Some experiential stuff...

I'll leave the title ambiguous as to referent: in fact, I'd say both types of nymph share properties that make 'reference' seem altogether uninteresting. If, as Bergson maintains, it's the same 'creative impetus' that sent everything on the same evolutionary trajectory, mammal, insect & less visible organisms alike, it's always going to be the more interesting liminal boundaries of the real that form the stuff (always exactly experiential) of life and poetry. Plenty of interesting intersections to see.

Here's a try...
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"Nymph"

Ah bent close to the snout, again
  just a twitch loosens, wings
    & enough of pale white—

strangely arced, too, to spring mayfair:
  a jittery blossom, a blade
    short, sharp bursts

of the shadow of your old self gone,
  loose pelf at yr hip (go!),
    new leggers

collapsing into tune (& let it go!)
  with nerve to lighten
    flicker, & grin

Ah, the world on two trick wings,
  again

What I wouldn't give for one Russell today ...

 

"There has been a lot of freedom of thought over the past few years, but no thought" (Simone Weil)

Time was when thinkers (like Bertrand Russell, Bernard Williams, A.J.Ayer) brought a entire arsenal of sound analytical reasoning (given in the form of clearly outlined propositions and  inferences) to their views on things like the nature of reality and the existence of God. It was both good and instructive to listen to them, whatever your own views happened to be. How things have changed!

The contemporary debate on God's existence, for example, has changed that analytical discourse into a form of garish social media in which participants gain points not by logic but by the outward show of 'cleverness' only: voice, body language and an outlandish sort of 'showmanship' that is oftentimes indistinguishable from 'bullying'. We are in need of better intellectual role models. I think media have quite intentionally undercut the possibility of real intellectual 'dialogue'.

Jacques Rancière is somebody who understands media and the potentially pernicious image of itself and its users it likes to unleash. It's, in his view, in the service of the new image of the real tied indissolubly to media that media users quite literally dictate the terms of discourse everywhere. It's pure 'image' dissociated from reality  : "The visible can be arranged", Rancière says " in meaningful tropes; words deploy a visibility that can be blinding." And as a result what purveyors of the new 'discourse' (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens) do is offer skim rather than real depth, the simulacra of intelligence only. They, and their YouTube followers, have no time for patient and respectful exchange of ideas.

They can, in other words, tell their audiences what they need to see since audiences do seem incapable of separating the proverbial tares from wheat. There's always something menacingly anti-intellectual and anti-social at work here. In the absence of real sustained theorizing the 'new atheists' (as Chomsky has correctly said) actually look like propogandists for their own brand of state religion. It's not conversion to a different viewpoint they seek so much as state-sponsored suppression of religious ideas in general. And how well they exploit media spectacle to do this.Things like an affecting accent, credentials and aggressive delivery--amounting at times to character assassination-- always carry the day. Their audiences (except for the attentive few) can't see (as if quite invisible) what is there in front of them. Indeed, a contemporary audience wouldn't be able to see a logician's well-formed proposition as anything but a poorly 'trending' event.

I offer the following as just one good example of the 'dumbing down' of much contemporary discourse. Jacques Derrida-- perhaps this century's greatest intellectual--  has gotten so far only four YouTube responses for his comments on atheism and belief! I take responses rather than views to be a more meaningful gauge of audience engagement and interest. It certainly isn't fashionable (and nor do I think most people today have the ability) to patiently follow through a rather complex train of thought based on faithful reading and study . Argumentative strength has taken a backseat to 'image' understood  in this peculiarly contemporary sense . In a typical YouTube debate forum Derrida would necessarily look like a stammering amateur.

 Logic, in short. just doesn't enjoy that crucial 30 second time-lag in which to get its message out: for that the new media intellectuals rely on all the available 'video manager' tips and tricks available. Rather than following in the philosophical tradition of Russell and Derrida  the 'men of ideas' today have become little more than virulently self-satisfied "fools and fanatics" of a bread and circus world always happy to receive & applaud them.

A birthday reminder (thanks to ginamarie)

Frida the Obstinate

(for ginamarie lobianco)

The last time Frida spoke to God, thinking she'd painted the best Madonna ever...
_______________________________

Lady steps over clover one day, from her home, granted her prayer— Ave Matuta!—to turn into Frida from cold Mary of Ephesus: and to dignify it, saying,

"Release me, God, from all yr gabfest, & if not, sensing the threat of dust that turns wet, then word the real sex of me straight to Olympia, with my one bare breast, cypress rouge, gaunt chin

No more the swelling angel seed for me!

No more that hovel instead of alabaster, the virgin's coarse sage  while I see there real marshy heat rise up round her ankles, by the harbour walls— a temple in place of huts!

Leave me my bare head, half-chignon that's been clawed back hatefully by you, hoping to kill this need to compete in games

It's better than not letting the sun fill shadowy gaps, between lips & nose, and as I'm still young, between my two real thighs!"

Arresting spite of a father's now sounds in her ear, tight sutured ear: God to Frida now,

"¿Dónde está mi duende?

Mother of Lesbos!

Now I find you facing temples, wide- browed, obstinate, trading good stone for my salty bogs

My skin-and-bones girl with plum-coloured nip, lest we part at Venus, eyes locking, take the path of a femur road to love's shining vacuity; & bleed for it, with one sorrowing eye, and arrive there the blue-ringed girl, after some trial, as if you got tired of my Hebron skies

Faithless, so-so girl, staring staring at her lips, hold your side awhile, gnashed by yr own finny hand Lumpy, self-evolving, purpling girl: hold both bloody sides & keep yr hand away from me!

Goat-like chins always crush into salt"

New Ephesian groves scarf her anew but as a madonna's falling chiton manages only a little dampness, it does
stop some bleeding

A sea-urchin grows at her neck, with a half-formed nimbus shell to tell the old Mary  from Frida