perhaps the hardest lesson to learn
is based upon drinking
whiskey slowly...
you can down one kalimotxo glass
after another, and if you have
to litres of wine, you can also chain-smoke
choo-choo it down the slide
into more uninhibited territory -
but with whiskey: there's a need to
keep vigil, and wait, and wait...
and it can sometimes be disengaging
that you somehow have to wait
for the right moment, and begin...
oh, i drink out of choice,
not out of an addict's plea -
what three weeks in Poland showed me
was that i can switch off the "addiction"
in a day, and feel no cold-trukey drama...
the western world with
its romanticism of madness and its
theatre of addiction narratives bores
me... quiet literally bores me...
so why am i writing this?
well... i feel the tipping point of the Libra
working its way into my drinking session...
a few aphorisms by a german
philosopher in hardback...
then a few newspaper articles from
a newspaper (column section, primarily)
and i can begin...
and i can begin: because i feel no shame
in writing what i would consider to be
utter tosh... but given the Libra principle:
at least i'll write nearly as much
as i have read...
i find it a disaster to merely write...
to fill some void, as if to rekindle once had
conversations with transcient friends:
notably those in a system of either schooling,
or work...
i just have a void in my head
that once had pristine conditions (soul-like)
for thinking... now i don't...
as happens when blood spills onto neurons
and you hear a sound akin to water
on an electric current...
but never mind that...
do i care for past conversations
as a writer might, in that current film 5 to 7?
well... i'm not really a writer...
as it is self-evident: i have the least
interest in paragraphs, or ensuring someone
takes me writing to bed as:
the best way to fall asleep... not as depressing
as someone falling asleep with the television on,
i gather that much...
but i'm not really here to talk,
to orate grand things in the vein of a Cicero...
i thought i could begin citing more
Seneca and Cicero than the Greeks...
but then i found that: they cite the Greeks...
so why bother citing those two?
pedantry, for the care of it being
a reflection that: there actually was a beginning,
and with that beginning i find myself
lodged in the current year, a.d. 2017.
it's not that i care about these historical
figures... they're as far removed from me
as someone in a village 100 miles north off
Beijing... gearing up from tending to a field
to occupying a cubicle-sized room
with a naked lightlulb dangling off the ceiling...
it's hardly an umbilical cord...
but such is the contrast i'm experiencing,
a philosophy book on the one hand,
and a newspaper on the other hand...
you can't find a better case of zenith and nadir...
i read one and i reach a nadir -
because current affairs and my place in the world
are a bit pointless by comparison...
but i read the other, and i am walking
up a mountain, upon which i find coordinates (0, 0)
and of all things: gravity - a pulling force
that drags me to say, well...
coordinates (0, 0), but that's on an x-y graph...
i'm the z-line, so, more precisely 1 (0, 0) -
neither of these two mediums are actually
three-dimensional, as such, not the objects
themselves, but the content...
so i have to stand outside the already prescribed
coordinate foundation...
but i still find philosophy books inadequate
in some way... a) no grammatical words...
not using the basis of categorising language,
all the time, just throwing words into abstracts
and geometric bulwark -
no grammatical words, not one,
only Artistotle nibbling at it: proper names...
or such thing from ancient lore...
and b) the rigid concepts used, intact,
to further an argument, or merely state
the logic of language...
e.g. ad infinitum (to infinity) -
and never toward, say, something poetic...
it's enough that grammatical words have never
been used in philosophy books...
allowing a pseudo-ping-pong or at least
the quickened step... a wormhole effect...
but the fact that there can be no, i.e.
αδ μηταφoρυμ -
for example syllables, diacritical marks
as punctuation marks / syllable enforcers within
words... why then all the way to infinity
and not toward the given, now?!
toward metaphor, yes...
how there is medicine all around...
a doctorate in linguistics might also mean
using another kind of scalpel to cut open words...
and not begging at the oratorium of:
the pen is mightier than the sword...
so i guess that would mean:
the tongue is mightier than the thought,
or as some would say: the thing that incubates
thinking... the in abstracto brain...
why would we begin to think by claiming
the origin of thought is in the brain and is by
brain solely coordinated?
what of feelings concerning the heart,
and my drunken odes when the liver speaks more?
i can hardly be as merely a brain in a pickle-jar
attacked to a computer (some time in the future)...
the heart speaks as much as the brain,
if not more!
side-tracking,
and why: Γγ Υυ
and not akin to Ιι Ρρ Ττ Χχ
Ψψ, i.e. identical shrinking?
some would say: can that ever be a serious question?
well... unless you're part of the crowd
asking about the mysteries of the universe,
i guess it isn't...
well... it's there, i'm in it...
it's unfathomable to the extent we currently
understand it... but at least this thing i asked is
concerning a human question,
not a dialectically theological question
that stacks a lot of brains working on
the cartesian "i am" without much thought,
i.e. the tri-tier dialectics of theism / deism / atheism:
no matter what thought i put into that thing
that boasts moons, stars Jupiter and Mars will
ever produce a lightbulb...
or a recipe for a well cooked roast...
here, now... language... it's bewildering
on the basis that: well, we're not exactly
merchants on the silk road writing route symbols
so we don't get lost when we travel across
Arabia... by the looks of it... we're already lost!
yes, that really was an exaggeration:
but i like to think it's so,
it's not as simple as 1 (straight), 2 (turn left)
and 3 (turn right) -
so to walk through a maze you were given
the instruction schematic:
1, 1, 1... 2... 1, 1, 1, 1... 3... 1... 2... 1, 1... 3... 1, 1...
bingo!
and believe me.... you will end up writing
these little codes at some point, wondering
why it was that you didn't remember modern
code given computers... or as i do...
or why i do these little codes, because,
as a byproduct of being drilled 1 + 1 = 2
from age 8... i feel like taking a break
and writing the most basic ciphers...
a bit like receiving complimentary chocolates
on your hotel bed...
it's not exactly a chocolate fountain...
but hell... they're there.
yet what was that thing i mentioned,
the Libra principle?
well... it doesn't matter what i wrote...
i spent the past hour reading...
which makes me feel, actually a bit shameless
about writing anything at all...
it's how i find writing to be at best
a chance of being trapped in a moment
that post-pones more balancing acts...
i just can't stash inside of myself
this high-air i'm wearing a cravat sort of airs...
like i might need a butler...
i can't say i write more than i read...
but at feel less urgent in writing anything at all...
and the content just passes me by...
the context is more important:
whiskey, cigarettes, newspaper, windowsill
a bit of heidegger...
and that's how it should be:
it can never be that important as i might even
like to think...
and yes, as Kafka noted should
his works be kept, published IN LARGE PRINT...
you seen a Kafka book?
New Times Roman... probably size 9 or 10...
they overdid the justice bit with Bukowski...
Kafka is stacked on my shelf and he's moaning
saying: you ******* should have at least
published my books in larger font:
so it's easier to read... who's this chuckling Charlie
doing in the myopic section of the library...
i mean: how many insuctices have been served
like that... he can boast all he wants:
the reason he's pop is because they printed
him in LARGE TEXT... Kafka received
a **** when he ordered a steak tartar...
and yes... the stench of a nation once incorporated
into the Roman empire is all too evident
in an English newspaper...
coming from a faction of peoples who didn't
experience being brown-nosed by the Romans
or who claim no conncetion with the Roman world
can be a bit daunting...
it would seem to suggest that there's
nothing to boast about...
and that much is true...
as if true that Poland: has absolutely no moral
obligation to prevent the people of Hong Kong
from being swallowed up by the one-party Chinese
state...
because no more Kowtow means: no more Kowtow.
if i were British i'd cite Bilbo Baggins...
Gandalf... i feel streched... like
too little butter spread over too much toast...
what's with this predicate of having moral
obligations... 6000+ miles away from Dover?!
well... these are middle-class opinions,
instead of reading a newspaper, i should really
try to get an invitation to some *******'
dinner party in Devon... or Richmond...
that's what i meant when i meant: two Europes...
suddenly got the fear
and left: because there emerged a workforce
with a communist work ethic,
a generation who had to join the army for 2 years...
given the conscription laws...
every time i wake up and feel nothing
but jealousy of not being born in poland in the 1960s.
