The Frammis Goskit Distims the Blue Doshes on Round Thursdays

The Frammis Goskit Distims the Blue Doshes on Round Thursdays

Dilettante has abandoned pretensions to Philosophy,

Much like the pretensions of his child ego.

He passes rapidly from Hemingway to Proust

to Hitler to Marx to Foucault to Mary Douglas

to the present situation in The Middle East

to Tolstoy to Steve Jobs's biography.

He is a name-dropper,

who uses names such to refer to ways of seeing.

  

His specialty is in seeing similarities & differences

between great big pictures,

between attempts

to see how things hang together.

Dilettante is the person who tells you

how all the ways of making things hang together

hang together. 

Windigokan no-flight contraries.

Lost in space & time.

An airport bathroom.

A woman & a man, the Dilettante --

with five-day stubble &

A surprisingly expensive looking suit.

Each confused,

each washing their face in front of a mirror.

Each walking from their respective bathroom

bumping into each other.

On his flight,

the Dilettante is alone but for a single sannyasin,

whose eyes remain closed for the entire flight.

Dilettante converses with the sannyasin,

Nonetheless, & among other things they discuss

The film dark city of all things

(I haven't seen it) but when they're done

Talking about dark city & the director &

His other movies Yada Yada the sannyasin says

"I am an alien."

"What? You're a human being," laughed Dilettante, not knowing why he said this of all things. If he squinted, the sannyasin looked like tiger woods for a second & then like

"This is merely a disguise. The perfect trap with which to ensnare

you. Notice I look a lot like your childhood friend."

"No you don't."

"Yes I do."

"Look --"

"Yes I do."

"If you can morph or whatever - if that's what you're saying -

morph into something else."

"No."

"Um."

The main thing about them is not that they wish to go “back,”

but that they wish to get--

away.

A little more strength, flight, courage, &&

they would want to rise, not return!

  Exclaimed Nietzsche.

& now to pass to the matters canvassed in the following essay.

The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture

culture being a pursuit of

total perfection by means of getting to know

on all matters which concern us,

the best which has been thought &

said in the world;

&

This, & this alone, is the scope of the following essay.

& the culture Dilettante recommends is,

above all, an inward operation. 

Surfeit of Knowledge, Sensation, Culture

Aporia (n):

To be at a metaphysical impasse,

but also the rhetorical act of

feigning such an impasse.

  I love NY.

"There are no secret rulers of the world."

"But even if there were, why not trust them? If one world government is all we have to fear, we'll be alright. Don't you want one world government?"

"I guess. How else are we gonna fight off the hordes of invading alien armies?"

I'm afraid of you,

Dilettante,

very much afraid, because the future of mankind depends on you.

I'm afraid of you

because your main aim in life is to escape--from yourself.

   

You're sick, little Noob, very sick.

    It's not your fault;

but it's your responsibility to get well.

    You'd have shaken off your oppressors long ago

if you hadn't countenanced oppression

& often given it your direct support.

No police force in the world

would have had the power to crush you

if you had an ounce of self-respect in your daily life,

if you were aware, really aware,

that without you life could not go on for one hour.

    You've got to realize

that you have raised up your little men to be oppressors,

& made martyrs of your truly great men;

that you have crucified & stoned them,

or let them starve,

that you have never given a moment's thought to them

or to what they have done for you;

that you haven't the faintest idea

who brought you the true benefits of your life.

As a child, Dilettante would always be holding helium-filled balloons,

whenever possible.

He likes to release a couple-three

into the New Year’s eve sky.

The Inevitability of Meaning Working Its Way Back Into Our Lives

Somewhere,

Demographically-Minded Social Scientist Dude

is reading a report

with your name on it.

  Next to your name, two boxes:

  Marked 'viable' & 'non-viable.'

        Behind all logic & its seeming sovereignty of movement, too, there stand valuations or, more clearly, physiological demands for the preservation of a certain type of life.

        For example, that the definite should be worth more than the indefinite, & mere appearance worth less than “truth”--such estimates might be, in spite of their regulative importance for us, nevertheless mere foreground estimates, a certain kind of niaiserie which may be necessary for the preservation of just such beings as we are.

           Said Nietzsche.

The Inevitability of Meaning Working Its Way Back Into Our Lives

For the Dilettante, certain signifiers fit you, & not others.

For the Dilettante, all signifiers fit himself.

  One as well as another.

He is trickster, rapscallion, anti hero,

craven, brave, treacherous, loyal,

at once the secret hero & asshole of the cosmos.

We are like the spider.

We weave our life & then move along in it.

We are like the dreamer who dreams & then lives in the dream.

This is true for the entire universe.

  From The Upanishads.

Dilettante the Daredevil

Dilettante the Noob, Ian

When Dilettante was a wee spazz of 12 or 13 years age,

When he was really more of a Noob than anything else,

Having not worked up the muster to rise to the

Torporous heights of dissipated ennui, he asked himself:

  What's the point in doing anything

  if God's in charge of

  everything I do?

If God's preordained it all?

Even then Noob né Dilettante at least had a sense of something being out of kilter.

He did not yet know that the Earth wobbled or that not trusting was even an option.

Still, he had more questions than answers, a deficit which would prove to have no ceiling.

The natural world behaves exactly the same way as the environment of Grand Theft Auto IV.

In the game, you can explore Liberty City seamlessly in phenomenal detail.

I made a calculation of how big that city is, & it turns out it’s a million times larger than my PlayStation 3.

You see exactly what you need to see of Liberty City when you need to see it, abbreviating the entire game universe into the console.

The universe behaves in the exact same way.

In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a definite state unless they’re being observed.

Many theorists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how you explain this.

One explanation is that we’re living within a simulation, seeing what we need to see when we need to see it.

Writes Rich Terrile.

Dilettante Gets A Blunderbuss

Organize a fake holdup.

  You won't be able to do it.

The network of artificial signs will become

inextricably mixed with the real elements.

  A policeman will really fire on sight.

  Someone will faint & die of a heart attack.

You will immediately find yourself again,

without wishing it,

in the realm of the real,

one of whose functions is precisely to devour

any attempt at simulation,

to reduce everything to the real --

that is, to the established order itself,

well before institutions & justice come into play.

  

      Wrote Baudrillard.

How To Survive In The Wild

This morning I snuck into Dilettante’s room

while he was in the shower &

I got How to Survive in the Wild of Civilization Volume 3

out of his bureau.

Then I got back into bed &

hid it under the covers.

When Dilettante came in I pretended to be sick.

He put his hand on my forehead &

said What do you feel?

so I said I think I have swollen glands,

so he said You must be coming down with something,

so I said But I have to go to school,

so he said Nothing will happen if you miss a day,

so I said OK.

He brought me some chamomile tea with honey &

I drank it with my eye closed to show how sick I was.

When I heard his chair creak

I took How To Survive out &

started to read it to see if there were any clues

about who Dilettante was searching for.

Most of the pages were filled with information

like how to make a hot-rock bed, or a lean-to,

or how to make water potable.

About which Dilettante left scribbled in the margin:

"I’ve never seen any water that can’t be poured into a pot.

(Except maybe ice)"

I was starting to wonder if I would find anything

when I got to a page that said

HOW TO SURVIVE

IF YOUR GOLDEN PARACHUTE

FAILS TO OPEN.

There were ten steps but none of them made sense,

& what if your parachute isn’t golden?

For example if you are falling thru the air &

your (golden) parachute fails to open,

it said search for a stone

but why would there be stones

unless someone was throwing them at you

or you had one in your pocket

which most normal people don’t.

Mama & Papa Dilettante

Dilettante was baptized

& brought up Catholic.

He was instructed in religion as a child

& throughout boyhood & youth.

But at eighteen, he left,

Dilettante.

He left college in the middle of his sophomore year,

no longer believing any of the things he had been taught.

Judging from various memories,

he had never believed very seriously.

Just trusted in those who taught him,

& what they taught.

The trust was unstable.

When Dilettante was eleven,

J. P. Snook, now long since dead,

came to call on Dilettante,

only to announce that there was no God,

& that everything we were being taught

was, in his words,

a crock of shiznit.

This was in 1991.

Dilettante took great interest in the news.

A great discussion ensued.

Mama Dilettante & Papa Dilettante

& the entire Dilettante family became very excited,

& took the news as something very enthralling

& entirely possible.

Forest Ranger Dilettante

There was a time Dilettante lived in the forest.

He ate worms.

Bugs. 

Anything he could put in his mouth. 

Sometimes, Dilettante would get sick. 

His stomach was a mess, 

but he was orally fixated,

needed something to chew. 

Forest Ranger Dilettante drank from puddles.

Snow slushees.

He developed a fondness for sneaking into potato cellars

that the local farmers had around their villages.

They were a good hiding place

because the were a little warmer 

in the winter.

But there were rodent. 

To say that Dilettante ate rats--

yes he did, 

obv.

Dilettante wanted to live very badly.

This upset him to no end.

& there was only ever one reason: her.

Truth is she told Dilettante she couldn’t love him.

He made himself forget. 

He forgets why.

He keeps asking himself about it. 

___

Rare Wandering Jewish Albatross

Who does Dilettante know? 

Nobody! Except for maybe a cousin 

who doesn’t want to know from him. 

Once Dilettante told me 

how the sculptor Alberto Giacometti 

said that sometimes just to paint a head 

you have to give up the whole figure. 

To paint a leaf, 

you have to sacrifice the whole landscape 

like you’re limiting yourself but you realize 

that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something 

you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling 

of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.

Just ask a wandering Jewish Albatross.

One of the mind loops Dilettante gets himself stuck inside 

is the Wandering Albatross - Wandering Jew - dynamic?

I am drawn to both equally.

“Once I start thinking of one, I say it, 

then I think of the other, back and forth, 

conflating the two mostly. Putting them together 

in my head until I see a wandering Jewish Albatross. 

Did you know they can go years without touching the ground, 

they sleep aloft in the sky, drink sea water, 

cry out the salt, and practice a form of monogamy I think?”

“The Wandering Jews?”

Lightning Alternations of the Sardonic & the Profound

Coming this Fall to Fox Sports Dos: "Under the Gun," 

the first poker-only talk show, 

consisting of competitive banter, 

answers to questions relating to poker, 

judged by Phil Helmuth, Daniel Negreanu, 

or the most charismatic poker player 

we can otherwise afford slash get our hands on.

***

Edmund Waller.

Margot Adler.

Bishop Marchenkous.

***

Dilettante is open to the cross currents of the drift of life, 

an openness that gives a sense of being simultaneously 

polished & jagged,

Vaguely appealing, but even more vaguely offensive.

In the Lightning shifts, 

dilettante & or reader

May feel a bit hit on the head.

***

Coming this Fall to YouTube, 

"Yoga for Man Children:"

Mostly nude women doing yoga, 

Explaining to the man children over & over,

"You won't be able to do this pose exactly.

But this is a yoga buffet.

Go to where you're comfortable

& no further."

"Let your arms dangle at your side.

Feet together. Slowly bend forward.

Clasp your arms & hold them over your head.

Let them dangle.

Feel it at the back of your neck.

Hold in that position while the ladies & I 

Perform more...complex maneuvers.

You stay dangling. The less you watch us the better.

But don't be too hard on yourself.

We are lithe & supple & whatnot."

& another girl bounces into frame: 

"Whatnot's on second. Definitely. Definitely. Yanh."

Microbrewed Sandwich Toppings

monologue for a male crazie, part of James Franco's secret, tortured basement entourage.

  “We must ensure that it is always possible for people here to make & sell alcoholic mayonnaise, because micro-brewed sandwich toppings make for great towns. A town prospers when its citizens know they can ferment oiled egg yolks.”

***

James Franco was controversial to the marrow.

He sought controversy & is still outre to this day,

as he approaches a hundred & how many years,

no one remembers.

.

But the area of agreement about him is growing.

What the Germans & the French have known for some time

is gradually being recognized in the English-speaking world as well:

James Franco was one of the greatest 3/4 Polish-1/4 Irish writers

& philosophers of all time

& one of the most interesting

& influential Americans of the early twenty-first century.