Pathologies of Guilty Pleasures and Regrets

It another warm day of late Indian summer. Each one threatens to be the last. The dog and I can sit outside in front of the coffee shop along Main Street. He will be given a bone by the lady in the restaurant across the street. She starts towards him. His tail is wagging. He strains at his leash. I worry that some child will try to pet him and get bitten. He is only protecting his bone and he is normally so friendly. Some mothers ask first, “May she pet your puppy?” “Certainly,” I usually reply, “He is very friendly but she may find him a little rambunctious.” I put his bone in my pocket for safe keeping until we got home. And he quietly lies on the wrought iron chair next to me and watches the Sunday morning traffic as I read. The park is still closed. Restoration from the flood proceeds slowly. We will walk along Main Street and he will piss on all the sidewalk flower pots.

The poet wants to take up the marbles and put them in his pocket. Wants marbles. Which is like wining the game – Jack Spicer – The Collected Books, 1996  p181

Psychological profiles of senior managers and chief executives when compared to patients of mental institutions are indistinguishable from those patients diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders. Particularly favored traits in management recruitment include: great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people, egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others, and a lack of empathy and conscience.

Mankind’s most universal habit was hypocrisy; its true and enduring love was money; its favorite avocation litigation; its drug of choice amusement; and the fullest expression of its fear is to be found in the dogmas, trappings, and hierarchies of organized religion – William H Gass – A Temple of Texts, 2006 p198

Why does our “liberal media” display the near monopoly of a conservative orthodoxy?

The good is the enemy of the better – Guy Davenport – The Hunter Graacchus, 1996 p67

When you respond to an authority whose doesn’t really mean what it says with something that you don’t really mean yorself – that is a triple entrende  - “Whatever!” in such circumstances would be a good example. But better yet just lie. Saying what you believe will get you into trouble.

Power, when it has to rest on public opinion instead of relying on policemen and armies, is compelled to express itself differently from the way it does when secrecy and silence are its henchmen – William H Gass – A Temple of Texts, 2006 p237

I wrote this postcard

“Dear Dad”, it said

“I’m doing  fine” in

            scrawled capitals letters

“How are you?”  I wanted

            To Know

Then  I licked the stamp

And  ran down the block

            To the mail box

I needed help reaching

            The slot

I anxiously wait

            For a reply

The desire, the regret for certain non-existent things… is the necessary condition for working, for freeing oneself from the dominion of habits, for detaching oneself from the concrete – Marcel Proust – Tine Regained p247

Baloney Man quite eating and he died just three days later. In the end he was just a slab of luncheon meat.. His body had a moldy odor as it oozed fat; just a large slab of baloney or was it Bologna. I carried him outside. He was already decaying, becoming a gelatinous mess. The mass that I carried dripped. The ooze flowed into the storm drain. It all slipped between my fingers. I did not know much about his early life other than that he had been born in the stockyards.  Someone had told this to me.

Once you have falsified fact and made it fiction, it is impossible to go back and re-cover the case, as it was, intact and untouched – to reverse the metamorphosis – and that is because you have meddled with your memory – William H Gass – A Temple of Texts, 2006 p209

I had taken a toke. This always made me paranoid, espically when among other people. I went to the supermarket. I was hungry. I should have stayed home. I glanced down in the deli section. It was labeled Bologna not boloney. How did it become Bologna? I was stumped. Maybe that’s how you pronounced it? I had never seen it labeled Bologna before or at least I don’t thing that I had. Maybe I had just never noticed before. Sometimes something old hits you on the side of the head. You wonder why you had never noticed this before. My mouth was very dry.

Gradually, however, each member of an audience grows accustomed to what is taking place before him, he forgets his first sensation of discomfort… For our immediate reaction is that this is grotesque – but we cannot be sure that it is not in fact magnificent, so for the present we suspend judgement – Marcel Proust – Tine Regained p345

The police interrogated me. They wanted to know what I had done with his remains. I explained about his oozing between my fingers and seeping into the drains. I told them that I was not going down there to look for it. I said that several years ago I had entered the system with a friend and we had barely escaped with our lives. I was not going down there again. The officer in charges said that he had notified the municiple sewer department and  that he had been informed that an engineer by the name of Fred and two companions both also called Fred were tracing the lines and would let us know where the remains would come out. They didn’t think that they could lock me up, except, maybe, for disposal of hazardous materials without a permit which was only a misdemeanor. They wrote of up a citation for a health code violation and let me go. I looked at the newspaper the next morning. There was nothing in there about anyone turning into a slab of baloney. Several days alter they published his obit. He had no next of kin. It said that he had been a renown escape artist and circus acrobat. 

All psychological investigations take place after the fact – William H Gass – A Temple of Texts, 2006 p158

He had first come to public attention as an escape artist. He had been able to free himself from what were apparently impossible situations.  Some thought that he might be the re-incarnation of Houdini. Then he started performing in the circus where he propelled himself though the air like a cannon ball, but without any cannon. He stood there in a yellow tights and a red cap and there was a boom and puff of smoke and you could see him flying through the air and he would land on his feet across the area with his hand in the air. Then he would take a bow to great acclaim. He toured Europe several times doing this act. He appeared before all the crown princes and their mistresses. The ladies all wore diamond tiaras. Later be became a contortionist and balanced on and with all kind of heavy objects. In one of his acts he used a bicycle with counter rotating wheels.

Whoever it is who has thus determined the course of ours life has, in so doing, excluded all the lives which we might have had instead of our actual life – Marcel Proust – Tine Regained p249

I had not met him until after he had retired from the circus. He always had lots food on his table, usually including some indiscernible meat product. Then one day he just said that he was giving up. That is when a musky odor began to emanate from his body. It got stronger and stronger. And three days later I called on him and he didn’t answer the door. The stench from his room was horrid.  I discovered his remains. It was a large hunk of boloney and it was in the bathroom hanging in the shower. There was his neatly severed arm half gone. Was this the source of the repast that he has last feed me. Had he been eating and himself and serving himself to his guests. I felt sick to my stomach.

Not that life has not frequently given her good parts; it had, but she had not known how to play them – Marcel Proust – Time Regained p368