A zipleaf ending in a blogtest

(Zipleaf is herbspeak for nothingburger.)

Dear diary,

What am I gonna say today? When will I ever run out of words? Or will I continue journaling even after that point in the distant future where destiny waits to award me my very own disease?

Answer key:

1. Nothing, as usual.
2. Never, because I’ll just repeat myself like a holy scripture.
3. No, I’ll continue far beyond that.

I was reading Horace’s satires today. Intriguing stuff. I told you yesterday that I finished The Odes of Horace, not to be confused with The Oats of Horse, and I really liked those, partly because the translation that I found was delicious. And now I’ve moved on to a collection of H’s satires and epistles, which the back flap of the book cover tells me that H himself referred to simply as his “discourses.” That makes sense: they’re pleasantly various – they could be blog entries, for the love of God’s eyelid. But they’re written in Latin metered verse, and most blogs are neither written in verse nor loyal to any fixed meter, tho mine are all composed in Latin originally and then converted to American slang, after which I let an online auto-translator render them into broken English, and then…

Sorry, I’ll try to stay on task. Honestly I like the idea of writing diary entries or letters as formal verse, even rhymed if possible (I mean near-rhymed or whatever half-passes – that’s what I’ve always loved about rap: its unconcern with dusty stiff literary shibboleths), and I thought about doing so as an experiment long before Horace was even a pony.

We rode to the park on our bikes today, and it was great fun because nobody was outside: we had the entire landscape to ourselves. The sky was obscured with purple clouds threatening rain… but it never did precipitate. We brought lunch along – my sweetheart made tasty sandwiches with tomatoes and hummus and mustard and olives and something like cucumber and other things that the church of science will not admit the existence of. All on homemade bread, soft, warm, and ruddy colored.

And a truck came by and serviced the portable restroom while we were at our picnic table; and when it drove away, I walked over there and got to be the first to pee in it. On the inside it was brand-new, freshly cleaned: sparkling new blue sudsy water in the basin, and it smelled so good that I couldn’t stop taking deep breaths – it smelled much finer than nature. It smelled like cigars.

So I still plan to share the rest of the quotations that I photographed from the Odes, but I wanted to skip to the Satires of Horace today, because they’re a lesser-quality translation, which makes me feel more at ease commenting on them. Isn’t that a shame, that we’d all (everyone’s just like me) rather opine about things that are inferior, for that way it’s less threatening when our assessments fail? No, actually I wasn’t planning on failing today anyway, so that’s not the tone. The tone is one of excitement, because I get to confront the thoughts of an ancient personage. It’s like he wrote me a message and sealed it in a sieve, and it sailed across a sea of eons, from Rome to my kitchen sink in Minnesota.

The sexual instinct is so strong in human beings. Is it weaker in other animals? How do you measure such a thing? I’ve heard people say “That tyger is in heat.” Can you measure exactly how amorous a given being is? The idea seems to be that if the sex force doesn’t utterly take over a creature, like a god infesting a prophet, then the creature will somehow forget to make copies of itself. This is what I do not understand: Why does the world need copies of this or that style of fiend? Well, the world obviously doesn’t NEED anything, that’s why the sex force has to yell; so I guess we could conclude that the urge to generate more, more, more of one’s species is just plain selfish, like the desire to overeat so as to bulk up one’s physical stature. ...But if you allow yourself to starve, just for fun, and you dwindle away without procreating, what will happen? The world will lack you, and the world will lack your line. So what if all creatures voluntarily carried out a pact to starve to death without bearing offspring? Then the world would be left with the type of matter that we call non-living. Or is that last guess wrong? If there were a trustworthy record that we could consult, that showed the history of this world, would it contain a pre-creature era, a pre-life era? Or would we find that there has always existed some form of animated, self-replicating, adaptable, frenzied, pugilistic, overreaching agony?

I suspect that even the smallest unit of matter possesses what we humans call personality and even free-will; but the reason that we think of, say, all electrons as devoid of individuality, is the same as the reason that, when we first discovered alien life on Mars, all the Martians looked alike – we could not tell Zom from Ip or Voox – but as soon as we learned that some of the Martians were artists while others were businesspersons… [end with joke about how the managerial class of Maritans is slack-witted]

And as I’ve said before (by the way, why is THIS one of the things I’ve chosen to harp on in these sermons?), there is no such thing as a “smallest unit of matter”; everything is infinitely divisible, and also the possibilities of harmonization are limitless. Big things are made of littler things, and the littler things are made of things yet smaller; likewise, vast entities can combine and create super-beings that offend the highest dimensions. Unprecedentedness is like infancy; with repetition comes meaning and maturity. So anyone on the side of half-sense is a true progressive. It means you’re always endeavoring onward and outward.

So if a bunch of Christians form a posse, the posse will most likely hold Christian values. But this is what I do not understand: Many people have pointed out how here in the USA, where we all pay lip-service to the idea of democracy, most of our corporations are run as dictatorships. Why is this? A number of people individually believe in the superiority of democracy, but when these individuals form a group, they choose to organize it as a dictatorship. Doesn’t it follow that they believe in the superiority of dictatorships, and that they really don’t give a hoot about democracy? By their fruits we should know them.

Here I will quote Matthew’s gospel (5:38-40) again, because I want to make a nasty point about the posse of Bible-thumpers who claim to live by Christian values.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”: But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

So what are “Christian values,” exactly? Christ is identified by believers as Matthew’s Jesus, who is the speaker of the passage above; so the values inherent in the above words must be Christian. Now a posse claims to follow the values of “turn the other cheek when struck” and “give thy cloak as well to anyone who tries to take away thy coat” – how can this posse then ride into the neighboring village and slay the people and steal their goods? If you reckon a group by its actions, this looks like a generation of vipers. Does this reasoning change when the posse grows to the size of a nation, and uses tanks instead of horses, and guns and bombs instead of swords? A Christian nation cannot go to war without forfeiting its status as Christian. But the worst part about this perpetual conflict that the “Christian” countries partake in is that it beguiles me into wasting my time writing trash like the present paragraph. Cursed be logical reasoning, for leading me astray. I will put enmity between thee and poetry, and between thy ways and her ways; she shall emboss thy facts, and thou shalt blight her truth.

Now, where was I, before this entry fell into a state of sin? Oh yes, Horace. In Satire X of Book 1, he speaks on the craft of composing blog posts; here’s his advice:

It is not enough to make your audience grin with laughter — though even in that there is some merit. You need terseness, that the thought may extend yet not become entangled in verbiage that weighs upon wearied ears. You also need a style now grave, often gay, in keeping with the rôle, now of orator or poet, at times of the wit, who holds his strength in check and husbands it with wisdom.

This sort of puts me to shame. I only say “sort of” because I have no true shame: about whether this diary I’m writing is classic or claptrap, I don’t give a fig. I only care about the quality of my books, which are already all published; this weblog can go to heck in a handbag, for all I care. (Now I’m lured into a free-association: Gucci makes handbags, Lucifer bears light; therefore the pronoun Guccifer, which more than a few modern cyber-pirates have employed as a stage name, means “radiant purse”; so it must have a wealth of coins inside, or gold ingots, or treasure that glows like the briefcase in the movie Pulp Fiction (1994) – and I deliberately avoid using the term “hacker” here, because I fear that the future will not understand its meaning; and I don’t want to bring the whole entry to a halt while I type “noun: (1) a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data; synonym: keylogger; (2) a thing that cuts roughly”; for, as Horace says, a blog’s author needs to possess the virtue of super-succinctness, so that his digressions can run on without getting bogged down in pleonasms that annoy a persnickety readership; and I yearn to make this blog classic.) My faux-shame stems from the fact that I do not believe I live up to such standards. So let me appraise my labor specifically: Does it do more than make the reader “grin with laughter”? Yes it does: it delves into the secrets of life and death; that’s why I talked above about the personality of subatomic particles—I deal often with the very large and the very small, because it is my desire to escape this current place, this prosaic house of existence, which is very middling, all-too-mortal sized, a claustrophobic lockup for a spirit who wants to jag to and fro thru possibility.

And does my blogging style possess the required “terseness”? Again, yes. Does my thought “extend”? Check. Yet, while lengthening out, does it (my articulation, the thought’s composition) avoid becoming “entangled in verbiage that weighs upon wearied ears.” No, usually not. But that’s OK; I’m still learning. Please be patient, Jove isn’t finished with me yet.

Is my style “now grave, often gay”? Most definitely. One moment, you’ll be weeping because I told you a sad story about how my neighbor smashed his motorcycle into a deer, and the next moment you’ll burst into laughter when I…

Actually, no I don’t believe my levity works well here—I think it’s ultimately a blemish—that’s why I’m so frequently down on my jokey tendencies: I don’t think I can err by blotting them all. And I need to remember to keep my language simple, to tell about my life and opinions straightforwardly. Listen to the surrounding world, and give my impressions earnestly. Stop being a smart aleck.

Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. [Ecclesiasstes 7:3]

So, henceforth, regarding jokes: when in doubt, strike ’em out. And keep your language plain; remember the Earth, remember William Wordsworth. You will not miss euphuism, dear Bryan; besides, you already enjoyed committing all indiscretions, or as Horace calls them “fancy-pants monkeyshines,” when you wrote your life-work, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2…

Lastly, in keeping with my rôle (the word is French, hence the circumflex), “now of orator or poet, at times of the wit,” do I “hold my strength in check and husband it with wisdom”? Honestly I don’t think so—yesterday I quoted Vidal’s citation of Santayana, about the “curiously American” phenomenon of an “incapacity for education… united with great inner vitality”: this, I think, explains my personal defect.

The pure products of America
go crazy—

Those famous, brief lines begin XVIII from Spring and All by William Carlos Williams. But as much as I’d like to “husband my strength with wisdom,” I’m not really sold on the idea of “holding it in check”—it brings to mind another notorious Proverb of Hell, from William Blake: “Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.” And also to end my retort of Horace’s taunting, there’s this nice avowal that occurs just a couple pages later in the aforementioned wildbook of WCW:

Why should I go further than I am able? Is it not enough for you that I am perfect?

As I admitted above about his odes, I also planned to quote much more from his satires here, but after this wrestling engagement with Horace’s Blog Doctrine, I’m plum tuckered out. Winning does that to a fellow. So I’ll limp away now.

And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. [Genesis 32:31]

P.S.

Here is the last of the raps from the batch of tracks that I’ve been uploading of late—this completes the album. I’ll put the full thing on YouTube and also at Bandcamp’s demorap headquarters ASAP.

https://bryanray444.tumblr.com/post/166268605046/waterproof-pantyhose-is-an-uninspired-rap-demo