Rostov-on-Don (1)

"Rostov's out bein' bad tonight
Rostov and the other
They had a big fight
Rostov found out
What everybody knew
Too many cooks spoil the stew
Rostov don't care
What nobody thinks
Rostov's gonna be bad
'til the whole town stinks

chorus
Rostov's bein bad
Rostov's bein bad
Rostov's bein bad bad bad
Rostov's out bein' bad
Rostov's out bein' bad tonight
Rostov and the other
They had a big fight

Rostov went home when it found out
Said, "Pack your bags
I want you out"
The other thought
Rostov was talking jive
'til he saw Rostov standing
With a .45
A .45's quicker than 409
Rostov cleaned house
For the very last time."


Lots of sic.

Things that don't resonate with me to the extent they once did (3)

Ladies and Gentlemen, Soren Kierkegaard.

But that was at a basketball game long ago, and humor never dies.

It just grows more nebulous and amorphous.

Like selling a baseball mitt to Marshall Chapman's bass player.

Or exchanging it for a testosterone shot.

But I digress, what I had meant to say was:

"Henry David Thoreau"

Nary a blip any more on the sinusoidal wave front that characterizes my consciousness anymore.

And I care not what Robert Harrison thinks.

I've got your self reliance right here, you freaky anti-social bastard

with bad manners.

Now don't get me wrong, Guns and Roses may have a point that we all need some time to be alone.

But the only insight I've ever come up with when I was all alone in a cabin in South Dakota was that I was freaky anti-social bastard.

Now I'm just a freak into this whole complex networked web of human interactions thing

whatever the hell that means.

Sillster Willster (2)

I'm never taking any drugs

until they make a drug that turns me into a Philosopher King.

 I'm seriously going to OD on that shit.

Then I'm going to share a bowl of it with all my friends so that we can

create this Utopian community.

But I will still be the king because I took more of the shit than anyone else.

And some stoners are more equal than others.

Or so I'm told.

Anyway, one of my first edicts as a Philosopher King will be to stop burying people with gravestones.

There is no identity in dead meat.

I mean, really, if we are going to do that, why don't we start marking our shit?

(on a train, in the rain, in vain, to chicago, across the plain, thinking of Rostov)

The Music Lover(9)

"Cérise was brushing her long hair gently down
It was the afternoon of Carnival
As she brushes it gently down

Reuben was strumming his painted mandolin
It was enlaid with a pretty face in jade
Played the Carnival Parade

Cérise was dressing as Pirouette in white
When a fatal vision gripped her tight
Cérise, beware tonight

Reuben, Reuben, tell me truly true
I feel afraid and I don't know why I do
Is there another girl for you

If you could see in my heart
You would know it's true
There is none, Cérise, except for you
Except for you
I swear to it on my very soul
If I lie may I fall down cold

When Reuben played on his painted mandolin
The breeze would stop and listen in
Before going its way again

Masquerade began when nightfall finally woke
Like waves against the bandstand dancers broke
To the painted mandolin

Looking out on the crowd, who is standing there?
Sweet Ruby Claire at Reuben stared
At Reuben stared
She was dressed as Pirouette in red
And her hair hung gently down

The crowd pressed round, Ruby stood as though alone
Reuben's song took on a different tone
And he played it just for her

The song that he played was the Carnival Parade
Each note cut a thread of Cérise's fate
It cut through like a blade

Reuben was playing his painted mandolin
When Ruby froze and turned to stone
For the strings played all alone

If you could see in my heart
You would know it's true
There is none, Cérise, except for you
Except for you

The voice of Cérise from the face of the mandolin
Singing Reuben, Reuben, tell me true
For I have no one but you

If you could see my heart
You would know it's true
There is none, Cérise, except for you
Except for you
I swear to it on my very soul
If I lie, may I fall down cold

The truth of love an unsung song must tell
The course of love must follow blind
Without a look behind

Reuben walked the streets of New Orleans till dawn
Cérise so lightly in his arms
And her hair hung gently down."

Well it appears that for Mr. Weir, 64 is the new 34, and Phil, after his new liver, is always good to go, and as far as Kroeter and Duck, where ever you are up there, they were definitely channelling Reuben and Cherise just for you, and though the Weather Report called for rain, both cold and mixed with snow, and in a box, I was somewhat chagrined that even though help was on the way on the second set, initially sans Franklin and then avec Franklin, in a Rio Grande way, I was not able to recognize the former until well into my second lap around the new speedway, which ended with prudence rounded out by Johnny B, only fitting given their venue.

Things that don't resonate with me to the extent they once did(2)

Though David Hume may be able to out consume Schopenhauer and Hegel, what would Georg say about the current state of affairs which look like various Escher drawings?

In economics, the Keynesian age of government intervention to stimulate the economy is now emasculated by the federal debt, which may have been created by government intervention in the first place.  Escher drawing #1.  If we had followed Hayek, would we be in a worse place?

Liberal democracies, safeguarding freedom protecting individual rights against governmental tyranny may have created the gridlock precluding any solution to the problem.  Escher drawing #2.

Contrast the seemingly more unified ant hill of the Chinese and their massive government intervention in technologies in the future, not only in Ph.D's in science, but green technology, investment in Africa, South East Asia, and likely soon in Europe, as the Euro Zone struggles with its own Escher drawing.

For Hegel, history has a purpose and a redemptive end, the full realizing of our  potential for freedom.

"The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom."

The state when it is fulled with spirit, is shot through with the realization of freedom.  In an ethical society, the state is in fact an expression of human freedom.

However, the expression of this freedom is unlike anything I can articulate. 

This is not a freedom in the negative sense, a freedom to do what you want, a freedom from coercion, as in the Western British/American sense.  This is not a glorification of individual rights.  Nor is it a system of checks and balances to prevent the tyranny of the state.

The  government which governs best for Hegel does not govern least.

There exists the real possibility of government intervention embodying the spirit of the times.

And if you understand any of this, you are doing much better than I am.

Tattoo you(4)/The Apolitical Activist(1)

The quoted portion below is an excerpt from a discussion which which occurred immediately before and during a  Hot Bag of Donuts.   The political views expressed here are not those of the Blogger.  Indeed, the Blogger is "apolitical" or is a political agnostic.   The Apolitical Activist(1) tells the story of the job review of a young male political activist.   In that review, the young activist is described by his supervisor as "remarkably apolitical."  That was not meant as a complement.  I still have that document, probably, somewhere.

 Here, in another story involving a young female apolitical activist sporting tattoos.  The juxtaposition of the Disney tattoos and politics is disconcerting/amusing:

"I so pissed off a Marine today in class."

How?

"We were discussing the Swallows in Kabul

and in the book there was this mild mannered intellectual who ended up stoning a woman who was thought to be a prostitute."

"And I said, we'll that could be anyone.  Everyone could have cast that stone.  People are like that."

"And this Marine was all saying how Americans were trying to bring those people throwing stones out of the dark ages".

"And I told him like that America is a terrorist state.   We always say that we are defending our homeland against terrorists but look what we are doing there.  Were freaking going in and wiping them out.  And what are they doing, but trying to protect their families against us."

"And the Marine got all pissed at me and telling me how he was fighting for my freedom and I was taking it for granite.  And I told him whose freedom?  Those people don't want us there.  How would you feel if some army invaded your country?  I told him American is the terrorist state.  And then the Marine got real mad and left the middle of the class.  He like couldn't debate me yo.  I told him to suck on this.  I told him that in front of class."

"I think the teacher is beginning to like me because she didn't like the Marine either."

"She always gives me 98."

The Dancer (5)

It was always more about the smell than anything else.

The dank musty odor of her last lover's homestead.

The cedar smell of her new husband's carriage house,  the long walk up the stairs to the antiseptic cleaning.

The new sheets on the carefully made bed


elevated high off the ground with brown twilled comforter.

So unlike the futon on the ground at the homestead.

She slept better on the floor


and where the bedroom had recessed walls forming a cave, and her bed was shielded and grounded, she felt safe.

But here amid in the high bed, granite countertops, and shiny appliances there was nowhere to hide.

Only the melancholy heaviness that this would not last.

Was she tired of her lovers, or tired of herself?

Would she ever find anyone that she could give herself fully to, completely enmesh, completely disappear?

Scenes inside a Gold Mine (5)

Last communication fragments from alien vessel MX5-VKL found at Area 51, United States (1953) (recently translated):

So there I was angling down into the atmosphere.

First the green mist that you can't breathe.

Then the red that only makes you choke.

Finally,  the clear white mist that smells like lilacs.

The ground came up with a thud, and covered me in darkness.

There was nothing.

Slowly and slowly, inch by inch, I crawled to the surface and poked through the dirt.

I started heading south.

Noiselessly over the sand.

The heat was unbearable.

There was desolation flat cracked jigsaw mud over and over again.

Time slowed, one frame to the next, delayed by inextricable circumstance.

The grinding down lowering in intensity.

Lights above me and lights below me and a....(end transmission).

The Artist (5)

There is/was at the cross roads of my life.

Not literally.  Was I  standing at a junction?

The road to the left cut across a field and disappeared in the yawning mouth of a forest.

To the right, winding into the lofty mists of the mountain peak.

There is/was sitting on the TV.   Watching the road.

The TV is the road and it is at a standstill.

Swill.

She peers in through the door and makes no movement.

What was the choice/decision?

It is on the whole probable that we continually dream

but consciousness while waking

makes such a noise that is/was do not hear it.

This is/was the case of the missing woman.

The expectation broken.

The plot diminished.

Things that don't resonate with me to the extent they once did (1)

From Spinoza to the Law of Conservation of Energy, the natural state of the mind is a return to equilibrium possessing zero energy.

If a stimulus acts on the body (e.g. a hand touching a hot stove), the electrical impulses would travel to the brain from the hand creating a surplus of energy in the brain, thereby disturbing the equilibrium.  The brain must "abreact" or discharge the surplus energy by creating a reflex response (e.g. electrical impulse from the brain to the hand).

Easy enough when the stimulii are externally created but what about internal emotional stimulii?

Emotional stimulii improperly abreated (ie. someone insults you and you hold your tongue, stifling instinctional reflex actions to act out physically or verbally) are repressed by the conscious.  The energy, however, must be diverted somewhere to restore equilibrium to the brain.   The repression releases energy via two mechanisms:

a.   displacement--you feel the appropriate response but attach it to another object (e.g. take it out on someone else besides the one who originally offended you).

b.  conversion--the energy is transformed into somatic sensations (e.g. stress, upset stomach, panic attacks).

How does this model explain the inherent primary energy we possess (the instinctual energy present outside of our external stimulus)?

What happens to our sex drive when it is not abreacted?

Lets go ask the mystics :-)

The Music Lover (8)

"Oh, the ragman draws circles
Up and down the block
I'd ask him what the matter was
But I know that he don't talk
And the ladies treat me kindly
And furnish me with tape
But deep inside my heart
I know I can't escape
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Springfield (sic)
With the Memphis blues again.

Well Shakespeare he's in the alley
With his pointed shoes and his bells
Speaking to some French girl
Who says she knows me well
And I would send a message
To find out if she's talked
But the post office has been stolen
And the mailbox is locked
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Springfield (sic)
With the Memphis blues again.

Mona tried to tell me
To stay away from the train line
She said that all the railroad men
Just drink up your blood like wine
And I said "Oh I didn't know that
But then again there's only one I've met
And he just smoked my eyelids
And punched my cigarette"
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Springfield (sic)
With the Memphis blues again.

Now the senator came down here
Showing ev'ryone his gun
Handing out free tickets
To the wedding of his son
And me, I nearly get bursted
And wouldn't it be my luck
To get caught without a ticket
And be discovered beneath a truck
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Springfield (sic)
With the Memphis blues again.

Now the preacher looked so baffled
When I asked him why he dressed
With twenty pounds of headlines
Stapled to his chest
But he cursed me when I proved it to him
Then I whispered, "Not even you can hide
You see, you're just like me
I hope you're satisfied"
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Springfield (sic)
With the Memphis blues again.

Now the rainman gave me two cures
Then he said, "Jump right in"
The one was Texas medicine
The other was just railroad gin
And like a fool I mixed them
And it strangled up my mind
And now, people just get uglier
And I have no sense of time
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Springfield (sic)
With the Memphis blues again.

When Ruthie says come see her
In her honky-tonk lagoon
Where I can watch her waltz for free
'Neath her Panamanian moon
And I say, "Aw come on now
You know you know about my debutante"
And she says, "Your debutante just knows what you need
But I know what you want"
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Springfield (sic)
With the Memphis blues again.

Now the bricks lay on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb
They all fall there so perfectly
It all seems so well timed
And here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice
Oh, Mama, is this really the end
To be stuck inside of Springfield (sic)
With the Memphis blues again."