"First Nations communities suffer from a couple of centuries of objectification. Our stories and teachings have been collected like museum pieces and stored on shelves and in books where they seem to atrophy and become more and more distant from daily life. It is not uncommon to hear people questioning the value of these old teachings and their relevance to contemporary situations. This has created a very disempowered situation. Without our own stories, we go to the stories of others, and those who have the most powerful story telling technologies (TV stations, media outlets, films) have also had a fairly consistent agenda of colonizing indigenous peoples. Mass media continues the colonization of indigenous peoples by giving us stories that are not our own, filling the vacuum left by the loss of our traditional technologies." --Parking Lot

You get used to being cold, you get used to being tired, you get used to being hungry, you even get used to being in pain, but you never get used to being disrespected.

Cathedonia.

"Judgment at Westchester"

Two crows clyted in the burnt-out hulk of a house.
They shook the rain from their feathers, then one said,
"Those who made this landscape must be proud."
The other: "Havoc is power, nonetheless."

06 12 04

Get rid of those suspicious art supplies.

Listening to: Seasoned Reasonings by The New Elements.

"Line 9. Of this peculiar character Ibn Khallikan remarks (ii. 43), 'There were four poets whose works clearly contraried their character. Abu al-Atahiyah wrote pious poems, himself being an atheist; Abu Hukayma's verses proved his impotence, yet he was more salacious than a he-goat; Mohammed ibn Hazim praised contentment, yet he was greedier than a dog; and Abu Nowas hymned the joys of sodomy, yet he was more passionate for women than a baboon.' " --Richard Burton, notes to his translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night (1886)

Shining Trapezohedron, dwells thy agent dead
not on Mount Fucking Rushmore though they'd urge it
but with his true kin vilely massed worms slime-shrouded
inventor for neon scissors outclassed thy yegg

06 10/11 04 quantitative sari

"Or: I work at the language as a spring of water works at the rock, to find a course, and so, blindly. In this i am not a maker of things, but, if maker, a maker of a way. For the way in itself. It is well enuf to speak of water's having its destination in the sea, and so to picture almost a knowing in the course; but the sea is only the end of ways--could the stream find a further course, it would go on. And vast as the language is, it is no end but a resistance thru which a poem might move--as it flows or dances or puddles in time--making it up in its going along and yet going only as it breaks the resistance of the language." --Robert Duncan

Death of a Salesman. (via Fishblog)

I remember Reaganomics, all right. I was working downtown at a bank. Every year there were more street people. We were the underground people, we lived in the tunnels & skyways. We only stood in the same world when we waited on our bus, & we resented even that. For the most part we refused to make eye contact or acknowledge them in any way.

I was a librarian of mortgages. I handled one stage of the paperwork. I remember, i don't know for how long but i lost track, i was doing a hundred foreclosures a day. It began to prey on my mind: that many families thrown out of their houses, that many dreams shattered. After awhile i had to quit & try to move away. I knew i didn't belong there, in the underground, with the happy saved.

The Neoformalists have failed to imagine farther back than Frost; they have no more use for Pope than for Ginsberg.

"Empty landscapes seem to inspire games." --DeLillo, 1983 interv.

"All of Philip K Dick's novels seem to bear at least three stigmata of his long apprenticeship to Ace Double Novels.' --Robert H Canary

"The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." --Lovecraft

Laid off after ten years on the job, i have $40 in the bank, $20 grand in debt, an 18-year-old car & a 15-year-old ulcer. Duncan: "A poet who sits in the light of words like a cat in the mote-filled sunlight of a window."

"Orthodoxy was never a religion of speculation anyway, but a waterfall of sound and colour, bleeding beauty off into the wings, overwhelming its unhappy brood with its mystical cant, and sending its harmonious dirges down the soul river of time." --Larry Frolick, Grand Centaur Station (2004)

The ancient bricks more beautiful than anything we can think to fill this space with.

"The Suq al-Warraqin, or bookdealers' market, in tenth century Baghdad contained one hundred booksellers." --Night & Horses & the Desert ed Robert Irwin (1999)

"Maybe, Murray supposed, he would get there in ten or eleven years' time. The fact that it would take the 31 years left to him, and still not be completed, might not have dismayed him had he known the fate of the other great multi-volume European dictionaries that were under way at around the same time. Although Emile Littre's rather short Dictionnaire de la langue francaise took only a decade from publication of its first volume to the last--though 32 years from the conception of the plan--the Grimm brothers' Deutsches Worterbuch, which was six times bulkier than its French equivalent, was begun in 1838 and fully finished only in 1961. If that was not long enough, the Dutch dictionary known as Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal was started in 1851 and completed in 1998, 147 years later. And a nineteenth-century attempt to fix the entire Swedish tongue between hard cover continues today into the twenty-first century, with scholars still stuck on the complexities of Swedish words beginning with the letter S." --Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything (2003)

Salvage in itself is a worthy art. In fact, it may be the art of arts.

"Poker is to New Orleans as waltzing is to Vienna, firecrackers to Beijing." --S Frederick Starr, New Orleans Unmasqued (1985)

Can you imagine a people giving up electric for gaslight, for aesthetic reasons?

"Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray,
That I may live to say, The dog is dead!"

from Richard III

the mad cow
that infected
america

is dead the
madness lives
on

06 06 04

the pain of war cannot exceed
the woe of aftermath

Led Zeppelin, "The Battle of Evermore"

Figuring out the president.

"Tomb of the Unknown Detainee"

they
let me
know who's boss

with
a cellcam
it's not torture

remember
outside there's
a different law

time
to go
my breaking said

05 31 04

"It is curious why anybody should pooh-pooh a study of fossils or various forms of rocks or lava. Such things grant us our only vision into Natural History's big book; and it isn't a book in first-class condition. Far from it! Just a tiny scrap; a slip; or, possibly a big chunk is found, with nothing notifying us as to how it got to that particular point, nor how long ago. Man can only look at it, lift it, rap it, cut into it, and squint at it through a magnifying glass. And,--think about it. That's all; until a formal study brings accompanying thoughts from many minds; and, by such tactics, judging that in all probability such and such a rock or fossil footprint is about so old. Natural History holds you in its grasp through just this impossibility of finding actual facts; for it is thus causing you to think. Now, thinking is not only a voluntary function; it is an acquisition; an art. Plants do not think. Animals probably do, but in a primary way, such as an aid in knowing poisonous foods, and how to bring up offspring with similar ability. But Man can, and should think, and think hard and constantly. It is ridiculous to rush blindly into an action without looking forward to lay out a plan. Such an unthinking custom is almost a panic, and panic is but a mild form of insanity."

--Gadsby

"Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie
  Dust unto dust
The calm sweet earth that mothers all who die
  As all men must;
Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell
  Too strong to strive
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,
  Buried alive;
But rather mourn the apathetic throng
  The cowed and the meek
Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong
  And dare not speak."

--Ralph Chaplin, in The Match (Summer, 2004)


''Abu Ghraib and God's declassified papers''
Date: Friday, May 21, 2004 @ 00:05:15 CDT
Topic: Gabriel Ash

"By Gabriel Ash
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)
(YellowTimes.org) -- Because they contained forward-looking statements that might have affected history, certain chapters in the Bible were marked "Top Secret" and excised from the original. One of these chapters has now been reclassified for public view. Here it is in its entirety.
And the Lord said: who is this nation, whose good fortunes are surpassed only by its hypocrisy? Who is this nation, that preaches the world my name, whose deeds besmirch my name to the world? Who is this nation, whose coins bear my name and whose actions are stamped with the name of Caesar?
Who is this nation, whose poor are sheltered in dungeons and whose wicked are exalted in churches? Who is this nation, whose soldiers can see in the dark and whose leaders are blind in broad daylight?

Who is this nation, that joins house to house, that lays field to field, till there be no place, so that it be placed alone in the midst of the earth? Who is this nation, that would not walk behind me but fancy I walk ahead of it?
Who are these people, who demand my commandments in courtrooms and remove them from their hearts? Who are these people, who cherish the life of a fetus and spurn the life of a child? Who are these people, who feed the bloated beef and give the hungry thistles? Who are these people, who move their lips in my service and their hearts rejoice in destruction? Who are these people, whose sons are idle at the table and whose guests are working in the kitchen? Who are these people, who mistreat the foreigner, enslave the orphan, and mock the widow, trampling on my word.
Who are these people, who hang my image on their necks and their faith they put in missiles? Who are these people, whose jets are faster than sound and compassion slower than a turtle.
Who are these people, whom I sent my son to free from evil, and they fancy he came to free them for evil? Who are these people, whom I sent my son to teach my word, and they fancy he came to free them from my word?
I say therefore: They don't know me and I shall not know them.
I say therefore: The money they put my name on, I shall make worthless. The prisons they built to spurn me, I shall make my houses, and the houses they built to praise me, I shall make their prisons. The missiles they built in pride shall strike them with fear. The bombs they have made their idols shall fall and destroy their houses.
I therefore say: the fires they started shall consume them. The charity they have given, that shall be given to them, no more.
And the advocate that was sitting stood and said in front of the Lord. Aye, you will besmirch your name by your own deed. Aye, you have promised and you will have broken your promise. Aye, you will let the innocent die among the guilty, and the world will turn away from your name. Aye, Lord, let them have a warning, so that they repent and be saved. For even if there were only fifty good people in the whole of this nation, you ought to spare them, for you are justice.
Therefore, this I advise: to these people who worship images I will bring images. I will make images of their folly, pictures and videotapes of their inequities, and will give them for all to see. From the darkest prison they have made to torture you I will bring them images of your suffering. And they will see the images of your images suffering. And they will see the depth of the sickness that have taken them away from you, and they will see the depth of iniquity to which they have condemned you. And those whose hearts are closed to the word will tremble before the image.
I say that there are many good people still in this nation, and they will wear sackcloth and put ashes in their hair and come out in the streets to wail and to repent and to mend their ways and to ask for your mercy.
And the Lord said: Do as you advise. But I examine the heart. Verily I say, you shall be surprised, and not for the better. A rotten apple does not become a good apple in a good barrel, and a good apple quickly rots in a rotten barrel.
And so it was.
[Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel. He is an unabashed "opssimist." He writes his columns because the pen is sometimes mightier than the sword - and sometimes not. He lives in the United States.]
Gabriel Ash encourages your comments: gash at YellowTimes.org"

"Tomorrow Quencher"

This shine is my night,
A work of turbulent years,
A tree with tapers & popcorn strands bedight;
Wake with tears
And not know why. In the Holy See
An old man gathers his kafka chips & fears
Fitfully
The rumor of Dyson Spheres;
His attention tapers to a high
Shelf where poems lie low
Including this one. Shadowless circling fly
Brings bleak news of long ago
Sunken things
Waking. To & fro
On querulous iridescent wings.
Commuting, a sentence. Woe
To the leaders who are always sure
Time loses what the villagers forgot.
Fallout evermore
Puissant, not
Glowing; secret. Written in
Deep alphabets, this travelling spot
Of blankness or sin
And i may live to watch unwind fractal plot
Into rout
Into ruin. Knots intrude,
I'll make them part & worth the puzzling out
O freaked solitude
Of birth pangs.
Without hope, without light, without food
I sharpen these fangs
And drive. A grayness imbued
By futurity, ferrying all
To a far shore where the flicker workers form
One line. Pall
Of chrome, nacreous flintknapper storm
Troops; traipse wan
Deserts that affirm
Your abject victimhood as pitiless man
Versus a pitying worm!

04 30 04

"Speaking about epics, mother,
How long is it since you gathered mushrooms...?"
--Zukofsky

"Lancelot Link"

Swiftly moving beasts
As they hurried to terrible the
Uttermost

Regions of the globe sagging verandahs &

Have peeling paintwork brought this
Evil down thing to
Pass down the grow. Winding metal road
Of the wildest of At all

Sublunary doorway of the old timbered

Hotel few
In children have abandoned
Tipsy telegraph poles to the hills beyond
Let of me
Then remember this ridiculous

Masquerade too utterly
Monstrous for the crack
Of edge-: a

Stockwhip singing chrome
Singularly alike in general
Contour chrome through a cloud of rising
Emerald dust acid & with a creeping
Shudder scanned
The empty landscape

04 27 04

"Let seem seem beginning of be." --Bob Perelman

Jubba.

#144

Between oolong in the mouth, oolong
   in the nostrils, there's
an absolute gulf. On that sea, stars
   are winking bubbles
left by the first passage of Sxwaixwe.

01 18 92

   "The House in Bonac Revisited

I am in love with the impossible:
From the beginning, I have tried to bring
Into the toils of language the fierce thing
No word may gather and no tongue may tell--
And it was in this room that first the spell
Was cast upon me for a curse, to wring
My heart in labor and in suffering,
Under these rafters that I love so well.

How many a night, how many a lonely year,
With mind grown bitter and with blood gone dry,
I have wrought these cunning toils! Nevertheless,
All longing was repaid, all bitterness,
In moments when my heart stood still to hear,
Even for a moment, that fleet foot go by."

--John Hall Wheelock, in: This Powerful Rhyme, ed Helen Plotz (1979)

'This body
grown fragile, floating,
a reed cut from its roots...
If a stream would ask me
to follow, I'd go, I think.'

--Ono no Komachi in The Ink Dark Moon (1988) tr Jane Hirshfield & Mariko Aratani

"We are living even now among punishment and ruins." --Wendell Berry

Stonehenge Aotearoa. (via Metafilter)

You don't think like a survivor, i said. You pile up all the things you can possibly think of to feel bad about, & then drop this treasure on your head, but that is not how a survivor thinks. A survivor only looks at the immediate problem to be solved, looks at it without reacting emotionally, & may have a vague notion of a wider view & goal, but never gets fixated on feelings of urgency & ultimate attainment. I know this sounds like a truism but it is still essential. It may not yet be so bad that only those who think like survivors will survive, but i'm certain that we will not be given warning or training should the moment itself arrive. You must start thinking like a survivor today.

Mieville's List. (via Mosses From an Old Manse)

"To possess a telescope without the other essential half--the microscope--seems to me a symbol of the darkest incomprehension." --Leonora Carrington, House of Fear

One of the curious unspoken conventions of contemporary poetry is that it's all about the same length: just enough to fill up a lettersize page...

"Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn't act, it allows. And that's what gives it so much power." --Joan Vinge, The Snow Queen (1980)

"The key thing to remember with literature is that it's a wholesale business as opposed to the visual arts, which is retail business." --Richard Kostelanetz in Atticus Review

Plot is the.gollup (gameliness) of Story.

'Tolstoy's excuse as a preacher is that he had two disciples who derived the practical consequences of his homilies: Wittgenstein and Gandhi.' --Cioran

"What good exterminating evil distorts if the sun itself should be owned by spiders?" --Attanasaio, Last Legends of Earth

"Dogs, sewed up in lamb skins, whisper repent, or wittily property is use." --Gerald Burns

A poem cannot levitate one dust-mote. --saying of Asmodeus

Burroughs [my rabbit] always snatches her cracker with vast avidity; often as not, not having hands, her first bite drops the rest between the floor-grate, & i have to retrieve it. How like humans & happiness!

Certainty is a feeling-state not a knowledge-state. A feeling-state, moreover, caused by a particular degree of ignorance...

'I don't believe in Rilke's angels; I believe even less in his poor.' --Cioran

Proverbs from A Maltese Anthology, ed A J Arberry:
   One man dies of drunkenness, and another dies for (want of) a drop.
   An agreement between two people is reached in two days; an agreement between three requires two months.
   Praise the sea, and remain on dry land.
   He who is born round will not die square.
   Whoever says what he likes will have to hear what he doesn't like.
   For the sake of a cent he will skin a louse.

From the point of view of the rest of the Earth, those who are killing the most of their fellow humans--are heroes.

" 'A sad spectacle!' exclaimed Thomas Carlyle, contemplating the possibility that millions of planets circle other suns. 'If they be inhabited, what a scope for pain and folly; and if they be not inhabited, what a waste of space!' " --from Martin Gardner's Order and Surprise (1983)

Sometimes when i am feeling particularly arrogant, i console myself with the thought that the only thing that kept me from a mathematical career was, i couldn't convince myself that calculus was true.

"We know so much intellectually, indeed, that we are in danger of becoming the prisoners of our knowledge. We suffer from a hubris of the mind. We have abolished superstition of the heart only to install a superstition of the intellect in its place. We behave as if there were some magic in mere thought, and we use thinking for purposes for which it was never designed. As a result we are no longer sufficiently aware of the importance of what we cannot know intellectually, what we must know in other ways, of the living experience before and beyond our transitory knowledge." Laurens van der Post, The Heart of the Hunter (1961)
  [How nostalgic the first part of that makes me feel!--]

As a child i felt toward cars & other vehicles much as primitive humans must have felt toward animals.

"I have always been grateful that I was born into a world and shall die in one where the lion, however diminished in number, is still roaring. Heard in his and my native setting, it is for me the most beautiful sound in the world. It is to silence what the shooting star is to the dark of the night." --ibid

I dreamed that i buried my heart. It was still alive but not beating, & i buried it deep in the ground.
  I'm still thinking about what that means...
  It looked like cicadas do when they're still in thev larval stage: gray & moist & ugly. I tried to get some images of what comes next. ...I realized i couldn't have the rest of it yet--not until i live it--but somehow there's a rightness in waiting. ...--Or: i have never planted my heart here; that's why nothing has grown.

Fantasy flourishes in the decline of empire, becoming indistinguishable from empire itself.

letter from Melanie to a local radio station:

" Hi, I must tell you how disappointed I was in your show this morning, specifically regarding American Idol, and, especially, the treatment John Stevens and his fans have been getting in the media. I was not in a position to call the station, so as to present the other side's case, or I would have. Although I actually heard you say you didn't want to gang-up on John Stevens, that is, in essence, what you did, and you have not been alone; Edna Gunderson of USA Today is a prime offender, and Paula Adbul has behaved poorly by appearing on Entertainment Tonight and saying Stevens needs to go, although Ms. Abdul would never be so forthright to any AI contestant to his (her) face, and that makes her a coward.

I've been listening to this noise for a week, monitoring the Idol message boards, as well as the countless newspaper articles and the coverage on Entertainment Tonight, and I think some people are grossly simplifying the results of last week's show and/or the appeal of John Stevens, himself. First, let me say, for the record, that I am not some lovesick-- white--teenage girl, nor am I someone's doddering old granny. I am an active, happy, vital person who works two jobs and also does some volunteering. Great, good enough. Okay, yes, I do like John Stevens, and so do a lot of my friends, some more than others. Yes, I have voted for him, more than once, even. That said, I've also voted for some of the other contestants, and my thought has always been that this season's round of American Idol was, and is, destined to be won by either LaToya London or Fantasia Barrino. With that in mind, the order in which all the other candidates go home shouldn't really matter. They all have to go eventually. Jennifer Hudson, in my humble opinion, was never destined to win this contest. The judges might have been salivating at the thought of a three way race between the so-called divas, but that was just wishful thinking, because Hudson was always the weaker of the three: inconsistent and at times bombastic. Her renditions of "Imagine" (as part of the first group of 8) and "Circle of Life" were stunners, but even though she sang "Weekend in New England" on pitch, it was still way over the top, at times painfully so. Therefore, in regards to last week's outcome, isn't it possible that voters just preferred the other six singers? Isn't it possible that it's just that way?

As somebody pointed out on an AI post, at this point voters need only be concerned with who they want to see on tv the next week, not who they think can sell the most units. That particular decision need only be made once the contestants are slimmed down to the final two or three. It's of little consequence in the meantime. Further, it's the job of the record label's marketing department to figure a sales strategy, not the American public. I'd probably buy a John Stevens cd, if he did covers of some of the oldies.

As far as changing the voting system goes, that's a bad idea, at least for the remainder of the season. I was always taught that you don't get to change the rules in the middle of the game just because your team is losing. Allowing people to vote only once may have to happen in the future, but not now. Another bad idea is switch the process so that people vote off the weakest contestant. The beauty of the show, and its voting system, is that encourages the notion of a pre-sold fan base, and people can rally behind (or around) whomever they want, and for whatever reason. Just two or three weeks ago Simon Cowell answered a question posed by Ryan Seacrest (regarding talent vs popularity) by saying that people have the right to vote whichever way they feel. There is no right or wrong way to vote. Obviously, the winning candidate should possess a mix of personality and musical ability, but who's to say at this point, what will happen, or, rather, what won't happen?

Obviously, John Stevens has a huge fan base. Just how huge is subject to debate, but it is fair to say a lot of people like him for one reason or another. It is unfair, however, to make judgements against the people who for vote Stevens (as in they feel sorry for him, or think he's cute, or that they don't have any friends, or that they're all little old ladies, that they all power vote, etc.). As I've already stated, I like Stevens. His style is smooth and straightforward, and certainly much more pleasant to my ears than some of the heated oversinging by many of the other contestants; the girls, specifically. Maybe other voters feel the same way. They just prefer one style to another. Why so much attention is being paid to this young man, who's done nothing, really, except go out and sing to the best of his ability each week, is beyond me. After all, and I hate to mention names, but here goes, George Huff for the past two weeks has given awful performances, and yet he's been given a reprieve and no one seems to be upset about that. (Nor do they seem upset that he was set-up as a stooge on last week's results show.) Also, the other girls, Diana and Jasmine, pale in comparison to LaToya and Fantasia, but that they've been allowed to stay another week hasn't prompted nearly as much as outrage (as the Stevens thing). Jasmine Trias is a lovely girl, but seems out of her element at times. Diana DiGarmo is loud, and she's proven she can hold a note, but she's often all over the place in regards to pitch, and yet she gets asked back week after week. As long as there are other singers that I honestly believe are weaker than John, I will continue to vote for him, and that's my privilege. Once Diana and Jasmine are gone, and possibly George, John will either have to step-up his game, or go home, but that time has not yet come.

I wish people would remember that John Stevens was passed through by the judges, legitimately, and that he had the most audience votes of anyone in his group of 8 (when he sang the Billy Joel song). To compare him to William Hung is just plain mean, and unbecoming of any adult. Not only is John Stevens only 16, he's also someone's son, and I'm sure it can't be easy for his parents to pick up a newspaper, or turn on a tv or radio and find someone blaming their kid for whatever is going on with that show. Stevens is blameless, and picking on him isn't going to help.

Finally, consider the judges. Several weeks ago, Simon Cowell, an early Stevens supporter, said he liked John Stevens and that he (Cowell) thought Stevens was what Middle America wanted. Apparently that has been proven true, but now, suddenly, Simon and the gang want to dictate the way America should vote. Last Tuesday, the judges all but told America that the three divas were going to the finals. If that's the case, if it's so predetermined already, why not just cut to the chase and not include the American voting public in the first place? Simon didn't help his case by hurling insults to Stevens (comparing him to Stan Laurel, for example). If anything, Simon probably strengthened the Stevens fan-base's resolve (that is, if you believe the fans' votes even count; there are those who believe the producers manipulate the show according to their whims).

Well, it should all be over after tonight. It's Latin music night, and my guess is Stevens has met his match. I honestly don't think it's going to be a great night for him. Who knows, maybe he'll come out there and be really great, but I wouldn't want to have to face that sour group of judges.

Thank you for letting me vent,
Mp"

   'Night Soul

My soul is sad at the end my soul
is sad to be tired at the end is sad
and tired to be in vain my soul is sad
and tired and at the end in vain
I long for your hands on my face

I long for your fingers on my face
like angels of ice your fingers on my face
I long for the ring to be brought to me
I long for their cold touch on my face
like a golden horde deep within the sea

And I long at last for their remedies
in order not to die exposed to the sun
to die in despair exposed to the sun
I long for them to bathe my eyes
where those in despair lie sleeping

Where so many swans are at sea
swans making their way over the sea
stretching in vain their sullen necks
while down in the winter gardens
there sick men are gathering roses

I long for your fingers on my face
touching my face like angels of ice
I long for them to moisten my eyes
the dead grass of my glances the fields
where so many lambs lie scattered'

Maurice Maeterlinck, Hothouses (1889; tr Richard Howard 2003)

I am still under the spell of the Myth of the Book! I ought to recognize books have affirmed in me what needed affirming (my subjectivity) but did nothing to solve my problems (i could only grow up & into their solution)--& that's all that books are for. Thus i have no responsibility in writing one, than the same. And yet, & yet...
  This ought to be a dialog with someone else.

I can never realize that most other people make do with the most childishly simple maps of the world, or none at all; & that a complex one (like Lojban) will never be more than a kind of caviar for intellectuals--& only one of many, for that matter.

'It is said that during the time the Sung empire was being overrun by the Mongols, the Chinese commander-in-chief was flat on his belly, watching a cricket fight, when he received the news that the capital was surrounded by the enemy and that they were in utmost danger. He just couldn't tear himself away from the crickets, he first had to see who the winner was. The city fell, and the reign of the Sungs was over.' --The Conscience of Words, Elias Canetti (1979)

America: freedom of speech w/out freedom of thought.

"And there impale perfected seraphim
Anguished by answers truant to their love." --Burns Singer

The reason i don't write much, is the same reason a scuba diver doesn't sing.

What Went Wrong.

Who Died In Here?