Thursday, February 16, 2023

And Close My Eyes and Contemplate the Vacuum of the Day

Sunday past I emailed the art contest L & C are encourging me to enter:

I do double-sided paintings, sometimes back to back on one canvas, more often two canvases glued together. They are meant to be handled, toggled, flipped over and back. I have poems on some of them. If I use media in the painting that rub off on people's hand I laminate the paintings, if I use media that won't rub off I don't. Do paintings literally need to be hung of would a basket of a few of these (12"x12" the largest, and probably not, most are 8"x8" or "6"x6") be acceptable? I understand I'd need accept any liability for damaged or lost or stolen paintings. 
Laugh, silence. I'm silly and ridiculous. My dying left eye, painted the last two days, which I will not be submitting. Yes, that IS fountain pen ink mixed with broth of white gouache, reminder: I declared my divorce from fountain pen ink in past week or two, fuck me and my addiction to noxzema bottle blue (UPDATE: My Favorite Post Ever Since the Last Until the Next)


AUTOBIOGRAPHY!2/14/23
SHITLORDS OFFER YOU FINANCIAL ADVICE!
What would it mean to theorise love as a form of labour?
SHITLORDS HORNY FOR CHILD LABOR!
All games aspire to the condition of war
During the cold war, helmetball’s violence became precisely its point
Notes on America's railroads
Motherfucking crackerstan
Consent FactoryAll opscay are astardbays. Every single one
Against Left covid scepticism
It continues to amaze and depress me that people can't hold in their head that (a) covid is a serious disease with real short and long-term ramifications and (b) of course our shitlords exploited the event for profit and power
East Palestine, Ohio: where you don't want to be
Goldmining and genocideMy daughter's alma mater
Trainwrecks, earthquakes, and profits!
If you're cooking it in the same deep fryer as tortured to death animals WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT?
Not a coincidence the Kielbasa Factory next door to corporate headquarters of an undertaker and has been for decades
Maggie's weeklyFRESH HELL
OUR SHITLORDS ARE LITERALLY VAMPIRES!
On touring as an independent musician
{ feuilleton }'s weeklyJeff is bad at swearing
A lost interview with Clarice Lispector
Ecologue of the "Big Garden"






ON BEING DEAD

John Koethe

Well, not quite, but Diane keeps calling me
Her horizontal husband, since after I finish the paper
And my laptop rounds, I just lie down on the bed
And close my eyes and comtemplate the vacuum of the day.

6 comments:

  1. The Hoover hovers ever at our shoulder, the great eternal Suck, chuckling with us, and at us

    ReplyDelete
  2. Have you read This Life by Martin Hagglund? Highly recommended. In 2019, many online publications had special issues devoted to it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bruce - Thank you for pointing to this. I haven't read Hägglund's book, but have formed the intention to begin doing so. Benjamin Aldes Wurgraft wrote:

      In this review essay, I examine Martin Hägglund's This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, a book that argues on behalf of democratic socialism on the basis of an atheistic confrontation with the fact of our mortality. Hägglund's book includes readings of Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Karl Marx, and Martin Luther King Jr. and is best assessed as a literary and philosophical, rather than historical, study of the relation between mortality and social action. Simply put, Hägglund believes that, from the standpoint of an atheistic confrontation with our mortality, our time itself should be our ultimate measure of value. He furthermore believes that democratic socialism is the political and economic form that most naturally follows from this, allowing us to honor, defend, and enhance one another's mortal time and freedom to make choices—and that, by comparison with atheism, religion offers only the false coin of otherworldly salvation. Although sympathizing with Hägglund's existential and political orientations, I criticize his account of religion, which I find to be historically weak. But I also criticize his approach to the problem of valuation, or the issue of how we make choices in relation to our limited time. Whereas Hägglund believes that mortal creatures like ourselves must make choices in a spirit of commitment—the “secular faith” of his subtitle—I observe that, despite our mortality, we humans make our choices in a variety of psychological states, and that asking us to occupy only one such state—one of zealous resolve—actually undermines our “spiritual freedom,” another one of Hägglund's key terms.

      Wurgraft's essay can be read at https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12200


      Delete
    2. It is intriguing to note that the subtitle of "This Life" differs between the U.S. and U.K. editions - "Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom" on this side of the Atlantic, "Why Mortality Makes Us Free" on the other.

      Delete
  3. josh billings said society runs on trust - otherwise we would never dare to eat hash

    ReplyDelete