CLVIII
Proposal for a new, more realistic college course: Global Sieve
No, no, Global Shiv
Naw, Global Shank
Anyone for Global Shiva – in all senses of the word?
I was a naturally-occurring lingam for the FBI
The Magnificent Six (point eight-seven-five)
Yo, yo – wassup with dat!?
9944⁄100%… it floats!
Once you get hung up on a concept, reality is doomed
Woke up it was a Chelsea Manning…
Or un, as the case may be
Don’t get shanktomonious with me!
Werner Sombart, a foundational German “social scientist,” whose influence at one time exceeded that of his friend and contemporary Max Weber, argued for sociology’s place within the “humanities” on the grounds that it dealt with human beings and therefore required inside, empathic Verstehen rather than outside, objectivizing Begreifen (both German words translate as “understanding” into English).
Ach, zo unterstanding can be either interstanding or outerstanding, ja?
But is one form of understanding more uber then the other?
Friedrich Hebbel, writing in an earlier time, tells of a young German philosopher in Amsterdam, who, one evening sees a funeral party departing from a mansion. He asks a passing stranger who the house belongs to and the name of the deceased it and is told Kannitverstan.
“Ah, poor Kannitverstan!” he exclaims. “What can all your riches bring you now? No more than my poverty will bring me one day: a shroud and a winding sheet; and all of your lovely flowers a bunch of rosemary upon your cold breast, or a sprig of rue.”
Later, or never, he learned that in Dutch, kannitverstan means “I don’t understand.”
You say Begreifen, I say Verstehen,
Let’s call the whole thing Orff…
The Times politely waits until the day after it runs a colorful full-page ad promoting Turkey as a paragon of democratic stability and abounding investment opportunity to the grim assessment – accompanied by brooding black and white photos – that “there seems to be no end to Turkey’s many troubles.”
Is this timing what one calls a “decent interval”?
Today’s colorful full-page ad is sponsored by the Xinhua News Agency and headlined “China Helps G-20 Find Solutions to Improving Global Governance.” Like its Turkish nearly-twin brother, the ad’s copy reverberates with auto-encomia. Here stands depicted a great power committed wholeheartedly to “promoting innovative cooperation” and “safeguarding rights and interests of developing nations” – all by virtue of its time-honored “Chinese wisdom.”
On the verso page of the spread, a sober-toned analysis of the civil war in Syria, a neo-Great Game carnage so horrifying as to necessitate a heroic journalistic attempt to… and, as ever with the Times, cloaked in the language of objective determination of causality, comes the strategic ascription of blame: on the unrest stirred up by Arab Spring, the rise of ISIS, and Kurdish separatism-nationalism. Search as one may, nowhere in its dense and lengthy columns does one find mention of the overthrow Gadaffi, or, more broadly, of western intervention.
You look up from the paper to catch a glimpse of an extremely pretty, petite young Asian woman walking past the café. Severe haircut, ripped skinny black jeans and a white top which reads:
MADE IN CHINA
FUCKED IN THE U.S.
First came The Walking Dead. Then, the prequel: Fear the Walking Dead
Then, more spin-offs:
Tax the Walking Dead
Trip the Walking Dead
Confound the Walking Dead
Bully the Walking Dead
Deport the Walking Dead
Mock the Walking Dead
Greet the Walking Dead
Hug the Walking Dead
Rob the Walking Dead
Hustle the Walking Dead
Defraud the Walking Dead
Ignore the Walking Dead
Poll the Walking Dead
Heal the Walking Dead
Surveil the Walking Dead
Inspire the Walking Dead
Placate the Walking Dead
Bribe the Walking Dead
Slander the Walking Dead
Hypnotize the Walking Dead
Impersonate the Walking Dead
Lead the Walking Dead
Proselytize the Walking Dead
Frisk the Walking Dead
Enlighten the Walking Dead
Impregnate the Walking Dead
Indebt the Walking Dead
Deploy the Walking Dead
Disrespect the Walking Dead
Tweet the Walking Dead
Organize the Walking Dead
Appreciate the Walking Dead
Convert the Walking Dead
Circumcise the Walking Dead
Contemplate the Walking Dead
Irrigate the Walking Dead
Console the Walking Dead
Repeal the Walking Dead
Bedazzle, bedevil, bewitch, bother, bewilder and besot the…
Wind (as in mighty)
Wind (as on a windlass [lass?])
List (as in a sequence of items)
List (as in to yaw, or archaically, to wish)
Mind (as in care about or be careful of)
Mind (as in a terrible thing [to waste])
Matter (as in have importance)
Matter (as in physical concretion)
Mine Dover Matter, is this an imperative?
Mattercide, is this the murder of meaning? And / or the annihilation of the physical?
Do the spiritually enlightened commit, and by committing, achieve mattercide?
DEATH OF THE STREET! Shouted that guru Corbu.
Who shot John?
And hey Joe, where you goin’ to run to now?
Fire (as in water’s opposite)
Fire (as in dismiss from employment)
Bear (as in endure)
Bear (as in exit pursued by a… and /or sometimes you eat the…)
Gladly, the cross-eyed bear
The Good Thief
The Weiss Virgin
The Prodigal Sun
Fall (as in autumn)
Fall (as in from grace)
Belt (as in cincture)
Belt (as in o say can u see or clobber)
Mass (as in missa)
Mass (as in a large group of like entities [does their likeness result from their grouping?] and implying concretion)
Mess (as in a dog’s breakfast)
Mess (as in an officers’ refectory
Banjo (as in “Abiyoyo”)
Banjo (as in shun or exile the feminine contraction of Joseph, as in Hey Jo, or Hey Pete, where you goin’ with that Banjo in your hand?
This fascist kills fascists
Woody (as in would row [if I could] and as distinct from the paneled station wagon woodie)
Woody (as in possessing the qualities of wood)
As I was walking the Ribinoff highway…
This land
Land (as the verb or noun)
Space (as in lebensraum)
Space (as in the final front ear)
Right (as in righto! Or droit, or exactly on the point or o time)
Right (as in to party or to arm bears or to remain silent)
Left (as in departed from or passively laisse to one’s own devices)
Left (as in sinister)
State (as in condition)
State (as in assert)
State (as in claim a monopoly [legitimate?] on violence within a given territory [Weber].)
Live (as in alive)
Live (as in right now)
Live (as in mind the voltage)
Live (as in let…)
Live (as in to begin, and other myriad meanings of the word sheng (生): vegetation thrusting from the ground and developing stage by stage…
Her head jutting forward, hurrying to yoga class
Wo ming zai wo,
My fate lies with me,
bu zai tian.
Not with heaven.
Let the breath create the movement
Borrowing breath and spirals from kun and tian
These eyebrows kill fascists
Aleppo, mon amour
Where have all the fowlers gone?
The Hundred Acre woulda coulda shoulda
The thousand yard
starecase to heaven
And a hundred spools of floss
contend
Could I have been contenter?
