Inspired Rubbish

(My first ever post - a mission statement.)

The past provides a rich source of fact, fiction, fun and fancy. I am composed of a unique mix of metaphors, myths and magic, and so are you.

Here, I will attempt to express the inexpressible, say the unsayable and repeat the unrepeatable.

The subject is immaterial, the object is all-important.

Let us get a few facts straight, in order to avoid crooked thinking.

Fact 1: I am Irish. Therefore, I put sound first, tone before content. The truth is true in tone and content. I have found that if something sounds good, or well, as my mother would have said, it makes sound sense. The truth reverberates, sound as a bell.

Fact 2: A fact is a lie and a half, as my father said. It is how the fact is interpreted that matters, and interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.

A taste of things to come, a rhyme written by me:

A Metaphor
I met a metaphor today
It said "I haven't much to say.
You see, I mean two things at once
And might be taken for a dunce."

I wish my writing to be such that its meaning is immediately apparent to the meanest intelligence, such as yours (Groucho Marx).

Genius is of the spirit (anyone can be a genius). Rubbish, crap, shite, call it what you will, are the base materials alchemy seeks to turn into gold. I make no apology for my language, now or in the future. I am made of shit and stars, and so is everyone else.

Await further developments.

David ****

Are You Averse To Poetry?

To Whom It Concerns (Slightly Prematurely)

Sabh
Is five
And glad to be alive.

Oisin, Oisin,
You never can be queen
But perhaps, and here's the thing
With a little effort you may, in fact, be king.

(Ogden Nash legalised the use of variable line lengths, poetic license knows no bounds).

Uncle Aesop

A Dialogue

Person One: What do you call a black man flying a plane?
Person Two: I don't know.
Person One: A pilot, you racist.

Person Two got the answer wrong because he or she treated it as a trick question.

Life is not a trick question. It is a dialogue between you and God (who may or may not exist). You provide the answer in how you live, your life is a one-act drama. You believe or you don't believe, choosing quality or quantity, the choice is yours.

Why is racism wrong?
Because it is materialistic. It treats quantity as all important, whereas quantity is merely that through which we must see quality. Quality counts.

It is fun to ask my first question of a politically correct person, and hear them saying they don't know. After giving the answer, tell them "You are not supposed to differentiate".

Note how I proceed from the specific to the general, and back again. GO TO THE WELL FOR WATER _ BRING IT HOME_ THEN DRINK IT AND LIVE ON> ELSE YOU MAY DIE OF THIRST>

(The last part printed in large capitals because I pressed some fucking wrong key on the keyboard, I am typing this in the semi-darkness).

Politically correct people, when asked a question, ask themselves 'What answer am I supposed to give?' instead of just answering the question. They are modern brainwashers.

Too-clever-by-half people treat every question as a trick question, whereas every question deserves only one answer, a true one.

Preserve us from people who are all knowing and no understanding.

In eternal terms, the answer to the question which we are posed is a simple one, the question is the answer. Frame your answer in terms of the question, each question, large or small, must be answered on its own terms. Each detail is part of the whole.

Much of life is made up of apparently inconsequential trivia, but do not mistake appearance for reality. Reality is the essence or meaning of the real.

The real is that through which we must perceive reality and there are none so blind as those who don't want to see. See not the thing, but the meaning of the thing. In broad terms life, in narrow terms you or the thing perceived, and may they be as one. See them as such and act accordingly.

This comes in dribs and drabs, and I pass it on.

My search is a search for clarity, in, of, through, and with expression, a search for clarity itself.
A litany of prepositions.

May I and my writing be true in preposition as in verb, the greatest of these is the verb to be which, as you may have noticed, is an irregular verb.

We all have our own way of being and being true. The truth is extraordinary, giving the lie to the ordinary.

That the ordinary and the extraordinary may be one, that is my prayer.

I will leave it at that, lest I go on too long.

David

Family Matters

I have decided to name or rename some family members. From now on Holy Sister will be called Girlie, for reasons known to a select few. Unholy Sister shall be called Storyteller, because she is a gifted storyteller with an original turn of phrase. My as yet unnamed (by me) brother I name Bishop, because, as a boy, he wished to be a bishop, without going through the tedious formality of becoming a priest.

A story about, or concerning, each of these.

1. When Girlie was a teenager she had a summer job at Butlins holiday camp. There was lots of the boy-girl thing going on. Some fellow said to her "You were very cutting to such-a-boy last night. He is only learning". "I don't want him to learn on me", Girlie said.

2. When we were still talking to each other, L'Innommable and I were talking about Storyteller. "Why does she fly off the handle so easily?" I said (she has mellowed since), "but she's a great story teller. If I could tell stories like that I'd never do anything else". "I was in a restaurant with her when she was telling a story," said L'Innommable. "The whole restaurant went quiet. Everyone was listening to her. They never heard anything like it". (I bet you didn't know that, Storyteller).

3. When Bishop was fourteen years old, he was set an essay on The Power of the Press. We had a family engineering works which had a hundred ton press for shaping metal. (They have the same thing in Detroit, on a larger scale, for forming car bodies). He wrote his essay on those. He was supposed to write about the newspaper industry. (He tells this story himself, I'm sure he won't mind me telling it).

My older brother I shall call Grey Eminence, Eminence Grise, or Old Greybeard, as the spirit moves me. He is addicted to punning. Once, I was sitting on the other side of the table from him, I thought he looked as Sophocles might have looked, sage like, for that reason, and no other, I asked him "Is it permissible for a younger brother to offer sage advice to an older brother?" "If he has the thyme," my brother replied.

I better tell a story against myself, to make up for those above. When I was sixteen years old, I sat in the kitchen, alone with my mother, my head in my hand, wondering if I meant anything, if anything meant anything, and so on. "Mammy," I asked, "Do you love me?" What did she say? "Of course I love you, otherwise how could I put up with you."

Ah yes, my mother. A woman came to our house, making a terrible fuss, saying our dog had chased her on her motorbike, and my mother had to appear at the district court. "Did you suggest to my client that she should see a doctor?" she was asked. "I thought he might prescribe a sedative," she replied.

I like the title of Gerald Durrell's book, My Family And Other Animals. Some animals are very lovable.

David ****

Its So Easy

I was speaking to ACP on the phone. "I have a joke for you", I said. "Is it suitable for children?" he asked. After a slight pause, I said "Yes" (not all my jokes are). "Hold on, I'll just turn the speaker on", he said. (ACP has three children, the eldest is ten).
"Are they ready?" I asked. "They're ready", he said.

"I'm going to tell a joke, or rather two jokes," I said. "They have the same theme, which means subject. In the army, the soldiers are asking for compensation, which means money, for going deaf from firing guns. That should be a joke, but it isn't. Here is the first joke.

Half the army haven't put in for deafness claims. They haven't heard about it yet.

That was the first joke, here is the second one.

Soldiers were queuing up to have their hearing tested for their deafness claims. The first one went in, and the officer asked him to close the door, and, when he did he said 'You're not deaf, send in the next man'. The next soldier came in, and the same thing happened. On his way out, the soldier said to the next man 'He's very clever. Don't do anything he says'.
So the the third soldier went in, and the doctor said 'Close the door'. 'Close it yourself,' the soldier said'.

"Did they get it?" I asked ACP. "They got it", he said.

The title of this post is taken from a Buddy Holly song - 'People tell me love's for fools, so I here I go, breaking all of the rules' - then the the refrain - it's a lovely, easy going song.
It's easy to blog, it's easy to write, when you get the hang of it. As I said in my 'How to Write' piece, as you feel, how you feel.

My brother just asked me what I was doing. "Blogging", I said. "You're learning by doing", he said.

The subject of a piece may be absolutely anything, anything that evokes a feeling. Writing is the transmission of feeling, as is music.

I am learning by doing.