Neurosis can be a good thing, sort of…

In Darkness by Amy Lowell

Must all of worth be travailled for, and those

Life’s brightest stars rise from a troubled sea?

Must years go by in sad uncertainty

Leaving us doubting whose the conquering blows,

 Are we or Fate the victors? Time which shows

All inner meanings will reveal, but we

Shall never know the upshot. Ours to be

Wasted with longing, shattered in the throes,

 The agonies of splendid dreams, which day

Dims from our vision, but each night brings back;

We strive to hold their grandeur, and essay

 To be the thing we dream. Sudden we lack

The flash of insight, life grows drear and gray,

And hour follows hour, nerveless, slack.

I just discovered Amy Lowell’s poetry, which in my opinion, deserves to be disseminated far and wide. I’ve been researching the incidence of depression on historical figures/thinkers, and realised that (low and behold) it seems to be quite a widespread phenomena. I wonder if the existence of clinical depression flies in the face of evolutionary dogma. After all,  many influential figures have suffered from it – and a considerable number have succumb to the violence of their own hand, yet their contributions have shaped society and culture as we know it.A great paper on the topic is written by Daniel Nettle, entitled Evolutionary origins of depression: a review and reformulation.  He writes:

 

… increasing neuroticism is associated with increasing competitiveness,and neuroticism is a strong predictor of success in attainment (generally studied amongst university students) amongst those who are resilient enough to cope with its negative effects. Having a fairly reactive negative affect system causes people to strive hard for what is desirable and to avoid negative outcomes, and this may well be associated with increased fitness. . . Thus it is plausible to argue that increasing neuroticism is selected for, because of its beneficial effects on striving in interpersonal contexts, until the point where the negative effects of mental and physical illness outweigh the marginal benefits. (Nettle, 9) However, if neuroticism is in fact an evolutionary tool, it is one that engenders a very high risk. Depression is crippling, and it creates an all-pervasive sense of nothingness that can completely demolish a person’s ego and psyche. Nonetheless, perhaps this (low-intensity) neuroticism is also that which allows one’s  imagination to lead them to novel ideas. It seems plausible to me that neuroticism could even lay the groundwork for all originality.  After all, the inventor of sliced bread might just have been a neurotic freak who despised having to cut up their bread one morsel at a time, whereas all their counterparts and ancestors had been fairly comfortable performing the task.  

All of a sudden, I don’t feel so bad for being neurotic.  

“ I stole this image from this other wonderful blog that I just stumbled upon.

 

Holding a pen like a scalpel, in the midst of an unadulterated abyss, there are no words which can bite the grass like crickets can and do at dusk. What ? you ask. And how I’d like to respond, but the truth is that nothing stays still long enough to be defined and shouldn’t that be enough. Whoever doesn’t think so has sat too long in armchairs before moving pictures of worlds they have no part in, screaming at those blinking lights and weary of the shadows that pop up just about everywhere if and when they are blown out – extinguished. Anguished lights they are, pale and jaundiced – repulsive unless you look at them long and hard untill they become much like a soother filled with mother’s milk for infants abandoned on that dangerous safari that kills before it hunts because isn’t it only after death that souls are recruited? Up in heaven as it is on earth.  

But nothing, absolutely nothing, livens up discussion like ta – boohoohoo. A cry is heard, distant and off of stage left. It multiplies, invades as a cacaphony of unrequited desire. Despair at high pitch. The makeup is well applied and generous while the costumes are tattered, scanty even – scattered - but the elephants do not waver, knowing exactly where those peanuts are kept at baseball games all around the world, hearded into fat sports-mouths while baseball-men watch and gag on their own glory.

Now wouldn’t it be nice to live a stable, yieldable existance, as if Schopenhauer meant nothing at all, when in reality he doesn’t most of the time. Not many of them do – these books with big ideas in them hidden away from those afraid of dust and whiteness, it’s cultural class hell, really. because when you ask prosititues their opinions on Heraclitus they think that they have missed out on a new STD. So That”S WhaT ExistS, is it?- HPV, VD, herpes simplex one (1) and two (1), syphilis, gonorrhea – and the mother of all mothers, the primordial eve of all sexual fear – AIDS (!) If only we spoke of philosophers as we speak of these handles: imagine: “Well, according to Gonorrhea’s theory of the essentialization of the other in terms of metaphysical non-being that cannot be explained through idealization, while being sensed, it is the unkowable creation that is the cause of the pervasive, yet untenable, anxiety. Much like Syphilis’ dissertation on the meaning of neant – of touching nothingness as if it were a massive, enveloping  ephemeral clitoris, it’s essential symbolization slippery and palpitating, gleaming yet palpable.

Or, conversely: “you’ve got Sophacles? Damn, why didn’t you put on your reading glasses – you know you shouldn’t be fingering those books without protection. At least you’re lucky you didn’t contract Sartre. Now that’s a Being and Nothingness that will not go away.”

Perhaps that is the attraction to arms older than the sun before the earth became the rocketship as we now know it to blast off the dead sleeper cells of skin, like terrorits, attacking from all angles against that warm embrace that could have been really nice, if only you had not fucked it up. On the other hand, it could just be blurred fantasy that beckons you from bed to stare out the window and smoke your thousandth cigarette of the week (and it’s only Tuesday now) because you  wished that monsters other than yourself were lurking between your bedsheets intespliced betwixt days of incongruous obscurity, and days of impossible attempts at being something other than you are: in-the-world.

on the future

“Don’t lay any certain plans for the future; it is like planting toads and expecting to raise toadstools.”

 - John Billings

LA DOMINATION MASCULINE – BANDE-ANNONCE

LA DOMINATION MASCULINE – BANDE-ANNONCE
envoyé par baryla. – Regardez plus de films, séries et bandes annonces.

Unpoem

wrote slam poetry in my head all night

psychic paper dirty and smeared.

dribbled soppy love/hate atop

those imaginary hilroy blues

brilliant prose broke forth

like projectile vomit

Unstoppable

wished your ears tickled red

hoped you had an uneasy 2am

prayed you were wise enough to ignore it

Now my coffee-sopped innards rage

like twisters in kansas and tsunamis elsewhere

While i try desperately to revive

those gleaming shards of salvageable material

and fail.

For You-ni-verse

for eyes unseen

silence unheard

For lips unopened

and wounds incurred

For bellies filled

with swallowed air

and vanities satisfied

with undue care

for acts of kindness

gone unreturned

and wise lessons

left unlearned

For hopes dashed

and passions undriven

I beg forgiveness

for not having forgiven

On the Thermodynamics of Hellfire

Some say we, the people, are rational little beings walking around on two legs, unmoved like boulders. If that’s true, I’m the most ridiculous of boulders, because everything moves; it’s like I’m molten. There are no guidelines to follow. No street signs, no traffic code, not even the laws of thermodynamics apply here. This is lawlessness made rock. Made frog in my throat. Choking up the passageways like too many words in mid tumble. Makes me cry like an elephant at a roadside funeral. I should soak myself in iodine and jump into a pool of cotton balls. I should get healed. (As if someone, something could do it for me). I should climb into an industrial sized garbage bag (perforated) filled with echinecea leaves (dried) and then jump into a vat of hot water (boiled). I should practice cynicism, and be stoic. I should leave Dionysus alone, relegate him back to lonely mount Olympus where he belongs; leave him to his soiled libations undisturbed.

But I want to make sense of this. I want to squeeze it between my fingers like crushed grapes, or ground slugs. I want it to speak to me, and tell me where I’ve gone wrong. I want it to jangle around and make noise like a mariachi band. I want it to sing ballads in the name of lost heroes. I want it to tell me all the alternate endings for stories that were never begun. I want it to teach me something. But instead, I’m Tantalus, wading through swamps of meaning, as dream interpretation books float by. If I were a butterfly, i’d crawl back into the genie’s lamp. (He’s got a hookah in there somewhere.)  I’d fly into the flame, preferring brilliance to whatever this is.

The values of higher education

Scene: Discrimination and the Law in Canada. Course given at unammed University in Montreal.

Prof: Quebec Canadian Judge, presiding.

Subject matter: Harassment/discrimination.

Prof: I had one case come before me, in which a woman filed a complaint against a mechanic because he had put up a poster of a woman in a tiny little bikini on his office wall.

random bursts of giggling swirl like wind through tall grass throughout the class.

Prof: (smiling) “Well, you know, some poeple feel uncomfortable with things like that, it’s important not only to be objective, but subjective too.”

(Girl raises hand) Prof, pointing to girl, “Yes”

Girl: “If it were a picture of George Clooney, would it be the same if the situation was reversed? If it were a picture of George Clooney, on a woman’s office wall ?”

Prof: “every situation is different, you see.”

My hand shoots up, Prof looks over, nods.

Me: “IT’s not just that it’s a picture of someone. If it were a picture of a fully clad Julia Roberts, it probably wouldn’t be offensive. If it were a picture of a sharp-looking George Clooney looking good in a suit, that would also not be offensive.” (white guy behind me pipes up, speaking over me, challenging: “that would make me uncomfortable!”) Now if it were a picture of a chippendale, nude on a sandy beach but for a barely-there g-string it would be different.

White guy behind me, gelled hair, tight black t-shirt: “Whatever, so what if it’s a girl in a bikini?! It’s not like she’d totally naked, and what would it matter anyway?”

First speaking girl looks perplexed, intemittently nodding and shaking her head.

The whole class bursts into sharp snippets of speech. People’s heads nodding, shaking uncontrollably.

Prof: “We must always provide for the region in which a complaint is made. This is from Saskatchewan, even a big bikini has a different effect than it would here. Maybe if it were here,, in Montreal, even a g-string would not…. Oh, I don’t know, actually… Anyway, let’s move on to pay equity. Which is that a job mostly performed by women should not be paid less than a job mostly performed by men if it is of equal value.”

Snickering spreads through the class, dying quickly.

Me: (screaming silently inside my head, eyes wide; disbelieving. Checking watch: one more hour of this…)

-Fin-

If you can’t join them, beat them…. I mean, if you can’t beat them….

Btw: finding pictures of lewd male models on beaches is actually surprisingly difficult.  I’m so tired of this society.

Pachabell

Dubber Rucky: Notes from a Bathtub

Green syrup runs through the cascade,
Crashing, exploding into foam, foam everywhere
Runs up round my belly, peninsular anatomy,
Surrounded by water on all sides but one
And groping hands (mine, no less)
Blindly find their way to the dimpled skin
Just bellow the small and above the in-between
undulating like a fat baby’s inner thighs
Pimpled and follickled, and inspiring to the touch
The foam laps up to the venus mound,
(but be not fooled, the gods have nothing to do with it)
The pubic hairs stand tall, like turrets,
A castle on the pebbled shore
And the waves wheel and deal on all sides
An island, unconnected to anywhere or anyone
Nipples like lighthouses, jutting out of the water
up top cresting the soft fleshy mountains,
The groundskeeper has not been by recently,
The long fine hairs around the ruby red buildings
Waver in the wind like long grass
Wrinkled skin puckers on my fingertips
Osmosis has called the skin juice out to play,
To gather with its brethren on the other side
Of the cellular barricade, as envy creeps through me
For I wish I too could release my water
Right then, right there
And feel the heat swirl along my skin,
A gulf stream jetting across and beside,
So hot against the rest of the gone-cold-ocean
But I don’t because that would be disgusting
And other people have to bathe here too
But, God, it would be nice.

However, one must always remember Pathagoras’ wise words: “Don’t eat your heart”