Sunday, June 30, 2013

You'd Think There'd Be a Way of Cutting Out Those Self-Destructive Layers of Introspection




United lost, didn't go, didn't watch. Five games in June, three at RFK, two in Germantown, I went to none. I sense a trend. United sucks, but that's not it, United sucked in 2010 and I didn't miss more than two and missed those because real life left me no choice: in fact, that was one of my favorite years at RFK, only the loyalest were there, we congratulated ourselves on our loyalty. Landru and SeatSix both have had valid reasons for missing all five games, that's no excuse, I've gone by myself countless times, it was never a consideration to not go because they weren't there. This blog's lamest gag - what I think is this blog's lamest gag, you may think another gag(s) is lamer, say a month of at least one Pere Ubu song a day - is/was comparing my fervor or torpor towards United with my fervor or torpor towards my political tribalism, lame because the comparison was both cliched and true. The currencies aren't precisely pegged any more: my fervor or torpor towards my political tribalism is simply being redirected, my fervor or torpor towards my soccer team is descending into disinterest. I'd like to think the timing belt connecting the two still spins, but it's whining.











ALL THE MEMBERS OF MY TRIBE ARE LIARS

John Fuller

Think of a self-effacing missionary
Tending the vices of a problem tribe.
He knows the quickest cure for beri-beri
And how to take a bribe.

And so the mind will never say it’s beaten
By primitive disturbance of the liver;
Its logic will prevent its being eaten,
Get it across the river.

But faced with this assured inconsequence
That damns the very method that is used,
It leaves the heart unproselytised and hence
Admits that it’s confused.

I know I’m acting, but I still must act.
I melt to foolishness, and want it ended.
Why it continues is this simple fact:
I’d hate to end it.

For now the jungle moods assert their terms
And there’s no way to check them if they lie:
The mind attempts to solve the thing, but squirms
And knows exactly why.

The world is everything that is the case.
You cannot see it if you are inside it.
That’s why the tortoise always wins the race:
the very terms decide it.

I cannot help it if I am contented
With being discontented that I falter:
That’s why psychology was first invented
So that we needn’t alter.

It is a strange position to be in.
It would be different if I didn’t know
Why the unlikely animal should win,
Which cannibal should row.

You’d think there’d be a way of cutting out
Those self-destructive layers of introspection.
To reach the truth at last without a doubt
Of making the connection.

That’s why the missionary, on his guard,
Is wondering why the cannibal’s so merry,
And why it is so very very hard
To be a missionary.


4 comments:

  1. "The world is everything that is the case.
    You cannot see it if you are inside it."

    i'm reminded of the saying
    "be IN the world, not OF it" -
    a paradox, admittedly -
    inside it AND above it

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  2. and now .. no .. to the impulse to quickly skim-read and either share or .. . discard.

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  3. .. " he comes in from the left sometimes " .. . / now if j. could just continue to talk like he is on a sub way car dance stepping some how , talk of his day .. with no need for linking , just him ,i'd be happ y , ( the linking brings back memories of my youth.. of too much time spent in the library and book shops .. feeling like you can never know.. . / till you look at .. from the point of viewing of knowing all /of how to see clearly ,.there is another way ..of seeing clearly .. just being stiller for a while ..and then living .. .

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