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Fluid narratives
So now we learn about high frequency trading (see John Lanchester’s piece in the current LRB), millions made so fast that it has to be described in nanoseconds, or what it sounds like is how to make money without risk, transferring the risk to . . . Well anybody who happens to be standing around…
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Fighting the road
Fighting the road and longing for the end. Pain: the accompaniment to life’s little troubles. Are we nearly there yet? Not far now. How far is it? Let’s play a game. Are we nearly there yet? Throw yourself into the battle, muscles cracking, screaming hurl yourself up that hill. Yes, I know, it looks like…
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‘Axles with their pegs and nails spin…’
Parmenides of Elea (Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; fl. 5th century BCE )- single known work is a poem: On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides describes two views: In “the way of truth” part of the poem he explains how reality (coined as “what-is”) is. In “the way of opinion,”…
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Unhinged
Hinges, articulations, joints, junctions. Eyes swivel suspiciously, uneasily. Danger is just around the corner. Waiting for me. Waiting for you. Itchy alert spine. Intestines on high alert. Alone I am unhinged, disarticulated, disjointed, broken, disjunctioned. The way through cannot be seen, imagined. When I saw in a pre-election news sheet the Labour Party using the…
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Lunch Goes on for a Long Time (“Iatromantics”)
Lunch with this dreadful woman Agnes at the Made In Brazil. I had eaten so much pork, I had begun to feel like a pig. And my head was throbbing from the beer. That, and her incessant repetitive voice. “Neck ya” she says. “Neck ya.” It sounded like that anyway . Greek, I thought, as…
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Granny Dooms
Zap. Zap. Zap. Zap. Zap. Zap. Zap. Agnes joined me in the Made in Brazil north London café restaurant last Tuesday. I had gone there to write. “OK, I’ll have the feijoada”, she says, “but I am not drinking, so I’ll only have a beer.” “You can’t smoke,” I say as she brought out a packet…
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As a lad
As a lad I used to run on those mountains in spite of or maybe because of the abuse suffered soon after my birth – cast out to die on the mountain, abandoned amidst the bare, unyielding, ungiving rocks. No soft flesh to nourish me, merely a rare thistle to chew on, until a passing…
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A Holiday Visit to ‘Erebus’ (the Underworld)
Afterwards I spoke with Agnes who served us coffee . She owned the bar called the Taverna Necromanteion (‘Taverna Death Oracle’) which we had found at the corner of the cross-roads of the village at the bottom of the hill. Or rather was spoken to, as Agnes mostly talked rather than listened. “I’ve lived here…
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Radical Emptiness
Nothingness. Nothingness and boredom. Those were the two words I had expected to hear. That emptiness is – well – empty. Nothing, and a nothingness that somehow is also connected with boredom. A sigh, a yawn. Ennui… … and despair like a creeping black cloud. Yes, nothingness, boredom, and despair. So I hadn’t expected to…
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Vistas of richness and reward and emptiness
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Tinkles the Ivories
A central european city lies broken and divided. There are huge piles of bricks and the ruins of buildings. It is late, the scantily lit streets are silent, and the black and white world is full of long oblique shadows. The word is out that Harry will make his run back to our side tonight.…
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Old spaces, new spaces
Opening up new spaces, jamming the crowbar into the crack and pitching all one’s power and might to open it up. Actually the work of years. It might even take us years to become aware of the crack. We try to ignore it. Turn a blind eye. The crack – the evidence of that ‘old’…
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.