I love the English language; it's fun to use and is the most flexible language on the world. Its elasticity seems to know no bounds, with perhaps the sole matter of oxymorons. Oxymorons :"a figure of speech in which contradictory words or connotations are placed together" brings to mind those that many may know but sometimes use in trying to express our thoughts: free trade; Progressive Conservative, civil servant, political integrity, tax-relief, corporate culture, responsible government and I suppose that Rock Musician and Rock Music could also qualify...
Many of our usual oxymorons are aging such as postal service, military intelligence, plastic silverware, authentic reproduction, jumbo shrimp, safe sex, painless dentistry, slow speed while 'newer' ones come to light , mostly by those that try to be public speakers, such as restless sleep or happy tears, original copy, constant change, death benefit, permanent part-time, personal computer and even the term 'oxymoron';(from the greek oxys,sharp,and moros, for dull; gourmet hot dogs and 'familiar stranger'....and new ones that became all the rage to use such as new classics, original reproductions and real imitation; mostly by moron copywriters making up ads for 'Madison Avenue' firms; value-added tax, looming recession and from some moron in Ottawa, a Tory braintrust...
Sometimes newer styled oxymorons are a bit problematic, such as teen wisdom..truly, an expression of a desperate mind, but we all seem to love, amicable divorce
That is as looney as the expression 'faithful husbands or wives' to many or journalistic ethics and Irish sobriety and how can anyone ignore 'silent auctions', deaf ears and new traditions...English; flexible and elastic that will stretch seemingly ad infinitum...
It wasn't so long ago that people in many countries were spending as much as a quarter of their waking lives in front of the ubiquitous "idiot box"; we were idiots watching a box filled with idiocy; eating dinner with it, going to sleep with it, waking up to it. Such a lovely dilemma...All the jokes about "couch potatoes" and "idiot boxes" disguised a grave Truth, one that few people were willing to acknowledge or even say aloud: our collective intimacy with television had grown into a full fledged psychological dependency, the damaging effects of which were becoming painfully aware on many levels as we were all being "dumbed down".
Things changed drastically by the turn into this century. The allure of being seduced by television, which many feared as invulnerable, had been abruptly compromised. Mainstream support for TV Turnoff Week became widespread, and a number of demographics TV viewership had actually fallen. At the same time, however, the amount of time spent staring at computer screens, playing usually violent video games, and using cell phones rose dramatically.TV may have been 'dethroned' as it were as the King of our homes, but that throne has swiftly found new tenants. Today the electronic environment dominates our work places and our homes, and, for many, any connections with nature and even local community has been all but severed and most of us sit alone and in isolation...
An old quote from Huxley seems to fit this situation, "Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures.
A society, most of whose members spent a great deal of time not on the spot, not here and now in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sports and soap operas, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it."
Thoughts during the separation from TV anxiety continue...
"Abstraction" opens up the prospect of an art that, following in the footsteps of pure philosophical inquiry, perhaps symphonic music, and certain expressions of spirituality, finds in geometry not only the new vernacular of the era of industry but also the secret language of the psyche or of our world, or rather, the psyche as the world; an art that is "abstract" inasmuch as it has withdrawn from the realm of appearances stands in the pursuit of something anticipating the noumenal.
At an exhibition of Russian art was Kasimir Malevich's unmistakable, iconic 'Black Square", that perfect and immutable monolith, that palate-cleansing cipher which admits nothing but its own abstract purity. But as one comes closer, one discovers actual variation. This is not the mathematical gesture of flawlessness that is expected that most people assume. This is messy, blotchy, rather painterly with rough-hewn edges yet remains black and just as bleak as anything without an unfolding future. It is death on display.
What is abstraction? A utopian realm of pure form; a universality of expression, of emotion, of thought; the hue of an infinity; a glimpse into the spiritual structure of nature itself; the culmination of thousands of years of human aesthetics...
A fear of life; of death; the loss of empathy...an escape from nature, a form of ecocide through willful ignorance; the incestuous victory of the single-minded logic freak...the fatal flaw of Western civilization.
The evolution of western aesthetics is one of a creeping abstraction; a turning away from the natural world.
Modernism gave birth to abstraction in a fit of dread, a paroxysm of fear born in the unpredictable dead of night, in the threatening wilderness, in the aftershock of a world war. The Futurists, the Constructivists, the Bauhaus, all of them were ruled by the tantalizing image of standing victorious over the corpses of trees, the sterile mountains, and a sun becoming dimmer, To tame an insane and corrupt world, they had to perfect it with logic. To tame art, they made stringent rules to follow.
This mind-set still rules over us. It doesn't need to be . Design doesn't need to be terrified, precious, idealized or sanitized. It can be visceral, messy, chaotic, anarchic...We can move on from the modernist impulses to always conform.Conformity is anti-human at its core....
Recently I resigned from my cable TV subscription. I was sick of commercials interrupting whatever I was trying to watch every seven minutes with streams of belligerent, psychotic ads about every possible bodily malfunction with the usual cartoon cure that only masked the causes, or dozens of other blurbs telling you that either you are loser or not... It was and is mind pollution.
We are drowning in a media-fed series of fantasies. We are the first entire generation in human history to have our lives shaped, not by Nature, but by the beguiling images of the electronic media. We spend more hours watching nature shows than actually experiencing the real thing; more time laughing at infantile TV jokes with flashing signs that tell us when to laugh, than joking around ourselves; more evenings experiencing virtual sex than actually having sex ourselves...As we forego the role of participant in the real world, we become mere spectators in the ever flickering world of make believe...
We stand at a pivotal moment in the human story. For 20,000 generations or so, our species lived in nature; we were nature, taking our cues from the sky, the wind, the sea, the animals around us. We only entered the electronic environment perhaps 3 generations ago. Now we are getting our cues from glowing screens. We watch watch nature shows instead of venturing into a wood or forest. We laugh at recorded insults masked as something funny and drool over over internet graphic sex instead of being intimate with someone that you actually care for or turning them off sex because of the bizarre and usually violent images you've seen under the guise of 'lets try this...'
Slowly, we move toward a goal that the great Swiss author Max Frisch once described as "arranging the world so that we do not experience it".
Eliminating Tv from your life allows the mind total freedom of thought. An awesome predicament for many, I'm sure. One's own thoughts can be downright inspiring...
Some unconventional thoughts on what to do when withdrawal symptoms arise...(not necessarily with tongue in cheek), find a relatively busy place, full of people and do nothing for ten minutes, or watch TV for a half hour without turning it on. For the next week, every time you ride in an elevator, step in and remain facing the rear. For elevators that have mirrors in them, take off your clothes and simply observe yourself in the mirror, see yourself naked for five minutes, then see yourself nude for five minutes...get dressed, smile at anyone aboard and leave...
Legendary Interior Designer Billy Baldwin once declared, " Books are the best decoration." I couldn't agree more but I still like paintings and other art works also.
Set on a shelf or lying open on a table, books do become decorative elements in most any room, as vital to the overall scheme as any piece of furniture or most hand carved arts and crafts . I cannot imagine any home without them.
"He that loveth a book will never want a faithful friend," proclaimed the 17th century British scholar, Issac Barrow.
More than three centuries later, his words still resonate with book lovers everywhere. "Faithful friends" have habit of turning on you; not so with books is my conclusion.
Why do these ubiquitous objects continue to inspire such adoration and devotion? One reason ia that cherished volumes are like favourite family photographs: Each time you look at them, you are transported back to joyful times. Perhaps you remember the day in a grammar school when a literary classic you've now read many times over was first placed on your desk. Holding a 'dog-eared' book in your hands may conjure up recollections of a carefree college vacation relaxing at a side-walk cafe somewhere in Europe, while the sight of a glossy museum catalogue can trigger the same awestruck feeling you experienced the first time you saw in person the work of an artist you greatly admire; you may even picture yourself among the shelves of a dusty old bookshop on a small side street in which you discovered a long out of print tome after years of searching.
Besides providing a window on the past, books show the world who we are today. A collection of books gathered over a lifetime reflects the owner's pursuits, pastimes and passions. No matter what the category, be it antique weapons, French cuisine, Chinese snuff boxes,or 18th century furniture, a book on the subject has been published somewhere in the world. This may explain the tendency of bibliophiles to steal a glimpse at the bookcases in a new acquaintance's home. If the topics they find there are subjects in which they have little interest, conversation will quickly drift in other directions, but should those shelves harbour familiar titles, especially obscure ones, a lively discussion will ensue, and, quite likely, friendship will blossom.
Books can also be appreciated on a purely aesthetic level. Consider the leather bindings on antiquarian books...florid, gold-leaf designs still visible after centuries of use, and colours deepened by the handling of successive owners. Beautiful endpapers in bold marbleized patterns, graceful botanical prints in strong stripes create a sense of anticipation when a front cover is opened and a sense of closure when the last line has been read.
Dust jackets brittle with age showcase the fonts, colour schemes, and graphic design motifs popular at the time they were first printed. Even the pages have a distance look about them, whether gilded or ragged or even dog-eared. From small press editions of erotica or military instructions on flintlocks to pulp fiction novels turned out in the various centuries, books possess visual and tactile qualities that CD-ROMS and Internet databases can never, ever replicate. Page after page of Online databases simply do not inspire reading.
After shifting and moving bookcases according to size and re-shelving books according to subject I have basically divided them into categories such as the various types of Histories, sciences, military etc. I decided to separate the bizarre, weird but hilarious and wonderful titles and put them all together as they deserve their own bookcase despite a wide array of subjects. Some of the divisions/ categories ended up up as 'Unintended double-entendre titles'; 'extraordinary names of authors; books by authors with the same names as the famous and infamous'; Authors whose names are remarkably appropriate or totally inappropriate to the subjects of their books'; 'totally insane and weird musical publications'; 'marvels of sciences'; 'medical oddities and sick titles'; 'deviant diversions'; 'the exotic and the erotic'; 'the great unknown novels'; 'titles to make people give up life'; 'good but unorthodox religious books'; 'publishers curiosities'; 'bizarre books on death, and afterwards'; and finally, book titles that are the most outrageously exceeds all bounds of credibility', such as :
The Madam as Entrepreneur; Career Management in House Prostitution, 1979
The Joy Of Chickens, 1980
Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, 1978....
Some 'double entendre titles':
The Hookers of Kew, 1967, A revealing biography of the eminent family of botanists
The Resistance of Piles To Penetration, 1935; An important treatise on a common problem; an engineering solution to a medical problem...
Queer Shipmates, 1962; Where to Say No, 1887; Ms. Cook lays down the law...
Perverse Pusssy, 1869; Anon. Same unknown writer also penned books for the Philadelphia, Pa American Sunday School Union revealing information on a reluctant feline...
Couplings To The Khyber, 1969 Riveting but un-romantic tales of the railway
The Garden of Ignorance. The Experiences of a Woman in a Garden, 1913; we are truly led up the garden path in this 'down to earth' book...
Every Frenchman Has One, 1963 by actress Olivia De Havilland; she reveals what every French woman already knows...
How To Avoid Intercourse With Your Car Mechanic, 1977; service costs are high; avoiding further complications will be most welcomed by many drivers...
The Fags, and Other Poems, 1912...
Joyful Lays, 1886...
Memorable Balls, 1954; an eminent art historian recalls some fashionable Society entertainments.
Queer Doings In The Navy, 1896; Line Officers' Assoc.
Under Two Queens, 1884...
Scouts In Bondage,1930
Organ Building For Amateurs, 1887; A do-it-yourself guide for bigger and better organs
I'll occasionally list other works as cleaning up takes time to rearrange chairs, etc.
I love my books, all 3500 or so of them. In them is nearly everything that I've ever wanted to know of our world; of our beginnings; of our civilizations; of our sciences and of what happened to them all.
As I look at them I am thankful that I have found all these treasures of ancient knowledge; of the hopes of peoples everywhere and even of the attempts to destroy those peoples from ancient times to the current on going genocides against humankind and knowledge. This brings me to the enemies of knowledge and the enemies of books in general.
" The weapons of the dictator is not so much propaganda as censorship."
Terence H. Qualter, Propaganda and Psychological Warfare, 1962
Books have not only a long history but also, unfortunately an even longer history of book haters; those that promote ignorance by destroying books and thus, the human search for truth and most assuredly a tool for freedom.
Among these enemies of books, and of learning are the bookworms and other vermin, fire, water, heat, light, gas and dust. Due to their natures, such enemies are insidious rather than openly hostile, but dealing with them is more often than not simply a matter of care, and easy enough to accomplish, provided, of course, if one has a mind to, as well as a mind...
The other kind of enemies, however, are usually not only openly hostile but proudly so, and are considerably more difficult to deal with. These are the human enemies of books, those who believe they are entitled to decide what we all should think, recognize that the ability to read freely inevitably leads to the ability to think freely, for themselves and accordingly would keep books of which they don't approve of, out of our hands.
From the Church's efforts by a few closed minds to keep Galileo from publishing his findings in the 17th century, to the Nazi book burnings of the 1930's, to the continuing and ongoing efforts to ban such American classics as Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, to the infamous Fatwa declared against Salman Rushdie in the 1980's, those who would restrict our freedoms continue to make their lurking shadows felt. We might accordingly all be well advised to keep in mind the old adage that "books are weapons" and to always use them as such for the freedom of humanity.
"Tell me what you read and I shall tell you what you are...or are not..."
"The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man's frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search."
Max Lerner, New York Post, June 4, 1953
"The world is fundamentally hostile to literature, in great part because the world is gregarious, and literature is a solitary pursuit." Joseph Shaylor, 1919
"To burn a book is not to destroy it. One minute is darkness will not make us blind."
Salman Rushdie, The Weekend Guardian Oct. 14, 1989
"I don't like to read books; they muss up my mind." Henry Ford, in the book Hero of America: A Chronicle of Hero-Worship by Dixon Weeter, 1941, (Ford, a man that re-printed and promoted the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion and an advocate of Adolf Hitler)
"Every burned book or house enlightens the world." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Whenever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."
Heinrich Heine, Almawnsor: A Tragedy, 1823
"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them." Ray Bradbury, 1994
" To read too many books is harmful." Mao Tse-Tung, New Yorker, March 7, 1977. (Mao was a former librarian for 13 years apparently joined the Communist Party in a pique after being passed over for a promotion at the university library of Beijing....)
Thought du jour..."The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them..." Samuel Butler
Life is about changes. We all change just as we all get older. As we get older our stories change. Our stories also get shorter. We feel that the less we say about ourselves, the more accurate we are. In so many strange ways, we become less than the sum of our parts.
When we are young in years, we need a three to four page resume to describe our degrees, our professional experiences and accomplishments, and our awards from that proverbial 'corporate world' that most of us slaved in. Twenty years later, our essentials; our 'credentials' fit into a one paragraph bio. We can tell ourselves that we've truly made it when we can be identified in print by a one blurb sentence description...(does it even make sense?)
Capture the essence of your experiences by leaving out crucial details when having to explain who you are and what you do.
If you are multitalented, downplay it. Praise your children instead.
If you are an author, omit the title(s) of your book, just mention where you live or your hobby.
If you happen to own a business, don't explain what it does; just list your clients.
if you were born in the 60's, or even before,don't flaunt your experiences, quote people half your age.
If you happen to be famous, never name-drop; talk about your next project instead.
If you are the best at what you do, don't tell others; that's what your friends are for.
You will always run into people who complain about getting older-----they are usually a lot younger. They have no understanding of how lucky, fortunate that are to have survived their youth unharmed. Give them a few more years, and they will fully appreciate their good fortunes; answers to questions that the'll need in ten years time as James Dean once put it his film Rebel without A Cause.
The second part of one's life is / can be second to nothing. Too bad we have to wait so long to get it. If only one could grow older sooner....that's Life. When you become your adult self at last, you stop counting the years. You take control...possession of what you used to call your future----a bracing, invigorating now-or never time.
Keep gazing ahead as you grow up...it takes time but not necessarily measured in years. The clock of age doesn't tick for those who refuse to look back.
And sometimes it feels like the most important thing about yourself in the name of your pet...Reflections...
That didn't take long; after my dinner the cats can tell me about their day; what delicious birds they saw or if a deer strolled by our patio...
But back to 'reflections':
Use your imagination, to avoid being fooled by your own perceptions, and take a second look at your life as through the eyes of someone else---someone as different from you as possible. Try and figure out how the clerk at your liquor store sees you . How your house cleaner describes you to her daughter or husband; or what might go through the mind of the foreign exchange bank clerk as you make the exchanges; a composite image may emerge, revealing nuances much more subtle than anything you could have conceived on your own.
One doesn't need to be defensive by trying to correct the impressions you make on others. If they should happen to admire you, don't undermine your accomplishments in front of them; if they are envious, don't apologize for your lucky breaks. Who you are to them is not about you, but about them. Be gracious and simply embrace the role you play in their narrative.
What we term the so called 'midlife crisis' is usually just a readjustment between conflicting narratives---between our current story line and the world in which we must live. We usually respond to that situation by trying to make changes. The telltale signs are rather obvious... men trim their thinking hair and finally get new glasses while women undergo a jewelry makeover, switching from gold to silver, or vice versa, depending on their hair tint.
More than a new lifestyle, we all need a new metaphor for our experience. If you don't like the way 'things' are turning out, fire your internal scriptwriter! Get a poet instead...(John Grisham's writer is way too busy). Try a Zen master or a Monty Python philosopher; hell, even a post-modern historian; someone who can tell your story anew, with a fresh re-interpretation that precludes heroes and villains and all convenient and lethargic conclusions with sanctimonious moral overtones or conclusions. It simply ain't real Life.
And do not try to squeeze all your passions, obsessions, preoccupations, infatuations and other pathologies with so much flatulence that the narrative ends up self imploding from those narrow confines of having a neat beginning, a middle, an ending. This is about you, not a novel like Tropic of Cancer, or another version of Fifty Shades of whatever...nor is it Ivanhoe or the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. John Cleese perhaps...or Eric Idle perhaps...Try to end it on a positive note if at all possible, as in "Lord, deliver us from Normal..."
We are supposed to grow up one day at a time; some of us do it one decade at a time, and without being able to study the 'master plan" or even seeing it... just like our oldest cathedrals, progressively, by decades or centuries with no blueprints or plans. This is like a child that invents the adult they will become, with the final design visible only at the end.
Don't look back to find where you are going, the answer is ahead of you. Treat your regrets, your memories, your pearls of wisdom the way you treat your old vacation photos; let them gather the dust they deserve. Be a precursor of who you will become later would have made good advise to follow. Stop describing yourself as the son or daughter of immigrants and try "I'm the future owner of a little bar or restaurant in Mexico or the Dominican Republic", both of which have Canadian retirees...You certainly do not need to be 'old' to move and change lifestyles.
But we prefer to start our accounts in the past tense with where parents or grandparents have come from, what they have done, and who they became. In old and primitive cultures, people used to rattle off long genealogies as a way to introduce themselves; today curiosity about where we come from still drives our sense of self. Then again, we may be looking for 'connections'...
All the great narratives of the world are always told in hindsight; people's legacies are told in terms of history; in terms of what people will or may remember after they are gone. When people should write their book or the symphony that could make them famous in the next decade or century, they write their obituary...
Get a head start on the future by projecting your intuition, five, twenty, or a hundred years from now. Look in the mirror and see yourself as the younger version of the person you wish to be at the age of 60 or 90.
Give children the respect due the adults they will become; think of your son or daughter-in-law not as simply the respective in-law, that married your son or daughter, but as the future grandparent of your great grandchildren.
Far too many of us adopt this one life narrative, and hold its truisms to be self evident...we assume that our awareness of sequences of events reflect chronological reality. They usually do not. According to many contemporary historians we, collectively, are what is referred to as "unreliable narrators" of our own biographies...subjective eyewitnesses who do not know all the facts about ourselves and thus cannot grasp the full scope of their meanings...Somehow we are 'clueless'
Shall continue this train of reflections later...the cats are getting upset and want their dinners...
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
THE OUTHOUSE TIMES-HERALD
Dateline Ratwhiskers, Arkansas, June 16, 2020
Illgup Flylippe , Reporter.
The small rural town of Ratwhiskers is considering hiring an independent patriotic firm to survey residents about their awareness of and attitudes toward Mooslims.
"That will certainly assist us in understanding the way forward to get rid of them people," said Mayor Bubba Rednek.
"There's always the question of what do our town-folks really want? Some locals say they don't want any mooslims around, some say that we need a cull of these weird varmints. Others say no cull is needed. Some were saying to only use contraceptive immunization, and not sterilization."
The decision has disappointed the Urban Muslim Stewardship Society of Ratwhiskers, which wanted the municipality to partner with it on a program that would have included public education, a mooslims headcount and a conservative, religiously based survey.
Ratwhiskers councillors rejected that call to contract with the KKK, which would have cost about $200 dollars.
Minnie-Ann de Bru, KKK vice president, said she was extremely disappointed by council's decision. She said the KKK is "a really solid faith based group" that includes patriotic experts from both the University of American Patriots and evangelical Baptist fascists."
"I think the mayor and some of the council seem concerned with our credentials and that we might be perceived to be bias, but I think it's really important to note that we've always said that hat we are a faith based science, pro lethal to mooslims in any management of them.We are in good standing with our President-Fuhrer for Life, and that he's fully endorsed our programs." de Bru said.
Mayor Rednek said council felt a resident survey was better conducted "at a shot-guns blast " than by a President's favourite group like the KKK, which is forthright in admitting there are no circumstances under which it would not support a moo slim cull in the USA. To make it look really fair "we coulda used the American Nazi Party; everybody knows that nazies and mooslims get along; they both hate the zionist jews. We ain't gots nuthin' against jews or their weird zionist religion. We loves dem people an' Israel", said Rednek.
PART ONE
PART TWO RATWHISKERS' SURVEY
"Those KKK patriots are really a pro-cull advocacy group. Certainly, I felt, it needed to look fair; if you're going to do a survey that has the appearance of being credible, it needs to be done by a so called independent agency, not one that's already in favour of only one particular final solution to get rid of our local mooslims, Rednek further said.
Council has accepted the municipality has a preventive role to play in any urban mooslim management in partnership with out state government. The town will deal with this issue once and for all in solidarity with our country's new policy of culling their numbers in every town and every state. It is now so american and makes americans more responsible.
Rednek also emphasized that when the decision is made in Ratwhiskers that there are only three methods to choose from: a cull by machine guns, contraceptive sterilization and deportation to Saudi Arabia. It will be recalled that in 2018, several states conducted a cull of mooslims over a seven hour period celebrating our new President-Fuhrer's ascension to office, but only eleven thousand mooslims were trapped and killed.
Prior to this cull, Ratwhiskers examined options, but was told by State government that culling was the only feasible and viable option to rid our state of these fanatical religious killers, Rednek said. At the time, no contraceptive serum was available in local drug stores. Since then, the state govt. has been involved in a pilot mooslim translocation program in the Ozark mountains, searching for any 'hill-billie' type mooslim agents.
Minnie-Ann de Bru said she doesn't understand why Ratwhisker residents just won't openly start an all out culling of all mooslims on full auto. "There's no reason in pretending to need anyone's approval, it just delays going out and killing these rag-heads among us. The whole experience really seems to demonstrate that people love culling mooslims; they're so non violent."
Currently there are believed to be perhaps 17 mooslims at large in the town and country and that is a lot for a town of 47 normal everyday christian American patriots," she added.
The survey will take approximately 2 months . Stay tuned for the results.
END
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