5cense

368the past is just another story we tell ourselves


Dear every 1,

... + also the 0s ... o, internetted every ... a.k.a. HCE. .... Here Comes Everybody. Including Gavrilo Princip. How different this past century would be if you hadn't shot Franz Ferdinand exactly 100 years ago today. Maybe u were just a pawn ... that the wheels were in motion in an unstable system ... some1 else would've done the job ... tho the other 5 assassins seemed incompetent ... + u guys were given expired arsenic ... u took it after but it only made u sick ... the would-be suicide bomber earlier that threw the grenade also swallowed a past-due pill + jumped in the river ... besides shelf-lifed arsenic, the river was only 4" deep ...

These are but words ... we weren't there obviously ... we were in Bosnia 98 years later, but not Sarajevo. We're not fans of the dickish Djoker. Nadal is our hero ... the word hero comes from the Greek ... a warrior who watches over + protects. All this hero-worship bullshit came later.

Who can say what really happened 100 years ago ... all we can say is what's running thru our head in this moment ... our head which may or may not exist were it not for Gavrilo Princip. 100 years of the world war machine ... sure, there was war + violence before that, but never on a global scale. There was tribalism + empirization, but not globalization.

Princip or Ferdinand never would've imagined that 100 years later a movie would be made about a guy that falls in love w/ an operating system. 1/2-way thru the movie the OS says «the past is just another story we tell ourselves» ... over + over again.

After the Trojan war, Ulysses is detained on the isle of Calypso ... 7 years. Takes him a decade in total to get home ... a decade being 1/10 of a century ... the only reason we make such arbitrary distinctions is cuz we were born w/ 10 fingers. But in temporal increments less than a day we use a base-12 counting system, courtesy of the Egyptians ... cuz they counted knuckles stead of fingers (not counting thumbs).

+ a count is 1 social standing less than a duke, which is 1 less than an archduke. Franz Ferdinand was 1 step away from emperor before Princip gunned him down in JFK fashion ... only he also took out the accompanying wife. Ulysses was king, of Ithaca ... but the Greeks had their own pecking order, the gods of which were above it all.

down for THE count

We've never been to Ithaca ... neither the Greek or New York equivalent. We remain still summering on the isle of Man-hattan ... tho we've been to Brooklyn a few times since the last post, including once by boat. SSES-wise, we finally finished w/ Calypso ... got off her island ... it took us a while, we were struggling w/ the continuity of the chapter. Also why we haven't blogged here in a while ... our original thinking was 1 episode per week. Hopefully things will accelerate now just like they do in The Odyssey ... Calypso is where U spends 7/10 of his time. Mostly Calypso was a big time sink.

Since we're somewhat grounded (tho j's prognosis is looking up) we got to thinking there for a bit that it was high time we got a dog ... we've always wanted 1 but always thought about it too much + made excuses, like we travel too much ... but rather than make excuses, started to think that we could use the dog as an excuse for why we can't travel, etc. But besides the travel restrictions, it just seems cruel + silly to have a dog in the city. What a strange breed we are, beings that cultivate reciprocal relations w/ another breed—feeding them + taking them for walks + cleaning up their poop ... all for companionship. We can understand this around the campfire in open countryside, but in a city seems strange, like a vestigial organ u drag around on a leash ... imprisoning the dog + ourselves in the process.

a boy + his dog (a wolf actually, named Zorro)

The above woof a big inspiration for The Becoming ... tho The Becoming is set in Oregon + we had the above woof in Axixic, Mexico. We had a family dog in Oregon, but it was pathetic cocker spaniel named Bridgette that was kept in a shit-strewn kennel in the backyard. But summers we'd be reunited w/ the hybrid daughter of Zorro, Lobo:

Been reading Trabajos del Reino by Yuri Herrera ... not that it has anything to do w/ any of this ... mostly we figured we justed needed to brush up on our Spanish. Been watching the World Cup in Spanish so figured why not total immersion. Actually, the name of the main character in Trabajos del Reino just happens to be Lobo, the same name as the wolf-dog above. Sometimes he is called Lobo + other times he is just called Artista. The publisher Periférica sent me the book, along w/ a bunch of others including Motorman, which they recently translated in Spanish (+ we read last year in Granada)

Guess there's a whole genre now of narcoliterature, spawned by the drug trafficking culture of Mexico ... tho Juan Pablo Villalobos would just assume have this word erased from our vocabulary ... tho Herrera's book is 1 that rises a cut above the rest.

Besides dogs + world warfare + futbol, we've been thinking a lot lately about things generally in terms of systems. As we mentioned in the last post, we've been getting increasingly disenfranchised w/ sports ... not to go into specific details ... there's no point ... but funny that the spanish word for referee, árbitro, sounds rather arbitrary ... so much depends on what they see + call ... the floppers + biters might get fined or penalized after, but too late to change the outcome of the actual game. Uruguay knocks off Italy + advances ... but w/o the cannibal ... what's the point?

The term widow's peak stems from certain hooded hats women wore when in mourning. Wolf's peak seems more apt. Hard to tell from the photo that we started this post with, but Gavrilo Princip had a slight widow's peak. If James Wagner had a widow's peak + more pronounced incisors he'd resemble Luis Suárez. Wagner homophonically translated Trilce by Cesar Vallejo, who has a sort of inverted widow's peak.

... we're rambling ... + simultaneously watching Brazil vs. Chile (1-1 in the 88th minute ...). Peru (Vallejo's country) didn't make the World Cup ... Bosnia did but they got knocked out. Anyway, back to our systems-based rant ... or the perceived lack thereof. It seems in almost every field—futbol, literature, drug trafficking—what is encouraged more + more is individual pursuit. Self-organizing systems of information + art—what we call culture—is being hijacked by select attention-seeking individuals w/ the biggest heads or some insane gimmick.

It's inevitable perhaps, innately human ... but now it's all playing out on a globalized scale ... every 1 not only self-aware but acutely aware of their place in the world. People are no longer driven to contribute to a field of knowledge or battle or culture ... but every 1 wants to be the hero. With the messages driven into us by movies + the media is this any surprise?

More + more it's coming down to how to cheat the system. It starts in school, students are no longer driven to learn, but get 'good' grades. In every sport + discipline, those that succeed are the best cheaters, drug-takers, floppers, biters. It's no longer about how you play the game ... maybe it never was ... Grantland Rice's words nothing but an idealized pipe dream.

And not only has it all become about winning, but every 1 wants to take credit for it. Successful Grantland journalism now means driving transgenders to suicide by outing them, all for a good story. For a byline ... or punchline. Altho fundamental to the theory of natural selection is that it's every man for himself, it seems only humans as a whole have regressed to such barbaric behavior. Most eco-systems seem pretty balanced w/o human intervention.

Now we're in overtime. European futbol has become especially ugly ... the Brazilian Dani Alves has the best approach ... what we're getting at is ... w/ all these distractions ... it's hard to appreciate the beauty of the overall system, the drama, which in futbol especially should be like watching an opera ... but for the most part it's just a bunch of racist fans + whining babies flopping around. Same w/ basketball.

In the art world it's the same ... the players that know how to make the most noise + get noticed are 1s that «succeed» ... the 1s that know how to play the game. More + more attention is being paid to the sensationalized antics of artists + writers rather than the actual art.

Now into the 2nd overtime ... obviously we're watching more than writing. If Chile wins, the host country of Brazil could very well collectively commit suicide. Would definitely put a downer on the rest of the world cup. Hope it doesn't come down to penalty kicks ... nothing is worse. There are only losers w/ penalty kicks, no winners. But it's looking that way ... only 7 minutes. Neymar wins for style points but he's not as good finishing as he is getting the ball into perfect position ... + Hulk for the best name ... fits him. Crowd is awfully quiet ... 5 minutes left ... 3 ... both teams seem resigned to penalties. May as well flip a coin. Holy shit ... a Chilean shot off the goal post! 200 million hearts almost broken. Neymar can barely walk ... cramping up ... that's it. Penalties. Can't bear to watch ... what a way to go either way ...

 > 369 > O' brother, put ur H on the maPhattan Project ... peregrinating like gridwork


5cense

[  (ɔ)om.Posted 2014  derek white  |  calamari press   ]