cognitive assonance

The Noise That Time Makes

by

Merrill Moore

The noise that time makes in passing by
Is very slight but even you can hear it,
Having not necessarily to be near it,
Needing only the slightest will to try:

Hold the receiver of a telephone
To your ear when no one is talking on the line
And what may at first sound to you like a whine
Of wind over distant wires is Time's own
Garments brushing against a windy cloud.

That same noise again but not so well
May be heard by taking a small cockle-shell
From the sand and holding it against your head;
Then you can hear Time's footsteps as they pass
Over the earth brushing the eternal grass.

knowledge and blood pressure

thought this morning of religious zealotry
what takes the human imagination to places of ultimatums

what to weave around oneself a web of meanings
a constellation of certainties
and assert oneself into the world just like anyone else
only with more fervour

some folks sit almost dead
they do very little on any given day
they too are zealots
zealots for the world where nothing important
really ever happens

do all humans espouse a certain zealotry
channel their excitement into something
as the only remaining hope for the world

passionate rhetoric is actually love poetry
it's the only context in which it works
if there is no love there is no poetry

may as well be a babbling auctioneer

i know a man who sits in his well protected fort of trash and trade
he sits paranoid certain that he's got it figured out
certain that the hot breath of the monster
is just out back
and nothing anyone can do short of call
the powers of ultimate good down to bear upon the
forces of destruction
will assist in allaying the intrepid demon

the trial as time goes on is to recognize that
the mind is always large enough and expansive enough
and flexible enough to widen its berth
to accommodate the troubling mystery of existing
and the mind must needs be cleaned and repaired
like a canoe after a rocky rapids tour

wounded it is often difficult to suspend
religious certainties
the juggler knows however
that another mental challenge always awaits
another bleeding heart is always in need
another invisible act of charity
is the only real attraction

i know the zealots
i know the souls who are more ardent
than myself
i know the visions that swell in the heart
and push a man's mind to dreams

the heroics are often without love poetry
and thus they foment little but mayhem

yet the zealots remain
they claim to know something we do not know
they feed off the ignorance of their enemies
and they continue on
like a vine inching up a wall

flannery o'connor in her novella
WISE BLOOD
follows a scenario of zealotry
gone haywire
where pathetic souls who by rights
might've thrived in a useful way
had they been properly schooled
instead flail about in burgeoning chaos
of social disconnections

the zealots are here
no less than mosquitoes

in the stacks

i recently visited the library and sought out a few books
the experience was one of wonder
i wondered why i could not find the books i looked for
for i was told by the computer that these books were on the shelf
but in the looking around i found another book
actually two
both of which have proven as useful for my insight
into present day areas of study

the forthcoming quote is from a paperback
entitled
TREATY TRIP
based on the journal which Claude Lewis kept
while on a journey up to the rivers and lakes
of Manitoba with his brother Sinclair
1924
the text is edited and abridged by
donald greene and george knox and published
in 1959

i am curious about the following line
because a previous reader has manually deleted the line
with a pencil literally crossed it out

the text is interspersed with the pieces of a novel Sinclair Lewis
wrote after the canoe trip
MANTRAP p 167

"nobody ever moves ten inches in the North
without being seen"

the following is Sinclair's description
of the land he visited and the way it left
it's impression upon him

'There was a good deal of regional patriotism. The outside
was regarded with suspicion: it was a place that one might visit from
time to time, to see relatives or for relaxation.....()>>>... [ the next line is the one that is crossed out] - and parenthetized - (The Pas {LaPas} is about 3/4 loose, and you can go as far as you like," Claude Lewis reports)-.....

what follows is a judgement he made
upon his brother's ability to withstand the trial of
life in the summer in the north which seems to have
involved drinking whoring gambling fishing and
running rapids and some writing

at any rate
i was delighted to read the whole thing
and i plan to quote again from the text
at a later date

my point today is simply the
acknowledgement of pleasure
which i suspect is all but lost
the pleasure of finding a book
you did not know you wanted to read

cyber-epistemology

can it be said that anything is known in cyberspace
it all flits
flits by

something anything a word a statement a picture
a digital video clip sits there forever (or what will eventually be the case
everything will be erased and forgotten) and is nowhere
it has little substantial legitimacy in any respect of the word
cyberspace is superfluous
yet nearly everyone regards it as meaningful
the message of the media is insubstantia media res
there is nothing to be gained or understood in
the webworld

that negotiations happen is no secret
that information is transmitted cannot be denied

it is only that the very immediacy of the event
precludes any sort of genuine verification of value

we are swirled into a random barrage of
digitized events

our world breaks up like the malfunctioning of
a digital tv when the pixils freeze and the image
breaks up into a thousand disconnected visual pieces

thus this impression marks the day
and we are left with nothing

a worldwide delusion
and the frightening thing is
it is working
the utter uselessness of this computer world
is hoisted into our lives with complete impunity
no one can ever be blamed
yet we have given ourselves over to the utmost criminal intent
and we give it our tacit blessing
convinced that it is indeed meaningful

there is nothing to be known here
the moment we achieve a bit of information
we are presented with instantaneous fiction
it cannot last as a narrative or a memory
it is a void surrounded by a vaccuum inside a shifting gyre
charged with an electronic digital blinking screen
next to 500 others all on seperate channels

the word incoherence has been stripped of meaning

trapped in a tautological labyrinthe

human activity has been managed into
a vast web of cubicles and
manipulations of information
all in radically incomplete and highly suspect ways

and yet it passes for necessary even desireable activity

if ever there were an opportunity
for worldwide control of minds

when the electricity is shut off
the paper will come in handy

we share vexations and little else

i needed to get this off my chest
jh

epistemology and peaches

lately we've been blessed with sweet ripe peaches
i haven't come across a bad one in two weeks
two weeks of letting my teeth go into the
soft outerflesh into the juicy mush the
muscle of the fruit as it were
i know bliss for a moment it lasts only a moment
and nothing can make it last longer
is eternity inherent
i don't know
here i have but a memory of sweetness and now
the desire to see if perhaps just perhaps
there is one more
one more blessed dribble of
nectar down my chin into my beard

ahh

ahhh