World's Before My Time

Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being.

- Martin Heidegger

Anamorphoses - Being-lessness OUTSIDE the World

The true focus of the film is there in the background...

The true infertility is the very lack of meaningful historical experience and THAT is why I like this elegant point in the film of importing all the works of art. All those classical statues are there, but they are deprived of a world, they are totally "meaningless". Because what does it mean to have a statue of Michelangelo or whatever? It only works if it signals a certain world, and when this world is lacking, it's NOTHING.

New World Orders

Being in the World

Mirror - Mirror

“Mirror Mirror on the Wall,
Who Is the Fairest of Them All?"

Free Choice in a Democracy

One potato, two potato, three potato, four,
five potato, six potato, seven potato, score.

Reading Unfamiliar Runes

A people who do not remember...
rain which falls upon rock.

--Maurice Kenny

Is that a *rock (banana) in your pocket?
Or are you just "happy" to see me?

--Mae West

Onegin Off Again

You wrote to me
Don't deny it. I have read
The avowal of a trusting heart,
The outpouring of an innocent love;
Your candour touched me deeply
it has stirred
Feelings long since dormant.
I won't commend you for this,
But I will repay you
With an equally guileless avowal.
Hear my confession,
Then judge me as you will
If I had wished to pass my life
Within the confines of the family circle,
And a kindly fate had decreed for me
The role of husband and father,
Then, most like, I would not choose
Any other bride than you.
But I was not made for wedded bliss,
It is foreign to my soul,
Your perfections are vain,
I am quite unworthy of them.
Believe me, I give you my word,
Marriage would be a torment for us.
No matter how much I loved you,
Habit would kill that love.
Judge what a thorny bed of roses
Hymen would prepare for us,
And, perhaps, to be endured at length!
One cannot renew my soul!
I love you with a brother's love,
A brother's love
Or, perhaps, more than that!
Perhaps, perhaps more than that!
Listen to me without getting angry,
More than once will a girl exchange
One passing fancy for another.

- Tchaikovsky, "Eugene Onegin" (Vi Mne Pisali)

The Contrarian Life

Vote 4 Me, I'll Set you Free!

Pat Paulsen for President (1968)

...or "how critical cynicism can actually serve to help sustain an ideology"

The organisers of a political electoral prank or "stunt" sometimes "pretend" [engage in mere pomo irony, a knowingly hollow miming of the electoral process] in order to draw attention to the sheer poverty of the policies of competing election candidates, they nevertheless still believed in the underlying integrity of the electoral process itself, in democracy as Master Signifier, ie "If only we had better candidates, all would be well with democracy" etc. Their criticism amounts to a simple, modern variation of "The Emperor Has No Clothes" viz, "Political Candidates Have No Personal Integrity" : but the undressing of the King or the unmasking of politicians does not work - though not because their personality or charisma is indestructible, but because the unmasking only destroys their personality, their personal charisma, not the power of the symbolic place of the King or of Democracy —when we undress him, we realize that "he is not truly a king" or "he is not a worthy political candidate". . . and then endeavour to proceed in the search for a true one. [So in political fetishism, as with commodity fethishism, it is never enough simply to disavow the politician (or the commodity)].

Emergent Shadows

Long ago I wished to leave
" The house where I was born; "
Long ago I used to grieve,
My home seemed so forlorn.
In other years, its silent rooms
Were filled with haunting fears;
Now, their very memory comes
O'ercharged with tender tears.

Life and marriage I have known,
Things once deemed so bright;
Now, how utterly is flown
Every ray of light !
'Mid the unknown sea of life
I no blest isle have found;
At last, through all its wild wave's strife,
My bark is homeward bound.

Farewell, dark and rolling deep !
Farewell, foreign shore !
Open, in unclouded sweep,
Thou glorious realm before !
Yet, though I had safely pass'd
That weary, vexed main,
One loved voice, through surge and blast,
Could call me back again.

Though the soul's bright morning rose
O'er Paradise for me,
William ! even from Heaven's repose
I'd turn, invoked by thee !
Storm nor surge should e'er arrest
My soul, exulting then:
All my heaven was once thy breast,
Would it were mine again !

- Charlotte Brontë, "Regret"

A Place for Everyone...

...and Everyone in His Place!

Liberating Meaning