Scab Mask Sore

The word opinion derives from the word for choice. To speak is to choose. To choose is to change.

He thought he should have a conception of the totality that included his conception of this totality. Ideal science explains everything, including itself. This totality also included this thought of himself as someone who thought he should take certain positions regarding this same inclusive totality.

Fail better

To succeed at first-science is to fail at it.

Self-subversion is a device of self-enlargement. Answers are made from questions. Then more questions are made from these answers. The enlarged self is network of questions and answers.

Questionable Questions

I think that any intellectual position is vulnerable to potent questioning. Do we stop questioning because our current position is emotionally satisfying? Are all intellectual positions based on a sort of faith? On the cessation of questioning?
Is the "pursuit of truth" a bluff, then? Is "truth" just adjustment? Is ultimate truth possible at all? What is my motive for asking these questions? If you have an answer to this question of my motive, what is the motive behind your answer?
Do we want truth or only the prestige associated with it?
If we propose a concept or model of the psyche, how do we know that this concept or model is not the result of wishful thinking, a rationalization?
Is all reason really rationalization? But then reason as rationalization would be a rationalization. Can the snake swallow itself tail-first?

First-science

First-science concerns itself with the most fundamental questions and answers. First-science functions by subverting itself. What are the fundamental questions and answers that other questions and answers are built on? This is a question for first-science. Psychology seems like a first-science, because the mind is the source of first-science in the first place. Linguistic philosophy (in the broadest sense) seems like a first-science, for both psychology, first-science, and linguistic philosophy are made of sentences. But all of these develop over time, in human history. Are history and/or historicism first-science? A question for first-science.

Is first-science a bottomless pit?

The "as" is the face of the soul.

Philosophy as the novel use of "as."
Philosophy as a nice "as." (Or philosophy has a nice "as.")
Doesn't philosophy have a nice "as?"
The "as" is the face of the soul. (A modification of Bukowski.)

Philosophy as spiritual phallus.
The spirit as hot air, as opposed to cold air.
Philosophy as an as-machine.
Is philosophy as-matic?

Winning Smile

Nietzsche and Tao agree that Truth is equipped with a uterus. Know the masculine (biblically?) but keep to the feminine.

Rorty reminds me of Running Water -- that's his Native American alter-ego. Is running water the same as Nietzsche's "mobile army of metaphors"? Liquid is made of molecules that hold on loosely, that are willing to recontextualize.
Pragmatism is self-consciously dynamic. If religion offers the comfort of closure, pragmatism offers the comfort of the impossibility of closure, which the wry pragmatist will admit is a form of closure. I like the term ironist myself. "Pragmatist" fits too tight. But for an ironist, "ironist" also fits too tight. The ironist is too busy being born to compose his epitaph. On his tombstone: "He Was Too Busy Being Born To Compose His Epitaph"

If a philosopher conceives of himself as an inventor rather than a discover, what then? If reality is conceived of as synthetic, what then?

Is it wrong/inefficient for a so-called philosopher to suffer the anxiety of influence. Does it betray a lack of seriousness? Does seriousness betray a lack of Wisdom?
Should the Wise Man whistle and grin?

Is self-consciousness the highway to Irony?

He thought linguistic philosophy was the shizzle, but not the boring kind best suited for churning butter. He was sick, at the moment, of case-closers. Today's game was the saluting of can-openers, presumably cans of worms.
When God closes a case he opens a can of worms.
What was all this noise about truth? He wanted to drop strong lines. That was his truth. He wanted his sentences to infiltrate. His viruses were phallogocentric. He wanted to be quoted. How like a woman, this concern with seduction. How like a man, this apparently penetrative self-consciousness. How like a comedian, this piling of reversals.

Goddess-stripping had become an addiction. At some point one ran out of Goddesses and had to strip one's stripping. Hamlet shoves his sword through the arras, a show for mom and a no for "father."

Being-toward-death: he could relate to that. Nothingness was waiting on him. It did give one a certain courage, but this courage was also a fear, the fear of not having lived as well and as beautifully as possible.

Was it wrong to value creativity? Was it an inferior state of being to concern oneself with the creation of novelty? Was the anxiety of influence the hell-hound of lesser men?

Perhaps, and then perhaps that sentence was pure hypocrisy.

Was an anatomy of self-consciousness an attempt to transcend or celebrate self-consciousness? Or both? Or neither?

He remembered his introduction to philosophy. Two phrases grabbed him right away. "Know yourself" and "define your terms."

Well, Onanismo had been knowing himself biblically for quite awhile now.

Defining one's terms boiled down to knowing one's self and knowing one's self boiled down to defining one's terms. Both projects were apparently endless.

To do foolosophy was to play both God and Adam, or should he say both God and Eve? The dirt in God's hands is better symbolized by woman.

Poetry is news that stays news. Yin and yang are poetry. Dichotomies don't die.

The One is eternal and the twins are timeless. Kant's general intention was great, to reveal the structure of revelation.

Three cheers for the advantages of misreading. Like so-and-so said: it's the thought that counts.

Names are fetishes. Fame is magic. Reputation radiates. Man is idolatrous, naturally (derived from natively) idolatrous.

Is Jung the Kant of the mystical? How is our response to magic structured?

He (our narrating hero) saw a structure in self-salesmanship. One had to sell one's self to one's self more than anyone. Sometimes winning others helped one win one's self. He was pretty sure that winning one's self helped win others. Wisdom was a twinkle in the eye. Who hasn't heard of the Winning Smile?

Beckett's Worstwar Ho

here is the snaradox, kids. beckett did not think he was failing. beckett succeeded at writing a text about failure. he succeeded at writing a book about the failure to write a book.

93% Fool

you see, jim, we are 93 percent fool and only 6 percent foolosophy.

onanismo was 90 percent fool and 9 percent foolosophy. here was his nine percent.

the letter "i" is the ninth letter. question: did the number nine compel him? answer: sometimes. sometimes it did.

something about larry. a comedy in zero acts.

finnegans wake is a good book to mention you if want to sound smart. worstward ho, boys. worstward away! fail again. fail more effficiently.

Truth Comes In Spurts

"what is this, this philosophy?

it's as if i cannot write. i seem to feel all tingly n also tense some how. but i shall write you this letter nevertheless. never the less. the less never. less the never.

plot. i thought about plot. the word plot. plot it out. the movement of yer characters. now, first thing you need is a hero or two. now a hero is some one who is special. this is not quite as stupid as it sounds. as i am not quite as stupid (or am I?) as i sound.

should i capitalize the personal pronoun? he had no name. he was a narrator. but as he was postmortem he did not have no grand narrative(s). so he could only describe his fundament. he was the poet of his poopy. "no. leave that in."

god damn you little shit. fucking

he was sooooo post-modern. he was incredibly up-to-date. i mean no one was in front of him in this race to racelessness. i'm in the race for grace. i'm in it not to win it. i want to see if i can out non-compete the others. i will compete less. i will be even lazier than the second-laziest.

to be deep is , if you ask the man on the mountain, quite shallow. whereas to be shallow is (these days) deep. this isn't very funny.

he was nameless, this our protagonist and erstwhile narrator. not that he had never been given a name, but rather that this name failed to stick. it slid off one rainy day, this christian name.

once perhaps he had fancied himself a foolosopher. now this is a bullshit mask like all the other bullshit masks. all the other makes.

all is vanity he once considered tatooing upon his forearm. why? to remind him that it didn't mean shit. now this is painful thought. but it was less painful than the idea of fucking something up that meant something. meaninglessness is the great leveller.

lets say we are all made of urge. lets say that schopenhauer and nietzsche and who the fuck else ever were vaguely if not specifically right. hume: reason is or ought to be the slave of the passions. the brain is the tool of the gonads. the brain helps the genes survive. the pseudo-mystical genes. the code. the virus.

is not writing an analogy both for genes and viruses? viruses need hosts. genes need mortal bodies. the text needs a reader. the text is scribbles w/o a reader.

the fantasy of being a great writer. the cliché of the phrase. how stupid it sometimes seems to bother with such (but that is a lie) for who does not crave glory? k.o. he replies --sure. sometimes we don't need glory. sometimes we are caught up in the ecstasy of the moment. oh yeah. oh yeah. the moment that only music can explain. but explain is not the word now is it? music can mirror our ecstasy.

music can instill. music can install our ecstasy. our ecstatic symbolico-sensual response.

he was a poet. is poet the wrong word? is poet no longer a viable word for what he was ? did it just knot sound cool? ok then. he was a writer. woooooo

no. he was a reader. this our narrator and protagonist. his only name was he. he was his only name. "we dont have perspective. we are perspectives..." what the F do you think of that?"

Water On Fire

Sometimes I think of mammalian life as "water-on-fire" or burning water. We are wet sacks of slow-burn, aren't we? Eat-burn food, sh*t the ashes. And we are smarter than the average blaze, as we move intelligently (efficiently) toward our fuel.

Truth in Painting

What does that serene face mean? It means what it shines. It's a painting.

An Inventor, not a Scientist

Onanismo describes himself as preferring invention to discovery. The prophets reveal God. Onanismo creates God.

The truth is made, not found. But this "truth" itself is made, not found.

How does one create God? If man is God (a metaphor), then the creation of man is the creation of God. What is man made of? Words.

Poets partake in the self-creation (and destruction) of God. But this is just another poem.

Philosophy is erotic as religion is erotic. I suggest that humans are erotic in 3 related but separable ways.

The trinity is baby, penis, christ.

Baby is a metaphor for the object of unselfish tenderness. Lovers often snuggle/pillow-talk in the feeling of tenderness rather than lust. It's just the baby seems like the ideal symbol for what is actually an archetype.

The penis is the metaphor for the object of lust. Tits and ass would also work, but because I think lust is better symbolized by the female, I will use penis as the metaphor for this archetype.

Next is Christ. Buddha or Elvis would work just as well, almost. This is the object of spiritual desire, related to the ideal self. This is the source of religion, I think.

Which brings us back to "philosophy is erotic." I suggest that philosophy is a manifestation of that third "spiritual" or "ideal" eros.

Metaphorical Animal

Yes, perhaps humanity is made more of stories than flesh and bone. Another way to say this is that man is made of words, that man is made of concept, that concepts are metaphors, that man is the metaphorical animal.

New Not True

The "intellectual" wants to speak for the universal, tell it like it is not just for him, but for everyone. This implies faith in a universal.

The "poet", on the other hand, concerns himself with the new, not the true. Poets fear that they might not be original enough (and also that they might not be exciting enough).

He would name his protagonist "He."

He would refer to his protagonist as "he." Freud had "it." He had "he."

He, a so-called writer, had been influenced by modern art, from the urinal to the black painting. At some point Art got smart and decided to represent nothing but itself. Art began to represent representation. (He thought that sentence was good, if not true. He thought that good was more important than true.)

He would present the writer behind the scenes, the writer whose only character was himself. He would write a book where the narrator was the protagonist. Shit, that was his life.

World-Historical Greatness

In the pursuit of world-historical greatness, he would write a book about the pursuit of world-historical greatness. He would write a book about a guy who was writing a book about a guy who was writing a book. His book would describe the problems of its own construction.

He would need to film crews. Only one of these film crews would need any film.

"The only story worth telling," he assures us, " is the story of storytelling itself."
Photographs of cameras?

In our civilization of the consumer who consumes re-descriptions of himself, his portrait of the artist as a self-conscious asshole just might work.

Footnotes are Holy Water

The footnote is holy water is a lucky rabbit's foot. They assure you they are not prejudiced, implying a prejudice against prejudice itself. From academics to snake handlers to twentysomethings with loud hair, the gesture or fashions that declares membership in an elite minority.

"But we don't have an elite minority. We're beyond such games." Yes, except that you are in the elite minority of folks who do not need to feel themselves as members of an elite minority.

Onanismo is or at least hopes to be in an elite minority of one.

Sentences are Viruses

The "letter kills" because it is undead. Text is the skeleton of speech, its dead dry bones. Speech is simultaneously music, dance, and text/logos(the text-word, a reduction of the speech-word).

Speech is "music" because its organized sounds are intended to communicate emotion as well as thought. Living thought is no less emotional than "thoughtful." Text is the stain of speech, intended for the eyes alone, neglecting the ears.

I call it a virus because it is dead until it is adopted by a living host. This living host quotes it in living speech or virus-like text. Original writers mutate the viruses/sentences they adopt. "Memes" are just about equivalent to what I mean by virus, by the virus metaphor emphasizes the undead status of text, which must be interpreted into living speech again. Imagine all the ways Hamlet might be read, focusing on the emotional/tonal variations. It's exactly this emotional element that text cannot communicate.

Self-consciously self-conscious

Not only can I only talk about myself, I can only talk about wanting to talk about myself. Self-consciously self-conscious, this feedback loop with an inherited face.

The face of stasis. The face of serenity. Find it in certain paintings.

Is what Epictetus wants to share? Is this the Tao? Is this Heidegger in the woods?

Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty is swell. He's sly. Richard Rorty.

Mark Ryden

Mark Ryden is good. What do the proportions of his characters mean? They mean what music "means", for plastic art and music are the means to say what words cannot say. "If I could put this painting into words, I wouldn't have had to paint it."

One might say that logocentricity is the forgetfulness of music and image, a sort of deafness and blindness to all that is not metaphor, for that's what thinking is, isn't it?