Insurgence
February 20, 2005
February 20, 2005
That I’m always running lean generates all my problems
I would solve if I could put on weight.
Sticks and stones & rice at rhinos; an inexorable progress
of inert
momentum: armored
vehicles not un-tracked by
tricks of
straw; bones &
names do not deter.
I find insurgency appealing: to shoot a spit ball at metal
plate tectonics slowly drifting continental divisions, mere
I find insurgency appealing: to shoot a spit ball at metal
plate tectonics slowly drifting continental divisions, mere
mosquito
bites on the
elephantine ass of hire
educated
lumbering
beasts of
burdens carrying on and on an ancient
forget
hell-no attitude.
A small epistemological lie occludes the yawning abyss between
quantities & qualities like emperors clothes worn to conceal my
A small epistemological lie occludes the yawning abyss between
quantities & qualities like emperors clothes worn to conceal my
institutionalized
butt
crack and not demoralize progress.
In my dreams I market insurgency as equivalent to “outdoor
In my dreams I market insurgency as equivalent to “outdoor
education”
under fluorescence
surrounded by cinderblock
whenever
the seeming clarity of
a syllabus-driving agenda-
covering
thesis-dominating
orgasmic on-task
ground-gaining
taxo-nomic
determine- logical
grade-gun quiz & examination-
levied ex-officio
structure is
suspended!
And CHAOS unveiled! We-the-people players left to
And CHAOS unveiled! We-the-people players left to
our own
resources might
could work up some
common
sense & shared estimation,
some civil obedient
survival
skills to
re-invent our
own universes of
discourse if not
wheels to
re-create
recreation & a womb of our own!.
Only edify:
up from old scratch
Only edify:
up from old scratch
some new
sense of identity
& loco
knowing!
Can you imagine the agon? Cast-off from standards? Cast away
Can you imagine the agon? Cast-off from standards? Cast away
from
estimation &
assess-mental esteem? No convenient convention
indicating
conformance
or rebellion & how
are we going to
tell the
dancers
from the dance so as
to pay our deficient attention
or ignore
efficiently?
Is anyone taking notes?
Walk through halls of ginseng and see students watch a progress
Is anyone taking notes?
Walk through halls of ginseng and see students watch a progress
pass their
open doors:
tilted back, arms across chests, memorizing
information
necessary to
pass a course I guess & presume it goes
in one hear
but not the
other. A student in 1964 told me: “I’m listening,
Sam: don’t
need
notation; I catch your
drift”—quoting
Emerson
how
notebooks impede a
memory.
Can I use the ignorance my growth requires, wonders Henry David,
who has so often to be abusing knowledge? How to make good
Can I use the ignorance my growth requires, wonders Henry David,
who has so often to be abusing knowledge? How to make good
out of the
stupid so
essential to the manufacture of clear?
I love my stunned stupor pre-requisite to study who never gets asked
I love my stunned stupor pre-requisite to study who never gets asked
to the
prom. The nerd
takes revenge. “Good morning, America!
Won’t you
know me? I’m
your native son!”
DELIVERANCE
That I’m always running lean generates all my problems I would solve
DELIVERANCE
That I’m always running lean generates all my problems I would solve
if I could
gain weight.
Fat & rolling in resource would be more recreational
I bet, huh? As it is, tasks weigh
more than time,
footnotes & loose ends!
Fancy free falls through my fingers; if only my only neck weren’t
held with such a miser’s clasp: white knuckles & opposable thumbs
pushing my trachea outta me. “Help! Help! Can’t breathe,” I’m crying
Fancy free falls through my fingers; if only my only neck weren’t
held with such a miser’s clasp: white knuckles & opposable thumbs
pushing my trachea outta me. “Help! Help! Can’t breathe,” I’m crying
out loud.
“Can't you hear
me now?”
But touch my maniples & I’ll kick your ass reflexively, auto-gnomically;
But touch my maniples & I’ll kick your ass reflexively, auto-gnomically;
my
home-land security
guard assures me my manicured manifold & manifest
destinations
have
nothing to do with restraints, trammels, fetters, shackles,
double-binds
&
buckles, suspenders, winches, com-fortificational pad
locks &
paddy wagons,
church keys & combinations, burglar alarms, contact
hours, seat
belts, bicycle
helmets & Trojan horses: my built-in palisades &
barricades:
"Don’t be
a Silly Sam! Hold on!
Hold on to what
you got!”
I’m embarrassing my self but it can’t be said & I won’t hear it, won’t hear of it.
Save, please. Hosanna.
I’m embarrassing my self but it can’t be said & I won’t hear it, won’t hear of it.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/05/01/barbara-kay-in-the-shadow-of-the-great-books/
ReplyDeleteBut the tide has been turning. Last week, venerated, yet controversial 80 year old classical scholar Donald Kagan gave his fare-well address at Yale University, reiterating themes from the 1990s, when as Dean of Yale College, he was called a "racist" and criticized on campus as "peddler of European cultural arrogance." This time the reaction was quite different.
In his overview of the state of American universities, Kagan declared: “I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness.” He accused faculty of lacking “an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values.” The students responded with a protracted standing ovation.
Warning of democracy’s fragility, Professor Kagan called for schools to adopt “a common core of studies” to convey the history, literature and philosophy of western culture to students.
Such “core” texts sometimes are referred to as the Great Books — the Bible (and now the Koran), Aristotle, Shakespeare, the American Constitution in the U.S., Canada’s founding debates here — summarized in Matthew Arnold’s words as “the best which has been thought and said.”
Could have been said in the 50's. (William Buckley's God and Man at Yale.) Always: the feeling that we're slipping--the fall ongoing. Psychological entropy. There's no general solution.Cultural void and ignorance of the past, rootlessness, aimlessness. Carl describes it as End Time, which he is certain if forthcoming.
ReplyDeleteIt's always the end times. It could be my end today.
ReplyDeleteI agree but he's talking the big deal--second coming and rapture and tribulation and Bema Seat Judgment.
ReplyDeleteI'll try and be ready today.
ReplyDelete"Good for you."
ReplyDeleteMartin Luther (not Martin Luther King; for those unfamiliar with historical figures; the 500th anniversary of the reformation is coming up), thought that he lived in the "end times", for sure. He had all sorts of reasons why he thought that so. Nevertheless, he famously said, "if today were the last day, he would plant an apple tree." People have interpreted this in many different ways. But if one studies the man's biography one will find that his garden and orchard were his hobby and relaxation. So, therefore, we can see that he would pursue something that is useful but also something that compels him and which he enjoys--i.e. some would say he would pursue his passion. In any case, he always said that the person with the head in heaven also has the feet firmly on the ground. We have here no imagined dichotomy.
ReplyDeleteAnd the love of great old books does not preclude the writing of new ones, rather it grounds them and propels them and gives frame of reference and something useful to think about.
Yes'm
ReplyDeleteI believe he also said that he would have a romp with his wife. Which is something along the same lines--passionate, joyful, forward looking, productive.
ReplyDeleteNo goodie, Martin.
ReplyDeleteVery much scriptural and not heretical, as was said about him. Jewish literature was always very much in favor of sex and reproduction. You have your sex and enjoy it, too, but within boundaries. Within the boundaries it will be much happier; but nowadays, we instill in our young people a philosophy of promiscuity. By the time they get married they are already fed up and then we get jokes about how marriage is the end of sex.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand Luther informs us, from experience, that nowhere do people think about sex more than in the monastery. Hence when you went into the cloister to be saved, you only become a "damned" monk.
When the reformation returned to the "old books", they called it "ad fontes", back to the sources, they chucked a lot of self-righteous non-sense.
"We must consult Brother Jonathan"
ReplyDeleteBrother Jonathan quit Yale the spring of his
Junior Year, left the editorship of the Yale Lit
and the Honors English program after hearing
the Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spense Coming
In on a Wing and a Prayer in Woolsey
Auditorium and walked away that mockingbird
night time & never returned, no he never returned.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYmnJ5WmR3U
I've mentioned Jon before & use him when some
student says he feels like dropping out.
"IF you have doubts, go talk with Dr. Bradshaw
--otherwise let me tell you about my brother"
knowing there's no generalizations in these
matters of the liberal art nothing but
anecdotal anecdotes..
Jon connected with a young sometimes go-go
dancer in San Francisco and toured the world
composing for her troupe and circus --teaching
a semester per year over 40 years in the U.
of Utah dance department. Composition for
Dance and Philosophy on the strength of a high
school degree and experience.
As a pedagogical trick in his philosophy course,
Jon would tear a 20 dollar bill in half, pass it around
inviting the students to shred it. "The map's not
the territory," he would remind them--the
representation not the represented.
He retired about a week ago--back to Santa Cruz
forever. One of my follow-yr-gnosis heroes. Well,
my main one, actually.
To him and his main muse Tandy Beal:
Little dreams my dainty dame.
Rumplelstilszchen is my name.
.
If I could say it I wouldn’t have to dance it,
Isadora Duncan is said to have said & if I could
dance it, it’d look like buck dancing a wildness,
big brogan breakdown, galoshes galumphing: not
a pretty site to see; my dear if I could dance it, I
wouldn’t have to say it &we could be tripping like
fantastic, dancing with the scars, hulking wounded,
damaged &damaging makes no never mind: hop
toad and leap frog going round the mulberry tush
all fall down spinning gold into straw doo dah,
doo dah.
"Go & do likewise,: Jesus said. "Be ye perfect even as I am perfect." Don't think he means wear robes and sandals and walk on water, or itchy cloaks and nail 95 thesis to the church door. Like wise, not the same.
ReplyDeletePut new wine into new skins.
ReplyDeleteAnd be prepared to reap the concerns from them who call themselves traditionalists.
ReplyDelete