larvatus prodeo

Bigotry is the lot of retards. A grown man has enough enemies of all stripes to preempt uniform grudges.



“When I was a kid, some of the guys would try to get me to hate white people for what they’ve been doing to Negroes, and for a while I tried real hard. But every time I got to hating them, some white guy would come along and mess the whole thing up.”

As disabled 37-year-old Megan Mariah Barnes was shaving her pubes for the benefit of her new boyfriend in the driver’s seat of her 1995 Ford Thunderbird, her ex-husband Charles Judy took the steering wheel while riding bitch. Thus conjoined in harmonious operation of her automobile across the Florida Keys, they slammed into the back of a 2006 Chevrolet pickup driven by David Schoff. Barnes was charged with the misdemeanor second offense of driving with a revoked license and the felony of leaving the scene of a crash involving injuries. Judy, who had switched seats with his ex-wife in a futile attempt to claim responsibility for her offense, was not charged: “iussisti enim et sic est, ut poena sua sibi sit omnis inordinatus animus.” For Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection should be its own punishment.

I like my kike kayak.^∗,†,‡
( Footnotes: )

Sigmund Freud’s Beiträge zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens, or Contributions To The Psychology Of Love comprise three articles:

1. “Über einen besonderen Typus der Objektwahl beim Manne”, Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, Vol. 2, 1910, pp. 389-97; Gesammelte Werke, VIII, pp. 66-77; “A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men”, Standard Edition, Vol. 11, pp. 165-175
2. “Über die allgemeinste Erniedrigung des Liebeslebens” (Beiträge zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens II), Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, Vol. 4, 1912, pp. 40-50; Gesammelte Werke, Vol. VIII, pp. 78-91; “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love”, Standard Edition, Vol. 11, pp. 179-190;
3. “Das Tabu der Virginität” (Beiträge zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens III). Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, Leipzig-Vienna, Vierte Folge, 1917, pp. 229-251; Gesammelte Werke, Vol. XII: 159-180; “The Taboo of Virginity”, Standard Edition, Vol.11, pp. 193-208.

In the second of these articles reproduced below, Freud discusses male impotence that arises from an incestuous fixation on mother or sister. In the broadest strokes that fall short of caricature, his approach derives from the hypothesis that human sexual desires are based on childhood developments that adults ordinarily no longer consciously access. In regard of these developments, Freud identifies two currents in erotic life. The older affectionate current, originally directed towards the infant’s earliest caretakers, typically the mother, eventually becomes complemented by the sensual current that attains its acme during puberty. The oedipal prohibition turns the sensual current elsewhere. But it often remains fixated to its original incestuous objects, whereby the whole of a young man’s sensuality becomes tied to incestuous phantasies in the unconscious. Impotence ensues. Short of this extreme development, pleasure departs from sexual relations. Men seldom combine the two erotic currents, taking complete satisfaction in the same woman instead of directing each current to different women. But perhaps the erotic instinct is bound to remain perpetually unsatisfied in the choice of object. In later work, Freud would develop the argument locating the gain in the processes of sublimation responsible for the development of civilization. ( Read more... )

The last time my father stood next to me, he was ringing your doorbell and telling you that we loved you. The next day you scraped our child out of your womb.

Leonardo da Vinci, Feto umano nell’utero, 1511
That was nearly five years ago. Now you complain that I am harming you. You have failed at forcing the issue. You are begging me to desist. But I am not doing anything wrong. Nor am I harming you. If you want me to do your bidding, you must understand my reasons and convince me of your understanding. If you can feel remorse, we may benefit from conversation. If you stand on your rights, we have nothing to discuss.
    You offer my survival in some good memories. You offer kindness and a possible friendship. But how you remember me is your business. Your kindness last screeched at me amid 57th Street. Neither of us is good at friendship. I am sorry to hear about your father’s recent death. I offer you my condolences and appreciation of your effort to be responsible. But your responsibility is impossible without remorse. You will be responsible for people who love you; you are sorry if you have hurt me; you are deeply sorry for the baby; but you obsess about your reputation. You will say anything to forget our catastrophe. Is that what you call making peace with the past? You seem to be susceptible to shame. Think of it as your medicine meant to elicit remorse in regard to our common history.
    There are two innocent victims in our story. Neither of us is one. But my guilt is not an issue in what you want from me. Refusal is my right. You have two ways of getting past it: either persuade me that satisfying you is the right thing to do or offer me something I want in return. You want to move on. You claim that my account deters you from doing so. It does nothing of the sort. I am nowise deterred by Usenet libel claiming that I fucked a dog. You are displeased with my versiculi. But pleasure is not your right. And I am nowise obliged to concern myself with whatever pleases you.
    You need to be jarred from complacency. You have cancer of the soul. Your anguish is its symptom. I live with your disparagement. You could likewise live with my diagnosis. Your discomfort stems from recognizing its truth. You suffer from a spiritual malignancy. Seek to cure the disease, not to palliate the symptom.
    I mean to be therapeutic for both of us. I could be wrong. But you haven’t begun to persuade me of my error. As to your offers, I doubt that you have anything I want. But it doesn’t hurt to try. This is not an issue of sexual deviance. Your love of pain was entertaining. Its frustration of your own aims did not stand between us. Nor am I concerned with your failure to live up to your role models of Sex in the City, that bevy of time-worn bags traipsing around Manhattan in search of a steady regimen of penetration. You relate to women even more tenuously than you do to men. You could have friends through interest in people for their own sake, or through interests shared with other people. Neither of us is good at caring for people. But you also lack concerns that might ally you with others. You fail at concentration. Your attractions are notional. You imagine yourself in life and work without realizing any role. You have dabbled in marriage and yearned after motherhood, just as you have dabbled in design and yearned after commerce. You avoid sustained effort. You must work for a living, and you are content with the minimum of work that will keep you alive. Millions of others live like that. Unlike them, you refuse to make peace with mediocrity. You admire the drive towards betterment but fail to keep up on its path. Things get too complicated. Progress is too much to bear. It’s fun to whine about aimlessness and regret childlessness. It’s a drag to create a business or stay the course to become a mother.

Johanna Schwarzbeck, AFTER ABORTION, 1993
You might look up Johanna. She is your kindred soul, supplementing sex in the city with syringes. Even closer to your home comes a movie about a Chinese woman who seeks to reverse the effects of aging by consuming her own foetus. The only side effect of her success is a fishy body odor. George Orwell observed that “in the West we are divided from our fellows by our sense of smell”. As an exile from ideology, I prefer to divide myself from the advocates of class struggle and gender privilege. Tyranny stinks. I accept the attribution of foetal cannibalism to domination by the Chinese Communist regime. The party rules you to this day. In your doctrinary moods, you always had issues with my material comforts. But the roots of your resentment may be more ancient. Think of Euripides’ Medea, the tale of a woman who kills her own children in order to punish their father Jason for trying to start a new family. Medea addresses grieving Jason at verse 1396, which David Kovacs translates as: “Your mourning has yet to begin. Wait until old age.” The Greek original is twice as concise:

Μήδεια: οὔπω θρηνεῖς: μένε καὶ γῆρας.
Medea: [not yet adv] [sing a dirge, wail verb 2nd sg pres ind act]: [await, expect verb 2nd sg pres imperat act] [and conj] [old age noun sg neut acc]

You may have fancied yourself unwittingly, Medea to my Jason. Perhaps you deserve to address me as ψευδόρκου καὶ ξειναπάτου, breaker of [my] own oath and deceiver of a stranger. For my part, I broke nothing and deceived no one. Perhaps you fear running out of chances upon reaching your fifth decade. For my part, every day brings new beginnings. Your dirge is unripe. Oupô thrêneis: mene kai gêras.
    Perhaps Latin will suit you better than Greek. In his speech for Aulus Cluentius in 66 B.C., Cicero recalls a certain Milesian woman convicted of a capital crime for an abortion that she brought on by medicines, having been bribed to do so by those who stood to inherit the father’s estate in the absence of his unborn child. And rightly so, says he, inasmuch as she had abolished the hope of the father, the memory of his name, the supply of his race, the heir of his family, a prospective citizen of the republic. But as the great orator wrote to Atticus seventeen years later, in the midst of a civil war that doomed his republican cause, ut aegroto, dum anima est, spes esse dicitur. It is said that for a sick man, there is hope as long as there is life. Set aside the rest of the story, from Pompey’s flight from Italy to the ensuing display of Cicero’s hands and head on the Rostra in the Forum. You may yet redeem your errors. If you could save three lives, you would restore the balance. Let me know how it goes. If you can take my help, I will give it.

cum suis vivat valeatque moechis, quos simul complexa tenet trecentos, nullum amans vere, sed identidem omnium ilia rumpens; nec meum respectet, ut ante, amorem, qui illius culpa cecidit velut prati ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam tactus aratro est. — Gaius Valerius Catullus, carmen 11, 17-24

Memoria teneo Milesiam quandam mulierem, cum essem in Asia, quod ab heredibus secundis accepta pecunia partum sibi ipsa medicamentis abegisset, rei capitalis esse damnatam; nec iniuria quae spem parentis, memoriam nominis, subsidium generis, heredem familiae, designatum rei publicae civem sustulisset. I recall that, when I was in Asia, a certain Milesian woman was convicted of a capital crime, because she had brought on abortion by medicines, having been bribed to do so by the heirs next in line; and rightly so, inasmuch as she had abolished the hope of the father, the memory of his name, the supply of his race, the heir of his family, a prospective citizen of the republic. — Marcus Tullius Cicero, oratio pro Aulo Cluentio Habito, XI. 32

City bustle. Fading light.
You’ll have company tonight.
At your service, all your men.
They will make you whole again.

Rig your hopes and tell you lies.
Bust a nut between your thighs. 
Fart and snore and pay no heed
While dreams dwindle and recede.

Others not so long ago
Lit you up and made you glow,
Nights fulfilled you, but the dawn
Found you wan and woebegone.

Lest your gloom ensued in spawn
Its conclusion got withdrawn:
Scrape the foetus from within,
Glom more solace for your skin.

City bustle. Fading light.
You will sleep alone tonight.
One good woman, no good men.
Love can’t make you whole again.

“Amours de voyage I have allowed myself to call them, as distinguished from the love we may have for localities wherein our everyday lot is cast.”

I have long believed that love must be pervasive or bogus. The kind of love that generates bereavement must also be permanent. On several occasions I have been cured of living love by dint of its object proving itself unworthy. The rule of “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” ensures that that cannot happen with the object of love gone beyond the pale of all change. ( Read more... )

Pendant la première partie de sa vie, on ne se rend compte de son bonheur qu’après l’avoir perdu. Puis vient un âge, un âge second, où l’on sait déjà, au moment où l’on commence à vivre un bonheur, que l’on va, au bout du compte, le perdre. Lorsque je rencontrai Belle, je compris que je venais d’entrer dans cet âge second. Je compris également que je n’avais pas atteint l’âge tiers, celui de la vieillesse véritable, où l’anticipation de la perte du bonheur empêche même de le vivre. ― Michel Houellebecq, La possibilité d’une île, Fayard, 2005, p. 173; voir aussi l’entretien du 25 août 2005 et La fracture Houellebecq de 27 octobre 2005, publiés dans Le Nouvel Observateur

During the first part of his life, one becomes aware of his happiness only after having lost it. Then comes an age, a second age, when one already knows, as soon as he starts to live in happiness, that he is going to end up losing it. When I met Belle, I understood that I had just entered this second age. I also understood that I had not reached the third age, that of true infirmity, when the anticipation of losing happiness altogether prevents one from living it. ― translated by MZ

Rembrandt van Rijn, Susanna and the Elders, 1647, Mahogany, 76.6 x 92.7 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin ( Read more... )