is Koestler important // ?

Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual by Michael Scammell (2010)

 

 

 

                                is Koestler important because
he models the build-up of whole passion and ideology and
                its congenital misalignment in the world
                                              its genealogy
                                              of adversarity
                                              which always
                                              condensed self
                                and other like water droplets
from the billowing steam centripetalled out
                                              from what was happening in the world
                and then found that they only shadowed a focus
                                they didn’t actually focus?

settled intellectuals stay with their ideologies and
                                              write thick books despite the loss of centre
                                Koestler at least showed the example of recasting himself with
                the billows

 

 

 

Koestler & philosophy wormholes: anxiety

 

evasion

 

 

 

                                          reading biographies –
                                          reading one now on
                                          Wittgenstein – I am
                                          looking at how to live
                                          life differently to the one
                                          I have now but the quest
                                          and practice of solution
                                          to the world in irresolution
                                                      is still just
                                          evasion

 

 

 

reading wormhole: portrait … // … reading

 

Allen Ginsberg’s // child

 

 

 

                                so sad
                reading Allen Ginsberg’s laments throughout his sixties
                                as if his American speech as mantra
                                had not been sufficient

                                                              still
                                              the collapse of old age and illness
                                              strips away everything

                                                              but the still-
                                                              vulnerable child
                                                              come along for the
                                                              ride

 

 

 

contributes to the >>> Allen Ginsberg page

 

iffyakan / getawaywi`it / you can `ave it

 

 

 

                                              iffyakan
                                              getawaywi`it
                                              you can `ave it

                                              in my day
                                the looking was the living
                                in a world too old yet to be
                                and the find was an avocado pit
                                around which life formed the flesh and skin

                                              nowadays
                                the statement is the `avving
                                in a world too expensive to own
                                and the `avving is consumed
                                or smoked but hardly ever found

 

 

 

world wormhole: anatta
society wormhole: Birmingham / 030413

 

but there …

 

 

 

                                stuck in Sunday
                     build-up of olive-green and damson anxiety

                     lost the freshness of my next breath
                                stuck in a lifetime

                                of Sundays
                     lost the freshness of my own birth

                     but I have glimpsed
                                it isn’t like this

                                my whole life
                                              isn’t like this

                     but my whole life
                                is all I have

                                how can I let it
                                              all go

                                                              but there …
                                … I missed

                                my own birth
                                              again

 

 

 

anxiety wormhole: sit stay heal
breathing wormhole: settling
olive wormhole: Birmingham / 030413
Sunday wormhole: the spectre

 

dream / 140603

 

 

 

                                          dream
                                          140603

                                we have had another baby

                                I seem to have delivered it
                                          on my own
                                it is Joe born
                                          four years old
                                but older Joe is still alive
                                          somewhere

                                later I deliver
                                          another baby
                                this time a girl but I need help
                                          to cut the
                                          umbilical cord
                                she seems to be Nan
                                          born four years old

                                she asks if she is
                                          going to meet ‘Nanny’
                                excited, wouldn’t it be funny
                                          if she met
                                                      herself

 

 

 

dream wormhole: dream 100213
Nan wormhole: the zen of grandmothers
Joseph wormhole: by

 

Birmingham / 030413

 

 

 

                                                                                 Birmingham
                                                                                          030413

                                          long sleep

            I played with awareness going to sleep
                                                              in sleep
                           a new endeavour
                           new fields to play
                       in new fields to play in everywhere
                       in the very plainness of my life
                       in the very and every ordinariness
                                          of my compromised-‘round
                                                              life
            which I can greet now
                           with lapis highlight
                           with olive horizontal with lemon uprights

                                          ~~O~~

                           met Elizabeth after twenty years
                           hugged her held her face for long seconds
                                          in eye contact … blink
            taken through windy landscapes new architecture
                           flagged stilted overhanging built-in built over
                           experience of everything
                                          packed into one unit
            a lift that choraled ascent to heaven
                           then return to basso profundo
                           and walks under
                                          roads and rail lines and
                           brick raised artful in dustrial legacy
                                          to get a grip
            passing slowly by acute-angle edges of new-office build
                           high redbrick sides of factory crumbled down
                                          from the top and day-speckled
                                                              with no insides

                                          ~~O~~

                                          looking
                           at all the people crossing
            and talking to themselves or their phones
                           to those who misstep and those called to help
                           to those who play with sex like a possession
            and those who practise dance steps by the kerbside concrete balls
                           to those who wear beauty like a halo
            and those who nose-spit on the ground
                                          like a right
                           to those who wear their years like a jawline
            and those who talk to the
                                          corners they sit in
                                          to those who
                           smile upwards with trademarked timelines
                           and all those who do not walk the streets today
                                          there is nothing
            nothing to gain no ideal to realise in all there is to Have
                           but the acceptance of what we all feign
                           to complete ourselves oblivious
                                          to our true nature

                           olive-green and mauve
                           with orange-strip sandwich filling
                           and lemon highlight décor
                           over darkest deep blue wall

 

 

 

awareness wormhole: in a / single / lifetime / sitting
compassion wormhole: returning home
lemon wormhole: sat
olive wormhole: thirst? / hunger?
orange wormhole: write / by the / night / of the / lamp
society wormhole: dropped ’till you’ve shopped

 

‘set the controls / for the heart of the sun’

 

 

 

                                          merely
                           spinning around 25 000 miles gives me all
                                          the nights and days
                                                   of my every breath

                                                   ‘set the controls
                           for the heart of the sun’

                                          only
                50 000 000 miles closer
                           I would be lost in a radiation
                                          of day to day stumbling and lurching

                                          at
                                          92 000 000 miles
                           I would take my place
                                          in the great auditorium
                           watch thousand-mile arcs
                hear planet-deep burps
                                          and smell the timpani farts deep within my lungs
                                                   as I melt with the audience
                                                              of a lifetime’s thousand selves

                                          until
                           at the centre
                           there will be the silence
                                          of wide-open potential
                                                   sufficient to light a world

 

 

 

breathing wormhole: sat

 

A206 / Plumstead Road: / perched on a wall

 

 

 

                                                   A206
                                          Plumstead Road:
                                          perched on a wall

            it’s when I wander off

            looking for the angle
                      that will see me straight
            looking for the time
                      that will connect me to my
                                birth
            looking for the change
                      that shows how things
                      are still the same
            looking for the step-aside and crossing
                      that will vindicate my notice

            that I’ll have missed
                      the miles and miles
                      I have walked

            not to mention the street tree here
                      square in its own plot of land
                      before shoals of roaming car
                                its trimmed branches reaching
                                from its sturdy trunk
                                          variously into the sky

 

 

 

a street corner of … Woolwich
walking wormhole: strangers
Plumstead wormhole: bench / corner of Cantwell Road / and Eglinton Hill

 

Sylvia

 

 

 

                                          Sylvia

                                sill                     via
                                          silver   -   agh
                                                      see ill’ve – ah
                                          sylph – ier
                                                      sophia

lived upstairs
                                self – higher
                      and visited downstairs
                                down through the bannisters
            where Daddy lived dying
                      and always distracted by the coving up in the corner of the ceiling
                                safe – over

 

 

 

poetry wormhole: wide-open / concentration