groggy hyperlinked maundering

[wombat1138]

In the midst of trying to tessellate together small scraps of poetry, I think I've finally figured out why I've never liked "The Waste Land" On the other hand, I may be any combination of misguided, trite, or incoherent :b

Years ago, when I was still full of initial disdain for Eliot's collage of echoes, owenthomas kindly cluestuck me that surely it was a matter of intentional effect, especially considering its own historical context (ironically enough): familiar fragments of La Belle Epoque, flotsam awash in the (post)modern awareness of its own wreckage and thus the futility of hope in any form, even childhood and love. Even moist spring loam might only sprout a crop of bones sown from leaf-green mists.

(It's a very different aesthetic from haiku, which seems to mournfully revel in ephemerality from what little I've been able to grok, perhaps akin to true classical Epicureanism between the extreme poles of "carpe diem" (fatalistic hedonism) and "sic transit gloria mundi" (the tharn paralysis of anticipatory nostalgia), but that's probably beside the point.)

So we've got advanced wallowing in despair, but also something that strikes me as a deep panic at ambiguity: the elemental interstices of mud, ashes, smoke, and fog; things that're both partially (and thus entirely neither) Russian/German, alive/dead, male/female, and so on.

What started me on this line of thought was the similar way I always feel about this time of year, between the cracks of the solar and lunar calendars. The odometer has ticked over, but the mascot hasn't caught up yet. This time, once it does, it'll be my fourth Year of the Dog through a different cycle of elements, from Metal through Water and Wood and soon into the Fire with accompanying math trivia. I have no real idea what all of this means to me, if anything. Well, presumably something.

Then again, it may relate to my continuing fitful attempts to mesh together the color maps of the Eastern/Western elemental systems, now currently incarnated in several index cards scribbled with badly-drawn RGB/CMY-vertexed polyhedra. I think I may need more colored pens. Or better handwriting. Possibly both. Or neither.

Comments

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

My, but that's some coffee you had this morning.

Pound's Cantos: Written over many years, some fine imagery particularly in the early parts, gets crazier and crazier and rather phlegm-spackled by the end, which I suppose stands to reason, given the author.

I can't tell whether this is more of an indication that my brain cell might actually be spontaneously gangliating again, or that it's just overclocking from the past week of fever, but I still have the vague suspish that there's some existing metasystem of worldviews whose wheels I'm reinventing.

Mine's deteriorating, I think, because I seem to've lost track of that last bit.

At least the way I remember it, "The Waste Land" ends yearning toward a future that's been somehow spiritually cleansed into peace, though that may just be me overstating the case in light of the history that followed. But since Yeats was enamoured with at least the idea of revolutionary violence, and Pound went on to react to one spasm of it (WWI) by supporting the Axis in the next attempt (WWII), it was certainly in the air around Eliot. (So Y & P were contemptuous of fin-de-ciecle Europe, or at least what it led to. Perhaps I am missing your point?)

Similarly, not to romanticize the bohemienne frippery of rebellion-without-a-cause or to rally the proletariat into smashing the elitist bourgeoisie, but it really doesn't seem as if the Outer Darkness is the only possible alternative to the established categories/system of respectability...

Welllll... is that still so? Now that Hypercapitalism Has Won and all that?

But as to cats: It ain't the color, it's the attitude. Spots of creamy white among either black or brown fur don't hurt, though.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Scarily, I don't think I am particularly caffeinated. I am, however, faintly giddy with aforementioned feverishness, or something.

Re "metasystem of worldviews", I think I ended up leaving out the metasystems of worldview shift, largely ignoring the details of pre-existing social structures (and thus whether any one hierarchy/categorization ought to be abstractly viewed as a Good Thing in itself) but instead simply checking on its general health and what its supporters say about the negative space around it-- are internal reforms considered tantamount to utter destruction? how do they regard people who are neither fish nor fowl within the extant definitions, and does it matter whether the fish parts are on the top half and the birdy parts are on the bottom? But other than that, quite possibly I have no point. If so, I will be unable to indicate if someone went thataway.

However, I believe that spots of creamy white might in fact hurt if induced by bleach. I merely theorize.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

Oh, now I get it: you really are an AI; I just met one of your meat puppets. Which I hope feels better, soon.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Oog. That was a pretty incoherent Markov-chainesque paragaph, wasn't it?

Oh well, there's always differently-random entertainment like this (http://www.flickr.com/photos/padrone/84487624/). I don't think any bleach was involved.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

Cute photo. (And I'd certainly read a translation of the aforesaid paragraph with interest.)