Editions MSS
Editions MSS
MICHAEL SEAN STRICKLAND
Divastigations

A sort of morning hour upon all sublunary things, with an army of shadows running.
— R. L. Stevenson

§ 0. Avant-propos, or a sort of introduction.
First Divastigation
Of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and body!)

— J. Joyce

§ 1. Virtual philosophy of miraculous origins | § 2. Instinct is a familiar form of turmoil | § 3. A strict truth’s simplicity | § 4. Paradoxical contradictions of a cunning linguist’s wanton bottom | § 5. On knowing what is good | § 6. Occasional body of a primordial soul | § 7. A philosophy posing as a man | § 8. Instinct laughs at morality | § 9. A profound insight | § 10. Awaiting this wild god’s animal | § 11. Imaginary points of imaginary things | § 12. If a sculptor’s logic could lift this world off its... | § 13. Discordant concord of things | § 14. A kind of fool | § 15. Marital bliss | § 16. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (I). Sound conclusions drawn from faulty suppositions | § 17. An inquiring mind wants to know | § 18. All that’s physical attains to history | § 19. A world which is not ours | § 20. To play hangman in this fantastic jail I call my world | § 21. As I hid among clouds and storms | § 22. A boldly original imitation | § 23. How disappointing this practical world is.
Fourth Divastigation Minus Two
And burning, and scratching, and harrowing, and ploughing, and subsoiling, in and in, and out and out.

— H. D. Thoreau

§ 24. In which, for lack of a V, I craft ab ovo a small, naughty word | § 25. What is abiding and most original | § 26. Morality making stupid custom | § 27. Tools of all kinds | § 28. A puritan approximation | § 29. Obligatory stoicism | § 30. On account of malnutrition | § 31. Playacting in public | § 32. Apparitional analysis of monstrous actions | § 33. Tasting of it strictly | § 34. Laid out in rows of a normal mind’s failings | § 35. Handy histrionics dividing what is from what is not | § 36. Of short and sunlit things | § 37. A cast of solitary mirrors | § 38. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (II). An ichnology of antipathy, with bibliography and citations | § 39. A most natural and fruitful poison | § 40. If on account of this utility | § 41. Catching sight of a final goal | § 42. And by supposing a solution | § 43. Sympathy is morality | § 44. This fruit of fruits hangs fancy | § 45. Simply to avoid admitting | § 46. Of moods and luxury.
Third Divastigation
Charity out of vainglory is as old as pharisaism.

— N. Boyle

§ 47. But so that mankind might... | § 48. Passion will not wait | § 49. Holy simplicity | § 50. About doing harm by day and night | § 51. Pointing out a royal road to truth | § 52. Far, far away from it | § 53. Without flinching | § 54. In which you can find almost anything | § 55. Dusky thoughts intimating rain | § 56. His own actions | § 57. At so thighigh a poorcarcass of joyproust | § 58. If only I’d known how to | § 59. It will, will it? | § 60. Of tobacco and alcohol | § 61. With obliging words | § 62. Proof by pathology | § 63. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (III). A habituation as old as mankind | § 64. Practical wisdom | § 65. By our own standards | § 66. Watching Pascal and Spinoza shoot craps | § 67. From this drop of blood | § 68. A plain chant stipulation | § 69. This standard is continually changing.
Fourth Divastigation
Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow’s shadow.

— Rosenkrantz

§ 70. Propping lusty thoughts on liminal stilts | § 71. To pivot about an axillary origin | § 72. Slavish or vain | § 73. Mouthing off a customary opinion | § 74. Who knows most must mourn most | § 75. Not to think of all this | § 76. Staid womaninity | § 77. Just starting out | § 78. Grounds for suspicion | § 79. That things of this sort still... | § 80. Summary participation | § 81. With no particular warmth | § 82. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (IV). Do not ask, How am I to act? but, What should I not do? | § 83. A particularly difficult labor | § 84. Paths in high mountains | § 85. Law and ritual | § 86. Thus a psychic knot | § 87. Hold it in your arms | § 88. Striving for distinction is striving for domination | § 89. Formal analysis | § 90. Almost without noticing | § 91. What of this soul is holy | § 92. Mask of a city.
Fifth Divastigation
No construction without constant critical control, and no criticism without putting our constructs into a linguistic form.

— K. Popper

§ 93. It’s right you should | § 94. An artificial clarification | § 95. But by what standards | § 96. Disdain no signpost to instruction | § 97. Tactical infatuation | § 98. Profoundly drunk | § 99. A way a long a last | § 100. Shy but proud | § 101. A major good part | § 102. Coming into confirmation | § 103. From a grand oral tradition | § 104. Of natural sounds | § 105. Against originality | § 106. A Kantian countdown of confusing cant | § 107. It’s all physiological | § 108. Blissfully unhappy | § 109. Soul by soul unstumbling | § 110. Daring to frown | § 111. A full word too many | § 112. Against compulsion | § 113. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (V). Uphill into ravishing light flows a rigorous casing of opinion | § 114. Continual hard work | § 115. What this work is worth apart from any worth intrinsic to its author.
Sixth Divastigation
Contact was always a byword for lunacy.

— A. Theroux

§ 116. As though in a fog | § 117. Floating, dancing, mocking, childish and blissful art | § 118. How could it grow and multiply? | § 119. But as things now stand | § 120. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (VI). A ruling out of prior scholars’ confusion | § 121. Promiscuous clay | § 122. Caught in a courtyard conspiracy | § 123. Any notion of which was far from his mind | § 124. As a woman in a man | § 125. To play around it | § 126. How much good it will do you | § 127. Not as difficult as waking | § 128. A florid stylization of form | § 129. Diabolical obscurity | § 130. How to dry cook a bag of light | § 131. Shoots and sprouts | § 132. Traditional vacuity | § 133. Disgracing him with words | § 134. Immortality | § 135. Four ways to put it down | § 136. Half a man | § 137. Possibly only in a land of loving good | § 138. So thus, by coming, did I find.
Fifth Divastigation Plus Two
It also has a basic focus from which it cannot stray too far without losing.

— V. Valeri

§ 139. As I was drawing you in | § 140. Such an acquisition as this | § 141. Tautomutilatory bombast | § 142. In stark contrast to gray | § 143. Discharging it in works and actions | § 144. To touch is only human | § 145. Rigorous and wary clausal subordination | § 146. Annular satisfaction | § 147. Childish soliloquy | § 148. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (VII). Multivocal foundations of transformational womaninity | § 149. Point, shaft, wound, flight | § 150. By acting as if drunk | § 151. A giving way to blind raging | § 152. Childhood surroundings | § 153. Cross this off your list | § 154. This small furry animal | § 155. Stoic domination | § 156. With only two strings | § 157. But not as distinct individuals | § 158. Banish from thought this broad | § 159. A two-way oblation in not too many words | § 160. Both kinds of agitation | § 161. With him and for him.
Sixth Divastigation Plus Two
This spiral is a mark. This mark is no part of it. This turning is not a book. This turning from is nothing.

— M. Palmer

§ 162. Gifts procuring no rights | § 163. I was going to go into it | § 164. To count any kind of affliction | § 165. As into a whirlpool | § 166. To count it in both colors | § 167. Things you didn’t want known | § 168. Thoughts | § 169. Following and walking | § 170. Antiquity’s gift | § 171. Struggling to say it | § 172. Not only so as to harm him | § 173. A laying on of hands | § 174. Pathological criticism | § 175. Casual bland hypocrisy | § 176. As from a vision | § 177. Full of action | § 178. In continual disputation | § 179. Writing in opposition | § 180. Graffiti | § 181. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (VIII). Confrontational bifurcation of Intrussyan usurpation | § 182. Assuming that I’m drunk | § 183. Portrait | § 184. Good form flaunts involuntarily.
Ninth Divastigation
It struck him as crass and faintly lunatic: a four-block dash with it into obscurity.

— H. Mathews

§ 185. Spiritual insight | § 186. Moral limitations | § 187. Hamiltonian sublimation | § 188. I was howling again | § 189. A smooth pink scar | § 190. Flat against rough wood slats | § 191. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (IX). Handy histrionics signifying what | § 192. Topos | § 193. Ludict is light | § 194. This art of choosing plural stuns | § 195. Pussy down swallow off | § 196. Not at a loss for stock words | § 197. Not all that important | § 198. Thirdhand plagiary by anticipation | § 199. Growth of mind | § 200. Bark from vision I forgot to strip | § 201. From my body’s tight labyrinth | § 202. Though this world is crumbling | § 203. Inconspicuous victim | § 204. Slut’s jargon | § 205. Primal violation | § 206. From childhood into dusk | § 207. With grass stains and mud.
Sixth Divastigation Plus Four
Ita magno turbidus imbri molibus incurrit validis cum viribis amnis. dat sonitu magno in parvas igitur partis dispargitur umor, quas oculi nulla possunt sub undis grandia saxa, ruit qua quidquid fluctibus obstat.

— Lucretius

§ 208. So much for spirituality | § 209. Passions of all kinds | § 210. Morning worship at Ishtar’s altar | § 211. Symbol of wisdom | § 212. Lawful suspicion | § 213. Writing it as I think it | § 214. Communal howling | § 215. Pop quiz | § 216. Promiscuous virginity | § 217. Cough cough | § 218. Slanting pools of shadow and light | § 219. Fading construction | § 220. Any dim ploy | § 221. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (X). A small contribution to a philosophy of will to parasitism | § 222. Gray clouds blossom into rain | § 223. Making do with what I could | § 224. Pitiful and vain | § 225. Without vanity | § 226. Capricious punctuality | § 227. Assuming that I will to avoid what I won’t | § 228. Past anything good or bad | § 229. Almost similar | § 230. Owlish warning with moral associations.
Fifth Divastigation Plus Sixth
I am not at all singular in that infirmity.

— C. Dickens

§ 231. All dross is choosing | § 232. Though it sounds too good for us | § 233. A lost blind bucolic crush | § 234. An inclination most natural | § 235. Sunburnt confusion | § 236. As I was giving birth to him | § 237. Bloodburst fruit | § 238. Taking turns giving graph | § 239. Nostalgia palls | § 240. Any man’s ability is usually actual | § 241. My fifth visit, in fact | § 242. From a distant mountain along that famous coast | § 243. What spirit is | § 244. A callgirl sanctification | § 245. Not joy | § 246. So many ways of losing | § 247. In favor of criticism | § 248. Always on guard | § 249. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (XI). Divastigations, a small tri-monthly multilingual journal of arts, writing, philosophy, natural history, and sundry cultural stuff | § 250. Striving for mutual goodwill | § 251. Suppository duty | § 252. A cryptic rapist’s companion | § 253. Hic Rhodus, hic salta.
Sixth Divastigation Plus Sixth
Du — ganz, ganz wirklich. Ich — ganz Wahn.

— P. Celan

§ 254. Pillow down hard | § 255. Many mighty stupid spirits | § 256. What I say I saw | § 257. My soul is vanity | § 258. That I should do as I do | § 259. Its waxing and waning moon | § 260. In contrary proportion | § 261. Assistant satisfaction | § 262. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (XII). An account of antlion larval silk production among Mountain Fukari of Iagip | § 263. Fiction as social pathology | § 264. A compulsory philosophy’s most joint-dimpling thrust | § 265. Unchanging pulp of inconstant things | § 266. Scorn touch | § 267. Against blows, but not against pinpricks | § 268. So as to grow good again | § 269. Through a crack of autumn falsity | § 270. Grinning proof | § 271. “Status: Still Living.” | § 272. Groping for oblivion | § 273. Convictions of all kinds | § 274. Sway amphibian hipspiral | § 275. Still so young | § 276. Sacrificial imprint of hands.
Final Divastigation
I know a hawk from a handsaw.

— Hamlet

§ 277. My story’s moral’s consummation | § 278. Fanatical originality | § 279. Not for want or lack of sport | § 280. Working ambition | § 281. Minatory music | § 282. A slight crack at anthropomorphic fun | § 283. Mutual aid | § 284. Still not at a loss | § 285. A singularly nonchalant application of fulvid immaturity | § 286. Against a promising tonality | § 287. Upon first catching sight of that woman I am | § 288. Bulk discount | § 289. Hit or miss living | § 290. Without jumping to conclusions | § 291. Individual shortcomings | § 292. Rank structuralism | § 293. Nothing of what has music in it | § 294. Towards a schizomythology of ritual (XIII). Total draft of a final calling to accounts | § 295. Public soliloquy | § 296. Vaulting into sky | § 297. Still in my skin | § 298. First you must pass through this | § 299. A profound conviction brought to maturity.
§ 300. Synoptic atlas of actors, artists, authors, locations, topics, words, works, and whatnot.

I doubt if I ought to touch a word of it now.
— H. G. Wells

Antlion. From a photograph shot by Otto X. Goldbarg, c. 1924–1927, of a Mountain Fukari clay bowl (#2004.24.13595) found with Ossuary 162 in Room 21 of Swarts Ruin, Grant, Wyoming, and on display at Harvard’s Display Institution of Old Folks and Tribals in Boston, Mass.
Austin, Monteverde, New York, Nice, Paris, Philadelphia, Vancouver. 1986–2009. Towards a Schizomythology of Ritual, Volume Two.
For Rebekah — A cui io dissi: Tu sola mi piaci / quanto mar, quanti fiumi / ch’ a la strada d’Amor mi furon duci.
In memory of Laure — Or in forma di ninfa o d’ altra diva.
[ A not-for-profit instantiation of human imagination and human labor. ]
Copyright © 2010 Michael Sean Strickland