Vacuum

He imagined he lived in a vacuum, but it turned out, and of course, that he didn't..

onwords

Square

A square.
'And inside the square a circle?'
No, no circle.

scratched

Sticks

A long path led away from the town and up a steep climb; not the most well-trodden of paths especially the further it went, but still far from unwalked. It continued on up to the top of the climb and, while the path became fainter and fainter as the climb progressed, its existence could still be discerned, even if fading as it progressed to little more than the steps themselves - that is the steps and path became one and the same.

A man appeared in the town, seemingly more used to urban living, not the most physically imposing or impressive, glasses beneath which greedy, bird-like eyes darting about him. He had a kind of carnivorous look of trying to extract some inner marrow of whoever he was talking to, though given the nature of himself and his staccato, disconnected attempts at conversing, I don’t think he was having much success with the locals in that line, though you never know, maybe he was penetrating them to the core.

He came across the path one day, by chance or however, and it seemed he grew very excited by it. He was soon to be seen coming and going from the town, and on his goings carrying bundles of long pointed sticks, atop of which he had managed to tie flags, and it turned out he was sticking these flagged sticks into the ground at regular intervals, or at least what was probably meant to be regular intervals, up along the ascending path. Back he would come to the town and then away again with another bundle atop his obedient if not very sturdy back. He had the look, it was said, all this time of someone who’d been awaiting all his life for something special, some great moment, and now it had arrived, and so now there he was merging with it for all he was worth.

With word of what he was doing when I next went along that walk I expected to see it indented from start to finish with his flagged sticks, and indeed for some distance it was heavily scoured. The sticks though tended not to be much in the way of being particularly upright, instead at odd angles to each other creating a haphazard rhythm, while quite a few were already perilously close to toppling over outright and a few having already done so. At times the sticks departed the path and struck out at some tangent for a few yards before these digressions coming to abrupt halts, occasionally one or two sticks then making unconvincing looking efforts to bridge and rejoin the apparently re-found path a little further. Maybe he thought he was effecting some short-cuts or, unused to such uncivilized terrains, his eyes simply found it difficult at times, say of fading light, to discern what was path and what not.

At first the disfigured vista seemed to me a bit amusing but then I began to get annoyed at the thought and sight of this wild, quiet place being made look ridiculous, and by this stupid outsider - not that his being an outsider probably made any difference, though of course only an outsider would have behaved like this in the first place.

Walking on after a while just where the incline began to get a bit more serious I came an end of the sticks, and a few yards further on lay the very man, stretched out and gasping, still with a couple of sticks in the bundle tied to himself. I’m afraid he didn’t provoke much in the way of compassion in me, he’d be all right in a while, but I could hardly just walk on, much as I might have wished, and so having asked him was he all right, to which he was unable to reply, I stayed by him a bit, and with the help of a drink of water he slowly began to recover himself.

“Are you feeling better now?”
“I am improving. It is the same every time.”
”What is?”
”This is as far as my body goes. I cannot go myself any further. But you, you don’t think you could . . .”

In short what he was telling me, while not losing that greediness to his look though with now I thought an added tone of some secret comradeship, that his path-marking was coming up against something of a brick-wall and that being his body’s collapsing in exhaustion somewhere around this point. The walk was bad enough, but with the weight of the sticks added to the load . . . But me, might I not wish to involve myself, to mark out the rest of the path? … ‘I’m afraid not.’ He seemed to find this incomprehensible - not to be a colleague in this great work - but rather than explain myself,  I said good luck and headed off up the path.

I came across him similarly stretched out and gasping over the next few days, back or forward a few yards from the same point, but usually back a bit: the weight of the added sticks he’d added to his pile and having to carry the entire already attained distance presumably too much for him. He didn’t ask me again to help him, but added to his embittered looks me was some latent pleading along with, deeper again, some uncomprehending sense of betrayal, whatever mystery about which he must have thought we were in league.

I suppose you had to admire his efforts with these flagged sticks, at least in theory you did, but in practice to be honest I didn’t. He failed to ever manage to get much farther with his sticks along the path, and soon, these limits to his endurance unsurpassed, he disappeared altogether. In his absence quite a few more of his sticks he’d stuck in the ground toppled over.

It wasn't the end of things though and soon enough other men, diluted versions you could say of the first, began appearing. And why? To see The Sticks for themselves (their pronunciation somehow included the capitals). Sent on their way up the path, they were as excited about what they came across as the first man had been, and in their own ways turned out to be just as busy – this time not sticks but maps, measuring tapes, graphs, cameras . . . If in the midst of their activities someone happened to walk past them heading off up the incline, out past the limits of the sticks, these men wouldn’t it seemed even notice him. Even if said hello in passing he still wouldn't appear to register.

Their activities proved endless. You might think they’d soon enough exhaust all they could do but there was no end to distances and angles of and between sticks that could be measured. Incidentally any stick that in the meantime fell was left where it was and no more interest paid it.

As time went on the fame of the original man and his sticks, and some of the later men, grew and grew. No mention though ever seemed to be made of the path.

KLF

Madrugada Eternal Club Mix

And in its album form.

scrawled

Seated Venerables

As a child I was shown into a dimly lit room, where sat several elderly and unhealthy looking men in differing armchairs - some elegantly upholstered and in quite good condition, others threadbare, even if also perhaps at one time elegant.I was ushered in, in hushed voices, entrusted by my elders with the apparently important and honoured task of bringing these gentlemen – for men seems too prosaic – their afternoon coffees.

They were all silent; some reading, some writing - though doing more in the way of looking seriously at the facing page than actually writing, and some merely staring into space, whether purposefully or purposelessly I had no idea and, being a mere child, the purposefulness or lessness of adults' staring mightn’t have been the kind of thing to set me wondering.

I noticed a circumference of chalk around each armchair, and asked the adult accompanying me what was the chalk about. “If they rise and step beyond the chalk, then they will perish.” Why that might have been the case I didn't think to ask; I simply took it as truth, which maybe it was. There was space for the sitters to take about one step forward from the chairs before meeting these chalk boundaries. There were several strong types standing around on guard, and with these precautions I expected to see sudden stirrings, risings of these seated gents, and then these guards springing into action to offset calamity. However, though I came daily for quite a while, and though the guards were ever poised and alert, nothing remotely like that ever occurred. In fact, they hardly stirred an inch - little movements of hands and even less of heads the only contradictions to immobility. To be honest, never mind the guards, I don’t know why they even bothered with the chalk.

hierarchy

Was Out

The word was out. What word? I don't know, but whatever one it was, it was out.

3

Positive

"Have you anything positive to say?"
"Yes."

Cutting Edge

"And what do you think of him as a writer?"
"He's at the very cutting-edge of modern middle class art."
"You'd go as far as that?"
"I would."

This

This is irreducible.

Outside

They were outside but thought they were inside.
"How was that done? Mirrors is it?"
Yes, it might have involved mirrors.
"And an artificial roof - was there one of them involved too?"
There could have been.

There Was

There was a great darkness, and only those who entered this darkness got to traverse it and come out the other side - that is if there was an other side. Perhaps there was only darkness.
And then again there were some who even denied the darkness. "Darkness?!" they would exclaim, "there is no darkness. It's all well-lit."

Midgets

There was a room full of nervous and excited, or at least excitable, midgets. They kept jostling and bumping into each other, and there seemed a psychological mania - though perhaps all manias are psychological manias - for measuring each off against each other to see who was the taller. So, once a third party acceptable to both parties had been requisitioned, back to back two midgets would place themselves - not though that it could be in any way certain that they could be relied on to stand still long enough back to back to effect the measuring, and even when they could remain roughly in the appropriate geographical spot, the third party, whoever he may be, still had his work cut out, as each tended to engage himself, when that is a little restraint governed his behaviour, in thrusting a little skywards by means of standing on his toes, and when unrestrained, by positively hopping, constantly battling gravity in the attempt to prove the victor.

In the rare instances when a decision could, with alleged certainty, be offered by the third party, awarding the height advantage to one or the other, then accusations of partiality, stupidity, blindness, littered the air, shrill words would be sent hurtling back and forth; but soon enough the squabbling parties would find themselves split apart by the ceaseless movements of the wider buzzing throng, ensuring by a kind of accidental but certain logic that things never got too serious . . .  and so on things went.

Happily though, relations between the midgets weren’t always so, if not hostile at least, competitive. Sometimes two midgets would be arm in arm, even at times hand in hand, expressions of bliss across their slightly oversized faces; and, if one asked why the pleasing comradeship, they would be delighted to inform that "We are exactly the same size!" - perfect equals, and what’s more might be intimated, the greatest of equals. If one asked whether they had measured each other to ascertain whether this perfect equality was certain, the answer would be that no, there was no need. If one pushed the point and this equality were then ever put to the test, sadly, after initial laughter, the earlier described scenario would unfurl itself and the brief friendship dissolve.

An odd room, a bit exhausting after a while.

2 pieces

Education of a non-Revolutionary

I found this in a trunk somewhere, whoever its author is. But maybe its author in turn found it in another trunk somewhere else:

I am, in some manner, educated, but only in some manner, whatever manner that may be and, whatever manner it may be, I’m educated in it. Or at least they tried to educate me in it, to submit me to its rigours, but while I may not have kicked and screamed in revolt of it and its manner, I don’t think it would be much in the way of true to say I submitted myself to it. Maybe there was the vague appearance of submission, but only vague - not that there was even much if any of an attempt to impart this vagueness.

 No, there wasn’t really any genuine sense of submission; just the absence of any particularly pronounced appearance of revolt, which I suppose was worse again - I didn’t even care enough about it and its manner to bother revolting against it. They had nothing to grab hold of – submission or revolt, and so, naturally, animosity mounted. On their part that is. I didn't care enough to rise to animosity

 And who is it in any case needs to go making a drama of his lack of submission? Someone I suppose who needs to make a show of not submitting now so as to submit all the more later - the formalities completed, dignity intact, now we can proceed . . .

The young man revolting and the people trying to harness him and his revolts - they're intimately bound, you can be sure there's an affection in there somewhere, maybe even the most intense of ones. With me though there were no such bonds.

A Row of Steps

There was a row of steps which led upwards or downwards, depending on which way you looked at them, or which way you were going. If going upwards they led upwards, if downwards downwards. But the steps themselves of course didn't go anywhere. They were entirely stationary. It was merely the beings who used them who would be going up or down.
Though given the modern world, perhaps there should be no ‘of course’ about these steps' immobility. But anyway these were old-fashioned steps and didn't move about.

But these steps were not quite what one might wish them to be, for though they looked solid enough, as soon as one put one's foot on one it would begin to crumble, and so one would have to move quickly onto the next which in turn would behave in the same disintegratory manner, and so on and on one would be forced so as to avoid collapse with the crumbling rubble. So if you intend on going upwards, that is the direction you had better set out in, lest having gone for some reason downwards- perhaps on a whim - you find
between yourself and your destination only the memories of steps, as it were, rather than steps.

t would of course be much easier, in this absence of steps, to descend from above to below rather than ascend from below to above; descent merely involving a movement into freefall whilst ascent involving an altogether moreinvolved and arduous process, and the deeper the descent the more difficult the upwards journey becomes, perhaps even to the ultimate point of absolute impossibility.

Do the steps downwards and upwards continue infinitely or at last end in a final step which crumbles beneath one's weight?
I can't say as I know.

His Thoughts

His thoughts were apt to travel in a direction harmful to himself. Though someone else might wish to say that instead it was he who was apt to travel in directions harmful to his thoughts. But whichever, either way, it all amounted to pretty much the same, maybe even exactly the same.

Rooftop

People crawling up out of the chimney, then onto the roof, then sliding down it and off over the edge disappearing from view.
Followed by – a thud?
It would make sense, round things off nicely: over the edge, an interval, a thud - a succession of thuds rather, for there’s a constant supply of these people sliding off and over. So a thud, a scream, a moan - perhaps, but no such sounds reach my ears, but then again my hearing's not great and on top of that the wind is howling, and howling the wrong way, not that there’s a wrong way for the wind to howl, but the wind is carrying those sounds, if they exist, away from rather than towards me.

Is it the same people vanishing from view off over the edge making their way back up and crawling out again the chimney a little later?
It could be, but I’m at too great a distance to make out. They look all too alike from here.
But if they’re not the same, where could they all be coming from? It’s not as if it’s a particularly big house. Well maybe there’s a queue, a great big stream of individuals coming up from down the street, all very ordered and mannerly, all in a precise order, dignified, mathematical . . .
Or why not in an imprecise order? - people changing places, jostling for position, to get to the front of the line the quicker, or maybe to get to the back of the line so as to get to the front of the line the slower, if at all.

So voluntary or involuntary, a queue perhaps, that’s where they’re all coming from, these hordes spilling out the chimney - not that I'm in a position to know. Why not in a position to know? Because my view is restricted. I inhabit a point of perspective, and that point is up here amongst the rooftops, nestled as I am next to a chimney of my own, whatever the hell I’m supposed to be doing up here . . . observing I suppose. And unlike that distant chimney there’s smoke spilling out of this one. It’s nice and warm, despite all the cold and the wind. You can see why the likes of jackdaws are attracted to such spots.

What kind of chimney is it these people are crawling out of?
I see. Not why are they crawling up out of it and why sliding down off the roof, but ‘What kind of chimney is it?’ What a gift for the banal.
It’s a chimney big enough to crawl out of, that’s what kind of chimney it is, and other than that - ordinary. Maybe it’s ordinary even including that - it’s not the being able to crawl out of a chimney that’s unusual but the actual crawling out bit.

That may all well be but it’s vague – about the ordinariness or not of the chimney. What of the chimney besides which I am nestled: would one be able to crawl out of this chimney?
I won’t answer that. Why not? Because I’m in no position to go inferring general conclusions about chimneys based on the solitary one I happen to be nestled up against – whyever it is I’m nestled up against it. And so, rather than invite what may be utterly false inferences about chimneys, it’s better instead I just stay quiet.

‘But what kind of research is this? You go on talking about chimneys while knowing nothing about them, and what’s worse, the one you do know something about you refuse to talk about. You’re not serious at all.’
Well that’s just the way it is, and if it was research I was interested in why would I be up here amongst the rooftops? Admittedly I might be interested in researching chimneys and rooftops, but take it that I’m not. It’s bad enough being on a rooftop – not that it’s actually that bad – without being expected to do research.

But the stream of people so crawling out the chimney and sliding down off the roof – why?
We’re back to that again. If you really are demanding a why, I suppose I could falsify proceedings. In truth all I am in relation to these crawling and falling people is an eye. I see them in the not-so-great distance, and all that unites me to them is this eye. Seeing is the beginning and end of my knowing, but still, I do possess a brain – I could hardly be writing this otherwise, and what kind of seeing would I be doing if my brain didn’t register the seeing? - and so with this brain I could falsify proceedings; I could let on to be perfectly aware of all that’s going on with all these goings-on.

Like so: look out your window and see a woman passing by on the street below – assume a window, a street below and a woman passing by. That woman is a perfect stranger but you know all about her; where she’s going, why, when, all the details. But what if she doesn’t even know herself? She may be only walking into town on a whim, even if a daily whim, has no set plans, doesn’t know herself where she’ll end up. But you know – in advance. You’ll even provide a why, a why she couldn’t.

And so similarly I could let on to know all about these people coming out the chimney – they’re still coming by the way. I could falsify proceedings, provide an explanation . . . Not that this explanation need necessarily be false, it might coincide perfectly with the reality. I am very intelligent. Such an explanation shouldn’t prove too difficult.
 But if I’m so intelligent what am I doing up here on the rooftop? That could hardly be described as intelligent, could it?
- It’s not enough to look to provide a why for the people crawling out the chimney and sliding down off the roof, I have to provide one for myself too, do I?

And so why - not my why but their why. An account of the facts, and what matter as long as it’s an account, someway plausible. What is desired is certainty. One can proceed forward with certainty from certainty. One can’t proceed with certainty from uncertainty. There is some gaping void which we’ve been encircling and re-encircling with much anguish, asking only that we could close in this void, this absence, render it an absence no more, so we can step over it with confidence - with such confidence as to be altogether unconscious of this confidence, so certain are we that the ground beneath won’t give way with us disappearing unhappily into the void below.

Some brave souls, so they told us, crawled towards the edge of one such void, peered into it, crawled back again, stood up, felt dizzy, got back down again, crawled a bit further, dizziness subsided and away they rushed to tell us what they saw. “I crawled up to the edge, nearly, and I saw . . . nothing! It was extraordinary! I fled in terror.”

And so rather than such a void, an account of the facts. Why the crawling out the chimney, sliding down, falling off, disappearing, perhaps coming back again?

A why - is that the essence of the matter? Of any matter? This happened. Okay, of mild interest, but why did it happen? The crux of the issue. A why, or if not a why, a how. Provide one of the two and a void no more, the matter closed. If one wished one might put up some kind of plaque to commemorate the occasion: “On such-and-such a date, such-and-such a void was filled in. So-and-so did the filling in. This is what so-and-so did the filling in with” – the how or the why.

So the essence of all matter it seems is words, ideas. In the beginning was the word. Matter was behaving in such and such a manner because it was conforming to an idea which was the truth of the matter. But what is an idea but words in someone’s head and words in someone’s head is a very recent phenomenon, so in whose head were these words to which matter was conforming before there were any words? A mystery.

So anyway, men and women crawling out of that chimney on that rooftop over there, sliding down off it and disappearing from view. Why?

Why the disappearing? - because of the lines of vision open to myself up here by a different chimney, whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing up here. We can probably assume this is as far as disappearing went. Now for why the crawling out the chimney and sliding down off the roof bit. Not so mysterious as disappearing, if disappearing it was, but in all probability disappearing it wasn’t. The disappearing has been satisfactorily explained: lines and nature of vision. So the rest of it.

But isn’t it a good thing, before we get onto the rest of it bit, that they were sliding off the roof. Imagine if they weren’t. The roof would
be soon so crowded that they’d have to start sliding down off it anyway, willingly or unwillingly. Pushing and pulling, screeching and screaming, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Would the roof be able to take all that human weight?
One thing I can’t claim to be is an expert on the weight-bearing capacities of a distant roof in relation to ridiculous numbers of people perched atop itself. But anyway, we can with good reason divert ourselves from pondering the implications for this roof if they weren’t sliding down off it since they were and are sliding down off it, even now in the fading light.
They’re sliding down off it . . . with pleasure, in fear, trepidation, from a sense of duty, the fulfilling of some arcane purpose, a ritual, a blind urge, a desire not to be different, to follow the one in front, to display one’s community spirit, one’s lack of cowardice, one’s fearlessness with regard to heights, through some mass hypnosis . . . It could have been any of these, a mix of a few of them, many of them, all of them, none of them, something else altogether.

But I’m supposed to be offering a why, a rigid and specific why, not a whole host of possible whys, some perhaps more accurate than others. I claimed, I think, a while back, I could offer such a why, or a how or both, and how: by falsifying proceedings, by pretending to the possession of unpossessed knowledge. But I now see I can’t. Only the most flimsy why could I furnish, despite all the impressiveness of the foregoing. “Why the people crawling out the chimney and sliding down off the roof? Oh that. It’s an experiment. What kind of experiment? Oh emm . . . logistics.” I’d be a laughing stock. So no, I’d better return to the truth, the known truth.

With all this the extent of my knowing is limited to my seeing. I see them carrying on now as before, their visible forms dissolving in the ever more fading light. The wind is still howling. If they’re making any noise as they make their descent I still don’t hear it. It’s getting colder. I’m thankful for my warm chimney. Whether they’ll stop when the darkness has altogether conquered the light, I have no idea.

But then again only a fool infers a night has to equal impenetrable inky blackness. Maybe they’ll wait to see and assess the darkness as it happens:

“Not so dark, we’ll keep going.”
“Too dark, we’ll stop.”
“No such thing as too dark, we won’t stop.”

I’ll have to wait and see too – depending that is on the depth of darkness and my ability to see within it. If it’s too dark I won’t see regardless.
And what about my willingness to see? I might just have enough of being up here and come down myself.

Unique

The wide boulevard and the houses standing along both its sides were like the lower jaw of an old Bolshevik who, late in life, arrived at democratic views.

The opening line of Victor Pelevin's short story The Tarzan Swing from his collection A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia. If all the accumulated human lives were gathered within the present, I still think one could be pretty sure Pelevin would be the only one to produce this simply worded line.

Forgotten

"Some things are forgotten and some are remembered."
"True."
"It is our task to differentiate between them."
"How?"
"By making a list."

What To Call It

They didn’t know what to call it, they weren’t agreed. They were in two minds; should it be called this or that – not literally ‘this’ or ‘that’ but something or something else – again not literally.
Someone came along and suggested they not call it anything at all, thus preserving its uniqueness. It being itself, what need had it of joining the legions of some general category as denoted by this word or that.
He wasn’t appreciated - by either side. Off he went. They still haven’t made a decision.

amidstthedark

Workinprogress

Fear of Freedom

Just to recommend highly Erich Fromm's Fear of Freedom which I'm currently reading.

One Thing

The one thing man needs is air.
-"And what about food?!"
Yes, well, food, but without air you can forget about food.

Bucket

There was a bucket of shit, and for some odd reason everyone began enthusing about this bucket - or at least everyone in a position to publicly enthuse and to proclaim that their enthusing encompassed fully the full circle of everyone.

It was set on the throne and all, or a great many, did homage. Why did they bow down? Was it just vanity? "If a bucket of shit is king, then how great must I myself be, for if I compare myself to a bucket of shit ... " - though needless to say if such a thought exists it should be kept very much to oneself, only allowing a hint of it to leak out every now and again, in passing.

But no, this is surely all much too cynical and complex. The answer must be that loyalty is the first and most beautiful  law of their nature - particularly the foremost enthusers - and if a bucket of shit is set on the throne, well then, it wouldn't have been placed there if it didn't deserve the honour. And even 'honour' is disrespectful - implies it is we who are honouring the bucket. No, it is we who are honoured.

Environment

"An environment. Where would man be without an environment?"
"He wouldn't be anywhere."

Try As

Try as he might, it proved impossible.
Well no, he didn't try at all, but even if he had, most likely it would still have proved  impossible.

Well-Dressed

They were so well-dressed, and elegant; but then the clothing was gone and with it the elegance.

He

He thought he was becoming broad but it turned out he was becoming narrow.