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Bus-ness As Usual
The Train for the Oxus is departing at 10.51 today from Taunton. Or is that the train to Oxenholme? The one where I need to change at Birmingham New Street. Or Istanbul. Either way, although it might be different rolling stock, it is the same width of track wherever we go these days. Yes, it…
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Pandora rules OK!
The first woman. Our business is with fruit and leaf and bloom. Not her though, she was dragging a heavy vase or jug, a pithos, which mistranslated became a box, behind her. Heavy with dark matter, dark energy: stuff that used to be known as evil. The colours blaze out from the dark loam…
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Pandora
Dear Derek, The name for a dusty valley, except during the rainy season when the incessant wind ripples through the fresh grass and brief wild flowers like sea waves, and the shepherds bring their sheep up to the high meadows to graze. Do you think we’ll actually be able to recognize each other after all…
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Almost recognisable
Is that Orpheus calling? Almost recognisable. On the edge of understanding; condensed sense impressions and a mere blink of interpretation. How much time do you have? Enough time to poach the fish on a sluggish heat. Well, Bernie, it’s like this, we are due to meet tomorrow in the dust of that valley. Fred Orpheus…
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Letter from Italy
This week the BBC (Radio 4: Book of the Week slot ) is inviting people of Italy to write a letter to all of us in Ukania – ‘Dear Derek… (signed) B@’, and more of that kind of thing. It is being called Letter from Italy. Today it is the turn of a 27 year…
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Like a B@ out of hell!
‘Quiet woman,’ he said. ‘When did you last confess.’ ‘Two days ago.’ The sparrows were twittering; they pecked at the wind-blown leaves, and twittered. So, here you are, the visitor from hell, and you have even taken the name B@! I should have wailed but I held back, the anxiety picking at my bones.…
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Not O My Captain
Dear Derek You are still hesitating aren’t you? And why do feel you still need to use the old ‘code name’- as if you have to protect your identity after all these years. Who from? Surely not from me! But then you were always careful – cautious and meticulous about every detail – I wouldn’t…
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Get With It
The frontispiece of Midnight Salvage has the following quote: ‘I don’t know how to measure happiness. The issue is happiness, there is no other issue, or no other issue one has a right to think about for other people, to think about politically, but I don’t know how to measure happiness.’ (George Oppen, letter to June…
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No More Turning Backs
We don’t go on strike anymore, for instance, see, you’d live on £ 53. 00 too if you had to, I wouldn’t go on strike either for a hand-out To stop. Then we might riot, in order to, I’d break into shops and steal the latest gear ‘tho you wouldn’t escape getting caught on…
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Class Struggle (More or Less)
Back on Track: How far is this going? So far as I can tell the lines of the tracks run well beyond Istanbul, transcontinentally at least as far as Basra, and transoceanically to Buenos Aires and other locations well beyond that. Beyond the parochial perspectives of Ukania, that is for sure – so farewell Maggie.…
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Class Struggle (Part 2)
High Purposes: All aboard the Orient Express boat-train because the woman with the two green and red flags is about to blow her whistle, and around these isles these days there is not much evidence of courage and sanity , a combination which was also sometimes equated with “High Purposes of Political Action” – being…
Categories (2024) are:
- ATELIER Work – about-creative-work (in all mediums: text-drawing-sounds-image etc)
- CLIMATE Action – indications-and-contra-indications
- DAWDLING – walking-pausing-to-wonder-wandering
- IN Conversation – companionship-and-connections
- LA Communita –participatory-collaborative-artivism
- OTHER than Human – animate-and-inanimate-terrestrial-kin
- PARANOID Readings – violence-and-fundamental-perversions
- POLITICAL Readings – mobilisations-affect-polarisations
- REPARATIVE Readings – inspiring-healing-restorative
- SHADOW Readings – speculative-and-not-yet-visible-thinking
- STYLE Readings – scales-and-familiarities
- TONITE at the Coliseum – live-experiences-performance
- YOGI (‘Not This-Not That’) – meditation-bhakti-consciousness
Different WORDSTALL Categories in the past supported the mainly experimental personal writing in posts. The previous list of Category headings was: Anti-gravity Surgery / Atelier / Catastrophe Games / Echo Effects / Exodus / Fundamental Perversions / Hitting the Potholes / Holy Fool-Hero / In Conversation / Old Men Traveling / On the Street / Out in the Wilderness / Over and Beyond / Tonite at the Coliseum. Some of these still persist or recur as Tag key-words.
The even earlier Category headings for the walkingtalkingwriting blog (2006-2012) have been forgotten, but can be explored if desired via the long tail of monthly posts for those years here.