eh ya hey ya eh yo

long days in heaven, short days in hell. earth days are ok, for the frog in the well

"art is the lie that reveals the truth." pablo picasso.

Culture, Business, Law, Government, Genetics

One day, our children will wake up with every type of cell in their bodies a patented product.

One day patented genes will be inheritable. Business will claim rights over cells in offspring containing those genes.

If we don’t change the culture that allows business and law to run amok, biology will be the prison of every last human in future.

The Loss of Poetry

Poetry’s beauty is devastating. When I return an anthology, it feels like I’m losing a friend. Old friend, new friend, it doesn’t matter. He/she knew me, spoke a language that opened my soul.

Then, I begin to forget. One by one, those lovely lines that uncovered the bones of my happinesses and sadnesses, that laid my insides bare to the glorious exculpating forces of Mother Nature, fade away. One word goes, then another, and soon the bridges of verse crumble to soft nothingness.

Yet, it does not stop. The loss of beauty implies corporeal destiny. First, these intricate words, what next? Tomorrow, I forget my keys. The day after, I forget to water the herbs on the window sill.

Is this what an Alzheimer’s patient in mid-deterioration feels? A desperate longing to remember some poignancy, some kindness, something long past? He/she looks into the abyss of his/her memory and the abyss looks back, silently mouthing nothing more than an encroaching darkness.

One day, my eyes open unremembering.

Discernment is Discrimination is Racism.

Fashion Flaunting Season in Singapore again. I guess I’m biased. Doesn’t matter if that piece of cloth is pretty. Just rooting for whichever designer is nice. In spite of fashion’s insistence that beauty is expressed by a narrow range of styles, the sheer diversity of human opinion in matters of aesthetic means every bloody piece of crap is pretty as heck to somebody somewhere.

Saying otherwise smacks of racism.

Same with preferences for food, weather, writing, religion, etc. People have the right to tell you your taste sucks. Remember, you have the right to tell them to go fuck themselves.

failnation: Traffic in antarctica.http://failnation.tumblr.com failnation: Traffic in antarctica.http://failnation.tumblr.com

failnation:

Traffic in antarctica.
http://failnation.tumblr.com

Footnote to Poem by Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver had married at 19 and had fathered two children by 20; his early married life was spent drifting in and out of poorly paid jobs. His first book of short stories took 12 years to write, compared to the three months it took him to complete Cathedral, largely because Carver had by then adopted “full-time drinking as a serious pursuit”. At 39 alcohol had shattered his career, his marriage, and his health; he was hospitalised for acute alcoholism four times between 1976 and 1977.

Carver finally gave up drinking in 1977: “I’ve had two lives. My second began on June 2nd 1977 when I quit drinking,” he said. Carver did not write for almost a year but felt too grateful for his new life to care much. He met the poet Tess Gallagher and thus began an intensely productive and happy relationship: Carver began to write poetry and Gallagher to write prose. In their ten years together the pair produced 25 books between them, and frequently collaborated on projects up until Carver’s early death from lung cancer in 1988.

Poem for the Day, Two. Foreword by Andrew Motion.

Footnote on Poem by Primo Levi

Vanda Maestro, to whom this poem is cryptically dedicated, was a university friend of Levi’s and a fellow Jew. They were arrested together and sent to Fussoli, a holding camp in Northern Italy; it was here that Primo Levi fell in love with her. On February 22nd 1944, the pair were amongst 650 Jews packed onto a train bound for Auschwitz. Observing a synagogue spire from the train window, Levi later noted: “That was the moment I said goodbye to my past for ever.” February 25th was the final day of their gruelling journey, when they crossed the border into Poland, and the last night he and Vanda spent together.

Poem for the Day, Two. Forward by Andrew Motion.

Passenger spacecraft SpaceShipTwo makes a test flight.

Only surviving voice recording of Virginia Woolf. Background and transcript.

I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King and
queene: moult no feather. I have of late, (but wherefore
I know not) lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises;
and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition;
that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterrill
promontory; this most excellent canopy the air,
look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this Majesticall roofe,
fretted with golden fire: why, it appeares no other thing
to me, than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
 reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving
how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel!
in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the
world! The paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is
this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no,
nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seem[1]
to say so

”

—The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Act II, Scene ii, 285-300),