The Red Wheelbarrow on Mars
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
on Mars.
--William Carlos Edgar Rice Burroughs Williams
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
The Red Wheelbarrow on Mars
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
on Mars.
--William Carlos Edgar Rice Burroughs Williams
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Beauty is the creator of the universe (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
(jacked up via biblioklept)
http://biblioklept.org/2015/10/05/god-has-not-made-some-beautiful-things-but-beauty-is-the-creator-of-the-universe-emerson/
From Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “The Poet.”
The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe. Therefore the poet is not any permissive potentate, but is emperor in his own right. Criticism is infested with a cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact that some men, namely poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action but who quit it to imitate the sayers. But Homer’s words are as costly and admirable to Homer as Agamemnon’s victories are to Agamemnon. The poet does not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.
The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Pluto dog star [Science fiction poetry]
Pluto dog star
Pluto dog star
atomic blast, and a rocket
passed by
everythign else
but itself
in the deepest and darkest
of space,
even space passing by,
until there's nothing else
to stand by,
but this everpresent nothing
moving deeper
into itself
yet again,
as it once ever was.
never disappearing
always being more
of exactly
just the same
empty void
of a blackened out
space
kali-unwhitened,
no stars
sun, or sky
passing on by
their ever-distant lines
and the weight of the world
so ever-more
uranic, saturnic
plutonic. Platonic.
(The heaviest waters
and the darkening orb)
in the old,
and still new
to even yet be
but therefore: so much
ever-yet-more
in its darkening canvas
in the empty nothing of all.
possibilities to be
(or never more, still to be)
to be destroyed forevermore
become by something ever-still more
neither here
nor faraway there
always somewhere, "there", or inbetween
what had once almost come to be
in this moment of space
------
INspired bartly by the musings and speculations of Christopher Knowles about the pluto mission, and the possible extra-plutonic object (planet x) that is being searched and speculated about. As well as other writings about pluto and the solar system.
http://secretsun.blogspot.se/2015/09/nasas-new-horizons-other-shoe-dropping.html
Sunday, August 23, 2015
And then the hallucination happened (Philip K. Dick: The Martian Time-slip)
Reblogging this from Biblioklept.
http://biblioklept.org/2015/08/23/and-then-the-hallucination-happened-philip-k-dick/
http://biblioklept.org/2015/08/23/and-then-the-hallucination-happened-philip-k-dick/
"And then the hallucination, if it was that, happened. He saw the personnel manager in a new light. The man was dead.
He saw, through the man’s skin, his skeleton. It had been wired together, the bones connected with fine copper wire. The organs, which had withered away, were replaced by artificial components, kidney, heart, lungs—everything was made of plastic and stainless steel, all working in unison but entirely without authentic life. The man’s voice issued from a tape, through an amplifier and speaker system. [...]"
-From Philip K. Dick’s 1964 novel Martian Time-Slip.
Head over to Biblioklept to read the rest of the PKD transcription & post
I've heard now by a number of people that the Martian Time-Slip is a highly over-looked PKD gem. Rarely all that spoken about, in the mainstream discourse, but often very fondly remembered and liked by those in the know. By those good souls who have read it.
I think that I will probably dig into that martian dirt at some time. Maybe/probably really soon. (Though the stack of my letters and books is getting so close to the roof! Anyhow, anywho!)
Biblioklept has a bunch of other good PKD posts as well.
I really liked this one riff, about the Martian Time-Slip:
http://biblioklept.org/2015/08/27/riff-on-philip-k-dicks-novel-martian-time-slip/
I think that I will probably dig into that martian dirt at some time. Maybe/probably really soon. (Though the stack of my letters and books is getting so close to the roof! Anyhow, anywho!)
Biblioklept has a bunch of other good PKD posts as well.
I really liked this one riff, about the Martian Time-Slip:
http://biblioklept.org/2015/08/27/riff-on-philip-k-dicks-novel-martian-time-slip/
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Timecheck and Paycheck (PKD shifting in and out of time)
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
~~T. S. Eliot, from "The Four Quarters"
I was reading Philip K. Dick's long short (or short long) story "Paycheck" (written in 1952), which asks some of the usual PKDick-ian questions about time, cause and effect, p/recognition, retrocasuality, the nature of time, of memory and self, etc.
One throught-provoking observation I recieved as I read this story, was/is/will be, that the main character is payed 50000 credits for a 2-year suspicious work, whereupon he'll have the last two years of life (or rather the memory of it all) erased. So he's receiving a paycheck, for a piece of his life (and his time).
And, as the saying goes: time is money. He's literally (lit-e-art-thurgically) and also metaphorically, trading a part of his life/time for a trinket of gold.
But the observation goes even deeper, as it is said:
The main protagonist, has, in his work contract, as is allowed, by corporate law, decided to forego & skip every single digit of his 50000 riches, and instead choose to keep another kind of paycheck of his own. .....One that is not even any money in the shape of wealth or digits.
What he recieves instead of the 50-grand-multi-numbered riches, is a bag of some seemingly random and useless trinkets and stuff. A bag full of... tricks... or.... even a pile full of trash?
Half of a broken pokerchip. A token for a bus. A metallic wire. A green piece of cloth. An unknown code key. Etc. Etc.
But as it later turns out, the company that he's been working for in secret (extreme high security in order to get away from government investigation), has been building a "time scoop". As well as a mirror for receiving in-sights from out of time.
AND. At least one of the seeming useless objects, that he recieves as his paycheck---it turns out---has been "scooped out" *from the future*. (The day after tomorrow or something to that effect).
So. He is literally (and metaphorically) recieving a piece of TIME as his PAYcheck. Time, as they say, is money, and money is time.
He lost two years of his future, two years of his life, yet he also gained a piece of the future instead, in the end.
And, as it turns out, each of the seven items that he has picked up for his pay, turns out to be hightly useful, in fact even invaluable, since he has seen it all up ahead, before his own p/resent time, through&about the timely mirror and time-scoop, just how he might make use them all, in order to escape any fate, even worse, and more horrific, than just the loss of one's time, or one's trinkets of gold.
Useless random trinkets, constantly ending up saving his life.
Seven random little items. As in the lucky number seven? Or as maybe the days of the week?
And one final of them of the future) to begin&restart the cycle (week/day & life) all over again?
Or maybe just a random little number? A most lucky of numbers.
Another curious thought I had, as I read this, is the realiziation that one's future self, would be as a god to one's present (and past) self.
Since future-me already knows what is ging to happen, and how to change the course of events, turn the tables, shift and nudge things ever-so-slightly in a different direction... Well.
One's future self might not be all-knowing or omni-pre-scient. But mine/your/our future self would surely know enough (which is certainly more than enough) to possess the power of the now. Or even---the power the future.
In a way, the past self of the protagonist, represents (or takes on the role of) his future self; since he has foreknowlege of the future, his past self represents his own future (self); and since his memory of his past (2 years), for his recent past self, his past, his present and the future hadn't been wiped clean, as of yet, meaning that in a strictly functional sense, his recent past self, with all of this might fore-knowledge (as well as some recent 2-year past-knowledge) functions as a stand-in for his own future/self.
What (and who) is his past? And what (and who) is his future? It all becomes extremely relative when the self of the past knows even more then the self of the present (or indeed the self of his soon-to-happen future).
All seen and sensed, through the mirror synchronis, tempus fugit, the reflected eye out of time, out of mind, out of sight, in&out of his life, shaped and changed, in the rivers and streams of all times; staring deep into that techno-futuristic mirror of time, that allows him to observe his own life, and so many other times lines and events, and to yet plan up ahead, for what is still soon yet to happen, or even be set in place.
(History of Richard II
Act V, Scene 5. (Pomfret castle)
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE)
(2790)
King Richard II:
Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To cheque time broke in a disorder'd string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours: but my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock.
This music mads me; let it sound no more;
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
"Paycheck" might not be PKD's best, or even most interesting piece of story weaving, thought surely not his worst either (some of his earlier pulpy 50s stuff comes to mind).
Would I recomend Paycheck to anyone? Maybe if your intereested in these kinds of ideas.
Or maybe its enought to just have read THIS one here article of text. Or even the wikipedia/cliffnotes version.
But why go to the exegesis when we can go straight for the gospel (itself)?
Or in the end (or one of the shady beginnings) maybe both serves their own kind of needs and their ends.
In the end.
If we were to take the "time=money" saying literally (and we are here), it would also mean that a paycheck is also a kind of timecheck. And the protagonist here is literally checking out time in advance, as well as actually reciving a check from the future, both with his actual pay (the objects and foreknowledge what is to come), as well as a literal check from the future, a receipt that will be registered and made active in just a couple of days.
Some people (like Eric Wargo of the Nightshirt) have speculated about precognition that any precog abilities are only possibilities or potentialities. Even PKD, himself, in the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldridge, where the precogs (future seers) only foresees a series of possible, and somewhat more and less likely timelines, with various probability factors (of actually coming to pass).
Any possible precognitive ability--as in the sight of the future--has to actually be observed in the future (or rather in the present when it happens), for the probability wave of time and space (and its many possibilities) to collapse as it did (or as it will or hopes it might do).
Where does the futures grow at its peak? In finance, there's this thing called "futures", which are trades that are made in the future, or about the future, or about any possible or probable future(s) that might happen some time further down the road.
Even a paycheck is something that you recieve or will recieve for your future's labours/time/love lost.
Just as a loan is something borrowed from the future, maybe from the bank, or from another person, or from one's own self. To borrow money is (in the end) to borrow from one's future money bag. To replace future consumtion with consumption in the now. Lots of people hope and pray that their money will have increased and arrived (futuristic possibilities) by the time futures comes to collect the debt and pay back the check.
What is a bill (payment and debt) but a will (an intention and testament, of man or god).
In the marxist analysis, finally, it is the very measurement of time (and all our hours laboured
and long lost), that makes it possible to even maintain the current capitalistic system of currency markets and exchange.
Time-money, and money-time: chronos, machine-time, can be summoned in the image of a cogwheel.
The cogwheel is the thing that allows the detailed numberical measurement of time (chronos).
The cogwheel is also that which represents the machine, with all of its industrial wealth and creation, social rearrangement, technologisation, and alienation.
What about other kinds of time, then? Personal time? Life-time? Self-time? Or even: other-time?
Or the concept of Kairos: time as an event, or manifestation, rather than as a mechnical measurement of numbers and moments.
People don't usually get a check... for showing up on time in their very own lifes.
But you/us/we (people) might at least get a life: A time that is lived, and embraced, and engaged.
Time out of time. Or time deep inside of time.
Time of a life.
The future collapsing into the now.
And just what does matter any more in the end?
In the end.
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
~~T. S. Eliot, from "The Four Quarters"
Timecheck and Paycheck
I was reading Philip K. Dick's long short (or short long) story "Paycheck" (written in 1952), which asks some of the usual PKDick-ian questions about time, cause and effect, p/recognition, retrocasuality, the nature of time, of memory and self, etc.
One throught-provoking observation I recieved as I read this story, was/is/will be, that the main character is payed 50000 credits for a 2-year suspicious work, whereupon he'll have the last two years of life (or rather the memory of it all) erased. So he's receiving a paycheck, for a piece of his life (and his time).
And, as the saying goes: time is money. He's literally (lit-e-art-thurgically) and also metaphorically, trading a part of his life/time for a trinket of gold.
But the observation goes even deeper, as it is said:
The main protagonist, has, in his work contract, as is allowed, by corporate law, decided to forego & skip every single digit of his 50000 riches, and instead choose to keep another kind of paycheck of his own. .....One that is not even any money in the shape of wealth or digits.
What he recieves instead of the 50-grand-multi-numbered riches, is a bag of some seemingly random and useless trinkets and stuff. A bag full of... tricks... or.... even a pile full of trash?
Half of a broken pokerchip. A token for a bus. A metallic wire. A green piece of cloth. An unknown code key. Etc. Etc.
But as it later turns out, the company that he's been working for in secret (extreme high security in order to get away from government investigation), has been building a "time scoop". As well as a mirror for receiving in-sights from out of time.
AND. At least one of the seeming useless objects, that he recieves as his paycheck---it turns out---has been "scooped out" *from the future*. (The day after tomorrow or something to that effect).
So. He is literally (and metaphorically) recieving a piece of TIME as his PAYcheck. Time, as they say, is money, and money is time.
He lost two years of his future, two years of his life, yet he also gained a piece of the future instead, in the end.
And, as it turns out, each of the seven items that he has picked up for his pay, turns out to be hightly useful, in fact even invaluable, since he has seen it all up ahead, before his own p/resent time, through&about the timely mirror and time-scoop, just how he might make use them all, in order to escape any fate, even worse, and more horrific, than just the loss of one's time, or one's trinkets of gold.
Useless random trinkets, constantly ending up saving his life.
Seven random little items. As in the lucky number seven? Or as maybe the days of the week?
And one final of them of the future) to begin&restart the cycle (week/day & life) all over again?
Or maybe just a random little number? A most lucky of numbers.
Your Future-you is like a god... to us now
Another curious thought I had, as I read this, is the realiziation that one's future self, would be as a god to one's present (and past) self.
Since future-me already knows what is ging to happen, and how to change the course of events, turn the tables, shift and nudge things ever-so-slightly in a different direction... Well.
One's future self might not be all-knowing or omni-pre-scient. But mine/your/our future self would surely know enough (which is certainly more than enough) to possess the power of the now. Or even---the power the future.
In a way, the past self of the protagonist, represents (or takes on the role of) his future self; since he has foreknowlege of the future, his past self represents his own future (self); and since his memory of his past (2 years), for his recent past self, his past, his present and the future hadn't been wiped clean, as of yet, meaning that in a strictly functional sense, his recent past self, with all of this might fore-knowledge (as well as some recent 2-year past-knowledge) functions as a stand-in for his own future/self.
What (and who) is his past? And what (and who) is his future? It all becomes extremely relative when the self of the past knows even more then the self of the present (or indeed the self of his soon-to-happen future).
All seen and sensed, through the mirror synchronis, tempus fugit, the reflected eye out of time, out of mind, out of sight, in&out of his life, shaped and changed, in the rivers and streams of all times; staring deep into that techno-futuristic mirror of time, that allows him to observe his own life, and so many other times lines and events, and to yet plan up ahead, for what is still soon yet to happen, or even be set in place.
Tempus Fugit
(History of Richard II
Act V, Scene 5. (Pomfret castle)
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE)
(2790)
King Richard II:
Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To cheque time broke in a disorder'd string;
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours: but my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock.
This music mads me; let it sound no more;
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
The gospel according to Dick
"Paycheck" might not be PKD's best, or even most interesting piece of story weaving, thought surely not his worst either (some of his earlier pulpy 50s stuff comes to mind).
Would I recomend Paycheck to anyone? Maybe if your intereested in these kinds of ideas.
Or maybe its enought to just have read THIS one here article of text. Or even the wikipedia/cliffnotes version.
But why go to the exegesis when we can go straight for the gospel (itself)?
Or in the end (or one of the shady beginnings) maybe both serves their own kind of needs and their ends.
In the end.
Timecheck and paycheck
Time's check(s) and numbers/digit's cash-register checkIf we were to take the "time=money" saying literally (and we are here), it would also mean that a paycheck is also a kind of timecheck. And the protagonist here is literally checking out time in advance, as well as actually reciving a check from the future, both with his actual pay (the objects and foreknowledge what is to come), as well as a literal check from the future, a receipt that will be registered and made active in just a couple of days.
Timechecks and maybe/too many futures long past
Some people (like Eric Wargo of the Nightshirt) have speculated about precognition that any precog abilities are only possibilities or potentialities. Even PKD, himself, in the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldridge, where the precogs (future seers) only foresees a series of possible, and somewhat more and less likely timelines, with various probability factors (of actually coming to pass).
Any possible precognitive ability--as in the sight of the future--has to actually be observed in the future (or rather in the present when it happens), for the probability wave of time and space (and its many possibilities) to collapse as it did (or as it will or hopes it might do).
Futures and greens
Where does the futures grow at its peak? In finance, there's this thing called "futures", which are trades that are made in the future, or about the future, or about any possible or probable future(s) that might happen some time further down the road.
Even a paycheck is something that you recieve or will recieve for your future's labours/time/love lost.
Just as a loan is something borrowed from the future, maybe from the bank, or from another person, or from one's own self. To borrow money is (in the end) to borrow from one's future money bag. To replace future consumtion with consumption in the now. Lots of people hope and pray that their money will have increased and arrived (futuristic possibilities) by the time futures comes to collect the debt and pay back the check.
What is a bill (payment and debt) but a will (an intention and testament, of man or god).
Machine time and Life-time
In the marxist analysis, finally, it is the very measurement of time (and all our hours laboured
and long lost), that makes it possible to even maintain the current capitalistic system of currency markets and exchange.
Time-money, and money-time: chronos, machine-time, can be summoned in the image of a cogwheel.
The cogwheel is the thing that allows the detailed numberical measurement of time (chronos).
The cogwheel is also that which represents the machine, with all of its industrial wealth and creation, social rearrangement, technologisation, and alienation.
What about other kinds of time, then? Personal time? Life-time? Self-time? Or even: other-time?
Or the concept of Kairos: time as an event, or manifestation, rather than as a mechnical measurement of numbers and moments.
People don't usually get a check... for showing up on time in their very own lifes.
But you/us/we (people) might at least get a life: A time that is lived, and embraced, and engaged.
Time out of time. Or time deep inside of time.
Time of a life.
The future collapsing into the now.
And just what does matter any more in the end?
In the end.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Wolf in the flow
I wrote me a one poemetry. The oldest art, and often-times the most lively (or even... the most... DEADLY).
So, my friend. I wrote you this hopeless Werewolf enchantment. But please… my old friend. Pretty PLEASE. My dearest of friends. Just don’t go out and whisper it out loud… At least not wwhen you’re missing out there… all alone. So that only the shadows can hear. Yes, at least not when you're falling down under a red-blooded moon in the night.
Wolf in the flow
Wolf in the fold,
flows from the old.
Owl out of love,
hawk and a dove,
batterfly wings,
and one ring of all storms,
dogging it out,
digging it in,
in the skin of a man
flowing through how too soon
not every hand,
with each of its thought,
word and deed,
collected from ill
or the thought of a kind.
Wolf, in the fold
of a meat-space flesh-costu-mary
skin,
doubled-up hands,
leather belt, (jumping hoops)
many a' things,
reatttttatched
from this sheet
of a once-living thing
made of old.
So, my friend. I wrote you this hopeless Werewolf enchantment. But please… my old friend. Pretty PLEASE. My dearest of friends. Just don’t go out and whisper it out loud… At least not wwhen you’re missing out there… all alone. So that only the shadows can hear. Yes, at least not when you're falling down under a red-blooded moon in the night.
Wolf in the flow
Wolf in the fold,
flows from the old.
Owl out of love,
hawk and a dove,
batterfly wings,
and one ring of all storms,
dogging it out,
digging it in,
in the skin of a man
flowing through how too soon
not every hand,
with each of its thought,
word and deed,
collected from ill
or the thought of a kind.
Wolf, in the fold
of a meat-space flesh-costu-mary
skin,
doubled-up hands,
leather belt, (jumping hoops)
many a' things,
reatttttatched
from this sheet
of a once-living thing
made of old.
Formalities, Schmar-malities
A most heat-felt and autumnal well-come to this blog, my dearest old friends (and born-again romans).
As this is the 4/first blog post of possibly many, I hope 4or a long and highly fruitful marriage (of minds, and of kinds!).
I have know idea how any of this will all work out. But in the end, I find it rather hopeful and.... maybe gloomy but still much too precious!
They say you shouldn't womit words when you've got nothing left to say, but, but, but... I think I've got a million things to say! I just. I just... don't haven't worded it yet... Or any of the things that is still yet to come.
So once again, a gloomy autumnal and most heartfelt embrace. In this enchanted meeting and greeting, of our minds, and so many (or so few) of our kinds. (And maybe even unmistakably too many other little s(p)orts!)
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