But the Consul’s brow was sad,
And the Consul’s speech was low,
And darkly looked he at the wall,
And darkly at the foe;
“Their van will be upon us
Before the bridge goes down;
And if they once may win the bridge,
What hope to save the town?”
Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the gate:
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods,
[Via Satellite:
Mr Johannes regrets terribly his very long absence — Alas, Imaginary Constructions need the occasional vacation too. In the meantime, Mr Johannes would like to relay from his undisclosed chateau that he’s given his personal seal of dialectical approval for the Zoo-BBC TV series: ‘Ashes to Ashes’ and ‘Life on Mars’ — he’s quite certain no elucidation is required.]
[I’ve been felled by a silly little Flu the past week and I do promise to check-up on all my talented blogger friends and their artistic endeavours hopefully by tomorrow. In the meantime, since the annual epic quest to retrieve that most famous of silver chalices looms near; and since the boy in me still demands his presence to be foolishly felt during such a time; and my Black & Gold came oh so very very close to drinking from Lord Stanley’s famously shining cup last year, I thought I’d break away from all my usual silly dialecticalness for a brief moment and instead embed a few videos.
The first was CBC’s last-year opening playoff montage accompanied by the sounds of one very excellent rock band. I must say, there’s really nothing quite like gallant heroes jousting against dastardly puck-stealing villains, or swashbuckling swordsmen doing battle with net-hoarding armored ogres! Valhalla anyone? The second one PLEASE start it at the 4:20 mark. There’s a ridiculous reason for this(The whole video is terrific, and the first part is good, so if you feel inclined certainly do watch). Ridiculous reasons can be motives you know. 😉 Perhaps my delightful readers, known or unbeknownst to this video’s creator, there’s something else hidden below it’s immediate surface besides greedy owners and pampered players, or ridiculous ideologies, or just a mere celebration of a sport…perhaps, just perhaps, there’s something of a deeper nature…or perhaps I’m just being a silly boy ;).
A train departs from Korosten heavy with grain from chernozem, squeals to a halt at Jitomir, shadows approach the engineer.
They douse the blinking lanterns first, garrote the guards and seize the train, shunting it onto a siding, chanting and stamping, brave Hutsuls.
Latches–flung open–doors unsealed, sacks and crates fly from hand to hand, curtains are torn, metal screeches, hammers clang, all that shifts is stripped.
Never to Kyiv will this train glide, not without throttle, pins or brakes, wheels, or valves of bronze and copper, nor will it serve the Moskali.
Taken in vengeance for their loss– a bow long strung, golodomor– Hutsuls, that engine was a life– sadly granted, a raided corpse.
And yet a marvel haunts these woods: eased from a coppice, Niavka, singing, touches the cold iron, where rose stars blossom in green moss.
[partial journal page entry of a melancholic enthusiast— found crumpled up and floating in the middle of a puddle amid a crowded street ]
Alice: ‘What a funny watch!’ ‘It tells the day of the month, and doesn’t tell what o’clock it is!’ Hatter: ‘Why should it?’ ‘Does YOUR watch tell you what year it is?’ Alice: ‘Of course not,’ ‘but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.’ Hatter: ‘Which is just the case with MINE,’
MIDNIGHT
May 15th, ____
…I know you, you anxiously driven thoughts. I know that one can infatuate her with words. I can totally apprehend how Richard III could overpower a woman who was his ennemi juré and change her into his lover mistress. I know that there is nothing that works so effectively on her as falsehood, a lie, when it is rendered with the fire of wild enthusiasm, with the poisonous thrill of lust. I know it; she actually does not love such a person, she almost loathes him, but she becomes dizzy, intoxicated, she submits. It was as if an evil spirit wanted to possess me—these spiritual trials enervate, and one becomes weary of shrieking, weary of crying, weary of raging, if nothing comes of it. It already dangled before me as deposit a presentiment of almost superhuman powers by which I would accomplish great things—in that way rescue my pride and save my honor. Oh, it is a hard road, the transition of being larger than life in the power of seductive evil to being nothing, nothing whatsoever, less than nothing, and even less than nothing through the antecedent aberrations of my thought…
[Smudged-out]
…I suppose I’m really like an Etch A Sketch that life plays with in order to see on me just how it might look. Similarly, an artist too has a sketch to which he now shades a little here and from which he now erases a little there before and while his brushstrokes poeticize the canvas; similarly, the mathematician’s pencil drafts a calculation, crosses it out, and then makes a new calculation before he proceeds to finalize his proof. And similarly, I am only a sketch, only a calculation…
[Smudged-out]
…The Hatter got himself in trouble for ‘beating’ Time. I often wonder if years later Alice inwardly never forgot his punishment. I wonder if she began to fully realize how terribly tragic was his sentence. I wonder then, if her sympathies for his plight might eventually become overwhelming to her and that she must visit him again—She had to find out if Time was truly justified with such a cruel imprisonment. But then, what might Hatter reply back with to her questioning? How could Alice understand fully when the one that…—
I don’t know you And you don’t know the half of it I had a starring role I was the bad guy who walked out They said be careful where you aim ‘Cause where you aim you just might hit You can hold onto something so tight You’ve already lost it
Dragging me down That’s not the way you use to be You can’t even remember What I’m trying to forget
It was a dirty day Dirty day…
You want explanations Things I don’t even understand If you need someone to blame Hey, throw a rock in the air You’re bound to hit someone guilty…
[Smudged-out/End of Page]
Tableau of Alice, the March Hare and the Mad Hatter at the tea party in ALICE IN WONDERLAND reproduced from THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LEWIS CARROLL by Stuart Dodgson.
A little Gaslight experiment with the sounds of Zooropa
[Appended with some unremarkable, unrelated silly Umbrellas]
(what do you want?) (what do you want?)
Zooropa…vorsprung durch technik Zooropa…be all that you can be Be a winner Eat to get slimmer
Zooropa…a bluer kind of white Zooropa…it could be yours tonight We’re mild and green And squeaky clean
Zooropa…better by design Zooropa…fly the friendly skies Through appliance of science We’ve got that ring of confidence
And I have no compass And I have no map And I have no reasons No reasons to get back And I have no religion And I don’t know what’s what And I don’t know the limit The limit of what we’ve got
You must hit play while reading along to the captions, silly
Don’t worry baby, it’ll be alright You got the right shoes To get you through the night It’s cold outside, but brightly lit Skip the subway Let’s go to the overground Get your head out of the mud baby Put flowers in the mud baby Overground
No particular place names No particular song I’ve been hiding What am I hiding from
Don’t worry baby, it’s gonna be alright Uncertainty can be a guiding light I hear voices, ridiculous voices Out in the slipstream Let’s go, let’s go overground Take your head out of the mud baby
She’s gonna dream up The world she wants to live in She’s gonna dream out loud She’s gonna dream out loud Dream out loud
—And now for some more ridiculous Umbrellas—
α…If someone were to pose the inane question to me: which victim is more to be lamented, a girl who is seduced by a Don Juan type or by a Faust, I must admit that there really can be no comparison—the one seduced by a Faust is utterly lost. Thus it is very profound indeed that the legend logs 1,003 in Don Juan’s little black book; Faust has only one, but she is also crushed on an entirely different scale. A girl seduced by a Don Juan still has the world of Spirit before her certainly; but a girl who is seduced by a Faust, well…for her even that is poisoned…Ω
α…And as you once so very wittily observed, when the idea of society truly ascends, communication will become so deeply intense that even to the most observant, the human race will morph into a vast single cyber-ocean where it will be impossible to distinguish the hordes of infusoria who previously formed little unique pockets of isolated floating existences. Oooo! my latest ‘AP’ just notified me again…Ω
α…I’ve had little to win or to lose in association with the ordinary lump of humanity, partly because what they all aver—this so called extraordinary life—life which appears fairly prevalent in the whole cyber era, is manifest also in the biggest of things; whereas the past ages built works before which the observer must stand by himself in complete awe and silence; now they build a ‘cloud’ and everyone swears at once in bold-faced font they wear a cape too! Yes, almost before a child gets time to admire the singular beauty of a plant or some animal, it demands: But is it extraordinary?—This does not interest me much, its hard to realize the spiritual and deeper currents in man while claiming to one-up the next cyber-mountain-climber…Ω
—[An imaginary construction of a one way chat directed at a silent Aesthete]—
α…It is okay, one might say, that you cannot allow yourself to be satisfied with such a mundane and ordinary life, that your ravenous hunger for pleasure cannot be satisfied by that—but is it more satisfied by the satiety that comes almost in the very moment of pleasure. The satiety you experienced in the same instant you embraced the pleasure?…Ω
α…but wanting to construct imaginatively is really quite futile. You know how Musäus’s Rubezahl was tricked by his captive young princess who sent him to the fields to count turnips; he never finished, you see, and she got clean away—but he is the very likeness of you, who like him in a certain sense is very clever, in another extremely stupid.—you become fooled out of life…Ω
α…If you happen by a young woman who had become terribly unhappy in love, you do not hesitate to IM with her and tell her the contents of her life in the form of fairy tales.—Heaven help that young woman!…Ω
α…But is it any better really, then…then the perspective in which you see every joy vanish with a swift fleeting sigh? Whenever you see a young woman, you immediately become very anxious because it seems to you as if this were her happy moment that will never descend upon her again…Ω
tete de femme
α…On cyber status updates, generally it is regarded as the ultimate wisdom of life to live each moment as if one were teetering over the very precipice of death. I knew a woman on Facebook once who became very unhappy precisely because she continually believed that she would die—this poor status-conscious lady robbed herself of all patience to live…Ω
α…I’ve heard it explained that man’s walking is a constant falling. This, one might say, is even more the case with his running; he is continually prevented from falling by a new fall. So it is with you; you lack the firm posture of a devoted life view, and therefore you cannot stand but, oh boy, can you ever run…Ω
α…She’s crossing the Rubicon! No doubt this road takes her into battle, but she will not renounce her decision. She will not lament the past—why lament? She will not waste time in regrets, like the girl stuck in a mire and first figuring-out how far she has sunk—all the while she is sinking still deeper. No, She will hurry along the path she found and shout to everyone she meets: Do not look back as Lot’s wife did, but remember that we are running up a hill…Ω
α… My prized sterling silver Malacca Prince of Wales never forsakes me; it did that only once. It was during a terrible storm; I stood all alone on Mass Ave, forsaken by everybody, and then my faithful umbrella turned inside out. I was at a loss as to whether or not I should abandon it because of its faithlessness and become a misanthrope. I have acquired such an affection for it that I always carry it , rain or shine; indeed, to show it that I do not love it merely for its usefulness, I sometimes walk up and down my room and pretend I am outside, lean on it, open it up, rest my chin on the handle, bring it to my lips, etc…Ω
α…You ask me what I do in the world—answer: I amuse myself—what do you think of that? I know very well that my occupation is the opposite of most other people’s, but then at least I’m not bored.Ω
α…I imagine you so vividly—my confession of love cannot disturb you—You do not know who I am—I do not know who you are—and yet there can be an understanding between us, and every time I see a pretty femme I think that she perhaps has read it, she perhaps has felt a faint shiver—and I ask whether.. .Ω
α…You are beautiful, my dear; your lips, what health they breathe, your eyes, how shining, how pure. When you open them, it’s like a dark cloud hiding the moon and now suddenly disappearing, and the moon’s radiance becomes twice as bright, because the cloud has polished it….You become angry with me, although wrongly so, since you do not know how guilty I am—I prefer to begin with a girl’s being angry with me—Ω
α…She wears sorrow and not just the apparel of sorrow—Ω
α…And at times she nevertheless knelt before me and stretched her hands up to me!—Ω
Yesterday I loved,Today I suffer, Tomorrow I die, Yet, today and tomorrow, I like to think Of yesterday
– G. Lessing
Anyone who has ever had leanings towards productivity has certainly also noticed that it is a little accidental external circumstance that becomes the occasion for the actual producing. Only authors who, in one way or another, have made a final purpose into their inspiration will perhaps deny this. This, however, is to their own injury, for they are thereby deprived of the extreme poles of all true and sound productivity. The one is what is traditionally called “invocation of the muse”; the other is the “occasion.” – The expression “invocation of the muse” can occasion a misunderstanding. To invoke the muse may signify, for one thing, that I invoke the muse; for another, that the muse invokes me. Any author who is either so naive as to believe that everything depends on an honest will, on industry and effort, or is so shameless as to offer for sale the products of the spirit will not be wanting in ardent invocation or brash forwardness. But not much is achieved thereby, for what was once said long ago still holds concerning the god of taste “whom all invoke,” that he “so rarely comes.” But if we interpret this expression to mean that it is the muse who invokes – I shall not say us, but those concerned – then the matter acquires a different meaning. Whereas the authors who invoke the muse also embark without her coming, those last described, on the other hand, are in another dilemma, in that they need an extra element for an inner decision to become an outer decision; this element is what one must call the occasion.
In other words, by invoking them, the muse has beckoned them away from the world, and now they listen only to her voice, and the wealth of thought is opened to them, but so overwhelmingly that, although every word is clear and vivid, it seems to them as if it were not their own possession. When consciousness has come to itself again to the extent that it possesses the whole output, then the moment is reached that contains the possibility of the idea actually coming into existence, and yet something is lacking, namely, the occasion – which is just as necessary, if you please, although in another sense most insignificant. It has pleased the gods to link together the greatest contradictions in this way. This is a secret implicit in actuality – an offense to the Jews and foolishness to the Ancient Greeks. The occasion is always the accidental, and the prodigious paradox is that the accidental is absolutely just as necessary as the necessary. In the ideal sense, the occasion is not the accidental as, for example, when I think the accidental in the logical sense, but the occasion is the accidental in the sense of fetishism, and yet in this accidentality it is the necessary.
And yet even the most consummate, the most profound, and the most meaningful work has an occasion. The occasion is the tenuous, almost invisible web in which the fruit is suspended. Therefore, insofar as it sometimes seems that something essential is the occasion, this is usually a mistake, since in such case it is likely to be only a particular edge of it….
But what am I doing writing all this silly nonsense. This is after all WordPress, and the people have “liked” – never mind asking for a like explanation. A vacuum space in blog comments where blogging thoughts must match the length of that always exciting thumbs up, or, of course, that very dreaded thumbs down, err I mean “dislike”. So while I had much more where my thought wished to lead me I will gladly desist for progress. However, If I may be allowed a more streamlined fancy hip way of expressing my laborious thought, perhaps a video – Yes, Yes, Quite right. I did say nothing was more boring than the consistent but I never said I wasn’t boring. Watch intently if you feel yourself in the least poetically gifted. Pay heed to the distinctive mannerisms of the well known pop-star and his secret agent guitarist. O’ my poets and silent readers; does the muse now invoke you or do you now invoke the muse? If so I am rather curious with what she is whispering in your ears? Please do spin that fabric of dreams nature bestowed upon you for me? For poets speak a native tongue I can never be privy too. And here, something about the individual is being portrayed I am quite positive about that. But it is to the poetic ones I unfairly lay this burden of extrapolation. Perhaps you hear the silhouette of the unhappy lover who swings the pendulum of recollected thoughts back and forth over the past, perhaps you hear the dread of an internal conflict that duels every night when the clock tolls midnight, perhaps this is the very concept of anxiety, Alas! Alas! I say perhaps, for I am not poetic. – though fortunately I do know some who are.
mr johannes 