'Alan Griffiths, Of Course, Vitelli!

The plot of this novel is not entirely original (it was anticipated by Jules Romains and more than once by reality), but it is extremely entertaining. The protagonist, Roger Diss, invents an anecdote. He tells it to a few friends, who don’t believe him. To persuade them, he claims that the event took place around 1850 in the south of England, and he attributes the story to the "famous cellist Vitelli." Everyone, of course, recognizes this invented name. Encouraged by his success, Diss publishes an article on Vitelli in a local magazine. Various strangers miraculously appear who point out mistakes in the article, and a polemic ensues. Diss,victorious, publishes a full-length biography of Vitelli, "with portraits, sketches, and manuscripts."
   A movie company acquires the rights to the book and makes a technicolor film. The critics declare that the film has distorted the facts of Vitelli’s life... Diss becomes embroiled in another polemic, and they demolish him. Furious, he decides to reveal the hoax. No one believes him, and people hint that he has gone mad. The collective myth is stronger than he is. A Mr. Clutterbuck Vitelli defends the affronted memory of his late uncle. A spiritualist center in Tunbridge Wells reveives direct messages from the deceased. If this were a book by Pirandello, Diss would end up believing in Vitelli.
   "Every book contains its counter-book" Novalis said. The counter of this book would be cruel and far stranger. It would be the story of a group of conspirators who plot that a certain person does not exist or has never existed. [1938]’  --Jorg* Luis Borg*s, S*l*ct*d Non-Fictions (*d W*inb*rg*r 1999)


Dualistic thinking, popular now as of old, is stupidity grown rigid, and a goof that rigidity turns into protocol. Alas, such wisdom as turns against dualistic thinking cannot find its mass sponsor, nor impart in a classroom. It is knowing which joins an "I" with what it looks at. It's not a way of talking.

Raps clack calcspar.


Can humans stop having wars? If our war today, idiotic and unjust as it is, still finds public approval, it looks bad for stopping all wars in a fuzzy bright tomorrow, right? Making war counts on two things: a split mind wanting to attack its own shadow, and Plain folks' strongly tribal thoughts of boundary.

'Hence it is true that if our apprehensions make us seek deliverance, yet it is they which keep us from achieving it. Though he dreads the future to the point of making it the sole object of his preoccupations, the anxious man is a prisoner of the past; he is, in fact, the only man who really has a past. His tribulations, of which he is the slave, move him forward only to yank him back. He comes thereby to regret the raw, anonymous fear from which everything starts, the fear that is beginning, origin, principle of everything alive. Terrible as it is, such fear is nonetheless endurable, since whatever lives resigns itself to it. It lacerates and ravages the living--it does not annihilate them. Such is not the case with this refined fear, this "recent" fear posterior to the appearance of the self, in which the diffuse, omnipresent danger is never materialized, a reflexive fear which, for lack of other nourishment, devours itself.'  --* M Cioran, The N*w Gods (tr Howard, 1974)

'Strict grammar and good Latin, it has been well said, are different things.' --Quintilian

    "Atom Spy"

You think you know
what it is to cry
in this blank snow

you think you know.

Sorrows swiftly grow,
and moons go by
you think. You know
what it is: to cry.


"All Nature feels the renovating force
Of Winter, only to the thoughtless Eye
In Ruin seen. The Frost-concocted Glebe
Draws in abundant vegetable Soul,
And gathers Vigour for the coming Year.
A stronger Glow sits on the lively Cheek
Of ruddy Fire: and luculent along
The purer Rivers flow; their sullen Deeps,
Transparent, open to the Shepherd's Gaze,
And murmur hoarser at the fixing frost."

--James Thomson, "Winter"

    "106.

When,I,was,no,bigger,than,a,huge,
Star,in,my,self,I,began,to,write,
      My,
    Theology,
  Of,rose,and,

Tiger: till,I,burned,with,their,
Pure,and,Rage,Then,was,I,Wrath-
      Ful,
    And,most,
  Gentle: most,

Dark,and,yet,most,Lit: in,me,an,
Eye,there,grew: springing,Vision,
      Its,
    Gold,and,
  Its,wars. Then,

I,knew,the,Lord,was,not,my,Creator!
--Not,He,the,Unbegotten--but,I,saw,
      The,
    Creator,
  Was,I--and,

I,began,to,Die,and,I,began,to,Grow."

--Garcia Villa

"Since it costs $15 dollars to rent these shopping carts, we must hitch them to the stars."

Lojban Hiragana.

"I think fakeness is a democratic value."

"In yoga class today I finally understood what my teacher has been trying to show me. There are gaps between thoughts. If you allow the gaps to become longer, the curtainof thoughts - tinkling like rows of beads - parts and you are deep inside of consciousnessitself, deep inside silence." --Th* J*tty

Going up. (tip via M*xp*rim*ntal)

"your eyes dance under stars
hidden by clouds these many years

blue as a spring washed sky,
they see open wings not shadows

your fingers again find the curve
of a shore shifted, not gone"

--Julie Damerell

Four Ozark Prison Sijo.

In Rov*'s R*public. (via Ptarmigan)

Flax th* war.

Tomorrow talk. (via Languag* Hat)

Crackdown. (via Abuddhas M*m*s)

"I see that all are wand'rers, gone astray
Each in his own delusions; they are lost
In chase of fancied happiness, still woo’d
And never won. Dream after dream ensues;
And still they dream that they shall still succeed,
And still are disappointed. Rings the world
With the vain stir."

--Cowp*r, "The Task" (1785)

    "Victory Asparagus

Should we call on God
or pour more blood?
Must a clown applaud,
should we call on God?
Power to the fraud
and to the flood...
Should we call on God,
or pour more blood?"

--*rnst A Kipling, Profil*s in Cowardic* (2005)

The idea of giving the revolution a colour, like a product, was a total success..

Tanka anthology. (via Po*try Hut)

'Who offered to me, Ares the sacker of cities, rich cakes, and grapes, and roses? Let them offer these to the Nymphs, but I, bold Ares, accept not bloodless sacrifices on my altars.'  --L*onidas  of Al*xandria, Th* Gr**k Anthology I., vi. 324 (Lo*b tr W R Paton, 1916)


    "A Lay of Pain and Want"

1.

slowworm
against a pallid sky
my car high on a tow truck back
again

as luck would have it

2.

stairway to downfall
climbing a stairway to downfall

3.

upturn cars burning
glass crashing
dark falls in globs
mad moon anchor
city point
glowworm to downfall

4.

languid warm painting

badlands murmur

quotidian built road

Thoughts on chaos. Am i afraid of dying, or of my kind and kind's ways vanishing? Am i afraid, not of losing, but of turning into what i abhor? For this war consists in knowing or willing not to know. What follows from this is not within our control; a shadowy polyp lifts its wings.


"...a civilization which glorifies the mind at the expense of the heart is in constant danger of slipping into limitless violence; while a civilisation which glorifies the heart at the expense of the mind would be in danger of sporadic brutalities without rhyme or reason." --* F Schumach*r, This I B*li*v*


    "78.

It is the remembering of the future.
To do that.
It is very difficult.
I remembered the future and
Broke myself.

Now the assembling is the Arrival.
Nothing must deter it
But eternity should defer it.
It must be very clear
That arrival is non-arrival.

Yet the future
Must be circumferenced and
The mind balance it!
Thus the great remembrance is gripped.
In this way the poet is broken
In this way the future is saved."

--Jos* Garcia Villa, S*l*ct*d Po*ms and N*w (1958)

On my victrola: 3l*ctronic Hair Pi*c*s by Mort Garson.


"We are the most fucked-in-the-head people that ever was. It's not our bad leaders we rise up against or gun down. It’s the good ones."  --Cay*nn* Turbo, Suppl*m*ntal R*sults (1970)