oh there's soo much to do, everything being so easy now, but the computer is fritzy and so if i am irregular in my posts know that sometimes i'm back in the commentary, for i can access the comments boxes from any computer. i feel the internet too often conceptualised in terms of telephones and telegraphs and such 'immediate' communication devices whereas i think 'glass attic' and 'handy wall for writing on' are more useful notions. of course a wall poor folks get to write on is a wall likely to get knocked down by vandals of both 'criminal' and 'authoritarian' stripe. i'm thinking that it would be wise to budget for the internet falling down. if you really want to remember something put it up in paint. on a wall you own. that's my guess.
one.) dale and i have been talking about kant's categorical imperative. (dale brought it up and i'm working with about twenty minutes crib of the cambridge encyclopedia of philosophy so catching up with me should not be hard.) my superficial scan suggests to me that kant, responding to the radical innovations in 18th century mathematics and physics, is postulating a place of 'pure reason', somewhere beyond 'empirical reason', and he needs this place to move ideas like 'the soul' (or 'geist'), which don't fit well in newton's new nature of matter. i say to dale: " i feel like this is just ecclesiastes again" and i mean that it is an argument framed to an idea of timelessness. kant is working with a much different idea of time than we all of us darwin's heirs. 'forever', to kant, is about twenty thousand years or less.
two.) dale proposes (and i'm paraphrasing and have not his communication before me so if i garble this forgive me dale)... dale proposes: "what i think kant is trying to get at in the concept of the categorical imperative is the existence of an essential humanity which exists beneath the layers of cultural diversity which differentiate us. i think that's an interesting question. do all individuals share a fundamental quality 'humaness'? " my response: "as opposed maybe to 'beagleness'?" dale, i'm interested in the question because you're interested in the question, so i'm going to carry on looking down this hole and thinking about it but my suspicion is the big rock down at the bottom ain't gonna move and the hole is never gonna get any deeper. "humanity" is a notion so tainted by theological poison and so impossible to quantify or test for that i think we can do without it. that is a nihilism, i have been told, that would undermine those customs and laws which make us a viable, democratic society. to my eye the evidence of our democracy and our viability is pretty thin.
put it another way: would kant extend the categorical imperative
to dolphins? what evidence would kant look for in making the decision?
three.) kant's trying to save rationality from itself (he can see de sade creeping around the corner). he's not successful and by the first half of the twentieth century rationality has eaten itself to the point it can no longer supply the certainty that had once been its (chief?) appeal. reason promised that you might 'know'. not any more. not since way before i got born (i didn't do it, it's not my fault).
the program that interests me is saving irrationality from religion. i want to lay down the soundtrack for leaping to no-faith.
four.) sherrif haney scott wants to shoot koo as soon as he sees him but somehow he can't bring himself to pulling his gun. so he vags koo intending that he die working on a chain gang out on the proposed highway.
five.) mrs. montoya hears koo playing the ukulele behind the wire of the exercise yard of the dos passos county jail. she buys koo's release. that is she buys koo.
six.) on his first night at mrs. montoya's koo goes unbidden to her bedroom. he takes off his belt. the music grinds. the suspense mounts. what's going to happen? what happens is that koo gives the belt to mrs. montoya.
seven.) later mr. jones (big nigger) will say to koo: "i should not have figured you for one of them boys who likes getting hit." koo laughs: "you think it's me who likes it, nigger? it's her who likes it. " big nigger says: "yeah, but she beats men for money all the time." koo says: " 'for money' and 'free' are two different things."
eight.) owen bright will shoot and kill big nigger (mr. jones).
nine.) mrs. montoya asks koo to kill owen bright. she wants vengeance for mr. jones. koo refuses. "why?" he says. "it won't bring nigger back. shortening owen's days ain't an injury to him. let him live and suffer."
ten.) mrs. montoya goes to shoot owen bright but the gun mis-fires. knowing that she'll only try again koo reverses himself, gives up on clyde the twisted buffalo deity's promise of ukulele heaven, and in the barroom of the zilchard hotel cuts owen's throat from ear to ear with a straight razor. lots of people see him do it. no one stops him. no one chases him afterwards.
eleven.) a dos passos town notable, incensed at the public bloodshed, will demand of sherrif haney scott that he go to lunaazul and kill koo kowlick. the sherrif replies: "you think it's so damn easy then you go do it. but you ain't gonna. i'll tell you what every hard man in this vicious little burgh already knows. nobody's ever gonna shoot that boy and nobody knows why."
twelve.) on christmas eve justine mannion spills a drink on koo kowlick. owen bright has been courting justine - for justine, even married to another man, represents everything that a lady should be to owen. some people will think justine meant to spill the drink. it's not true. justine's just drunk. she's drunk that night because she feels guilty because she's glad owen bright is dead. he was becoming boring and a pest.
thirteen.) the spilt drink makes koo especially conductive and when the electric lap guitar that sloane nibley has designed for koo shorts out koo will light up like a light bulb. the sound of koo dying will reverberate in the barbed wire all up and down the border and all through texas the font of dying. the sound of koo dying will be blasted by a million watts out through the air waves, out through the ether, out through the entire universe and all its stringy dimensions.
fourteen.) the sentient fungal creatures of F2 are the first to conceptualize the importance of the sound of koo's dying. telepathically they resolve to spread the good news. they decide this will require an appendage like what we call a 'thumb'. it takes a hundred thousand years of concentrated evolution for the fungal creatures of F2 to develop a thumb. after that things get easier.
fifteen.) time travel is easy. it requires only that you be very, very small. most of the civilizations ever have or will exist hover in the sound of koo's dying.
sixteen.) mrs. montoya is born elizabeth marie barbara welsh in a village near Hanover, in Germany, in the year 1896.
seventeen.) when koo dies we hear clyde's voice. clyde says: "close enough for jazz."
10:35:38 PM 
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