evolution/education
split into 'before' and 'after'
on 13 april 1974
as i was mopping a floor
pondering krishnamurti and
a girl i had a crush on
but felt unworthy of
and then the penny dropped
(as it had, i think
for joyce in august 1902
pondering maud gonne)
i had put my spiritual room in order
(in krishnamurti's phrase)
and the window could open
not as an act of will
seeing an image
(in the gospel of thomas's phrase)
as an image
and my tastes mostly crystallised then
pynchon-nabokov-stone-murdoch-gs brown
no longer straining to emulate
the priorities of academics
but still unable to articulate
or defend my preferences
so over the next decades
as i practiced this articulation/defense
i was appalled to find myself
a magnet/target
for vituperation
my independence consistently
rubbed people the wrong way
and the more articulate i got
the more extreme
became my isolation
(so far as i can tell
the notion of
loyal friend
is a myth
and nobody nowhere's
dared to make a webpage
appreciating my site/ideas)
the blog was an attempt
to bridge that rift
a window of opportunity
when quality web-content
was hard to find
and so long as
my conventional tastes
sufficiently balanced my heresies
my blog audience grew
but once i'd linked
shahak
and other critics of israel
the balance catastrophically
and vituperatively
shifted
hardly anyone dared link me anymore
so i retreated to joyce studies
and the history of ideas
.
