Monday, February 12, 2018

The Fashions Are Always Downriver

  • Strange, fellow Trollocenes took the weekend off oh-my-fucking-god-wise. 
  • Next year's Super Bowl is more urgent now than last week's ever was.
  • I am telling you three times, we are being reprogrammed.
  • Denying me reprogramming jones me.
 



  • Tomas Saraceno, 8oSW iridescent / Flying Garden / Air-Port-City, 2011. 
  • New installation at BMA - we had cause to be in Baltimore yesterday, had an hour to spend.
  • Had it's own room. Crawl carefully through tethers to see inside!








THE PAYS D'EN HAUT SUBLIME

Douglas Crase

The fables were always upcountry but
The sublime
Understood in its practical sense as
This map of vista and refuge that slides into mind
Whenever you simply are looking
Has to be here: its precincts
So free of protection, freely desired,
And reached by that hard-driving warpath
Where each vote was personal, something you feel,
Cut time. The fashions
Are always downriver, not the sublime.
It lingers the unlicensed wealth
Due to any inhabitant, some,
Who could hurry its data into an ardent shape
As if life were a sensate
Cartography. So it would seem
In this land where the maps all lie flat
Until, trying one on,
You proceed via graphic new molt as your whole country
Walking—in whose indefensible habits
Let me come too, though the facts
Turn to fables themselves, strike back and run.


3 comments:

  1. 1)i read What makes life shitty? which was the first time i ever considered jordan peterson and his influence for good and/or evil, and for sowing confusion about postmodernism and post-world war ii european intellectual movements

    2)following the author's links i read an article at the guardian with some detail

    2a)and a photo of prof. peterson with two lobsters - a reference to his canadianism? but he's from the prairie provinces - i'm puzzled

    3) including a quote of peterson's 12 rules for life from his bestselling book

    Peterson’s 12 rules

    Rule 1 Stand up straight with your shoulders back

    Rule 2 Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping

    Rule 3 Make friends with people who want the best for you

    Rule 4 Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today

    Rule 5 Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them

    Rule 6 Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world

    Rule 7 Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)

    Rule 8 Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie

    Rule 9 Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t

    Rule 10 Be precise in your speech

    Rule 11 Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding

    Rule 12 Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street



    4)rules 5 and 6 are the ones that seem to me most capable of being problematic and even destructive of human freedom

    5)rule 11 seems especially timely, as i was watching olympic snowboarding on tv only last night

    6)rule 12 reminds me of pau, my best cat ever, and my own most prescriptive piece of poetry - which goes as follows - rule numbers added:


    This is your Pau – what a great cat
    [1}Enjoy your Pau and [2]love him like that

    Groove with the rhythm, bopping down the block
    move his paws and tail as he go hip-hop

    Purr at the neighbor, purr at the sky
    Life is a blessing – why ask why

    Energy moving his fur and bones –
    This is his life – this is his home

    Something good happen – maybe soon
    Maybe next week – maybe next June

    [3]Count all your blessings – [4]let go of strife
    This is your Pau – [5]treasure his life,


    6)i was disappointed to find only five rules in my paean to pau - but after looking at the tweet of fleabus on saturday night, and realizing the implicit advice of "copy the cat", it becomes clear several more could be detected


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I still don't know what a Jordan Peterson is and am going to do everything in my power to keep it that way. So I skipped that part.

      Delete
    2. the presence of the lobsters in the photo has to do with

      "What does the nervous system of the lowly lobster have to tell us about standing up straight (with our shoulders back) and about success in life?"

      [from the book description at the public library's website - i am now 46th in line for the 'antidote to chaos' book, which has not yet arrived]

      Delete