What da ya mean this Character is double parked?

The idea of the sage may be known from this, that he simply endeavored to eliminate multitudinous characters. Later literary men, on the other hand, desire to increase their number.

This is from Wang Yangming (1472-1529), whose lettrist career managed to start a mid-sized character breeding operation of his own. This kind of word-farming was called "commentary" in China, and I'll never figure out how they managed to fit it all on the DVD.

I suppose by the Ming Dynasty the scholars had no hope for sagely writing. The wise man of the day just couldn't afford to be the vague, fortune-cookie hucking Santa Clause of yesteryear. The Taoists and the Buddhists spoiled the whole thing with their extended and oh so diverting "explanations" of concepts and ideas.

(And if you think "concepts and ideas" is a redundant phrase, let me just remind the more ignorant of you that one can get two characters for the price of one in Chinese. It's the only language where "one" can get "two" without a math tutor. In Sanskrit, "one" never really added up but I hear "zero" is doing quite well)

Good Confucian fellows like Zhu Xi couldn't just stand idly by murmuring "rhubarb" and blowing raspberries; they had tried that move in the earlier Tang Dynasty, when Taoist magic tricks had reached the court and Zennist mental acrobatics were infamously out selling Cirque-du-Soleil a millenium before it existed. In response, Confucians tried the conservative and sober minded "Old Text" tactic. It was as exciting as it sounds. If you can imagine the collective and bearded literati of an entire Empire simultaneously shouting "bah humbug!" you might have an idea of its philosophical significance. This bread-and-water-and-then-more-water tactic not only gutted Confucian learning of its entertaining new age Yin-Yang aspects, but stole Confucius himself from the Olympic heights of divinity (to which he had been recently, and rather unceremoniously, flung) and left him disorientedly grovelling in his hovel back where he started.

"It's bound to work," they said, " the people love an underdog!". After running him through a gruelling training montage, with song and lyrics by Jackie Chan, Confucius became everything Rocky V wanted to be.

That is to say, he flopped. But that tune changed with the Song Dynasty. A pair of pedantic siblings appeared called the Brothers Cheng. In this picture they will be portrayed as Siamese cats who finish each other's sentences. Well, to keep a long Cheng short, these two started the tactic of stealing Buddhist and Taoist "concepts and ideas" (easy now), and stripping them of sexy terms like "emptiness" (which is called wu in Chinese because the people love an empty park, but mu in Japanese because it's considered polite to empty your cow on a Buddhist). They gave them instead a nice and orderly "well hold on now" Confucian gloss. Fully formed, as it were, from their furry heads came Zhu Xi, who took their ideas as it were to the principle's office, which were called li in China. And of course this took a lot of diatribing.

So we come to Wang Yangming's complaint. Is there anything in it? Well, yes, in fact, lots of writing is in it. He's hearkening back to the days when poets didn't have names, books didn't have non-mythical authors, and to be a philosopher one merely needed to sit up straighter than the next guy at court and then set up shop in a grass hut. Wang makes a point; we live in age when the characters are multiplying faster than we can even count them. I wonder if writing can ever return to a state of non-writing, where books like Homer and the Shi Ching can just sort of appear from the people. We all know that these books (henceforth to be referred to as "classics") are just as good, if not better, than the books we ourselves make and stamp and send to Singapore to be pirated.

As the great and loveable curmudgeon Master Kung said,

Even I reach back to a time when historians left blanks (for what they didn't know), and when a man would lend a horse for another to ride...

Sounds good to me. The only problem is that once you've started to write it just keeps going. But I will look out for an off-ramp if it ever shows up. Writing in order to shut the hell up!

On Poems and Toros

There is a reason we hate poems. When we pick up a book of poems it naturally disgusts us it is pretentious and goes on forever (even though the lines are short) the words are muddled make no sense after one another and the story is either non-existant or indecipherable. Even if we know we would like to be different would like to like poems we have to steady our initial nausea swallow it unwholesomely until we learn to digest it. These are the many reasons we hate poems and those reasons are offshoots of the one thing.

It is the same reason we hate bullfighting. When we watch a bullfight it naturally disgusts us it is preventable and goes on inexplicably (we're modern civilization for chrissakes!) the passes are torture and cannot be seen one from the other and the tragedy is either non-existant or monstrous. Even if we know we would like to be different and would like to like bullfighting we have to steady our initial repulsion and swallow it unwholesomely until we learn to digest it. There is a reason we hate bullfighting and those reasons are offshoots of the one reason.

Look at the faena of the bullfight and the line of a poem. The line of a poem is its most basic narrative unit, where the poet can convince you beyond mere ornamentation (single words) and yet before you are consumed in the whole of the emotional poetic paragraph. In the faena the matador has his chance to shine with the muleta (red cloth on a stick) and is for the first time left all alone with the bull. Both units are the hinge of the whole. Of course there are differences. But in the faena the great matador will do a series of passes the goal of which is to bring the horns of the bull as close to his body as possible without killing him in order to prepare the bull for death in a deadly way. In the poetic line, the poet must string together words the goal of which is to bring the meaning as close as possible to prose (that is, a chained meaning as opposed to individual words) without becoming prosaic in order to set the poem to a structural blueprint.

Now if the matador is tossed or killed the effect is not spoiled but it becomes immediately prosaic; questions of timing, grace, emotion become subsumed in a scientific journalism that needs to know who what where why and how. The poetic line is similar; it must jostle but not gore the reader or he will lose himself in scientific journalism and the effect will not be spoiled but will become prosaic.

But who wants to live outside of journalism these days? That's why poems are not on the front page. News that stays news doesn't move papers. We will watch a goring before we watch a whole corrida and we will ask our w5 before we will concern ourselves with textual architecture. It's just the times and there's no blaiming that, but our taste for this sort of thing explains why we like neither poems nor bullfighting and will barely (or not) tolerate funding for either.

Speaking of "The New Sentence" ...

O blissful light of which clear beams I count the best. Subordinate to the third heaven. She is a clause of divinity. May we praise her eyes?

O sacrificial vessel the jade of which I model virtue. One cannot overestimate the rites. You are the clay of his bosom. Am I to bury you?

Onomopoeia of worship that goddes lips ykuste of mine. It arched a hillock in obeisance. It is the hollow of the well. Am I, moss, to grow over it?

Oscillate then, let again be phoenician the flame of the lyric.

The mystery play for its language alone is a parade worth summarizing.

---

O docile rhymes which parleying undulate. Of the gentle lady which another honours. You to be seen, if not granted once more. One who says: these are our brothers.

And then, Tuscan.

Suddenly, at the prima arriva. All such random hypotheses fondemens ruineux. The Eagle gave chase to Mr. Jean Rabbit. Bird who bore Ganymede.

Alors, Frenchman.

The "I have seen no root". Wood for humor so strong. Those who saw in the river Lombard. Her son fall, leaves out nor.

And the rest.

---

paragraph stanza sonnet of love

paragraph stanza inescapable sonnet of love

As blossoms in Heian eras. Writing ends you poorest immortal. Yours are fourteeners. Uncountable the wars and ways of heaven. There were kingdoms. She felled a wall.

Auspiciously a barrier for the oncoming production. I am a stage. Rains all the worlds.

Supposing a certain tendency towards vaprous talking, she could not be trusted. Hiccups are terse. Terse. Whose white is soul. Saul is where hills love.

paragraph stanza inescapable sonnet of death

As blossoms in warring states. Last in rites. First decidedly first by a hair this time around. Was it coming then. To morrow is to sorrow. I am cheered. Is it not to share. Not to sorry. Saul missed him. Him who obeys. You are not fit for aubergine my lass. Revolt in the just desserts. Proof in the prodding. Everything is not about flowers, death.

---

La Sentenzia Nova

In advance. My Lady shall be IXth. What o'clock in Arabia.

Let alignment be justice justice chiasmus chiasmus under reign.

A single long sentence. A short. What number is shortest.

De la mia donna stare se non in su lo nove, tra li nomi di queste donne.

Envoi sweet new. A foreign language probably romance. His youth.

First is divided. Second is divided. Che non abbisogna d'alcuna divisione.

---

I sing of frons, verses, feet, diesis, sirma. I canto of Safety, Love, and Virtue. I steal my dialect from all around town, the panther who visits all but dwells nowhere in particular.

Pes pes, O Amor.

I sing of frogs, mouses, geese, deer races, serpents. I cant off safely love and virtue. I steel my direction all around town, the panter whom visible patois impart incula.

Peace peace, O Amor.

Let her brave the storm.

Let him do a deed of daring.

some prose bits

of enlightened picnics

a picnic he said its like a picnic where the writer brings the words and the reader brings the meaning. he said it was like a picnic and bohme and blake and swedenborg brought the words and johnny appleseed brought a bushel and the rest of us brought the meaning. thats just what he said. he said it just like that. of course he said it he would know that gottingen has many lovely picnic spots a few even around his monument of course only for a moment around his monument but a picnic is a picnic is a picnic. so he might call it a monumomental occasion. for a picnic he said it was just like a picnic and i suppose of course he would know all the trash he picks up in his trash books. of course the anglo-german enlightenment in one man would know all about trash. and picnics. concerning the franco-german enlightenment well they were less about picnics he didnt said much about their entertainments. but as far as picnics are concerned he said and of course he knew that one requires: a monumomental spot, a blanket, a basket, fruit, vegetables, meats, breads, drinks and liquers, company, the sun, positively and negatively charged ions, ready wit, anecdotage, spare time, a date, milk and milk products and ice-cream, an enemy, an anemone, grass, sighs, ants, condiments or at least mustard, fruits of the sea, a frisbee, coolade, pants or skirts, a joke book, a laptop, a pen, angels to dance on the head of said pen, a camera, a dog, a camel if you are a bedouin, a ukelele, a dictionary-lexicon-wertherbook.

caesura

wen hui his cook whose knifed inimitably aimed avoiding bones by his knife-hand could and would carve oxen rather than oxenstirn allowing all the knotty bits to fall earthward. what a cutter. there is to be made here an analogy to the process (dao) of composition and the razor of composition by analysis. through his very cutting this inimitable cooks knife guided by his knife-hand remained sharp for decades. now we know that it is not the knife the nor the cutter nor the concentration skill nor the tenderness of oxen (that would be an oxymoron) that kept the knife sharp and the joints and steaks a comin it was rather something else. now this something is to be found in else and that else was his sticking to the definitions of speech namely phonemes. the only proper name in the whole business belonged to wen hui and when he was delighted with the process of the cook in his butchery of whole oxen. in this way butchery is sanctioned when it serves the purposes of parsing parsimony and parts of the whole are divided without blunting the knife.