was forecast to be partly cloudy but, at slightly above freezing, this year's first snow is sifting blithely by, and has a 60% chance of continuing to most of today. The ghost of Ezra Pound waltzing/ with the ghost of Robert Frost. The snow leopard? The snow goose? Snowy owls? Something more later perhaps. 11:35 AM -- two quotes Curtis Faville in a Silliman's Blog comment to Ed [Baker]: "In the ideal society, all public identity would be banned in the campaign against the cult of personality, all works would be by 'anonymous.' Self-efacement is the new paradigm. All Hail, Anon!" See ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/history Tuesday, November 25, 2008 - Robert Archambeau in an interview of him published in ChicagoPostmodernPoetry.Com: "Roland Barthes was on to something when he said that the author, in the romantic sense of the isolated visionary, is dead. What we have now is the scriptor, whose sole power is to mingle writing. I like this notion, and see it as a sign of vigor in our literary culture, complaints from pessimists like Frederic Jameson notwithstanding." See Robert Archambeau link in my Rho00227 post. While I know both Faville and Archambeau express valid positions in that ultimately planet Earth will cease and that we are now not only post-agendas but are also becoming post-Homosapiens/ I remain committed to-- however self-congratulatory--the presence of signature. History (even corrupted history--remembrance, continuity, perception) matters. Nonetheless, I do not favor the my-car's-better-than-your-car attitude. My favorite flavor of ice cream was mint, and might still be, but these days chocolate chips are blended into mint ice cream. Tomorrow it will be chocolate ice cream with mint chips. I would rather there be no literary canons and no poetics skirmishes, but it can't be avoided. Humans--myself included--are always searching for new ways of seeing. 6 x 2 = 12 and 6 x 3 = 18. 6 x 17 = 102 and 6 x 18 = 108. 6 x 32 = 192 and 6 x 33 = 198. And the important number here is: 15. Just something else in my weather today. So what's new to me is old to you and what's new to you is old to me, or, or. You should read what that K. Silem Mohammad man posted recently. - 9:54 PM A comment by Dale Smith over at PFHarriet has moved me to add a link to a 17-page pdf excerpt from Timothy Morton's Harvard University Press book: Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics I am going to try to get this book through a library here. Rho00228
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Springfield's weather
Friday, November 28, 2008
Avant-Garde Vigor
(or whatever one construes to be the leading edge of aesthetic thinking at a given time) tends to dilute over time, and so must/ be refreshed if the art it addresses is to remain vital mainly because there always is a general culture ready to put any new thinking to its own uses and into its favorite boxes, and no one has yet (or is ever likely to) construct an aesthetic some general culture cannot absorb. Nonetheless, valuable insights are not lacking. In issue 8 of Action Yes is an article by Robert Archambeau about Per Bäckström's analyis of the central movements since the Nineteenth Century with a nod to Renato Poggioli and with further insights of his own. At the core of this article is the acceptance of linguistic entropy. - Rho00227
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Lemur soft surrealism poetry
is meant to be a poetry which is cuddly yet rabid, which does not wish to supplant other visionings but does wish to implant isolate rhizomic tangles, to be purposefully minor and strange, to not care about the future. Over at Exoskeleton a nascent manifesto unfolds. I have read it several times and feel I do not fully understand it, but the comments beneath it, especially Arthur Durkee's comment, strengthened my understanding. I am now going to see what more I can learn about a Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey). Rho00226
employment contraction article
from 24/7 Wall St. by Douglas A. McIntyre October 15, 2008 as many as 6 million more jobs could be lost Rho00225
Monday, November 24, 2008
We need time
to perfect the technologies which will allow us to proceed appropriately; therefore, while his post today does not mention those technologies, JHK's "Zombie Economics" does detail the step back--a step some places in this nation have been implementing--which will provide that time we need. Also, do read the early comments beneath his post. I am, with good reason, a fairly avid reader of comments. - Rho00223
Saturday, November 22, 2008
welcome to humanity
You're gonna luv it. - Yah. - - Homo sapiens is an imperfect being. As soon as/ one is conceived// death begins. Whether that death will occur in utero or more than twelve decades later is an unknown. - body - heart - soul - mind - Sometimes the body knows before the mind knows. See Floyd Skloot review by Andrew Shields. * Sometimes the heart knows before the mind knows. Examples abound. * Sometimes the soul/spirit knows before the mind knows. Will be getting back to this. - This morning and yesterday morning just before awakening/ I had an unsettling dream. The two dreams were not the same dream even though each exemplified the same reality. * During yesterday I encountered at different websites unsettling knowledges (mind recognitions). - Dreams and imaginings are extensions of mind. For all its inadequacies, Homo sapiens is a special being, a being capable of what appears to be infinite growth. There are conflicting views as to the why. See Rho00221 and Rho00015. Also my mind/seasons/time villanelle. Will be getting back to this. 1:30 PM -- 3:12 PM -- I believe in the existence of a Supreme Being. I believe that Being, being supreme, is constantly active; and even though I cannot know that Being as that Being knows me, I believe that if I am open to it, that Being's presence is accessible/ especially in that that Being provides guidance for me and opens doors for me. In spite of my not having recognized those guidances as often as I could have and not knocking on those doors I could have, I have come to call such: Watch God Moments. * I could cite instance upon instance to support what I believe/ even while I realize most others would say they were luck or fate or coincidence. I believe that out in the universe there exist civilizations greater than Homo sapiens, and yet that we of planet Earth--if we are able to solve in time each problem which mitigates against our continuance--will one day be welcomed by such greater civilizations. Read article by Michio Kaku in civilizations folder. * I believe the Supreme Being is not only from-Whom-all but also is to-Whom-all. I believe in the idea of the Omega Point, that time is speeding up (or, as some say, collapsing), that human knowledges--and therefore the creations and understandings arising from them-- are growing exponentially. Still, Nature does have its limits. What about the time machine? If it does get invented, will time stop then? Complexification? Simplification? A smooth round stone can be used in good ways and in equally evil ways. An atom likewise. God exists, or does not. * We exist, and are potentially God-like. * What we surmise is God/ exists within each of us. * Because it is possible to imagine, however inaccurately, humans at a far higher level than we are now, those humans are/ like gods to us. At any one moment, the collective human mind cannot know more than it collectively knows. * On the other hand, the collective human soul transcends the realms of knowledge. Alas, thus thus, the collective human mind cannot grasp what the collective human soul contemplates. Rho00222
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Physicist David Deutsch
from TED: ********* about him with a link to his speech Two snippets from speech: - ". . . whether we create the relevant knowledge in time." "We need a stance of problem-fixing. . . ." [ Thank you, J J Gallaher. ] Rho00221
Monday, November 17, 2008
James Howard Kunstler's
post for today (2008-11-17), In the Reality Lounge, whether or not you agree with it, should be read. Early in 1945 I turned four and so began my fifth year. Looking back, I know how blessed have been the speck-of-time years since/ and that beyond the world's present downsizing due to the money errors we humans have made it could already--as physicist David Deutsch notes (see TED video on J J Gallaher's Nothing to Say & Saying It)--be too late for humanity. Technologies we do not yet possess are what we need. Meanwhile it may be best to reinstate technologies we abandoned and use this nation's natural gifts more productively. Rho00220
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
A Seamus Heaney interview
I encountered and read last night, via a link on Todd Swift's Eyewear blog, is rife with insights on the craft and art of poem-making. Rho00219
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Any institution
such as a religion/ that promotes the torturing of and/or the killing of those who are identified as non-believers is an unholy institution. Brian Salchert Rho00218
Sunday, November 9, 2008
from Tel Quel 2 (1943)
"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them." Paul Valéry Rho00217
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Flarfathon
Here is a link to a post by Gary Sullivan that I would have known about yesterday had I scrolled down more than I did when I visited his Elsewhere blog. My general response is: There is always something to flarf. Rho00216
Friday, November 7, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
2008 electoral college map plus
simple but informative 2008-11-07: - And it is being updated. 2008-11-08: Current House of Representatives information Rho00214
Monday, November 3, 2008
Marx capitalism socialism communism
and a needed beyond. At the History of Economic Theory and Thought site is a brief explanation of the views of Karl Marx: as they relate to political/economic systems. - - At Sugarhigh are two posts: real badiou and apocalyptic capitalism which will be linked to in the order shown here. First, two quotes from each post: "The crisis of credit is found in the status of the relationship between the speculative and real economics." ". . . the grand strategy for increasing intensity, breadth and duration of labor exploitation is exactly what we call neoliberalism." - "The capitalist is entirely identified with surplus value; when it dies, the world dies with it." "Apocalypse is merely capitalism's last new line, the latest in use value. . . ." 1. October 26, 2008 2. October 1, 2008 Each of the quotations above I understand, but the second one is on a frequency I as yet can not find. I do know neoliberals are more socialist-oriented. Rightly or wrongly, my dictionary's definition for a neoliberal is: "a liberal who de-emphasizes tra- ditional liberal doctrines in order to seek progress by more pragmatic methods." * From what I have read at their sites, Mr. Dark and Mr. Little Red constitute the "we" in the quote. Tomorrow is this nation's Elect-Our-Next-President Day, and I have never felt more grey in all my ghostly life; and as I reflect again on how my financial status could have been as opposed to how it is, I feel that even if it were what it isn't I would still feel sullen grey. || Whatever becomes of it, this nation is not the nation I desire it to be, and I doubt either of the major candidates has the strength to make it so. - Unless we humans can somehow rise above the Type 0 civilization we presently are, and do so quickly, I fear our own foolishnesses will cause us to go the way of the passenger pigeon. Rho00213
