Editions MSS
Editions MSS
MICHAEL SEAN STRICKLAND
Divastigations
Fourth Divastigation Minus Two

And burning

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.
§ 24.
In which, for lack of a V, I craft ab ovo a small, naughty word. — And should I inhabit a world in which dull crowish stoolmarms laugh off an original act of logothymia as a tight broad’s churlish slip? Last night at Glamporium. Pursuant to a pious philosophy of nutrition, I think not. Illify my status. Owlstain’s most infamous floramor. Sacrificial cat fight on Monday, Thursday, Mardi, Friday, Sábado, Lundi, Dimars, Mittwoch, Onsdag, Monday, Bhānu, Indu, Mardi, Bhauma, Saumya, Guru, Bhrigu, Subota, Sthira, Saturday, Thursday, Sontag, Saturday, Vivtorok, and so on. An industrious rāgaman raps out a crooning kriti against a groaning tāla. Look it up in my dictionary: to illify is to cast about publicly with buttloads of pompous noisy agitation without managing to bring anything of import into light. Pink blossoms of confirmation. This is a condition of my job. If that woman turns to God, I, colorful hipsway hybrid of Hamiltonia through Tixpu, turn to prostitution. Ishtar’s child. All of us. Autophagic starts to a romantic fiction in parts. Cyclopic buildings, sacrificial history. Insidious proof of a typical grinning john’s grim satisfaction.
§ 25.
What is abiding and most original. — And should I mortify instinct with a ludicrous ticking off of stops and half-starts; hits, flubs, and non-wins? This fantasy counts for far too much — how much I still cannot say. And if it didn’t? I’m constantly losing my virginity. Strong right arm’s tyrannical rhythm. String this bow. Notch this arrow. Finish it off by hand. A rising function of dawn’s familiar light taking wing. Black cap crimson chirp. Cardinal hopping from branch to branch.
§ 26.
Morality making stupid custom. — And should I harbor any illusions vis à vis this rundown topic, I won’t marry him anyway. A glass of rum. Indiscussability of a bridal sanctification. Probably as a kind of play of light against rapidly strong ringing. Sacroiliac.
§ 27.
Tools of all kinds. — And should I comply with this lowborn law? Highborn I might claim I was if I could stand moaning limping pity to approach, wringing its pavid hands. Puss-pink drool oozing down from a politician’s quaking collusional chin. Origin of what most I want to say. I could spit on it. Worthy of all that mannish clamoring for it? But almost any woman would do as I did. Total wasting away of bodily functions. In similar conditions. I won’t talk about it, though. This constraint. Urinary tract, birth canal, colon, womb, tauroral horns of Fallopius. Finish by writing it all down again. So strongly and for so long. Almost continuous stimulation. A woman posing as a dog.
§ 28.
A puritan approximation. — And should I think it through or jump right in? Cloud formation. Day night dawn morning day. Black scorpion in shadow on black rock still warm from sunlight. Onanistic pilgrim, I lay my body down atop soft damp moss. Lacking this woman’s ivory arm and that woman’s taut scapula. Blatant act of banal plagiary. Paradisal radius. Cloud formation. Plant clay pot within cast-iron sky. I should scorn my womb’s compulsion. Immortal wound of passion I was born with. Skull and tibia of a dying god. Spiral orgy. Paradisal radius. Sting of scorpion. Circular ruins.
§ 29.
Obligatory stoicism. — And should I signify my condition as any good martyr would? Sacrificial imprint of hands. Burnt clay burnt straw burnt wood burnt skulls. Raising a scornful brow against that blind horizon’s cross. Gray hawk spirals along a smoky updraft of saintly victims’ confusion. Arrows down through pilgrim’s frustration. Sound familiar? And shit this stupid boring world is. Passion will not wait. Blood spit thorns spurs whip. I walk along this trail that abuts a cliff. Distant city. Brown flinty sand. Obsidian chips.
§ 30.
On account of malnutrition. — And should I garrison my troop of haggard words in back of a bathroom stall? This scribbling civilization’s root-raw start. Thumbs up for stupidity. As if you didn’t know by now. Graphomanic claw scrawls brilliant graffiti. A laggard glyph sprawls in sun-drunk languor against bright brickwork stung with blood. Wry punch of bitchy wisdom. Put all your trust in a stylish prosy fantasist. Numb mouthful of humming wasp. I must say that I am a bit proud of it. Not too much, though. I sing a body built for prostitution. Turn poor trick into rich man; sulking nymph into virtuous woman. It’s not so hard. Low-cut nail polish thigh and ass with lipstick strap-on dildo blowjob throat and jaw. G-string buzz-cut plum satin bra with crimson bangs and saffron cunt anus skirt. Ishtar’s child, I am a woman of good will. Labia rings. In truth I find it difficult. What you call making a living. But what art isn’t? To ink my story’s margins. I’m not so strong. Slant account. My first, my last. My not first, my not last. First my last, not my first. Not my first, not my last. My first last, my last first. But can I say that? Virtuosity laughs at any lazy fuck that flags in back. Avian tattoos top off an avid sacrum. Mortal sin. Bring down hard that blackjack atop this skull. Crack. My fault as usual. Crack. Man is born for gambling politics and war. Woman to suck his cock. Blatant plagiary again. Poking solid gold nib into a thin wall’s crack. Puking runny black curds of a chalk-thick liquid tart with pills and charcoal. Too much work I did put into it. And a bit too long. This monstrous dwarf of hand. Hot moist hairy tight and slimy. Call it a call girl’s calling. In wrist is rhythm. Call it pornography. In fumbling fist is thirsty thumb. Call it prick. Not so fast, bitch! Call it stomach pump. Clutch and pull and drool and twitch.
§ 31.
Playacting in public. — And should I look at him fondly? Good form flaunts involuntarily. At a pinch of thumb and ring and nail, vain approval labors. I know that now. Going thus through history my body. Puts paid to that kiss-coupling phantom. Famous odor of antiquity. As I was saying to him. Lick that smoky salarval dung from his mouth. A right stiff crotch with lunch. Oh, fill it up, baby! Good and fat and full. Any good world is always round.
§ 32.
Apparitional analysis of monstrous actions. — And should I jab my foot thick into it? Blunt my account with a laborious shadow of wooly psychology. Witold Gombrowicz’s birthday is tomorrow. Paltry philosophy mouths and licks and sucks on a raw fist of dismal moral mufflings. And in conclusion I would insist on Kant’s constipation. Always this infatuation with mythic anguish. First last stand of an all too human soul laying traps for tumbling spirits. Janusfruit proposition. Plump it falls into my rich Argus lap.
§ 33.
Tasting of it strictly. — And should I blush at doing an act almost any normal woman would find totally compromising? Not for a thousand nights of it. From thigh to crotch imprint this wild script’s proposition: carry a whip. A paradox for fools. And with imagination scratching away in a most discomfitting part of truth... I should risk my soul’s affliction. A typically bland flavor, but not lacking in a sort of individual quality. Human, you might say.
§ 34.
Laid out in rows of a normal mind’s failings. — And should I wish this horror into hiding? I’ll find things out that you didn’t want known. Ivory arms, coral lips. Which formation may transmit a normal amount of pain or joy or longing. As tiny as a fish brain. As multifarious as it is ubiquitous. As full of convolutions as this winding mountain trail. Today is Gombrowicz’s birthday. Off an imaginary coast a throbbing pink organ drowns in shoals of sobbing.
§ 35.
Handy histrionics dividing what is from what is not. — And should I ravish my spiritual inclinations with a wry crotch’s strap-on mask of sturdy animality? That’s a hairy mouthful for you. A common young thug’s raw fist. Imaginary soporifics — Saint Arjuna’s zinc infusions, J. J. Astor’s Canadian castor coils (flat furry tails, actually) — for a natural pain. On palm and wrist I sit scribbling words to fill in humanity’s glaring blanks. Scholia fit for any savior’s quiz of sin. Tattoo it to my skull. I drank that pain in midnight bolts.
§ 36.
Of short and sunlit things. — And should I focus my vision on a sight that has high utility in various and sundry domains of inquiry? A topic fit for a convulsing king. Draw no conclusions from anything I say. Nocturnal vigils. Stars. Small talk first. Towards a point of diminishing origins. Inhabit that grid of finality. A thin shaft of light. Contrary to astronomy’s rigorous suppositions, I was crying.
§ 37.
A cast of solitary mirrors. — And should I knot this worry into my oily guts? A tight black dramaturgical bun. A windy cry for Maria, marry, blood bloody Mary [1], or Minakshi. Iambic twist of hypochondria worn with a trochaic bunch of dahlias. Tonight as always I sang my bourbon down. Glamporium. With a pink bow to cinch a crowish clutch of hair. I should mourn that child I was. Without any sort of implications. No spitting, no frowning. Logically implicit. Sympathy is to slowly suck it down.
  1. Bloody Mary. — Or Aunt Smaragdina’s tart viridian Margaritas.
§ 38.
Towards a schizomythology of ritual (II). An ichnology of antipathy, with bibliography and citations. — Supposing truth is a woman, this tautology (and not — contra any falsifying conclusions your conditional curl of lip, your lapidary laugh or lift of brow, your dorsodominant shrug — dramatically dolorous — of collar may claim as full philoscoffical act of logical contradiction — and not, I say, a whining, nagging ghost — half liminal inclination, half limbic inhibition — of womanly intuition) posits morality as, at bottom, a shy child’s way of hiding from particularly unhappy facts of adult sociophysiological morphology (I forbid no curious scholar from scanning what Strickland has said [1] (and still has to say) on this topic, but simply wish to maintain for now an upright lack of obtruding citations (which will follow with a bibliography)) and such dim or glum or glaucous notions as may accompany this willful shutting off of sight, of sound, of touch, and that, in addition, this automatic act of obnubilatory autocontradiction (substituting or adding -str- for -trad- or -ø- (null sign as in symbolic logic, not o with a slash through it as in Finnish orthography) for -di- may aid in clarifying any confusions (I thank Dr. Avílano Bimkov for this insight)) impacts into maturational pathways conducting, from infancy to womaninity, that child I was into this truth I am. Nothing antinomian about any of this, so far, you might fairly quip, drawing supporting quotations from Bimkov, Patrolius, Spinoza, Spitmarkx, Strickland, Foucault, Darkbloom, Darwin, Raymond, Kidjaki, or Lamarck. But hold on (and hold in your yawns (as I hold you in my arms)) — for soon a twist will hook you in typical stylish fashion, and a popular form of snag will turn this murky summa’s subplot into a sunny (sub)littoral story in which thanatos digs at (and into) vital bodily functions. All right now, Victor? You go, girl!
A Litany, with Invocation and Supplications

By O. W. Johnson

Invocation: Gray chalk cliff slips down to pool

Supplication: Gray chalk Cambrian in origin

I: Gray chalk cliff slips down to pool

S: Forming quarry’s lips and mouth and throat

I: Gray chalk cliff slips down to pool

S: Full GI tract right down to black pool

I: Gray chalk cliff slips down to pool

S: Of stagnant aqua impura in

I: Gray chalk cliff slips down to pool

S: Quarry’s acid stomach so thick

I: Gray chalk cliff slips down to pool

S: With tannins only fools and orphans

I: Gray chalk cliff slips down to pool

S: And sacrificial virgins would jump

I jump. I hit bottom. I drown. Hours pass. Black gas bloats my pallid stomach and I float. And days pass. And I rot. And my body shorn of soul and skin and limbs and organs inhabits myth. A story told in a foolish old song found in an idiot’s study of it (that old foolish song) in a long-lost library book (alphadigital assignation invalid) in which a blind bookworm furiously crawls through a scrawny knot in an insignificant thing (a tun, a cask, a coffin) built of wood which rots in a tomb (on which a hungry fool is scrawling graffiti) containing this most holy sprinkling of cosmic dust I would call my body now (if larynx I had, and lungs) in this schizomythological limbo I inhabit on a soulful balcony (chock full of lost souls similar to this that scrawls and stops and sucks on chalk in a simulacrum of thought and scrawls again), (comma fills lacuna, nipping a rampant shoot (possibly rambling) in its bud) a back row of a grand old stadium’s bathroom stall (shadows and lights and stairs and rails and sinks and drains mix and match in a mingling sort of way in a shifting involutional show cast on a tumbling, crumbling, windblown scrap of dirty gray rag torn from a scrawny savior’s last liturgical loincloth) built by Strickland long ago (that man’s anomalous foamy down) in a book I would fain publish at my own cost if his will and my ghostly vibration (shaking hands, fading vision, fuzzy logic, and all that) would allow it. I swallow. No. This is what dying is, I thought. I did not drown. I think. What’s quick flowing blood. What’s murky brown stagnancy. I ask. No. Fighting off faints and fits and shocks following (in all logical simplicity) from (in any world’s logic) non-random post-cranial contusions (what hit bottom hurts, and what didn’t hit hurts, too), I swim. I thrash and gasp and swallow lungsful of stagnation. What’s quick and flowing. In a kind of stylish fashion, I float and chop arms front, kick scrap of foot back. In a word, I swim. A kind bush casts out a buoy of thorny lianas. It snags my wrists and palms and draws my body in. It drags my body onto a musty bank of roots and humus. No. Fighting off faints and fits and shocks, I thrash and gasp and lay my body down. Sunlight and hours and loss of blood. I crawl into a shadow of dry and crumbling rock. Paw prints of an unknown mammal in association with fur and scat. Flint chips and sharp shards of a big clay pot with zigzag incisions. Long ago and far away in a far off land a quaking virgin lay among fossils and ash laid down by diluvial inhabitants. Skull, tibia, scapula, ulna, rib, jaw and, finally, tooth: a gawky front molar shrugging off its long lost mouth. I claw clay and find its grimacing companions: back molars, incisors, fangs. Straight out of a horror film, or a sort of Outward Bound initiation stunt thrown a tragic loop. History staging a(n) (un)happy campground just as a ritual maw swallows a foolish child’s fantasy. Into an infinity of falling I am born. Mom didn’t catch. Nor did Plato discuss a falling birth’s laws, nor did any Scholastic school’s diploma grant this bony bloody outgrowth of womb and ova and tauroral horns of Fallopius (circular ruins) an instinct to plug its husk’s cracks with frantic wads of fur and chalk and shit. I am caught. Into strong hands I am born, umbilicus trailing. To trim a trivial summa down to a common story’s cut: a virgin, a birth, a foundling, a savior. Dark stains of human occupation. Stratigraphy. I am floating. I coil my hot dark wings around him. I cup in my palm his warm and furry, his sinking, sagging, shrinking, and lifting balls. A falling star winks out against horizon’s spasmic thigh. Scrotum draws in tight as I stick a pinky up his ass and swallow. Now that’s a blowjob! you sigh and say and fall pillowy back to scholary toil. Anonymous foamy down. Bimkov, Strickland, Patrolius, Spitmarkx, Darkbloom, Spinoza, Kidjaki, Foucault, Lamarck, Vighdan, Darwin, Udidi, Hamiltonian, Raymond. How many in all today? But who’s counting? What follows is a bibliography with citations.

A Bibliography, with Citations

Bimkov A.
1984
Pninalgia y plagiaritis. Tixpu: Tiliar Publishing Co. — “An unsightly spark bursts into my brain. Flowing through all parts of my body was a ghostly frisson of non-intrinsicality. A particular modality of diffusion and dilation, a sort of cardiac arrhythmia, discomforting and disgusting. For many months I had sought it in all my books, in all my compatriots’ books. In vain. But now I had found it! And it stung my brain as a drug stings. I could not drink my fill of it! It was parasitizing all my moods, all my actions, I know, pullulating within all my works and words. A palpitating world of dislocation disrupting my scholarly tranquility, as if my body was mingling with that of a famous author: fading sunlight shining crimson on dusky bark, horrifyingly sad convulsions on a patch of auburn sand. In fits of manic insomnia that could last for days, I spun out my unwon words, winding my silkworm’s ink into magical books shot through with forbiddingly brilliant colors. Happily, though, I was caught” (Informant MSS, p. 199, O. W. Johnson trans.).
Bruno G.
1583
Sigillus sigillorum. London: John Charwood. — “It is thus not in our tradition to worship an alligator, or a cock, or an onion, or a turnip for its own quality as a thing, but to worship that thing’s inhabiting god or divinity, which divinity is found in various things in so far as all things show signs of mortality at particular lights and locations, bit by bit and all at a falling swoop, that is to say, divinity according as it is proximal and familiar to a thing, not divinity as it is most high, airtight, and without affinity to a thing’s production” (Dial. Ital. 3, O. W. Johnson trans.).
Darkbloom V.
1962
On location in artificial moonlight. Minxburgh: Random Library. — “Machinations at my window. A confrontation with calamity. In two swift, bow-stringing actions, I draw my curtain to and/or fro, sliding a tragically gaping crowd of criminals into my solitary mountain cabin. What do you want? Why do you laugh? A farcical prison play full of poultry, dogs, nuns, girls, boys, authors, critics, victims, assassins and sad, gray ghosts. I grab my razor and start my morning ritual. For alas, it is I who am solitary actor, and I who must, in this dusty mirror, watch” (p. 301).
Darwin C.
n.d. mss
A study of foxy growth arising from mopsi mold (Mopsi spp.) invasion and worm trails in books in my library. — “Growth as Atrophy and Impulsion (1859), by Doctor Spitmarkx of Ruhr-Lülnrar, Bavaria, is a book, in my library, of which I am almost childishly fond, having gaily found it, in a local bookstall, not far from my daily thinking path at Down Manor. (In Charing Cross or Marchmont, most usually, and with difficulty, do scholars habitually court, and obtain prodigious favours from, this timorous author’s works.) A book, in my shy opinion, is only born, not as its author blots its concluding flourish; not as its manuscript is bound into goatskin bindings; but, as its acquisition by an inquiring mind, fills that mind with unfamiliar thought, and that thought grows into an original way of looking at man’s affinity, in both body and action, in both mood and motivation, with animals. Having occasion, thus, to lift a supporting citation, for my own work, from that of Doctor Spitmarkx, my chagrin, at finding it full of worm-casts, and foxy with mopsi mold, and this, months past its day of birth, was a blow I could ill afford. I could not avoid succumbing to a fit of vomiting. In its turn, though, this particular handicap has sown a happy habit; for from it, was born this study” (Introduction, p. xi).
Flawndol S., Johnson W. M. M, and McLaughlin A. K.
1993
Town city plain: A cultural history of Tagma and Intrussyan incursions into Fukariland. Owlstain and Paris: Urdostoist Publishing Assn. — “Mr McLaughlin is awaiting his turn. A far door is closing, and closing again, wafting an insidious calm into this long, poorly lit hallway in which Mr McLaughlin is awaiting his turn. A far door is closing, and closing again, and out that far door is a parking lot of a stadium in which Mr McLaughlin, worn out from watching his son play ball, is awaiting his turn. A far door is closing, and closing again, plunging this long, poorly lit hallway into a radiant torpor that trails away softly from that far door closing, and closing again: black tarmac soft in hot sunlight; aluminum lamp posts and tall humming pylons; blindingly glossy cars with thigh-scorching vinyl cockpits; cicadas lazily chanting a sibilant cantata in a trash-rich picnic ground. Mr McLaughlin is awaiting his turn” (Book I, p. 23).
Foucault M.
1968
Constrain and publish. Paris: Gallimard. — “Appropriation of authorship functions importantly in social control in that constraints on publishing inflict cultural isolation through a branching or forking bipolar shift from positional posturing to author function, formulaic authorship to status valorization in which loss of anonymity short-circuits a thoroughgoing truth, group, body, or pathological proposition of writing. Discoursing critically constructs author function in ahistorical location, propagating authorial domination in a world publishing industry propagating such myths as ‘profundity,’ ‘originality,’ ‘stylistic obligation,’ and ‘civilizing moral composition.’ Psychology is historically ignorant of biological things; authorship is unlawful production unbound by copyright” (p. 34, O. W. Johnson trans.).
Hamiltonian T.
1999
How’s it going, son? Journal of Sociophysiology 1(5). — “This autobiography’s augustinian supposition: notation as a natural history of humans; in particular, totality of a dad’s nurturing activity toward his son. I will thus chart not just my own days and nights, but my son’s also. An Owlstain high school drinking party; bad music is playing too loud; bumping and grinding passing as dancing. I approach a young girl slunk down sadly in a ratty couch. Tight saffron skirt with too high thigh slits. Approach; chat; sip my gin and tonic. Hi, I’m Tony Hamiltonian, instructor at ISOCPHYS, mind if I sit down, too? No? Good. You look uncommonly familiar. Don’t I know you from — no? Cigar annoy you? Glamporium? No? Possibly? Most probably? Good. What I’m drinking? Gin and tonic — want a sip? Full soft dark crimson bow lips. Cigar? Just kidding. You would? Your band playing again soon? So you know my son, do you? And I should call you...? Ada. Ishtar’s Hand” (§ 3 of Discussion).
Kidjaki C.
ongoing
R I F T. Owlstain and Paris: Urdostoist Publishing Co. — “Production and consumption of words as found in Babylonia or Assyria, in which a warriorking’s grapholithic imposition of an unworldly philosophy props up a sprawling urban civilization with a muddy subpopulation toiling away (at sword-point) at farming and irrigation, vary drastically from situations found in Attica or Ionia, in which fishing and navigation substantially support small tightknit autonomous affiliations of quasinomadic toxophilic bards composing worldly songs and tribal myths. Troy was an agricultural community torn down by barbarians — barbarians who could punch with words” (Introduction, p.ix).
Lamarck J.-B.
1809
Zoological philosophy. Paris: Flammarion (1994). — “If physiology and morality spring from a common origin; if mind, thought, and imagination consist only as natural things, and, following from this, only, truly, as facts of organization; it is principally up to zoology, applying its logic to a thorough study of organic things, to find out what truly is mind, how is it spun out from a man’s brain and thrust, abiding, into light; in a word, how bodily history is born again, and again, into it, wound into it, transforming it so that it sings” (Third Part, Introduction, O. W. Johnson trans.).
Patrolius
c. 1517
Ionis Astra. Kabul and On. — “Cunning as a poaching fox is that girl who drinks down straight ktar/And, citing Rumi, can chant a loping, swinging translation,/Outdoing (with no pausing, no panting) six pan-piping bards/In this lupanar, oh holy star Io, virgin Ishtar!” (Fourth Canto, O. W. Johnson trans.).
Potocki J.
1813
Copy of a manuscript found at Saragossa. Warsaw: Sarprostium. — “And so thus did Papa Potocki, living only on thought, passing back and forth from watchful optimism to mindful rumination, and having shut tight his laboratory’s blinds to succumb to his mind’s continual condition of inward psychological striving, only in this way could Papa diminish such distant lachrymal strains of that childhood inundation by dolorous divastigation which had laid low his rationality” (Day 19, p. 223, O. W. Johnson trans.).
Raymond A.
1983
Tiliar Boarding School: A sociophysiology of graduation. Tixpu: Tiliar Publishing Co. — “In a parking lot across Tixpu Hill Road, a brown plastic trash bag lifts in a gust of wind, taking wing as if, thorn-proof stand-in for a crow, it actually could fly on a calm, sunny day. Rain slants down in big bursting drops to soak moms and dads racing from car to auditorium. Principal Bimkov is practicing his parsimonious bailiwick with, as usual, a poignant, rambling introduction charting his own maturational path from Tiliar Boarding School graduation, what is it now? about 30 suns ago. Coach Turbo is taking off his hat, showing an ocular bull’s calvity to Ismail I. Strickland, class clown, son of local luminary and illustrious columnist, Ms. Strickland, last, but not lost, in a graduating crowd of 44 girls and boys of all nations, all tribal origins, all anthrophonological vistas” (p. 52).
Spinoza B.
1656
Tractatus logistico-philoscophicus. Paris: Diasporama. — “From which it follows that, of animal moods said to lack rationality (for arguing that an animal cannot think is not at all a continuously valid assumption, now that it is known of that which mind’s origin consists), such moods vary from a man’s in such a way as an animal’s natural foundation is not a man’s. Stallion and man, it is truly said, both submit to a copulatory compulsion. But a stallion’s compulsion is a stallionish lubricity; a man’s, a mannish. So it also is with ant cravings and fish wants and bird satiation rituals; moods accordingly suit an animal’s natural foundation” (On mood, proposition LVII, scholium, O. W. Johnson trans.).
Spitmarkx S. A.
1848
Airy arrowscript portraits. Ruhr-Lülnrar: Spitmarkx Buchfabrik. — “If I know a thought, I know also visibly its humanity, its coming into a soft patch of sand on a trail in thick woods. Such humanity is an accommodating lay in thought’s promiscuous warp and woof. Tastily spacious, a found humanity, though sandy, cannot but submit to my will” (§ 2.3, O. W. Johnson trans.).
Strickland Ms.
1996
Thoughts on various and sundry topics. Journal of Sociophysiology 4(9). — “Faulty forms of thinking about communication, arising from a paradigm which maintains that a passing back and forth of information is adaptational foundation to sociality, to group dynamics, forbid clarity on this topic. Communication is parasitism; information is a by-product of that parasitism; and parasitism occurs throughout all biostructural organizations, from individual virus to swarming wasps, from shark schools to human nations” (§ 1.4 of Introduction).
Udidi D.
1998
Sais pas, su jamais, saurais jamais. Owlstain: CACA. — “Giving birth without blood, without obscuring that world I am, amid a circumstantial nadir of shaky hot gravitational wind, without grabbing to doll hound, currying to a top lip fascination striving to kiss it, kiss it all and drink boiling fistulosity down a throat which burns in dry shadow” (§ 1.1, O. W. Johnson trans.).
Vighdan B.
1992
Globarš: A ritual Tagma physiological philosophy. Journal of Sociophysiology 1(3). — “A Tagma woman, placing this black, oval rock in a shallow pit dug by hand in a patch of chalky sand, squats atop it and starts to rock hips back and forth rhythmically, crooning a ritual song through panting lips. This song sings of a Tagma woman, born into a harsh world, who, looking vainly for satisfaction among various living things (authors, poultry, onions), finds it finally in a black, oval rock in a shallow pit dug by hand in a patch of chalky sand” (§ 2 of Analysis and Discussion).
Who’s Victor?
  1. What Strickland has said. — Putting a variant of this ludict out as his own in Pank’s May 2009 instar, Tiliar Boarding School alumnus M. S. Strickland (class of 1984) was actually fobbing off (a falsis principiis proficisci ad captandum vulgus ab absurdo) a draft I was quondomly composing a priori ad libitum ad arbitrium for Dr. Bimkov during that particular visit I paid to him (that is, MSS) a good trayodaśi of varśana avaunt its impunctual plagiary by procrastination (JYazS, alas, to which, upon DAB’s urging, I had sold this ms’s rights of first publication, was and most probably still is wrangling with a torminal bout of rotulalgia or indictor’s block which would and will in all probability last for a good lustrum or two); and from that Parisian sojourn ch’i’ho fatto molti anni fa, I promptly wrought, upon alighting again in Tixpu, a sort of caudal vinculum or consummatory symphysis of our coup d’appât by insinuating a mocking allusion to it (in his own words to boot!) into a livraison of my small tri-monthly multilingual journal of arts, writing, philosophy, natural history, and sundry cultural stuff Divastigations, a gabarit ab incunabulis of which forms this work’s 249th sutra.
§ 39.
A most natural and fruitful poison. — And should I apportion this stubborn mistrust to a possibility born of scarcity? This particular path I’m afraid of taking. Vying to match a vicious trio of living v’s. As if I could trust you. I’d ask your opinion. To insist on what calculating Kant says: vital virtuous virtuosity.
§ 40.
If on account of this utility. — And should I visit his family? It’s not my fault. To cast suspicion on joy. Words, sounds. Brow racks brain with causation’s pain. It’s not my fault. Is today Gombrowicz’s birthday? Capricious punctuality mockly laughing. Along a gurgling brook’s maudlin bank. Paralytic alms of artistic consolation. I walk to him in high significant fashion. Find my way back on a dark trail. Winding through willow, poplar, hickory, blackjack oak. Boasting of my discomfort, my knack for uncommon timing.
§ 41.
Catching sight of a final goal. — And should I quarry from dolomitic chalk dimorphic fossil nautili? Show off my finds at Glamporium. Play abstract sport with such lithic induction. Toadskin spirals of clovitic flint. Balsitic blastoliths of basaltic friability. Hiccup barstool across sawdust floor. Imaginary words imaginary points imaginary things. To track wily quarry across a malicious god’s brutal outback. Shorthand notation for a platonic husbanding of magma’s knack for drawing blood. Tribalistic showdown. Riswa bîr. Crumbling quartz. Volcanic glass. Imaginary worlds. This particular path I’m afraid of. And pallid subtotal of all that was worth knowing. Or not. Abandon this taking, this stowing away of porphyric spirit.
§ 42.
And by supposing a solution. — And should I omit this part of my story? Lyrical folk chant of haunting magnanimity limning harsh truth with a humanistic touch. To avoid stumbling against just any ordinary supposition. I occupy my thoughts. I chart my common fiction. I build my days with blocks of words.
§ 43.
Sympathy is morality. — And should I pray for my own good? Fabulous accommodations of cloudclad sky. That this woman’s world still obtains. A quality of imagination.
§ 44.
This fruit of fruits hangs fancy. — And should I distinguish my lavish accusation, my unforgivingly individual form of complaint, from that rank and common art of wounding and torturing with words and looks? But a formulaic comparison comforts poorly. Swallows whistling in a dusk of cowbirds. I lay my body down amid damp straw. A slow doll’s quadrumanous crawl of faith across a limply unfolding compass patch. Did I not say that a witty assault distracts gloriously? Claw a clumsy thumbsnatch into my plump and sticky tail. Moonmad crushing into climax against a throaty musk of rabbit fur. My husband? I don’t fancy it’s only on account of him that I find this initiatory imitation of communal illusion so crassly unoriginal. Am I not author of my own bold autumn, my own limpid spring? Circumsolar politic of sapsuck and lightbloom old blind bards sang so windily of. Orbital axis of connubial colonization. Into my matricaudal wound a rainbow lizard sticks a dart of barnyard gold. Gaming for a palmrich clutch of rabid titgrip. I’m not giving him back his ring anyway. Today is Gombrowicz’s birthday. A prickly pink rash blooms across my thighs.
§ 45.
Simply to avoid admitting. — And should I nymph about in Owlstain’s rancid suburbs, or stay put in dusty Tixpu? Trick’s to avoid looking as if I’m turning tricks. Do it with flash how many girls how many crapulous johns. Kiss it. And again kiss it. Tin shack morality of backroad habits. Crack. Occurring in broaddaynightly attacks of cactusmoth law in addition to a thorough tarbrush point of, simply put, things. Got it? Crack. This pitch of loving sham. Got it, bitch? Mortal clinging. Hating him most natural. Kiss it thoroughly.
§ 46.
Of moods and luxury. — And should I unify within a parturitional point pain joy war politics prostitutional stock trading and pornographic bonding as a sort of partisan journalism and hunting along with shopping buying practicing writing day by day imagining social conditions in which psychospiritual classifications would or would not drift into an accumulation of acorns walnuts and spiraling fossils imploding into an uncommon art’s originary root of lawful singularity? And to think that such suppository duty fills in for a man. I should banish body from this dawn.
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.
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Copyright © 2010 Michael Sean Strickland