the phatic files

Three x Ulven

2011-06-06T17:11:00.000Z

In the style of Tor Ulven:

Your eyes open
within
I see your
darkness

Champagne idiots,
you dream of dwelling in open exterior elevators
that endlessly slide up and down
glass houses where people sleep,

worn out by work,
the shit, the harassment,
and the unanswered call for

enjoyment

3.
Late night. Someone
draws a finger wet
with saliva across
your forehead, nose. A

cool breeze erases the
invisible remainder. Darkness
falls. She is

gone.

Demokrati og sosiale medier

2010-12-02T23:55:00.000Z

Does social media contribute to democracy? Just posted this on forskning.no:

La oss si det er to forlokkende og en luguber side ved dette fenomenet. Som du påpeker er det fint å tenke seg at en type demokratisk praksis man kan utøve i sos medier er overførbart til skolesamfunnet eller samfunnet tout court. Dette støtter seg på et syn på demokrati som prosesser av en bestemt kvalitet, sk prosedyredemokrati. Videre, og det var dette som lå til grunn for spørsmålet tidligere, kan vi tenke oss at FB eksisterer i et mellomrom mellom det muntlige og det strengt skriftlige (skolestilen, rapporten, det offentlige skjemae,t etc.) og at skriveren har et løsere forhold til kontrollinstansen. Det er ting som kan tyde på at dette er tilfellet: Mange lærere synes elever er _for_ flittige på FB, men grunnen til dette kan jo være at elevene føler seg friere der enn i den regulerte språkbruken i klasserommet. Dermed åpnes også FB-språket for sånne ting som engelske vendinger, smileys, nyord, etc. I tillegg syns jeg det bør nevnes at for oss som har undervist en stund er det ikke umulig å huske ei tid hvor norsklæreren drømte o m et verktøy som ville gi elever _lyst_ til å skrive. Sosiale medier virker som å kunne fylle den funksjoenen.
SÅ til det lugubre: Denne tilsynelatende friheten skjer under markedets herredømme. Prisen vi må betale for å slippe unna statlig regulering av språket synes å være at vi underlegger kommunikasjonen kommersielle rammebetingelser. Dette har konsekvenser bl.a. for tilgang til verktøyet, rammer for hva som kan uttrykkes, og kanskje også en økonomisering av selve den språklige uttrykksmåten.
Det ville være interessant å vite om det finnes noe forskning som kan hjelpe oss videre her.

Hardt kroppsarbeid, pugging skaper ikke gode ferdigheter

2010-11-28T17:03:00.000Z

Talentutvikling [er] til tider preget av overambisiøse voksne og harde trenere, slik at utviklingen blir mer hard enn morsom.

Hvis barnet derimot får plass til å leke og utfolde seg, kan det antagelig øke motivasjonen og viljen til å lære mer senere.

Resultatene er tydelige innenfor individuelle idrettsgrener som friidrett, tennis eller seilsport.

Det hersker en illusjon om hva som kan kontrolleres og dokumenteres i skolen

2010-11-22T22:22:00.000Z

Fra I skolen 9 • 2010 nr 5

"Jeg frykter at det som «slankes» i skolen ikke er unødige byråkratiske prosesser, men snarere lærelyst og rom for formidling. Modellene bidrar til å gjøre problemene i skolen større." Sjekk dette intervjuet med LOs Ståle Dokken om NPM og skoleledelse:

– Lærerfrafall gir grunn til bekymring, sier Ståle Dokken i LO. Lederen av LOs organisasjonsavdeling Ståle Dokken snakker med tyngde når han retter sitt organisasjonsanalytiske blikk mot skoleverket. Han har en mastergrad i organisasjonsendring fra University of Herfordshire, og i fjor ga han ut boken «Å få folk med. En fagfortelling om organisasjonsendring» på Gyldendal Norsk Forlag.

Unødige krav
Han er uroet over hvordan lærere beskriver sin skolehverdag:

– Skolen kan ikke akseptere større frafall verken av lærere eller elever. Jeg tror de store rapporteringskravene har ført til feil fokus. Det hersker en illusjon om hva som kan kontrolleres og dokumenteres. Vi trenger ikke verken nasjonale prøver eller internasjonale elevundersøkelser. Jeg sier ikke at vi skal ha evalueringsfrie skoler, men at vi kan klare oss med mindre av det. Vi trenger gode, trygge og dynamiske lærere, som har tid til å jobbe med fagene, sier han.

Innenfor organisasjonsteori har Ståle Dokken kompleksitetsforskning som spesialfelt.

– Det er en tenkning som har oppstått med utgangspunkt i London de siste 15–20 årene, som omhandler andre forestillinger og et annet språk om hva ledelse er enn det som råder nå, og som springer ut av en annen verdensanskuelse. Utgangspunktet er en oppfatning om at organisasjoner ikke er systemer, men prosesser mellom mennesker, forteller han.

Ståle Dokken bruker begrepene New Public Management og Lean Management («toyotaisme») for å beskrive det han kaller en bransjeuavhengig internasjonal ensretting av forståelsen av hva ledelse er, som har oppstått de siste 20–30 årene.

Toyotaisme i skolen
– Bånnplanken er at det settes likhetstegn mellom organisasjon og system. «Toyotaisme» er en bilindustrimodell med sterk vekt på automatisering, som ukritisk er overført til helsevesenet og skoleverket, uten at virkningen av det er undersøkt. Det er en farlig måte å jobbe på. Jeg frykter at det som «slankes» i skolen ikke er unødige byråkratiske prosesser, men snarere lærelyst og rom for formidling. Modellene bidrar til å gjøre problemene i skolen større, sier Ståle Dokken.

– Det hersker en tradisjonell ledelsestenkning som stammer fra industrien og som ukritisk er overført til skoleverket, med tvilsomme effekter. Lærere og skoleledelse har mer enn nok arbeidsoppgaver og utfordringer, og trenger ikke bli dytta på unødvendige krav til testing, evaluering og rapportering, legger han til.

– Hvilke negative utslag mener du det har ført til?

– Mange lærere førtidspensjonerer seg. Lærere som skulle gløde til de var 70 år! Lærerne er slitne av å fotfølges og av sterk detaljregulering, sier Ståle Dokken.

Endringskynisme
Han mener lærerfrafallet i skolen er et faresignal som ikke har fått stor nok oppmerksomhet.

– Det som skjer nå er en endringskynisme. Lærerne bøyer seg ned og håper at uværet går over. Lederen av LOs organisasjonsavdeling mener også at det er urovekkende at lærerne de siste tiårene har fått mindre anseelse som yrkesgruppe i samfunnet.

– Har LO bidratt til å rive ned respekten for lærerne?

– Over tid kan det ha vært en bivirkning av LOs lønnspolitikk at lærerne har tapt status, sier Ståle Dokken. Han understreker at det i såfall har vært utilsiktet, og at LO ikke har hatt noen ønsker om å trekke noen grupper ned.

New Public Management (NPM)
Ledelsesfilosofi brukt av regjeringer siden 1980-tallet for å modernisere offentlig sektor gjennom økt markedsorientering. (Wikipedia)

Lean Management
Ledelsefilosofi som i stor grad bygger på produksjonssystemet til Toyota (Toyota Production System (TPS)) og som derfor ofte kalles «toyotaisme». Den japanske bilfabrikken Toyota vokste fra å være et lite firma til å bli verdens største bilprodusent. (Wikipedia)

Ståle Dokken (51)
Leder organisasjonsavdelingen i LO, som har ansvar for LOs egen organisasjon, medlemsutvikling, organisasjonsutvikling, medlemsfordeler, student- og elevmedlemskapet, LO Ungdom, utdanningspolitikk og skolepolitikk.

Re-Tooling Education

2010-11-09T17:00:00.000Z

Ok, so heres some thoughts on educational discourse. A few contradictions:
Pupils/students should be motivated when they arrive in class. Then what is the purpose of the teacher as motivator?
How come theres an increase in limits for attendance in schools? Should we not trust that we are able to measure competence regardless of student interest/participation/attendance?
It is as if the ghosts for our educational past are returning -- but this time more forcefully and more in need of challenge.

Policy of phatic files

2010-10-09T21:41:00.001Z

This blog practices a patient view to comments from readers, including disgruntled European emissaries venting their frustrations with experiences of resentment on foreign soil. This is why comments with essentially abusive language is allowed to remain on this site. Views expressed by readers are subsequently not necessarily shared by phatic.

---

On a different (but related) note:

They're almost 1/5 of the US electorate -- an "anxious response" to a changing economy. But do they have a case? Kate Zernike discusses the Tea Party movement with Sam Tanenhaus on the NYT Book Review podcast.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/book-review-podcast-making-sense-of-the-tea-party/?src=twt&twt=nytimesbooks

A conversation with phatic

2010-10-03T14:42:00.001Z

"I don't understand what 'identity' means," phatic said.
"OK," said I.
"One thing is when they stop you at the border and ask what is your identity. You answer your name, nationality and so forth."
"Yes, " I responded.
"I also understand what they say when they speak of two things being identical. If that's possible. But I understand the meaning of, say, 'this nail is identical to that nail'."
"Uhm," I nodded.
"Same with the verb identify. That's an easy one. John identifies with blue folks, say."
I was getting bored.
"Yes. Now what's the bottom line here?" I asked.
"Well, I'll tell you what the bottom line is. What do you get out of statements like, 'I have lost my identity' -- unless you're Jason Bourne, of course, and have literally lost your papers and registraton in public records. Or, 'We don't really feel like blue folks used to sometime in the past.' That's what I don't get."
"I see," said I.
"Or what about this quest to 'find one's identify'. Well, maybe you find the answer when you locate your passport, right?"
"Right," said I.

Best,
-tor

American from abroad

2010-09-30T18:36:00.001Z

America seen from abroad.

Here's what correspondent Eivind Trædal reports. America, is this correct?

"Obama didn't wear an American flag on his jacket sleeve during the election campaign. No American president can act that way." These are the words of Margaret Curole, co-ordinator of the World Forum for Fish Workers, feminist and environmentalist. We are speaking to a member of "the other America," liberal and well educated. Our discussion is going well until she catches us by surprise with her comment on Obama's sleeve. "Besides, we pay too much taxes. That's why I'm a member of the Tea Party movement."

A week after the conversation with Margaret, on September 11, we have the honor of commemorating the occasion with a few hundred Tea Party members at the Washington monument. Judging from plackards, pins and banners, this is an incongruous mixture of market libertarians, Christian fundamentalists and good, old-fashioned racists congregated around a handful of national markers. Wandering around us are Ben Franklin, the Statue of Liberty and the constitution. On stage a lady sings "the times they are a-changing," incomprehensibly. A few minutes of vague speeches emanate from the pulpit. They are about "taking back the country." From whom? To what? Answers seem as plentifold as there are attendees.
...
Without a common analysis and other goals than opposition to the administration and taxes the movement appears to offer nothing more than disempowered fistshaking from a populace that too long has been lacking a frame in which to understand the social changes that affect them.
...
The political climate has reached new depths in the world's most powerful nation. Political choices have apparently been replaced by a blindly swinging pendulum of discontent. The apathy is now so great that a few hundred oddballs in costume are able to decide the ground for public debate.

Best,
-tor

the social construction of idiots

2010-09-28T08:15:00.001Z

is fortunately for everyone composed of one step (one only! fewer maxims
than Grice's! Speranza, take the lead nad produce a few more!)

the step is easily theorized.
we take F and look at "F". We observe that "F" was spelled in "K" in
Uzbekistan.
Hence F is subjected to change (between being spelled "F" and being
spelled as "K"). So it is not set in stone. Being not set in stone is
axiomatically equivalent to be a social construct, since society
constructs (not in stone apparently.)

Voila.

I am terrified by the amount of excrement being told to students, and
alas, with terrifying effects. This is a note.
Consider the famous argument by the neo fascist J Malema:
"in my language [seSotho for the ignorant ones] there is no word for
ermaphrodite. Hence such "things" do not exist" (they are not
"classified" "as such" as the post suggest)
This is about teh Semenja affairs for those who follow the adventures
and disadventures of gender politics.
This si then the answer.
Idiots are those who on the base of concocted excremental "arguments"
wish to persuade people of the non existence of hiv, trans-sexual, etc.
Their great progenitors are famous contructivists, Goebbels"WHAT IS A
JEW I DECIDE", character in Orwellian worlds in which he who owns the
language of the past owns the past... und so weiter

p.s. how does an argument from "change" run?

x died of a stroke

strokes change? meaning what?

On Mon, 27 Sep 2010,
Torgeir Fjeld wrote:

> Disobeying Kierkegaard's dictum that one does well to shy away from public debate, here are some responses to despondents:
> 1. Causes of death are cultural constructs.
> They change. Hence not set in stone.
> 2. We don't know why we die.
> Any legal cause remains unable to give reasons for death.
> 3. As autism are taught so is our ability to recognize deadly diagnises.
> The condition X may or may not have existed before anyone was able to label it. But does it matter?
> 4. The critters you refer to a dinasaurs only became such at the moment of classification.
> To postulate an experiencing subjet prior to the categorization of dinosaurs classifying them as such is anachronistic.
>
> -t
>
>
> "The work introduced the term social construction into the social sciences
> and was strongly influenced by the work of Alfred Schutz. The central
> concept of The Social Construction of Reality is that persons and groups
> interacting together in a social system form, over time, concepts or mental
> representations of each other's actions, and that these concepts
>
>
>
>
>
> eventually
> become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to
> each
> other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to
> enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be
> institutionalised. In the process of this institutionalisation, meaning is
> embedded in society. Knowledge and people's conception (and belief) of what
> reality is becomes embedded in the institutional fabric of society. Social
> reality is therefore said to be socially constructed."
>
> A sample:
>
> "Society as Subjective Reality
> Socialization is a two-step induction of the individual to participate in
> the social institutional structure (in its objective reality).
>
> "The individualÿÿ is not born a member of society. Heÿÿ becomes a member of
> society. In the life of every individualÿÿ there is a temporal sequence, in
> the course of which he is inducted into participation in the social
> dialectic" (p. 129) ÿÿBy ÿÿsuccessful socializationÿÿ we mean the establishment
> of a
> high degree of symmetry between objective and subjective realityÿÿ (p. 163)
>
> => Primary Socialization takes place as a child. It is highly charged
> emotionally and is not questioned. Secondary Socialization includes the
> acquisition of role-specific knowledge (taking oneÿÿs place in the social
> division
> of labor). It is learned through training and specific rituals, and is not
> emotionally charged (ÿÿit is necessary to love oneÿÿs mother, but not oneÿÿs
> teacherÿÿ). Training for secondary socialization can be very complex
> (full-time teachers and expert training), and depends on the complexity of
> division
> of labor in a society (e.g. educational and university system). Primary
> socialization is much less flexible than secondary socialization (e.g. shame
> for nudity comes from primary socialization, adequate dress code depends on
> secondary: ÿÿA relatively minor shift in the subjective definition of
> reality would suffice for an individual to take for granted that one may go to
> the office without a tie. A much more drastic shift would be necessary to
> have him go, as a matter of course, without any clothes at allÿÿ).
>
> ÿÿThe child does not internalize the world of his significant others as one
> of many possible worldsÿÿ It is for this reason that the world internalized
> in primary socialization is so much more firmly entrenched in consciousness
> than worlds internalized in secondary socializationsÿÿ. Secondary
> socialization is the internalization of institutional or institution-based
> ÿÿsubworlds
> ÿÿÿÿ The roles of secondary socialization carry a high degree of anonymityÿÿ
> The same knowledge taught by one teacher could also be taught by anotherÿÿ
> The institutional distribution of tasks between primary and secondary
> socialization varies with the complexity of the social distribution of
> knowledgeÿÿ
> (p. 129-147)
>
> => Conversation/communication aims at reality-maintenance of the
> subjective reality. What seems to be a useless and unnecessary communication of
>
> redundant banalities is actually a constant mutual reconfirmation of each
> otherÿÿ
> s internal thoughts (maintains subjective reality).
>
> ÿÿOne may view the individualÿÿs everyday life in terms of the working away
> of a conversational apparatus that ongoingly maintains, modifies and
> reconstructs his subjective realityÿÿ [for example] ÿÿWell, itÿÿs time for me to
> get to the station,ÿÿ and ÿÿFine, darling, have a good day at the officeÿÿ
> implies an entire world within which these apparently simple propositions make
> senseÿÿ the exchange confirms the subjective reality of this worldÿÿ the
> great part, if not all, of everyday conversation maintains subjective realityÿÿ
> imagine the effectÿÿof an exchange like this: ÿÿWell, itÿÿs time for me to
> get to the station,ÿÿ ÿÿFine, darling, donÿÿt forget to take along your gun.ÿÿ
> (p. 147-163)
>
> Identity of an individual is subject to a struggle of affiliation to
> (sometimes conflicting) realities. For example, the reality from primary
> socialization (mother tells child not to steal) can be in contrast with second
> socialization (gang members teach teenager that stealing is cool). Our final
> social location in the institutional structure of society will ultimately
> also influence our body and organism.
>
> ÿÿÿÿlife-expectancies of lower-class and upper-class [vary] ÿÿsociety
> determines how long and in what manner the individual organism shall liveÿÿ
> Society also directly penetrates the organism in its functioning, most
> importantly in respect to sexuality and nutrition. While both sexuality and
> nutrition
> are grounded in biological drivesÿÿ biological constitution does not tell
> him where he should seek sexual release and what he should eat.ÿÿ (p.
> 163-183)"
>
> See also
> social constructionism
> Phronetic social science
>
> Speranza
> ----- The Swimming Pool Library
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>

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palma
University of KwaZulu-Natal Philosophy
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EMAIL: palma@duke.edu
EMAIL: palma@ukzn.ac.za

MY OFFICE IS A290@Mtb

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Ratio, enim, nisi judex universalis esse deberet, frustra singulis datur.

[ _Quaestiones Naturales_, Adelard of Bath ]

Signora granda, testa che massa
massa ne passa, che quasi schissa,
Dia dei sostegni de cese e palassi
Dia de le taje che su ne tien fissi
Dia de le onde che le ne fa grassi,
ne ingrassa de ogni grassia, Dia Venessia -

aàh Venessia aàh Venàssia aàh Venùsia

Andrea Zanzotto, Filò, (Sezione: Recitativo Veneziano)

Re: The Social Construction of Reality

2010-09-27T20:07:00.001Z

Disobeying Kierkegaard's dictum that one does well to shy away from public debate, here are some responses to despondents:
1. Causes of death are cultural constructs.
They change. Hence not set in stone.
2. We don't know why we die.
Any legal cause remains unable to give reasons for death.
3. As autism are taught so is our ability to recognize deadly diagnises.
The condition X may or may not have existed before anyone was able to label it. But does it matter?
4. The critters you refer to a dinasaurs only became such at the moment of classification.
To postulate an experiencing subjet prior to the categorization of dinosaurs classifying them as such is anachronistic.

-t

"The work introduced the term social construction into the social sciences
and was strongly influenced by the work of Alfred Schutz. The central
concept of The Social Construction of Reality is that persons and groups
interacting together in a social system form, over time, concepts or mental
representations of each other's actions, and that these concepts

eventually
become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to
each
other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to
enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be
institutionalised. In the process of this institutionalisation, meaning is
embedded in society. Knowledge and people's conception (and belief) of what
reality is becomes embedded in the institutional fabric of society. Social
reality is therefore said to be socially constructed."

A sample:

"Society as Subjective Reality
Socialization is a two-step induction of the individual to participate in
the social institutional structure (in its objective reality).

"The individual… is not born a member of society. He… becomes a member of
society. In the life of every individual… there is a temporal sequence, in
the course of which he is inducted into participation in the social
dialectic" (p. 129) "By 'successful socialization' we mean the establishment
of a
high degree of symmetry between objective and subjective reality" (p. 163)

=> Primary Socialization takes place as a child. It is highly charged
emotionally and is not questioned. Secondary Socialization includes the
acquisition of role-specific knowledge (taking one's place in the social
division
of labor). It is learned through training and specific rituals, and is not
emotionally charged ("it is necessary to love one's mother, but not one's
teacher"). Training for secondary socialization can be very complex
(full-time teachers and expert training), and depends on the complexity of
division
of labor in a society (e.g. educational and university system). Primary
socialization is much less flexible than secondary socialization (e.g. shame
for nudity comes from primary socialization, adequate dress code depends on
secondary: "A relatively minor shift in the subjective definition of
reality would suffice for an individual to take for granted that one may go to
the office without a tie. A much more drastic shift would be necessary to
have him go, as a matter of course, without any clothes at all").

"The child does not internalize the world of his significant others as one
of many possible worlds… It is for this reason that the world internalized
in primary socialization is so much more firmly entrenched in consciousness
than worlds internalized in secondary socializations…. Secondary
socialization is the internalization of institutional or institution-based
'subworlds
'… The roles of secondary socialization carry a high degree of anonymity…
The same knowledge taught by one teacher could also be taught by another…
The institutional distribution of tasks between primary and secondary
socialization varies with the complexity of the social distribution of
knowledge"
(p. 129-147)

=> Conversation/communication aims at reality-maintenance of the
subjective reality. What seems to be a useless and unnecessary communication of

redundant banalities is actually a constant mutual reconfirmation of each
other'
s internal thoughts (maintains subjective reality).

"One may view the individual's everyday life in terms of the working away
of a conversational apparatus that ongoingly maintains, modifies and
reconstructs his subjective reality… [for example] 'Well, it's time for me to
get to the station,' and 'Fine, darling, have a good day at the office'
implies an entire world within which these apparently simple propositions make
sense… the exchange confirms the subjective reality of this world… the
great part, if not all, of everyday conversation maintains subjective reality…
imagine the effect…of an exchange like this: 'Well, it's time for me to
get to the station,' 'Fine, darling, don't forget to take along your gun.'
(p. 147-163)

Identity of an individual is subject to a struggle of affiliation to
(sometimes conflicting) realities. For example, the reality from primary
socialization (mother tells child not to steal) can be in contrast with second
socialization (gang members teach teenager that stealing is cool). Our final
social location in the institutional structure of society will ultimately
also influence our body and organism.

"…life-expectancies of lower-class and upper-class [vary] …society
determines how long and in what manner the individual organism shall live…
Society also directly penetrates the organism in its functioning, most
importantly in respect to sexuality and nutrition. While both sexuality and
nutrition
are grounded in biological drives… biological constitution does not tell
him where he should seek sexual release and what he should eat." (p.
163-183)"

See also
social constructionism
Phronetic social science

Speranza
----- The Swimming Pool Library

Re: [lit-ideas] cant tell u how it is

2010-09-24T14:44:00.001Z

the suggestion is that idiots construct idiocies (viz. i hacking)

On Thu,
23 Sep 2010, Torgeir Fjeld wrote:

> no, that an event or object is socially constructed does not merely mean that we can't get at the 'an sich'-ness of the thing, it means that there are structured (and structuring) ways in which we render objects and events. whether someone is rendered freedom fighter or lewdachris isn't a function of the non-determinate character of the thing itself, but an effect of structured dispositions to 'think, percieve and act' in those who produce meaning.
>
> the suggestion that there should be objects or events outside any meaning prodcution is unbridled idealism --
>
> best,
> -t
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>

MY OFFICE IS A290@Mtb

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Ratio, enim, nisi judex universalis esse deberet, frustra singulis datur.

[ _Quaestiones Naturales_, Adelard of Bath ]

aàh Venessia aàh Venàssia aàh Venùsia

Andrea Zanzotto, Filò, (Sezione: Recitativo Veneziano)

cant tell u how it is

2010-09-23T21:17:00.001Z

no, that an event or object is socially constructed does not merely mean that we can't get at the 'an sich'-ness of the thing, it means that there are structured (and structuring) ways in which we render objects and events. whether someone is rendered freedom fighter or lewdachris isn't a function of the non-determinate character of the thing itself, but an effect of structured dispositions to 'think, percieve and act' in those who produce meaning.

the suggestion that there should be objects or events outside any meaning prodcution is unbridled idealism --

best,
-t

Follow our tweets

2010-08-30T22:17:00.001Z

http://www.twitter.com/m_phatic

abjection and the scapegoat: some preliminary reflections

2009-07-03T02:19:00.003Z

abjection: a term from kristeva -- "Our reaction (horror, vomit) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other. The primary example is the corpse (which traumatically reminds us of our own materiality); however, other items can elicit the same reaction: the open wound, shit, sewage, even a particularly immoral crime (e.g. Auschwitz)." (http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/definitions/abject.html) To Kristeva, an experience of abjection is necessary before we enter into the mirror stage with its formation of the specular I, the fictional agency of the ego, and finally a social I. Abjection is a enecessary experience of a divison of subjet and object, of child and mother, of society and its outside.

Foucault notes that the modern subject is fostered through processes of division, but that these practices are radically altered witht he advent of science. While lepers were ostensibly excluded from the community, lodged in camps outside cities, the plague victim was confined and analyzed. The first was shut out -- abjected, as it were --the second was divided from the nomral subjectivity by way of an intense scrutiny. The plague victim became a potentially rich source of knowledge and a cornerstone in the establishment of a new disciplinary order. Foucault: "The leper was caught up in a practice of rejection, of exile-enclosure; he was left to his doom in a mass among which it was useless to differentiate; those sick of the plague were caught up in a meticulous tactical partitioning in which individual differentiations were the constricting effects of a power that multiplied, articulated and subdivided itself; the great confinement on the one hand; the correct training on the other. The leper and his separation; the plague and its segmentations."

The scapegoat treads an uncertain path between these two states of alienation: it performs the fuction of society's abject as it produces reactions of horror and solicits a necessary instinctual rejection. On the other hand the scapegoat's soccal destiny travels a diachronic path from separation to segmentation, from exile to confinement, from mass to individual. Biopower is precicely the secular capacityto solicit from the subject an affirmation -- whathe religiousregime would refer to as a confession -- of his or her status as abnormal. Modernity no longer shuts the scapegoat out from society, but solicits a consent from the subjet to her or his own confinement and subjection to disciplinary power.

crying at a reading by robert bly

2008-05-17T16:57:00.002Z

i went to hear robert bly read his poetry
but i was crowded by ghosts
i saw people who are still alive but dead
seated in the audience was an old english teacher
he was as dashing as when he taught composition
his name was john then but maybe not now, i didn't ask
then it was my friend robert.
he used to wear a leather bag over his shoulder
he didn't anymore but the beard was the same
i heard someone whisper there's thomas tranströmer
or someone who's face i've forgotten

olav h. hauge was there. so was rolf jacobsen. and more
old masters hidden in the water under
the frozen lake i remember canooing there in summer
the sickle smiles at all

how fickle is the boundary between the dead and
living how solidly the dead have planted their being in us
to a certain believers men are non-existent
to god
robert bly said
we are dust on the underside of grass

Poor time for poetry

2008-01-27T16:59:00.000Z

I promised (myself) not to take to translating (again). How feeble
is a heart faced with injustice. From Brecth's Svendborg collection
(http://www.svendborg-bib.dk/biblio/Brecht/brecht_en.asp):

Poor time for poetry

I know: Only the happy is
loved. His voice is heard
gladly. His face pretty.

The yard's mutilated tree
indicates poor soil, but
those who point say rightfully:
It's a criple.

I dont' see
green boats and lusty sails at sea. I only see
fishermen with nets torn.
Why is my only concern that the
fortyyear-old maid has a hump?
The breasts of young girls are
warm as ever.

If my song rhymes it
feels like hubris.

I am torn between
joy over apple trees in bloom and
resentment over Mr Hitler's speeches.
But only the latter
drives me to my desk.

I hold your head

2007-09-22T22:27:00.000Z

I hold your head
in my hands, as you hold
my heart in your tenderness
as everything holds and is being
held by something other than itself
As the ocean lifts a rock
to the beach, as the tree
holds the mature fruits of Fall, as
our planet is lifted through planetary space
So we are both held by something and lifted
to where riddle holds riddle by the hand

(Stein Mehren, "Jeg holder ditt hode" from _Mot en verden av lys_ (Toward a world of light), 1963)

Fleeing youth

2007-09-20T21:38:00.000Z

Fleeing youth!
A hind
hunted by a pack of
barking dogs.

The great Hunter
at his guard
cooly observes
his hands.

(Claes Gill, "Flyktende ungdom" from _Ord i jærn_ publ. 1942)

2007-07-05T09:37:00.000Z

The deep blue sky is drawing
A woollen blanket over itself,

Preparing to dream

London, October 2004

Voluntarism all over again

2007-07-04T18:23:00.000Z

Dave or Hearts in Atlantis. Hearts in Atlantis or Dave.

---
The more abstract the truth is that you would teach, the more you have to seduce the senses to it.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

http://phatic.blogspot.com

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Norwegian for beginners

2007-07-04T18:15:00.000Z

Google: akutt nervøst sammenbrudd

H.P. Lovecraft - Wikipedia
Da Lovecraft var tre år gammel, ble faren akutt psykotisk på et hotell i ... Han fikk et nervøst sammenbrudd i 1908, hvilket også resulterte i at han aldri ...
no.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.P._Lovecraft - 34k - I hurtigbuffer - Lignende sider

Kindelvev - Noe helt for seg selv ;)... til tross for ett akutt behandlings forsøk på hospital onyx hvor ... og få nervøst sammenbrudd hver gang lippglossen kommer litt ut av stilling. ...
www.vgb.no/4024/ - 49k - I hurtigbuffer - Lignende sider

[PDF] FRIVILLIGHETENS KÅR – NÅ OG I FRAMTIDA.Filformat: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - HTML-versjon
akutt katastrofehjelp og mer langsiktig bistand med tanke på å sette folk i ... grensende til nervøst sammenbrudd – på hvilke signaler en slik melding ...
https:/.../organisasjonsseminar/DnBNOR_orgseminar_frivillighetens_kaar_naa_og_i_framtid_Gunnar_Haugsveen.pdf - Lignende sider

I Tlönese:
Google: acutely apprehensive breakdown H.P. Lovecraft Wikipedia As Lovecraft stayed three year aged , became danger acutely psykotisk at a hotel in. He getting a apprehensive breakdown in 1908, which also was resulting in that he never. wiki /H.P._Lovecraft 34k IN cache memory Likewise pages Kindelvev Any absolutely for herself ;). although a acutely deal attempt on the hospital onyx how. and a few apprehensive breakdown each time lippglossen comes a bit from among census. www.vgb.no/4024/ 49k IN cache memory Likewise pages PDF FRIVILLIGHETENS CIRCUMSTANCES – Now and then IN FRAMTIDA.Filformat: PDF Adobe Acrobat HTML - version acutely katastrofehjelp and additional langsiktig aid with a view to to large type people in. border at apprehensive breakdown – on which signals a so bid. https:/. organisasjonsseminar /DnBNOR_orgseminar_frivillighetens_kaar_naa_og_i_framtid_Gunnar_Haugsveen.pdf Likewise pages

-p

---
The more abstract the truth is that you would teach, the more you have to seduce the senses to it.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

http://phatic.blogspot.com

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Someday sunthing

2007-07-01T18:09:00.000Z

Some rolled oats
Some wheat flour
Baking soda
A pimch of salt
Water
A banana

Mix well.
Fry in vegetable oil

Eat.

-p

---
The more abstract the truth is that you would teach, the more you have to seduce the senses to it.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

http://phatic.blogspot.com

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Stay undead!

2007-06-21T18:08:00.000Z

A ditty to cheer up all you undead out there.

As they lower me down into that hole in the ground
I scream out for help but they hear not a sound
I fear at the lid, my fingers they bleed
Is this happening to me or is it just a dream

-p

---
The more abstract the truth is that you would teach, the more you have to seduce the senses to it.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

http://phatic.blogspot.com

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Old limerick for Irish Richie

2007-06-03T10:54:00.000Z

There once was a man from Isis

Whose balls had different sizis

One ball was small

Hardly no ball at all

The other was big and one ...

(and this is where you enter the competition... what is the missing woid we ax. btw. some say We r stupid just becåse we disagree with some spelling rule. we beg to differ.)

good evening.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Julie Krueger"
To: lit-ideas@freelists.org
Subject: [lit-ideas] Please correct me if I'm wrong. Please.
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 02:22:19 -0500

So. The Kurds are being hemmed in from the north, as insurgents blew up a bridge which was a vital link to Baghdad, and the south, as Turkey is poised on the border to attack the Kurds from the South (Gates is warning them against doing so, so obviously everything's going to be all right). Major Iraq-type bombs are being found in Afghanistan for the first time. Iran is apparently continuing it's search for nuclear power, while Iranian type weaponry is being used in Iraq. And, not having enough groups to kill and be killed by, there is now Sunni on Sunni fighting; as BBC says "rival Sunni factions". Somewhere in the midst of all of this Al Qaeda and all kinds of Al Qaeda wannabes are running amok. But we're safer now. Right? Do I have all of this about right? (I'm not going to get into the Somalia thing, or the Lebanon thing; or the Israel thing, or Japan's nuclear aspirations; there's only so much I can deal with at once.) Condi wants a chance at diplomacy and Cheney wants to take the whole lot out. And Bush, most likely in a hurry to get everyone to ignore the Wars, is now championing a Green plan. Hooray. When we all die, the earth will be a cleaner place for our .....wait a minute....

I'm going to go read some trivial piece of fiction now. My head hurts.

Julie Krueger

--- The more abstract the truth is that you would teach, the more you have to seduce the senses to it. - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil  http://phatic.blogspot.com

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Re: [lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Poem (rather important missing word restored)

2007-05-23T13:05:00.001Z

JG Ballard on growing up in Shanghai, the cruelty of contemporary Cannen , and life in suburbia Londonium.

http://download.itv.com/southbankshow/jgballard.mp3

Best,
///-

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garbage sun

2007-05-06T00:29:00.001Z

Sit with me,
dear, tell

of the time
when I am

no more

Tor Ulven
phtic traslate

--------------

"Sitt hos meg,/ kjære, fortell// om den tiden/ da jeg ikke// finnes mer. "
From Tor Ulven, _Søppelsolen_ (1989)
http://www.helsinki.fi/uh/3-2005/juttu7.shtml

http://phatic.blogspot.com

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What's perfection?

2007-05-05T23:44:00.001Z

The love of the Body of man or woman balks account—the body itself balks account;
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

Walt Whitman, 'I Sing the Body Electric'
http://www.bartleby.com/142/19.html

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To his father

2007-05-05T23:35:00.002Z

(after Tu Fu)
-------------

The note books have faded to yellow
The rubbers don't listen no more
The ski tracks are blown away and
The TV screen dishevelled
At a dump

The pupils have turned into parents and
The incineration ovens turned cold.
There are no longer a living
Memory of the English classes and
The red pen's orders

The trying steps of friends in dance are forgotten and
The mistress' painted cheek
Changed to dust in the river of eternity.
What remains after the passing
Of centuries? What was me?

-phatic

chewing gum

2007-05-05T23:35:00.001Z

-- for lit-ideas

Dead bureaucrats sailors
Dead poets teachers
Oh how I have suffered for this poem

The voices will never stop
Dispose of your objects you say
Dead fishermen scholars
I can only write how I write

My child is hanging from a tree
I put him there
Don't look at me now
While I eat the evidence

Dead people's voices speak through me
Every sentence is a betrayal
I dream what I dream

- phatic
(traslated from hisself)

What's in a name

2005-12-22T13:31:00.000Z

Upon asking "What could be a greater insult to Christianity than to substitute Christ with an X," Mike Geary informed that he

> sent him a note while he was broadcasting

which opens up for a number of interrogations:

1. Does Mike still correspond?
2. Is Christ still broadcasting?
3. Did Christ call hisself chris(t!) and does he (still)?
3a. In the case that he didn't, how come it would be an insult (to him)?
3b. In the case that he did, what would be his riposte?

phatic,
Down under

Presentation, check one

2005-08-19T16:00:00.000Z

http://home.no.net/torgfje/utopos/images/healer(s).ppt

Chewed Moons

2004-08-10T16:22:00.000Z

(After Tor Ulven)

Heaven is an indifferent moan

Joy's torturous instruments make every day bearable
Fishes walk on water 'cause they're tired of swimming
Pine trees root in your nails' dirt
as language roots in your mouth's swamp

The foot is simply a neutral joint
between the kick and the mutilated face
the ungoverned foot limping along
to restlessness' encounter

Feverish musicians play instruments of reality
on seductive violins of innumerable noses

But music causes ears to deform
And evil has wings

Tor Ulven:
Avgnagde måner

Himmelen er et gjesp av likegyldighet
Gledens torturinstrumenter gjør hverdagen utholdelig
Fiskene går på vannet fordi de er trette av å svømme
Grantrærne slår rot i skitten under neglene
slik språket slår rot i munnens sump
Foten er bare et nøytralt forbindelsesledd
mellom sparket og det kvestede ansiktet
den herreløse foten som halter avsted
til møtet med rastløsheten
Feberfantasiens musikere spiller på virkelighetens instrument
på dine utallige nesers smektende fioliner
Men musikk fører til misdannelser i ørene
og onde mennesker har vinger

(from Skyggen av urfuglen (The shadow of the original bird), 1977, repr. Samlede dikt, 2001, p. 22)

2004-08-10T16:19:00.000Z

paper scissors rock
paper scissors rock
rock scissors paper
paper scissors rock

rock paper paper rock
scissors scissors scissors scissors
paper rock paper scissors scissors
scissors rock paper scissors scissors
scissors scissors scissors scissors scissors

roll rock roll rock
scissor paper
roll rock
roll roll

paper scissors rock
paper scissors

rock

2004-08-10T16:10:00.000Z

We have reached a conjunction and
we have reached a conjunction or
we have reached a conjunction but
we have reached a conjunction if
we have reached a conjunction then
we have reached a conjunction so
we have reached a conjunction because
we have reached a conjunction.

script

2004-08-03T17:57:00.000Z

http://home.no.net/torgfje/utopos/script.html

GO!

2004-08-03T17:53:00.000Z

Emerge into the abyss, the heart of this eternal
City as it rises on the slopes of its inhabitants'
Mediaeval imagination, horned and rusty and
Drunk with stupor, unwittingly causing its own
Demise, returning

Step out of this cleavage, take the steam
Train across the ocean, land somewhere in the
Carribean, on a cricket pitch or at some stage of
The never-ending revolutions of Jamaica.

The sun descends slowly on this blue-green ball as
It revolves around itself and around the big ball of fire
Fuelling the machine connecting fingertips to
Eyeballs

Leave your locality -- only to return, an endless
Coming-back to the site of your
Emergence

from lit-id (http://www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html)

On 1 Aug 2004 at 18:57, Mike Geary wrote:

> WOE!
>
> by Czeslaw Milosz
>
>
> It is true, our tribe is similar to the bees.
> It gathers honey of wisdom, carries it, stores it in honeycombs.
> I am able to roam for hours
> Through the labyrinth of the main library, floor to floor.
> But yesterday, looking for the words of masters and prophets
> I wandered into high regions
> That are visited by practically no one.
> I would open a book and could decipher nothing
> For letters faded and disappeared from the pages.
> Woe! I exclaimed -- so it comes to this?
> Where are you, venerable ones, with your beards and wigs,
> Your nights spent by a candle, griefs of your wives?
> So a message saving the world is silenced forever?
>
> At your home it was the day of making preserves.
> And your dog, sleeping by the fire, would wake up,
> Yawn and look at you -- as if knowing.
>
> * * * * * *
>
>
> GAUDE!
>
> by Mike Geary
>
> I don't know how wasps find their nests.
> and I can't even imagine the nose maps of dogs,
> or how willow roots know in dark dirt where water is.
> There's an explanation for these things I know,
> for nothing happens but Law allows it.
>
> A missile rises out of the sea and sails
> a thousand miles to it's target,
> a sudden end to everything therein.
> No mystery here. We've a calculus for this.
> All the world should be as advanced as us.
>
> I don't know what 'knowing 'means.
> Quite unexpectedly my heart races,
> my breath deepens, I feel confused --
> all at the sight of you. I don't know why,
> but my body must. Mind is body shouting: "Gaude!"

Book review by Diderik Humble jr.

2004-07-17T15:32:00.000Z

Author and poet Diderik Humble jr. submitted the following as per boook review of Milan Kundera's Igorance. It takes an ignorant...

It is up for consideration by the Utopos Book Review Council, 15 Parlsey Street, Sussex. And I will say this only once: Any notes of queries should be addressed to them.

Editorially,

phatic

***

A Last Sermon for Milan Kundera

Communism didn't collapse, Milan. Regimes self-identifying as state socialist crumbled and dissappeared. In most of the so-called communist bloc. But even that statement can't be generalized, Milan. Belo-Russia still self-identifies as such. What about Cuba? What abut the so-called welfare states, or mixed economies (admittedly crumbling to the pressures of capital interest), those places where reformism managed to crush the revolutionaries? What about North Korea, China? What about the millions of underprivileged that live in my flower pots under the weight of five hundred suns?

What about the dreams of your youth, Milan? Do you remember what team you supported before you resigned to the advice of bookmakers? Do you remember how the blood flowed in your veins, Milan, when you realized that this here world is conjunctive? Do you think, Milan, that you were the only one to make your observations?

Do you feel lonely and abandoned now, Milan, or do you hope for the redemption in a mortal community of cowards? Do you really believe that they will save your memory? Will they remember their own betrayal as they will remember yours?

For there is something to glean from your writing, Milan Kundera.

Betrayal.

Linkage

2004-07-17T15:23:00.000Z

Sometimes when you stroll the streets of Catmen Town or attend a conference of confederates, you notice a link. It retrieves in you the memory of dismemberment, when your arm was just an arm, and your eyes may have been drifting around it, detached. It may have been your older brother before he was flushed down and left to retention.

Anyway, sometimes you are reminded you are not, in fact, a tourist in this place. You may be wearing your fancy shirt, or you might be waiting for someone. Perhaps you are on your way home from work, the path you've been walking so many times, you've forgotten its pathness. And then all of a sudden you remember that once this path was foreign to you, before it became a part of you, taken for granted like your old cup of Joe.

Some people say it's your personal god, your chi, that is attending to you. Others call it a kind of telepathic energy, insisting, perhaps, on the divisibility of bodies.

They don't know about your older brother, buried in some sewer, returned, purified, to the waters that serve as a source for your morning shower.

"I Sleep With Large Eyes"

2004-07-17T15:11:00.000Z

Poem by Torgeir Schjerven in translation. Enjoy.

http://home.no.net/torgfje/utopos/images/sleep.jpg

Subject: [lit-ideas] the perverted soup eater joke

2004-06-02T22:16:00.000Z

could i have another hair in my soup please?

clubbing

2004-06-02T21:51:00.000Z

act!

imagine the role to perform
perform the role to imagine

t-shirt (green)

front print: same same
back print: but different

tractions

planes for landing, sirens
traces of violated Phusis

audible frictions of acts designed to relive pressure
extend the system of body parts, re-bundle nerves

CROSS the corpus collosum
transverse the stadium, battlefield

track the symptoms of presence
follow either trace of the whiffletree

notes for tractions

traction:
1. The friction between a body and the surface on which it moves (as between an automobile tire and the road)
2. (orthopedics) the act of pulling on a bone or limb (as in a fracture) to relieve pressure or align parts in a special way during healing
syn: adhesive friction; grips
type: frictions, pullings, pulls, rubbings

tract:
1. an extended area of land
2. a system of body parts that together serve some particular purpose
3. a brief treatise on a subject of interest; published in the form of a booklet
4. a bundle of nerve fibres following a path through the brain
(types: athletic field, battlefield, corpus callosum [A broad transverse nerve tract connecting the two cerebral hemispheres])

transverse:
1. Extending or lying across; in a crosswise direction; at right angles to the long axis
(syn: cross, crossing, thwartwise, transversal)

trace, noun:
1. a just detectable amount
2. a clue that something has been present
3. a suggestion of some quality
4. drawing created by tracing
5. either of two lines that connect a horse's harness to a wagon or other vehicle or to a whiffletree

trace, verb:
1. follow, discover or ascertain the course of development of something
2. make a mark or lines on a surface
3. to go back over again, as of a route or steps
4. pursue or chase relentlessly
5. discover traces of
6. make one's course or travel along a path; travel of pass over, around, or along
7. copy by following the lines of the original drawing on a transparent sheet placed upon it; make a tracing of
8. read with difficulty

whiffletree:
1. A crossbar that is attached to the traces of a draft horse and to the vehicle or implement that the horse is pulling

2004-04-25T22:27:00.000Z

URIs for Lies (1999, dir. Sun-Woo Jang):
http://www.shincine.com/lies/eng_introduction.htm

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208995/

Good review, discussing intersection sex/religion:
http://www.plume-noire.com/movies/cult/lies.html

Even better review, discussing link to de Sade and the politics of orgasm, ie. George Bataille etc):
http://www.indiewire.com/movies/rev_001115_Lies.html

The movie is based on a novel by Jung-Il Chang. There's an overview of his work here:
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:p0LaTQ650IwJ:kuba.korea.ac.kr/~leekj/chang_jung_il.html+Jung-Il+Chang&hl=en

Can't find any work in translation at the moment, though...

2004-04-19T14:14:00.000Z

Hurry up please it's time

Poor Albert won't leave you alone
You took some pills to take the edge off
Albert with his round stomach and broken penis
You, kneeling, in Albert's shower

Hurry up please it's time

April is the cruellest month
I don't belong here
His hands around my waist
Your feet crawling away

Hurry up please it's time

For Cocaine Nights and Junkies
For uppers and downers and downtown trainspotting
For CDs and DVDs and Wireless and Bluetooth
For MDs and PhDs and tubes and lubes

Hurry up please it's time

One more time, once again
Cocaine Nights and Junkies
April is the cruellest month
Poor Albert won't leave you alone

Hurry up please it's time

2004-04-17T22:48:00.000Z

Sometimes it seems like I don't have it, while everybody else do, and it's kinda embarrassing that I have this kind of incapacity, I don't want anyone to know that it is like that, and I have to engage in all sorts of dubious manouvers to keep it out of sight to everybody else. But sometimes it's different. Sometimes it seems as if I am the one who has it, while others don't. Some kind of secret knowledge, you don't say. Some kind of ability for empathy. Some kind of universal empathy.

My hands grow out of themselves.

it is dusk. it is after dusk. night had fallen over the city even the underground world where I sat and write what I like with this Japanese brand named computer. it comes from nowhere it comes from everywhere there is no longer a link between space and adjective. breath. just keep breathing. in out. breath. listen to the beat. it is your heart beating. breath. in and out.

more contrived. like an explosion it must soar. it must run over the pages like a fugitive chasing for a future tne\
i have to go to court. i'm a witness. to my own trial. whose trial. who is to judge what happened that afternoon? who was the agent? what was the cause and what the effect, i function better with the sun in my eyes i go by.

take a second of me. reduce me seduce me dress me up and seduce me. no sense that yiyu can trust me trick or tream it must be written mi itself.

fjkdlsalskdejjowksossiejd |ke adsadf w3wd wsiwd dhf wskqa sjdhf ska s s vne iska iejr weia djeoix eiw ajks fiej sja eid ewiee.,dsikekd.s diiejnn cd

2004-04-12T17:44:00.000Z

Carnival Love

It comes in the form of a few milligrams
It can have any number of colors and shapes
It is assertive and submissive, but never misses
a carnivorous carnival

carnage me implanate me

Sometimes you can see the bubbles imploding
Sometimes the heat of the flame spurting out of the carnival's belly drains you in sweat
Sometimes you can drown yourself in the puls the beat the stomping feet
And yet to rest inside this spectacle

forget me leave my flesh

Run! Follow that gargantuan rabbit through the hole
What does memory deserve? Paper slips and Polariods?
Monuments and deities? Holy holy thy memory of me
At the carnival embracing strobing rolling over
Laughing remembering

It's been 33 years
I have been waiting a long time for this carnival
In the City of God there's too much mindless killing
I want to kiss you mindfully

Imigood what kindof carnival is this? That man has taken his shirt off,
Oh, and that girl is sitting on her knees and, oh no...
Adreanline kick me, hit me with your hammer and strike me out of this state of the
Carnival

A thousand eyes watching me from the walls of this carnival-theatre
How are you doing? Are you all right?
Man in gray sweater, discreete medic
Iris rolling around in his head outside somewhere in the mist, the fog, blown, beaten,
Where are you now, my soul? Where did you fly that night of they beat you, bruised you?
Will you return upon my return?
Will you again reveal your wings to my reason?

What are we waiting for? When will the moment arrive when we will, finally, collapse this structure of reason and turn, make a turn, somehow, globally, I mean, totally, structurally. No neautral position. The passivity of the bottom depends on the activity of the top. You don't say.

2004-04-09T19:37:00.000Z

Tautological shapes

Oval rolls awkwardly
Line squeaks and sneaks
An equation can never be the same

You turn a corner in the Tate Modern and face Dalí's "Narcissus"
Carved in stoned you hardly sense the flower that springs from your head
You recede behind the mountain catching
A last look at yourself in the river, stoned

So many of us and yet so few
So many duplications and

the joy and the laughter and the paraknowledge
that's on offer, up there, at the third floor at the Tate Modern when you
suspend your self, Kant-like, or
distract extract contract and explode your self
in front of Matisse's headless therapist,
opening his coat to reveal his interior: a bird cage
opened, and yet two birds remain there, perching,
resting waiting

I leave my mind at the counter of another restless nightwatch
It is cold, next stop the Fridge
Rolling over and over, speaking, squeaking, sneaking
Equating same with same

Clapham Junction, London
9 April 2004

2004-04-09T01:34:00.000Z

Returning to repairmen POMPEL&PILT (dir. Ebbe Ording), we made some investigations into whether this fine piece of TV entertainment, in the form of puppeteering 1960s style is available to young and eager minds of today. And lo and behold. NRK, the Norwegian State Broadcaster is now publishing the series as a DVD for the meager price of NKR 199 (USD 28.7123 according to http://www.xe.com/ucc/). From the web jacket:

Puppet show in black and white, with figures that were always contained in a large hall, without walls or ceiling, but equipped with doors leading nowhere. They argued incessantly, and lived in perennial fear of Gorgon the Custodian and his ravenous son. http://butikken.nrk.no/butikk/product246.html

POMPEL&PILT was first aired on NRK in 1969, and then re-broadcast several times. In around 1985 the pressure from pedagogical quarters on NRK that the series had anti-pedagogical content made the broadcaster submit that it was not "fit for children." In 1994 they caved in to contrary pressure, however, and transmitted it one more time. The current head of programming for youth and children in NRK, Kalle Fürst, calls it a "classic of cultural history." It was "pioneering and surrealist. I can't fathom how NRK in 1969 dared to put resourses into a series as peculiar as this, completely absurd in form and content." However, it is not of "sufficient quality" for children of today, even if Fürst promises to consider broadcasting it to an "adult audience, at night." He doesn't shy away from recommending the DVD on sale from his employer's sidekick on-line store, though. And hence and in all ways demonstrates his loyalty to Employer and Provider. Well done, Kalle. (http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=38456.)

Anyway, this post was supposed to introduce the series. Bjørg and Arne Mykle wrote the script and made the dolls. There's photographs with them and the dolls at http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=38462. If you look closely you'll see that Pompel (the older chap with the tired eyes) and Pilt (younger and with more hair) don't have mouths.

There's another photo, in black and white, at http://home.powertech.no/shoiem/turidg/pp/reparatorene.html with Pompel to the left, Pilt to the right, and Gorgon the Custodian in the center. It's kinda difficult to explain the story line, if there is one. Child psychologist Thore Langfeldt describes the mood of POMPEL&PILT as "chilling, funny and surprising" at the same time. Professor of Media Sociology Eva Bakøy explains that it made a radical break with the norm of children's television of the 1960s and 70s.

"It has no happy ending, doesn't offer a sense of that 'everything will be OK', and it communcates a chaotic and incomprehensible world," she says, adding that, first and foremost, "it was FUNNY" (http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=38460). There's more on Bakøy's research at http://www.forskning.no/Artikler/2002/juni/1022772677 (in Norwegian).

We have managed to ascertain that there is at least five episodes of POMPEL&PILT available, and that there might be a sixth episode made. The titles of the first five parts are:
1. The repairmen are coming
2. The repairmen are returning
3. The repairmen are coming and coming
4. The repairmen are coming again
5. The repairmen are returning again

The disputed sixth episode is probably entitled "The revenge of the repairmen."

The music was performed by Arild Boman on organ, Helge Hurum, flute, and Espen Rud, drum sponge and percussion. The drum sponge was made on the basis of an old matress, onto which a number of bells and other objects were attached. When the repairmen walked around in their vast, open spaces, the sound from the drum sponge would evoke a sense of uncertainty and polyphony.

As repairmen Pompel and Pilt move around in this building, or whatever it is, trying to negotiate their way past door that lead nowhere, or back into the same room as they had just left, they meet several characters, some friendly, some not. Gorgon the Custodian appears to be the one who has comissioned Pompel and Pilt to repair something. This observation is based on that every time they encounter him, they ask if he has anything that needs repair. Upon hearing the question, Gorgon goes off on a long harangue consisting of words that resemble or sound like "repair," like a grown-up lost in her or his own long, incomprehensible sentences. When Gorgon enters into this kind of trance, Pompel and Pilt seize on the opportunity to run away, but always ends up in more difficult and mysterious situations.

They also meet Gorgon's wife and his rapacious son, Gorgon the Custodian's Assistant. Then there's also the Moffedill, who gets by on eating keys, and the numerous Migrants, who look somewhat like bicycle pumps with funny rasta hair and necks that keep extending and contracting, while they whistle. They are always busy and confusing.

Pompel and Pilt never really get to repair anything. Their world is not only confusing and absurd. It is also beyond repair.

You can download some soundbites to get a further sense of the atmosphere in the series. Each episode contains a scene where Pompel reminds Pilt that now he should surely understand that it is better with two repairmen than with no repairmen: http://home.powertech.no/shoiem/turidg/lyd/bedre.wav.

Gorgon the Custodian goes into his strange trance-like state here: http://home.powertech.no/shoiem/turidg/lyd/gorgon.wav.

A makeshift translation of the first part of the first episode is available from Utopos: http://home.no.net/torgfje/utopos/pandp.html.

It is now slightly updated, with some stage directions added, and some wording changed here and there.

2004-04-07T14:15:00.001Z

On 6 Apr 2004 at 17:15, Michael Geary wrote on lit-ideas:

Do you like my subject line (gigawatt chivalrous inflammatory handyman drainage)? All life['s] a random event. So it's randomness we must order into meaning. Here is a perfect phrase to practice on, say I. I suggest a contest to determine what that subject line is all about.

Dear Mr Geary and Judge(s)

We here at the Utopos Office of Spam Encryption (UOSE) would like to submit the following entry in your contest. It was devised by taking advantage of author Diderik Humble Jr.s self-devised Encryption Routine, programmed in Pascal, to produce the following:

gigawatt, proper name, possibly a symbolic representation of a distant relative of President Megawati, who is up for elections. here it serves as interpellative, as in

* gigawatt, i want you to do something for me, and here comes what it is...

which renders the proper transcription thus:

1. "Gigawatt, [perform the] 'chivalrous, inflammatory handyman drainage' [now, please]"

which makes it obvious that the implied narrator instructs Gigawatt to operate a particular KIND OF handyman drainage. These considerations leads us to the question of what the "chivalrous [and] inflammatory" type of handyman drainage would be. On this the Routine remains silent.

On behalf of UOSE,
phatic
[sign]
editor

2004-04-01T22:54:00.000Z

WITTERS_LOOP.BAS

10 GOTO 10

2004-03-31T22:53:00.000Z

Five indications that you might have spent too much time on-line

1. You double click the remote
2. You tilt your head when smiling
3. You turn on your computer on your way from bed to take your morning shower
4. You get up at 3am to use the toilet, and just have to check your mail
5. Your on-line affair has lasted longer than any other affair you've had

Darwin P. Johnson
president

PS!!!!

i only get four out of five. (i watch streaming video.)

Adapted from Jørgen at http://www.humor911.com/femting/

2004-03-30T22:50:00.000Z

Researchers at two leading universities have issued a study countering
the music industry's central theme in its war on digital piracy, saying
file sharing has little impact on CD sales.

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62871,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

2004-03-30T22:45:00.000Z

I received a letter from Diderik Humble jr. the other day. He's arrived in Uqbar now, and the mysterious story of the life and adventures of hisself, his erstwhile "companion" Sinsemilla, Managing Director Stimos of the TRU Corporation, and Inta, delegate to the Intra-Paracelcist biannual convention at Hotel Rio Grande do Sul downtown Uqbar, will continue. Perhaps we will be offered answers to significant questions like who is Mundt? Is he, indeed, the Master of the Mansion? etc. As I have been swarmed with enthusiastic, and occasionally lewd, mails from devoted readers, urging me to continue the tale of our friends in Uqbar, I have had little time to actually write down the story as its writ. Hence and therefore and without further ado, let me cede the floor to Diderik Humble jr., by way of aforementioned letter.

Umfuweto, phatic,

I hope all is well back in The Specter of Kabool, and that you're managing in your bungalow on the Bagdad Banks. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversations, and Sinsemilla sends her regards as well.

Uqbar isn't much like it's rumoured to be. The old buildings are still here, sure, but there's a certain barrenness about them. It's like returning to a future that somehow got lost in the past.

Anyway, the other day I attended a lecture on "The Mirror of Sport, or Couching the Performer" at the Uqbar Institute of Titting and Tatting. I just missed one Prof McEnroy's paper on "Once you Pop you can't Stop: How Nike Changed my Life and Other(ed) Observations." The conference was obviously a success, and, amid the pools of plastic glasses filled with champagne and mini-sandwiches, I managed to lodge myself in Auditorium Terminus, just as one Prof Kingfisher took the podium in elegant strides, his coat whirling about him like the flaps of a bat-costume, briefly disguising his limp. As he turned to face the audience, I realized that he was a rather oldish professor, possibly emeritus, I figured, but with a distinct and forceful voice. Professor Kingfisher wore dark, slim sunglasses, matching his silver-gray mane and black suit. I'll copy some of my lecture notes here. I hope you find some use of them, or not.

Diderik Humble jr's lecture notes

Lacan's Mirror Stage: Alienating armour of identity. To locate identity ("thou art that!") only first step, before journey even begins. What is the world like before mirror stage? No way of knowing, since our knowing is always mediated. No social, shared knowledge without communication, mediation. Could there be knowledge outside the social, shared? We couldn't know: If a tree falls in the forest and no-one is there to hear it, would it still make a sound? We can't know. We can guess. But no way of determining or knowing it. It is a kind of speculative knowledge we're reduced to when trying to speak about the world before communication. It is when we start communicating that we enter into the world of communicating beings, into society. But entering into society also means entering into a structure, a rule-governed practice, and these rules we learn only slowly and through much pain and misunderstanding.

In a sense we could say that the very premise of us communicating is that I can distinguish between myself and others. So the sense of I/other is cruical for it to be communication what so ever. But what is this I? What am I? Today we usually understand this question as a question of identity. What am I becomes "what is my identity". But let's consider some possible identities: Woman, man, racial, classed (poor/rich or worker/capitalist), sportsman, student, Britney Spears fan, YAP, etc. The point is that these classifications and their attendant identities (practices, appearances, technologies, methodologies) are all given. If I want to be a Britney Spears fan there are certain rules I must adher to in order to be recognized as one. And these rules are made before us. So identifying with these identities don't makes us individual, as they may have promised. We thought, somewhere along the line, that we needed some identity that would distinguish us from out parents, friends,
school mates, rivals, etc., and it turns out that we are simply moving from one kind of social constraint to another.

In fact, going "overboard" in a quest for singularity could be one possible characteristic of the obsessional. Perhaps we could say that the obsessional has figured out precisely the logic of individualization: She desires the supreme, total and absolute individuality, but by the same token acquires nothing but confirming the logic of individualism. Confronted with the total scope of individualist isolation, the obsessive could be said to engage in an attempt to subvert it by over-identifying with it.

Let's consider the joke from Monty Python's Life of Brian for a second. "You are all individuals." The crowd repeats in one voice, "We are all individuals." Except one fella who declares: "I'm not." The gist is of course that us being called upon to be different individuals can only lead to that everybody become more of the same, and the only means through which to subvert it is by denying that one is different. It is a paradoxical conclusion, but apparently necessary to the game of "individual identity".

This sense we get, then, of this identity which is not me, is the point of Jacques Lacan's The Mirror Stage. Our call to "identify ourselves" is perhaps precisely one of those requirements we meet when we are engaged in the world of social communication, the game of distinguishing self (friend) from other (foe). The attendant alienation from our selves is a characteristic effect of our passing through the Mirror Stage of childhood development. I will now go through some of the central points in Lacan's argument, and will return in the end with some notes of how we may use these notions to interrogate the meaning and purpose of sport.

- inchoate, disparate, pre-symbolic, fragmented body, imaginary

- indications: dreams, paintings of Bosch, jokes

- stages: hysteria, obsession, paranoiac alienation

- fiction of I (fortress), phantasies, entrance into symbolic order

- primordial jealousy: someone else has something I want (projection, repression, mediated desire of the other, Oedipus)

- imaginary servitude

Sport: symbolizing activity par excellance, symbolizing violence, incoherence, ordering it

- imaginary servitude: Hand of god shows possibility of breaking symbolization, but still not unmediated?

I'm sorry if some of these notes may turn out incoherent. After the lecture I tried to approach Prof Kingfisher for a discussion on the Oedipus complex, but as he was immediately swarmed by young teenage girls aching for an autograph on some explicit limb, I ended up breaching my ideas to one of the conferees, a young lecturer from Ireland.

I asked him if he had ever taught Oedipus Rex in class, and he assured me he did, at least once a year, and we exchanged notes on student responses to various approaches to the play. I inquired about if he'd ever made use of audio-visual material, such as a videogram, and he suggested Guthrie's famous 1954 version.

I didn't want to tell him that I hadn't seen it, or never even heard about it.

"What about Fellini's version?" I proposed.

He asked me how it had worked, and I had to admit that it was less than satisfactory. Students tended to focus on the graphic violence, amplified by Fellini in that he lets Oedipus kill the sphinx. I mean, isn't there a difference between shaving and decapitating, now? Also, while instructive, the framing narrative wasn't really that helpful for our purpose, ie. in that particular class.

"Try Guthrie," the Irishman said, breaking out in a big smile, and slapping me on the back like there was no tomorrow.

Conferences, huh.

Stay well, brother.

Diderik Humble jr.

(sign)

2004-03-19T12:47:00.000Z

OK, so I gotta update this blog. Went to listen to Manuel Castells' lecture on "Politics and Power in the Network Society" at London School of Economics yesterday. A lot could be said. The most profound flabbergastation was derived from audience watching. LSE students aren't nearly as outer-worldly as us of the provinces sometimes fancy. Or, uhh, well, they are, kinda. Anyway, this paragraph isn't leading anywhere.

Highlights:

There is a CRISIS OF POLITICAL LEGITIMACY!!! Big news from Castells here. He's referring to party politics in the parliamentary form, but "forgot" to mention that caveat. Oh, and he knows his Poulanzas. During the Q&A Castells was courting the Angry Young Marxists to Step Forward so he could Baffle them with his knowledge of Marxist History and why it Failed. Great.

The Arnold-vote was NOT a vote to the right but "a vote to terminate the political class." Snappy line, but, again, Castells scores on conflating "politics" with "professional party politicians operating under liberal democratic institutions." So it's a protest vote to him. Besides patronizing the electorate (interpellated as "citizens" in Castells' discourse), it also situates the speaker in the comfortable center. The angry ones, those who don't understand grown-ups' politics, they are extremists! Boo!

Interesting quantitative tid-bit: In Inglehart's World Values Survey we may extrapolate that regional identification figured more prominently in Southern Europe, while national identification was more pronounced in Northern Europe. FWIW.

Castells conflates the theatrical aspect of contemporary mediated politics with the unreliable. He claims the electorate doesn't trust politicians anymore. But what's new about this? Did the serf ever trust that the landlord had the serf's best interest in mind? Should politicians and the political system be regarded as some kind of god we should respond dutifully to when asked to sacrifice our children? Hey, Castells, go kill me a son.

The rest of the talk was actually about Power in Social Networks. Far more Foucauldian and hence interesting. Problem is he wants it both ways. He wants to maintain a notion of agency ("social actors") and at the same time claim that if you're outside the network you're powerless. It's a tricky one. Would it be possible to be in/outside except in a sense of individual connectivity? (Besides, does it really hold? There are linkages to the WWW even for those not actually online?)

There's more to be said. Perhaps I'll return to Castells' theory of domination and resistance in networks. He ended his lecture by mentioning how the demonstrations in Spain last Saturday had been organized by way of SMS, WiFi and other networked technologies. The participation of young voters increased dramatically from last election. (So there is hope? So Castells is a spokesperson for liberal parliamentarism, no?)

2004-02-12T15:41:00.000Z

Person A, chapter 8: The Return of the Repair Men

Director Stimos woke with a rush. He'd had another of those horrible nightmares, those returns of childhood indignities, that cursed evening. Stimos rolled slowly over in his bed an lifted the phone off the hook. It was this kind of business he'd hired Dr. Snout to rid him of.

Director Stimos had heeded all the advice he had been given. At first he had cried his bitter tears, but quietly, outside the possibility of being caught-out weeping. He had figured that he would have to "get over it", as they said.

The Stimos family was one of the founders of the TRU Corporation, and Director Stimos was expected to attend one of the Corporation's top business or law colleges. And he was expected to do well. The latter proved no difficulty to the young Stimos. It was deciding which college to attend that kept him occupied. At the advice of his childhood friend Tom, he'd decided to go to Woolbridge Academy, a combined law and business school specializing in game theory and the singularity of mind. A cornerstone of the TRU Corporation's School of Cogito, Woolbridge received corporate funded for range anthropological and financial research programs in the newly acquired businesses.

Stimos put all his energy into his schoolwork, and, at the age of 20, became a full member of the financial research team designated to provide a program to "Restructure and Capitalize Nam Viet Finances". Stimos' zeal and affective performance stunned his elder colleagues in the program, and he was elected manager of the program's "outreach and friendship" company in the midst of Nam Viet. There he met Michael K., and the rest is history.

Stimos had to take his part of the blame for the Nam Viet fiasco, and had to accept a number of back-office appointments in the decades following the outbid of the TRU Corporation. Employees of Nam Viet had secretly sold their private shares to Dong Tse Inc., enabling TRU's eternal enemy to secure a majority at the yearly convention. Stimos got out of the morass early enough to find employment with a fringe operation in TRU. Several of his colleagues from the Woolbridge program had ended up financially destitute and publicly ridiculed. The head of the program had committed suicide. TRU Corporation had changed management after the fiasco.

So Stimos considered himself lucky, after all. His lovely young thing of a wife was not to know anything of how close he had, in fact, been to the so-called "unsavoury methods" that had been used in TRU's attempt to gain control over Nam Viet. She would never know. And even if she knew... Well, it didn't matter.

His peer group from Woolbridge had emerged scarred but intact when they met at a college reunion party a decade later. The result of their friendship was the now much-discussed action plan for "The Third Empire: Project for a TRU Millenium". They had chosen Randolph Beaverton as their front figure and candidate for the ceremonial position as Corporate President, while Stimos were to coordinate New Acquisitions Policies.

In the mean time, Randolph's brother Julian, had designed a plan to intervene in the program that counted votes on the yearly convention, and, taken by surprise, Stimos found himself head of TRU's New Acquisition's Implementation Program. When TRU acquired EyeRak, Stimos was appointed Managing Director of the new merger.

Stimos set out to make the new TRU EyeRak not just another jewel in Randolph's crown, but a shining one at that. The new merger wouldn't just supply TRU with gold and diamonds, but also unlimited access to muses. The Spring of Muses, as you will remember from chapter one, having previously been under EyeRaki control. In short, Stimos sougth to make TRU EyeRak a model for new acquisitions and mergers. The corporate management were securely located inside the TRU Wall of Freedom, guarded by 2nd Division of the TRU Republican guard. Stimos spent most of his time at the Corporate HQ downtown Bagdad, in a building his father had erected during his time as corporate governor, as it was called then, of this area.

Stimos weren't as worried about hidden away shares on EyeRaki hands, foreshadowing a repetition of the Nam Viet fiasco. His was more concerned about the Deconstructionists, a fringe corporation where many of the previous managements' staff had found work. Their membership was elusive, and they would rarely declare themselves as such. But Stimos had a way of finding them out. He'd ask them about Maradona scoring with his hand in 1986, and if they refused to agree that Maradona was bad, they would loose all their corporate privileges.

TRU's top executives didn't believe the Deconstructionists would have any chance at regaining control of the corporation, not as long as Julian Beaverton was in charge of Democratic Procedures. At board meetings nobody would bring up precisely why the Deconstructionists posed such a threat, but when Stimos had suggested moving towards legislating them as 'formally terrorists', the board members had all nodded in relief. They all had their private reasons that shouldn't be Found Out.

Stimos' private reason had to do with the nightmares. When he relocated to Bagdad, he had secretly sought out the advice of one Dr Snout, who was the Head Psychiatrist of the Revelation and Re-Socialization of New TRU Subjects Program in TRU EyeRak. At was only triggered by finding himself on the brink of desperation one early September morning, when he hadn't managed to close his eyes all night, visions of doors hammering and rushed steps in the room above him. He couldn't keep his mind concentrated at meetings, and, yet, he couldn't sleep at night. Stimos would get into fits of rage, sometimes clearly uncalled for, yelling at junior members of the Management that they didn't try hard enough.

"Do you know how hard I have to try? Do you think this is easy?!" Stimos would shout, and send them off with some elaborate clerical work.

Dr Snout had recommended Stimos to get in touch with his anger, to let it's power reign him, so as to get it out of his body.

"For a man of your position," Dr Snout had said, "I would recommend attending, and, perhaps, even participating, in some of the Revelation and Re-Socialization Programs we have going now here in TRU EyeRak. What we got going here is far beyond the old hearts and minds-approach, I can assure you. We hold that it is also necessary to win their bodies. Yes, I can see your astonishment, but this is our firm resolution. We are using the most refined Re-Socialization Procedures in our Room of Revelations, and a man in such a prominent position as yourself, would not have a problem being admitted, I can assure you. It is completely legal, all within the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism act, I can assure you. It wouldn't be popular, one could assume, in the eyes of TRU Shareholders, I mean, if all details were to come out, so we practice strict discretion, of course."

Stimos had spent a good few nights in the Room of Revelations after this encounter, and found that he enjoyed it thoroughly. And the subjects did reveal what they were supposed to, finally, and they we're granted amnesia after a rather exhausting procedure. In fact, Stimos spent more nights in the Room of Revelations than at Home, having taken a dislike in the walls and the guards. It made the area seem somewhat, uh, dated and unappealing. And then he couldn't believe how churlish he'd been as to the policy of spatial control. It's all about Mind Space, control the Mind Space, and you won't need walls and guards.

It was a slower, but far more resistant method, Stimos had to admit, and he would implement it on a far larger scale. Stimos was, after all, a true child of modernity. Reflecting on his own artwork as Chief Inquisitor in the Drama of Revelations, he would go so far as to call his performance as modernist. They questioned the very existence of the individual. Since there is no solid ground for control in the individual it must come down on the body, Dr. Snout claimed, so as to alter mind-body relations. Oh, yeah, he'd let it come down on the body.

And still the nightmares didn't go away. He had been shifting around in his parents' bedroom. He couldn't have been more than 12, because he was still in Primary School. His parents had left for work, and in his mother's drawers he found a pair of lace panties that he wanted to try on. They felt soft and warm, and got quite turned on by the scene, and went over to look at himself wearing the panties in their head-to-floor bedroom mirror.

One day his mother must have had forgotten something or other at home, because she came back to the house, and, without any forwarning of any sort, had walked straight into the bedroom, while he was standing there with his erection and her lace panties. Oh, it was demeaning, all right.

Dr. Snout had encouraged him, then, to get in touch with this side of himself. Stimos went on to wear lace panties during the night sessions in the Room of Revelations. But it musn't come out.

Stimos had finally let his wife pull him to the opera one late night of Fall. It was a Brechtian rendition of The Repair Men are Coming, the 70s puppet show, but this time with actors with bodies as sumo-wrestlers. Pompel, the older repair man, had his small, comic hat on, and Pilt, the younger of the two, was adorned with curls. Stimos was both of them. He knew that, but would never tell wifey, of course, or anyone else for that matter, with the exception of clandestine occations at Dr. Snout's office and with the Brotherhood, as he liked to call it. They all knew, but, then, he knew things about them, too. Things that they wouldn't want to come out.

Anyway, Pompel was trying to repair a set of Domino pieces in one of the key scenes of the performance. He had just arrived at the moment when he's about to tip the first piece over so that the rest of them collapses with a long, satsifying drum roll, when the lights in the theatre went out. The audience started mumbling, looking for their belongings, rummaging through their pockets for their mobile phones, when all the strobe lights at the podium were turned on, pointing at the audience. A choir came on, dressed in tight-fitting blue uniforms and reciting:

The Repair Men are cumming and cumming (a literary pestish with notes and appendices, a Le Speranza)

Pestish being a portmanteau word consisting of pesto, and pastiche, the literary genre.

It was clearly about Lacan's signifying economy, and about how to exchange symbolic values. The choir continued:

The desire to alienate the mother is in fact a negotiated response to Mother's desire to reclaim and devour what was of the mother in a pre-symbolic stage. Hence, we are facing a tranference whereby the symbolic value of supremacy is exchanged from the Body-of-Mother (The Matrix) to the subject, in return for an iterable recurrence of this Other-as-Object in the originary locus of the dialectic!

Stimos' wife was crying as they drove home. He went to "settle some business" at the Head Office.

There had been reports that the Deconstructionists were making headway into the the relatively remote companies in the Uqbar division. Agitators had claimed that gifts may suffer multiple faiths, and that the gift of submission may not be the appropriate counter gift to the take over. Then, as if out of the blue, the TRU Times had reported that a group of Paracelcists were holding a convention in Uqbar. It would be impossible to charge the entire group with terrorism, so, after conferring with his councelors, Stimos decided that they would target their future leader, so as to make an example, as was the fate of Cardinal Mistos.

Dr. Snout had insisted that it was the most efficient way to make headway, and Stimos had no reservations. He charged Piece of Cholif Mundt with apprehending the leader, but quietly. A solid case must be brought against her before we let it come out, he declared.

2004-02-11T15:39:00.000Z

There's a translation of the first episode of Pompel and Pilt online.

2004-01-29T15:33:00.000Z

What Ibsen never wrote about Kierkegaard (but Nietzsche thought)

1. Kierkegaard admired Abraham's leap of faith, while acknowledging he hadn't made it (for) himself.

2. Ibsen subscribed reincarnation. Was he aware?

3. Peer Gynt reworks Kierkegaard's required leap: Here's someone, like Kierkegaard, who hasn't made it. Is Peer Gynt the butt of a joke? Is he a weakling, a coward, someone who is not being there?

4. Is he like Borges' I:

I am he who knows himself no less vain
than the vain looker-on who in the mirror
of glass and silence follows the reflection
or body (it's the same thing) of his brother.
I am, my silent friends, the one who knows
there is no other pardon or revenge
than sheer oblivion. A god has granted
this odd solution to all human hates.
Despite my many wondrous wanderings,
I am the one who never has unravelled
the labyrinth of time, singular, plural,
gruelling, strange, one's own and everyone's.
I am no one. I did not wield a sword
in battle. I am echo, emptiness, nothing.

5. Objectify your 'I'!

What is 'I'? Lacan: Object a is the fantasmatic 'stuff of the I',
as that which confers on the /S/, on the fissure in the symbolic
order, on the ontological void that we call 'subject', the
ontological consistency of a 'person', the semblance of a fullness of
being.

"What is I but a metaphor?"

6. Let's vacate I

7. Appear in style

2004-01-27T15:22:00.000Z

Nationalism as the discourse of a post-imperial community is not given in the academic literature. Several commentators have remarked on the dominance of eurocentrism in scholarship on nationalism, and in any case, as Ania Loomba have pointed out, it may be that nationalism is only one possible outcome of a "kernel" of resistance, to borrow from Zizek.

2004-01-26T21:51:00.000Z

From last night's concert on lit-ideas:

Bloomfontein

Let's leave this place tonight Lazarillo said
We can't stay if we gotta keep a head
We packed up the car with drinks and smoke
And left the city as the thunder stroke
We were on our way...
to Bloomfontein

Lazarillo had a pipe it was made of bone
And he didn't wanna smoke it all alone
I was driving the car through the thundering rain
Swirling softly into another domain
We were on our way...
to Bloomfontein

Lazarillo had the munchies so we stopped by the road
Our hunger was about to switch to overload
But the guys at the station didn't like our guts
We left in a rush to save our butts
We were on our way...
to Bloomfontein

An hour later our car broke down
We decided to walk to the next town
But just outside freedom we were stopped
By two guys who wanted our journey chopped
We were on our way...
to Bloomfontein

The took us to a cell in the local station
Lazarillo said, 'hey, we're just on vacation'
But the cops said, 'You guys, your asses mean trouble'
Decided to add to the woe make it double
We were on our way...
to Bloomfontein

A bird was chirping in my ear when I opened my eyes
The first thing that I saw wuz Lazarillo's prize
He'd won a beating for his pretty face
So we lit up a pipe an left for outer space
We were on our way...
to Bloomfontein

Lazarillo and I hitched a ride to Bloomfontein
We thought it was the endpoint of our campaign
On observation in the streets, out of cash
Trying to make some dough in a flash
We were heading out...
of Bloomfontein

I also performed Suzanne Vega's Calypso and a recent composition, Departures.

It went well. Great audience. Keep singing.

2004-01-26T21:42:00.000Z

From Thomas F's Last Notes to the Public:

The riot
by Kjell Askildsen

When I read or when I'm occupied by solving chess problems, I often sit and look out the window. One never knows if something will happen that's worth attending, even if it's unlikely. Last time it happened was three or four years ago. But then again it could offer some diversion to everyday life as well, and outside the window there is, at least, movement. In here it's only me and the hand of the clock.

But three or four years ago I saw something remarkable, and that's the last remarkable thing I've seen, even though, as I've pointed out, I'm not indifferent to more ordinary acts, such as people fighting, who are beating and kicking each other, or people falling over on the sidewalk and remain there because they're too drunk or ill to get home, if they have a home, many of them probably don't, there's not enough homes in the world.

But what I saw this time was different. It must have been during Easter or Pentecost, since it wasn't winter, and I remember that I thought that these kinds of acts were reasonably connected to one of the churchly high seasons.

From my window I look down upon a short, intersecting street, it is short enough for me to see the end of it without any difficulty, my eyes are good.

I had been keeping an eye on two flies mating in the windowsill, so it probably must have happened during Pentecost, it was a kind of diversion to me, even if they practically didn't move. I wasn't aroused by watching them, although I remember I often did when I was young, oh, yes, I remember it well.

So I was sitting there watching the two flies, and had just carefully touched one of the female's wings and then one of the male's wings without them taking any notice of it -- which I found a curiously strong commitment, it was after the male had sat on top of the female for at least ten minutes, I am not exaggerating, I should have spent more of my life studying insects, but, then again, why? -- when I caught eye of a man at the far end of the street behaving quite remarkably. He kind of waved his armes and then he cried out something, at first I didn't perceive exactly what it was. In certain ways he was systematical with a peculiar sence of geographic order, because he walked or dashed from the first window on the right hand side of the street to the first window on the left hand side, and from there to the second window on the right hand side and on to the second window on the left hand side, and so on, and he knocked on all the windows and cried something. It was unusual and strange, and I opened my window, it was before the hinges broke, and I heard him cry: "Jesus has come." But he cried something else, too, and I perceived it as: "I have come," and when he came closer I realized that it was correct, that was what he was crying. "Jesus has come, I have come." And all the while he dashed from one side of the street to the other and knocked on all the windows he could reach, it was upsetting to behold, religious lunacy is upsetting.

The first reaction was as surprising as it was adequate: a stool was hurled towards him from the third floor somewhere in the middle of the street. It didn't hit him, that was not the intention I would hope, but it broke into pieces, of course. It certainly was a waste of effort, the man only raised his voice, perhaps he needed a confirmation of his business being important.

The next reaction was related to the first, but less tangible, and not without a whim of comedy. A window burst open and a furious voice screamed: "I think you are stark, raving mad, my good man!" Only then did I realize that the man on the street actually was dangerous, that he triggered dispositions latent in some of his fellow people, and I thought: isn't there a sensible person with fresh legs that can go down there and end it all. Many heads were now sticking out of the windows along the street, but down there the insane man was in solitary charge of the ground.

I was facinated, I must admit it, but to an increasing extent more by the whole street scenario then by the main character. People had started making noises, they laughed and yelled to each other over the poor man's head, I have never seen such a sudden social encounter, there even was a man in the house closest to mine that called to me. I could only hear the last word, "blasphemy," and I didn't answer, of course. If he had, at least, said something reasonable, like "Emergency ward," then we could perhaps, who knows, have established some kind of exchange of greetings from window to window. But a grown- up man, he was old enough to have been my long departed wife's eldest son, with nothing more reasonable to say than "blasphemy," I have no need to exchange greetings with, I'm not that lonely yet.

Anyway. As I said, I sat there fascinated by the buzzing window-life, it reminded me of my childhood, it was probably better to be of old age at that time, I think, less lonely, and, first and foremost, one usually died within a reasonable time, -- when a man emerged from a gate. He was in a hurry and he was heading for the lunatic. He grabbed him from behind, spun him around, and hit him so hard in the face that he flailed sideways and fell. For a moment the entire street was quiet, as if everybody held their breath. Then the cacophony broke loose one more time, and now it was apparent that the disagreement had turned on the attacker. Subsequently, it didn't take long before people started emerging from the gates, and while the immediate cause of the entire commotion sat speechless and apparently immovable some meters away, a heated discussion was embarked upon, the singularities of which it was impossible to perceive, where it was obvious that the attacker also had his supporters, because all of a sudden two youths flew at each other. Oh, it was a black day for reason.

In the mean time the lunatic had gotten up, and while the youths were fighting, probably because of him, but possibly for entirely different reasons, and while some tried to go in between, he pulled further and further away, backwards, until he reached the street- corner closest to me, then he turned around and started running, it was a relief, and I can tell you that he could run.

When the flock down on the street became aware of the man's disappearance, it slowly calmed down, and one window after the other was closed. I closed mine as well, it wasn't a warm day. The world is full of unreason and confusion, unfreedom is deeply rooted, the hope for equality and a common worth fades, the powers that be are too great, it seems. We must be glad that we are as well off as we are, people say, since most people are in a worse situation. And then they take a pill for insomnia. Or for depression. Or for life. When will a new generation come that understands the meaning of equality, a generation of gardeners and foresters that can cut the large trees that put the lesser in the shade, and that can remove the suckers from the tree of knowledge.

[Translation by Torgeir Fjeld of Kjell Askildsen's "Oppløpet", first published in Thomas F's siste nedtegnelser til almenheten. Translated from the collection En plutselig frigjørende tanke, Oslo: Oktober, 1991, 199-202. A Sudden Liberating Thought available from www.amazon.com in Sverre Lyngstad's translation.]

2004-01-15T21:57:00.003Z

For Person A.

A call from the Head Office

Why was she here? Inta didn't know. When the head office had sent her to the biannual convention, they had offered no explanation, and had given no brief as to her endeavours. She turned to look out the window, and observed, with some surprise, that the moon was still up. Inta slid her feet into the slippers provided by Hotel Rio Grande do Sul, sauntered over to the desk next to the window, and contemplated the imprint she had found the night before, "hlor u fang axaxaxas mlo", and the scribble beneath, "upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned."

She picked up the paper and twisted it around between her fingers, when she came across a scribble on the flip side of the sheet as well. It looked like a poem:

Mooning

Yellow moon, yellow moon peeping through my window
Movie director, wheelchaired, observing murder

Keep it cool, keep it real (for real)
Stay where you are, moon
Be a moon, moon
Moon, moon

She jolted to the sound of the phone ringing.

"Hello, madam. Felix at the reception speaking. There's a call for you from the Head Office."

"Put it through," she said.

There was a crackling sound in her ear, a pause, and a deep, muscular voice, as if from far away, sighing as it uttered each word emphatically.

"Inta," it said. "You must make an appointment with the Master of the Mansion."

Pause.

"You will receive further instructions." Dial tone. Felix: "I guess whoever it was hung up."

Inta put the receiver down, a felt as if she was falling. She was nineteen years old and she was falling from a skyscraper, passing windows where single mothers changed their babies' diapers, where whole families had their breakfasts, where old couples stared at her, pointing at her, because she was naked, her arms tied together behind her back, still falling, falling, young men inviting her to stay awhile, falling and falling, now gagged, her speech incomprehensible even to her own ears.

"Funny," she thought. "I'm falling from the skyscraper and I'm perfectly calm, as if for every floor I pass I get older."

Inta observed her image in a fractured window. Her face look wrinkled, her hair short, and her arms bruised. She had to get out, but first she had to get to the bottom.

A knock on the door.

"Are you all right in there? Madam? Are you all right?"

Inta opened the door.

"Oh, it's you Felix. Just had a nightmare."

Felix slipped her a note.

"You received this message this morning. Can I get you anything? Would you like some breakfast brought up to your room?"

"Thank you, Felix, that would be lovely."

She unfolded the note. It read: "Who told you it was all right to love me? Certainly not me. Midnight. By the town hall." Signed Mundt.

2004-01-11T19:29:00.000Z

Letter from superego

Dear phatic,

At the Bourdieu-list, on 4 Jan 2004 at 16:54, Emrah Goker noted the journalistic/scholastic argument used by right-wing French (or Turkish) Republicans to support discrimination against young Muslim women ("We are trying to liberate them from their male fundamentalist oppressors by removing their foluard/turban") is only an excuse for the state elites' nationalist/irredentist angst.

I responded with a notion I seemed to remember from Ania Loomba's Colonialism/Postcolonialism (Routledge, 1998) that Indian nationalism came out of a struggle to control access to women. I just reread Loomba, and she's paraphrasing Partha Chatterjee on the matter:

Well before nationalism launches itself against the colonial state, anti-colonial nationalism attempts to create 'its own domain of culture (which includes religion, customs and the family). The supremacy of the West is conceded in the material world, whereas the spiritual world is claimed as the essence of national culture, one which must be protected and defended. The more colonised people imitate Western skills in the former sphere, the greater the need to protect the latter. (Loomba, p. 190)

I guess I must have confused these comments with Fanon's notes on the use of women as anti-colonial signifiers in Algeria. Not so strange, perhaps, since Chatterjee's and Fanon's sensibilities may sound similar (analogous). Fanon claims that French colonialist doctrines identified Algerian women and family relations as the crucial site for their onslaught against native culture:

If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the women; we must go and find them behind the veil where they hide themselves and in the houses where the men keep them out of sight. It is the situation of woman that was accordingly taken as the theme of action. The dominant administration solemnly undertook to defend this woman, pictured as humiliated, sequestered, cloistered ... transformed by the Algerian man into an inert, demonetized, indeed dehumanized object. ... After it had been posited that the woman constituted the pivot of Algerian society, all efforts were made to obtain control over her. ... Thus the rape of the Algerian woman in the dream of the European is always preceded by a rending of the veil. (Fanon 1965, 37pp)

Fanon the explains how "the resistance movement demanded that the nationalist Algerian woman both veil and unveil herself in its cause. She was asked at first to Europeanise herself to penetrate the European quarters of the city, since the colonial regime assumed that Westernised woman would not be part of the resistance. The unveiled Algerian woman had to fashion her body to being 'naked' and scritinised, she had to move 'like a fish in the Western waters' while 'carrying revolvers, grenades, hundreds of false identity cards and bombs'. But such a woman is not unveiled at Europe's bidding, hence she does not signify loss of cultural identity but the forging of a new nationalist self. ... Some years later, when the colonial state understood that not all unveiled women were alienated from the nationalists, the Algerian woman was ordered to veil herself again." (Loomba 193-194)

Your humble servant,
T Fjeld

2004-01-11T19:21:00.000Z

Instructions
How to change reality *
(manual in 7 movements)

1st Movement.
Make a concession: Allow realistic intrusion into your text.

2nd Movement.
How is the world around you different from how you want it to be?

3rd Movement.
Articulate the realistic element as a fictional moment.

4th Movement.
How would it be possible for this fictional moment to reintroduce
itself into the real?

5th Movement.
Imagine a possible world in which the change you want may take place.

6th Movement.
In composition, allow for realistic coherence (avoid formal collision
with realism).

7th Movement.
Disseminate and Return.

* Footnote: 'Realism' is considered dominant (and) in its
contemporary manifestation.

2004-01-10T19:11:00.000Z

Who made who?
Who made you?
Who made who?
Ain’t nobody told you?
AC/DC

What is science fiction?
A primary notion of science fiction may be that it is fiction set in the future. The word itself, though, simply indicates that it is a fictional text (not a documentary or in another genre that purports to mime a pre-discursive reality) having science as its subject matter. A popular notion of what science indicates that this type of narrative text should have its emphasis on the so-called hard sciences. This conforms to the narrative content of a number of artifacts common referred to as hallmarks of the science fiction genre: Blade Runner, Alien, Solaris, 1984, Brave New World, The Time-Machine, Metropolis, Frankenstein, and so forth. All these narratives are either set in a relatively distant future in relation to the time of narration, or, in the case of Frankenstein, in a contemporary setting with an isolated incident of a futuristic element. Other examples of the same type of fabula is found in the numerous horror- movies dealing with science “gone amuck”, where, e.g., a biological weapon is haphazardly unleashed on the general public.

While it is a mistake to cling to the idea that science fiction are restricted to themes common to (astro-)physics, biology, chemistry, etc., it has become a popular notion that the genre should deal with an imagined possible future, and that they should feature technologies that are not yet invented or not yet implemented in the way recounted by the story. Some of these futures may in turn be employed in so-called realistic or factional narratives, so that newspapers may portray an politic as “big brother policy”. They may also be productive of popular practices, such as the current obsession with “gadgets”, apparently empowered to convey as sense of avant-gardist technological edge to their owners or knowers. It is as if the entire fascination with the form of modern telecommunication is anticipated in scientific imaginigs. Because isn’t it precisely in the form that science fiction makes itself know to the popular imagination?

Besides suggesting that it is a complicated matter to distinguish clearly between fictional and factional (“realistic”) narratives and that facts may imitate fiction as much as fiction may mime facts, these insights stop at critiquing the latter part of the term, the fictional status of these narratives, but leave us short of a critique of hard science as the central organizing element of the genre. However, most of the narratives mentioned above, and also narratives that are common referred to as science fiction but that don’t conform to the generic outline above, such as Borges’ “Book of Sand” and “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, also feature a certain formal creativity. We will limit our deliberations on how to articulate this generic moment to two narratives: Jorge Luis Borges’ “Book of Sand” and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, considered as sampling a more common formal moment to which we wish to call attention.

In “The Book of Sand” the narrator acquires a monstrously expanding book, an artifact without beginning or end that threatens to usurp the entire world into itself. The narrator stores it away on top of a shelf in the basement of the Buenos Aires public library, author Borges’ workplace at the time, in the hope that it will forever remain there, as a stowed-away Pandora’s Box. The book represents a singular artifact in the story, such as was the case with the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, intruding into the normality of a narrative contemporary. But whereas Frankenstein’s monster is produced by an aberrant science, the abnormal book in Borges’ tale comes from nowhere and ends in a possible contemporary world. It doesn’t have a story of origin, and its existence doesn’t end with the completion of the narrative. It stands as an object miming the narrative act itself, unappropriable, confusing, potentially monstrous, and never-ending.

In Blade Runner, it is the replicant who provides the photographs that are the organizing core of their memory. Darren Tofts recount them as “proof artifacts” (“The World Will Be Tlön”), reminding the audience of the fictional, derived nature of the replicant’s sense of reality, but also, by diegetic implication, interrogating the audiences notion of realism. The blade runner constitutes as evidence of the replicants’ inauthentic past, an interpretation echoed by Tofts in his classification of them as “memories ... belonging to someone else”. Tofts, similarly, finds that Borges’ narratives “intrude into the world-outside text”, as a kind of paradoxical dream. However, if both Blade Runner and “The Book of Sand” threaten to swallow the world, in a kind of psychotic immersion, in the mother-as-body, they also provide a destabilizing moment to the fictional universe, proposing themselves as realistic narratives considering objects available for practices of validation. [The notion of validity understood here as the practice of realistic affirmation par excellence.] As Donna Haraway points out in her Cyborg Manifesto, we already “find ourselves to be cyborgs, hybrids, mosaics, chimeras ... both in formal discourse (for example, biology) and in daily practice (for example, the homework economy in the integrated circuit).” Separating the content of a subjective imaginary from its form, or its body, may never have been a tenable construction, and it would only be within such a construction, exemplified by the blade runner’s interpretative framework, that these moments could constitute a sort of psychotic demon.

From the replicant Rachel’s perspective, these insights exhibit no more than those epiphanic moments when we realize that we were never fully ourselves, and the untenability of an isolationist notion of subjectivity. In Rachel’s radical confusion as who made who, we cognize the fear, love and confusion of cyborg culture: a never- ending recursion as to the question of originary authenticity. As a formal manifestation, such as in Blade Runner’s narrative non-closure, it is symptomatic moment of science fiction as a generic phenomenon.

2004-01-06T19:09:00.000Z

From Recitals:
Rules change

I, the poem hereby declare that
From now on
From this moment

Meaning is not to be found behind, before or beyond
Me, but between

You and I, the poem

2004-01-02T19:03:00.000Z

What is pornography?

Nikolaj Frobenius, scriptwriter of Insomnia (starring Al Pacino, Hillary Swank and Robin Williams, and directed by Christopher Nolan of Memento-fame), let hisself be interviewed by Bøygen (The Bend, also a character in the last act of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, a devil-like appearance), in conjunction with the publication of The Shy Pornographer in 1999 (Le Pornographe timide, Actes Sud, 2000). More or less wittingly, the conversation drifts into a comparison with his 1996 novel Latours katalog (De Sade's Valet, trans. Tom Geddes, Marion Boyars, 2001). Frobenius, a master of scriptwriting from LPC college in London, studied the letter the Marquis wrote from the Vincennes and the Bastille to his manservant Latour Quiros, and immersed himself in what he calls a Sadean universe.

It is basically violent, inhuman and paradoxical -- and confusing. Confusion is a cornerstone i de Sade's way of being in the world and communicating in language. As soon as we engage in a careful reading of him, we find out that his language works on several levels. You find reason, which in a way incorporates you into his universe, and it says: 'This happens, my good friend, if you don't follow the path of virtue.' It is a very confusing claim, since it directly follows descriptions of what we may call the Sadistic problem: a world of fiece passions and fascinations, but where apathy is also just around the corner. There is an affinity with the executioner and the victim, and contradictory elements are played out in turns. [Georges] Bataille finds de Sade's literature paradoxical, since it essentially is the victim's language. I believe de Sade tries to destroy language, in an attempt to overcome a lack of communcation.

How?

de Sade lives in complete isolation for large periods of his adult life because of his extravagant transgressions of the law and common sense in France. He's imprisoned, and eats, writes and fantasizes, that's all he's doing. I think his most important problem, from he was a boy, has been his distance to others. And what constitutes the bridge between myself and everybody else? That's language. That is what he wants to destroy, I believe that's what he wants. With his monotony, with confusion, with constant repetitions and detours.

In order to completely burn down the bridge between himself and the world around him?

Perhaps, but also to provoke a reaction, to get attention in some form or the other. He's up there on the bridge that language is, demolishing it. You will find the same effect with a great many other pornographic authors: Charles de Mas, Bataille, Cooper. It is a constant struggle at the borders of language. Pornography is conserned with 'non-language', that which exists on the other side of language. With those authors I mentioned, you will always find reflections on the boundary between language and non-language.

2003-12-30T18:09:00.000Z

In a restroom at the Metro:

Requirements

Hide meaning behind
Narrative stanzas perfected
As if

Frozen in a moment of
Thought, midair,
Indebted to ideas

Unthought, more than
Real

2003-12-30T17:58:00.000Z

Another chapter in Untitled:

She was cleaning her toe-nails again.

Diderik Humble jr. detested the sickly sweet smell of butyl acetat (it boils at 125 degrees C, he though). Sinsemilla was leaning forward to aplly the nail polish remover. Then she would wipe her nails clean with a cotton pad, which she would the proceed to throw behind the front seats, adding to the pile of pads with a pink stint that separated the front of the car from the back.

Another BMW passed them on the highway from Bagdad. Diderik Humble humped along in his Trabant on the highway's shoulder, windows wide open, relishing each breath of fresh air provided by the passing vehicles.

"Look, there's another BM," Sinsemilla shrieked. "That makes three today."

Diderik Humble glanced over at her, still crouched over her nails, her hair flowing in the wind from the passing car. She looked content, he thought.

"No, we can't afford a BM," she said, her voice sounding grave, but was there a hint of a mocking smile at the corner of her lips?

Sinsemilla reached over to change the dial on the car radio. Out of the chaotic sparks of the ether, she managed to extract a song by The Humperdinkies, and sang along happily.

Diderik Humble straightened up in the driver's seat. They wouldn't arrive at the border post until midnight, and he had no idea if they might encounter problems at the crossing. He had expected a larger stream of cars heading for Uqbar since it was announced on the radio last night that the borders were now opened.

Bagdad hadn't been the refuge he had hoped for. He wanted to be somewhere far away from his countrymen, where he could live in splendid isolation with Sinsemilla, and she in splendid isolation with him. But the city was already seething with faces he recognized from the home office. It was as if they had come here to escape the thronged poverty of their central administration, hoping for a fresh start in the Newly Purchased Subsidiaries.

Perhaps it was a law of existence, Humble thought, that all corporations must spill over themselves, as if there was a constant tendency in all business life to expand beyond the what could be managed, like the Megaceros hibernicus, mutating until its antlers were four meters along the curvature, intimidating rivals and impressing potential mates, until one day its antlers had grown so large and heavy that it could no longer lift its head to see where it was going, falling off cliffs and stuck as prey for hungry, lonely wolfs.

In a state of imbecility, Diderik, for amusement, turned his attention to political economy. He had poured the pages of proto- luddite Ricardo's "Dialogues of the Three Templas," a very capable disputation of the notion that there is an "inexorable" tendency for profits to decline.

Diderik had said, before he had finished the first chapter, "Thou art the man!" Wonder and curiosity were emotions that had long been dead in him. Yet he wondered once more: He wondered at himself that he could once again be stimulated to the effort of reading: and much more he wondered at the book.

Lost in his though, Diderik had forgotten to pay attention to the gas gauge, and, noting that it indicated it was time to fill more gas, he announced, "It's time to fill more gas, Sinsemilla."

"Ok," she said, staring out the window at the odd olive tree floating by the car. He could see by the reflection of her face that she had put on some of her glossy lipstick and purple shades on her eyelids. She scratched her bare foot. Diderik navigated the car into the gas station.

It's strange, though Diderik as he had handled the pump, that such an establishment would be referred to as a petrol station, a gas station, or a garage, depending on its linguistic location. From the corner of his eye he saw Sinsemilla strolling across the tar. He turned his head and saw a red Alfa Romeo round-tailed Spider parked at the far end of the station area. A Dean Corso-type character had his head out the window.

As he exited the station building, Diderik observed that Sinsemilla was already seated in their car. He got inside the car and got it back on the highway. Sinsemilla didn't say a word. Two can play that game, he though, and said, perhaps a little too loud, "Two can play that game."

"What game? What are you talking about?"

"Silence. We can drive in silence."

Sinsemilla looked at him for a moment, tilting her head forward in what Diderik had decided was feigned disbelief.

"Whatever," she said.

"Total silence."

Diderik tapped his fingers on the wheel.

"Not a word," he continued.

2003-12-19T20:32:00.000Z

It's 19 December only once a year. Enjoy 19 December! It will take a year before it returns! Only today! Buy 19 December now! You will not regret it!

2003-12-19T20:19:00.000Z

T Fjeld, my super ego, posted the following on litIds today. FYI.

Georg Johannesen, Norway's sole professor of rhetoric and the man behind

DARK TIMES -- a conversation (after Brecht)

You:
In dark times / only the wise speak / They say: Here only a few / can be saved
In dark times / only fools sing / They sing: It's good / that the grass is green
I do not sing / I do not speak / Wise men are silent in / dark times

I:
In dark times / I am not wise / I sing and speak / of the dark times

and...

PROPOSITION FOR AN EXPERIMENT

When you who opens my heart with a prayer / Find nothing but answers, it is due to me
When you who opens my heart with a knife / Find nothing but blood, it is due to the knife

...is out with a new book, News about Ibsen, and has let hisself be interviewed by Dagbladet, Norway's Guardian-like daily. Reporter is Fredrik Wandrup (himself author of a biography on Jens Bjørneboe). Some highlights:

"I'm always bitter, but never angry," GJ reassures us.

Oh yeah?

When reporters ask if I'm a socially engaged poet, I answer that they're on the wrong track. It is those who write commentaries and opinions on the second and third pages of the dailies that are socially engaged poets. A newspaper is a collection of poems until the opposite is proven. VG [local Torygraph] is modern poetry on free verse in news print and in tabloid format. Dagbladet is henceforth and from tomorrow morning a daily poetry collection without metre or rhythm.

And where does Ibsen enter into the picture?

I don't want to say bad things about Henrik Ibsen. NRK [local BBC] and the Parliament compete to be considered Norway's two premier national theatres, far ahead of Henrik Ibsen and lagging somewhat behind Ludvig Holberg.

[We will cut here, and move on to GJ's estimation of specific plays by Ibsen.]

What about Emperor and Galilean [Kejser og Galilæer, one of Ibsen's early, spectacular plays, traditionally considered in somewhat bad taste]?

A magnificent piece, in a total of ten acts. Hollywood's most expensive biblical tales are preceded by the stage directions of this play. They are written as world historical news bulletins in German- Gothic ruins. Emperor Julian is a Dionysian heathen. The Empress plainly and physically detests her husband. She gets to say it before she dies from poisoning, but pregnant, with the emperor's more virile brother. She is a heathen whore. She has enough sex. The Emperor is a Holbergian cuckold.

Ibsen's later fame was due to his supposed critique of society?

His contemporary dramas aren't that interesting anymore. They have too much puritan sex. They are ladies' novels to be read aloud. Ibsen's women are horny ladies who are disregarded by their impotent husbands. Social scientists with no sense of history are pulled to the theatre by their wives to attend these plays. There they get to see how little men understand of women. [...] The play is marital pornography of uncertain use in psychiatry, but of certain use to Northern German noble ladies until 1917.

And then?

After the diaphragm and the pill the lady was privatized to her inner market. Nora shoots Helmer. Hilde shoots Master Builder Solness. Hedda Gabler has an abortion and becomes Minister of Children. Rita Allmers sells dildos to herself. Sigrid Undset claimed there were thirteen to the dozen of Hedda Gablers. She said Ibsen had prejudices against women, but that they were lovable prejudices. One would have to be old-fashioned like Ibsen to take these characters seriously. The main characters of Ibsen's contemporary dramas are often dumb. Several of them tries to be insane without really succeeding, or have turned insane without anyone noticing. The Master Builder should be performed as a farce.

[snip]

When you call your book News about Ibsen, it's obviously ironic. What's new?

Everything is new, all the time. Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that you can't swim in the same river twice. Anyone who reads Ibsen again, do it anew. Everybody is an intellectual. Everybody can think. Everybody can talk. A person is a philosopher and artist interpreting the world.

The Media as well?

NRK is Norway's premier vocalist, and they broadcast The Religion of Norway, which consists of moralizing foreign policy. When I watch the 9 o'clock news I see it as a kind of witty sermon. The anchors bring out the comedian in me.

[snip]

In the essay on Ibsen you ask if Jesus should have been taken off the cross and sent by air ambulance, financed from Norway, to attend family counselling in Jerusalem?

According to The Religion of Norway that could have been the correct approach. There Jesus would meet 500 poorly educated, but generously remunerated, crisis therapists who could have cured him from his self- delusion that he was a god who should save the world. Because that would have been accomplished already by Norway.

2003-12-19T15:38:00.000Z

I just got to watch Frida last night. She's located in a space analogous to that of the replicants in Blade Runner. Her body is an integrated machinery (though it disagrees with her, it has betrayed her) and even has her memories produced for her (when she asks her father what she used to dream of as a child), as the replicants all share the same childhood memories: those of their manufacturer's niese.

Fine film.

Donna Haraway says: "the cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity. In a sense, the cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense."

2003-12-18T17:39:00.000Z

On 18 Dec 2003 at 11:55, Peter D. Junger wrote on litIds:

May I point out that the Buddhist position would appear to be that self-deception is possible because there is no self to deceive (and, of course, because there is no self to do the deceiving).

Funny you should mention that, as I just observed the following passage in Zizek:

When we denounce as idological the very attempt to draw a clear line of demarcation between ideology and actual reality, this inevitably seems to impose the conclusion that the only non-ideological position is to renounce the bery notion of extra-ideological reality and accept that all we are dealing with are symbolic fictions, the plurality of discursive universes, never 'reality,' we must none the less maintain the tension that keeps the CRITIQUE of ideology alive. [...] Ideology is not all; it is possible to assume a place that enables us to maintain a distance from it, but this place from which one can denounce ideology must remain empty, it cannot be occupied by any positively determined reality -- the moment we yield to this temptation we are back in ideology. (Slavoj Zizek, “The Spectre of Ideology”, The Zizek Reader, p70)

Ideology would appear to imply fixity, or sutured signification in Zizek, while it's critique may only be employed from a position of non-fixity. This is of relevance to studies of nationalism, since it would entail that it's critique can not successfully be launched from the position of foreigner, which is precisely nationalism's meaning- giving other, the point of fixity against which the nation is stabilized. It also means that a non-ideological position can never be finally arrived at, however it must [for ethical reasons?] remain a posibility as a condition for ideological critique.

It should be added that in the approach of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe it is not required to supply ethical arguments in order to enable signification's non-fixity. In their view, any articulation is constituted as any practice (linguistic and extra-linguistic) that establishes a relation among elements so as to modify their identity, or as attempt to fix floating elements as discursive moments. Since there can be no suture to this kind of social practice, there will always remain endless posibilities for different articulations of the same elements.

As Volosinov points out, the word is split.

2003-12-14T17:19:00.000Z

Links in the right coloumn should be fixed now.

2003-12-14T16:53:00.000Z

Managing Director Sotsim, CEO of the TRU Corporation, wrung his hands in glee. His band of lawyers had finally succeeded in placing Cardinal Mistos, deposed leader of the now-defunct EyeRak Inc, behind bars. The courts, generously sponsored by TRU's Eternal Democracy Fund, had admitted a motion that charged Mistos with Crimes Agaist Humanity, and specifically the Democratic Parts Of It. He would also be charged with Evil Terrorism and Bad Acts In General, along with a long list of Also Awful Crimes and Misdemeanors, such as drunk driving, adultery, procrastination and trafficking in Minor Pornography.

With Cardinal Mistos stored away in a prison cell in some Carribean Island, or, even better, spectacularly Hung On The Town Square, Sotsim's Enemy Numero Uno with be history. The last pockets of resistance from within the Newly Acquired Companies would wither away, and Managing Director Sotsim could introduce his final solution to the EyeRak Problem.

The Human Resources Division of TRU had estimated that it would be necessary to develop a policy on Lower-Level Employee Disposal, if TRU were to avoid future social disruptions in productivity. The Very Poorly Incomed to Extremely Poorly and Non Incomed ratio was diminishing, and, Human Resources estimated, would be in a 1:1 relation within a short time, unless the Corporation made an effort to take charge of the Problem.

Most of the suggestions offered by Human Resources entailed a significant expense on TRU's part, and Sotsim had spent many a sleepless night pondering how to design a plan that would make the Lower-Level Employees put up the cost of Solving the Problem. But this very morning he had woken up with a clear idea crystallized before his eyes. All he needed was Cardinal Mistos out of the way, and no resistance would be non-defeasible.

Managing Director Stimos called for an urgent meeting with the Members of the Marketing Division.

"The arrest of Cardinal Mistos removes the shadow hanging over our plans for the final solution the our Problem. Now we must make it clear to those people that the cause of their Low Level of Life lies with those who are Even Lower. If it hadn't been so many Really Poor People poaching on their resources, it would be more to share between fewer. Isn't that obvious to everyone?" Stimos asked rethorically.

The Members of the Marketing Division nodded their heads.

"So, to make a long story short, the problem is that there's too many Really Poor People. And the solution is To Make Less. Here's what I want you to do: Make a campaign that emphasises the problem of Reproduction among the Really Poor. Some disease or something. Get some of the Low Levels to support the campaign, and we have a winner!"

The Members of the Marketing Division nodded their heads.

2003-12-08T00:24:00.000Z

Read Untitled off-line.

Re-flecting on Bourdieu's notion of the failed gift-exchange in Outline of a Theory of Practice. I'm not sure, but would it be off the mark to read Bourdieu's intervention there as an attempt to understand mis-interpellation as a matter of academese?

To try to be specific, observe page 5. Contra the notion that an objective truth of gifts is to be found in the model (and not the observer) of gift exchange, Bourdieu rites:

Any really [the trick word] objective [oops, another one] analysis [dang, a third one] of the exchange of gifts, words, challenges, or even women must allow for the fact that each of these inaugural acts may misfire, and that it receives its meaning, in any case, from the response it triggers off, even if the response is a failure to reply that retrospectively removes its intended meaning.

What must be introduced to the problematic, if I read B correctly, is a sense of time, the meaning of temporal displacements of gift and counter-gift.

Ahem... Probably not very helpful, but it made itself written.

In coherence,

2003-12-08T00:23:00.000Z

Inta entered the yellow-green taxi at the Uqbar International Airport. She had just arrived, as one of the first travellers to this remote area of the TRU Corporation's newly acquired territories. On her way to Hotel Rio Grande do Sul, she reflected on the way the corporation had already made its marks on the Uqbar landscape. During the Take-Over, it had been speculated that Mickey's, a fast food chain controlled by TRU, would establish outlets across the new territories and gradually wrestle control of food provision from local vendors. As she glanced out the window of the taxi, Inta observed half a dosen Mickey's signs, the characteristic black oval ears, hovering above an emerging outlet.

The lobby of Hotel Rio Grande do Sul was as she expected, its old-world charm intact. Inta was chaperoned to her room on the second floor, with a view to the pool, by a hotel clerk who had the name "Felix" inscribed between the hotel's logo and the slogan "These are the MOST significant of all times" on his badge. As he put her suitcase down, she turned from the window, where she had contemplated the view.

"Felix," Inta said.

"Yes, Madam?"

"Could you do me a favor and bring me a cup of the local brew."

"Local brew?"

"Tea, I mean. The local tea."

"Certainly, Madam. Right away, Madam," Felix said and slunk out the door.

Inta had come to attend the Intra-Paracelcist biannual convention at the hotel. This year the proceeding would be devoted to the premise of "Deference, or a time not marked by prefiguration and fulfillment." She sat down by the small desk vis-a-vis the window, and leafed through the papers that had been left for idle guests. Between TRU Times, a short guide to local sites published by the Transverse Society, and the leaflet Night life in Uqbar, she found a sheet of paper, with the imprint "hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö." Underneath someone had written "Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned. XS."

Felix arrived with the tea, and she paid him handsomely, watching his small buttocks are they wrestled beneath his white pants and made their way for the door. She turned to face the window, surprised that the moon was already up, shining almost as brightly as the sun had done a few minutes ago. Inta hadn't noticed the change, but now she realized that the moon gave a dark yellow gloss to the things it illuminated: the terrace and the swimming pool, the window frame and the curtains, the bed and her dress.

In the elevator, Inta was tapping her right index finger lightly on her purse, only to recognize the background music as one of the odes of "Crane Jackson's Fountain Street Theater," a copy of which she had acquired at a street sale in Toronto a few years previously. She decided not to allow it to collect dust. And, refreshed by the ambiguous muzak, she dived into the party of Paracelcists at Hotel Rio Grande do Sul in Uqbar.

***

The night was about to surrender to the inevitable day, and most of the conventioners had left the hotel bar for their respective lodgings, when Inta discovered a book that someone had left on a table in the far end of the room. Or, rather, a fragment of a book. Its cover lost, the pagination indicated that she had stumbled upon some ten pages of a larger volume. The first page of the fragment bore the title "Gift, time" and at the bottom of the page it was indicated that it was removed from a Volume X of A First Encyclopædia. It's author had subtitled the entry "Time of the Gift in Tlön," and was arguing against the notion of gift exchange propounded by the followers of one Diodorus, who had claimed that if it is true to say of a thing that it will be, then it must one day be true to say that it is, or, "Today is tomorrow, because yesterday tomorrow was today."

The author of the fragment claimed that the followers of Diodorus must be mistaken, since cycles of reciprocity are "not the irresistible gearing of obligatory practices." Gifts may suffer multiple faiths, and, because of it, can have no objective prediction. Rather, gifts receive their meanings from the responses they trigger. These responses may be deferred or instantaneous, legato or staccato, marked by delay or rush, but in either case, those who participate in the cycle must pretend that they do not possess full knowledge of the meanings of their exchange.

The first rule about counter-gifts, the author claimed, was that they should be deferred and different, or they could be taken as an insult. It mustn't be a return of the same kind of gift, that would be a refusal, or return, of the gift, and it must be preceded by an interval. The author quotes La Rochefoucauld in this regard: "Overmuch eagerness to discharge one's obligation is a form of ingratitude." It is a question of style, but in each case, and particularly with regard to their use of time, the participants must try to hide the truth of what they are doing from themselves and the others.

Inta shook her head with an astonished sense of dizziness. She took the pages from the table, and decided to bring them up to her room to study them further. She could tell the receptionist in the morning that she'd brought some papers to her room inadvertently, and that she'd like them to trace their owner. In the lobby she filled a glass with water from a bronze jar. It tasted peculiarly sweet.

2003-12-01T19:08:00.000Z

1. Setting the Stage: 1948-1976
After the victory of the Purified Nationalist Party in the 1948 elections, the South African state embarked on a program of hardened social boundaries along "racial" or "ethnic" lines.*1 Passport laws were hardened, control of influx to the cities were strengthened, the Immorality Act banned interracial marriages etc. In the 1950s Sophiatown was dismantled. Afrikaans gained recognition as an official language on par with English. On short, the attempt to suture the social by erecting non-permeable boundaries between whites and non-whites was pursued to the full extent of its logic. Cities were to be white, while non-whites were moved into townships and homelands.

This policy wasn't implemented without protest. The demonstration that in some ways inaugurated the modern resistance to apartheid was a peaceful protest by women burning their passports with the slogans "with passports we are slaves" and "women don't want passports." The period also saw the establishment of the PAC, the ANC Youth League, and the Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, led by Nelson Mandela, who was later convicted for treason in the Rivonia trials. By 1976 the protests were widespread and organized, to some extent, around popular imagery, such as the widely circulated picture of Nelson Mandela behind pridon bars. When the state, then, introduced Afrikaans as a compulsory language in schools, riots broke out in the South-Western Townships of Johannesburg (Soweto) and other areas. Schoolchildren refused instruction in what was perceived as the oppressor's language, and took to the streets, marching and singing songs of protest. The state responded with bullets. (See, e.g., Sarafina (starring Whoopi Goldberg) for a Brechtian rendition.) The international community responded with sanctions against the apartheid state.

2. The Total Strategy
By the time PW Botha took power, then, it was beyond doubt that the regime was in a serious crisis. It was threatened both from within and without, and the state articulated the juncture as a conspiracy of communists set to wreck havoc.*2 Botha's remedy, termed the total strategy, was two-pronged. Domestically, the state would attempt to manufacture and coopt a "black middle class" (this concept is still prominent in contemporary discourses on South African society), while, as a matter of promotion, it would reformulate a number of oppressive mechanisms to make them appear as more contemporary.

Hence, the homelands were now increasingly referred to as nations, with a degree of political autonomy. Passports controls were eased, while other forms of influx control was intensified. The powers and resources of the secred police grew immensely. Various programs of more "scientific" population control was investigated, such as the infamous project by Dr "Death" Besson to devise a chemical agent that would only kill people with a dark complexion. Foreign operations were intensified. (There is still suspicion that the South African Secret Service may have been behind the murder of Socialist prime minister Olof Palme, perhaps because of his vehement, principled and articulate opposition to the South African regime.)

In short, the total strategy consisted of intensified surveillance, increased powers of detention and detainment, and an attempt to appropriate modern discourses of democratic nationalism and free, individual choice as means to sustain the order. It was, however, not successful.

3. The aftermath: Articulating a chain of signification
The 1980s saw an increasing fragmentation within the hegemonic bloc. Business leaders got concessions on the National Party traditionally anti-capitalist line, signalling a shift from state intervention in the political economy to an increasing focus on maintaining an orderly social climate for business. The Wiehan report in 1979 recommended easing the long-standing ban on African trade unions in order to prevent wild strikes, and the Riekert Commision advised dismantling white job reservation while maintaining a rigorous control on influx to the cities. Complusory primary eduction was also introduced, though multiracial schools could only be run privately. Public amenities, such as hotels, restaurants and theatres, were no longer compulsorily segregated. In line with the 'total strategy', these measures were introduced to "intensify class differentials while reducing racial ones" (Hyslop 1988, Worden 1994), or, in a word, to make it possible to preserve entrenched social division within a global discourse of 'fair capitalism'.

With the failure of the tricameral constitution and intensified sanctions from the international community, FW de Klerk was may have been put in power with the task of dismantling the apartheid state as quietly and gracefully as possible. Hence, by the time the multiracial Mass Democratic Movement launched their civil disobedience campaign (the first sign of a major movement against the regime that included large numbers of those who had benefitted from it), the National Party was already busy repealing some of its most unpopular measures, such as the banning of ANC and PAC, the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and the colonization of Namibia. In 1991 the Group Areas, Land and Population Registration Acts were repealed, and the CODESA negotiations instituted. After South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, Nelson Mandela and the ANC took over as custodians of the South African state.

Let's fast forward a bit, to Thursday August 16, 2001. We are at a racism conference in the Western Cape province, an event held in conjunction with global UN conference on racism to be held in Durban, South Africa, later in the month. In Durban, leaders of states, international organizations and NGO will give well-meaning speeches on their fight on the scourge on racism. Tonight, however, we are about to witness Wanda Stoffberg taking the stage. She has been running the butchery Vleis Paleis in George, on the South African garden route, in face of increasing protests from neighbouring small- holders. As she serves a predominantly black clientele, her neighbours have successfully petitioned the local zoning authorities, controlled by the Democratic Alliance, to have her butchery closed. Stoffberg, in return, contacted the local branch of the ANC to recruit their support, and announced as much in the local newspaper. Tonight she will tell of the reaction from her local community.

At the gate of her smallholding, two men attacked her from behind, hitting, kicking and throttling her. Then one of them, who she saw from his hand was a white man, carved a "K" into her left breast.

"He said: This is a message from our boss. Those were his exact words. And kaffirboeties like me can't stay in George." The men said the "K" was "because I'm a kaffir-lover".

While goodwill prevails among ordinary people, she says, white supremacist attitudes had been forced on whites during the apartheid reign.

> As a child growing up in Beaufort West racism was "force-fed" to her every
> day of her life and at one stage she was even scared of black people.
>
> "One day you wake up and realise you have been part of something so bad
> and so wrong, for so long."
>
> People felt guilty when they realised this. Some ignored the guilt but
> others chose to deal with it.
>
> She said she had reservations about coming to speak at the conference,
> "but I decided to stand up for the truth for once in my life, a truth
> which many of us are still in denial of.
>
> "We should not tolerate any form of discrimination or racism in our
> country. The perpetrators should be punished. This is the humble message I
> want to bring to you," she said.
>
> "I want something positive to come from this. We are a nation in the
> process of healing... and I learned and believed today there are enough
> people in this country with goodwill to heal this country."
>
> Stoffberg, sitting on the stage after delivering her testimony, later
> broke down as another victim of a racist attack, Zola Plaatjie, wept as he
> was describing how he was assaulted by whites in Milnerton, Cape Town.
(http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=13&click_id=13&art_id=qw99796494157 0B653&set_id=1)

I am not suggesting here to view 1994, the year of South Africa's first parliamentary elections under general suffrage, as a moment of democratic redemption, of sorts, in the history of the country. Confining the practices with which apartheid is associated to the past enables the type of "current amazement that the things we are experiencing are 'still' possible [which] is not philosophical," as Benjamin demonstrates. By allowing the present to be defined as a state of emergency, it performs as the rule of which fascism becomes a normal expression. "One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm," Benjamin notes in his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (249). With Benjamin, it might be necessary to work in tandem with two different notions of time. The dominant notion of time, the "homogeneous, empty" version, would perceive fascism as an aberrant form of politics, and, consequently, confirm the normality of the hegemonic formation.

Against this temporal conception, Benjamin holds the thought-image [Denkbild, in Weigel 162] of the "angel of history," a figure, who, while facing the past, is propelled backwards by "a storm blowing from Paradise" into the future, "while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress" (Benjamin, 249).

*1 The categories that became dominant towards the end of the apartheid epoch was "white/European," "coloured," "Indian" and "African." These categories were of course highly problematic, both in their implementations and conceptualizations.

*2 By this time, the theological justifications for white rule was of less importance. Dominantly, the situation was articulated as one of an embattled agent of order against a sea of disorder and chaos.

2003-11-25T22:30:00.000Z

Diderik Humble jr. had just finished his letter to the editor of TRU Times, complaining that his mentor and benefactor in spe Darwin P. Johnson had been misinterpellated as Darwin P. Erlandsen, “a wholly different animal altogether,” in Humble’s own words. “Darwin will not take lightly on this mistake on your part, and may be persuaded to take legal precautions to have such gross misrepresentation rectified,” Humble had written, well aware of Johnson’s generosity to his friends.

Only last week Humble had to ask his sickly mother, stored away, as she was, in a barn somewhere in the Middle Kingdom, to extend him a small grant, “for a new coat,” as he put it. It was dire times for Humble, even though he had succumbed to the call to join the new corporation. For one, he had been unable to have his interjection on the debate on Solyaris. I was bending paper clips, rolling cigarettes ferociously, trying to know something about the movie, all the while Diderik repeated the same phrases, “Allow me to interject,” and “Not to be presumptious or facetious in any way, but,” and so on. I asked him to write his ideas down, if he could find the time in between composing his Compleat Theory of the World and Everything Else (Vol. I). Last night I received this note in my post box:

Curious the way Tristero placed those two post horns on the wall in Tarkovsky’s Solyaris. Wonder if those horns are there in the new American version?

I had already passed my remarks on the movie to the TRU Times, and, not having seen “the new American version,” saw no reason to post an addendum. Instead, I sent him an text message, inviting him out for a cup of tea at The Spectre of Kabool.

It was a seedy joint, crammed with the usual racket of hypocrites, do-gooders and other bleeding heart liberals. We found a table in the darkest corner of the bar, where only the occasional prostitute would pop by, thinking we might just be some potential paying customers. When she saw us, she would invariably turn on her heels, displaying a somewhat repulséd look.

When Diderik finally arrived, he was not alone. Sinsemilla, his estanged wife, came stumbling through the door, holding on to the sleeve of his jacket, behind his ghostly apparition, like some shadow of a metaphor.

“Stop it now, Sinsemilla. I said you could come with,” Diderik started.

“What is she doing here,” I said, staring directly at Diderik.

“She wouldn’t be left alone.”

“I thought you said you’d killed her. Killed her good.”

“I thought I had. But I hadn’t. Or so it seems.”

Sinsemilla needed to use the restroom, and Diderik had to come along. He couldn’t leave her alone. He’d brought a thick brown envelope to the bar, and left in on the table while he was escorting Sinsemilla. I looked at it thoroughly, considering whether it could be some primordial version of the manuscript he’d been working on. I glanced around furtively, and quickly slid the envelope into my lap.

Diderik Humble jr.'s thesis

Laertes in his «Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers» notes that «When somebody asked Heraclit to decree some rules, she showed no interest because the government of the city was already bad. Instead, she went to the temple and played dices with children. Finally she withdrew from the world , and lived in the mountains feeding on grasses and plants. However, having fallen in this way into dropsy she came down to town and asked the doctors in a riddle if they could make a drought out of rainy weather. When they did not understand she buried herself in a cow-stall, expecting that the dropsy would be evaporated by the heat of the manure; but even so she failed to effect anything, and ended her life at the age of sixty».

I managed to slip the manuscript back into the envelope and slide it back onto the table just in time for Diderik not to notice. I think. He pushed his body over the floor, dragging his ghost behind him like some metaphoric shadow.

“Stop it now, Sinsemilla. I said you could come with,” Diderik said.

2003-11-24T22:16:00.000Z

What is I fighting for?

I fought the law but the law one,
I fought the law I fought for fun
I fought the law but the law won.
I fought the law but the

Why is the walrus such a bore?

I fought the law but the law one,
I fought the law I fought for fun
I fought the law but the law won.
I fought the law but the

What am I but a metaphor?

I fought the law but the law one,
I fought the law I fought for fun
I fought the law but the law won.
I fought the law but the

2003-11-24T22:13:00.000Z

The Future is a Genre
(and therefore iterable)

On Solyaris (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem).

Notes
Kris is a psychologist charged with considering the possible conclusion of the Solaris space project. Before departing he meets Berton, who was ejected from the mission after reporting on all sorts of queer visions while on a mission to rescue a fellow cosmonaut who had been lost on the planet. Berton has some insight, hardly communicable to someone with "the mind of an accountant," as he claims Kris has. He urges Kris not to recommend bombarding the Solaris -- it would not be a moral thing to do, Berton claims.

Here are two summaries from http://www.imdb.com/:

Summary by Dan Ellis:
> The Solaris mission has established a base on a planet that appears to
> host some kind of intelligence, but the details are hazy and very secret.
> After the mysterious demise of one of the three scientists on the base,
> the main character is sent out to replace him. He finds the station
> run-down and the two remaining scientists cold and secretive. When he also
> encounters his wife who has been dead for seven years, he begins to
> appreciate the baffling nature of the alien intelligence.

Summary by Philip Brubaker:
> This film probes man's thoughts and conscience, as it follows a
> psychologist who is sent to a space station situated over the mysterious
> Solaris Ocean. The two other scientists there tell the psychologist of
> strange occurrences in the station, and the Ocean's eerie ability to
> materialize their thoughts. After being in the station for a while, the
> psychologist finds himself becoming very attached to it's alternate
> reality...

After a short while at the station, Kris meets an apparition of his late wife, who had committed suicide after he left her. She is very much flesh and blood. They watch a film from his childhood that he had brought with from earth. In the film, there are images of Kris' mother in a fur coat.

In KRIS' cabin: KHARI watching herself in a mirror.

KHARI
I don't even know my own self. Who am I? As soon as I close my eyes I can't recall what my face looks like. Can you?

KRIS
What?

KHARI
Do you know who you are?

KRIS
Yes, all humans do.

KHARI
Ah... (pause) That woman in the fur coat, she hated me.

KRIS
That's your imagination. That woman died long ago, before we even met.

KHARI
I remember her very clearly. What makes you deny it? I tell you I do remember. I came over for tea, and she told me to leave the house. So I left at once, I remember it very well. And what happened after that?

KRIS
After that I went away and that was the last time we ever saw each other.

KHARI
Where did you go?

KRIS
To another city.

KHARI
Why?

KRIS
I was transferred.

KHARI
But why didn't you take me with you?

KRIS
It was you who refused to come.

KHARI
Ah... Yes, now I remember.

The issue of "Khari"'s true identity is further complicated as the head scientist of the station, Dr. Sartorius, demonstrate that she does not have blood in her veins, and that can not be killed. He is propagating bombarding the planet, as that must be the source of the cosmonauts' delusions. Kris, who originally championed the same solution to the problem of Solaris, now has second thoughts. Nothing Sartorius says can alter the fact the he loves his wife.

Dr. Snaut, the third cosmonaut on the station, has invited his colleague to his birthday party, to be held in the library, the only space in the station without windows. It is decorated with all sorts of contraptions of European High Culture. Kris brings Khari to the festivities, which Dr. Sartorius does not approve of. Dr. Snaut recommends Kris not to worry about the bookkeeping of science, but rather to delve in texts that will provide understanding, such as Don Quixote. He opens the book in front of Kris and Khari, and quotes from Sancos Pancha's Ode to Sleep:

Senor, I know only one thing, and this is when I... (pause) and that is when I sleep I know no sadness, no fear, no hope, no blessing, no work. Praise be the gentle sleep's creator. That currency [...] has only one defect for it lacks too much of death.

Dr. Sartorius reminds Kris that he is a scientist, and that that entails certain obligatory relations to objects of observation:

In the library.

DR. SARTORIUS
At least I know why I'm here. I am here to work. Nature created man so that he might gain knowledge. (Slams his hand holding his glasses in the table so the glasses fall out of their frame. Continues calmly.) In his ceaseless march to truth man is condemned to knowledge. The rest is of no consequence. (pause) If you will permit me to inquire about a colleague, exactly what are you doing on Solaris?

KRIS
What a question.

DR. SARTORIUS
It can't be your work that brought you here. Except for your trust with your ex-spouse absolutely nothing here seems to interest you. Your time is spent in bed discussing scientific ideals. And I'm supposed to appreciate the great job you're doing. I fear you've lost contact with reality. If you ask me you're plain lazy.

KRIS
Oh, stop it.

This scene is followed by a confrontation between Dr. Sartorius and Khari and the exchange of some harsh words:

KHARI
I'm not finished. I'm a woman! Treat me with consideration.

DR. SARTORIUS
Woman? How can you say that? You're not even a human being. Try to understand that, if in some way you are capable of understanding. KHARI is dead. She doesn't exist. As for you, you're only a reproduction, a mechanical repetition of the form, a copy from a matrix.

KHARI
Yes. Perhaps, yes. But I... I have become a human being. I can feel just as deeply as any of you, and I feel pain.

Notions

How we imagine the future is structured by the genre of future (cf. software companies' etc. scenarios of "the future", Sid Meyer's Civilization prominently; the dependecy of Luc Besson's Fifth Element on Ridley Scott's Blade Runner etc.).

We know what we're coming from by not where we're going. (Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.)

On teaching Aristotle's Ars Poetica: In some elementary textbooks it is the claimed that we can imagine all sorts of odd curves in a drama (i.e., that the drama doesn't have to be structured as exposition, increasing tension, crisis, decreasing tension, climax/catastrophe, but that the order may be different or some other such change). In other words, these books are inventing Aristotle. But what's the purpose of the curve? It is as if these textbooks assume (with Boileu) that it was a prescriptive tool?

2003-11-18T16:13:00.000Z

“Don’t freak out, now.” It’s a terrifying moment after the OS starts up and I wait motionless and for the mother board to finish her processes. I still have the resolution to move the mouse so as to cause the pointer to mark the white square with the green “R” at the top right corner of the screen, but the enforced period of impassivity inflicts an increasing sense of doubt. My mind starts wandering, thinking of the Spider game, and, as a result of it, the man dressed in a Spider Man costume in London, fighting for his rights to custody over his daughter, which, again, causes me to think of Robert Bly and the Howl of the Wild. Bly had this idea that Men needed to Get Out More. “If we’d only get out more,” he reasoned, “we would become milder characters, more gentle in our manners and cetera.” So what he did, like, you know, what he’d do, kind of, was to take a bunch of guys into the forest, you know, like, kind of, and Howl. This procedure was undertaken in order to bring the Male Id in junction with the Male Ego, hence manufacturing a kind of sutured response in the subject, abnegating the effect of the Mirror Stage and the Symbolic Order, as it were.

(All these observations must be meticulously noted in the Journal, so that future biographers won’t miss (out on) all the clever theoretical observations I was actually undertaking while playing, say, Civilization or Age of Emires. The latter of which being, of course, a Microsoft game. Let it also be said now and henceforth that I am, also and as a matter of fact, aware that one shouldn’t start a paragraph with a parenthetical remark, I mean, that’s just not on. But let US stick to the moot point, which are that Bill Gates, while being a nasty sort of guy, being up to all sorts of wickedness, I am sure, is not the cause of his blame. Or to blame for his cause, for that matter. Mr Bill, as we call him here in the Colonies, should not be killed (terrible movie, by the way, not even boring, fell asleep after an hour, good sleep though, wish he’d turn down the volume a bit on Vol II, but -- maybe he won’t --), but seen as what he is -- a lackey in a white shirt. He’s got his little Mansion on the Hill, now, with all kinds of nice gadgets running around greeting him, “Hi, Bill,” when he gets home at night, usually late, ‘cause he’s got to work Long Hours at the Office, sincerly, and these robots are perfect replicas of the dolls in Ridley Scott’s house. (Note to Big Other: Please make a Cultured Reference note.)

All articulation is directed to a future self, the self of the Other, a becoming self, never there in-it(’s)-self. (Derrida scholars, et so on.)

But, yeah, I was talking about Mr Bill. A moot sort of wickedness. Thing is that he’s extremely successful at what he claims to be doing, he would be considered the cream of the puff to the dudes in his kind of social field. (Bourdieu-scholars, take note.) He’s the cherry on the icing, the cream of the doughnut, the paste of the cut of the [relatively new, at least in it’s ideological formation] managerial class. The logic of accumulation goes: I want more money. Simple, really. Thing is that it’s exponential (yes, Paul Stone, you can calculate it’s “growth”), and, hence, and because of it, if the capitalist want 10 Norwegian Kroner return on his “loan” today, you can be sure he’ll demand 100 Kroner tomorrow, and you’d better deliver, or he’ll bump you down to the previous level. (Very few participants stay on ‘till the end in this game, as you may appreciate.) Here is the major difference between a neo-liberal logic of The Economy and the socialists ditto [and it is to be noted that neo-liberal economic ideology has now become part of the (neo-)conservative stock, and, hence, and because of it, a conservative virtue, and, because of it, indicating both the need to rearticulate the ideological juncture of this kind of logic, it’s ideological home, so to speak, and to reassess the strategies outlined in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, founded, as it is, on the linkage of stragegies of the “neo-liberal” at his moment (downsizing, privatisation, globalisation, etc.), which are now associated with conservative political movements]:

* We are eating a cake, but each of us wants more to eat every day (in an exponential fashion). This is not a problem, dude, because the cake keeps growing, courtesy of our magical system, called (fan fare) Capitalism (in it’s neo-liberal/conservative ideological articulation).

* Or: We are sharing a cake in such a way that a few (and they are decreasing in numbers) get to eat more and more of the cake (in an exponential manner) and, even if it was the case that the cake is growing, the growth of their increasing demands are outstripping any possible growth of the cake, and, as a consequence, the vast majority of eaters have to eat LESS every day. If, however, the majority of cake eaters would realize their common situation, they would grab their forks in a stabbing motion (and, yes, that is a brutal metaphor -- there is another version, the one I tend to favour, in which the greedy cake monsters -- they’re kind of like Mr Kreosot of Monty Python fame -- take up arms to force the majority of cake eaters to eat less, and the majority must take up arms to DEFEND their selves (hence the prevalence of the term Defence force as signifying the armed wing of the state, as if it was never used against state’s OWN POPULATION)).

Structuralist Marxists would say that the state under capitalism serves as the armed wing of the Kreosots of thishere world. It is myths (in it’s collective form also referred to as Ideology, dominantly in the singular) that masks this Reality. If people (the vast majority of increasingly starving cake eaters) would only see past the veil, turn their faces from the back wall of their cave and turn to See The Light, they would be transposed from the realm of the fake to the realm of the real, the realm of darkness to the realm of light. It is, however, and according to Zizek, not that easy.

It is, actually, impossible to imagine a state in which reality could ever be unmediated. [Anarchists would say that that is because we need to Abolish State.] Because, if notions like Meaning and Reality are to have any Social Implications, they must by constructed as matters of iterativity. If I want Meaning to signify ‘Terrorists are really Wicked People’, I may do so, and it may be meaningful to me in a system(at)ic manner, but not if my systems are screwed up, see what I mean. Meaning can’t mean whatever I want it to mean, if I want it to mean anything to anyone but me. But that doesn’t mean that the word meaning can’t have more than one meaning. So, hence and in other words, it is not possible to imagine a social meaning without some sort of structure, or mediation, or iterativity.

* Iterativity implies structure.

But, says the post-structuralists, the fact that there must be structure for us to communicate, doesn’t mean that it can only be One Structure, now, does it? I could coomunicate with Tom at this moment, but not with Dick and Tracy, and with, say, Dick at the next moment, but not with Tom nor Tracy, so as to imply that there could be different ways of communicating with Tim, Dick and Tracy (or Jerry, or whatever). But oh, squeek the structuralists with their grumpy old-men’s voices, “but at the Deep Level, young man, and this is something you will realize when you Grow Up (and See the Light etc.), all structures are really One, the One Deep Structure. And if you try to take that Faith away from us, vee veel Cut Off Your Chonson.” Anyway, this is still an ongoing debate in Certain Circles.

Which is a long way of saying that “You don’t have to be deep to be structured.”

2003-11-12T20:36:00.000Z

“Watching Suy Kui act is deeply disturbing,” Diderik said. “She is a seemingly seemless display of trenchant display of phallic imagery.”

We were seated in the Spectre of Kabool, drinking green leaf tea and chewing chiabattas.

“Burp,” said I. “I’ll get another pot. You want one?”

When I returned, Diderik was still staring into space, in exactly the same posture as I’d left him. I put the cup of tea in front of him.

“So, what else have you been up to lately,” I asked.

“Well, it’s uncomfortable to work for TRU. I mean, I was used to the restrictions in the tried and tested EyeRak system, but there’s a whole different set of pre and pro scriptions now. I can’t go into them. I mean, they’re classified for one,” Diderik said.

“No, I meant what have you been up to after Sinsemilla left.”

“Oh, that,” Diderik said, but I know he merely pretended not to be bothered. It was a secret, albeit public, scandal that Diderik’s compulsive wife, 20 years his junior, had left him for a bouncer at the TRU Executive’s Club. She passed me in the rush the other day, driving a red BMW convertible. Diderik was still driving his hammered old Trabant. It was parked across the street from the bar we were patronizing, with a coating of white tape around the left side mirror, probably put there to keep it from falling apart, standing out from the grime and rust of the battered vehicle.

“No, listen, I mean that

‘I’m not comfortable in this corporation,
but this corporation has made itself comfortable in me!’”

“Stop quoting Ekelöf and get to the point, I said, waving my hand vigorously, as if to scare away some fishy flies from his discourse.

“No, I mean that Suy Kui offers no resistance to the imaginary. She’s the terrifying spectral image of phallic desire.”

“As in Natural?” I said. “Nonsense. What do you know about Hardcore?”

“Well, I know it was a boook written by Linda Williams, in which she discourses upon the porn genre.”

In the book, Diderik said, Williams elaborates the concept of visual spectacle, using at is a vehicle to explain the prevalence of the cumshot as an ocular gimmick. The cumshot constitutes the high point of a hand-job sequel, usually around 15-20 minutes in duration. The sequel typically opens with some narrative pretension: a lightly clad sorority girl gets a visit from the post-man, or horny house-person is having one’s cable fixed, and so on. Then her step-sister or room-mate emerges from the shower or bed-room, preferable in the nude, and the action begins. This sequence is tightly scripted, and, finally, ending in the infamous, and already-mentioned, cumshot. What Suy Kui had managed in her work, Diderik said, was no less than the most perfected embodiment of the phallic imagining to date.

“It’s brutal. You never know if you’re watching a machine or a person.”

“A personal machine, perhaps,” I said, in an, admittedly failed, attempt to be witty.

“Or a mechanical person,” Diderik explicated, while fishing out another cigarette from his packet with his hand-implants. He’d stopped wearing the skin cover, and the metal screws holding his hands together were on display in their cruel and senseless honesty.

2003-11-11T14:11:00.000Z

It was a strange time in the history of EyeRak Inc. After many years under the fraternal leadership of Comrade Mistos, followed by the attentive command of General Mistos, and the glorious paternity of Cardinal Mistos (the same Mistos after converversions), the competing Terror "R" US, ok!? had finally managed to wring control of the corporation after an aggressive knife-to-the-throat attack on EyeRak shares. It had installed its leader, Managing Director Sotsim, who persistently declined to comment rumors that TRU planned to downsize all "non-essential" staff and replace them with robots supplied the mother corporation.

Primarily, though, it was expected that TRU was interested in the rights to important mineral assets under the ownership of EyeRak Inc. It was a matter of a number of gold and diamond mines in the Accessories Division of the corporation, and the Spring of Muses, an ancient site of pilgrimate for poets on the TRU payroll, who would now have free or a significantly reduced price on access to the shrine, which would enable TRU to cut costs and put more money in the Future Fund, a large vault of money only accessible to the Inner Trust, a cabal of Managing Directors of the Clan Chosen by Mammon.

It was a strange time, indeed, for employees of EyeRak Inc. With the spectre of mass firings looming, they had adopted a number of strategies to better their own chances in the new corporation, however it might be shaped. Some had started writing long, elaborate letters to the new management team, laying out how their husbands were out of work, their daughters lacking the most essential of winter clothing, and how desperately they needed to keep their job. Others would take extreme measures to find out when a manager might stop by their particular part of the corporation, and would then put on their best clothes, and bring a parcel of tea-leaves from their own garden to present the manager as a token of appreciation of and confidence in their leadership. Yet others would make complex plots to undermine the chances of fellow employees in the competition for work in the new corporation. Project papers would accidentaly dissapear in the shredder, memos from junior managers prompting urgent action would get lost, compromising the position of employees considered rejectable by a certain push of fate.

2003-10-30T22:23:00.000Z

They say that those unable to display a stiff smile in daily intercourse lack a sense of humor, according to amateur surgeon Zarathustra D. Johnson. To aid these unfortunate souls, author Diderik Humble jr. has invented a new, great devise: a novel gesture in sign language, by which it will be possible to spare one's facial muscles and instead smile by means of a sign!!! (A hand signal.)

It is opined that the invention (method) will be of significance not only to preserve marriage, but also to promote international understanding.

On behalf on the South Minnesota Ignoramus Society
(the Reception Committee)

Darwin P. Johnson
president

2003-10-28T17:20:00.000Z

Thishere in response to jlsperanza of aol.com, who on lit-ideas 23 Oct 2003 at 9:02, announced the publication of an
> English/Iraqi Iraqi/English
> Phrase Book
>
> by J. M. Geary with the
> collaboration of J. L. -- and authentic native Iraqi's
>
> Baghdad and Memphis: The Buckley School of Languages,
> with the auspices of the Seattle School of Scholasticism, Paperback, iii
> + 112 pp, with illustrations throughout.
>
> Editorial description.
>
> "They don't speak our language", Professor Geary -- a native of
> Seattle but actually born in Memphis -- complained on his last tour to
> Baghdad, where he is promoting with co-author J. L. -- "Buckley or the
> Aftermath of Kabul" --. On co-author J. L.'s suggestion that they
> engaged Phatic to translate the work, Geary, invoked statistics and
> expenses that showed that it would be "more profitable -- to everyone
> conceerned --" to issue a paperback phrasebook instead. They write in
> the preface to the Iraqi section: "English is not an impossible
> language to learn -- and Iraki either, we guess -- but we leave that for
> the preface to the English Section'. With the aide of some friendly
> (nah, talkative) native speakers they found the task -- especially
> 'lexicon retrieving' as Geary calls it -- 'easy nuff'.
>
> Geary and JL soon found out that Iraqi is not really an Indo-European
> language, which discouraged the original idea of providing a comparative
> grammar. "There ain't really nothing to compare, ednit", Geary said,
> expanding: "I mean, no subject-copula-predicate stuff and stuff". That
> gave them the idea of providing instead what is basically a phonetic, or
> as Geary prefers to say, fonetik, manual ("You can always learn the
> API", said JL -- referring to the Paris-based Association Phonetique
> Internationale). The main intended readership, the authors hope, will be
> the task forces, mainly American, but Brits and Aussies, too. "This has
> been noted before," Geary said, "way back in Vietnam." "And don't let's
> forget Japan," JL added, with a nodd to the anthropological research of
> McCreery, "but the matter," Geary continued, "has now become pretty
> urgent. There must be a way -- at least fonetic -- by which American
> troops can reciprocate a simple heart-felt 'welcome' or 'nice cuppa
> tea?'."Right. There must be more to lingo than gesture and
> paralanguage", JL concluded. The authors will be signing copies at the
> Buckley Hotel, by the city river.

Meanwhile, Phatic was lounging in Mingus Court, plotting his revenge for not being included in the release of "Buckley or the Aftermath of Kabul."

"So JL thinks I'm cheap, ey," he thought to himself, pushing aside one of the nude breasts that obstructed his view of the Bagdad Hotel across the street. The groupies had become a pain in the eye -- he could hardly get a moment to himself to think of the events that had led him here and his plans to reclaim his rightful place in the annals of things Buckley.

It all started when he was heading to Memphis International Airport one fateful morning in the early Naughties. The night had been spent in utter debauchery, celebrating the collaborative completion of "Buckley" (the novel). MG had recited Yeats, JL played the organ and EH had performed one of her acclaimed exotic dances on webcam from Queebec (where she gave a Canadian Fraction Party with PL and PS). All in all it had been a wonderful night. But when Phatic, on his way to the airport in a rented TransAm, saw an announcement for a public lecture by one Darwin P. Johnson of the South Minnesota Ignoramus Society at International Airport Trampoline Hall 49, and, calculating that he had some time to waste before his plane left for Paris, where he would stop over on his way to Bagdad, he though why not? Why not indeed? So he slid the car between the only two other vehicles that were parked on the immensely oversized lot outside Hall 49, a brown Bentley and a red Renault, and found a seat in the back row of the auditorium. He had just taken out a pen and notebook from his light green trenchcoat when the lights went down. Darwin P. Johnson emerged on the podium: A smallish man with a gray beard and a curved pipe. This is the lecture he gave:

> Today I shall speak on the egg. Historically, the first (and largest)
> egg was allegedly laid by a Russian, thousands of years before Christ.
> It was the so-called ur-egg. In Europe, the egg has been known for only
> a few hundred years. In august/september 1492 Kristopher Columbus laid
> the first European egg, whereupon he went out to discover America. Some
> say that he first discovered America and then went home to lay the egg,
> while others claim that he laid the egg in America and then hurried home
> to Spain with it. Be that as it may, two things remain: 1. Columbi egg
> wasn't laid in a day. 2. Columbus laid only this one egg and died in
> 1506 as a disheartened man.
>
> As I mentioned in my lecture yesterday, it is mainly the hen that lays
> eggs nowadays. Some birds, such as the DODO, have stopped laying eggs
> altogether. The dodo was extinguished at the end of the seventeenth
> century as A DISHEARTENED BIRD.
>
> The egg consists of:
> 1. The white.
> 2. The yoke.
>
> Earlier it was a commonly held belief that the yoke enjoyed its stay in
> the egg. Later research shows this to be wrong. IT HAS A HORRIBLE TIME!
>
> Attempts on the egg's side to teach the hen how to lay eggs have not
> been successful. On the contrary.
>
> By the way, an end must be put to this nonsense that it is the ROOSTER
> that teaches the egg what the egg will teach the hen. IT IS NOT THE
> ROOSTER!!! (I don't know who it is, but at least it's not the rooster.)
> Perhaps it's no-one? Perhaps the egg has REVELATIONS?
>
> What do I know?
>
> Thanks for your attention.

"Of course!" Phatic thought, slapping his forehead in epiphany, "it is not the rooster!"

Meanwhile, over at the Proverbial Righteousness and Ideology Conference, K-division (P.R.I.C.K.), JL and MK were already busy scheming a separatist publication of "Buckley" (the novel). The conference was funded through an annual grant from one of Buckley's charitable foundations, another part of his grand money-laundering operation.

"'Tis against my principles," MG is rumored to have objected.

"Principles, scminciples," JL replied as he signed the contract granting all future publishing rights to P.R.I.C.K. "Now, stop cowering. Pretty please with sugar on top, sign the blasted paper."

Possibly convinced by the insurmountable logic of JL's argument, MG put his name on the dotted line.

It was only later, after Phatic, disguised as a Burundian refugee, had issued a barrage of fake spam mails offering penis extensions, free Viagra (TM) and cheap sex with horny house-persons that the mood in the separatist camp changed. JL was struck by a sense of conscience after a visitation from Virgin Mary, in whom he didn't believe, in a dream. MG, on the other hand, noted that while the Viagra (TM) was free, the sex was 'cheap' and hence a for-pay service. Little did he know that Phatic's LP "Buckley -- the collected Folk Songs" had been an instant popular success upon its release in Eyerak earlier that year, affording Phatic with sex in any imaginable gender, case and number. MG, unaware, as he were, of Phatic's act of deception, wanted money to "feed the monkey", as he put. So when JL, in a soft moment, suggested they'd allow Phatik, as he said it, in a Germanic sort of accent, to translate Buckley to Eyeraki, MG balked.

"That's beyond our means, JL. We're gonna milk this baby dry," MG said, sporting a devilish grin on his exiled South State face.

Meanwhile, Phatic had been busy organizing a band of agitators, the Post-Pragmaticist Stress Order, to persuade the Eyerakis that JL and MG really were lackeys of the imperialist Buckley's scheme to colonize the translation business. He had attended hisself some of the tea-parties organized by the Order. Tea was key to the heart of the Eyeraki. Phatic knew that after reading up on the scholarly literature on Eyeraki culture, and always offered free Lipton Service tea at his public recitals. In an interview with The Daily Veil, Phatic offered this explanation:

"It started spontaneously, but it has now become a stock moment of these events that the crowd, upon my arrival on stage, will lift their Coca-Cola cardboard cups filled with tea, stomp their feet, and exclaim, in a rhythmical fashion, 'Phatic, you are welcome.' The tea always does the trick in Eyerak, doesn't it?"

Meanwhile, Phatic had been colluding with EH to win her over to his side. She was in trouble with her employer, a think-tank in Quebec, after having delivered an oversized, zero-paged paper as her report on "Reading Readers Reading: 'Moma is a Psycho and other tales of liberation'."

Meanwhile, the Post-Pragmaticist Stress Order had tried to convince the Eyerakis to stay away from Bagdad Hotel this particular morning. Plans had been made, alliances struck and young maidens, shameful of their fate as unmarrieds -- as was their wont in Eyeraki culture --, had arrived in hordes at Phatic's backstage door to volunteer as missionaries in Phatic's crooked course for Ontological Eyeraki Autonomy NOW!

As he reached for another grape, held ready for him by one of the maidens, Phatic had a snug sense of self-satisfaction. The counter- strike was planned in its minutest detail. A maiden, disguised as a beret-clad blind man in a wheelchair, would roll into the lobby of Bagdad Hotel at precisely 10:01, signally to the hotel clerk, a member of the order, that she should set off the trigger mechanism, a fall-trap under the podium where JL and MG would be seated boasting their separatist release. They would then be flushed around an intricate system of tunnels, dug specifically for that purpose, under the streets of Bagdad, to end up in the dungeons of Mingus Court, where they would be forced to listen to recitations of spam mail offering penis extensions, free Viagra (TM) and cheap sex with horny house-people in accented English to all eternity.

"And then," Phatic thought to hisself, "I shall be free. At last."

... to be continued

(or not)

2003-10-22T16:16:00.000Z

Open letter to jlsperanza of aol.com

I'd like to thank JL for our exchange on the meaning of the verb 'exist' and ints noun form 'existence'. To sum up, JL had argued that Borges' Anglo-American Cyclopaedia in a sense can't have existed, since it couldn't be verified, despite numerous attempts. I replied something to the effect that, if the Cyclopaedia existed to Borges, it did indeed exist, possible with the qualification 'to Borges'.

I've been thinking further about this problematic: a conceptual approach to 'existence' qua noun. Existence as a scientific value to statements, objects and other discursive moments is indeed, in some dominant sectors of the scientific world contingent on a pre- established practice of falsification. Existence (does gravity exist? is this a true statement? does this object-in-discourse exist?) must pass the test of falsification. Falsification is an astonishingly simple practice. First, articulate the object as in some specific relationship to some 'pre-discursive' world (nature, the real world, reality, aka. existence). Second, produce the articulation in such a way that it is testable in the same pre-discursive world as it is articulated through a pre-established set of parameters. (Say, a machine produces the color green iff the color produced is green. The method through which statements of the second order is articulated is arrived upon, is considered given, or natural. "Everybody knows what color green is, if they have eyes to see with." The color green is self-evident, transparent in a conceptual sense.) Finally, test the articulated object against an articulation of the pre-determined reality. If the two articulations don't correspond, scrap the theory and keep the already-established reality.

The practice of falsification rests on the assumption that knowledge is an [ac]cumulative process, that the amount of knowledge in a subject, or the social body in toto, is in a process of growth, it moves forward and upward -- nothing grows downward, now, does it? Except maybe onions, but they don't have anything to do with the Existence of Man, now, does it?

There's just a couple of problems with this assumption. For one, it can be falsified (!), that is, beaten on its own home ground. After a brain damage of some sort, or as a result of some disease, a person may loose knowledge in a commonly accepted sense of the word -- memorized 'facts' (set statements) about the 'objective world'. You may answer that knowledge in our sense doesn't reside in a singular mind, but in some abstracted social body. If one person should forget the year of the American Declaration of Independence, lots of people still remember. It remains societally remembered. Besides, it is written down, and hence accessible as long as a written document of its memorial exists (and can be interpreted). Sure, I'd say, but if some moment of discourse doesn't exist to any member of a group, does it then exist to the group? Isn't existence precisely contingent upon at least some member acknowledging it? And this is where we come to the more serious problem with 'falsification theory' as a theory of knowledge. Existence can't, in a linguistic sense, be reduced to (a certain conception of) scientific existence.

To backtrack: In (hard) science, it would be meaningless to say that Newtonian gravity exists but is wrong. The Newtonian notion of gravity has been falsified. And yet it exists! I've just referred to it a number of times, scientists spend years of their lives proving and convincing others that it doesn't exist, and so on.

Anyway, must dash.

2003-10-16T21:45:00.001Z

Posting Tor Ulven – Release reworked (including an excerpt in translation)

South Africa in the movies – some impressions.

Staged: phatic sings the blues (and more!). Download phatic music now.

On posting Ulven

It's not easy to translate Ulven. In fact, if you've ever tried it, you'll know the meaning of the Norwegian term "gjendikte": to make parallel poem in a different language, to repoetize. So as a noun it would signify the parallel poem, the re-poem. One reason it's particularly difficult to translate Ulven is his avid use of all sort of Germanizisms: The passive voice, the indefinite pronoun, the endless run-on of clauses, the inventive use of presentation, and so on and on.

The first issue to takle, though, is the novel's title. The Norwegian "Avløsning" is the noun form of the verb "å avløse", to take over for something else. It is used in military terminology to signify a change-of-guards: The guards were released. Hence it has connotations to relief, letting-go, as when a Queen may finally let go of her duties, hand them over to her successor and rest confidently on her laurels. On the far end of the connotative scale is "utløsning", the Germanic prefixes constituting their minimal pairedness. An "utløsning" is an ejection or ejaculation, or a release of energy more generally. So while it was tempting, then, to translate the title to "Relief", I chose Release, since I wanted to maintain some kind of link with the sphere of formal succession.

As I was working on the piece, and, even though I'm a great fan of late Ulven's work, I was struck by the plasticity of his metaphorism, at one point bordering on sentimentality, for instance when one of the narrators wonders if he'd "ever hear the sound of the chimney sweep again." And then I started contemplating what the heck the chimney sweep is supposed to symbolize, anyway. And, finally, what's the machine that "you" will construct meant to symbolize? Puzzling.

Tor Ulven's fate was both sad and sudden. I remember working the night shift in the daily newspaper Dagbladet in 1995 when there was some hushed whispering in the corner of "suspicious death" that had been reported on the police radio. "Suspicious death" is police-code for criminal investigation: A body has been found dead with no apparently "natural" cause. A team from the newspaper was sent out to follow the investigation. If it turned out to be a case of murder, it would be top priority. Murder-stories always collected a large readership, and thus much money for the paper.

When our team came back, though, it was more hushed whispering in the corners. Having worked in the paper for more than a year, I thought I might get an answer if I asked what had happened. As it turns out, it was not a matter of murder. The police had closed the case as no crime had been commited. In other words, it was a case of suicide.

"It was Tor Ulven," the reporter told me. I reacted with shock. Ulven was one of my favorite authors. I'd followed his writing meticulously since I began serious studies of literature many years earlier. He was a central member of the writers around the critically important Vagant literary magazine, and he'd introduced French surrealists and critical theory to the Norwegian language-area. Ulven had just been awarded an important literary prize. He'd pointed a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

Ulven had handed in the manuscript for Mixtum Compositum to his publishers before his death. When it was published the same year, it came with the following excerpt on the dust-jacket:

"Monumentet er et monument over sin egen glemsel. Og får mening først når det ikke finnes noen som kan gi det mening. Det er steinen du holder i hånden. Som du aldri når inn til. Bare speilet viser alltid riktig tid. Når steinen speiler seg, er det ikke av forfengelighet. Speilet røper alt, steinen ingenting. Som stein og speil er det du helst vil vite."

"The monument is a monument of its own forgetting. And is given meaning only when nobody is there to give it meaning. It is the rock you're holding in your hand. That you can never reach in to. It is only the mirror that always displays the correct time. When the rock mirrors itself, it is not out of vanity. The mirror reveals everything, the rock nothing. As rock and mirror is that which you most yearn to know."

Release, published on Gyldendal in 1993, has been noted for its narrative creativity. In an interview with Vagant's Alf van der Hagen, the only interview he ever gave, Ulven is asked to comment on a critic's statement about the novel.

van der Hagen: - The Danish critic and author Christina Hesselholdt writes that she has counted fifteen persons or conciousnesses in the novel?

Ulven: The number is correct.

Later in the interview Ulven stresses that he composes his novel in as simple a manner as possible. Read an excerpt from Release below.

South Africa in the movies – some impressions

The ongoing festival "Films from the South" is showing two South African movies. I went to see them. While Malunde was cinematographically a very conventional movie -- down to the continuity editing, God is African was quite a different, and far more interesting experience, both in terms of the narrative style and the content. This movie, while also about integration, as more an attempt to establish Pan-Africanism on the ground of the foreigner present in South Africa. Set in the mid-90s, Femi, who carries a Nigerian passport, is trying to establish support for a protest against the Nigerian government's planned execution of the writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. The main body of the movie consists of dialogues between the variously located characters -- fellow Nigerians, South African of various "races" and classes, students and journalists -- and Femi. Filmed with a hand-held videocamera and then transferred to the big screen, the cinematography is slightly reminiscent of Lars von Trier and the Dogme-school, and it manages to capture our interest even during some of the rather lengthy dialogues.

Staged: phatic sings the blues

It was a dark and dangy night when I glanced trough the stage curtain to see throngs of fans stomping their feet, shouting for "phatic". I know, I know, these stories should be written by someone else, but, as I've always said, if you want something done properly, you've gotta do it yerself.

So, anyway, while I was basking in the shouts of "What's his name?", and the response "PHATIC", I was preparing the evenings program. The stage was being covered in smoke, strobes piercing through the fog in rythmic intervals. It would have to be "I would like" that would open the show. Its techno-like beat seemed to get crowds going, and if it was one thing I wanted it was a wild crowd. "I would like" was a recitation of a poem by Samuel Beckett on a bed of techno, as simples as that. Then, I thought, I would do "Think", with a beat somewhere up the same alley, but with my own words this time. And with a dramatic end. All lights on stage goes down. Phatic changes shirt, to return with an acoustic guitar. Seated on a stool at the front of the stage I would do "universe-solitude", Beckett's translation of Paul Eluard's "L'Univers-Solitude." But a show can't end on a mellow note, as show-bizzers all know, so it would have to end with my Euro-Rap "am", climaxing in a masturbatory solo on my metallic green Fender Strat. Oh yeah.

Now it was just a matter of doing it.

Download the tracks from the Vitaminic stage.

* * *

Release

by Tor Ulven(*)

(1)

An uneasiness, a small nervous twitch of light (or dark), one could
call it, an airing touching the curtain folds, admitting the pale
summer night shimmer, it occasionally breathes like this, a small
stream gaping and disappearing in a few seconds, then temporary
darkness, then a new breath and a new darkness; it happens every time the
draught (since he has purposefully, due to the strong heat, opened two
windows) opens a crack between the curtains, they flutter and bulge (as a
stage curtain when the actors or stage workers rush past behind it) before
they again hang relatively still in their skirt-like folds. A skirt with a
long split and the entire world hidden behind it. It is, in principle,
only a matter of opening the door and starting to walk, to find
everything, absolutely everything.

(2)

It's dark. He's lying in darkness, almost immovable, immovable on his way
to rest and sleep. He's become used to it, friends with it, a friend of
darkness, the short time of darkness after the curtains are drawn but
before he lights his reading lamp. If everything stands at its usual place
he can transport himself, as he has just done, with a certain confidence,
across the floor from the window to the bed. It is, however, not a full
night's darkness, merely half-obscure dusk; it still shines bright and the
sun reflected from the upper windows of the high-rise buildings burns,
while darkness, or semi-darkness, or the shadow, thickens below, and rises
(he knows) slowly up the floors, from one row of windows to the other, as
if on a measuring rod: almost full. Tonight he entered the smell of the
house like a guest, and again he senses the soothing, metallic vapour of
gun oil; it is within reach of the bed, loaded, as always. He is prepared.
The only matter of uncertainty is that the shells are about half his own
age, in other words over forty years old. Perhaps he should afford new
ones. But if they're never fired, he will have no joy from them, and the
money will be wasted.

(3)

Night inside is as warm as day outside. It could have been the ocean. Does
he have regrets? He doesn't know. At arrival he could have bought a pack
of jam biscuits (he must just soften them in his mouth first) and a bottle
of soda in the kiosk, before embarking upon the laborious trek to the
beach, where he could sit in the grass, with his jacket and crutches
beside him, and shirt-sleeves rolled up, could have eaten his biscuits and
drank the soda, slowly, relishing, while observing the waves rolling in,
feeling the wind in his hair, or, more precisely, on his skull, the smell
of salt, iodine and rotting seaweed. He remembers the last time he was by
the ocean, it must have been about ten years ago, when he saw something
(since it is as if his missing throat is compensated for by good
eyesight), something that first resembled a message-in-a-bottle, then a
cigar case, drifting towards the beach with the wind, but finally changing
into a wooden block, quite simply, a watery wooden block which finally
ended up pushing towards the rocks in sync with the waves, without any
message what-so-ever, smooth, not even with marks from the saw that had
cut it. He remembers the disappointment of sitting there and observing the
insignificant object bobbing towards the beach, the feeling that if one
only waits long enough, something will float, something void of meaning or
significance, perhaps, but something, something will float, drift, loiter,
a block, it's only a matter of waiting, he thinks, it is him, he is a
wooden block pecking at the beach rocks a summer day ten years ago. No,
he's not. He's alive. He's sitting there watching the wooden block in the
water.

(4)

No. He sat and watched the wooden block in the water ten years ago.
Or seventy-three years ago. On the beach. A hand travelling up her
thighs, under her dress, and so on, no, not that, he thinks, but he
could see the bright dots of a sailboat moving through the branches
and leaves, disappear for a second and appear again, painfully slow, and
feel the sour smell of sausages burnt black at the beechtop bonfire (by
that time reduced to a red-orange pile of glows, where scattered wooden
remains shot out, spreading a powder of whirling sparks), and he is
content that that time has passed.

(5)

No, he's not. The core of an apple, for instance, or any fruit or
vegetable, rotting, getting wrinkled, twisted, and shrinking, as the human
body is getting wrinkled and twisted and shrinks and shrinks as the age
increases, as if the common denominator for fruits (or vegetables) and
humans only appears in decay, he thinks. He's sweating, particularly on
his back, a rancid, sticky sweat as syrup to the skin. Something he once
read concerning an artist who had hung a long string of bananas painted
white on some sort of rack by a wall, all of the same form and appearance
and equally artificial, except one, and, as the artist's exhibit
progressed, one of the bananas started rotting, the real, of course, thus
having revealed itself, while the others, the artificial ones, of course,
maintained their whiteness and splendor. No, not the ocean today. How long
had it been? About four months. That is, it was about four months since he
last was out of the house. Each time was an act of courage. But it was
worth it. Never in winter, that's too dangerous. But a grand experience
after having had the same view for four months or half a year. Basically
of no consequence what he sees, as long as it's something else.

(6)

Alright, not through the binoculars: a gyroscopically movable
aluminum tube, mounted on a solid rod, a platform to stand on, and a slit
for the coin (he knows nothing can be seen before he's paid; the coin,
rattling into the box, brings about a sudden epiphany of new and unthought
things, and allows them to appear clearly, magnified, indiscreetly close,
for a charge; he imagines a blind man with tin box rattling on his belly
who incessantly must put coins in the box for a few minutes of vision,
always more coins, and every time he runs out of change, he's completely
blind, until he again can produce another coin; observation isn't free, it
accumulates as debt, and he laughs quietly to himself in darkness at the
thought, fortunately none is there to hear the whooping, gasping hiss of a
throatless laughter). No, not the binoculars. Firstly, he wouldn't have
been safe enough on the small platform (close to a footboard), and,
secondly, he would probably be too slumped and stoop-shouldered to reach
the ocular, and, to top it all, he presumably would have had to let go of
both crutches, or at least one of them, to insert money.

(7)

Thus the naked eye. But he could support his elbows on a table at the
terrace, one of those outdoor café tables of white enameled metal booming
as one hits it, and he could sit on one of those folding chairs with a
high back, a collapsible iron skeleton with wooden crossbars. He could sit
there, harshly and uncomfortably, as it were, in the shade of a plastic
umbrella adorned with fringes and with a printed advertisement for some
brand of soda, while he had coffee and ate waffles with butter and
strawberry jam (even if he had to repeat each part of the order to the
young girl behind the counter three times, and the third time watch how
she thoughtlessly shaped the words with her own mouth, as if she were a
ventriloquist and he the ventriloquist's doll, and he noticed how
horrified and embarrassed she was by the amphibious, toad-like burping and
quacking he made). A barred fan at the counter, it cooled comfortably,
turning from side to side, while, in the empty room, he heard the
clattering of trolleys with cutlery and plates from the kitchen. The first
thing that happened as he re-emerged was that the paper that had covered
the sugar cubes blew away before he got to crumple it.

(8)

The bedside rug didn't slide tonight either. He could sit down in
safety and unbutton his shirt, slowly - each button being a project
of its own - under his stiff and shivering fingers. The tiny, smooth disc
that keeps slipping away, but he finally managed, today as well, even with
the sweat, and without seeing much, in the darkness, or semi-darkness;
it's a liberation each time he feels the release of a button's obstinate
friction against a button hole, and the button lets go, with a slight
push, a victory each time, increasingly splitting the shirt's chest. Now
he's lying here, in bed, in darkness, next to the firewall. First a few
strong, mellow thumps to the inside of the chimney, then a quick and
jerking whistling, it's all repeated, then the clamping as he re-enters
the attic stairs; the chimney sweep usually arrives early in the morning,
and the sounds are due to the tools he's bringing: an iron ball hanging on
a chain, and a tuft of elastic metal ribs fastened to the chain, it must
be so that the ball makes the broom sink to the bottom of the chimney,
while the tuft sweeps away the soot while the entirety: ball, chain, tuft,
is hauled up again, while the more or less pulverized layer of soot
sprinkles down to the basement, where it, subsequently, must be shoveled
out through a hatch made for that purpose. But not now. It is in spring he
arrives, spring and fall, twice a year. We become more unassuming when it
comes to entertainment as we grow older. He wonders whether he will hear
the sounds of the sweeping tool again.

(9)

It's always better to sweat than to be cold, he thinks, but it's not
good to sweat either. He could almost see it in its entirety from
where he sat, under the umbrella at the terrace of the café,
cartographically, in bird's perspective, and it didn't appear to have
grown from the seaside and up, as it clearly had done through the
centuries, but as if it had flown down the valley and dried on the plain
before the ocean in the form of a slow, pale mass of glass, where he could
discern through the haze of heat a number of small, white and apparently
immovable sails between the green-black landmasses of the bay; only if he
stared insistently at one of them could he register how the distance
between the boat and, say, one of the islands diminished, until the sail
disappeared behind it.

(10)

Now it's dark, and yet not entirely so, for some light still slips
past the curtain, both through the small crack in the middle (only an inch
or so, and, on each side of the glowing column, the folds are drawn as
thick, dark lines that taper here and there where the fabric is twisted
inwards or outwards) and through the textile itself, where the real
pattern (stylized clowns, sea lions, circus horses and elephants in a
regular repetition) has become almost invisible, as if it was completely
washed out. In stead you now see something that usually doesn't come out
that well, particularly not when it's light in the room and dark outside
(while it is now dark in the room and light outside): a suggestion of the
weave itself, all the crossing threads that in sum make up the curtain,
approximately as when someone pulls a shirt over your head and in your
resistance you see the light through the fabric of the clothing, but not
what is outside, and your breath makes an imprint. When your head is
finally pulled (forcefully) through the neck, you feel it as a wet spot on
your chest. It is soon forgotten, and by the time you remember it, it's
gone.

(11)

It's not a total darkness, but it turned into a sort of darkness
after her thumb, with a long, red nail, flicked the switch (which
resembles a short, round nose -- it somehow extends when the lamp is
switched off), after she closed the book and leaned over you so that her
while pearl necklace fell into the arch of your neck. It was cold and
tickled, and she had to hold it up with her other hand while putting her
cheek next to yours, and you sensed the smell of perfume and a faint scent
of today's dinner (mutton in cabbage, with the nauseating, sludgy,
grey-white substance, the tough, soda-like meat splinters and the hard
pepper corns that seem to explode in your mouth like firecrackers to your
taste buds when you bite them; you can't help it, even though you're
always told to spit them out and put them on the side of your plate);
stench of mutton in cabbage, that is, from her hair and clothes. If she
had accepted leaving the door ajar, some light would have entered from the
living room, but she won't accept it, she says you must get used to being
alone in darkness, or you'll never get used to it, you who have gone to
school for two years, and there's nothing dangerous in darkness; thus
there is no light from the living room, only some from the window.

(12)

You will construct the machine.

(*) Translation of the first paragraphs of Tor Ulven's Avløsning (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1993) by Torgeir Fjeld.

2003-09-20T11:12:00.000Z

Out now! Released! Etc!Check out http://stage.vitaminic.com/main/phatic/ for phatic music. More to come.

2003-09-17T21:19:00.000Z

i've working on music files besides the continued writing on My Grand Project lately. soon there'll be phatic sounds on the net.

2003-08-06T19:19:00.000Z

Tor Ulven (1953-95), author from Oslo was one of the most peculiar and influential authors [in the Norwegian] in the late 80s and early 90s. Ulven's poetry and prose are both characterized by an extreme realism of detail. His texts are uneventful, but are rather careful descriptions of sense-perceptions and reflections on what is percieved. Ulven is clearly influenced by the French neo-novel, particularly the author Claude Simon.
http://nrk.no/litteratur/forfattere/182901.html

Translation of Ulven's work by Siri Hustvedt is available in _Writ_ #18.
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~roger/writ.html

The only interview given by Ulven is available (in the Norwegian) from his publisher.
http://www.aschehoug.no/oktober/dialogerto/ulven_t.html

best,

phatic
editor
utopos

*

Tor Ulven:

Intermission V
(the joys of reading)

It's arduous, it's dangerous, it demands considerable ingenuity and practical ability, and a willful resilience, but it can always be done, and it survives under extreme conditions, on a desert island, on plains of permanent frost, under a stinging tropical sun, possibly among cannibals, one hunts in order not to starve to death, one rubs one's nose incessantly to avoid frost-bites while being pulled by a willing dog team deeper into the darkness, snow and frost of a polar landscape, where gold might be waiting, or the fur animals that are laid down so that diamond-shining madams with stupenduously wealthy husbands may dress fashionably for their charity balls, and you indulge them with a smile, since you know better, you know that life is a struggle with harsh and concrete realities, and you continue fighting criminal corporations and mad professors and poker-faced, gentlemanly thieves, until one day (the specificity of which is unknown), they have lost their luster, and the challenge consists, rather, of conquering (as it's called) women, that is, first dreaming of them, of all the wonderful things sex drive will, in the correct dual combination, or perhaps more coincidentally, more multiply, make of your life, and, moreover, the working life's possibilities of various quirky careers, which are either pushed into the vaguely sensational, or find their place specified in the smallest of detail, details that only serve to allow your uniqe talent to shine, and not to forget the equally fantastic as pointless travels you will venture, not to fight cold or heat or wild animals or bandits, this time, but to greedily slurp the exotic, because you're certain that in some other, more wonderful corner of the world the wonderful will also happen to you, and, not in the least, you'll find for yourself wonderful opportunities which will allow your inner miracle to stand out in its glory, if you only have the courage and will. And you conquer (as it's called) woman, and you step in through the gate of working life, and you also make certain travels, where you, as expected, are exposed to pick-pockets, and you must still struggle to survive, but the brawls are somehow peculiarly small, and they decrease in proportion to the goals, after a while, it's reminiscent of a house-wife's endless stuggle against dust and dirt, which, always ingloriously and unexcitingly, must start from the beginning, and it all has an increasingly unsurprising tendency of repeating itself, return on return, like your paper falls on your doormat with the same slap every morning, as if an outsider counted your days by slapping a palm impatiently on a table, and the print rubs off on your fingers, and you run the risk of dying like this, to succumb over the breakfast table, with your forehead planted in a half-eaten egg or an open sandwich with strawberry jam, and this time the dangers were miniscule, but the risks real, and you lie there, a finished chapter, so to speak, while the trivial letters continue their tale of a struggle against all the dangers people must fight, of ship-wrecks, fires, wars, only rarely of gentlemanly thieves, of fights against criminal corporations, as it were, but more often of the fight against simple street violence and arbitrary murders, and there are heroes, a few, but victims are more numerous, and most of the so-called struggle for existence (according to the print you can no longer read) are carried out with filthy, grotesque,sickening and cynical methods, and the print from all of this is left on your hand as if you were about to submit a fingerprint.

Translation by Torgeir Fjeld.

[Translation of Tor Ulven, "Mellomspill V (lesningens gleder)",
Stein og Speil: Mixtum Compositum, Oslo: 1995, p. 21-23.]

2003-07-29T17:09:00.000Z

* New site featuring artwork by Denise Pheiffer
* Stories by Kjell Askildsen in translation.
* Translation of “The Fiddle in the Wild Forest” Hans E. Kinck.
* ... and more

Denise now has a site of her own. Check out
Interceptions, featuring lots of new artwork.

I’ve kept myself busy translating some stories by Kjell Askildsen. He’s a contemporary Norwegian writer who claims to make no use of symbols or metaphors. Read exerpt of an interview here. I posted some short stories on the list Lit-Ideas, and they’re republished below.

* Kjell Askildsen: Chess
* Kjell Askildsen: Carl
* Kjell Askildsen: People in Cafés
* Kjell Askildsen: The Anchor
* Kjell Askildsen: Thomas

Recently I finished translating a novella by Hans E. Kinck, highly canonized, but yet interesting Norwegian author, somehow associated with the continental fin-de-siecle movement. Not quite homey, not quite international, Kinck tried to bridge the local and the global his stories.

* Hans E. Kinck: The Fiddle in the Wild Forest, part I.
* Hans E. Kinck: The Fiddle in the Wild Forest, part II.
* Hans E. Kinck: The Fiddle in the Wild Forest, part III.

For more information on the highly commendable Lit-Ideas, see my selection of links below.

This blog is a continuation of the e-journal Utopos, which is still available online. Follow this link to enter Utopos.

To discuss topics in this blog, or to give feedback, join the forum located here.

Happy reading!

phatic

* * *

Chess
by Kjell Askildsen

The world isn't what it used to be. For instance, it takes longer to live now. I'm way past 80, and it's not enough. I'm too healthy, even though I don't have much reason to be. Life won't let go of me. If you have nothing to live for, you have nothing to die for. Maybe that's the reason.

One day a long time ago, before my legs were too fragile, I walked over to my brother's. I hadn't seen him for more than three years, but he stayed where I met him last. "Are you alive," he said, even though he was older than me. I had brought a lunch bag, and he gave me a glass of water. "Life's tough," he said, "it's unbearable." I ate and didn't answer. I hadn't come for an argument. So I finished eating and drank my water. He sat and stared at a point just above my head. If I had stood up and he hadn't moved his gaze, he would have looked straight at me. But he probably would have moved it. He didn't like to be with me. Or, more precisely, he didn't like himself to be with me. I think he had a bad conscience, or at least not a good one. He has written some twenty thick novels. I've only written a few, and they're thin. He's considered pretty good, but more than a little naughty. He writes much about love, mostly physical, wherever he might have gotten it from.

He kept staring above my head – he probably thought he could allow himself to do that, having twenty novels on his saggy behind – and I felt like leaving with my business unattended, but that would have been a little silly, too, after the long walk. So I asked if he would care for a game of chess. "It takes so long," he said, "I don't have so much time to take of anymore. You should have come earlier." That was when I should have gotten up and left – it would have been right on him – but I am too polite and considerate, it is my great weakness, one of them. "It doesn't take more than an hour," I said. "The game itself, yes," he answered, "but the excitement afterwards, or the annoyance if I should loose. My heart, you see, it isn't what it used to be. Neither is yours, I assume." I didn't answer. I didn't want to discuss my heart on his premises. So I countered: "So you're afraid of dying. Oh well." "Rubbish. It is just that my life's work isn't finished." That was exactly how pompously he expressed himself. It was nauseating. I had put my cane on the floor. Now I bent down and picked it up. I wanted to end his boasting. "When we die, at least we stop contradicting ourselves," I said, and it wasn't to be expected that he would understand what I was referring to. But he was too conceited to ask what I meant. "I didn't mean to hurt you," he said. "Hurt me," I answered quite loudly. It stood to reason that I got a little excited. "I don't give a damn about the little I've written and the little I haven't written." I stood up and gave him a whole little speech: "Every hour of the day the world rids itself of thousands of fools. Imagine – have you ever imagined how much stored stupidity that disappears in a day? All the brains that stop working, because that's where the stupidity sits. But then there's still so much left, of stupidity, because someone has written it down in books. And that's how it's kept alive. As long as people read novels there will be much stupidity. Certain novels. Those in the majority." And then I added, perhaps somewhat opaque, I must admit: "That is why I came for a game of chess." He sat silently for a long while, until I had to leave. Then he said: "That was many words of little use. But I will make the most of them. I will use them. I will put them in mouth of an ignorant."

That's precisely how he was, my brother. By the way, he died the same day. It's not unlikely that I heard his last words, since I left without answering, and he probably didn't like that. He wanted to have the last word, of course, which he got, but he would probably have wanted to say more. When I recall how excited he was, I can't help thinking that the Chinese have their own sign for dying of exhaustion during intercourse.

We were, after all, brothers.

[Translation of Kjell Askildsen, "Chess", first published in Thomas F's siste
nedtegnelser til almenheten by Torgeir Fjeld. Translated from the collection En plutselig
frigjørende tanke, Oslo: Oktober, 1991, 185-187. A Sudden Liberating Thought available from
http://www.amazon.com/ in Sverre Lyngstad's translation.]

* * *

Carl
by Kjell Askildsen

While my wife was alive, I thought that I would have more space when she died. Just imagine all her underwear, I thought, it fills three drawers. I can put my copper coins in one, my matchboxes in another and the corks in a third. As it is now, I thought, it's a complete mess.

And then she died. It's a long time ago. She was a demanding person. But, peace be with her, she finally gave me peace. I emptied drawers and shelves and cupboards of what she had left behind. It turned into lots of empty spaces – more than I could make use of. So I demolished a couple of cupboards. But then I was left with an emptier room instead of two empty closets. It was quite thoughtless of me, but, as I said, it's a long time ago. I was much younger then.

Well, a few weeks, or perhaps months, after I had committed this inconsiderate extension of the room's emptiness, I had a surprise visit from my second oldest son, Carl. He wanted a scarf from his mother. He wanted to give it to his wife as a memory of his childhood. When he realized I had gotten rid of it he turned cantankerous. "Do you hold nothing sacred?" he yelled. And that came from him, who is a businessman and lives off buying and selling things. I felt most like cutting him short, but I refrained. I am, after all, partly to blame for his existence. "What was it that was so special about the scarf?" I asked instead, conciliatory. "Mother knitted it while she carried me. She was particularly fond of it." "Oh, I see. It came into being at the same time as you did. Perhaps you were her favorite son?" "I was, incidentally." "Oh, hardly incidentally," I answered. I began to loose patience with him. He was like her to the dot, and he would be as incapable as she was of discovering the regularity of existence. "Well, the scarf is gone and it will remain gone," I said. "You'll have to find comfort in that we only own forever that which we've lost." Admittedly, it was a nonsensical statement, but I thought he would like it. But I was wrong. For a moment, I had forgotten that he was a businessman. He took an almost threatening step towards where I sat and rambled angrily, but boringly, about my insensitivity. He ended by saying that sometimes he couldn't see how I could be his father. "Your mother was an honorable woman," I answered, but he didn't get the point – why have I been given such dense children. "You don't have to tell me that," he said. His face had turned quite red by now. It suddently occurred to me that he might suffer from a weak heart. After all, he was sixty years old, and, so as to avoid a potential accident, I said I was sorry about the scarf, and that if he had come earlier he would have been given everything his mother left behind. I still think that was a very conciliatory statement, but his face turned redder still. "Are you saying that you threw everything away?" he yelled. "Everything," I answered. "But why?" I didn't want to tell him, so I said: "You would never understand." "How inhuman!" "On the contrary. I acted on a decision of the will, and such acts are almost the only things that make us specifically human." It was, of course, splitting hairs, but it seemed as if he hadn't even heard what I had said. "Then I have no business in this house," he yelled. He had gotten into the habit of yelling, indicating that his wife had turned deaf. My hearing is very good. Sometimes it's truly painful. Some sounds have become much stronger than they used to be. Also, new sounds have been added, from pressured air drills, and those kinds of things. I wouldn't have minded being a little deaf. "I hear what you're saying," I said, "but I don't see anything coming of it." Then he finally left. It was about time, or I might have lost my patience. I certainly have more patience than I used to. It must be the age. Old people have to endure much.

[Translation of Kjell Askildsen, "Carl", first published in Thomas F's siste nedtegnelser til almenheten by Torgeir Fjeld. Translated from the collection En plutselig frigjørende tanke, Oslo: Oktober, 1991, 185-187. A Sudden Liberating Thought available from http://www.amazon.com/ in Sverre Lyngstad's translation.]

* * *

People in Cafés
by Kjell Askildsen

One of Thomas F's last visits to a cafe was a summer Sunday. He remembers it well, because almost everybody was dressed casually, and he thought that perhaps it wasn't Sunday after all? And producing presicely this thought makes him remember it. He was seated by a table near the center of the room, surrounded by many people who were eating cakes and sandwiches, mostly by themselves. They seemed lonely, and since he hadn't spoken to anyone for a long time, he wanted to exchange at least a few words with someone. He considered how to proceed, but the more he studied the faces around him, the more difficult it seemed. It was as if everyone had lost their sight. The world had certainly made a depressing turn. But since he had gotten the idea into his head that it would be nice to have someone talking to him, he continued thinking about it, which was his only aid. After some time he realized what he had to do. He dropped his wallet on the floor, as if unawares. It was lying next to his chair, clearly in sight to those around him, and he observed several guests peeking down on it. He thought that one or two of them would have picked it up and give it to him – he was an old man – or at least yelled something like "You have dropped your wallet on the floor." How many disappointments one would have been spared if one only could cease hoping! Finally, after several minutes of peeking and waiting he pretended that he suddently discovered that he'd lost it. He didn't dare to wait any longer, afraid someone would grab the wallet and run off. It could be some money in it. Sometimes old people are not poor, they might even be rich. That's the way the world is. Those who plundered in their youth or in their best years are paid in their old age. That's what people at cafe have turned into. That's what he learned. We learn as long as we live – whatever that's supposed to mean – when we're about to die.

[Kjell Askildsen, "Mennesker på kafé", first published in Thomas F's siste nedtegnelser til almenheten. Reworked from the collection En plutselig frigjørende tanke, Oslo: Oktober, 1991, 191-192.]

* * *

The Anchor
by Kjell Askildsen

A few months ago the new landlord made a visit to Thomas F. He rang three times before Thomas F made it to the door, even though he walked as fast as he could. He didn't know it was the landlord. Visitors are so rare and almost all of them represent some religious cult asking if he's been saved. Thomas F derived some pleasure from it, but he would never let them in. People who believe in eternal life are not rational – one never knows what they might be up to. But this time it was the landlord. Thomas F had written over a year ago to notify him that the railing in the stairway was broken. Thomas F thought that was why the landlord came by, so he let him in. The landlord measured the flat with his eyes. "You live comfortably here," he said, and it was such a presumptious statement that Thomas F was put on his guard. "The railing is broken", Thomas F said. "Yes, I saw that. Is it you who've broken it?" "No, why me?" "You must be the only person who's using it. Apart from you it's only young people in this section, and it doesn't break by itself." He was obviously an unreasonable person, and Thomas F didn't want to enter into a discussion as to how and why things break, so he said quickly: "As you wish, but I need that railing and it is my right." The landlord didn't respond to that. On the contrary, he said that rent would increase by 20 per cent from next month. "Again," Thomas F said, "and by 20 per cent. That's quite a lot." "It should be more," the landlord said, "the building is running at a loss and I'm loosing money on it." It was long since Thomas F had stopped dicussing matters of economy with people who say they loose money on something they could get rid of – it must have been 30 years ago, so he didn't say anything. But the landlord didn't need a response to continue. He was the kind of person who could run by his own steam. He elaborated on how all his other buildings were also running at a loss. His speech was a misery to hear. He must be a very poor capitalist. But Thomas F didn't say anything, and finally the lament ended – it was about time. Instead he asked, apparently without any comprehensible reason, if Thomas F believed in god. Thomas F almost asked to which god he was referring, but settled with shaking his head. "But you must," the landlord said. So he had let one of them into his flat after all. He wasn't really surprised. It is common that people with much property believe in god. He didn't want to let the landlord have a go at another topic – he'd referred evangelists to the crack of the door once and for all, so he wouldn't let him go on. "So rent increases by 20 per cent," Thomas F said. "I think that's what you came to tell me." Resistance must have taken the landlord by surprise, because he opened and closed his mouth two times without a sound, and Thomas F imagined that that was highly unlikely behaviour for him. "And I hope you make sure the railing is fixed," Thomas F continued. The landlord's face turned red. "The railing, the railing," he said impatiently, "what a fuzz you're making of the railing." That was a dumb statement, Thomas F found, and was slightly stirred up. "But don't you see," he said, "that sometimes the railing is my only anchor in life." He immiediately regretted having said it. Precise statements should be directed to people of reason, otherwise it turns into a mess. And it was a mess. Thomas F can't remember exactly what the landlord said, but it was mostly about the next world. He ended up talking about standing on the grave's edge – he was referring to Thomas F, and then Thomas F got angry. "Now you must stop bothering me with your economy," Thomas F said, since that was really what it was all about. And when the landlord didn't leave immediately, Thomas F allowed himself to beat his cane in the floor. Then the landlord left. It was a relief. Thomas F felt happy and free for several minutes afterwards, and he remembers saying to himself, silently, of course: "Don't give up, Thomas, don't give up."

[Kjell Askildsen, "Holdepunktet", first published in Thomas F's siste nedtegnelser til almenheten. Reworked from the collection En plutselig frigjørende tanke, Oslo: Oktober, 1991, 196-198.]

* * *

Thomas
by Kjell Askildsen

I'm getting terribly old now. Soon it will be as difficult to write as it is to walk. I'm slow. I only get a few sentences down a day. A few days ago I fainted. So the end is getting closer. It was while I was solving a chess problem that I had a sudden sense of loss. It was as if life itself was coming to an end. It didn't hurt, but it was a somewhat unpleasant feeling. And then I must have fainted, because when I woke up, I had my head on the chess board. Kings and pawns lie scattered around. It was just the way I wanted to die. I guess it is too much to ask – to die without pain. If I would get sick and in grave pain and sense that the illness and the pains have come to stay, it would be good to have a friend to help me into the void. It's banned by the law, of course. Unfortunately, laws are conservative. So doctors will prolong the pains of a person, even when they know it's hopeless. It is called doctors' ethics. But nobody laughs. People in pain usually don't laugh. The world has no mercy. They say that during the great clean-up of the Soviet Union, those who had been sentenced to death would by killed by a shot it the neck on their way to death row. Suddently, without a warning. I find that to be a streak of humanity in the midst of all the misery. But the world screamed out: at least they should die face to face with the execution squad. Religious humanism is more than slightly cynical – oh, any humanism. But I awoke with my face among the chess pieces. Other than that, it was like waking up from an ordinary sleep. I didn't know what else to do than to put the pieces back in their places. But I couldn't concentrate on solving the puzzle. I was just about to move over to the window when the door rang. I won't answer, I thought. It's probably an evangelist who wants me to believe in eternal life. It's been many them lately. It is as if superstition has made an up-turn. But then it rang again, and I started to doubt. After all, they usually only ring once. So I shouted, "one moment," and went to open the door. It took a while. It was a boy. He sold tickets for the local school band's lottery. The prizes were an unintended mockery of old people – bike, backpack, soccer boots, and those kinds of things. But I didn't want to come across as discouraging, so I bought a ticket, even though I don't like brass music. But I had my wallet on top of the drawers, so I had to ask him to come inside, or else the wait would have been too long. He walked behind me. He'd probably never walked so slowly in his life. On our way inside, I shortened time by aking what instrument he played. "No, I don't know," he said. I thought that was a strange answer, but I assumed he was shy. I could have been his great grandfather, which might just have been the case. I know I have many great grandchildren, but I don't know any of them. "Does you legs hurt terribly?" he asked. "Oh no, they've just gotten terribly old," I answered. "Oh, ok," he said, probably relieved. We had reached the drawer and I gave him his money. Then I had a fit of sentimentality. I thought he had spent such an unreasonable amount of time to sell that one ticket, so I bought another one. "It isn't necessary," he said. Just then I had a severe spell of dizziness. The room started sailing about. I had to hold on to the drawer, and then I lost the open walled on the floor. "A chair," I said. When I got it, the boy started collecting the money that was scattered all over the floor. "Thanks, boy," I said. "You're welcome," he answered. He put the wallet on the drawer. He gave me a serious look and said: "Can you never go out?" And then I realized that I'd probably been outside for the last time. I can't take the chance of fainting out on the sidewalk. It would mean hospital or retirement home. "Not anymore," I answered. "Oh," he said, and the way he said it made me sentimental again. I've turned into an old fool. "What is your name?" I asked, and the answer only made things worse. "Thomas." I didn't want to say that I had the same name, of course, but I was put in a strange, almost solemn, mood. Oh, it's not so strange. The bells had just chimed for me, so to speak. Then I suddently got it into my head that I wanted to give something to this boy that would make him remember me. I know, I know, but I was somewhat put out. So I asked him to get the carved owl that was standing on the top of the book shelf. "You shall have it," I said, "it is even older than me." "Oh, no," he said, "why?" "For nothing, my boy, for nothing. And thank you so much for your help. Please lock the door behind you." "Thank you very much." I nodded to him. Then he left. He looked happy. But perhaps it was just a show. I've had many spells of dizziness since. But I've placed all my chair at strategic locations in the room. It makes the flat look sadly messy that way. It gives an almost uninhabited impression. But I'm still living here. Living and waiting.

[Kjell Askildsen, "Thomas", first published in Thomas F's siste nedtegnelser til almenheten. Translated from the collection En plutselig frigjørende tanke, Oslo: Oktober, 1991, 204-206. Available from as Kjell Askildsen, A Sudden Liberating Thought, translated by Sverre Lyngstad, Dufour Editions, 1994, for a meager $24.]

* * *

The Fiddle in the Wild Forest, part I
by Hans E. Kinck

Suddently they heard an ugly howl; it came from below the lakes.

The sixteen-seventeen year old son Torstein slipped out of the living room, into the pitch-dark night. The wife, slim and bright, took to her belly and said "Jesus".

It was just before Christmas. Her husband came home to the mountain farm Vasslid from the parish; he often howled like this in the dark nights on his way home; ugliest when he'd stopped by the grocer's and had a drink, – but at other times, too.

She stood up from the spinning wheel, stood by the coal oven, though and shivered in fright: it was like taking a wild animal in her lap straight in from the wild forest when he came home like this... This large man, hair and beard black, and with black eyes hurling around in sharp glimpses.

His old mother, sitting white haired by the oven, looked up at his wife, – her eyes widened, and a strange bright light came over her wrinkly brown face from a distant fire. She still made a bait, and it was her who had spoiled the wife, people said, when she finally married the boy at Vasslid.

The son slid down the hill; he had to get out each time he heard his father howl, he couldn't rest before he'd done it. But this time something else bothered him, too. – Everything was black out here; the mountain was black, the air and the mountain side, and the long, broad forest below the lakes was black. He stopped by the barn and started to howl, as bad and sharp as he could. The he held his breath and listened to the silence that followed.

It answered from beyond Trollberg.

And Sella in the barn, the farm girl, sounded louder and louder; she was frightened, he thought.

The son came back uglier; the mountain threw it back badder.

'Cause he would teach his father to shut up, – he came home ever so often, frightening Sella and frightened his pale mother! ...

Uglier and uglier came the howls between father and son. The pitch darkness, the forest, everything around them was filled with ghosts and monsters; it sparkled from eyes, it padded from paws.

And the hook of the barn door came on; she sounded more quiet in there. She was frightened in another way as well; – his father had been there at least a couple of times already, when he came home at night, she complained.

He howled, as ugly as he could: ho, tonight he wouldn't stop for long down by the barn door! He would be so scared that he would be glad he made it inside the house. He should go home – he was married, the old man! ...

Time and again he howled; but now only the mountain answered. His father was silent; he probably approached from below Trollberg now, – and there the ghosts were, so he probably kept his mouth shut.

The son was quiet, too, listening to the winds of the forest, to the rivers running around him, angry and large after the last bout of bad weather; ... listened for Sella, who stood dead quiet at the barn floor. –

His father breathed over the mound, and slid past him in the dark; he moved swiftly tonight. There, someone took the barn door; it was closed from the inside. He knocked once. Sella didn't move. One more time.

Then he slid back and past him up to the main building.

His son heard him tuble around in the hallway up there; heard his strong voice; saw the uneasiness of the candle. He filled the living room entering like that, sweeping with him all the monsters of the forest until every corner moved and grinned and mother and son lay frightened all night long. He never hit them; only clamped around in large boots, breathing heavily.

Torstein shivered; he knocked on the barn door. She opened.

– Have you got the milk? he whispered.

– Yes!

– Hurry up, then!

And she hurried up to the main building with the milk while he sat on the barn stool in the pitch darkness, waiting.

She was quick; – she'd just put the milk inside the door and hadn't strained it, she said. – He took her fur light, got the fiddle that was hidden under the rafter out in the hay barn. He had traded it for a sheep he'd told his father had gotten lost in the mountains.

He didn't utter a word when she came back, just nipped the strings and listened, put it between his knees and bent over; bent more and more, until his overgrown carcass was shaped like an arch. She watched his narrow neck carressing the fiddle with his black haired head.

The cows moved their ears, listened and shook their horns.

Someone opened the door up there. An ugly howl to the forest. Sella put her hand on the hook of the door and pushed it down. Torstein stroked the strings once; his soft-lipped, broad mouth squeezed shut. An uncontainable fire sparkled behind his dark, dark brown eyes. It was his father’s stare. But the skin of his face was fair – it was his mother's.

It howled again, closer this time.

– Jesus! Sella said and lifted her lids, which lay half way down her large gray- yellow eyes.

Then something slid past the door, breathing; Torstein paused the bow and stared at her. Then it passed, padding up the hill. Sella let go of the hook.

Torstein sat down on the stool, striking the strings heavily. He stomped so the barn floor shook; the bow travelled faster and faster. It was as if a waterfall poured down with everything of the world and the strings couldn't quite hold all the sounds.

– You're frightful tonight, Torstein! Sella said, – the flame in his eyes was shining straight on her.

He didn't listen.

He didn't know what he played. It wasn't any of the country songs he'd learned; he played of people on long journeys, played of broad, sunny villages in summer weather; he played of large steam boats in frothed chase on a shining sea, of the foam of broken waves at the outermost rocks; he played of tall, enormous churches with the sun baking quietly on a wall painted white...

– You sparkle, Torstein! she said, shielding her eyes.

He jumped up, wrapped his arms around her.

– Well, do you want me then! he cried and squeezed.

She fought him:

– Oh! You frighten me, Torstein!

– Well, do you want me, then!

– Oh... be careful, then!

He let her go, sat down, made loving strokes with the bow. He bent more and more sharply over the fiddle; she squatted in front of him and looked at his face. It almost disappeared in the weak glow of the fur light, which was almost out.

...Soft tones, curling and sweeping the fiddle's body until it was shaking and shivering roughly in there, from below them, sliding futher away. It was like frost being dressed and warmed up. He lay over the fiddle, then he accompanied slowly:

Oh, the fiddle sang in the wild forest,
Yes, the fiddle sang.
And noone heard and noone saw
And noone cried and noone smiled,
No, noone cried.
Oh, the fiddle sang in the wild forest
Yes, the fiddle sang

His hands searched for his knees, to find the fiddle box.

– Oh, yes, the fiddle sang! he whispered again, dropping the fiddle. He grabbed her hands, pulled her shivering to him and over to a pile of dry leaves in the corner of the barn.

The candle in the fur light made a last breath. It rustled in the heap of leaves. The bell cow lowed slowly, intrigued.

Someone opened the house door again. An ugly howl to the forest.

Torstein jumped up, fumbled through the darkness and found his fiddle.

Sella after, holding him, begging:

– Oh, Torstein! ... Torstein –! Don't you want me, then!

He didn't answer, flung the hook open, rushed out, and stroke the strings heavily. This thing inside him would find its way after all: His madness would have to live! ...

She followed him across the mound. His father howled at the courtyard.

The strokes more heavy on the strings. He played of different things now: of long lakes at dark, stormy seas, of dead wilderness in the fall without a path, of deep canyons in the wild mountain, of dark nights in the forest...

She tore at him, wanted him out of it. She knew the wild whistle from the fiddle, taking him away from her.

– Torstein, don't you want me, then!

He didn't answer, but kept playing.

It didn't do with these strings anymore. What he saw tore the fiddle out of his hands. He threw it agains a pile of rocks, making it sing and break. Long moans and strings breaking! He heard it dance down the mound. He saw how keenly it flew away in the dark, as if caught in a fire, discharging trolls and witches – they snook under pine roots, hid in heaps of rocks – ugly, strange, soft bodies. And then – pitch dark silence.

He laughed ugly.

– So you don't want me, then! she said softly, letting him go.

He didn't give an answer, only drew his breath heavily. He saw a long, quiet glow over the pine forest, – and inside there were broad, green villages bathed in sun, and grand cities with house upon house.

– We shouldn't have done this, then! she whispered.

– No. No. But only then could I feel how frightened you were, he answered quietly, disappearing in the darkness towards the house.

She walked past the heap of rocks, felt along the mound and found the fiddle. –

But the next day Torstein ran off to the village and took the steamboat to town. He had to get out there to see what it was in the glow over the long, wide forest.

* * *

The Fiddle in the Wild Forest, part II
by Hans E. Kinck

He was away for 15 years, having been far and away, and a jack of many trades. He started as a driver in the city, and went on to be an apprentice with a band – he beat the drums.

For a while he travelled the Eastern vallies with an accordion, in the company of a vagrant wiman, who played the triangle and sang. Lately he'd spent most of his time in the Northern country, participating in the winter and summer fishing.

He'd seen big cities where armies played under tall trees, and coffin dressed people drifting around, and broad villages, without a ray of sunlight. He had seen foam at the outermost rocks and long waves drifting towards the ocean without means or ends.

But everything was different now than it was under the glow past the wide, long forest.

It was a sound to everything he saw, a whistle so strong it went too far. He couldn't follow. It was like the time home at Vasslid before he had the fiddle, – when he was inside during winter nights listening to the storm from the North throwing itself around the house from the mountains, or when he lay in the sunny hills on Sundays, staring along the carpet of pine tree tops or along the flower covered mound. What he was felt was a knock in his soul, wanting to come along outside, wanting to whistle and fill the forests. A whistle came from him instead, so he couldn't feel what he saw. And again he was back on the ground, bored and empty. – That's the state of what he'd seen the last 15 years. It was like at Vasslid before he'd gotten the fiddle. –

Then one day in the Northern country he heard his father had died, and that his mother considered selling the farm. He travelled south on the first fishing boat. He had to get back to Vasslid, because it only paled him, this flight of the mind that was always, always going further. He knew it now. It wasn't a fiddle big enough in the whole world to carry what he felt inside – further...

His mother moved down to her family. Torstein wanted to be alone in the mountains in winter. He's start over again, howl ugly to the wild forest, see the monsters' eyes shine in piled up rocks and under pine roots.

*

A dark night in fall he lit up the barn with his light, figuring out if the hay would last. Under the rafter he saw something that was gray with hay dust and spider webs.

It was the fiddle.

Recollections ran through him as tingling shivers. He recalled that fall night when he played Sella away from him. He was startled, weighed the fiddle with his hands, thinking.

Then he shook it off and walked quickly to the barn. No, women wouldn't be allowed on this farm! People in general weren't worth much, those he'd seen, – but least of all women, because either they were frightened of him, or else they were just a piece of wild meat shivering for his embrace and no though for anything else. No, he wouldn't have women on the farm! So he took care of the cattle himself...

But the strings seem to have gotten back on the fiddle. He realized it – and a long, warm stream flowed into his mind: Sella had found it down by the piled up rocks then, – and she had put the strings on it, – and she had stuck it under the rafter, 'cause it was only she who knew where it belonged.

He plucked the strings, felt the fiddle's body over and over again, caressed it, sat down on the barn stool. He tuned it. The sound was fractured, the body was cracked. A yellow ribbon was tied around it, holding it together. But he swore to himself: Women would not be allowed on this farm! ...

He stroked lightly with his bow.

Something was released inside him. Things started floating in a thousand blinking brooks; he saw blooming mounds of grass in humming games of bumblebees; he saw shimmering sun on bays blown blue; saw steaming dew among the swaying white cotton grass. He closed his eyes and saw the finest and softest things of the world.

It increased; it plunged: Now it was brown fall at the grass mound, breaking ocean waves entering the bay, a flurry of snow on icy mountain marshes...

The cattle twisted in the barn to see, shook their horns, and the bell cow made a long, inquisitive low.

The door opened quietly; beings scurried from the dark fall night, one being after another – hairy, frozen beasts, filling the barn with shivers from solitary mountains.

It was a voice in the darkness; he listened.

Oh, the fiddle sang in the wild forest,
Yes, the fiddle sang.

it said.

He raised his eyelids and peeked carefully outside; in the glow of the light a pale girl's face peered in.

And someone cried and someone smiled,
Yes, someone cried,

it said again and came further in.

The torrent over the strings slowed down. Something sucking and wild in her eyes out there overtook him, a strange far-sighted longing, like a winter's sun in a frosty forest, – paralyzed the fingers that held the bow.

He knew that people said that Sella-girl hadn't been right the last couple of years; she could run off to the forest from her masters in the dark night and only return in the dark of night.

She slid onto the barn floor, watching him.

– Should I help you with the milk? she said.

– You'd better do as you'd like, he said.

He words were cries scraping like needles through his whole mind.

She grabbed the bucket and squatted under a cow. He stared in her direction without looking at her, listened to the sound. Playful splashes of milk against the bucket bottom; then the cuddly embrace in a foamy depth... And the fiddle silently followed the sound.

After a while she took the bucket and the light without a word; he saw that she was done; got up and joined her.

– You'd better restrain yourself, Tostein! she said in the darkness outside; it was as if everything they should say dared to come out here.

– But I'm not fit for it, he said.

– Otherwise you might play yourself away, – away from yourself.

– Would you hide it, then?

She didn't answer, but took the fiddle box and the bow. –

Torstein and Sella's marriage was proclaimed three Sundays in a row. They were married in early winter.

And the winter days at Vasslid were bright as a softly shimmering mountain sun in small windows. One day slid past after the other, and months slid past. Year by year slid past, quietly, like her chest's sleepy breath, rich as the shelter from warm sheets.

* * *

The Fiddle in the Wild Forest, part III
by Hans E. Kinck

But then, one winter’s day four years later, a group a hobos came by the farm on their way to the next village across the mountains.

They pleaded, played accordion and sang. Sella went in and out of the house, found food and feared. But Torstein remained seated on the side of his bed in the living-room with them, listened to their talk and smiled strangely. It was as if the living-room was filled with the sun flicking in wide villages and the clatter of wagons in grand cities. Their eyes shone with mirrors of rich places.

They’d brought a deck of cards, and they read them. And the girl who sang looked like the one he’d travelled with along the eastern valleys many years ago. The same black hair, the same quick glances, the same cat-like twist to her body.

He sat on the bed-side for a long time after they left for the next village. He listened with a stiff smile. For it was that girl he’d travelled with in the east.

When darkness fell he started drifting in and out of the doors. Sometimes he would stop and stare straight through the wall. It was as if he heard something in the wind from the North, something chirping coldly around the house.

Sella gave him a quick glance from time to time. She’d never known he looked so much like his father. – The restless flicker of his black eyes increased, gained speed, looking for something far away.

She was frightened when they went to bed. His eyes were like desolate mountain lakes, his black beard like tangled bramble bushes and stiff straws of grass from below Trollberg. His breath was like a gust of marsh and darkness.

She dared not blow out the candle in the bottle. She lie awake, waiting in fear. This wildness would come out one day! ...

He knew it from the look in her eyes. It was his mother’s eyes when his father came home. They looked in fear for something to rest on. That stare told him somehow who he was. And it struck him so he couldn’t control himself. He ran out of bed.

– Where d’you hide it, then? he said. He said it in a low voice, but it still sounded like a storm over wild marshes.

– In the chest! she said, dared not otherwise.

He rushed up to the attic to find her chest and rummaged inside for the fiddle box. It was wrapped in a scarf. Then he barged down, stormed in and drew heavy on the strings so that it filled the living-room.

– Jesus! she said.

He played everything the hobos saw, roaming freely around the world, through bright valleys and in noisy cities. It grew to a whistling storm through the strings of the broken fiddle.

She turned in bed: Oh, Tostein! You’d better get a hold on yourself, Tostein!

He didn’t listen. He stomped the beat harder and harder, until the floor rocked like waves. Sometimes he groaned heavily. And she moan under the covers.

Suddently he got up, let out a wild roar and threw the fiddle at the wall so the scarf around if broke and the body shattered. He stomped on it and barged out.

At the courtyard he howled ugly to the mountains where the road led to the next village. Sella squirmed in the living-room, praying for her husband: well, Jesus, this was his father through and through! ...

He drifted along the mound. He didn’t know where – only away! And he couldn’t get far enough! ... He didn’t feel the sting of the Northern wind – even though he only wore underwear – as it swept down the hill with large grains of snow.

Over and over he howled ugly to the forest.

It whisteled through the pine forest, it murmured through the leaves, flickered in eyes, –flickers of lights from wide villages and grand cities, and of great sheets of sea turning in golden sun...

He didn’t know where he was, didn’t know anything when he sat down in the snow. –

Sella whimpered and prayed in the living-room. She heard the howls slide further away – the storm from north was as strong around the house now. The she leaped out of bed, out on the staircase and screamed “Tostein” with her weak voice that her fear had almost strangled. She didn’t stop screaming – but no answer.

She went back inside, put on some clothes, and grabbed the light. Then out to wade in piles of snow all night.

Under Trollberg she found her husband, frozen stiff, with snow in his black beard. Daybreak came when she found him. She kept staring at him. Her anger grew and widened until her chest was too small. But then it gradually froze. She didn’t make a sigh when she grabbed him under his arms to drag him home. The northern wind had reached into her very heart.

And the song from grained snow rattled along the plain, started to form waves. Now she saw what she hadn’t seen for an entire life: She hadn’t been able to catch the beast in him! ... It was like a whistle from many strings over a broken fiddle’s body – the same tune he’d made and played while he lived:

Oh, the fiddle sang in the wild forest,
Yes, the fiddle sang.
And noone heard and noone saw
And noone cried and noone smiled,
No, noone cried.
Oh, the fiddle sang in the wild forest
Yes, the fiddle sang

[Translation of Hans E. Kinck, "Felen i ville skogen," Noveller og essays, ed. Edvard Beyer, Oslo: Aschehoug, 1976, pp. 7-11.]

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