Time is swift and many things
Crowd between the dark and dark.
So say: what wouldst, if thou couldst,
Take treasured to the nerveless grave?
Two things? Aye, and something of the sea:
A storm, and westing sun,
And, at early day, cold air
And the whirr of wild wings.
Category Archives: Literature
World Wide Watchmen
I prefer to self-issue books in a library. It’s quicker and more convenient. And you feel okay about borrowing books suggestive of sordid and socially unacceptable tastes. For example, who would want to hand a copy of Watch You Bleed to a live librarian?
Well, I wouldn’t mind. I find it amusing to be mistaken for a Guns’n’Roses fan, just as I find it amusing to be mistaken for a Guardian-reader. But there are limits, so I’m grateful for self-issue when I borrow, say, a biography of Martin Amis or that book about The Simpsons. The trouble is, nowadays we have to be more dubious about self-issue than we used to be. It’s all on computer and it isn’t just librarians who might be scanning the record of books you borrow. No, you also have to ask yourself: What will the NSA, GCHQ and MOSSAD think?
With this in mind, I’d like to put it clearly on record: I got that book out last year for research purposes only. Nothing more. I am not – repeat not – a fan of Iron Maiden. The same applies to that other book this year. I got it out for research purposes only, I swear. Inter alia, I had a hypothesis to confirm. I am not – repeat not – a fan of his.
And was the hypothesis confirmed? Yes, thanks for asking, it was.
As for Big Numbers, Moore asserted: “It is the most advanced comic work I’ve ever done in terms of the storytelling.” — Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore, Lance Parkin, pg. 266 (Aurum 2013)
Elsewhere other-posted:
She Say, She Sigh, She Sow
“Those who view mathematical science, not merely as a vast body of abstract and immutable truths, whose intrinsic beauty, symmetry and logical completeness, when regarded in their connection together as a whole, entitle them to a prominent place in the interest of all profound and logical minds, but as possessing a yet deeper interest for the human race, when it is remembered that this science constitutes the language through which alone we can adequately express the great facts of the natural world, and those unceasing changes of mutual relationship which, visibly or invisibly, consciously or unconsciously to our immediate physical perceptions, are interminably going on in the agencies of the creation we live amidst: those who thus think on mathematical truth as the instrument through which the weak mind of man can most effectively read his Creator’s works, will regard with especial interest all that can tend to facilitate the translation of its principles into explicit practical forms.” — Ada Lovelace (née Byron) (1815-52).
He Say, He Sigh, He Sow #18
“Even so, firing a man for ordering a salad…”
“The salad was the last straw.” — Life lessons: Mark E Smith, The Independent, 13/xi/2011.
Mix to the Marx
“And in the global climate of the early 90s, it’s perhaps not surprising that the ANC bent to the neoliberal flood tide, putting its Freedom Charter calls for public ownership and redistribution of land on the back burner.” — Mandela has been sanitised by hypocrites and apologists, Seamus Milne, The Guardian, 12/xii/2013.
Previously pre-posted (please peruse):
He Say, He Sigh, He Sow #23
“Brion knew it wasn’t William’s fault. But in terms of the general popular culture not recognizing the importance of his contribution, there was a little bitterness.” — phantasmagoric freethinker Genesis P-Orridge interrogates issues around Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs.
Elsewhere other-posted:
The Still to Hour
Stand and see, some sun o’clock,
Wet flame devour the headland rock.
Performativizing Papyrocentricity #15
Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:
Brought to Book – A Book of English Essays, selected by W.E. Williams (Pelican 1942)
Glamourdämmerung – Treasures of Nirvana, Gillian G. Gaar (Carlton 2011)
Highway to Hell – The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
Solids and Shadows – An Adventure in Multidimensional Space: The Art and Geometry of Polygons, Polyhedra, and Polytopes, Koji Miyazaki (Wiley-Interscience 1987) (posted @ Overlord of the Über-Feral)
Magna Mater Marina – The Illustrated World Encyclopedia of Marine Fish and Sea Creatures, Amy-Jane Beer and Derek Hall (Lorenz Books 2007) (@ O.o.t.Ü.-F.)
Or Read a Review at Random: RaRaR
Six by Saki
Papyrocentric Performativity Presents:
• Six Uncollected Stories by Saki
Lute to Kill
A little-known Housman poem that should be better-known:
Breathe, my lute, beneath my fingers
One regretful breath,
One lament for life that lingers
Round the doors of death.
For the frost has killed the rose,
And our summer dies in snows,
And our morning once for all
Gathers to the evenfall.
Hush, my lute, return to sleeping,
Sing no songs again.
For the reaper stays his reaping
On the darkened plain;
And the day has drained its cup,
And the twilight cometh up;
Song and sorrow all that are
Slumber at the even-star.
A.E. Housman (1859-1936) — see also Breathe, my lute at Wikilivres.
Overlord In Terms of Core Issues Around Maximal Engagement with Key Notions of the Über-Feral 