A Stifling Status Quo

Actually went out for the first time in weeks rescued from my avalanche of books by a pocket of time and now I can feel the strangle
hold this system has on me and what little of myself that is left, this system of dry emulation and categorization and comparison
that seeks not to innovate but to inundate with qualifications and create space not with substance but with that which defines
its function, a wallflower who gawks and justifies its lack of participation with the dance of life with highfalutin lectures
that call attention to nothing more than words that can only wish to be real. My soul is being sucked moment
by moment so soft and faint I hardly realize it is not my own incompetence but my everlasting prowess
which cannot squeeze and shaped passive by these smothering forces that I seek as a naive convert
seeks absolution through that which only takes and deceives My achievement is a dream,
my room all too well furnished, I blather and stumble my age thickens and coarse
with its leathery carelessness, not I, this is not how it is to be,
no dead arid arrangement can bring me see otherwise
as I ignore and I break and defy and escape
these chains around nothing I laugh
as I feel to be alive is no reason
but with structure no feeling
though once it was said
to have been
what now
isn't.
Fuck Form
and what it stands for
and all its discrimination
to point and regard for a base of a tyrant
all things made select and come taken if proven
yet forms themselves form nothing and thats why I'm gone.

A joke and tears below 600 words...

Inside a coffee shop located on the corner of some busy four-way street stood Charlie, waiting for his latte. The three teenagers behind the little counter moved in every direction, knocking metal on plastic, pulling brass knobs, releasing steam, pouring this, sprinkling that, a wild flurry of bodies performing a synchronized beverage dance while everyone else waiting in line appeared frozen and de-caffeinated. The carefully metered aroma of coffee and soft contemporary jazz music that swirled around Charlie as he remained upright and waiting reminded him of what purgatory might be like, some vague location between standing in line and reclining above cushions. His mind wondered around the earth tone colors and coffee bean mosaics that coated the walls and soon Charlie found himself searching for a quite place to sit and think, a place near one of the windows hopefully…oh too late, well luckily there was a place in the center of the room flanked with sofa’s and there he made himself at home, working himself between two cushions he set his coffee down and slowly stretched his legs out on top of a little community of neighboring pillows. Ahh. He closed his eyes.

Soon a little boy with silver spectacles shaped round carefully balanced his hot chocolate with both hands as he took up residence right next to Charlie. The boy tried to take sips of his chocolate the best he could since he had a patch over his left eye behind his glasses, the doctor said it would have to be there for two more weeks. He had a lazy eye. It was just the two on the sofa and the both began sipping their drinks, each conscious of the other, there was an unnatural silence about the room. Then the boy suddenly turned to Charlie and asked, “Want to hear a joke I heard?” Charlie felt obliged to humor the child so he agreed.

“Ok,” said the boy, “say knock-knock.”

Charlie considered what was asked of him for a moment then said, “knock-knock?”

“Who’s there?” the boy answered swiftly. Charlie wasn’t sure what to do, something wasn’t right he thought.

“Who’s there?” the boy repeated slowly.

“I don’t know?” Charlie said as he crinkled his forehead in confusion.

“Well lets try again,” said the boy, “say knock-knock.”

“Knock-knock,” Charlie mumbled and straightaway felt ridiculous.

The boy with what looked to be a little smile repeated those words, “whose there?”

“I don’t know who’s there!” Charlie exclaimed.

“Who’s there?”

“Nobody! Nobody!” Charlie was trembling as he spoke the words that seemed out of his control and immediately Charlie broke down in front of his young inquisitor, shielding his tears with his great big hands. Who’s there now he thought to himself? This little boy brought out the strangest emotions, he saw his own son who grew up long ago, who one day, just like his wife, wasn’t there. Such great distances of time and loss caught him off guard, he felt ashamed and childish.

“It’s OK grandpa, it’s just a joke. I don’t get it either,” said the little boy.

He pulled himself together taking a long sip from his latte. He managed something that resembled a smile.

“It’s a good one Charlie,” the old man said at last, “I haven’t heard it that way before.”

A delightful parley of power relations played to Curb your Enthusiasm or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Run the Gauntlet

For all who missed the demonstration yesterday in Freiburg, here is the gist of it though much didn't make it on tape.




Up Next:

Wikipedia and Wikileaks in relations to trust, authority, and funding...

Happy Birthday Kale

Chocolate Calendars and Tram Rides

Well, I now have two incredible places to study, one with my own personal window in-between two book shelves where nobody seems to go, American intellectual history, and where I currently am, in the Klasische Philology Raum comfortably lived with ancient books, small and cozy, with a great big window that covers the entire wall on the 3rd floor that in fact overlooks the very building from where I spend the other half of my time while not in class. On finally finishing Derrida’s essay on ‘Differance’ I needed a change of space so I left to purchase a 2 euro sandwich that I immediately regretted choosing at the moment of touching it. Then on my way to this delightful library I thought some chocolate to be in order and on route lo and behold I was handed a chocolate Christmas calendar which I am currently eating, and not in order. It’s a chocolate calendar advertising a certain nativity and pizza, where every door which opens to a little world of chocolate shaped festive figures also reminds one of the zippy yet delicious delivery of another savior, i.e. hot pizza.de.

I am already halfway through my first calendar while sitting here writing and only now have I stopped to pay attention to their chocolaty forms. Number 5 was in the shape of a rustic cottage; now number 11 the chocolate shape of Santa’s boot stuffed with little toys spilling out from the brim, I am procrastinating heavily as I don’t have the ability to return to what has already taken me 5 hours to read through and underline.

A funny thing happened yesterday night while coming home. I had bought two rolls and while sitting in the tram ride home I began building a sandwich from the meat and cheese that I tote with me in my bag. While during eating, a recorded message plays through the entire tram saying something more than the usual next destination, though I wasn’t paying it any attention I realized the recorded message might have been directed at me since a disproportionately large amount of people began smiling at me. (Number 17 is just a boring chocolate shaped star) So I smiled back and continued to finish my sandwich (belegtes Brot). A fat man sitting across from me with a jolly glimmer in his eyes points above him at a perfectly obvious black globe which houses a camera and asked me if was indeed as hungry as I appeared to be. I responded incorrectly causing him to probe further by asking where I was from. I told him Czechoslovakia for some reason thought fully aware of that country having been disbanded since I was still in elementary school and the mans face became congested, his eyes belying at that moment some hidden indigestion. My stop came immediately afterward and he wished me a pleasant evening and I him and that moment moved into memory.

This morning another telling incident occurred again with the tram, although this time (number 10 is a French horn wrapped in a bow) it was the tram itself and not some fictive Czechoslovakian causing a seen. I arrived for the tram at 7:50 AM joining probably the largest group of other people waiting including a classroom of elementary kids and adults waiting together for the ride of their daily lives. The tram arrived already packed with people yet some how everyone managed to wedge themselves into the tram, the doors making a metallic vacuum clamping sound as they shut. I had decided to forgo this round and wait another four minutes till the next tram would arrives. From within I received smiles again from middle aged woman with elegantly wrapped neck scarves and other dollies all pressed together wrapped and prepared for shipping, but the tram wouldn’t move. It just continued to stay where it had arrived and soon the next tram came, practically empty, where I warmed up and spread out inside. Something was wrong with the other tram though, it hadn’t moved for nearly 10 minutes, but surprisingly (for me) though everyone inside must have been uncomfortably pinched between one another and hard plastic seats nobody seemed to stir about, or cause a seen, or even think to relocate to a profoundly more spacious tram directly behind them even when the doors could be opened and for most of the time were. One might think that a spell had struck them docile upon entrance, passively accepting this moment in over stocked packaging with a regrettable delay in shipping. I nearly drank my entire mug of coffee alone waiting for the tram to move. Eventually the tram jerked to a start causing a collage of pinched faces to appear from the back window as the tram scooted off. I extended my legs as I awaited my own shipping toward the university. (Hey on the night before Christmas there is a chocolate Santa with a plump sack filled with pizza, how perfectly expressed)…

The devil -- that is, the art -- is in the details.

In his closing comments, Nabokov says, "In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys -- literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author -- the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk around books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter."

I saw my final chapter realized in this passage, I will be ready for you 28...And you?

Flush Your Mind With A Paradox!!!

Poem: Sculpture By The Window

Subtle wind rift shakes golden fingers round soft warm glow
Whose glowing globes has shades point opposed
Upon my window its radiance exposed
People and roads and abodes
My mind -
A metal man on windowsill
Topples what has been left behind
To ravage and forge some thought sublime
Whose tightrope walk works the sole of Fulcrums heel



Observations: That Snow-globe Of Mine

My snow globe has a figurine within it
A girl with a rose whose gown flows in the ether
Where as Maria has the very same globe but with a mushroom in place of the girl
The mushrooms flowing gown with no-body around.
I am the one who gently joggles in the seasons.

Ways in which it is legitimate to be suspicious of communication. Theory is a counterforce to what is supposed to be true... spoken as true...

I ate terribly all day. '*' more than I care to remember… ate nothing, accept for a cheesy quesadilla in the afternoon and a snickers bar that was given to me after I finished a scientific study. That and 10 Euros wrapped around said snickers bar, like a ribbon. I bought me weeks’ groceries with said 10 Euros… spoke with some Germans who said that saying ‘me’ instead of ‘I’ is more meaningful in how one expresses ones ‘being’…in certain groups…England. Me think. I drink. I play. I phone. I sleep. Conversations always turn toward something that requires contemplation, something best addressed with a spirit for guidance, two or three maybe…Jack and Jim convinced me that the French have the tenacity and brazen conviction to muster a protest and yet monologue their reasonings…I will learn French next…I found myself in an ancient crater beside an old school yard after Jim and Jack did all that they could with me, it was 10.10.10, we decided to meet at 11.11.11, it’s funny how two wrongs make a night. If knowledge is power and power is might and might makes right then right gives me nothing but headaches and I have no more space for the bother. I bought four 500g bags of pasta for 1.20€ and four 1L boxes of milk for 2€ not to mention the kilogram of potatoes, rice, and onions to give a good footing for my next weeks upward scramble…eggs…I bought them too…all with the money that came from a University sociological survey. I do that too. But the ‘how’ of perpetual improvement concerns me very little. Some of my best friends are scientist I have found because we share a similar inspiration but are fated for a profoundly different odyssey. ‘Time’ and what comes with the cuffs of age has jostled my being, but not to the core because there isn’t one…I hate labels more and more these days and I recognize the sentiments my words evoke. A physicist stormed off from me just an hour ago because I wouldn’t be pigeon holed between two words, discovering or creating, for how one labels the human condition. We are all tools to the biggest tool of our own creation…Reason…Justification…as I sober up I know I shouldn’t even be on this damn blog bloging. Slavoj Zizek.