Throwing Rocks at Dogs And Oh the Flies Swarm So in This Heat

It will be hot today – no dew in the early morning – the dog and I hiked across the lawn (I didn’t have to turn the windshield wipers on). Ted’s hound dogs (the cowards) stayed in the their master’s yard but couldn’t resist a yap or two – he probably took a rolled newspaper to them after being awoken early yesterday morning. My scheme is to hurl a big rock at them each time the come after the little dog until Ted gets annoyed with breaking the blades of his lawnmower on them rocks  and decides to chain his dogs up – they won’t bite anyone, he claims, but they are cowards and if they can find a weakling and attack without risk they don’t hesitate. We got four days relief in a row from the heat so this is OK, but every time the door opens another fly comes in. The door opens a lot. The room is full of little kids – daddy, daddy – hop and leap, jump and fly – arms in the air – scream. The flies annoy me more than the yelling. I once lived on a farm. I was once used to flies. I once though that barnyards had no smells (at least none that were annoying).

It occurred to him that he ought to ask himself why he was doing this irrational thing, but he was intelligent enough to know that since he was doing it, it was not so important to probe for explanations at that moment – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p190

All feelings have a social attribute called appropriateness – feelings are not synonymous with emotions

Once you know what makes you tick you don’t tick anymore – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p530

A Map of My Domain


The white truck is white
The wheels go round and round
I sit up high and am the Lord
       Of all that I survey
The wheels go round and round
And the white trucks sits high
       Above the ground
I can go anywhere that I want
       And I am the Lord
After all I've got four-wheel
                          Drive

The men who dazzle us and lead us astray are the men who promise us those things which no man can honestly promise another – namely safety, security, peace, etc – Henry Miller – The Wisdom to the Heart, 1960 p122

Bad sex stinks
Like high school
         Bad sex smells
Like stale cigarettes

Evolution has to work with what is available, not with what might be optimal – David P Barash – How Women Got Their Curves – 2009 p129

News stories have legs because they consist of a narrative that plays out the rules of a social appropriateness that has altered by  changing circumstances - it is the process by which we search for  a new concensus on how to behave. We need to look closer at these stories to understand social change and how our rules have morphed. Stories with legs are the modern equalivant of myths. Oh OJ and Tiger you are messengers from the gods.

Each man’s life has the quality he gives it, but you can’t say that life itself has any qualities – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p530

Copyright laws have been seen as a great 19th century achievement that guaranteed a flourishing book market but they may have actually been a hindrance to the development of such a market. This is the hypothesis that German historian Echard Hőffner has recently posed. In a study contrasting England with German he claims that such laws turned books into  luxury commodities and permitted publishers to make a large profit from a very limited edition thus actually  preventing  a mass book market from developing. Germany had no copyright laws during the period of study. It would have been interesting to have included the case of the United States which only protected books published in the US which I would hypothesize encouraged Americans to read popular foreign titles but restricted popular access to native authors.

The species is not at all intent on destroying itself. That’s nonsense. It’s intent on being something which happens inevitably to entail its destruction – Paul Bowles – Too Far From Home: Selected Writing of, 1993 p111

Kenneth Fearing is another Whitman but
      For the age of media rather than
           Democracy and hope
Fearing is Whitman coming out of a
      Movie house or what we would now
           Call a mlultiplex
Or better yet stream it through your
      Wii – you don’t even need
           To read
And Who is Fearing? And Who is
      Whitman anyway?
           And who gives a rats ass?

Someday he is going to kill all the morons, / Be applauded by crowds, /Praised in the churches, / Cheered by the gang, / Be smiled upon by the little pink mouse, his far away star. / His pure angel, with her skirts torn away over blinding thighs – Kenneth Fearing – selected poems, 2004 p29