Papaver Somniferum, John Bonanno photograph, 2009

Cushing In The Sun, Beth Bonanno photograph, 2009

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."-Karl Marx, Capital

I believe Marx saw the varied phenomena of do-gooders as futile manifestations of a guilt complex. Conservatives usually insist on a similar analysis, which, of course, is a kind of atheistic nihilism.

"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere."-Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

Marx saw the fallacy of globalism before almost anyone else. Unfortunately his solution (Global Communism confronting Global Capitalism) compounded the problem. Perhaps that was the plan all along. In this case the call to arms of one global movement for battle against another global movement presents little choice at all since the desired result, hidden in plain sight and occult to the many, is Globalism. Communism and Capitalism are irrelevant distractions.

"The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."-Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction

At the head of this entry, Cushing, my Boston Terrier is contemplating Marx. And so am I. Marx has been so demonized by the prevailing, recently triumphant, but rapidly declining Capitalist mode one can instantly marginalize himself by the mere admission of having perused and analyzed Marx' thinking and writing. As spiritually and functionally dead as Marxism in practice has proven itself to be, one may garner knowledge from the man Karl Marx. I have long stated that Capitalism and Communism are two sides of the same materialist coin. And this coin has been absolutely debased and its plated dross desperately attempts to simulate spiritual gold. On reading Karl's famous statement that religion 'is the opium of the people' in context, one is led by him to conclude that religion, in practice, in an oppressed world cannot provide true spirituality. (Whether Marx entertains the possibility that such a thing exists is glossed over.) This passage implies that only in a liberated world may one properly pursue what is the object of religion. I disagree, the object of religion must be attained to liberate the world; but this much repeated, truncated, and mangled quote simplifies in a most banal way Marx' essential argument: organized religion provides comfort in misery by indefinitely delaying a possibly fantastic and certainly untestable reward for the common man's endless struggles and serves the masters of the world in so doing. Opium and religion are both incredibly good at what they do to those who are susceptible. It is error to confound the goals of establishment religion and the longings of men and women for the sublime other.

A case in point:

"A Christian man is the most free lord of all and subject to none"-Martin Luther 1520

"And should the peasants prevail (which God forbid!), -- for all things are possible to God, and we know not but that he is preparing for the judgment day, which cannot be far distant, and may purpose to destroy, by means of the devil, all order and authority and throw the world into wild chaos, -- yet surely they who are found, sword in hand, shall perish in the wreck with clear consciences, leaving to the devil the kingdom of this world and receiving instead the eternal kingdom. For we are come upon such strange times that a prince may more easily win heaven by the shedding of blood than others by prayers."-Martin Luther, Against the Rioting Peasants, retitled by its publisher as Against The Murderous Thieving Hordes of Peasants, 1525

Luther admitted that the goals of his movement were now identical with the interests of those who possessed political power and that the peasants whom he had previously championed and had supported him, were shit out of luck. The peasants had the choice between Rome's Catholicism and the local nobles' Protestantism, both of which would screw them into the ground. It was a false dilemma, not even a modicum of freedom was an option for the masses, and the 'reformed' Protestant nobility of Germany killed at least a hundred thousand revolting peasants. Luther's freedom was only the freedom to be Lutheran instead of Catholic. Political freedom was out of the question.

"--People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarme but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians."-James Joyce, Ulysses

Coming Soon: Marx and Hegel! The Dialectic!

Graveyard, Hiram, Maine, John Bonanno photo
It was in this cemetery that I recorded, on a Halloween, an EVP (electronic voice phenomena) faintly but clearly and unmistakably, in an archaic accent demanding: "Live well."

"O.E. græf "grave, ditch," from P.Gmc. *graban (cf. O.S. graf, O.Fris. gref, O.H.G. grab "grave, tomb;" O.N. gröf "cave," Goth. graba "ditch"), from PIE base *ghrebh-/*ghrobh- "to dig, to scratch, to scrape" (cf. O.C.S. grobu "grave, tomb"); related to grafan "to dig" (see grave (v.)). From Middle Ages to 17c., they were temporary, crudely marked repositories from which the bones were removed to ossuaries after some years and the grave used for a fresh burial. "Perpetual graves" became common from c.1650. To make (someone) turn in his grave "behave in some way that would have offended the dead person" is first recorded 1888. Graveyard shift "late-night work" is c.1907, from earlier nautical term, in reference to the loneliness of after-hours work."- Online Etymology Dictionary

“Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All want to be on good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real good sort. Keys: like Keyes’s ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. _Habeas corpus_. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it’s not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That’s the first sign when the hairs come out grey. And temper getting cross. Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. Courting death... Shades of night hovering here with all the dead stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O’Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o’ the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they’d kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones.” Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to do it at the window. Eight children he has anyway.”-James Joyce, Ulysses

"Good Friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."-Shakespeare's gravestone

"Or to take another eminent example, in which not Puritanism only, but, one may say, the whole religious world, by their mechanical use of St. Paul's writings, can be shown to miss or change his real meaning. The whole religious world, one may say, use now the word resurrection,--a word which is so often in their thoughts and on their lips, and which they find so often in St. Paul's writings,--in one sense only. They use it to mean a rising again after the physical death of the body. Now it is quite true that St. Paul speaks of resurrection in this sense, that he tries to describe and explain it, and that he condemns those who doubt and deny it. But it is true, also, that in nine cases out of ten where St. Paul thinks and speaks of resurrection, he thinks and speaks of it in a sense different from this; in the sense of a rising to a new life before the physical death of the body, and not after it. The idea on which we have already touched, the profound idea of being baptized into the death of the great exemplar of self-devotion and self- annulment, of repeating in our own person, by virtue of identification with our exemplar, his course of self-devotion and self-annulment, and of thus coming, within the limits of our present life, to a new life, in which, as in the death going before it, we are identified with our exemplar,--this is the fruitful and original conception of being risen with Christ which possesses the mind of St. Paul, and this is the central point round which, with such incomparable emotion and eloquence, all his teaching moves. For him, the life after our physical death is really in the main but a consequence and continuation of the inexhaustible energy of the new life thus originated on this side the grave."-Matthew Arnold, Culture And Anarchy

"Gloved Dance" John Bonanno, watercolor, 1990, $150

"Glove-O.E. glof "covering for the hand," also "palm of the hand," from P.Gmc. *galofo (cf. O.N. glofi), probably from *ga- collective prefix + *lofi "hand" (cf. O.N. lofi, M.E. love, Goth. lofa "flat of the hand"). Ger. Handschuh, the usual word for "glove," lit. "hand-shoe" (O.H.G. hantscuoh; also Dan., Swed. hantsche) is represented by O.E. Handscio, but this is only attested as a proper name. To fit like a glove is first recorded 1771."-Online Etymology Dictionary

"A pure hand needs no glove to cover it." - Nathaniel Hawthorne

“See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!”-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

"It was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite Father Conmee had finished explaining and looked down. His wife, Father Conmee supposed. A tiny yawn opened the mouth of the wife of the gentleman with the glasses. She raised her small gloved fist, yawned ever so gently, tiptapping her small gloved fist on her opening mouth and smiled tinily, sweetly."-James Joyce, Ulysses

The following glove references, in this order, appear in Ulysses:

"I want puce gloves and green boots."
puce gloves
kid gloves
gloved hand
rich gloved hand
"Never put a dress on her back like it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips."
canary gloves
"one plump kid glove"
"his other plump glovepalm"
small gloved fist
small gloved fist
"Father Conmee drew off his gloves"
violet gloves
"It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns."
kid gloves
"Cigary gloves long John had on his desk the other day."
"Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track."
"elbowlength ivory gloves"
glovers
"doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet"
"fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc"
warmgloved
"lovely ladies saling gloves"
canary gloves
"Clipclaps glovesilent hands"
"a pair of long yellow ladies' gloves"
"the present of Byron's poems and the three pairs of gloves"
"touch him with my veil and gloves on going out I kiss then would send them all spinning"
"I did I forgot my suede gloves on the seat behind"
"he kissed me in the eye of my glove and I had to take it off"
"he pestered me to say yes till I took off my glove slowly watching him"
"when I put on my gloves and hat at the window to show I was going out"
"when I put the chair against the door just as I was washing myself there below with the glove"

“It's a pretty sure thing that the player's bat is what speaks loudest when it's contract time, but there are moments when the glove has the last word.”-Brooks Robinson

"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."-Johnnie Cochran