kagablog

While having my car serviced by a mechanic at a car dealership, I was reading a magazine in the waiting room. Not quite “reading” in true sense. I left my reading glasses at home, so I could not read well. Mostly I was looking at pictures. Cars. Trucks. Engines. Transmissions. Tires. Race drivers. Women with large protruding breasts. And so on. Then I saw a large bold caption which I could read even without my glasses. A full page advertisement for men.

“MASCULINE ENLARGEMENT … BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE!”

Suddenly, I had a flash of inspiration. A new poetic imagery. A man with two enlarged penis (penes). Why two? Why not? The other one is free. Quite a bargain. Two pistols for the price of one.

Now, how am I going to write a poem which evokes such imagery poetically? The task challenges my ability to its limit. A two-pistol gun-slinger with two enlarged penes, standing tall in a cowboy town shoot-out.

i swallowed all the parts of you that had not been burnt
but first i burned all the parts of you i had not swallowed
this went on until we’d both chewed off more than we could bite

she has pretty lips
rosy and soft

she doesn’t use them
primarily to kiss
me or anybody else
or to whistle
at a passing man

she uses them
primarily to nibble
a chicken leg
while talking
at the same time

when i googled your name
nothing came up
don’t you understand
i can’t have an affair
with someone
who doesn’t exist?

you want to write about nothingness?
write nothing

sartre wrote about nothingness
page after page
a big and fat book
full of nothingness

he wrote something
which was nothing

go ahead
write about nothingness
as I am doing now

something hilarious:
in sweden every third man you meet
is called “anders”
which means “different”

it’s a perfect example of the swedish paradox
same difference
anders

a baboon I saw in the san francisco zoo
reminded me of a poet
who looked unhappy and unfriendly
because he didn’t have enough money
for a glass of whiskey
so had to settle for eating peanuts
in a new york bar
one cold winter night

Many years ago, at University of Wurzberg, philosophers and pysycologists studied the nature of introspection. What they discovered is what is now known as “imageless thought.”

In arts and literature, we have had our surrealism. Unfortunately, too often surrealism is closely tied to imagery, mostly visual. But I dare say that the ultimate surrealism is imageless. It is, to use Buddhist terminology, empty of any intrinsic property or attribute.
So, what appears to be shifting paradox is not paradox at all if paradox itself is devoid of paradox as an intrinsic attribute.

Here is one attempt made by a Korean poetess.

Taklamakan Desert
by Kim Hye Soon
(from Words Without Borders)

Translated from the Korean by Jiwon Shin

Washing her hair as the sun rises
a thighless one
pours a dipper full of sand over her hair and
lowers her head into the sand pit with a splash.
The footless one
tosses her hair in pendulum as she
rinses it out in the sand river.
This chestless,
hairless,
O, bodiless one washes her hair.
We shall never come . . . or go . . . you there . . . and
me here.
Dry strands of hair from the fallen days rise and
tumble, swaying this way and that.
From sunrise to sundown
the woman washes her hair
not even once straightening her waistless back.
She combs and caresses the ripples of the sand river.

How aptly said! The memory someone you once loved never ages. It only fades, and vanishes at the end.

*

The profit of nothing is less than you had before you gave away what you didn’t deserve anyway.

*

The profit of nothing is more than you got back from the bank after the interest in futures was past.

*

The profit of nothing is always something, but not quite what it was before it became what it is.

*

The profit of nothing’s not easily measured: statistics don’t do it justice, it simply requires an act of faith.

*

The profit of nothing is outside the economy of value exchange. Its very exteriority guarantees its return to that place it’s not yet been.

*

The profit of nothing’s a concept not easily grasped. In order to do so you have to let go of it first.

*

The profit of nothing is an investment for some; for others its sum is the total of bankruptcy and ruin. Its relative value depends on the moon and how much you take heed of her waxing and warning.

*

The profit of nothing is best illustrated by diagrams on paper that’s blank. To read them you need to decipher the secret of something in its relation to everything other than that which is a-priori to, and/or a-posteriori of itself, notwithstanding , furthermore that which is this, that and the other (or not), and that’s quite a lot!

*

Why, you who hate me, do you love me,
and hate those who love me?
You who deny me, confess me,
and you who confess me, deny me.
You who tell the truth about me, lie about me,
and you who have lied about me, tell the truth about me.
You who know me, be ignorant of me,
and those who have not known me, let them know me.

For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Give heed to me.
I am the one who is disgraced and the great one.

Please hear me

I am too stupid to make
sense out of nonsense
something out of nothing
meaning out of meaninglessness

Therefore I am making
nonsense out of sense
nothing out of something
meaninglessness out of meaning

I am a good man
who does not know
what a good man is.

1.
Thou shalt not.

2.
Thou shall.

3.
If not why not?

4.
It is better or not.

5.
Not is a thing, but not a lot.

6.
Not to be is.

7.
Was the not before?

8.
When the not will be?

9.
More or less are both not.

10.
Yea verily, that which is, also, is not!
The not is that which never has been.

*

We know what the Not is not.
But can we know what the Not is?

*

Whatever is is not Not.
Does this mean that the Not isn’t, ie. is not?

*

Is what is never Not?
And if so that Not is what is then we go back to
dot!

*

When I say the Not is or the Not is not this is in fact the same thing.
That is, whatever is is also Not (when what is is not!).

*

*

M o r e is never e n o u g h.

*

What is real.

Why is real too.

But “What is real?” is a question.

Is what is all there is?

Or is there more?

More what?

*

What you think is a thought.

But what you thought is past tense.

I thought therefore I was.

Now, what if what you think is a thought wasn’t a thought at all;
it was actually a slogan being beamed into your mind by aliens called
L
a
n
g
u
a
g
e.

*

And opposite me in Row 89
an idiotic looking guy reading “The Idiot”
(which is apposite).

*

In the beginning was the end.
In the beginning is the end.
Where the end begins is the beginning of the end.
Which is to say the beginning of the beginning since the beginning must necessarily also always be the beginning of the end.

This beginning of the beginning has already begun.
Thus the beginning of the end has begun.
But where will it end?
And when?

Now the end of the end can never begin before the end of the beginning.
And the end of the end is always after the beginning of the end.
To recapitulate: In the beginning was the beginning of the end.
In the end was the end of the end.

In between the beginning and the end
was the eternal recurrence we call life and time and space.
But there is no end to this beginning
which keeps on beginning again and again.
This beginning of beginning which has no end
therefore has no end of the end and also no beginning of the end.
But if it has no beginning of the end
then it must necessarily lack a beginning of the beginning.
But how can the eternally recurring beginning of itself lack itself?
Is the eternally recurring beginning really nothing more
than the constitution of itself as a lack,
ie. as an end in itself?
The beginning of the beginning is therefore the end.

Getting back to the lack of the beginning of the beginning
we find there can be no beginning without an end
or that an eternally recurring beginning must have an end
which is precisely its beginning.
Thus not only is the beginning of the beginning the beginning of the end,
but the beginning is the end,
eternally.

And now in order to end we return to the beginning,
viz, in the beginning was the end.

There was a man who hated God
Undid his breeches cursing
“God thou art shit!”
bent over and showed his arse
to the lord

God saw that it was good
Showered the man with blessings

greeting!

this notice of disqualification
is being sent to you because
you are disqualified

this notice of disqualification
is being sent to you because
I am qualified to disqualify you

therefore by my qualification
this notice of disqualification
is being sent to you

appearance is reality

i stumbled upon
myself stumbling upon
the difference between transcendence and immanence

my stumbling was the means by which i knew
there was an i to stumble
upon that which was there to be stumbled upon

immanence implied that i was everything that i stumbled upon
and everything i stumbled upon was me
transcendence granted me existence outside of what i stumbled upon
and that my being might exist outside of knowing

what was unknowable was how to unstumble
and thus in my unstumbling upon
myself unstumbling
i became unme

now immanence implied that everything unme
could be unstumbled upon and that everything that could be be unstumbled upon is in unme
whereas transcendence seemed to be saying that unme is also outside of unstumbling
and therefore could not be unstumbled upon

here i found a contradiction
if it is only possible to stumble upon something outside of me
then surely it is impossible to unstumble upon something inside of unme
unless of course my stumbling upon
myself stumbling upon
was in fact inside of me

meaning that there is no difference between transcendence and immanence
hence god’s indifference
to the problem

i was about to disappear
so i closed my eyes
because i did not want to see myself
disappearing
and then the strangest thing happened
because my eyes were closed
and i could not see myself
disappearing
i did not disappear
when i opened my eyes again
i was still there
it was a very close shave

i was never meant to meet you
and that i did
is merely a sign
that even whatever will not be
will be

dear child
you could not abandon me
because i am not me

therefore
it is foolish to feel guilty
about something you did not do
to no one

in my work
the only thing that would make me happy
is the utter negation
of all that makes me happy

in this silent darkness
there is nothing to see
there is nothing to be seen

light has become its own shadow
you have become your own light
you have become your own shadow

you may close your eyes
you may open your eyes
it makes no difference

the only good thing about dying
is that you don’t have to worry about dying
anymore