The Consequences of Becoming a Theophosist

It rained during the night – I got acid reflux – drank too much wine – I ate too many potato chips which didn’t help. Trail dog is with me at the coffeehouse – he is watching the traffic – a chopper – pop poppa pop – lighting flashes – more rain – then the consequent rumble, but not as loud as the chopper. The river doesn’t appear to be any higher. The mayor is making a joke of it on TV. The town has become a tourist destination – people are flocking in to gawk at the rising water – the pizza place says business is up by at least 30%. I forget to move the wash into the dryer like I had been asked to do. I had been told that it would mildew. It doesn’t smell all that nice at that.

That you had parents and a childhood does not of itself qualify you to write a memoir – Neil Genslinger – New York Times Book Review, 1/30/11 p14

To praise the individual while condemning the group allows one to be “wounding without being rude”.

One of the abilities of genius is to make a little go a long way – Guy Davenport – Tatlin!, 1974 p125

No medication since Monday. Am I staring to feel it? I’m not sure. Just the other day I read that it all may just be in the head anyway (well obviously). The effects of selective serotonin uptake inhibitors may be imaginary anyway. The difference in double blind tests (when taking into consideration all tests and not just the most positive ones the drug companies use for FDA approval) between the inhibitors and inactive placebos was marginal. When active placebos (ones that have a side effect – all participants must be advised of the side effects) are used there is no difference in the effectiveness of the inhibitors and the placebos. The theory is that test participants on the inhibitor detect the side effects and assume correctly that they are on the drug and respond accordingly. So much for the Prozac Nation.

Having guests is tiring. Not the guests. It’s the changes demanded in my routine I suppose. I have to take  a nap in the afternoon; I have to speed up my pace; I have to do things a little differently.  Simple things like leaving my Muni pass so that my guest can ride around on the cable cars. I set out for the coffee shop. Like any Saturday afternoon it was packed. I considered several alternatives but they all involved Muni and I considered Frank’s Bohemian for a brewski,  but I really did not want a cold one but a hot one and wound up at Martha and Brothers with a cappuccino. It was that or skip writing anything today and that I would not do. Sea Lions, Ft Point, Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito and the Headlands and back. My nap. Then up and at it again.

My nephew found a place that he liked the other afternoon. He had his mother and I by for an inspection. Did it fit all of his wife’s criteria? Well most of them and there was a long list and he won’t be able to do any better that than this. She said that it was OK only after he assured her that it had my approval. Somehow you have impressed her, he said. I was standing at the end of a swaying deck next to a gray fiberglass houseboat, a replica of the Taj Mahal.

If Jesus could be

            On TV

Would he have

Anything

Significant to say

Anything we would

Want to listen to

And  what would

It be that he would

            Say on TV

            Before they

Broke in with a commercial

And would we return

            When he came back

            After the break

Religion involves extraordinary use of ordinary cognitive processes to passionately display costly devotion to counterintuitive worlds grounded by supernatural agents – Scott Atran – In Gods We Trust, 2002 p51

No real person is

Any one person’s

            Person

When you dance with the devil, never fool yourself into thinking that you’re leading – Jim Hightower 2/8/11

Art is bounded

With property lines

Four walls and a floor

Signs having been

Previously posted

Everything is for sale
            At market price

It will be often fortunately that strawberries need straw / Or can they yes indeed have marsh grass ready – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956 p25

I am coming to the end of Proust – it has been a long journey (three, maybe, four years). It is odd but he has run out of anything to say – what a sad way to end such a great book – now he is just blabbering about sexual perversion – maybe the death of Robert Saint-Loupes or de Charlus will revive this story. Very little has been underlined to jotted down in my daybook (except for some things about Zeppelins). Well St Loupes is dead – shot in the head retreating after an attack on the German trenches – the end is about to begin – the narrator has returned to Paris and it is several years after the war and he has begin to write this work.

He knew that. Roses. Are. Red. And Roses. And. Roses. Are. White. And Roses. Are Rose. Colored – Gertrude Stein – Stanzas in Meditation, 1956 p155

“Catch anything?” “Caught one. Caught nine over there this morning.” “What  do they stock it with?” “Trout” [said as if – ‘what else’] and I see one jump . Fishermen are resistant men (usually, sometimes they are not even men) engaged in a solemn, solitary endeavor (but sometimes with members of their family).

Instead of referring to something that is not a sign, signs are always signs of other signs – Mark C Taylor – The Moment of Complexity, 2001 p61

Man is a part of nature

Man is apart from nature

Man has a nature

The natural man

Natural selection is always bound by historically antecedent compromises between organic structures and environments – Scott Atran – In Gods We Trust, 2002 p32

The consequences of becoming

            A theophosist is to die

The consequences of not becoming

            A theophosists is to also die

The old boy had died, instantly, as the newspapers liked to put it – who could say… how long that instant might seem to the old one who was doing the dying – John Banville – Christine Falls, 2006 p144