Guilt

You sometimes hear - at least I think you do, perhaps you don't - of religion without the guilt. One - for it might be better to leave you out of it - should also be familiar with the phenomenon or idea of religion very much with the guilt. And there also seems a modern fondness- say in the person of writers like Beckett, Sebald, and a host of others - for guilt without the religion.

A Box

A box, empty. An empty box. Another box, Files written on the outside, containing, presumably, files - I can't say I'm interested enough to check. I'm happy - though happy is a bit strong, content rather, though even that'a a bit strong - to take it on trust, not too bothered about whether the trust is justified. What do I care if there's files in it or not? It's not my box. But anyway it's safe to assume this box does contain something, presumably files, and I remember carrying what must have been this box a distance, a short one, and it certainly did contain something, files or whatever, more than likely files; it's written on it, it means there's files inside, you don't need to check, and when those files are needed you don't need to go hunting, you just open the box and there they are, presumably.

That's what I call a box. It contains something or somethings; you open the box and there they are. But the first box, the empty one - how am I supposed to look on that? A box: something in which things are kept, carried, contained. That's a box. It shouldn't be a box otherwise. But all the empty one contains is space, and in truth that's all the box itself should be: space, that is if all it's doing is taking up space, containing space, then it would be better if it too was space, not a box. But, you will argue, it may be only half a box, so to speak, granted - a container that doesn't contain - but still, it's a kinetic box. It may some day, and almost certainly will, contain; be a box in the full sense. And, if all boxes were already boxes in the full sense, where then would we put all the stuff that needs to be put in boxes that isn't already in boxes? No, kinetic boxes are necessary, more than necessary - essential. Though come to think of it how can something be more than necessary? Essential is no more "necessary" than necessary. You need something, that's an absolute; it's necessary. You don't half need it, or kind of need it. If that's the case you need a different word, something milder, more lukewarm. You need it or you don't. Something is essential - you need it again. You don't more need it.

Lifted

A man lifted a pothole cover and called into the darkness. "Are ye all right there lads?" Nothing. "I said are ye all right in there?"
"Piss off!" came out of the darkness. "Yeah, piss off!" voiced another voice, followed by a whole chorus all affirming the same impolite directive.
"All right, all right, I was only checking. So I'll put the lid back on, will I?" Silence. "I could leave it off if ye like." The silence tensed. "I'll put it back so." And he did.
"What a fool!" he'd have heard if he could have, but of course with the lid back on he couldn't."

Duty

He felt a duty: a duty to be miserable. This was realism. And if he didn't feel miserable? forgot his duty? - got lost in some kind of happiness, some escapism... well, he would remember his duty and begin to feel guilty, which did just as well, and maybe even better.

The Point

A heated discussion:
"I don't see the point."
"But don't you see that is the point! The point is that there is no point."
"But if the point is that there is no point, then there is a point."
"Yes, I see what you mean. Ah, but if the point is that there is no point, and contrarily this means that there actually is a point, well then there is no point, as the point that there is no point is not a point after all."

Societal

"Societal, what an awful word!" wrote DH Lawrence in a letter to someone or other, just after unfortunately having to use the necessary word, and how right he was. Through the use of it, and other similar linguistic artefacts, you feel transformed into some kind of machine, some inhuman instrument for producing joyless constructs of all-conquering seriousness; but there is happily a compensation, and that is that the use of such words as societal are a key, a key that provides one's entrance into an arcane fellowship, an esoteric brotherhood: a brotherhood of assholes.

Perversion as Truth

An idea occasionally encountered is that sickness, evil or perversion is truth, and while one meets this thought not so nakedly so often, inferentially it abounds far more than one might imagine. Leo Strauss, principal ideologue to the American neo-conservatives for example wrote: "Because mankind is intrinsically evil, he must be governed." So evil is truth, intrinsic truth. Sickness is truth, perversion is truth, goodness illusory, and so for instance child abuse is an expression of this truth, more true, because aligned with inner reality, than acts of apparent goodness which are in discord with this philosophical reality of perversion.

Is it possible to logically criticise this position? Is it merely a subjective affair to consider extermination camps, child abuse, torture and so on, wrong? As is any idea, this truthlessness of being is an intellectual proposition, a language construct, and so as such can this construct be intellectually disproven- as one might hope- or even - as its proponents might hope - upheld as a meaningful proposition of language, a logically consistent entity?

If true that perversion is truth, then the idea is itself an emanation of this perversion, and being perverse is therefore not true. And so instantly, its logicality, its 'truth' can be dispensed with. Nothing within such a mental framework or landscape of universal perversity could be said to be true, since everything would be by definition perverse.

The very notion of perversion being 'true' is linguistically, and tautologically so, perverse, nonsensical. The idea of the language term "perversion" necessitates the idea of healthiness, truth, to which this perversion is contrary. It cannot exist autonomously without this standard to offset itself. It exists in relation to truth, which it is in defiance of, in perverse relation to.
This proposition all amounts to attempting to say that falseness is truth, which is self-evident linguistic nonsense where words are asserted to mean the opposite of themselves - i.e. false = true . . .  but anyway to look, more or less again, at the 'logic':

If falseness is truth then there is no truth since anything that could be said would have to be false, and being false could not be true.

And so the notion of falseness being truth cannot be formulated in the first place since within the framework of the idea of falseness being truth nothing true can be said, and so the entire logic is forced to dissolve before it logically begins. A closed loop of meaninglessness disappears into nothingness.

Meaningless notions don't possess reality, are not animated by truth, life. They are false, their existence illusory. These attempts to justify evil as truth are simply nonsensical, truthless: intellectually impermissible violations of the truth tool of language.

Evil, when it attempts to be a philosophy of truth, a coherent intellectual concept, is shown to simply be incoherent babble, and all it really is, this notion of the absolute truth of perversion, is a symptom of and temptation into the domain of evil, itself intellectually insane.

Devoid Any Of

"What we want is writing devoid of any intelligence whatsover."
"Why is that?"
"So that it would be entirely unprejudiced."

Aren't Things

"Words aren't things. That is they are things, but they're not other things."
"I'm glad you cleared that up."

Pool

There was a pool within which was water...but what sense is it to say there was a pool within which was water? A pool is water, or at least some form of liquid. It should be: "There was a pool of water." You can't pretend to have the pool, and then, as if distinct from this pool, the water that makes it a pool. "There was a pool of water within which was water." Superfluous, tautological even- and not even even. You can have water without a pool, but not a pool without water, if that is of course it is a pool of water and not, say, a pool of blood, but I think, in general, it's reasonable to assume when mentioning pools that it's pools of water one is talking about, and not these other rarer and more than likely ephemeral pools, such as are of blood, and, needless to say, in those cases it would be necessary to clarify that that is specifically the kind of pool one is speaking of, that is of blood or whatever specific fluid, and not the usual one of water.
There was life and within this life an observer of this life...

The Rain

The rain had wet everything. That's what rain tends to do, and what kind of rain would it be if it didn't? Not rain at all.

Thirst

They were dying of thirst, were given a jar of sand, and, I don't know quite how, drank it down gratefully and rejoiced all but ecstatically at the jar of liquid heaven they had enjoyed.

All Fiction

"This is entirely fictitious."
"Entirely? But a word here, a word there, surely?"
"No, entirely."
"But that's impossible."
"Impossible it may well be, but that's the way it is."
"But truth, fiction- enmeshed inextricably, entwined utterly...where one ends, the other begins, who can say...?"
"No, it's all fiction."

Better Again

"I look across, not up, and sometimes, often even, even down."
"You are to be envied."
"No, you misunderstand me. I state this as a fact, not out of pride."
"Better again."
"No no, I repeat: as a fact, not out of pride."
"Congratulations."

Within the Sphere

Within the sphere of his activity he was a master, granted- even if this granted is only for the sake of concision. But the nature of the sphere - what kind of sphere was it?

Chamber

There was a chamber, so small from the outside did it look it could hardly be conceived a man could fit within; but once inside- and getting inside seemed a strangely effortless movement, you didn't even notice yourself going in- how vast it did reveal itself, even if, admittedly, it still appeared tiny from the outside. But the outside- what was that? From the inside it had all but disappeared.

Certain Heights

"A certain height. Yes?"
"Yes."
"Another height below that height. Yes?"
"Yes."
"Two different heights. Yes?"
"Yes."
"Co-existent, but not contradictory. Yes?"
"Yes."
"The higher height dependent on the lower height. The lower height not dependent on the higher height. Yes?"
"Possibly; but why not the other way round? The lower height, I agree, seems to exist without the higher. One gets to the higher by reason or pathway of the lower. And so the higher is dependent on the lower, not the lower on the higher. Without the lower we wouldn't get to the higher; wouldn't have a higher. Or so it seems. But perhaps the lower has simply eroded away, in time. Was higher, is now lower. Wouldn't be lower if not for having been higher in the first place. And so the lower dependent on the higher, not the higher on the lower."

Exhaustion

He had exhausted his faculties- temporarily. Or at least he hoped temporarily. For if not temporarily how could he be expected to live with exhausted faculties? Not well. Not at all. Think of it: life without your faculties. You can't even think of it, for what would you be doing if you were thinking of it but exercising your faculties. And that starts to give you an idea of the degree of exhaustion involved- the fact that you can't have an idea of the degree of exhaustion involved.

Fly

A man outside on a chair. A fly on the arm of an at least superficially identical chair a few feet away. The man reading a book, now watching the fly. The fly...though what can we say about the inner life of a fly. Many will even deny the inner life of a fly. I am not so crude however- not to imply that this lack of crudeness is any great virtue- but anyway I am not so crude, so totalitarian, as to deny the inner life of a fly. But even then what I can say about the inner life of fly? Nothing. It's alien territory.
Perhaps through some strange immersion in the deep silent spheres of being I can somehow sink into some existential commune with that worldess space that is the inner world of a fly, or any organic being for that matter, animal or vegetal, but even if I can- unpopular or at least unorthodox though such a notion would be- still this, as said, inner world is a worldess space, and so, also said, alien territory- the realms of wordlessness naturally alien to words.
But anyway, the man looked at the fly, as far as I know unthinkingly- perhaps not even much irritated by the fly, if at all- but suddenly up flew his left leg, so suddenly as to suggest a reflex action, unpremeditated- and kicked the underside of the arm of the chair atop which perched the fly- if perched is the word- and simultaneous to this kick, or as near simultaneous as to make no difference, off flew the fly.

Equal Validity

An idea extremely prevalent in the current era is that everything is equally valid. For instance you cannot, you will be told, say that one work of art is greater than another because of this equal validity of everything. So a quick look at the logic at play here.

Everything is equally valid. Therefore all statements are equally valid. And an example of one such statement within the totality of equally valid statements is that:
Everything is not equally valid.
And so if everything is not equally valid, then the first statement that everything is equally valid is false. So the statement of all being equally valid contains within itself its own disproof.

This is an extremely important little intellectual matter. It will be argued, once you extend the thinking here from the page to its implications to "real life"- afraid I can't be arsed plotting the intellectual journey- that this is a disproof of democracy itself, or liberalism, but this is a false, defiled version or interpretation of democracy where everything is permitted, and given the falseness of this notion, then the society that permits itself everything will inevitably become falsified, defiled, made decadent and collapse, partly or even significantly effected by those people who will then impose the apparently necessary subsequent harsh order on the collapsing society- most obviously effected by the propagators of the dumbing down of that society's members through the forms of the mass-media.
The Weimar period of something like absolute liberalism, where all, or an idea of all, is permitted, all being equally valid, followed by the inevitable disproof, the totalitarian period, which had exploited the weakness of the misconstrued or false "liberalism" or democracy of the Weimar period. A long earlier piece here.

Addictions

A well-dressed man was speaking through a megaphone by a pond:
"We fill the holy space of consciousness with intellectual constellations: static points around whose gravitational pull we orbit, lost in these products of our own making, chaotically encircling these eddies and whirlpools of distraction. And with all addictions, one tries to consummate the attraction to this gravitational centre in an ultimate act of union, but because the process is ultimately internal, a physiological and psychological process in the addict, then the external centre that one is trying to attain is illusory, and so the craving is never satiated. Freedom from the addiction can only occur in the non-participation within its sphere of activity, by remaining outside of its orbit. Any temptation to conquer the foe from within is only that- a temptation, a seduction, a means of drawing ourselves back into its temporarily fatal gravitational pull."

Slave Not Slave

"So you're saying man is a slave?"
"No, I'm saying man isn't a slave, but the problem is he thinks he's a slave."
"So he has to learn to think he's not a slave?"
"No, who needs to tell himself he's not a slave except a slave? It's the thinking he's a slave that makes him a slave- the thinking is an act of creation or pseudo creation, but the process isn't half so simple. He doesn't think he thinks he's a slave. He thinks he thinks he's free, whereas in fact, unknown to himself, he thinks he's a slave."

Complimentary

They complemented each other perfectly. What did? Their stupidity and their vanity.

Nowhere

He was halfway to nowhere. How could he be halfway to nowhere? He must be somewhere or not somewhere, nowhere or not nowhere, surely. And one can't, nowhere being nowhere, find one's way towards nowhere, because if you're going somewhere, then it's somewhere you must be going, and not nowhere. So no, it seems he wasn't halfway to nowhere at all, but halfway to somewhere.

Madness Is

Madness is the confusion of reality with the words in one's head. Where perception and raw experience have been ousted, insofar as humanly possible, by incessant interpretation of perception. One is in a permanent state of selfhood, but while this "selfhood" may suggest that this state is one of reality, it is in truth imaginary but invested with the semblance of reality by the fact of the mind-body organism that is conceiving of it. Reality for the subject of the madness is, to a catastrophic level, a matter of words, an incessant interpretation of reality, but this human subject is, despite his best efforts, himself a real living being, and so is potentially able to invest and manifest a dreadful 'external' dynamism to the mad, false ideas.

Thus the dangers of all matters of false collective idealism- of some political bent- where the subjects of the malaise of thought attempt to force reality into the dimensions and parameters of thought which they have decided life really ought to fit into if it is to be truly reality or the desired version of such. And since the subject, speaking in the singular, is certainly bound to find in reality in the flesh immense obstacles to the reality in his head, the most extreme measures will be used to effect the necessary changes, and given the lack of success he is bound to meet with, ever more extreme measures to push obstinate life in the desired direction.
This all-pervading idealism or madness is not to be confused with the practical healthy idealism of someone who, for instance, thinks efficient sewerage systems are desirable for a community and effects the necessary changes. Here the ideas are intelligent fragments of life, whereas in the former case life as a whole is substituted for an idea of itself, some artificial simulacrum.

Tasted

"It tasted like muck."
"Why is that?"
"Because it was muck."

The Road Was Closed

The road was closed. The road was always closed. Why was it always closed? Because there was work being done. There was always work being done. Yes, but why was there always work being done? Noone knew, or at least noone seemed to know, but did anyone even ask? As far as one could discern or deduce nothing was ever finished, but all carried on as if this never-ending work was normal, and of course it was normal, for if something is always so then what can this be but normal?

Except that this is all lies, or if not all lies, as good as all lies- for the sake of appearances, some kind of metaphysics, some facile parable of despair and absurdism. For the truth is that the road wasn't always closed. It was closed now, true enough, and had been for a week or so, or perhaps even two, but what is a couple of weeks in the great scheme of eternity, and even allowing for the incompetence traditional to such work involving roads it can hardly be long before the road is back in its customary state of being open, even if, due to the mentioned incompetence, it should have to once again close for some stupid unforeseen reason or other.

A First Line

All I need is a first line and the rest is sure, or at least likely, to follow. But without that first line nothing can follow. You can't do without it. Though you could argue that the second line is also paramount, for without it you won't get a third and so on. But without the first you wouldn't have gotten the second in the first place, so the first is still the key, and without the second you'd still at least have a first, whereas without the first you'd be void of anything. 

Though mightn't this all seem a bit coarse, utilitarian?: the linguistic structures of sentences being reduced to their importance and function within chronological systems. But noone here is making such reductionist claims. Chronology may be an aspect of these sentences’ being, but a kind of abstract one and not their essence. 

 What is the essence of this sentence, for example? Not its place within a sequence surely - that's nothing to do with the concrete sentence itself, even though it itself is a sequence: of words one after the other. But again this idea of the sequence is a set of values coming from without, an external intellectual lens refracting the sentence into something else altogether, reducing it to, or defining it as, a place in a system, within which system it supposedly has its 'meaning,' its whole essence, and ignoring it in the concrete of its own words and what they signify. But what do they signify? Well, we could transpose this significance of the words into some other linguistic structure - instead of: "What is the essence of this sentence, for example?" replace with: "What is the pure meaning of this sentence, for instance?" and say that this is what the words meant, but then you could do the same with those words - replace them with other words, and so on ad finitum. 

 No, ultimately the words mean some internal process in the mind which cannot be reduced to anything else, otherwise for some bizarre reason we're trying to eliminate a mind from an experience which is entirely of the mind. And even the notion of the sentence being refracted into an element of some intellectual system, chronology or some such; in fact no refraction is going on at all, for the sentence isn't being refracted or changed in any way. It remains just as it it, for no matter how much 'refracting', placing it within other systems you do, if your eyes go back up the page or screen you'll find it just as it was, not refracted at all, and so all the refractions are simply other sentences masquerading as these refractions, but are in truth simply themselves; not truthful approximations of these other things at all, but, like those other things, just themselves. 

 So all I need apparently, or so claimed, is a first line and things will progress from there. Some matter will inevitably be furnished, ushered forth, given the nature of the mind involved, cause and effect, etc. And, yes, a first line did indeed usher forth some great spillage or other, but is the 'ushering forth' a tad misleading? Suggests perhaps the erroneous idea of all that followed somehow predetermined by, all somehow contained within that first line? It seems to me I could quite easily have written utterly different things in the following of that first line.

Science Fiction

I won't pretend to have read any science fiction, but in the spirit of egalitarianism I've decided I might as well try and write some, so here goes:

"Has anyone seen my bunsen burner?"
"Never mind your bloody bunsen burner. Where the hell is my litmus-paper?"
"It's over by that pile of test-tubes over there next to the magnesium."
"Oh thanks."

It's About Time

It's about time I wrote something. Why about time? It's a subject like any other. Well no, not like any other. It's a subject, being itself, like itself, whatever that self might be. And so, either way, why not write about it? Unless, of course, you've nothing to say about it. But even then maybe it isn't until in the actual active saying of nothing about it- as opposed to the passive simply not saying it- that you find out you have nothing to say, and until then, not having tried to say something, dwelling in the passive not saying, you had no idea of the nothing of which you had to say- were convinced you had plenty to say. But anyway, I offer no apologies for writing about time, and don't imagine I'm confessing that it turned out I had nothing to say. I was merely speaking generally, about cases in general, and perhaps, for all you know, I had plenty to say.