dimanche 31 octobre 2004

Of weariness, wild wires and Weir If you find me more than usually obtuse cryptic today, know this: I went to bed at 2:00 am, since I was still busy at the end of a Saturday when I'd forgotten it was a bank holiday weekend. I meant to sleep in, but woke up at 6:00 am. At lunch, Sam told me about the clocks, which I'd also forgotten though this is the first day of real wintry yuk of the year. I'd got up at five without knowing it. I'll reclaim the hour by changing my clock only tonight. Then I sleep in tomorrow before work. If that makes no sense, this does: "Gibson restarted his blog a week or so ago, and today (Oct 21) he reports that Pattern Recognition, his latest novel, may well turn into a film by Peter Weir" (more at Searchblog). Since John Battelle spotted that, Gibson's said no more about it. Not so the IMDb and "the movie insider". One says it's for 2005, the other places a safer bet. I'll go for the safe bet and hope that we're in for a film on a par with Kubrick's encounter with Clarke. Have you seen a bad Weir movie, yet? 4:09:01 PM  link   your views? [] What bloody election? If that's why you came, go away. Please. Okay, so I opined about it. All I can add is the hope I'm far from alone in finding ironic the calendar proximity between the "free world, etc." vote & that other disturbing nuisance: Halloween. Both are good for bad trade, wicked masks and scary movies. Is that your thing? Skip me, go to BC and bits of blogosphere where they're already jumping through hoops. I'm a time-warp. Here's another coinage of my year: "I'll share anything with my friends and loves except betrayal. In my world, that's the only mortal sin." You're in luck. Twice I'm about to come close, being a perfidious hack for whom little you say is off the record. First, someone with grace enough to leave this log's suicide bid in peace wrote: "Granted, you pissed me off as well, each time you wrote some snarky something and included my name (usually it was something you pulled from my PRIVATE email to you.) I couldn't decide whether I should tell you to go jump in a river or if I was really just amused by what you wrote. Again, it doesn't make a difference (and I write this knowing full well that you can easily slap this up on your blog.)" Voilà, c'est fait. Here's another mint "taliegram", mainly to politicians: "Bow usually to blackmail without fuss. When people blackmail you, forget police and principles if you can blackmail them back. This wastes neither lies nor lives." I applied this when someone told me me that if I failed to disclose what the Project is, (s)he would do it -- "via [my] comments box". Since I won't shut down your place to insult me and disagree in public, I dusted a skeleton in that person's cupboard. You'll have noticed how in movies and occasionally in life, men provoke smirks with some patronising variation on: "Lord, I love it when she gets so mad!" Women waste no time on such tactics, but I have artistic and professional reasons to make some angry. It being Sunday and me a hack, I join today's yellow tabloids and newsprint paving stones plus glossy supplements in competing for attention with a "weekend exclusive". Here's another bit of "PRIVATE e-mail". "Exclusive" since it came from ... ah, my poor heart: "we will definitely get together after the american election has calmed down. glad you're working feverishly on [It]. we're just counting down the months tilll youre famous!" Never mind the ungodily spelling -- her unasked middle name may be that of Mercury's winged consort. Two sentences wickedly beg five questions. I've heard countless excuses and know how "definitely" can mean the opposite, but since when has an "american election" been an acceptable way to avoid me? It's scarcely force majeure. I've seen less lame excuses on Web-Tricheur, which French kids mine for reasons to skip class. I may be a hack, she may do similar things, we all need the money. But hell, I don't even want to know about World War III until it's over. Secondly, what does "calmed down" mean? Does this open her road to steer clear of mine through the chill months until we're sure who's in the White House and which ghastly "advisors" they've picked? If so, that's not on. Next comes the worst: who is "we"? Am I to take this oh-so-innocent pronoun, casually dropped in, as a promise -- or a threat? Is it a little "we" or a Big "We"? "the months"? I'll let her get away with that, since my excitement about the Project may to be blame for her timeframe. But what about the "tilll youre famous"? What grounds does she have for assuming that (a) I'm not already and (b) I ever shall be? I've two points to make to Factory friends and others based on a few words from she who accuses me of thinking too much. The first I discovered from doing this log. Denholm told me yesterday he'd learned it in a different way: properly "famous" and gifted people are usually sufficiently self-assured to do without insecurity, tantrums and bodyguards. Denholm told me about a famous opera singer from the Met who readily gave him an interview on staggering off a plane to Beijing* after a flight which lasted 18 hours. The most renowned people I've blogged are very often the swiftest, most modest and helpful when it comes to answering e-mails. The Second Lesson (it's still Sunday) fills out the explanation I gave Sarah of why I stopped listening to BBC Radio 4 months ago. I usually find my waking-up process -- from wild, wonderful, wet or bad dreams to the bouncing far and wide of my Neuron -- more constructive nowadays than any blah-blah I thought I used to enjoy absorbing. What I left out was why and how. I'd normally never publish her e-mail, but the Exclusive teaches us how much cunning, ambiguity, possible deceit and revealing nothing a clever and luscious member of the very unfair sex can pack into two rapidly typed lines. You'd better believe it. I'm on to you women and take her advice to "Stop Thinking". She's right. The Neuron works of its own volition. Should you see a sexist remark coming, it's yours, not mine. My morning Neuron tells me how they work their minds. By all saints and souls, they're good at it! In a recent anniversary edition, a science and medical magazine should have have left out its editorial full of apologies for claiming decades earlier, on the strength of what experts knew then, that women rarely think and when they do, it's not like men. Scientists knew all along: women don't. They're usually much smarter than mere thinkers. Once a man's put that in his pipe and puffed on it, the smokescreen of the millennia dissipates. Such understanding means we men might have a future after all. Here's a warning to women. Forget the excuses. Drop the dreary nonsense about a vote and how much worse or better its outcome might be for the world during the next four years. It could be nasty, true. So was the Roman empire sometimes. Now that I've sussed it -- and most especially you, love -- the Project has a new subsidiary theme to add to its puzzle. You could bet your butts that I'm not the first bloke to have noticed this and I won't be the last, since "the truth is (already) out there." Really, What election? I'm down to four hours sleep a night, decent weather or foul like today. There's no time to misspend if I'm to do the Factory stuff, make love to you lot and let the Neuron work when it comes to my idea of what's out there. What's today's reel, before digital and binary come to rule? I'll give 'Thelma and Louise' back to Dominique at the store downstairs. While I won't purchase Ridley Scott's 1991 vision for keeps, I bought much of what's in it. Ridley's shown over and over how he borrowed Radio 4's maxim: inform, enlighten -- and entertain! He's got a good perspective on issues I'm teasing about here. The end of this splendid road movie, which I ignored on release, is great as it is, though Scott made an alternative. He and his team are so smart that the considerable fun on the way must have been planned. Unlike 'Starship Troopers'. Heavens below, this ... film? ... is awful. It's so dreadful, so unintentionally funny that discovering this year has brought a sequel (IMDb) might be better news than World War III. Or a vote result I care about but would rather not know any time soon, just as long as the quick e-mailer doesn't go on making excuses. What if the poll goes ... don't think about it. There are no fewer than four women in the Project. I've only just begun to understand them. There's no woman in that race across the Pond, is there? If we're to be bushwhacked again, I'll finish up like Thelma and Louise in my own time, thank you. When the time comes to shove, nobody wants to be pushed. _____ *Beijing, not Tokyo (Nov 2: thanks, WDB) 11:54:18 AM  link   your views? []

samedi 30 octobre 2004

Design faults: IT with them, voices without them "Seen any good movies lately?" Oh yes, Donald. I've even studied many in detail. I'm happy to drag Donald in here again because he and the other veteran bricks in the wall have been borrowed anew by the Factory, which makes work there more fun. One cinematic detail, a dull cliché already, is the omnipresence of Macs. Maniacs began listing them whenever spotted in films, but this must now be a huge waste of time. I guess we have designer Jonathan Ives to thank for this and a mention at a French culture website with a big "C", 'evene'. There's a Mac near the end of 'Antitrust' -- Amazon UK sells only the US Zone 1 version; why? -- though everybody knows this film is about open source software and has characters specifically rule out any Bill Gates connection. Better, I suppose than being sued to hell and beyond. Sharon Stone and Juliette Lewis can't save 'Cold Creek Manor' (Rotten Tomatoes), which may be the worst "chiller" I've seen this year. But Dennis Quaid uses Mac OS X in it. He even does so properly, though his Mac is too boringly factory fresh and unhacked to linger on long. While Mac OS 9 remains the Apple operating system usually seen in movies, it had a huge flaw. I went back into 9 because I've been too lazy to drag my accounts into X. Foolishly, I lingered for hours of more feverish work on the Project. I like OS 9. I even keep Internet Explorer on it because that browser is so good at ruining some web sites that I make sure it won't seriously screw up something I've done, keeping most of the rules IE breaks, before displaying it on the Net. When I'd worked on enough Project, I opened my bank's site in IE to finish the job on the accounts. Disaster! Being too "clever" for their own good, my bank had produced something new that buggered up IE, then awarded my Mac a hard freeze of the kind I'm trying to teach friends not just to pull the power plug on. I've bothered to learn tricks, starting with the three-finger salute, or emergency sign-off, to shut down IE. I managed to save most things, including my completed accounts, before the full shut down and reboot. But I lost all I'd just done on the Project, which caused me to indulge in the spoken equivalent of many two-finger salutes. I blame Bill and the bank only in part. I blame Apple for the hell of an "old" but normally dependable OS where force-quitting an application (or programme) means you must reboot to avoid messing up others. The repairs finally taken in hand as I type -- that's a beauty of the Big X. Above all, what made me cross was immediately to think of several people in town who would have lost all they'd done, as I often did before I read a totally missing manual or two and absorbed the best of the Web. The design fault lies in this: if ever again faced with a Mac or other computer disaster on such a scale and without experts close, I'd want to take it to say, TS (where they're being just so American today. I hate Halloween, sorry). I'd get help from people who can mostly talk sense. But you can't. Because you can't get online! And the help you need isn't in the help places on your computer. Because that kind of disaster never, of course, happens. These days, I find it relatively easy to try something novel and great fun which sends even Mac OS X into a total panic. But the hours wasted getting there must have totalled weeks, perhaps months. When it comes to information technology, I've begun to think, like the ever masterly William Gibson and others, of what comes next. After laptops and desktops. Once I've got my own answer, it might be in the Project. I mention that self-censored topic here once more, while my Mac does lots of other things of its own, because I'm recruiting... Close friends get first call, but I may change my mind and say more about it soon, if necessary. In musical circles, one person to reintroduce as a matter of urgency is Ana Gracey. The woman's voice is a miracle. Plus some hard work, I guess. I told you that back in March. But now I've listened to her on a really good sound system, I insist that she's got it. A gift from the gods. There might be another somebody pretty new to the "Great Voices of Women" scene, but in a different vein. Ever heard of Stina Nordenstam? If not, take it from me, you will! And, I swear on the head of the White Goddess, she's on the French branch of the iTunes Music Store already. Wow. Somebody there's got some sense. I found out about her on Tuesday, was convinced and bought some yesterday, introduced her to Barry today. He enjoyed what he got of a good rinse to the ears, so he said. Do they come in threes? If so, Norah Jones may have changed style, but needs to watch her back. Madeleine Peyroux's new 'Careless Love' isn't at the ITMS France yet. But 'Dreamland' is. There are no design faults in this trio of discoveries. As they say in this country: "Warning: talent!" As for movie-makers: how about something else? You could try give the Macs to the bad guys. I would. 11:00:55 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 27 octobre 2004

Notion. Not masochistic. Tonight I worked on the Project. Then I felt an urge to write an ungodilily long letter, before saying this and then going back to the thingie. The letter gave me another urge. I want, in a wholesome, healthy way, to spend a few weeks reading all the love letters I have mailed since I've had a computer. Partly, I want to get this over before the extinction of the male of the species I once warned you about when I read it in 'Science et Vie': that famous day when biology wins and women rule over the world instead of pretending this is done by men. (Will they remember us with at least an iota of affection?) Mainly, I wish to do it because I'm suddenly curious to know how many dreadful lies I have told in my life. Is it just tens ... or millions? How many have I got left? 11:36:00 PM  link   your views? [] My-grams: don't mix with migraines Kathryn is good at a mindful haiku. every now and then. Me too. But I'm also practising Nicki-grams, based on the sense of my oft-repeated second favourite quote from TSE: "immature poets imitate; good poets steal." Here's one before it falls through the sieve, along with the best piece of advice anybody ever gave me, which was "Stop Thinking." A likeable cynical bastard asked me today why I was suddenly "most solicitious" of his welfare. I gave him a silly answer, left the real one as an immediate and unspoken exercise for my neuron pea: "Happiness and love are like misery and colds: when they arrive in intolerable doses, they're best liberally shared with your friends." 12:41:10 AM  link   your views? []

dimanche 24 octobre 2004

Saigon green So. Should you trip over the body of 'The Quiet American ('Un américain bien tranquille'), may I recommend close attention to the bomb attacks in central Saigon? I mean Philip Noyce's latest film of the book, starring Michael Caine and a surprising Brendan Fraser. I cheated. Played the episode twice on first absorbing it. Or thought I'd "absorbed it". Discovered to my delight that the DVD extras include a 20-minute 'Anatomy of a Scene'. The key one. Six cameras, soundtrack genius and Vietnamese "extras" and helpers including a man who was there the day of those 1952 explosions. I watched the whole rented film again. It's rare that film-makers give you such a fine "howdunnit" of a whodunnit. It's rarer still that a movie is better than the book. Graham Greene didn't think much of the famous earlier attempt. He'd have been proud of Noyce & co. 10:03:45 PM  link   your views? []

samedi 23 octobre 2004

Cautious coda on the wrong note Blackmail. That's nearly it. Already! The "view" out front here where it should be is right. Norm. Nat. I said: Dead. Kaput. Remember? Oui, try Bach. Bonne idée. For what Frogs call "musique savante" -- does this description of a European-rooted music mean all other musics are braindead? -- who's better than a mathematician who did nothing by numbers? It's the bunch of e-mails. If you want to say it, bloggers have comment boxes. Four have the sense to agree with Nat and Norm. Of my "foes", the longest hate and joy letter is my favourite: may I quote you? The rest are near blackmail. To Ms -- I translate -- "...[W]ho else tells it like it is?", i.e. the Factory. I suggest: all of you? It works. Don't you think the Factory files bored everyone else? Inside the Factory, I was accused of "blackmail": it was a joke, once every card was on the table, always intended that way. Has nobody else noticed how things French often function by corruption, nepotism and "système D", as elsewhere. It's ungodily, kinda works if you don't fight the bad guys. Joint 4th Prize: Cindy the Squip & other heart-throbbing "sighs". 3rd Prize: François's "you won't be able to stop." Next spring, chum, I even quit smoking, promise. Shared 2nd Prize: other friends, some family, Tony, also forgiven for: "R.I.P. I shall miss it, if only becos it's always comforting to realise there's someone out there as muddled, sad, angry, ambitious & bone-idle as you are." Winner: astute bastard, expert in forcing back doors as well as windows (last night I liked most of 'Antitrust') -- "Nick. So you're through with experiment, but I'm sorry and just a tad surprised that since you've studied the I Ching [for 30 years, mate, not 20] you can call any decision irreversible, you know better. Tim." The unplanned, unrequested awards make me feel more comfortable marginally more comfortable than leaving you with a grave, far from anywhere in cold driving rain without a taxi in the place. So, I demand time to think, ignore people who say I shouldn't think. The Wildcat was right, an age ago, to tell me what's wrong with my writing (avoiding "pompous", which was kind), and better, how to change it. If my inner woman -- anima? -- changes her mind (she might yet win, they tend to), much must happen. BJ's "do it every day" maxim was buried, but I'd tread it down. While many make a bunch I was proud to join, I'd drop plans to contribute more for 'Blogcritics'. They're excited about that election whose outcome may scare what's left of the living daylights out of the rest of the world. Even She only guesses which way the cookie will crumble. I'd give up on politics. Women and other human People, Project and Factory would take priority, in that order, logging last. Further entries would abide by my lunar calendar and nobody's deadines. The subtitle would change. "an experiment...!" is colder than any stone. Maybe "...get real!" would go up. My last word would always be Hers. Since She invented it, I want more: ungodily (pron. unspeakable) (mainly US usage) adj. un·god·i·li·er, un·god·i·li·est   1. Without body or substance; shapeless, pointless, meaningless, formless   2. Intolerable, unsupportable, right, wrong: that's ungodily behaviour.   4. (fam.) Accidental, unintended, unpredictable   7. Too long to complete: have you heard her ungodily concerto?  13. Extra-terrestrial, void: the results of carbon analysis and viral tests revealed something ungodily. It's not from here.  15. (phys.) Quantum jump  36. Hazardous  40. Purposeful: the ungodiliest idea.  49. (chem., biol., neur.) Microscopic 101. (slang) Absurd, foolish; ‡cruel, vile adv. un·god·i·li·ly Etym.: der. bod·i·ly, un·god·ly (unknown, 2004?; poss. Mandarin Chinese, early Icelandic Yiddish, Sanskrit) What's harder to avoid loving than a flower or a "lethal cocktail of beauty, (etc." viz. yesterday)? Do the words "please" and "sorry" come close? To say "yes" would mean URL links with minimal explanation, e.g.: "With sea-salted Harry, I've just resumed the intimate chat we left off for a while a decade ago. HSF's Limbic System joins the 'places I drop in'. The Kid kisses artful Bobbi. I send her a smacker myself. Even blogs have tidal estuaries." Or "Still lost with Macs and RSS? Try a drunken idea." Or "Why Missy Elliott? She says: 'Je ne veux pas d'un mec qui ne tienne qu'une minute... Si tu ne peux pas me faire crier oooh comme le fait le rhythme Alors, reprend tes papiers, t'es viré.' Exactly." What's an 'eXistenZ' without the right 'Frequency'? Have an eye to the bonuses and unsolicited extras, now that you know why you never wanted to know and never will. Trust no-one. Promise nothing. I've my own ungodily X-File to complete. It's none of your business. Yet. To be continued? My tossing coin has a hole in the middle. What if the answer falls through it? 5:48:25 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 21 octobre 2004

Death Sentences. Why does it take an elephant... ...so long to give birth? Announcements by others of the demise of this blog are misplaced. Here's the word from the goat's mouth, Young Nick: taliesin's log is dead. All fragments of mad genius sometimes responsible for this magnum opus are united in an irreversible decision. Being me, I can't drop "an experiment" without words. Others can judge whether the experiment was success, failure, or neither black nor white. François, you're such an idiot when you try hard. I may be no expert in "favicons", but this site's Rorschach blot you've followed in your browser is a wolf. It's clearly a wolf. Why you took it for a butterfly is beyond me. Blow it up and look again before I blow you up. To Jacques, who left word on my ansafone, saying you read in a paper that the latest mess hitting the Factory's fan seems solidified into a long strike on its French-language domestic wires, that's news to me, even if true. I've been sick, haven't looked at the reports, can't enlighten you further. To Factory hands, I say there must be a solution, but I damned if I know what it is. I'd suggest it might be a bad idea to drive out a third top boss with other management types. Where would that leave us, beyond square one? Big news agencies are all in public trouble. If changing anything upstairs at ours might help, may we not at last consider modifying AFP's ancient statute, while keeping our independence? When the governors include domestic clients who are also competitors, we have an unhealthy "conflict of interests". Now to stuff of possible broader interest. I've been way out of it. What began as a bad cold turned back into the Condition, with complications. Those who endured "taliesin's log", lapping up obscene details and gory illustrations, don't need a repeat. There are no bits of Nick, inside or out, left to show. The gut balloon is deflating. The waste matter you need sparing slowly returns to what the doctors call "normal". I planned to stay clear of the Factory until Monday. When told Africa's desperate, I know this. Isn't it always? But when told I was indispensable to editing its woes and joys on Friday, I ate the bait. For an hour or so. The rest is in my attic. Some call it a brain. The Kid thinks it's the famous tin of peas. The most astute of the Faithful Five ¾, following a central part of the "experiment", always tried elementary detective work: "Cherchez la femme!" No beating about the bush. Wise Americans might wipe that bunch of thorns off the map. Here, elsewhere, journalists have learned how parts of your vote are allegedly rigged in advance. Many of us cross fingers with others you'll again make your nation one we only pretended to dislike, without applying that to inviduals. End an obsessive, threadbare tyranny now divorced from reality! We saw the emperor's new clothes, looked through them. Now it's your turn. Without ado then, it's always the Woman who's been a problem. You read of many of them. The Kid is now a bright, often happy first-year lycée lass with a rich life. No longer Daddy's little girl. The Wildcat's exceptional. You followed ups and downs with this rare creature. Especially the downs. Of a savage desire become a very close difference, she remains costly in long-distance calls, but when it comes to friendship and love, they come no better. We shared hells and highs. After fierce fights, "unpardonable" insults and huge laughs, I still say she's a great-looking miracle. When she gets her man, which she will, I hope he knows just how lucky he is, every instant of his life. Of course there's somebody else. There's always somebody else. Do somebody elses have somebody else? Ask anyone. You can waste time with the repaired search engine, dear readers. You won't find her. To do that you need the real world and stories I never blogged and never shall. Her tale began here as a one-way love story in breach of every "rule in the book". When it became what some laughingly call "serious", I wrote "Milady" out of this place and covered my tracks where she stayed in it. You might say all the "love" I threw at her was "Here's my ungodly Mess. You just gotta love it, sweetypie." She's a life and heart of her own and merely liked me a lot. She found me funny, absurd, outrageous, badly behaved and totally terrifying. That was on my good days. Being the biggest fool in the world, I never realised, until it was almost too late, what she was giving me with the wisest simplicity. I love symbols so much that I've failed to see the obvious signs. This means absolutely nobody deserves what they get and everybody gets as much as they deserve. There's nothing stranger than justice. When she denies every word, it will be with irrefutable arguments. It was by accident that I met a woman known in every dream in a routinely banal life in a routinely unfair world. Apart from looks as stunning as the Wildcat's but quite different, she too is clever and funny. Who among us can resist a lethal cocktail of beauty, brains, wisdom and humour? I "blew it" of course, being the world's blindest grey wolf. She's neither wolf nor wildcat. I won't tell you what she is. Some people's "magic companions", once known, must stay even more secret than their Names. Ask any shaman. She gave me two things nobody else did. A second chance, then a third. She also screwed up. But what she did "wrong", she did by mistake. Some people proved ... unhelpful. You know who you are. There's no point in killing you, though it crossed my mind. A handful have been great. To my readers with limitless imaginations, I'd say your guesses are bound to be wrong, which is how it should be. The "experiment" remains a sieve of clues. You can't avoid leaving a few holes when you push a million words in 20 months. No crime is perfect, except by definition. Amid all the lunacy and occasional wisdom I hope have given pleasure, I've tried to tell truths as honestly as one can while they're happening. It's been painful and fun, doing what we all do: reaching parts the others don't always spot. For anything I've said which some have called truly inspired, you have only other people to thank. I simply put bits together... However, while "nothing's new under the sun", a better enterprise has begun. I'm so sure of it I'm shutting this one down. I'll leave a few more clues, having been in blogospheric hibernation for so long, but hundreds of thousands of others will keep you abreast of the same musical, movie, science and book discoveries I make. While others don't write them up in my roundabout way, some say what they think instead of blinding you with common sense, science and stupidity. There's no shortage of great blogs. To anyone who's really got something to say, I say "Say it." The worst mistake we can make is to imagine it's been said before, and better. This usually proves to be true. Thing is, whoever said it before wasn't you and didn't say it your way. And a few things always need saying... I've got something else to do. I've done none today, when other things had to be done. But that project and my Factory work will take time and are too different to pursue this log. Whatever may possibly take me past the million-word mark -- for fans of round numbers -- is too new for this old place. Yesterday I saw the Shrinkess for the most valuable meeting to date. To those who miss me at the Factory -- it's reassuring to know there are so few of you! -- yes, I stepped over the line, but tales I hear of what supposedly happened to me are either partial truths or downright lies. Nobody knows the full story. Few ever will. Those who have come here expecting honesty deserve to learn that I'm emerging from my worst ever depression, which felt terminal at its height. I remain as fragile as some call me "strong". When it comes to "Cherchez la femme", you must look for the man. Such is a life. To those who know my dear Dad shook hands with death and went critical, some of us hoped and people who knew how to pray did that. My father's story is little different from anybody else's, with the usual "big problem". It's his own, unique and unfinished. Well, the stubborn bugger made it. He won't mind me saying he's home again and he's fine. If sometimes you've found my own lows and highs illuminating since I went public, then you deserve to know I've found out the name of my most feared enemy, the killer who stalks me. Sorry to disappoint those who jumped to conclusions. I'm scared of neither women nor sex. Winter and nowhere skies always petrified me, but even that made no sense. It's not decay and not death, as such, nor even limbo. The thing that hides in my inner darkness and has frightened me most all my life is quite simply ... me. Any reality, especially yours, loyal reader, was preferable to mine. The Shrinkess reckons that finding what's left in the coffin -- which I see in shards -- is perhaps useful but "not indispensable". She gave her blessing, with reservations, to a decision turned action: sending the mind-drugs to the same place as I did alcohol in 1997. Forever down the toilet. For her, what comes next some of us have no choice but to do in the end, winning the war of the sexes. Not out there, folks, but in me. That we're all both male and female has been known since forever. Reconciling the two is for some harder than for others. This guy won't make do with a cobbled job. I've rediscovered a further paradox which concerns us all, far bigger than our inner paradoxes and contradictions. It's an ancient one, often told. This is where I again draw attention to the Blogroll on the left. I've chosen carefully, so it contains nobody but people I consider gifted, often funny, brave and original in dozens of ways, all worth meeting and special. Some I won't name are more special to me than others and have given me more than they know by telling me their own stories. To those who wanted to strip almost naked online, I'm particularly grateful. Keep at it. The same goes for others who prefer clothes but share treasures. I disagree with ideas some of you express or illustrate about politics, art, religion, sex and dirty linen, but you're there because I admire the way you do it and love a good row. My problem is that the very few people I have closer to hand are, of all, the most Special and they'll get most of my time. "Daddy, Daddy, can I tell you a joke?" "You can try, darling," I told the Kid last weekend, while you still would have agreed I wasn't fit for most company. "It's a 'blonde joke'. Just to make you suffer a bit more!" "Go on, then." Sam says there are other versions. Here's hers: "A blonde goes to the doctor with horrible tummy pains. He gives her lots of suppositories because they're both French. The woman takes them for a week, feels worse every day. She goes back to the doctor in a mess and says: 'It hurts more than ever!' 'Did you finish them as I said?' 'Oh yes, doctor.' 'Maybe the treatment wasn't long enough. Here's another prescription and I'd like you to takes these pills too, one three times a day, with meals.' A week later, the blonde shows up again. She looks terrible and can scarcely walk. 'Doctor, doctor, why can't you help me? I've never been ill before, scarcely a cold.' 'It works for nearly everyone else.' The blonde rummages, takes the last suppository out of her handbag. 'These taste so horrible too. It takes several glasses of water just to keep one down.' 'Oh my poor girl. What have you been doing?' 'All you said, doctor.' 'You're not meant to eat them.' 'Doctor, I may be blonde but I'm not just a dumb pretty face. Do you really think I'm silly enough to shove capsules up my backside?'" OK. It may not be funny, may not even work unless you're half-Frog. But it made me laugh and it's so true. All real creativity seems inextricably linked with pain. They go together and there's no way I'm stopping creativity. Why does it take an elephant so long to give birth? I dunno really. Do you? Does it matter? The person who accidentally opened the grave for me -- I will hunt down anybody who persists in the wrong ideas -- gave me the present of my life. The most wrong of all are those who say that this person kept me from both Factory and work. She did no such thing. All you need to know of what she's done is that she helped show me what has always been wrong with me. Better still, she gave me many clues to how I can find my own resources to heal the wound. I hate those who said this blog's been a novel in disguise, wanted more of its cast. You're despicable, unkind and mean. But she, in adding irresistible encouragement to jump over the edge, is by far the most wicked of all. I've never detested anybody as much as I love her, with all my heart for the rest of my life. She's the real one for me, always was and will be. The fact that she's "not mine" has sweet fuck all to do with it. Nobody belongs to anybody else. Some of you said this would end in tears, smiles and a love letter, the best song and poem I can manage, maybe a few flowers. How right you were. What a woman once took from me and another one gave me back, I'm not telling. It's a paradox. It's a fiction and it's true. It's my version of a story some of us take half a lifetime to understand. It will take me ages to turn it into an art form. I need all the help I can get with it, but only from the few very people I've asked and the ones who've said "Yes. Great idea. Let's do it." The blog won't vanish but I'm done with experimentation. Cue Ted Hughes please! What comes next will be extremely hard work and it's much more "for real" than any virtual accomplishments you may have liked or loathed. Je vous embrasse, tous. Sorry if that embarrasses the guys. Thanks to everybody who's been a part of this part of the show. You must neither rejoice nor mourn over the farewell. May your gods go with you. I'm borrowing the white goddess, but don't worry, since there's more than enough of her to go round, has been since the first human people invented her. Au revoir! Oh yes. I'll be back. And someone else will be with me... 7:02:31 PM  link   your views? []

lundi 4 octobre 2004

The best-laid (blogging) plans... ...have gone wildly astray. On this unexpectedly sunny day, your reasonably faithful correspondent came within an ace of losing close on 20 GB of data on the Mac. Thank heavens for Disk Warrior. True, most of the essential was backed up, but still... Otherwise, I've been very busy elsewhere since my last post. I've not even had the chance to write a couple of film reviews I have in mind. So this has to be another 'blogging will resume as soon as possible' entry. In the meantime, thanks to the people at Atomz, who've recently decided to allow their clients another 250 pages worth of site indexing for free, the search engine here now works properly again. And with that good news, here's the bad: "The last index of your web site index completed 8 seconds ago. It took 15 minutes to crawl 653 pages and index 653 pages containing 928079 words..." 928,079 words! Yes. Good reader, I assure you I'm as appalled as you are. 9:09:13 PM  link   your views? []