I have not been funny
I am going to take a rest from writing BookArmor.
I have lost my way, with writing, with life. I no longer feel a comic spirit alive within.
Let me say this : it is hard to live in new places with new cultures, sometimes things are left behind but nothing comes forward to fill the space. In Guatemala, I felt I was twice the man and here in Taiwan I am now a shadow. This is not to moan, I am not moaning, just observing what has unfolded. There is still time for things to turn, for a new life to be created here, for good things to happen.
But for now, it is time for a break. I'll come back when I have the Nikon D300 camera I have been saving for. Bye, people.
B.S. Johnson – Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry
The type of book that people have a tendency to over-rate, in terms of quality, due to its singularity and a charming hero.
What is saddening is thinking that this novel was 'out there' in the literary environment that was 70s Britain. It's nothing much more than some authorial intervention, of the sort seen in Ulysses 60+ years previously, and is certainly not anything like as challenging as the works of Thomas Bernhard, where the entire edifice of the book appears founded on another set of principles altogether, an entirely separate conception of what literature might be.
But, it is funny, and it is singular, and it is memorable.
B.S. Johnson – Albert Angelo
Casual violence, sexual frustration, expedient friendships, unsatisfying work, this book contains extensive sections of authentic honest-to-God writing about this, about life in general, life in England in particular. I was dismayed, at times, at how close the wit of B S Johnson is to my own sensibility, knowing how it ended for him, in despair and in suicide.
Anyway, the B S Johnson book is worthwhile for its monologue sections, its tone, and its period detail of a mundane life in 60s London. What is harder to fathom is how conservative the literary scene in the UK was at Johnson's time, that such meek experimentation was seen as being in any way a challenge. When it comes down to it, this is actually very conventional stuff, nothing compared to the work, contemporaneous, of Thomas Bernhard, for example, who seemed to produce another idea altogether of what literature could be, something wholesale, not a tweaking.
Bernhard roared/roars, Johnson squeaked.
That'll do.
Scenes from Bitan
Life through a lens, these are:
After the photos of sleeping men, focusing on people in wheelchairs is now becoming something of an obsession, and for the same reason, that people in wheelchairs take a lot more possessions around with them than most other people.
A last word from Jung on the subject of drunken teachers
Just to place into a context my lament for the increasing control that is exerted over humankind, here is Jung, quoted in Psychology and Alchemy:
Fundamentally it is a question of polar opposites: the collective or the individual, society or personality. This is a modern problem in so far as it needed the hypertrophy of collective life and the herding together of incredible masses of people in our own day to make the individual aware that he was being suffocated in the toils of the organised mob. The collectivism of the medieval Church seldom or never exerted sufficient pressure on the individual to turn his relations with society into a general problem.
Yes, in the time of the medieval church, the alchemist was substantially free from pressure when pursuing his experiments into the very nature of matter, while today society struggles to unleash a public servant sufficiently in their leisure time to engage in the quite legal consumption of alcoholic drinks.
Forget about the big issues…
Great story in Taiwan today concerning a legislator of the ruling party being divested of his hairpiece by an opposition activist.
Said the legislator on this incident: "It feels like someone pulled my trousers down in public."
Beautiful. He is now suing for having his human rights impinged upon. More beautiful, still.
Things that improved my life #3 – Swans
Let's return to what matters, good things. Swans. A good thing. And violence and hopelessness and misery and pain and confusion. These are good things, too, it is what you make of them.
Yes, I am a utilitarian. Anything that teaches, I will accept it as being of value to have experienced, even if the lesson is wholly negative. This is perhaps why I am drawn towards nothingness, towards impossible things, to what things are not and never will be.
Swans made this:
The lyrics below are worth reading.
The Scorpions real crime – their music
Clearly, the entire song is abysmal, but the first seconds of this clip are truly infernal, I can feel the trapdoor flapping open and my spiritual neck being broken as I twitch and swing from the gibbet.
Oh Woolworths!
For the demise of Woolworths, gone the way of Top of the Pops and Tiswas...
Oh Woolworths,
Haven of those, in need, yay, of solitude
Welcome respite from the horrors of capitalism
With what great sorrow do I witness
The lonely demise of Pick n Mix
And the wheeling away of
Overpriced BMX bikes
No more, alas, no more,
The great vistas of your empty aisles
The ill-fitting uniforms swaddling
Putty-faced Julies and Karens
No more, the plaintive wail
For a price on that stray China Crisis CD
Or the thirty interminable minutes, spent
fruitlessly, in redeeming Aunty Ida's 1.50 gift token
Oh Woolworths, even, Woolies, if one may be so bold
Go now, go! And leave this heart a touch more cold