spinoza's ethics, prop xxxiii

Prop XXXIII. Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.

[…]

I confess, that the theory which subjects all things to the will of an indifferent deity, and asserts that they are dependent on his fiat, is less far from the truth than the theory of those, who maintain that God acts in all things with a view of promoting what is good. For these latter persons seem to set up something beyond God, which does not depend on God, but which God in acting looks to as an exemplar, or which he aims at as a definite goal. This is only another name for subjecting God to the dominion of destiny, an utter absurdity in respect to God, whom we have shown to be the first and only free cause of the essence of all things and also of their existence. I need, therefore, spend no more time in refuting such wild theories.

Spinoza, the Ethics, Concerning God, Proposition XXXIII and accompanying note. (Translation by R.H.M Elwes)

What’s at stake in the assertion that things could not be any other way than how they are? To imagine the world as one possibility among others is to foreground it as a sort of positive “shape” standing out against the background or “negative space” of pure possibility. When we eliminate the background, the world loses its shape; it has no more edges or absolute boundaries. Moreover, I must admit that I am “within” this world, or that I am an integral and inextricable part of it, and that it is no more possible for me to step outside of it and see it from afar than it is for me to step outside of my own body. Or if I do see it from afar, then I am precisely that world gazing upon itself.

As the illusion of background recedes, what was formerly the foreground hardens -- infinitely, absolutely. To feel the force of this, it is perhaps not ridiculous to try the following: grasp any small object and consider that it would have been impossible for this object to be any different than it is right now. If it is scratched or dented, every scratch and every dent is as much an integral and inevitable part of the universe as the law of gravity itself. If it is painted, it could not have been painted any other color. While Spinoza may be perfectly at home with such meditations, the insistence of the question of why (why these dents and scratches, but no others? why this color and not another? why something instead of nothing?) may increase in direct proportion to the petrifaction of the existent such that, at the limit, the question becomes the endlessly permeable material from the which the world’s inevitability has been fashioned.

Tractatus Pangrammaticus

After having been abandoned by his blogging interlocutors in the panicky days leading up to and following Bush's second non-election, Thomas Basbøll takes up the project of (re)writing the shadow-Tractatus on his blog. Please note that I am exhibiting significant restraint by not adding several unseemly exclamation marks to the end of that last sentence.

Thomas' writing, in my opinion, admirably exemplifies Wittgenstein's double ethic of maximizing both clarity and humility of presentation (indeed, how could one be both clear and dramatic?). The implications of the transformations through which he carries Wittgenstein's remarks extend far, far beyond the range of what one would expect from such a "simple" procedure.

border prism, part 3

The sky above his yellow state borders, watchful, and arms his watchful gaze. But he rarely acts. The state, because he is a state, is armed with, perpetually, his watchful gaze. But behind his screen, which he also is, he rarely acts. He, the horizon, is perpetually behind the border, his screen, which is also separating self from the other consciousness, or the unconscious horizon. The other Texas border separates self from the rest of the world, one other consciousness from unconsciousness.

One world goes one way, another goes to Texas. From the rest, the others of the world shouldn’t interfere. One world goes the way of another except for the ants. His goes as the other consciousness comes. They shouldn’t interfere from somewhere, except for the spacious ants. They go in back of him. He can’t look. Consciousness comes back from there, from somewhere it doesn’t want to. But, spacious, in back of there, is space behind him. But he can’t just look back, a step there he doesn’t want.

Back from his screen, he’s there, his face pressed into space behind him, into the world. But if he just took his body behind, a step back, from his screen, his head would go into the hole, his face would press into the world. But he goes. He could just step his body back behind the hole and look at all the stars where his head goes around him. He could just gather them in his step, place them back and look at all.

On the stars around each fingertip, this is him, where he loses, gathers them in himself, hands placed at the center of one on each fingertip. This is where he, the hierarchy, loses, where he, in dreams, becomes himself, one, to the center, with it. The spaciousness of the hierarchy is where god looking out in dreams becomes all directions. One with it, from the center of spaciousness, of the universe, each star of god is looking out from a possible world.

(to part 2)

conquistador

This word, according to the lovely WORDCOUNT site (which I discovered, in a roundabout way, via Tony Robinson's site), is currently the 86,800th most popular in the English language. (It's also the final word in wordcount's long list). It also seems worth noting that "love" ranks 384 whereas "hate" ranks 3,107. "Money", however, is the 227th most popular word, and "poetry" fell below even "hate", at 3,235.

geez, it's been almost a week

since I last posted! New job has taken up much time, and I've been spending a lot of time working on a website for a Mexican arts, crafts, and jewelry store that a friend of Gerardo's is opening up.

I'm quite thrilled that the weekly poetry critique group I meet with has decided to put on a reading somewhere sometime in the near future. I'll post more details as they emerge from the glittery fog of lofty dreams into the flourescent light of reality.

Below is a detail from one of the store's Huichol yarn paintings. I've fallen in love with this tribe's peyote-inspired images.

Tricia's Wedding

Great news. Turns out nearly all of my coworkers in the department I now work in are almost as liberal as I am. We spent a good portion of yesterday unabashedly discussing our disgust with the coronation. Bad news - I learned from the same coworkers that our company ceo hosted republican fundraisers on his big glitzy boat. It's not a surprise really, but I guess it would be safe to say that I had my head in the sand about the company's political ties. What the hell am I doing working for a big corporation anyway? If I figure it out I'll you know. It certainly qualifies as a stain on my soul given that I've been doing it for 5+ years.

On a much lighter note, I finally had the opportunity to see the Cockettes' infamous film Tricia's Wedding. It was a special showing in honor of the coronation and was shown alongside Jack Smith's No President (which was boring, radical, and amusing in equal measure). The premise is delicious - Eartha Kitt shows up at the pomp-and-circumstance wedding of Nixon's daughter Tricia and, disgusted with the company she finds herself among, pours a bottle of LSD in the punchbowl. Among the more memorable moments: Mick Jagger making out with both Prince Charles and Richard Nixon - and the latter giving the well-endowed Mick a handjob.

The amateurish acting suited the content perfectly. None of the Cockettes even pretended to make a serious attempt to look like the character they played (many of the women had beards and at one point an incoherent Tricia lifts her dress to reveal that she is, in fact, a man in drag). Somehow, though, this made the satire all the more vicious. By playing their openly and happily (and sexually) decadent selves playing miserably (and violently) decadent politicians, they transformed the images of those politicians into precisely what those politicians most loathe (thereby, of course, revealing the politicians' true selves). The sexual and comedic orgy becomes a reverse sublimation of the tragic orgy of power, violence, and greed over which Nixon and friends preside.

1-100

The marketing group that I'm now a part of is certainly a lot livelier than the finance group I used to be a part of (sorry for repeating the cliche, but it's true). Nevertheless, there are still a few hours each day when even work-related conversation halts, when everyone's absorbed in her or his particular project. It was at one of those moments that I happened to listen to an UbuWeb recording of Charles Bernstein counting from 1 to 100 Had I been drinking something, it would have a spewed from my nostrils. I'm sure that the sound of my supressed giggles made my coworkers wonder if I was quietly crying.

mlk day bay area recommendation

mary ann brooks is offering a special Martin Luther King Jr. Day performance of her multimedia work Niggerati Story. I saw the first run of this a couple of months ago, not long after the election. I don't want to give anything away, but I will say this: the last segment consists of a sort of participatory group ritual so overflowing with radical, authentic love and compassion that the memory of it has helped to keep my heart from turning into a block of ice this cold, grey, stormy winter.

The show is at 848 Community Space, 848 Divisadero St. @ McAllister, San Francisco, at 7pm. $10-$20 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds.

Here's the official info:

About Niggerati Story:
Niggerati Story is a collection of gestural stories, epiphanies, and dreamscapes integrating dance, film projection, song and ritual. Local dancer and performance artist, mary ann brooks welcomes you to The Church of True Expression where she conjures up black superheroines, genderbending preachers, bicycle dances, and ocean goddesses. Niggerati Story is in collaboration with dancer, Ashley Brockington, film artist Benjamin Connelly and vocalists from the acappela group, Samsara.

what's wrong with us?

I know, stupid question for stupid times, but these allegations, which I stumbled across via a buzzflash link, make the Bethel Boys Academy, one of those so-called Christian bootcamps for supposedly "troubled" teens, sound just one notch more mild than Abu Ghraib. And, worse, it's not the only one; the website which posted the allegations contains links to data on similar camps throughout the US. We don't just torture our enemies, we torture our own kids. And we don't even have to ship them overseas to do it.

Fundamentalism -- Christian, Islamic, whatever -- cloaks itself in religion. But it isn't religion. It's nationalism -- might makes right and my nation should be the mightiest and whoever weakens my nation from within or without deserves to punished or killed -- and nothing more.

If this were a Burroughs novel, roving packs of wild boys would swoop down from the hills and skies right about now.

pause

I just completed and submitted my application for the MFA program at San Francisco State (one day before the deadline!). Phew!

Regardless of whether I get in (chances are very very very very slim), it was a heartening if exhausting lesson in asking for help and getting it. My undergraduate advisor, who I'd lost touch with for about six years, cheerfully wrote a letter of recommendation, as did local poet-mentor Sarah Rosenthal, despite the fact that I asked both of them about a week before Christmas. I would have killed me had I been in their shoes. Sarah also took quite a bit of time out of her incredibly hectic life to critique my statement of purpose and help me put the poems in my writing sample into a strategic order. I doubt either Sarah or George (my undergrad advisor) ever has or ever will read my blog, but just in case: THANK YOU SARAH AND GEORGE!

Anyhow, all of this to say sorry for the long silence. I promised myself I wouldn't let blogging distract me, and I kept my promise. It worked. I imagine that if I am someday reincarnated as even blue-green algae, I will still be able to recite every word in my statement of purpose.

border prism, part 2

Because of a divine hand he’s bigger. And a hand which, and if, in relation to someone bigger than him, was so big as a divine hand, a hand to be diving, dusted him, which, in relation to him was the world, he’d be so okay, big with that, as to be diving through.

They’d probably dust him off, fight the world back, just like he’d be okay. He expects ants with that, though, to fight back. They’d probably fight, and they do. Back just occasionally, like he expects, biting his hand. But ants fight, he doesn’t.

Back, and they mind, just like they do, occasionally biting god, who wouldn’t mind his hand, but the ants are also mind, alien, just like god, distractions. They wouldn’t mind, from out of his spite, there. But the ants, below, he can’t keep, are also them, alien, just off, distractions from bits of unconsciousness out there, or below, uncertainty invading.

He can’t keep the consciousness of them off bits of his screen, unconscious uncertainty invading memories, dissatisfactions. His costume screens the consciousness of his consciousness. From his opening he doesn’t participate onto the world. Simply he stands back, observes.

The world opening on television doesn’t participate simply inside his body. The inside observes a world as a costume. But on television he’s removed and he’s inside his body, above it somehow, like from the inside of a somewhere, remote. He doesn’t costume, removed and above, doesn’t think about it somehow. From it, the world creeps somewhere into his remote screen. It overcomes but he brushes it, the world, off, but it creeps into his screen. Texas overcomes, is full of his screen, but the ants, huge, he brushes onto the ground.

He just doesn’t notice a part of his life. And Texas is full of, has to deal with, ants. It’s in the ground, huge, but he ignores it when the ant mounds just come as a part of life, into the screen. He’ll have to deal with it but panics for a second. Takes it. Ignores it deep. But when the ants’ breath keeps coming into his breathing, into the screen, he slowly panics, letting air, for a second, take, fill his lungs, expanding a deep breath. His chest keeps his diaphragm breathing slowly, he’s just letting air, eaten, fill his old tuna lung, expanding his brown chest, his banana, his diaphragm.

No matter how he gets the tuna, he’s just old, eating bananas. They don’t spoil and old brown bananas can be preserved, no matter how old, for a long banana time. Tuna gets them so they don’t spoil on the shelf, both of them, for ages. Tuna admires both on the shelf for their ages, their cheap longevity, prepackaged lack of aluminum.

Decay, like commitment, admires people not for their longevity but their lack of decay. They grow old but shouldn’t spoil. Commitment also signifies people whose ignorance of corruption grows old, but thinks corruption shouldn’t spoil, which also signifies their ignorance of the banana. Corruption thinks corruption but doesn’t mean anything, is like the brownness, really spoiled, of the banana, just a part of life. It just doesn’t mean.

To accept anything is to move on, really. Spoiled, life moves, just a part of life, past, under, the screen, just like the landscape accepts, goes under, then moves on. Life screens his eye, moves past his consciousness, under it. The screen hovers like a landscape above the map where the yellow line of his eye goes, extends parts of him around the eye. The landscape above the state, the yellow above the ground, a line, goes, observing the eye, extends parts of the landscape to him above, around the state, above it. A landscape, the ground, is a face or its observing eye.

As consciousness of the landscape, the gaze above or behind it, the sky pulls the landscape up, its face out of the ground. The sky surrounds it, is its consciousness. The gaze or mind behind the sky and the body pulls up out of split ground at the horizon. He inhabits the sky, surrounding mind. Above, his yellow body splits the line which borders the horizon and arms the state he inhabits.

(to part 1)

more on the kleptones

And then I'll stop pretending to be 14 years old, I promise . . .

Just to give an example of one of better pieces on the album, a song from the hiphop concept album Prince Paul's Prince Among Thieves (which I hadn't heard of until I googled some of the lyrics), with some pretty amazing lyrics on cocaine addiction, is superimposed on top of Queen & Bowie's song Under Pressure. Layered on top of the opening of Under Pressure is the chorus of Belinda Carlisle's Heaven Is A Place On Earth. As the song progresses we hear Bowie's voice fading in from the background, rising to the dramatic climax where he sings "and love dares you to change our way of / caring about ourselves / this is our last dance / this is our last dance / this is ourselves". Rather than the familiar "under pressure" lyric, however, we hear Prince Paul's chorus of "do you want me baby? / I want some more". The whole thing is pulled off so seamlessly that it sounds for all the world like a true collaboration, a completely coherent statement. And if you recall the gigantic zit on the face of popular music that was Vanilla Ice, you'll of course recall that said Vanilla Ice shamelessly "borrowed" the same Queen/Bowie song for Ice Ice Baby. Whereas Vanilla's "borrowing" always struck me as a real theft (it was a snappy riff from a powerful song, used perversely to inflate Vanilla's ego), the Kleptone's appropriation strikes me as pretty reverent homage to both Under Pressure and the Prince Paul song.

Anyway, now back to regularly scheduled programming . . .

kleptones

WFMU may save my soul. Thanks to this internet-friendly radio station, I just discovered the Kleptones, an English "collage band" that recently produced a free, fully downloadable album called "A Night At the Hip-Hopera" superimposing Queen's music and excerpts from 20 years worth of hip-hop recordings. Apparently Disney, who owns the rights to the Queen catalog, is working hard to supress this thing. It's an exhilarating and oddly emotional listen that, somewhat mysteriously, takes me back to when I first "discovered" rock music (about 12 or so, and it was Purple Rain that turned me on). Perhaps it's the knowledge that something vaguely rebellious is going on, combined with a general love of collage. And then there's the way a project such as this seems designed to bring both homophobia and racism in popular music into an uncomfortably bright spotlight. Is combining Queen with hip-hop homophobic? Is it racist? Is just the opposite of either one or both of those things? Is it commentary on racism within the gay community, homophobia within the hiphop community, or both? Does it suggest that the music industry has a divisive effect on society as a whole by marketing clearly racially segregated product lines? Or is it taking the project way too seriously to even ask these questions? Although the album isn't available via the Kleptones' site due to bandwith problems, the site contains links to several mirrors.

NarcissusWorks: Psychomagic

A brief introduction from NarcissusWorks on avant filmmaker Alejandro Jadorowsky's Psychomagic, a form of psychotherapy that incorporates art, mysticism, and martial arts . . .

good start

Not much time to spend in blogland lately. I've been getting over being sick, preparing an essay for a grad school application, providing editorial assistance on an avalanche of MBA program application essays from a coworker friend . . . and I just started a new job (different department, same company) this week. I don't expect the new job to bring me happiness per se, but for the past four years I've been about as miserable, under my old manager, as one can be at work without sustaining long-lasting psychic scars; and so I'm happy at least for the change. Bad news is I'll be required to attend a NASCAR race in Vegas. Seriously.

In other news (which probably isn't news to any reader of this blog):

Laura Carter's blog has migrated over to typepad. By the way, am I the only one who missed Laura's appearance at No Tell Motel (check the archives)?

Gary Norris' post on Ocean's Twelve, education, and publishing (among other things) is very much worth reading.

And Thomas Basbøll is back with two new posts (at least since I last visted), Beyond Language? and On Paper.

Oh, and I've been having a great deal of fun listening to WFMU at work (many thanks to Jean of OKIR for the reference to this marvelous station).

There is, undoubtedly, a lot more out there worthy of note, but this is far as I've been able to get tonight.

border prism, part 1

The jester rains, sweats in sun. Summer sweats down. Rain on skin. Jester, fool of victory, can’t stand the bright rain of historical sun, sweating. Something on the skin. Rain, constituted, is painful, so he packs up. He, his bags, won’t be subjected. So he travels to rain, to Texas, like that, where he and his head believe he won’t look up, be subjected to the sky, to rain, terrified and constituted.

And light like that light is broken from or looks up in dread. Head from the sun, looking up. Stained into sky. Misshapen sun fears the stain. Arms crossed and heavy, he’s shadowed in dread. Afraid. His chest breaks like a dog ready to beaten apart into triangular shards.

Expecting a beating, he forgets about the sun, constituted, breaking him apart. Triangular, remembering only the shards, he forgets. Because of that sun he moves, remembering, to Texas, where it reminds him he won’t confront that sort of sun, where there isn’t victory, only loss in the desert where he is of loss, in a way, of Texas. Where a rain trooper, just empty, is busy sand drawing a yellow line.

A state around the state of the trooper is Texas because he’s busy drawing a yellow line like that line around the rose of Texas. Because yellow, symbol of purity, like the yellow of the state, is a rose for him, of Texas. And he is in - and is a - love.

Purity, symbol of the highway. He understands. Symbol of the state for him, of infinity. He’s in the yellow, in a love line with the highway down the middle and understands. Highway line, infinity, divides his yellow life. Line down the middle, life-like, going away.

On this side of the line he’s one part of consciousness. The other one, that part, keeps them, their psyches, from intermingling. Going one way can rest, one part assured. The other, keeping that line from them, will be the guide.

Intermingling will prevent collisions. One can rest and this, assured, is that line. How he thinks the guide will prevent each person, collisions, he thinks in own way. Place, bordered, where he’s relating to one from each other person - only in his own place - to the border prism. How he thinks the relation of the state to one another.

Through a similar image, he imagines only the round eyes. Prism of the state, remote and cool, glass tears cascading down multiple levels. So he dusts ants off the crystal screen, level with the tiny prisms, cascading down. Machines, brainless eyes remote and round, like he’d like to be. And cool. Dusts the ants to be like he’d like to be: off the screen, like everyone.

To be tiny machines, organized, brainless, like his screen. He’d like to be ants but he’s to be like everyone greater, so he brushes them off, just the ants. But he’s greater. So he brushes them off his screen. Because he’s bigger. And if he’s someone, just like that – bigger – then he does so.

(to part 2)

vote fraud update - massive public drive to urge senators to action

This site has many useful suggestions & listings of other sites which make it almost painless to send an email or a fax.

new year bus

A not inappropriate end to the year. Gerardo & I, both sick, trudge out of our apartment at about 11:15pm in the wind & light rain, miss the bus, walk about 3/4 mile to the BART, take the BART to the Muni metro station a few stops away, hear the Muni announcers wish everyone a happy new year, hug, kiss, bicker, catch the only train heading to our friends' apartment, discover that someone has just vomited on the floor, attempt to breath through our shirts, trade grimaces and half-moans half-giggles with the other passengers (it's a full train), arrive at the Castro station at about 12:15am, receive a message that our friends have already gone to bed, decide to go for a drink anyway, head toward the key intersection that will give us the greatest number of options, notice the bus we missed heading back toward our place, hop on, arrive back home about 1:00am.