soupe de guerre

My friends, you can take the girl out of Missouri, but you can’t take Missouri out of the girl; in fact, I haven't been there for a while to check, but what with mass media and gentrification, it might today better survive, however miserably, transplanted to a place more forgiving of anomalies. Among other less obtrusive qualities, Missouri dooms the native, transplanted or not, to the misery of being and expecting people to be nice, quite like, but then again unlike* today's genuinely gentlemanly or -womanly rock stars. Below I will address this particular possible deviation below. I also don't mean oppressive, over-protective niceness, or the subtly condescending, manipulative, covertly hostile variety, of course that's not nice; that's why Missourians fail to cultivate the sometimes sinister skill of Southern belles or the always sinister skill of Northern hirers of the handicapped or historically oppressed for the sole purpose, it turns out, of the tax benefits and other professional perks. Ours is not for results, it just happens. It's not necessarily a smile in the street, though it can be, depending on the immediate need ascertained out there. We may seem mercurial, even evasive, unto quite ennervatingly invisible in order to channel the ever-changing input. Politicians, when not booming and bragging, try to imitate it, but it's not political.  It could be god-fearing, what with the spirits lingering from all those sacrifices at the pyramids of Cahokia and that quiet old river that just keeps rolling along, it must know something and somehow purvey it. Wherever it comes from, it's in the air there, or used to be, and bred from the birthing bed until it's automatic, the original default disabled and switched to perversely, unnaturally heart felt communion with the needs and desires of a sentient being in ear or eyeshot or even of a rock; how nice is that Japanese garden so perfectly at home in the consummately accommodating Missouri botanical, not that all botanic gardens don't manage, with the constant attention and back breaking labors of love required, more consistently than any other contender to break out of the relative, almost ubiquitous un-niceness of everything else, both culture's and nature's. Such niceness and fittingness translates into, even if she's a rock, answering and politely concluding -- an emoticon tag does the trick -- your text conversations with her.  Like Alfred Hitchcock, I’m a very sensitive person who likes to be done to as I do, if it's nice enough, including thoughtful and considerate enough to warrant such consideration as would cause one to think of it, and so a dangling text thread can unsettle me for days. Or, it bears repeating, noticing and welcoming strangers, however dowdy or not dowdy enough, as the case may be, when one is among familiars.  

That it's essentially nowhere to speak of, drawn and quartered between North, South, East, and West -- where the different directional winds having traversed the continent face off, grind to a chilling or suffocating halt, and a supernatural stillness reigns -- explains the peculiar cosmopolitanism of this pack of back water provinces so provincial that they're at the forefront of going, as well as both sideways and forwards, backwards, the first, say, to get hand guns back in circulation and the last to join the Confederacy, thus the favored straw for breaking the back of the Union, a thought thankfully by now perished, at least regards the issue then prevailing, which caveat I enjoin not because I'm thinking of it, but so as not to hurt the feelings, by excluding them, of any decent souls with off the beaten track ideas. 

Thus Missouri being everywhere as much nowhere came not only to be Japanese gardenesque in its graciousness even to rocks, but also, in its welcoming of strangers, it's ancient Greek, the mother of attentive, self-effacing, cosmopolitan science, supremely nice in and of itself, however ruthless its drivers can be, oh if they would just let science -- not to be confused with computers running on human-made programs and input, not that they can't help as much as hurt locally, but consider their longterm effect -- drive itself, it would, veering neither to the left or the right, forced to linger over special interests that it's not yet equipped to address, fly as the crow flies straight to the promised land for all the needed supplies.  This is visible wherever it breaks free and verified in my secret lab, where it doesn't just croon for, but touches down in that very promised land, beyond the yellow brick road, and starts dictating texts like this one, in a foreign language all its own, as I dutifully take dictation having no more idea than you do where it's going, just that it's very upset that people aren't nicer to us, more accommodating to our needs, more nurturing of our capacities, constantly pulling in the reins on, and thwarting the realization of our sensationally sensually (science's secret, as explained below) versus their aloofly abstract -- only ideas, not actualities, sell I guess -- long term ineffectively altruistic proclivities and abilities, and it just can't take it anymore.  Miserably empathetic -- Missourian Tennessee Williams: "Happiness is a function of insensitivity" -- meter measurable -- don't tell me, show me! -- niceness suffusing the surface admittedly, when it fails to penetrate, can create a cloying effect, or worse if a monster hides behind it, but at least it’s a potential start, which that stranger will appreciate so long as it’s effectively concealing any such xenophobic contempt as might be, or rather certainly is, built into our selfish genes.  

To return to the niceness of today's rock stars, as promised, they’re awfully cute and no dummies, but I can't help liking, even as I only sporadically trust some of those admirably, but potentially ennervatingly energetic performers with their ubiquitously, generically defined, optimally marketable, perfect faces, when these not only admirably creative, but also, let's face it, paler imitations of Madonna, Mick Jagger, and Nina Simone flaunt their truly gushing niceness to their fans, as well as the poor and handicapped, with the camera pointed at them.  In defiance of the tradition, they like being liked so much they fawn on their likers, they drink up the flood of applause as if they were dying of thirst more for it than the music, and this river, as they drown in it, feels a part of them and their beauty youth wealth and fame as indeed they would, as they often openly profess, fade away like blood deprived vampires without it.  And maybe it’s just envy, but when I watch them I feel it, the blood draining out of me.  

Of course in truth the relatively elder never do get the relatively younger, envy indeed plugs up our ears and covers our eyes with scales, but to me it mainly all sounds like well designed original-ish collages of familiar melodic moves, catchy rhymes, pretty faces, and however literally as, if not sometimes more, sexually edgy, not as suffusingly sexy, and not with an absence, but still a relative shortage of the je ne sais quoi that sets a genius far above, often in fear and loathing, if not outright contempt for the madding crowds (however I do like their style and find that when all else fails fâshion finds a way into the neo-neo-neo-etc.- classical future). Did Harry Truman ask to be liked?  Right or wrong, deluded or not he authorized dropping the bomb -- please let's not get sidetracked by far more (seemingly, but look beneath the surface) critical issues involved that are nonetheless irrelevant to the function of the example in the context provided -- because it was the kindest thing he could think of doing under the circumstances.  And if I thought the same and had earned the power I’d do the same -- if novices are still experiencing difficulty detaching the contextually defined detritus, however otherwise, even ontologically central, so as properly to facilitate the obviously intended function of the example, don't worry, practice makes perfect; when you finally get this one, go to the head of the class -- that with the same plaque he placed on his desk — the buck stops here.  I left Missouri in a hurry, but even as far from Missouri as you can get, such as New York City, whenever I sufficiently challenge their investments in the status quo, especially when they most overtly protest it, they too won't let me be, to be and see by my own lights.  But what does that matter?  Wherever I settle, I'm from Missouri, neither here nor there, just on my way to where the gold is and yet uncorrupted by either having it or resigning myself to lacking it, a pioneer in progress. I can shut them out and let myself be to buzz about where I will and see whatever it shows me.  I am not an art practitioner practicing authorized art, I am an artist, meaning it’s my skin that I trust.  I am a plant, my skin is made of eyes, my whole body cries show me! and bends to the light.  I am rooted in history and the earth, and this is one of my showy flowers, holding the seed of my fruit.  I am not a real, I am a surreal being, supernatural, not natural.  Who is not called to this vocation?  What practice cannot and should not be an art, even the art of science as epitomized in Einstein.  Did Sherlock Holmes ever crack a case with a disembodied brain? Indeed he had to smoke his out, so his eyes, nose, gut, and crawling skin could get the job done.

C'mon, you can prove you’re not a computer by picking out the traffic light in nine images.  As MLK says everyone must be an artist; every mouse must roar!  However given the temptations of numbing robotically, most may fail, far better to fail at the one thing worth doing than succeed at anything else. If humans suffered suffusing sentience and owned its powers, they would no longer fear the dominance of machines. It begins and ends in the skin that likes and offers a nice touch or it's hopelessly mired in the muck of its mediator, some kind of anywhere from subtly (the most intransigent kind) to obviously fascistic be it leftist, rightist, centrist, hybrid, or all over the place ideology, fostering a misalignment of means and ends ultimately thankfully fatal to the project, however seemingly a nice one. Consider native sons of Missouri, Hemingway, TS Eliot (however he begged them, they could not take Missouri out of that boy either), the aforementioned Tennessee Williams (oh he aches of it) and Mark Twain. Alfred Hitchcock (from long lost twin of Saint Louis (home of the hot dog), East London haunted by Jack the Ripper) and my late mate (from Chicago) and closest friends are honorary citizens.  We are not just plants, we are minerals. We are, as mentioned, in my case not to mention the ones above, rocks. We are evidently water. We are, by inference as well as evidence, nobody, even if we're as famous as Emily Dickinson. We are ciphers. Wherever we are we’re a nice fit, ready to serve. When you are against us, you are against everything.  Your world, however its Pollyanna positivizing protests — oh yes it doth protest too much, but this play’s the sting  — knows only world negation and your self,  however masked, self-assertion.  You do not let us finish our sentences.  You do not answer our texts. You just say, go back to Missouri. 

essential

footnote:

https://detritusofmongrel.blogspot.com/2022/10/footnote-to-soupe-de-guerre.html

Praised Folly, September 13, 2022

what was that? afterward to soupe de guerre and preface to the rest

 

afterward:

what was that?

oh, that was

an essay (attempt, experiment) 

in neo-romantic or romantical critical theory/practice, 

a mirror of being grown irrevocably whole 

in the very moment, shrieking, laughing out loud 

weeping oceans long blocked at the gate,

swooning in ecstasy, whilst computers cooly calculate

to verify the result -- of gaining distance

and glimpsing itself in this mirror,

apart and contained within, weaver and woven

into the skein of the suddenly read/seen scene

at this rebirth of rebirth...

if you would please respect your neighbors

by shutting the shades whenever

this supersonic rocket racing around the world 

isn't barreling into the no less actual than eternal sunrise

bleeding into the sunset at this rate, 

(as in Skaya's tile sky affixed to a school),

so forget the blinds, 

form fluidly flowing into content

and vice versa, and perceptible as such --

the impediments to seeing, having, and keeping it

all manipulations; kick hard and kick them off! 

or, if you've the skill, 

disdisenchant these disenchanters with a snake dance,

or however you do it, do it! Or...

if you already, having caught a few cold drafts of my drift,

or the moment you do so, dread, fear and oppose 

any such effort at an effort at an effort..

however distantly removed 

from the inaccessible vanishing point,

deeming the least reference 

to such a convergence,

a threat to all enlightened discourse,

which indeed it is, 

only I would put "enlightened" in quotations,

until this long missing passage is included,

the map of the world legible and navigable,

the keystone in place, and the scaffold freed

for rafters, rafts for the riffraff, etc.,

the threat revealed preserver, redeemer, the future! --

but if you intractably disagree and are steeled

in resistance to any such suggestions 

even of what I am only suggesting 

only utterly suggestively,

I, to you the devil herself, but,

as in the account beloved of cognoscentis

having a soft spot for lovers, 

so in this, conspiring with Jesus,

offer this thread as the flaw in your carpet for good luck,

the one Satanic verse that proves you're not a demagogue,

your discourse might not be Satanic, 

and you faithfully follow

or are a worthy rival of great Muhammed. 

Read marksism (artism) --

after you gave up hope for such a thing

determined the hoped for downright evil,

as even if it's real, which is supremely doubtful,

the flower's just too short lived to justify the rot,

and arranged your whole world accordingly --

disable Spring, this cruelest month's not worth the pain,

[however if your knees bend to plant, 

you'll soon feel much better] --

not thinking that, should it appear, 

bamboozling and making mincemeat

of your ideas about it, 

just as, at the first fire they make,

having rubbed and rubbed,

flint and stone cry WHAT IS THIS?

just as hydrogen and oxygen shrieked,

outraged at becoming spray in the passage to water,

or as all mates do when it's time to tie the knot

and initiate with a big bang

replacement by their imminent,

exhaustingly self-assertive synthesis --

it might induce you to rethink the matter, 

a thing like no other thing under the sun, 

religion (religament) for the recalcitrant

is truly catholic (all inclusive) and roamin

(so lazily circuitously peripatetic 

it seems to be a viscous verb

bogged down in a blog that wants to be a novel)..

brace yourself as we barrel through a black hole

into an ulterior universe smiling like Mona Lisa,

the cat that ate the rat; however you deface her

until you become her, you cannot erase her,

and then you won't need or want to.

You will love what is

and no longer, if I may say so --

aren't you sick of all the targeted pandering

to what we already are to reinforce and reinforce it,

as by now we're made of some kind of indestructible plastic

that even art finds harder and harder to erode,  --

be a hazard to humanity.

Repent! Repent! The kingdom is at hand!

Whip me! Harder Phyllis ! Ohhh that feels so good!

Love, Aristotle

"...yours is the friend of all mankind.

mine speaks in parables to the blind."...

traveling to the ends of the earth to gather up  us, those who love and mind the mind, the blindest of the blind, the brats worst!

for posts inspiring or inspired by this caveat, scroll way far down to October 2022 posts in blog ARCHIVE -- listed BELOW PAGES, to right 

Footnote to soupe de guerre

(ahead of science, high resolution philosophy is finding traces and tracks of the original particle, as all disciplines -- it appears in a literary caprice or a chain of logical assertions or an image say -- converge, their metaphors overlapping.  It's somewhat technical, but the layman should be able to follow it.  As the ground starts to shift, you become aware of how much you depend on believing that science, apart, has everything under control, as growing aware this is not the case, your senses and extra-senses begin dramatically to awaken to bind you as never before to humanity and heighten your consciousness of the nature of language and everything.)

*The difference between our nicenesses might be minimal, but the devil's in the details, or God is, but in any case the whole world turns on difference so minimal you can only feel it and reason that it's there, but no accelerator has managed yet to isolate the original particle of which all particles are made and in which the genetic code of being is, as it were, inscribed. 

Yet science must proceed on what feeling and intuition, driving their inquiry, and reason, corroborating or debunking it, agree is the case, where even scientists need poetic license at the outset. 

And cultural critics are proto-scientists as their results are not so verifiable. They converge on those of science at the limits of its own capacity for verification, 

just as reason begins defying itself, 

the critical nature of this critical, liminal work seeming more supercilious and downright insane, the more serious it gets, 

the classification committee leaping and flopping all over the place trying to trap the mouse under the carpet. 

In this critically critical, therefore doubling as maximally supercilious case, the mouse under the rug can make itself as flat as it is, as the bump disappears, 

and then suddenly pops up in an entirely different quadrant, and by the time you're looking there, it's already back to home sweet home between the built in stove and the built in counter.

That's at least how it is here, because that's how it should be, however the field of critical theory has widely regressed, having abandoned service to the ongoing quest for the original particle, 

with the remnant allied to the pure scientists believing that they're advancing on a straight line as if the multiverse were flat, they will arrive at the end, and then there will be nothing. 

No matter, as we open-minded, constantly evolving scientists and proto-scientists circle round and round, we always find new kinds of valuable booty, 

as we constantly see new things in new ways so astonishing that we are as much as constantly reborn, as wide eyed with wonder as children, constantly expanding in experience and knowledge -- 

hence the resilient illusion that we've never been there (for instance, here) before, however I'd almost bet my darling mini-labradoodle, that's how almost a hundred percent positively sure I am that we're just going round and round in circles and will never arrive at the vanishing point, just as the journey's yields remain inexhaustible. 

Meanwhile, deaf altogether to the call up the mountain, the mainstream Neo-neo-neo etc.-platonists and Neo-neo-neo etc. Aristotelians refine their pingpong game on the public dole, 

with the red etherealist and blue materialist states mirroring their metaphysical mentors (the etherealists for some time now mainly underground in the academy, but highly internet active), but compelled to sting harder than pingpong allows, ready indeed to blow up the whole planet to keep the other from winning,

their nuclear reactive programs metamorphosing at an accelerating rate thanks to technological advances made possible by the discovery of the relativity of everything but relativity itself.  Quick, follow me into the rabbit hole of that glitch and close the sewer cap behind you!  Don't worry, the sewer was redirected during the industrial revolution.