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Author: Bartleby

Der Mammut

Der Mammut

Ich muss unbedingt weitergehen. Jetz aufzuhoeren waere eine Schande–eine unausstehliche Schande! Es gibt ja so viele schoene Moeglichkeiten wenn ich nur ein bisschen weiter gehe. Aber wenn ich hier Aufenthalt mache, habe ich nur ein bisschen altes trockenes Grass zu fressen; schlammiges, fragwuerdiges Wasser zu trinken; und spitze Steine als Bett. Nein, das darf nich passieren! Also: weiter!

Ich bin aber ein bisschen muede. Und auch gelangweiligt. Selbst die Vorstellung, die schoene Welt um die naechste Ecke zu erreichen und geniessen langweiligt mich. Also veilleicht einfach mich hier sitzen, nichts machen, einschlaffen, alles vergessen. Die schoene Moeglichkeiten koennten bestimmt noch einen Tag warten.

Also.

Quitting

Quitting

I give up.
I quit.
I’m done.

If I had money, I’d go travel and take yoga classes and long walks. But since I don’t, I’ll just work from 9 to 5 and then goof off the rest of the time.

I’m done. I quit. I give up.

There’s nothing I want to do except leave all the time. I feel vaguely guilty.

I should start a gratitude journal.

I’m gratitude for being healthy.

I’m gratitude for the lonely bored ache shoving the top of my back–in that dip beneath my shoulders–so that I fly forward and down, hands sprawling desperately forward to catch my scraping fall onto the asphalt driveway. It teaches me that people hurt and we’re all God.

Do you ever want to be an energy being? I do quite often. Like the guy from that episode of Star Trek. He could take on any shape and drift from world to world, exploring in the possibilities. Once while on earth being a human, he fell in love with an earth woman. The story ends sad, but I still think it would be nice to be able to zip around as a beam of light and then take on any shape and any mind and explore and create and be invincible and more powerful than all the weapons on the world. It appeals to me. If I had it, I would put on a slightly younger me and go to some cities I miss and a few others that I feel nostalgic about even though I’ve never actually been; I’ll go to these cities and sit about in cafes and bars and imperviously smoke cigarette after cigarette, speaking whatever language the locals speak. Maybe I’ll pick up women too–who knows?

You’d think I’d take on the shape of a sperm whale, but suited up with an IQ 300 brain and dive to the bottom of the sea while contemplating general relativity. You’d think I’d make use of my powers like that. Oh and maybe I’d end up doing stuff like that. But for now, I’d just be me with a younger body and invincible lungs. I guess I could be super intelligent in the cafes and bars as I dissipated.

Of course, people and their institutions would change and eventually cease to be. So that would add a lonely wrinkle to the enterprise. I mean I always feel a little lonely anyway, but I think it would be worse once I’d outlived the people and world I grew up in. Not that I’m done growing up. Anyway, maybe once everything that had flowed in and out of the young warbling me was dried up and blown asunder, I’d take on a child’s form and grow up again.

Ah! But then you see how it must be! Reincarnation and all that. Must be true. And ultimately it is God that is each of us. So God experiences every possible permutation. I don’t know why. Does God know why?

Anyway, I always feel like taking off. I don’t know where I’d go. I wanted to be a writer. Why was that anyway?

So I quit.

AMW/BW

A New, Improved Manhattan Project: Pt 1: Preliminary Worries

A New, Improved Manhattan Project: Pt 1: Preliminary Worries

[Anti-Weapon / New Manhattan Project]

I live in the world. I worry. Won’t it just have to go off the rails? Nuclear war still clearly a threat; nuclear terrorism now clearly a threat. Antibiotic resistant bugs still being carefully crafted by reckless agricultural practices. Strange rumors of cracking ice and swirling storms. Prison industries profiting while perfectly good people get thrown away. “Race” and other tired old delusions still keeping us from being ourselves and meeting one another for real. And so on.

And look how the United States lost its shit after 9-11. Plus the corrupting influence of money and advertising in the US election cycle coupled with gerrymandering moderates out of the House while everyone tucks into their private media sources for a dose of agreement and amplification in the echo chamber: the politicians become more and more beholden to a few while the many become more and more divided over the glory of their good-good wisdom and the horror of their neighbor’s evil-evil stupidity.

How worrisome!

And yet here on the ground floor of the US, we mostly go on our merry way. It is fun. We like the sunlight and enjoy chatting with friends, family, and acquaintances. We slip into comfy beds with our lovers; we stroller our kids around vibrant, bustling streets, full of life and fun. We have to go to work but not all the time and there’s opportunities to find more congenial, more rewarding work.

[Editor’s Note: This essay was written in the late Summer of 2017 in Brooklyn, NY, USA, Planet Earth, Nondescript Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.]

Meanwhile some groups tell us they very much plan on killing a bunch of us — hard to say how many: 30, 300, a few metro-areas’ worth, the more the better — and get the rest of us to discombobule and blow our hand. The freedom to speak your mind and a safe, orderly setting with a functioning government are wonderful and they are still ours to watch fade on out.

In a representative Democracy the citizens must serve as a final check on corruption and idiocy in the political class. We are not doing a very good job of fulfilling our basic duty, which is to together guard against political corruption, meanness, and other obvious idiocies. The rich feed television to the poor; and judgment’s a storm gathering a thousand miles — the relatively young Leonard Cohen might yet be wrong, but the route oute is difficult to discern.

When a major city is destroyed by a nuclear bomb or everyone at the President’s congressional address is killed(A Worrier’s Suggestion), or even when the citizenry notices that such darkdooms are not necessarily a priori impossibilities, the citizens need most of all to stay calm and resolute. They need to work together to make sure that they keep first things first: yes, immediate safety and order are extremely important, but the very most important thing is that we hold these truths to be self evident:

That all people are created equal and are endowed by the Light within with the right and duty to live well (clearly, honestly, fully, joyfully, creatively, beautifully, kindly) and justly (honestly and impartially, with respect and kindness towards all).

[Some Philosophizing moved to Outtakes!]

I am worried that we lack the shared clarity and purpose required to pull it together and put clear competent kindness first when faced by something awful — or maybe even when merely faced by something that particularly reminds us of awfulness.

I am concerned. But what can I do?, that’s what I’d like to know. Or rather: what should I do, and am I allowed to go take a walk?

Authors: Proposers

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[Anti-Weapon / New Manhattan Project]

[NYC Journal – Politics Page]

[Something Deeperism Institute]

[NYC Journal]

From Before:

I live in the world. I worry. Won’t it just have to go off the rails? Nuclear war still clearly a threat; nuclear terrorism now clearly a threat. Antibiotic resistance bugs still being carefully crafted by reckless agricultural practices. Strange rumors of cracking ice and swirling storms. And so on.

And look how the United States lost its shit after 9-11. Plus the corrupting influence of money and advertising in the US election cycle coupled with everyone tucking into their private media sources for a dose of agreement and amplification in the echo chamber: the politicians become more and more beholden to a few while the many become more and more divided over the glory of their good-good wisdom and the horror of their neighbor’s evil-evil stupidity.

How worrisome!

And yet here on the ground floor of the US, we mostly go on our merry way. It is fun. We like the sunlight and enjoy meeting friends for a chat. We slip into comfy beds with our lovers; we stroller our kids around vibrant, bustling streets, full of life and fun. We have to go to work but not all the time and there’s opportunities to find more congenial, more rewarding work.

Meanwhile some groups tell us they very much plan on killing a bunch of us–hard to say how many: 30, 300, a city’s worth, the more the better–and get the rest of us to lose our shit and blow our hand. The freedom to speak your mind and a safe, an orderly setting with a functioning government are wonderful and they are still ours to watch fade on out.

In a representative Democracy the citizens must serve as a final check on corruption and idiocy in the political class. But we’re too busy playing policy expert with our chosen pundits and otherwise goofing off to focus on the task at hand; and we’ve been too completely lulled and badgered into writing the “other side” off as “hopeless” to work together as a nation: we are not doing a very good job of fulfilling our basic duty, which is to together guard against political corruption, meanness, and other obvious idiocies. The rich have their TVs in the bedrooms of the poor; and there’s a mighty judgement coming–the relatively young Leonard Cohen might yet be wrong, but the route oute is difficult to discern.

When a major city is destroyed by a nuclear bomb or everyone at the President’s congressional address is killed, the citizens need most of all to stay calm and resolute. They need to work together to make sure that they keep first things first: yes, immediate safety and order are important, but the very most important thing is that we hold these truths to be self evident:

That all people are created equal and are endowed by the Light within (deeper and wider than any concept or feeling, though some concepts point better towards it than others–here I picked “the Light within” because because and sometimes we mention “love” with a similar argument) with the right and duty to live well (fully, joyfully, creatively, beautifully, kindly) but also justly (justice = no shortchanging souls in order to achieve your goals; aka: your goals can’t forget that you and other people are full, complete humans; aka: beneath every goal must be the deeper goal: that the Light in our centers bursts evermore through the rags and we all move more and more for real).

We know that sense-of-things deeper and more fundamentally than any doubts we may conjure against it or any dogmas we might use to justify ignoring or co-opting and betraying it. It is a good idea; it is our idea. This idea informs us that we can and should work together to make this democracy of the people, for the people, by the people be just and kind to all the people in this land and the world.

I am worried that we lack the clarity and shared purpose required to pull it together and put joyful-justice/just-joyfulness first when faced by something awful–or maybe even when merely faced by something that particularly reminds us of awfulness.

I am concerned. But what can I do?, that’s what I’d like to know. Or rather: what should I do, and am I allowed to go take a walk?

Authors: BW, AMW

…..

What is this?
A three essay series called “A New, Improved Manhattan Project”
Part 1: Preliminary Worries
Pt. 2: The Proposal
Pt. 3: Some Tips for the Geniuses

Whatever happened to selling evolving ebooks on the world-wide web?
Well, nothing’s being posted, but the somewhat-begun books are still available:
Love at a Reasonable Price are listed and linked-to here:
Intro to Love at a Reasonable Price
Intro to Diary of an Adamant Lover for sale here:
Buy the Books

We also are still selling cat totes and epistemologically controversial baby onsies:
Buy Cat Totes!
&/or Objectively Cute Baby Onepieces! (advertised here: An ad for an “Objectively Cute” baby wrap

But what are we really up to?
I dunno, Bartleby and Andy are writing something once in a while and then sometimes going back and editing things. I think they’ll go back to the ebooks before too long. We’ll see.

The man who gives out flowers

The man who gives out flowers

2 of 2 occurrences marked by the author on the coldest Valentine’s Day in NYC recorded history.

It was on Valentine’s Day at about 9pm on the C train, heading towards Brooklyn, clacking all the way and screeching in the turns. A black man about 60 reclining back, long legs spread wide on either side of two giant bags full of recent purchases (a small appliance in one; an inflatable mattress in the other) stacked one on top of the other. The train wasn’t very crowded, so no one cared that he took up so much space. Dressed in a nice coat, with nice black slacks and nice walking shoes. Blue knit cap. Takes a Corona out of one of the bags, opens it quick and starts drinking, hiding it in the open bag between swigs. His underjaw juts a little too far forward. He is tall and though starting to age a little in the face and getting a little paunchy in the middle, still looks pretty strong, sturdy, vigorous. He looks forward beneath his knit cap with a slight pursed smile–like both his eyes and lips purse forward a little in a gamesome smiling.

A heavyset gumdrop-shaped (while seated anyway) black lady; 40ish; light brown skin; with big thighs in tight green sweats (of a substantial fabric and probably with at least tights beneath–there was a heartiness to the outfit that reminded one of a thick layer of blubber). A thick brown jacket coat, open for the train ride and with a light blue hooded sweatshirt beneath. Leaning forward with her elbows on her thighs, one hand holding a nice new athletic backpack, the other holding a clear cup with some milky coffee drink. Looking towards the rubbery subway flooring; tired half-opened lizard eyes; mouth a little compressed, forcing her round, full cheeks out a bit more. A tired person, done for the day.

The man across from her pulls a bouquet of flowers out of one of his bags and presents it to her, gesturing it forward as he asks if she’d like them. Her face lights up. She smiles big and overawed like she’s about to burst out with delighted laughter. But she doesn’t laugh. She accepts the flowers with a big smile. Smells them. “Thank you! Thank you!” He gives a little nod and takes another swig of his beer, which makes her big grateful eyes wobble a bit, but not drastically. “I’m going to put these next to my heart tonight–when I sleep–I’m going to keep them next to my heart.” He, with half-shut cool eyes and a knowing half-smile and half backwards-nod (as in you nod backwards–assenting) says, “be well.” She has a mild Brooklyn accent. She repeats her plan and he repeats, “Be well!”

He finishes that beer and begins another (he drank the last beer in about a minute). She is still smiling over at him, and so she notices the quick beer progression. She’s sitting up a little more now–still leaning a bit forward but no longer with her arms on her shoulders and no longer looking down–looking towards him with a shy, blink-away-and-return smile. Now she pulls her shoulders back and straightens up and looks up and over to him, her gaze arching: “I don’t like beer” she says smiling thin, shaking her head a little from side to side. “Me neither” he says with a pouty smile. “I used to drink that–when I was a teenager–but …” He nods slight, judicious. She turns to one side, looking now down the fuselage, not quite across. At the next spot she looks around from side to side, as if she isn’t sure if this is her stop or not; then she gets off, thanking him again as she leaves, “thank you papi, thank you papi, thank you!–!”

At that stop a tall pretty early-40s thin black woman with high cheekbones and an elegant, shoulders-back, chin-up ease strolls on the subway. She stands by the pole by the door–diagonal to the man with the flowers and the beer. She’s left her faux-fur-lined hood up. He takes out another bouquet and offers it to her. She smiles but with a skeptical twist in her lips, small nose, big eyes: “No!” with that fixed smile through knitted brow and ironic eyes that one gives to a perhaps harmless but still dubious proposal. He, with a slight forward-shrug, puts the bouquet away and sips his beer.

He got off when we got off. I saw it.

Witness: AMW, dramatic recreation: BW; accuracy we can vouch for: not all the details, but something like this.

Two homeless men

Two homeless men

1 of 2 stories from the coldest Valentine’s Day in NYC history.

Sitting there, crowded subway. People squished on either side–arm around your girlfriend and her shiny, slippery, puffy coat; and the wide round thighs and big black coat of the person on your right spilling into your experience, hemming you in, holding you tight. People all along the overhead poles, standing in front of you closer than people normally get, leaning over you, their coats unzipped and faces staring at an ad-lined concaving wall over your head.

A young white man enters by the door across and eight feet over. Subway’s not yet so crowded that you can’t see him clearly. He’s unshaven with a stubble growing long, looking like porcupine quills lying down. A thick blue jacket. Not a thin guy, but not fat either–a little stocky, chunky, horse-shoe-shaped. Gray hood and blue knit cap over his head; a fringe of dark hair showing beneath the cap. Dirty faded blue jeans. Pale face a little horseshoe shaped and not quite fat but not quite thin or square, kind of edging towards heavy; and the corners of the eyes and lips slanting down sadly, in resignation, which matches his monotone that is a little nasally and maybe borders on whine but that is more like the pained, self-conscious deadpan of an AA confession: (the speaker pauses to glance down from time to time; then he revs back up–head babybirds a bit back and up as he plaintive shouts the top of his next volley, a height from which his delivery soon drops down into a steady doldrum) “Hello, I’m very sorry to disturb you. My name’s (witness honestly forgets). I am 29 years old and I am here because I am homeless and I am out of work. I can promise you that I will not be out of work forever; I am going to get a job and get myself back on my feet as soon as I can–that’s a promise I’ve made to myself. And even though I’ve got an education, I don’t care–I’ll wash dishes if I have to, anything it takes. I’ve promised myself that much. But today I am here asking for some help because I am homeless and out of work. I tried to find a place to sleep all last night, but I couldn’t lie down anywhere for more than a few minutes without feeling like I was going into hypothermia.” He went on to say that he checked himself into the ER last night because he was so cold. They kicked him out after 45 minutes but it was worth it just to warm up for a little while. He’s been trying to get enough money for a warm meal; he’s about halfway there; if anyone could be kind enough to help him out–. A 40ish black lady sitting behind and to one side of him, stout and wrapped up in her coat and hood and hat like a baby in a papoose, poked at him; he reached back with a cupped hand and she inserted something into it. She had a round face, a small, flat, round-edged nose, big eyes, a slight smile on her full lips as she looked a little up and to her left towards the troubled young man.

The man heads away from you, and you can’t see him in the crowd. At the next stop a medium-build, sharp-cheeked black man in a sturdy green workman’s coat (the kind that looks more solid than puffy and more matte than shiny–you see them on construction workers) and worn but clean and wrinkle-free black jeans. He gives his speech in a clear voice with his head up. He’s homeless and he’s out of work, but he’s not looking for a handout. He’s got these papers from a local homeless advocacy organization that he is selling for a dollar, two dollars–whatever you want to pay.

The newcomer heads towards the same direction as the other guy. Then there’s a little bubble in the crowd like when a pebble makes ripples in a creek. Arms overhead, stumbling back a little: “.. I didn’t even know …” Backpedals towards your spot, talking loud and stern towards the direction he came: “But do it the right way! Do it the right way! Do it the right way.” And a little later, looking over with a flash in his eyes like he heard something offensive; but he’s right next to you and you heard nothing; it could also just be the pique of recalling and further unpacking a past grievance: “you’re 37?! I’m 53! I’m retired! I’ve been at this since 9:30 in the morning!” (It is about 2pm) “And what is this? [arm stretched out long, but limply, pathetically] You gonna just hold out your hand and say oh, gimme gimme gimme–what is that? And you wonder why people don’t give you nothin! You can do better than that–you can do better than that, son,–you can do much better than that!”

Where was the original guy? You can’t see him. The new comer finishes scolding and exits when the doors open at the next stop. You feel sad, overwhelmed.

Witness: AMW; Author: BW; Accuracy: Not all the details, but something like that.

The Story of Isaac

The Story of Isaac

A young boy walks up a sandy mountainside with his father, a righteous man who has found favor with the Lord, the creator and sustainor of all things. A young boy in the time before time, his cloak sunny and flecked with dust, walks up the hill, wondering what’s up.

An old man who talks with God walks with a heavy heart up a grade a little steep for his years. Why has God asked this of him? Everything was going so well. And yet everyone knows that it’s not supposed to be easy. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be real–right?

Isaac, just a boy. Come along, I’ve got a need.
Isaac, just a lad. Skip to it, I’m commanded.
Isaac, just a kid.

What does God ask of me?
What do I invent?
What does God let me get away with?
Where do I embellish?

Who takes Isaac by the hand,
up to the cutting stone?

Betrunkene Nutzlosigkeit

When your boyfriend is drunk on a Saturday afternoon

When your boyfriend is drunk on a Saturday afternoon

What can you do, really?
What options do you have?
You can disagree, but that won’t make him sober.
You can acquiesce, but that won’t make him useful.

And so I guess it is probably for the best,
that I fold and turn this shiny blue paper
into a symbolic angelfish,
that floats easy and forgetful
near a knobby coral
somewhere in the light blue.

Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

AMW

When I was a young man

When I was a young man

I was young forever in my early twenties.
I was infinitely young and immortal
from about age 20 to age 34.
I was really somethin!

But now I’m oldly looking on with a glass eye
that turns a little too unnatural, a little walleye.

Shakespeare we don’t know.
He kept himself out, all we know is the totality of the vision.
A vision that grew, that got wider, deeper, wiser.

Then you got suckers like me
who just talk about ourselves
as our visions get colder, glassier, further, blacker, emptier.

Too bad!
Doubtless there was something there at some time.
And isn’t that how it goes!?

AMW/BW/that gloom

Lonely Monster

Lonely Monster

Who walks with long thin legs,
flings itself across the world really–
on those 30 foot chicken legs.

Besides its legs, it has long thin arms
and a bulge round arm socket
stuck in a round leather-ball body.

Giant creature that runs across the plains.
Terrible monster with a jagged-tooth mouth around its center.
And two giant wet squid eyes plastered into the three-fourths quadrant.

Horrible monster.
Wanting nothing but to, on long strides, toss itself across the seven seas
and the countless worlds,
spinning its arms and with long curved fingernails tearing through every living thing it can reach.

And yet
it has its sorrow, its hurt, its division,
and we shouldn’t judge overhasty.

Sad, lonely, cruel creature.
I feel bad for it, but we still must shut it down,
else it will kill us all,
and not in a redemptive, religious, hopeful 16th Century kind of hanging way–
no, it will just slice us all up like a blender would if it could
get so large and so mean.

Poor fiend,
lonely devildog,
rising up off the evil like some kind of a yellow vapor.
Wish I could stop it, wish I could make things nice.
But all these knives swinging in all these directions!

Still, I thank you for the flower
made of paper and bent with relaxed fingers that are too often tensed.
Well, well again, well around, our wheel comes round again with a bucket of water
to drop into the stream.
The water actually turned the wheel that turned the gears that turned the grind stone
that milled the corn.

AMW

Standard Theory of Pure Love 3: Supposing it were true

Standard Theory of Pure Love 3: Supposing it were true

I wonder what it would mean if people actually mattered.
Not just to me or you,
but really–
whatever that means.

What if love was realer than everything else?
And when you died,
what you were that was love
remained;
and everything else
didn’t–
because it never had been
anyway.

What if this life really was primarily a spiritual exercise?
And if you keep holy love as your center, all is well
no matter what.
And if you don’t, nothing is quite right
no matter what.

What if that’s not just something people say to break the ice
or win the round?
What if it’s truer than all the threads
that weave together
to argue it away?

What would I say to my friend if it really mattered what I say to my friend?
What if “really mattered” isn’t just an indefinable concept;
what if it also points towards a true knowledge
that I know
though I cannot perfectly define it,
or that I at least know something of
and know something of how to let it win
even though I can only get better and better
at holding, knowing, describing,
and sharing it,
without ever quite
catching it
in words
or even feels
or even maybe
acts?

What is the point of seven billion human beings?
What is the point of a busy world forced silent by the overhead catastrophes?

What is the point of getting together
or breaking up?

Why be Einstein sketching the edges
or Shakespeare painting from the inside out
or a skinny bum sitting on a heating vent,
sipping from her diet coke
and telling the air to leave it the fuck alone!?

And what is a human soul when dogs have feelings
and even gnats whisper a trace of thereness?

Who’ll stop the sides from falling into the center,
the stones breaking out
of outward blossoming walls?

You? Me? Us? Them? The god? God? Who? What?

I’ll wager you one life
for a life worth living–
one where I am really here now
and know it
and have reason
to be
and am
OK
with it.

—-
Attributed to the same old committee
Copyright AMW

What is this?
Well, it has to do with Love at a Reasonable Price.
In the first section of that evolving ebook are two stories from the town of Pine, Michigan–where Pure Love was once peddled and where in time a Pure Love Research Center grew. And at the end of the second store, a Pure Love researcher says, ”
To understand Charles’ and I’s research, you have to be at least somewhat acquainted with the standard model of Pure Love.”
So then we thought we’d write a Standard Model or Standard Theory of Pure Love–like how there is one for physics. But we’ve been having our troubles. So now we’re just writing poems around the topic, hoping to sink in at an appropriate place. So far the poems are all free (so far all poems are free: see “Poems” category on the right hand side). These poems and all other writings in Love at a Reasonable Price are listed and linked-to here:
Intro to Love at a Reasonable Price

Access to the whole evolving ebook, along with Love at a Reasonable Price for sale here:
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