Tale of Gnomes.

The dream involved a tiny village that resembled Kopenhagen that was inpopulated by dwarfish gnome – like people. The parallels to Kierkegaard’s life are not lost on me one bit, nor the significance of this village’s location. It was at the center of a building whose interior re-

sembled the corridors of a college campus: Specifically, the one in Escondido. Wherein I  had my film writing class. ‘Creative’ writing. (I.A.L.)

THESE corridors were in the shape of a ring that encircled the enclosed village. This leaves me to

suspect THAT the deep blue sky, I think turquoise when I first appeared, was faux – merely the product of a cleverly crafted set.

I have re-told this story so many times all ready (once to Anthony,

once to Zac and Mike, once to Blake and Blake’s girl (was it ‘Shelley’?),

and once to Scott.) that I might all most be tempted to forget my self and thus to forget how many times it was that I have told this story. But that the reasoning may be circular no longer bothers me; that I hope to escape Utilitarianism is my entire

thesis. What concerns me NOW is my own mental well-being. And my spiritual well-being beyond that.

I came to that village, as I re-

call, with two companions: A close friend of the same gender who appeared, at least in de-

meanour, to be akin to a family member. The other was my dog.

(Pumpkin. My  innocence. My love.)

At first I trusted the gnomes.

I should remember my discipline in spontaneous action. At times like these it can only be the mark of Highest Culture to surrender the flow of the piece

to write to you, Alanna. But is it too soon? I do not imagine that I burden you with these relatable cares. That you might once have shot down my plaints is a distant past; the movie is over. I feel that I OWE you these reflections. That you might grow. But per chance it would be best to adhere to a ‘selfish’ path, if only for some time, that it might serve the altruism I shall gain when you return. It simply drives me mad, though. Do you not feel the same? Even that idiom – to ‘gain an altruism’ –

appears blatantly Utilitarian to a

jeering crowd. Though they them-

selves so unabashedly and un-

blushingly push their Utilitarianism!

But then I found a beautiful maiden: A damsel in distress!

I think that she was bound up in the captains quarters of what once had been a sailing vessel and what now had been trans-

muted into a restaurant and/or meeting hall of some sort. She was hiding from the gnomes and plotting her escape. She co-*

rroborated my suspicions that the gnomes meant not well.

In FACT: They were man-

*<3                                         eaters.

You have figured it out by now.

Professor Cess-mat rejected my scrypt. He took one look at it,

flipped through it, lecturing me upon how it was (though not WHY,

or very feebly and unbelievably)

that Format (Cess-mat, four-mat,

floor-mat) accounted for one third of the class. That ass. He is pre-

cisely the patriarchal ‘white liberal’ man that he preaches against; that he would generalise upon all who bear a kinship of appearance to him only evidences his own narcissism (do believe me: It is exhausting to write this, if only so at the moment that I say

‘exhausting’) and now that I have made that parenthetical digression I forget the next clause. We labored to make our escape.

We had to play along and to pretend that we had not yet caught on to the gnomes, so that the gnomes would not have ‘caught on’ to us. I must confess that I do not re-

member yet if it was I just remembered: He was no less guilty of it for admitting to it,

but MORE so. that the girl followed us around or re-

mained in a mobile hiding.

Camus warns that when we have ac-

Knowledged a situation as Absurd there is the temptation to take a ‘leap into Absurdity’: To sell out, to deny the absurdity of things. Suicide is an example of such faulty coping mechanisms. I am reminded of a Story told by Tyrone, the Palomar custodian at the San Marcos campus, about a student he knew at Berkeley who got into an argument with a professor. The professor gave the young man a ‘C’.

The dispute was intellectual. The student took up the issue with the clock tower. He appealed to the ground.

Now they have bars on that tower.

So yeah. Suicide is not the answer.

Remember that if nothing else; it is the sole resin I write these with such desperation and unrest.

Were I so easily seduced

By format and

structure you would not be

Reading this

now.

Art must be a form of revealing.

I explained to Anthony that this was not ‘contrarian’; it was simply post-structuralist.

If I am contrarian at present it

Is only as a preventative measure.

Lance was right: Some people are in life for what they can ‘get out of it’. But others want to understand it. Still others wish to ‘over-stand it’. My break-down began really when he first told me that it needed to be formatted. You might recall. At that moment my Fate was sealed, for I Could Not Corrupt my Work. We snuck under cover of twi-light up to the gates. I had my dog, if not at my side, then in my arms.

And Anthony asked, after having been so contrarian as to call me a contrarian,

(do keep in mind that this was the kid who

would leap over fences just to prove a point; please do not fall in Love with him for that) what it was that I had to GAIN by ‘not’ (gain by not. What a phrase. Gain by nought. [sic and naughty.] Gain by night? Gain by knight!) formatting it. And it even pains me to inscribe it NOW as a possibility!  It simply could never have OCCURRED to me to do such as thing! Tony had the gall to imply that I was an egoist.

But GAIN was nowhere on my mind!

I had no estimations for an ideal ‘future’; at present I all ready knew that I could edit the piece no further.

But the girl was some where LAGGING behind. We had to make our escape swiftly. It was not by a firm sense of necessity but with a scattered trepidation that we passed into the air-lock that was the security entrance. Its white tile reminds me of the air-locks of some In-N-Out restaurants, and its bleak over-HEAD lighting reminds me, most palpably, of the narrow corridors that had so fascinated me with my photographic eye the night that I met Alanna.

The alternative to leaping is PROTEST. This was Camus’ solution. He based an entire book upon it: The Rebel. Format is so dubious and criminally arbitrary and privileged

that it is impossible to delude my self that it would have made any ‘difference’, nor that I might even have FOUND it! Every thing is Structure; the Universe its self is geometrical; how was this NEWS to physicists only so RECENTLY?

I still do not know if the damsel escaped. I barely Know if my male cohort had escaped! What seems without doubt though was that I got out with my dog. Yet how far did we get? How far into the darkness did we penetrate? It was not the darkness that bothered us. Only the people we were running from.

Form is substance. Substance is form. I had no way of KNOWING that the ‘format’ would decide a third of my grade. You have seen the Absurdity by now, even if it was at this point in the reasoning that Tony expressed his im-

patience more explicitly.

I could only INTUIT that the professor would be entirely arbitrary, dismissive, and dogmatic, out of only Resentiment for my talent. How could a professor expect me to trust a ‘syllabus’, a set of mere words and numbers in a LIST, as any sort of guarantee? How could he try to fool me by insisting that he needed to create a ‘level playing field’ for the students?

Kierkegaard versus the People of Kopenhagen would have been a stirring court case trial to witness. The Public On Trial.

Was it not OBVIOUS? Did he think I had not READ Kierkegaard?!? That I did not remember how it was that Lisa Cecere nearly lost her job when She told JAKE, in the wake of his Traumatic Episode, that she had to be ‘fair to the other students’? How dare this cess-

mat educator dispossess his self of his own responsibility – to facilitate CREATIVE writing – by pre-

tending that he did not create the rules? It is such a blatant cession of responsibility to the MASS! And it was so typically Utilitarian! I spoke with him for a bit after the fact. An awkward silence, electric with energy, hung betwixt us as we stood outside the campus building upon the cement strip be-

twixt the corridor and the parking lot. And so I ventured to give birth from the pregnant pause.

I mentioned Derrida’s entire analysis of how typically Utilitarian Americans are, and that cinema is haunted by this problem. And the

cock-sucker called Derrida a LANGUAGE theorist! I guess that makes Cesmat a Languish Theorist. As though we do not all have to answer to the challenge that reality is made of Language! Both Ali and T.

McKenna insisted upon this;

what in hell is Cesmat playing at dismissing him as Kresten once had?!? And to think that either of these men had once implied that I was LAZY!!

And of course then I mentioned Joyce (it had really been before then), and all he could produce

was that Joyce was an ex-patriate from  in from France! As though I had fore-

gotten what Deleuze had said about intellectuals. Watch out. The Sith have sent their best-researched Nazi to shut us down. We must have

And it was DELEUZE then that I mentioned as a FILM THEORIST!

And Cesmat could only grapple at the word ‘theorist’, as though to dis-

miss it as ‘less than fact’. Well:

Apparently he thinks he knows better than Deleuze. But that is but a theory.

I hate telling people what to do. I hate being told what to do. Cesmat wanted me to surrender my own sense

of autonomy and RESPONSIBILITY for my script, for the role of writer as unadulterated prophet,

in service to the same system that destroyed Orson Welles’ work, as well as that passionate painting of the Native that had found its home in the San Diego State class room before that P.C. Fascist removed it.

We tried to return, for the girl, I think. Since the dog was under my supervision,

the operation was cumbersome.

He wanted me to PRESUME upon his authority and upon the

authority of THAT system! Even though he had the nerve to use the names of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung! And he wanted me to become Utilitarian. Not only would I have become a clone trooper marching in the crowd: A clone of my professor, echoing ‘I do not make the rules’, that olde cliché. He wanted me to take HIS order by giving OTHERS orders! THAT was what it mean to FORMAT.

As though I could Not TRUST directors and cinematographers to interpret my work according to their own imaginations! It DOES

take a village to raise a brain-

child, you know. And I had thought that tiny, cozy, un-

intimidating village of GNOMES to have been the place.

Anthony’s criticisms mean little.

He could only ask what it was that I had to GAIN by ‘not conforming’. Why not ask the obverse? what to gain by con-

forming? There is no Mass.

There is no ‘way it’s done’ at work here. There is no format.

There is only the relationship with the professor, and Tony’s indirect relationship to it. YOUR

indirect relationship to them both!

The relationship of course. Not the people.

But how could I so insult my teacher by attempting to flatter him at the expense of my authenticity? Surely HE would read my work care fully,

labouring to understand it, if it is his intent to learn from his students.

The LEAST that he could do is to live up to the name of Jung that he so casually drops and not to interfere in the name of his ‘own bourgeois ideas about what is ‘normal’.’ (von Franz, Jungian Analyst. Though less anal than Freud.) I mean: What?

Does he want me to go through life

and have a mental break-down every time that I must commit the written word to print? If Derrida is ‘MERELY’ a language theorist, then what relation does PAPER have to Computers?? I might have begun typing this letter directly to phone long ago,

but NO! Writing is not a daring POKE into a miss-

understood and volatile abyss!

It is a BUSINESS! Spirits do not Guide us through this treacherous jungle! Only CRITICS who chop down the trees

we are so eager to write upon!

And he would have me re-print it all,

wasting the hide of those once glorious trees, just on the OFF chance that I would stumble upon the ghost of FORMAT! HIS ghost! The Cesmat Format.

Obviously, I expected better of him. It could not have been much to ex-

pect. Very RARELY must he have a student whose avant-garde Stabs so wound him and whose wounds are so worth nursing. And I KNOW that mine are worthit. [sick.] I really poured my heart directly into that screen play. How could he regard it as

but one of a number? Had I not demonstrated my COMPETENCE enough that I might ALTER if not Transcend the dualistic illusion of a Norm?? Do under-

stand, and over stand: I would not tell you this if not that I KNEW that you feel my plight and HOPE that this might help you.

There was nothing ever to ‘gain’. We approached this day with Fear and

Trembling. For we had seen our SELVES and had the courage to clothe them.

So the same reason that I refused to besmirch my piece with crude instructions and belaboured descriptions and directions was the reason it did not even occur to me to think of ‘gain’. Whether it is to tell the camera man what to do or to be told how to write (and here the one cannot be extricated from the other), the temptation is the same:

Utilitarianism!!!

Deleuze said that what is original never follows a TREND.

HE ALL so said that writing is pure.

Talking is seductive. As much as I would

love to seduce you, it is well that I took the pains to write this.

Let us keep writing pure and not fall into dogmatism. That my own frustrations sound dogmatic is only to serve the utilitarian purpose that I might re-

member the next thing,

moment by moment, that I wish to berate. And that Utilitarianism is a ghost I shall exorcise soon. With push-ups curls and a fresh run per chance. I have not run for a while. I pray that this will be help full to you.

Remember: Do not take the Leap.

I could have told my self that next time I shall Know better,

that he’s the boss. I could have submitted to an impersonal social order. But every one Knows the Emperor wears no clothes. This class was between me and the professor, and he did not hold up his end of the relationship. I wrote. He did not read. What did he think I came to school for? To kiss his ass? No. To LEARN. And not to ‘learn format’. There is no such thing as an ‘unstructured piece’. What is learning if it has been learnt before? Do I look five?

Creativity is all ways NEW, and as Campbell said we enter the wood where there is no path.

The dictation of the time has no proper dominion over our personal eternity, and so Campbell was not a mere man of his time. Circular as that is it probably saved my life. I hope it saves yours.

Karl and I once came to the joint conclusion that Schools are no longer academic institutions and think-tanks. They are trade-

schools. And that is very, VERY dangerous. I hope to find you again.

To deliver you from the gnomes. [Dm.

Malice of the Equalist:

You little bitch. What do you hope to GAIN by leveling with me? That a man might have to answer not only for his OWN sins but for those of every man who wronged him? That it would not be SUFFICIENT that he criticise the man who wronged him? That he could not LEARN from the wrong doing of his assailant and crusade against it, watch full of its each appearance lest he permit the wrong to be committed again by any other. What malice you must possess to suspect the VICTIM of this, as though to add insult to injury and to salt the wounds! Is there no refuge from evil? Now you mean to tell me that the poison from the wound has spread to the Heart! MUST the victim be vigilant now of his self, at a moment when he needs most to be confident of his self and vigilant of others? MUST he turn his keenest eye inward as still other rascals take advantage of him? NO! What do you hope to GAIN by this? What am *I* to gain? What are WE to gain? And most importantly: What will THEY? Do you think honestly that I would bewail my own agony were it not the agony of watching an other suffer? What does it bother you that YOU suffer that I might my self heal? Would you have to watch one of your own suffer? Until you do you shall not fathom my pain; you only have enough room in your heart for one. IMAGINE the pain of two! And when the heart was most open!!

Dm.A.A. 

Dialogue.

Ahh. Typically American. But you see I did not ASK about what MIGHT happen. *I* was asking about what is TOTALLY IMPERATIVE at THIS VERY MOMENT. Now you speak to me of women getting raped, and the necessity of self defense. But you failed to provide one ostensibly crucial warrant. I mean: Can you PROVE to me that rape is bad? Now, now. No need to get violent yet. A simple warrant will do. Now you seem to EXPECT that I know the answer to this question. That’s a bit TOTALITARIAN, is it not? To EXPECT such an answer. Seems contrary to your motto. Allow me if you will to venture again. It was YOU that suggested that women need guns to protect their selves. But I of course filled in the details with my own imagination. You simply said: But what about women who get raped? Well: what ABOUT them? Or is it possible that you wanted to PRESERVE this fine tradition? After all: Surely many of their ASSAILANTS TOO were armed. Now I have done the work FOR you. Now haven’t I? And you turn to me like I have tricked you. You DEMAND that I be clearer next time with my claims. But I only thought to ask questions. I was curious about you. I wanted to give you that space to set the standards. Turns out you had NO standards to set. My views were secondary. But now I must supplement them for your own. Nature abhors a vacuum, you know.

Allow me to refresh. You SEEM to have suggested, by threat of violence, that ANY man should know the answer to this question that I asked OF YOU. And yet it seems you did not even think to ask the question first! Were the last men to have beaten you not kind enough to TELL you the answer, that you might not be beaten again for asking it? How is it that YOU cannot prove EITHER why rape is bad? Now come on. Must *I* educate YOU? I have all ready hinted at the answer twice before. But I wanted to get to know you before I did the work for you. Clarity IS the enemy of Depth, now isn’t it, and I would INSULT your depth by my Being-Too-Clear!

Here is the answer: That rape is a form of VIOLENCE. Now that we have established VIOLENCE, as the problem, go ahead. If you will pardon my use of the imperative. EXPLAIN to me how guns are necessary. SHOW me how you might sit next to your WIFE and not feel AWKWARD at the fact that you have a gun at your other side. Does that not HAUNT you? Does it not BOTHER you? Now, now. I did not EXPECT you to know the answer. Say what you will of my being manipulative. But at least I am consistent; I my self don’t have Totalitarian Expectations. Is it not YOU who seeks to manipulate me by leveling with me, that you might escape responsibility in the mere moments it takes for me to justify my self?

But was the burden not upon YOU? After all: It was to YOU that the thought of sexual violence occurred. No surprises, since you seem to value violence as a human right. But surely it can’t be that YOU are the apologist. Only for the violence that you your self deem justified. But my good man! What about the women who do not WANT to carry a gun! Bless their souls. And you would RATHER that they be raped by any MISCREANT who thinks to bear one? After all: Are they not usually found out LATER to have been “mentally unstable”? Are many of them not so DIAGNOSED only a posteriori?

The burden was of course upon you to answer my question. And you tried to dispossess your self of THAT responsibility as well, reversing the burden upon me as you have done [by] Leveling more recently. Yes, even as you have done by labeling me the manipulator. But is it not IRONIC that since the burden of the question rested upon YOU to begin with, you could only parrot it back to me with the EXPECTATION that *I* know it? Why would you EXPECT that I know the answer to an innocent question? Were you biased against me to begin with? How DARE you call me manipulative then! That is surely WORSE than the fact that I did not EXPECT you to know the question either. I mean, sure: May be I have confessed that the question was not so much innocent as interrogatory, more Rhetorical than Socratic. But what does it say that you JUMPED to that same conclusion without EVIDENCE?

Or was my evidence merely a matter of tone, of intentionality? Would you not EASILY have exposed it by simply answering? Would that not at LEAST have lay my planned advocacy to waste? Or were you afraid that it would not? You only compel me to sound manipulative for you your self are. How else am I to answer to the accusation that I too had had Totalitarian Expectations? Either I did, or my question was rhetorical, for I did not expect you to know the answer. It is not nice to try to corner people. Nor is it accurate. For it was YOUR last argument that would have led me to believe one of two things: That either you knew or you were bluffing. So I ask one more time: Is it not IRONIC that since the burden of the question rested upon YOU to begin with, for it was YOU who mentioned rape to start with, that you expected ME to know the answer to a question you did not ostensibly expect? After all: if you expected the QUESTION, was it not you who lay the trap? How could you claim that I had tricked you if the question its self was expected?

Now, now. But no need to get violent. And no need to level. We heard every thing.

Dm.A.A.

Marxism and Assault. III:

Marxism and Assault. III.

The confusion of theft and rape can only be committed by the neurotic ego. If one's locus of attention is upon the Other, then there can be no confusion. The Other NEEDS food, and similarly the Other has a Need NOT to be violently abused. There can be no conflict of interest here. In the same way as we must honor the Other's space we must honor the Other's nutrition and general well being. Only the Self can imagine this latter obligation is an infringement upon its OWN former rights. The Self, if it is sufficiently conniving, will hold the altruist to altruistic standards. But the egoist is exposed at the moment that the altruist sees that the egoist neither holds its self nor other others to these altruistic expectations. This hypocrisy can get SO egregious that, when the altruist rages that they are not being held to the same standards, the egoist simply says to the altruist: think of others. But it is merely an absurd parroting of the altruist's own indignation -- a re-direction of resentiment. At this moment the offense must be seen not as revelatory of the altruist's contradictions but rather of the egoist. The egoist fucks up; he thinks that he is simply perpetuating the ruse. In fact he had blown his cover, for were thought of Other his own goal then he would join in his altruistic friend's tirade against the selfishness of these others.

That this seems to contradict the principle of Tolerance for the Intolerant is a fact that I can tolerate. After all: consistency belongs to the self. Inconsistency is the province of the Other. Yet I do not espouse a surrender of consistency. There can BE consistency underlying an apparent inconsistency, and for a balance betwixt self and other to exist we must honor it. The consistency here is that we still tolerate those whom we criticise; we try to ignore those we do not see any positive potential in.

The effect of Political Correctness is that we repress the Otherness of the Other and our own tendency to Otherise in favour of including the Other in the Self. So it is that, as tends to be the case with repression, the repressed instinct becomes VILE. When we DO Otherise, it is with unconscious aversion. And this is not said to haunt you with fear of your own unconscious; my intent is quite the opposite. The moment that we express this aversion we become conscious of it. But what we forget is that it was not justified to begin with. So it is not as though at this moment you must ask your self: am I secretly racist? You are not. There is no such thing. But rather when you say: I AM racist, but I cannot help it! you are lying. When the notion of racism its self is seen to be a projection of the unconscious then it loses all meaning except as a slur. But what we must be vigilant of here is the investment we make in the psyche. If we spend days being politically correct, by the time that we order a drone strike on the phantom projection that is I.S.I.S. it is all ready too late to convince the well meaning, politically correct ego that this is blatant xenocide. The ego has done every thing RIGHT, but it is still wrong, to use a cynical expression. And this is, again, NOT to say that the egoist is 'unconsciously racist' and that he can atone by becoming 'conscious' of that 'fact'. There never WAS a fact, just like there never WAS any sort of Racism nor any sort of I.S.I.S. The naivete here is on the part of the realist. What there WAS were the Muslim people, but because they were excluded under threat of exclusion their Otherness was repressed, forgotten, corrupted, and re-projected upon the Middle East. The non-realist does not deny an actual crisis, so he is not naiive; HIS whole argument is that the crisis is perpetuated by the people trying to stop it. And whilst it is in man's nature to act, to cite Watts, we should act in such a way that does not act against Nature.

Dm.A.A.

Marxism and Assault. II.

Marxism and Assault. II:

The central flaw with contemporary progressive thought is the nihilation of the Other. To be regarded as Other is established as the most unfavourable sort of Hell because to regard an other AS Other (to Otherise) is seen as a vile sin. And if one man's sin is an other man's hell, the default for cynical atheists who disbelieve in cosmic and karmic justice, then the former necessitates the latter and vice versa: to the degree we are afraid to exclude to that same degree we fear being excluded. And the moment that exclusion is justified in order to exclude the exclusionary -- when we feel entitled to be Intolerant of the Intolerant -- at that moment conformism and fear become a synthesis more dangerous than State and Corporate power.

Dm.A.A.

Marxism and Assault:

I wonder how many of you have seen this psychedelic film from 1977 called the Holy Mountain. In the closing monologue this sort of Plutonian character, concluding your journey through the Under World, tells you to surrender your body. It is not yours, he says: it was a loan.

Admittedly, I have had enough problems with trickster gurus in my day to be vigilant of such rhetoric. But all that cultists have shown me is to be mind full of the Intent Of The Speaker. The words them selves are unequivocal. It is simply that their meaning is skewed in favour of the person saying them.

The claim that Marxism justifies rape does not phase me. It does so only in theory. Not in practice. It was never PUT into practice. The co-claim that rape can never be justified does not support the primary claim; it is simply a counter-claim because the primary claim PROVES that rape can be justified. We simply should not do some thing simply because Reason tells us it's okay. And to escape Rationalisation we must weigh it against Experience. The moderate suspicion of Marxism is that it works in theory and yet not in practice. Yet in truth it was never PUT into practice. So all we have to say against it is purely theoretical. And we must prepare for the possibility that, IN practice, it might be our only alternative TO a coercive and violent society, much rather than a step 'towards' it (as though such a society could not be said, however naiive conventional realism may be, to exist within the status quo.). To ignore this gap between lucid reason and Experience is in fact to engender the Same kind of Rationalism that can justify any thing and presupposes that thing to be "good" because it is "justified", without consulting Experience and, most importantly, the Intuitions that help us learn from past experiences in such a way that we have more than simply to 'test our hypotheses' that rape is a good thing empirically if we wish to Prove that it is not.

Dm.A.A.