his face about Gandhi again. He said he didn't like it because he could smell the alcohol on my breath.

I said the whole thing was a mystery to me, but that's why alcohol was in such demand, because it put a little bit of the mystery back into life which modern science has stolen; but I would respect his personal space nonetheless.

I said the thing about science because he was a biology major and I never missed a chance to remind him that science didn't scare me at all. His nostrils flared, and I walked slowly but surely towards my room. And I stayed there for quite a long time after moving all my furniture and belongings in front of the door.

After a couple of days I left my room and my home for what seemed to be the first time in years! But for what was in reality only the first time in a couple of days. There was snow on the ground, it was wet – man, it's always wet! – and I thought: yes, it is possible, I'll never accept that it is not, I'll just bet that some people live in this world and are happy, and the season changes for them every single day, and the snow is always wet or dry, and I wonder, what other wonderful things do they see…..? What a life!

And I walked over to the supermarket, having forgotten about the incident a few days before, which was extremely unlike me, to take a walk through the fruit section.

But when I got there I was unpleasantly shocked. There was someone really beautiful in the fruit section. She was just walking around and not even looking at the fruit. What could she possibly need there!? She was just walking around in the fruit section. 'Move on!' I wanted to say. 'Get a move on out of the fruit section,' but I couldn't, I didn't have the guts, I was a chicken. And the real reason I wanted her to move on was – she was so beautiful. I know it sounds stupid and not witty at all, but it's the truth. She was that beautiful.

I wondered to myself - could it be, could she be, waiting for me?

It seemed unlikely.

And then the store manager, who had asked me never to come back, walked by.

And saw me.

And started to walk over to me.

And she sensed that something was wrong and stopped just walking around and looked over at me. 'Move on,' I wanted to say, 'get going.' She was that beautiful. Geez.

'What are you doing here?' The manager had every right to ask me that. 'Go on, get out of here. What do you want?'

She looked over at me and I don't know if it was a smile of pity, or if it was a smile at a scene, or a smile of understanding because she had also behaved badly in this very fruit section, or a smile that was pleased to find something to alleviate the boredom of strolling around in the fruit section; whatever it was she smiled so wonderfully that I filled up with spirit and looked straight at the manager and said, very proudly, 'I am leaving. There is nothing here that I want.' And I walked out into the snow.

From the parking lot I walked to the street where I had been the night I got lost and slept under a bush. I walked up and down it, back and forth, for maybe an hour or two. Though all the events seemed very random, though they seemed to be just one little insignificant thing after another I thought about them for an hour or two on that street, I had plenty of time to think over what had happened and I decided that they were all - can I say it? - very important.

From there I went back to the parking lot, it was already dark, and I tried to see in through the window to the fruit section, I wanted to get another look at that smile. Was she there? Was the smile? Not as far as I could see. As it was dark and the snow was coming down I didn't mind. Until I turned around and she was standing there looking at me.

'What are you doing in the parking lot?' I asked.

'What are you doing in the parking lot?' She asked back.

'That's a fair question but I happen to have an easy answer – they won't let me in so I have to stand out here.'

'They kicked me out too,' she said, 'so now we share something.'(It was so improbable! But that's what she said!)

And then she looked at me and smiled the same smile again!

But I need to ask - can I be forgiven if I try to wax eloquent about a girls smile? Is there at least one other person out there who will understand me and won't say, 'oh, come on, enough with the smiles already; maybe you wanna talk about your dreams and kisses and babies too? So maybe give us a break, eh?' Is there at least one other person out there who understands, maybe a person who has a beard or crooked teeth and who gets smiles like that from girls so rarely that when they do they are willing to write a whole story about it, and not only that!? Because the story is the least of it, the story is nothing at all compared to the nights you go to bed with a smile on your own face remembering it; the story is nothing at all compared to the way it stops you from elbowing people in the crowd, and grimacing at people who cough, and just going to class and work and not feeling bad about life at all. The smile is beautiful, man, she was beautiful.

We didn't say anything else to each other but we both smiled and went on our ways. It was a great night, and if I can be forgiven for writing about a smile perhaps I can be forgiven for one more ridiculous remark, maybe I can get away with saying just one more silly thing – I think that smile saved my life(oh, I know, it sounds so silly, how could it save a life? Smiles don't save lives, firemen save lives. Next thing I'm going to say beauty will save the world and smiles can put out fires. But it's true! Smiles can save the world! Smile at people! Especially you girls! And especially at people with beards! All you girls out there smile at people with beards!)

Manchester comes to Moscow

Hier soir, comme prévu on s'est pointé complètement rébou au concert organisé par l'équipe du film paragraph 78 (un film de guerre russe à gros budget dont la bande originale a été composé par les tenants de la scène rock mancunienne des années 90). A l'entrée, on nous dit que le bar est gratos à l'étage. Bon point. s'en suit donc une consommation éhontée et c'est en aucun scrupule que nous jetons nos gobelets à moitié vide sur Dan.

La bière, déjà en masse dans mon organisme, n'a pas pu me permettre de trop bouger pendant le set electro-rock de Richard Fearless.

Ce n'est qu'en tapant dans les boissons à forte valeur ajoutée (b52, vodka-red bull) que j'ai pu me remettre sur le devant pour assister au spectacle navrant de Bez des Happy mondays qui descendait sur scene une bouteille de vodka en échouant sur le sol toutes les cinq secondes.

Une bonne heure après, Ian Brown rentre en scène et là : blackout total. Aucun souvenir, mais ce matin tout va bien.

Tout à l'heure, je reçois un sms d'un de mes acolytes d'hier qui disparut étrangement lui aussi :

"What the fuck happened last night ? got a very vague memory of getting thrown out... got back in somehow. Lost, drunk or had stolen 4000r. Headbutted David. No idea how i got home"


Voilà, un vendredi normal donc..






Stone Roses_I wanna be adored from funtimeok.com

nirvana, bukowski

not much chance,
completely cut loose from
purpose,
he was a young man
riding a bus
through North Carolina
on the way to
somewhere
and it began to snow
and the bus stopped
at a little cafe
in the hills
and the passengers
entered.

he sat at the counter
with the others,
he ordered and the
food arived.
the meal was
particularly
good
and the
coffee.

the waitress was
unlike the women
he had
known.
she was unaffected,
there was a natural
humor which came
from her.
the fry cook said
crazy things.
the dishwasher,
in back,
laughed, a good
clean
pleasant
laugh.

the young man watched
the snow through the
windows.

he wanted to stay
in that cafe
forever.

the curious feeling
swam through him
that everything
was
beautiful
there,
that it would always
stay beautiful
there.

then the bus driver
told the passengers
that it was time
to board.

the young man
thought, I'll just sit
here, I'll just stay
here.

but then
he rose and followed
the others into the
bus.

he found his seat
and looked at the cafe
through the bus
window.
then the bus moved
off, down a curve,
downward, out of
the hills.

the young man
looked straight
foreward.
he heard the other
passengers
speaking
of other things,
or they were
reading
or
attempting to
sleep.

they had not
noticed
the
magic.

the young man
put his head to
one side,
closed his
eyes,
pretended to
sleep.
there was nothing
else to do--
just to listen to the
sound of the
engine,
the sound of the
tires
in the
snow.

A Star is Born

a winter collage

i typed in dancing frenchmen, and this is what i got , eh?
this is what the world thinks of when they think of frenchmen dancing?
on behalf of monkeys who eat cheese and soldiers who have swords, and little
girls and rats and all that i think we need a better to get along, i think we've all seen what the world can get up to when it hasnt got some kind of idea about something else, and if this is all that can work out for a way, i think that, hey, whatever, you know, but i dont think thats the best maybe

well buddy, huh? eh?

you cant squeeze juice out of a rock breaking hammer! you cant expect rivers and loads of tears from a dried up canon. i screamed but you did not hear the trees, and when i pulled over to the side of the road to roll down my window i had a breath of wind SO fresh, i had to hurl my cookies all over the shoulder. if i could have figured out the first time what shoulder i wouldnt have had to get down on my knees and look around, but as it was i was crawling, feeling around, groping in the dark - and there she was. to be perfectly honest i always knew it would work out that way - in the worst moment of tears, covered in a vomit filled parka, searching at the side of my youth for a key that didnt exist - there she would be, and you know what - there she was. holding a bag of peaches and asking me which i prefered - do you prefer peaches or pears? she asked. i couldnt answer her at first and then she tossed her hair over her shoulder, said she was finished with waiting around, her ride had arrived, and she got into a black mercedes with florida plates and drove off into the night of my first youth.

the bird or the barber

we want any one reading this blog, probably by mistake, or because of a bad link, to vote now, leave your comments, to this question:
will this blog still exist in two weeks time
or in other words,
will dostoyevsky still be trapped in outer space or can he at last return to earth?

Scanner Darkly

{108321}{108386}What does a scanner see?
{108390}{108439}Into the head?
{108449}{108505}Down into the heart?
{108516}{108599}Does it see into me, into us?
{108603}{108655}Clearly or darkly?
{108691}{108801}I hope it sees clearly, because|I can 't any longer see into myself.
{108811}{108861}I see only murk.
{108881}{108965}I hope for everyone's sake|the scanners do better.
{108976}{109071}Because if the scanner sees only darkly,|the way I do
{109075}{109175} then I'm cursed and cursed again.
{109179}{109249}And we'll only wind up dead this way
{109253}{109398}knowing very little and getting|that little fragment wrong too.

All Acknowledge the Superiority of Unchangeable Wisdom to that Which is Variable

Now, no one is so egregiously silly as to ask, "-->How do you know that a life of unchangeable wisdom is preferable to one of change?"--> For that very truth about which he asks, how I know it? is unchangeably fixed in the minds of all men, and presented to their common contemplation. And the man who does not see it is like a blind man in the sun, whom it profits nothing that the splendor of its light, so clear and so near, is poured into his very eye-balls. The man, on the other hand, who sees, but shrinks from this truth, is weak in his mental vision from dwelling long among the shadows of the flesh. And thus men are driven back from their native land by the contrary blasts of evil habits, and pursue lower and less valuable objects in preference to that which they own to be more excellent and more worthy.

Under the tower

I was under the tower, didn't get ontop of it. It was raining and I was drenched to the bones. I looked at the barpapa sellers and thought it's so sweet. She's made of candy and I have a sweet-tooth. 3 hours later it was the new year with a sip of smokey irish whisky, french champagne and seventies fashion everywhere. My name : Paco Rabanne and my wife is the most extraordinary thing I can think about. I failed to be honest, I failed to be a monster, I failed to be myself, I failed to be alone. There will be a time I'll be alone and it would be six feet under, in a box with red-silk walls and a huge non-revolving door the size of a man.

alas, poor max, its come to this

how many men have gone down in action trying to bring this man in? how many lives destroyed by the wicked grin? who taught you to give me the kitchen knife for the sun? who taught you to feed me haggis at the point of a gun? why max? why?
i warned you, didnt i?
i told to - stay away from that tall tower, didnt i?
but you said - i like the cheese, i like the breeze at the top of the tower; i like the view, i like the people falling, one and two...
then i said - those words are meaningless, you sayd them to rhyme, but only because
and you said - thats a good reason, thats a way and a was
oh max, you silly old shoe
if only you knew...
but its too late
as all can see - max has his glasses on, and he's armed with the grin - look out, here comes max! hes ready for the next round of atrocities!

the legend lives on down under

yes, once again, the incontainable fire sparked, the lights glaring, the crowd gone wild - hot and furious seth faces the fact. hot and incontainable he lights the hearts of too many teenage girls, lost forever in the stadium of delirium on the edge of the australian shelf, on the brink of the australian night. will they ever recover? will he never learn? when we will he grow weary of these little escapades he calls ultimate wisdom? what does he know about wisdom?! he forgets to see himself in his true light, he forgets what he truly is - the rock start of wisdom, and the grocer of despair.