Friday, August 08, 2008

Room 880.1


Hospital 17



we beat strange

we beat strange

we beat strange

the sky is above us





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25/ 1/ 04

Hospital 23


It’s incredible how bone “melds together” in the way perhaps metals meld when welded: bone is to some extent calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate deposited in the collagen and united and compacted and moved and connected into the Haversian structures. The body like a great machine – a metropolis – rebuilds itself, as those bombed or bulldozed rebuild, as the people gain heart and grit and strike back: the Palestinians strike to the Israelis’ very heart, the Iraqis counterattack against the imperialist invaders: the Vietnamese fought, the French, the Greeks.

No one knows why John Mulgan committed suicide just after the war, in a hotel, in Cairo, alone, with poison. Man is indeed alone: perhaps not always.

But I am alive and not in a romantic or terrible war, my real war is with myself and my hate is, if I have any, abstract. I am alive but “laid up”. My repair or my recovery is almost some sort of statement…but then who am I?

Once I told Leicester Kyle how I couldn’t relax at poetry readings unless I was drunk and he said “Why can’t you just BE?” Point taken. Leicester is me mate! The Old man of the Woods, now the old discoverer of a new snail! A giant snail! What if your giant snail starts to eat New Zealand, Leicester? What if it is molecularly transtoned by those green bastards and eats everything in the world up! Leicester Kyle, the writer of many books of poetry, one dedicated to me. Shut up head!

Where was I? Oh, here is the entry: at 11 am today, after reading an encyclopaedia entry on bones, I told my helper (who is a medical student, and concurred) how marvellously complex, how mysterious the body is. But then everybody knows that.



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22 comments:

Anonymous said...

When fact is stranger than fiction.. Polanski directed Rosemarys Baby in 67 at the Dakota building in New York... about witchcraft and a pact with the devil..

Anonymous said...

Polanski and wife Tate dined with RFK in 68 the night of his assassination in LA...

Anonymous said...

In 69 the week of woodstock, a pregnant Tate and friends were killed by Manson and his cult...

Anonymous said...

At the scene the lyrics of the beatles were written in blood on the walls...

Anonymous said...

In 71 Polanski directed macbeth and changed the ending having macduff visit the witches...

Anonymous said...

Lennon of the Beatles moved into the Dakota in NY in 71 where he stayed until being shot in the foyer in 80...

Anonymous said...

There are other connections too but will leave it for now as I dont want to conjure up the witches wrath...ha...

Anonymous said...

Lastly Tates father was a Lt Col in the army and was an intelligence officer during the vietnam war...

Richard said...

But all this - true or not - significant or not - needs more power, human significance and moral force of some kind.

For me these facts taken as they are are, some coincidences, or events strong together so that thus "fiction looks stranger than fact" as it can do...but the problem for me is "so what"?

Frank used to play Rosemary's baby many times I recall liking it a lot but I cant remember (much of) what it was about even though I saw it about 5 times... I read a book about Manson but he and his lot seemed quite pathetic; quite directionless.

I saw the Polanski version of Macbeth few times but I cant remember the change at the end! For me Macbeth is best as it was written - but the greatness of it is the poetry inherent in the frame (like Greek tragedy such as those by Sophocles or Aeschylus etc)* Shakespeare has used. Of course the magical/spiritual force is also there.
Set agaisnt Shakespear's gret plays -there is one at least by Ben Jonson - 'Bartholomew Fair' that is perhaps stark "antidote"... it seems uniquely 'realitic' and indeed in Macbeth -writtenas were most of his Shakespear's great works I think after he had read Montaigne (of course he had also studided Ovid as Titus Andronicus (have you seen the painting of that title by Larry Rivers?) is based on one of the legends or strange "transforms" in Ovid - that of Philomena etc) - BUT near the end of Macbeth we here the words "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury (which became Faulkner's book..., signifying nothing'

But like our own (New Zealand's) great poet - and one of my favourite poets R A K Mason - I dont want to entertain: any

".. dark cynic blood..."

AFter all my own Hospital series - ful lof "reality" - has the refrain you see on this Blog entry:

"we beat strange/we beat strange/..."

Hmm - food for thought...

I will comment more...

I just woke from one of those early evening sleeps and am in relatively "strange space"...

[BTW - perhaps an irrelevant aside - - I won another chess tournament! Lol - it was what we call a Rapid but I drew with one of NZ's strongest players (McLaren) and so on... so while the prize money isn't big - some kudos Greek or Roman glory perhaps!]


* But if Macbeth or Oedipus, Orestes or Agammenon are doomed (while the spiritual and magical give a framing force) it is the moral choices, and indeed whether we are in fact capable because of historical and other forces of making unique choices etc -i.e. the human dilemma inside that frame (symbolic itself of "genetics" or history etc) that is important ultimately...

Richard said...

tertius - another thing "off-subject" - I received a call from your father earlier tonight - he has lost your ph number - can you contact him?

It is not urgent - but as a father myself - I appreciate contact...

Regards, Richard

Anonymous said...

I will contact him have not spoken to him for three years and no news is good news but must speak to him....thank you

Anonymous said...

As for your so what? The layers of Shakespeare, Hollywood, narcotic smuggling , a protest movement, music manipulations, cult and mass murders, political assassinations, mind control subjects and having Pres nixon declaring them mansons guiilty before their trial lawyers murdered is unprecendented and the backdrop of the weather underground and the black panthers being blamed initially... the undermining of the hippy movement by 1970...fbi project mk ultra also...many more layers suggest mere 'coincindences'... really RT if your interest in American culture is geniune in regards to Am poetry this period is profound in its intrigue and is your poetry merely a collection of words with no context at all , if so Nz protests, maoridom etc is meaningless and just intellectual masturbation along with reading the maps scott hamilition just and ego blow off....

Anonymous said...

The period just before language deconstruction of the 80s... look at why this happened and my thesis may not seem so erroneous the 50s to the 70s... and the merging of several fields and ultimately its dismantling leaving a void in the poetic process...these matters a more profound than a bunch of anglo philes in nz too chicken shit to stand up to maori radicals who dont appreciate a damn single thing Britain have brought to the quality of their life..they should be thankful the germans didnt settle their or arrive first. And I work for the damn maoris over here and their attitudes are more realistic than their homies...as for scott hamilton he should spend one day with me over here and he would be begging for his mothers milk ..fucking sheltered bitches..

Anonymous said...

Lastly the much vaunted King James Bible is well known but who relates the treatise of JAMES' NOVEL DEMONOLOGY AND ITS INFLUENCE ON SHAKESPEARS MACBETH, is this not literature and poltics and religion overlapping in the 16th cent so my analysis of the 60s in america i hope is not dismissed so flippantly by your reactions as it shapes all the poetry written by the language poets thereafter..

Anonymous said...

Ask the question why the language deconstruction of the the Am poets occured...and maybe my thesis will seem more relevent..do you consider your poetry all personal and introspective, if so look beyond your own emotions and you may see the reason in my madness like Lears fool or macduff being 'untimely ripped'...

Anonymous said...

In the bible it is written the jews are entitled to palestine or so they believe...so keep empowering the radicals with about as much maori blood as a thimble in them and one day like zimbabwe maybe not in our life time...some representatives of maori will arrive at you and scotts house and say get the fuck out we own the land your house is build on...careful now you bleeding heart liberals...the box you open may indeed be pandoras...

Anonymous said...

Two choices remain,the left and its take what I own, you own it now or the right and its mine if I can pay for it..."so what" you say RT...no let my family be slaughtered so the right wing can undermine the left wing movt of the 60s...that is the point and I say "what so"...

Richard said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Richard said...

"Anonymous tertius said...

As for your so what? The layers of Shakespeare, Hollywood, narcotic smuggling , a protest movement, music manipulations, cult and mass murders, political assassinations, mind control subjects and having Pres nixon declaring them mansons guiilty before their trial lawyers murdered is unprecendented and the backdrop of the weather underground and the black panthers being blamed initially... the undermining of the hippy movement by 1970...fbi project mk ultra also...many more layers suggest mere 'coincindences'... really RT if your interest in American culture is geniune in regards to Am poetry this period is profound in its intrigue"

I have an interest in culture throughout the world but a lot of these dramatic events could be assembled from any culture or even any time period. Thousands of words have been written about Nixon and so on but nothing ever happens. A great take on US culture I find via say Pynchon who satirises much of it...
Indeed in "The Crying of Lot 49" he uses the theme of the Revengers tragedies (thus Macbeth and Hamlet etc as you know via the Revengers Tragedy" and "The Spanish Tragedy" ...) as a comic "commentary" or satire of "conspiracy"... (undoubtedly there are conspiracies) ... (In fact Macbeth and Hamlet also have a satiric undertone already in Bill's hands...

What I am doing here is not based (specifically) on US culture although I do owe a lot to the US language poets - in particular to my reading of Charles Bernstein's essays.

Maps goes even further and repudiates language poetry altogether as his buzz is politics but he does write poetry - he integrates thee reality of NZ history and the NZ Wars etc into his poetry - a mix of imagination and realism.

This EYELIGHT "project" or hobby I have going is an on going process that can indeed go in any direction
but not to be taken too seriously - it is not structured very tightly and is not really based on any theory from anywhere except to some extent on some ideas of Bernstein's (in turn derived from some postmodernist texts I have never read...)

"...and is your poetry merely a collection of words with no context at all ,..."

I don't know - EYELIGHT isn't really a poem in the ordinary sense. [The poems -most of them -that are on here are deliberately reciycled from older poems -whichis aslo satirical device -some of the images (fr theimagesare compntsof hte"poem"or the "poem" [text assemblage] is integrated with images and so on are simultaneously serious,tragic and comical - depending how one sees them I am perhaps an existentialist is the closest I can come to describing what I am (doing)- or a phenomenologist - to make it sound profound - but really this is just a Blog - its just a hobby.

[one example is the comment under the Picture of the dead soldier with chess pieces "looking on" which is for me very funny but of course it is also horrific also...]

There are areas of concern - the Holocaust is one that arose (coincidentally - each section is "engendered" by an initial poem) and so on - war..the personal, hence the local, science, art, origins - it is also a learning project. Roughly ny idea (I started or initiated this EYELIGHT long before I got a computer and in fact I only started this Blog by mistake - I was trying to make a comment somewhere and somehow I pushed the make a Blog button) was to bring all the threads together - but I completely open to my own mood changes - what I am reading etc. I have very few fixed views on anything. There is no plan as such.


"... if so Nz protests, maoridom etc is meaningless and just intellectual masturbation along with reading the maps scott hamilition just and ego blow off...."

I don't follow your reasoning here.
Scott Hamilton is committed to politics and is quite sincere and he is also a major poet, very aware of poetics and politics etc, a good friend (although we disagree on quite a number of issues) but he doesn't run my Blog! And I don't run his!

Richard said...

tertius - why don't you start your own Blog? You can thus develop your own ideas there.

I will have a look at your other comments soon - but you seem a bit overwrought...

What I am saying is sincere - you yourself know what YOU want to do with Polanski etc {I CAN see that it has potential for a project or poem or something though}... I'm not much interested in movies myself - I actually hate going to either movies or concerts. Occasionally I get a video out - I hardly listen to the radio or watch TV - although I have watched some of the Olympics... and I like watching The Lion Man as I love
tigers and lions etc and even cats
themselves.

Otherwise I watch a lot of (instructional and entertaining for me) videos about Chess!! - My other main hobby.

But you need to self activate yourself. By starting your own Blog you can do almost anything you want - as long as you follow certain ethical guidelines they ask you to follow...and its free. You can then link to other Blogs. Blogging is great fun and can be quite creative. (Sure it can be a bit tiring at times).

Regards, Richard

Anonymous said...

You asked me to elaborate on the macbeth curse and the director obsessed by it...so I did...and then you dismiss it? Am not interested in my own blog as my time on the internet is coming to an end...dont even have an e mail or phone... my comments are contextualised towards 'how' language poetry came about...creeley,ashbery etc I was there too in 92 when they were guest poets and thruout the poetrybratz years...you may ask why? as I didnt perform I had another mission which is classified...have given too much away already...or is this the stuff made of dreams...I sense your unease at my contributions and I intially began to comment because there were NO comments on your blogs over a long time and thought some interest may encourage you...my intent was to engage on poetic matters and I sense your unease...dont you comment on other blogs? Anyway I will sign off for good this time ..enjoy blogging with no comments...Au revoir.

Richard said...

tertius - the comments are good - but these ones here are as if I was being fired at by a machine gun!

- I have responded to your outline - I didn't quite dismiss it. The point is if you are going to go anywhere with this (Polanski / Tate / Manson/ Kennedy - to the break down of a language thing (yes it was connected to the 60s (Silliman etc were street protestors in those days) but also to the Soviet Constructionists and certain Utopian ideas - but remember that the Langpo movement (not quite Ashbery - Ashbery is almost in the Romantic tradition - he follows the early Auden and also surrealism but also satire - and Ashbery never visited NZ as far as I know - Creeley and Lynn Heijinian did) - the Langpos were are are a very diverse group.

I can see some of the points you are hinting at - but they need to be developed more fully...

My "so what" was what indeed any astute critic, even friend will say, as that puts the ball in your court again to think what you are doing through as deeply as you can -as it happens I can see the possibilities for a drama/film/or novel in the material you have - my "so what" was not a dismissal - more a healthy note of skepticism.

Roger Horrocks might have some ideas on what you are doing... his forte is film as well as poetics and also the great NZ artist/sculpture film maker Len Lye (he wrote a book about him.

I'm wary of coincidences -they are almost always just that - not that the CIA etc don't plot things such as 9/11 or the Bali "bang! bang!", or the Madrid fireworks - but such plots ("successful", and other) have occurred throughout the world since human history began. [But this is necessary skepticism - it doesn't mean you can't still pull something together as such as deLillo or Pynchon etc do or Faulkner, Capote, Bellow, Updike, Doctorow and many others - even some NZ writers such as Maurice Gee, Vincent O'Sullivan, Stead, even Curnow and Smithyman or some of the British (all including English) writers]

Yes - I'm not getting many comments but that is life. [Probably as I don't deal with recipes, sex and pornography, movies, music, or politics or the latest massacres etc - although there are plenty of murders and suicides happening right in this area I live in - see the memorial (on this Blog) to those killed at the local RSA]

Poetry etc is not a major thing in today's world.

That is "numerically" - but I like that - for me - it - words are more profound than music). I rather like keeping a low profile - I'm not interested in fame or whatever (I don't enter any poetry competitions and I rarely submit any poems anywhere) - but a nice and large monetary checque from someone would be nice though!

To make your vision work you need to work - DO IT as Dr Phil says. You have spent too much of your life fucking around - as indeed I probably have - you do have abilities, and quite a deep sensibility and a sense of right etc as well as a (maybe too strong ) fascination with the baroque or the Gothic - which is not unusual) but, get off the wacky, get your own arse into gear and do your work. I don't know - you could be the next James Joyce - or the next Polanski...but it at least requires consistency.

The Internet's not finished - it here to stay mate! Like telephones and so on...

Tertius -re-read what you are saying - you lost it - I was still considering what you wrote - BTW Jack Ross is very erudite on such matters as film and popular culture as well as "high culture" (also he would be interested in your "connections" I would suppose as he has a great knowledge of Shakespeare, postmodernism, various strange mysteries, languages... etc) - have good look as what he has done on his (various ) Blogs)... but he (unlike moi )works very hard at what he does... but also teaches etc

Don't run down Maori, they too have a great culture - I don't think you really think that (some of your comments here) - I am of English parentage but not quite an Anglophile - I am interested in Irish and English stuff (I am well aware of the wrongs done to the country of your birth historically and even in this century by the English or the "British") - all cultures..you know that.

We - I -and others over here are concerned for your well being.

Re-read DR Wayne Dyer's "Your Erroneous Zones" - especially on anger and "Exploring the Unknown" as well as "self love" - from inner strength you can build connections to others - and from it will the come the energy and passion to do your projects.

Kind regards, Richard