I wonder who writers think they're writing to. I notice that there are a lot of texts continually being published: articles, reports, books. (Are there more textual publications at present than ever before? I don't know.) Some people, I assume, read the newspaper; and I assume journalists think that they are writing for "the public". I wish I knew the public.
Do I believe that I have a readership? No. Has anyone other than me read my own writings? Yes, a few people. Who am I writing for now? Imaginary friends.
Am I myself a reader? Absolutely: I especially love reading creative books that are wild, strange, or hard to pin down.
Do I belong to the public? Yes. Does the public's taste coincide with my own? No.
If you could ride a horse to anyplace in the world, where would you go? I would ride to the marketplace, to buy some supplies for my village. Which supplies? Eggs, milk, dried fruit, fish, and...
INTRODUCTION
I'd rather make this entry a collection of miscellaneous stuff. I recently quit using the Telex Network, but I don't want that to stop me from sharing short compositions:
Here's a poem consisting entirely of words taken from the X-axis of a chart that accompanied an encyclopedia article about "The Great Vowel Shift":
time see east name day
house moon stone know law
new dew that fox cut
[SOURCE: chart & article . . . also, "Middle English meet sounded similar to Modern English mate".]
WHY I'M SEXIST IN FAVOR OF FEMALES
Here's the reason I'm sexist in favor of females. Humans in general are less adept at raw violent spastic wrath than the other animals, such as Behemoth & Leviathan. (Among many things, humans lack horns or poisonous tail-barbs.) This absence of natural weapons and deadly appendages necessitates an advancement in intellectuality: hence poetry is the crown of human accomplishment. Female homo sapiens, in turn, generally possess at least slightly less physcially destructive prowess than their male counterparts: Females might therefore be seen as "the humans of humans"; accordingly they've developed a keener intellect, better imagination, and they write superior poetry.
Men have one advantage tho: They can kill you with their bare hands. They also are not ashamed to use wooden clubs, or bombs. Men are therefore the USA of mankind. That's why patriarchy rulez.
THOTS ON MARK 1:17
Jesus said to some fishermen: "Follow me, & I will make you into fishers of men."
What if Jesus had met deerhunters; would he have said: "I'll make you into hunters of men"?
Or if he encountered a butcher chopping up a hog: "I'll teach you how to commit first-degree manslaughter"?
*
Jesus meets a librarian: "Put those books down & follow me; I'll show you how to shelve real bodies."
A mechanic is changing the oil of a car. Jesus sez "Come with me; we will lube the living."
To a pet-shop clerk: "Puppies are childsplay; Become a master of human-trafficking."
*
A nurse is working frantically in a hospital, tending to many ailing patients. Jesus drapes his arm around her & sez "Leave off saving flesh, & come with me: I'll show you how to save the SOUL." — They walk away, and we hear the loud beeps from all the heart monitors flatlining.
WHY MANKIND ROX & SUX
It seems to me that what sets us humans apart from other animals is our sophisticated language. (I think that they also use language, only theirs is not as complex & symbolic.) I wish that we could say "Look how our advanced lingual knack has harmonized our kind with yours, O animal friends!" But instead, we used our talent to intensify their old familiar beastly chaos (which is fine: I like chaos; I only wish that we would try harmony, for once, just to see what it's like).
Why don't more people care to end starvation & homelessness, and make poverty impossible? I wish that we would meet all people's needs, not on account of altruism but rather from greed: for I know that if everyone in the world is at least NOT UNCOMFORTABLE, the odds decrease that some desperate person will gun me down for my last two cents.
I wonder if written poetry was ever very popular. I bet it was.
Imagine the difference between making a rock song with several bandmates, versus writing a poem. Think of lyrics: someone plays the lyre while you recite your poem for the king, and then the king throws a spear at you.
*
For that last sentence, I was thinking of 1 Samuel 19:9-10:
The evil spirit from the LORD was upon King Saul, as he sat on his throne with his javelin in his hand, while David sang psalms and played the harp with his hand. Then Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin: but he slipped away out of Saul's presence, and he smote the javelin into the wall: and David fled and escaped into the night.
I think it's good that folks keep procreating; otherwise, if there were no new children washing up on the shore of life, teachers in schools wouldn't have anybody to teach. Also, when parents kick the bucket, no one would mourn at their funeral. Then their souls would wander forever in the underworld and never be able to locate a proper resting place.
The mind is a fragment of eternity within the brain's finitude; & the bound of this universe is a vast skull, so the physical forms of our earth, including ourselves, are thoughts of an oversoul or super-mind.
Thus, existence without death would be like lacking the ability to stop obsessing over the same annoying thought: Ceaseless life is tantamount to sleepless nights.
Yes, I'm aware that life WITH death is a recurrent nightmare as well, but that's because... [thought left unfinished]
I don't understand why we can't figure out a way to make every day just a casual hangout. Basic necessities require a certain amount of labor, but we can all split the necessary work into little tiny tasks and automate most of them, so that one would only need to interrupt one's cloud-soft life of serene contemplation if the lightning machine gets jammed & starts shocking everyone.
On the idea of artistic recognition remaining posthumous: it's just the way of this world; nothing morbid, only a bit of a drag. It's how it was with almost all of my heroes: Emily Dickinson left her poems in her closet & then died. Fernando Pessoa left his writings in a chest & then died. Franz Kafka, prior to dying, told his friends to burn his unpublished manuscripts (thankfully he had at least one friend who disobeyed and thus saved some papers for us future-folk)... even Whitman, who did garner an amount of fame during his lifetime, had to endure being fired from his job on account of his first, self-published edition of LEAVES OF GRASS: the "normal" people of that day judged this work to be immoral; at least I hope to avoid THAT type of reward.
I think it's healthy, for anyone who enjoys writing, especially in the Epoch of Electronic Entertainment, to know from the start that this type of neglect is to be expected. Anyone who wants to contribute to art and literature of the kind that constitutes the School of the Ages should prepare to remain uncompensated, just like anyone who aims to do good for humankind should plan on being assassinated.
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