Spooks By Me

Mythological Figs

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:35:27 -0400

Sosibos the Lakedaimonian, by way of proving that the fig-tree is a discovery of Dionysos, says that for that reason the Lakedaimonians even worship Dionysos Sykites (of the Fig). And the Naxians, according to Andriskos and again Aglaosthenes, record that Dionysos is called Meilikhios (Gentle) because he bestowed the fruit of the fig. For this reason, also, among the Naxians the face of the god called Dionysos Bakkheos is made of the vine, whereas that of Dionysos Meilikhios is of fig-wood. For, they say, figs are called meilikha (mild fruit).

Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 3. 78a (trans. Gullick) (Greek rhetorician C2nd to 3rd A.D.)

He was said to have discovered all tree-fruits, amongst which apples and figs are particularly mentioned; and he was referred to as “well-fruited,” “he of the green fruit,” and “making the fruit to grow.” One of his titles was “teeming” or “bursting” (as of sap or blossoms); and there was a Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaia. The Athenians sacrificed to him for the prosperity of the fruits of the land. Amongst the trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree. The Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular pine-tree “equally with the god,” so they made two images of Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies. In art a wand, tipped with a pine-cone, is commonly carried by the god or his worshippers. Again, the ivy and the fig-tree were especially associated with him. In the Attic township of Acharnae there was a Dionysus Ivy; at Lacedaemon there was a Fig Dionysus; and in Naxos, where figs were called meilicha, there was a Dionysus Meilichios, the face of whose image was made of fig-wood.

Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, Chapter 42

Apocalyptic Figs

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:27:15 -0400

And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree. (Isaiah 34:4)

And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. (Revelation 6:13)

Catalogue

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:24:44 -0400

How my body and the temperature do not match—a basic reminder of how even measurement is subjective and so being bewildered.

Not being able to do “regular” push ups continuously, but alternating between doing two on my knees and two not on my knees and so alternating between feeling impatient and empowered.

Alternating between sleeping on the couch and sleeping in the bed, sometimes serene and sometimes restless.

When San Diego looks tropical because of this plant or that plant. I am involved with Jasmine, especially.

Watching Lester scratch pin feathers from the top of his head, the ones he won’t let me scratch yet. When tenderness feels impossible, I look at Lester.

A floor with dust, feathers and smudges on it. It is not my floor, but I use it. Guilt that I am not cleaning the floor right now.

Expectations

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:47:58 -0400

I couldn’t get the bind today Marichyasana D, even though I’ve been able to do it for the past few weeks, with assistance.

To show up to practice, regularly, and not have expectations or judgments about it.

Figs Fall on My Head

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:35:00 -0400

Many figs just fell on my head, and it reminded me that I have a project about being hit with fruit and throwing fruit. And Jessica Smith reminded me of this section from The Bell Jar:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Exhaustion

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:09:28 -0400

(The summit of Stonewall mountain—a not very exhausting hike)

We work too hard
We’re too tired
to fall in love.
Therefore we must
overthrow the government.

We work too hard
We’re too tired
to overthrow the government.
Therefore we must
fall in love.
— Rod Smith

The old Spooks By Me is now sitting in an xml file on my hard drive, and may return again when I can figure out how to import those posts into Tumblr. Wordpress became too much of a technical pain to use, so I’m not going to use it anymore.

Rod’s poem has been quoted a lot recently (see An Army of Lovers by David Buuck & Juliana Spahr, Brian Ang’s Manifesto #3: Poetry & Militancy, etc. etc. ). I relate to the part about being tired and working too hard, to the circuitous nature of the poem, the idea that love and overthrowing the government are connected and possibly even substitutions for one another. The idea that certain kinds of love tend to occur in certain kinds of governments and social structures and communities while other kinds of love are not allowed.

But mostly the tired part. Anne Boyer, I know must be tired, too, but how do you write so much? Or Kate Zambreno, how do you write so much? I’d like to lay down on my couch for days and listen to the great blue herons on the Cornell Lab Bird Cam while drifting in and out of sleep, except that there’s no way that could possibly happen, ever. And then I’d just be sleeping not writing and reading. Perhaps some kinds of writing can only happen with exhaustion.

*: Mary Shelley's List of Books Read in 1815

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:47:10 -0400

*: Mary Shelley's List of Books Read in 1815:

anneboyer:

LIST OF BOOKS READ IN 1815.

MARY.
Those marked * Shelley read also.Posthumous Works. 3 vols.
Sorrows of Werter.
Don Roderick. By Southey.
*Gibbon’s Decline and Fall 12 vols.
*Gibbon’s Life and Letters. 1st Edition. 2 vols.
*Lara.
New Arabian Knights. 3 vols.
Corinna.
Fall of the Jesuits.
…

"To me, the value of artist-run institutions is not so much in the models they establish for a more..."

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:20:11 -0400

“To me, the value of artist-run institutions is not so much in the models they establish for a more democratic society as in the everyday enactments of such a society through art, and in their capacity to engage fellow citizens in the difficult work of addressing one another and not some chimerical oppressor.”

- Provan, Alexander. “All for One: What Makes A Successful Artist-Run Institution.” Frieze, Issue 153, March 2013. Web.

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/all-for-one

harlequinknights: The White People

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:40:53 -0500

harlequinknights:

The White People

yerawizardmary: yerawizardmary: Dying right now. I cannot...

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:43:11 -0500

yerawizardmary:

yerawizardmary:

Dying right now.

I cannot believe this got so many notes. But this is the continuation.

"Anne Boyer: a lifetime of fits of intense, impractical desire to foster _all_ the children,..."

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 12:19:58 -0500

“Anne Boyer: a lifetime of fits of intense, impractical desire to foster _all_ the children, aggravated by any exposure to lost, unparented, or harmed children — or, I imagine in a more feminist world, there would be a clearly articulated theory of this sometimes overwhelming desire to mother who is not (by law or biology) “yours””

- https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10151358999565923&id=748475922

"Ross, indeed.. this is what i posted on tumblr about rateings on the Beach Sloth Scale: ‘i..."

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 22:10:34 -0500

“

Ross, indeed.. this is what i posted on tumblr about rateings on the Beach Sloth Scale: ‘i actualy kind of believe this, as i believe “alt lit” is more based on the community rather than qualities found in the writing, and i think beach sloth may be the person who is most comprehensively conected across the various “alt lit” sub-communities’

so i agree: (1) “alt lit” is a specific comunity more then a type of writing.. (2) if your gonna try to describe it based on a characteristic other than the specific community ties, the strongest shared thing is just an embrace of the internet. in 2011 i was pushing the term “internet poetry,” but it didnt stick that much, and i lost enthusiasm for it, now “alt lit” is sticking pretty hard.. “alt lit” was a term coined by Cory Lumpenprole in 2011, i think he was using “alt” in the same way as hipster runoff used it, just describing indie youth culture, hipster stuff, etc., he also referred to soy milk as “alt milk” i remember. so Alt Lit is literature for the alt hipster youth, thats how i interpret it. it’s not at all precise or clear cut as a label, but labels for art things rarely are. i think its inevitable and positive that people see a pattern tho and want to have a name for it, alt lit is just what has stuck, i think its about as good as anything.

”

- Steve Roggenbuck explains the term “Alt Lit”:

http://www.facebook.com/steveroggenbuck.co.uk/posts/521296404556549

Ryan Gosling Rimbaud meme

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 12:18:49 -0500

Ryan Gosling Rimbaud meme:

Via Facebook & Michael Nicoloff & Wendy Trevino

"The closest that most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an..."

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 10:33:31 -0500

“

The closest that most of us come to a direct experience of the centerlessness of capitalism is an encounter with the call center. As a consumer in late capitalism, you increasingly exist in two, distinct realities: the one in which the services are provided without hitch, and another reality entirely, the crazed Kafkaesque labyrinth of call centers, a world without memory, where cause and effect connect together in mysterious, unfathomable ways, where it is a miracle that anything ever happens, and you lose hope of ever passing back over to the other side, where things seem to function smoothly. What exemplifies the failure of the neoliberal world to live up to its own PR better than the call center? Even so, the universality of bad experiences with call centers does nothing to unsettle the operating assumption that capitalism is inherently efficient, as if the problems with call centers weren’t the systemic consequences of a logic of Capital which means organizations are so fixated on making profits that they can’t actually sell you anything.

The call center experience distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism: the boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since – as is very quickly clear to the caller –there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could. Anger can only be a matter of venting; it is aggression in a vacuum, directed at someone who is a fellow victim of the system but with whom there is no possibility of communality. Just as the anger has no proper object, it will have no effect. In this experience of a system that is unresponsive, impersonal, centerless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in itself.

”

-
—Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, via Reg Johanson

"Teachers are now put under intolerable pressure to mediate between the post-literate subjectivity of..."

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 10:30:00 -0500

“Teachers are now put under intolerable pressure to mediate between the post-literate subjectivity of the late capitalist consumer and the demands of the [decaying] disciplinary regime (to pass examinations etc). This is one way in which education, far from being in some ivory tower safely inured from the ‘real world’, is the engine room of the reproduction of social reality, directly confronting the inconsistencies of the capitalist social field. Teachers are caught between being facilitator-entertainers and disciplinarian-authoritarians. Teachers want to help students to pass the exams; they want us to be authority figures who tell them what to do. Teachers being interpellated by students as authority figures exacerbates the ‘boredom’ problem, since isn’t anything that comes from the place of authority a priori boring?”

- Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, via Reg Johanson

What Defines a Meme

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:45:27 -0500

What Defines a Meme:

What would it mean for a replicator to exist without chemistry? “I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet,” Dawkins proclaimed near the end of his first book, The Selfish Gene, in 1976. “It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.” That “soup” is human culture; the vector of transmission is language, and the spawning ground is the brain.

For this bodiless replicator itself, Dawkins proposed a name. He called it the meme, and it became his most memorable invention, far more influential than his selfish genes or his later proselytizing against religiosity. “Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation,” he wrote. They compete with one another for limited resources: brain time or bandwidth. They compete most of all for attention.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/What-Defines-a-Meme.html#ixzz2CjNoPS7d

HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA (by ProtoOfSnagem)

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 20:14:48 -0500

HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA (by ProtoOfSnagem)

Photo

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:47:56 -0500

"The grammatical choices we make—including pronoun use, active or passive verb constructions, and..."

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:17:14 -0400

“The grammatical choices we make—including pronoun use, active or passive verb constructions, and sentence patterns—represent relations between writers and the world they live in. Word choice and sentence structure are an expression of the way we attend to the words of others, the way we position ourselves in relation to others.”

- https://www.csun.edu/~bashforth/305_PDF/305_PDF_Grammar/MakingACaseForRhetoricalGrammar_Micciche.pdf

Photo

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 11:06:10 -0400