Disclaimer: This blog, Listics, and it’s predessors, including but not limited to Sandhill Trek rel. 2.0 and the original Sandhill Trek are not now associated with, nor have they ever been part of arcane movements such as runic revivalism, futharkh spelling, nor any other pan-Germanic proto-linguistic baffle-gab promoted by the likes of Guido von List.

The existence of such a person, a man with a suspiciously Italianate first name, had nothing to do with naming this blog Listics. Anyone who says otherwise is a cad and a bounder. While we here at Listics thoroughly approve of Herr (or should I say “signor?”) von List’s choice of facial hair styling and fabulous headgear, I must re-emphasize, that his relationships in the Germanic Paganism movement, the insidious influence of Blavatsky and her nest of Theosophists on his otherwise clear and noble Wotanist thinking, have nothing to do with the work we are trying to accomplish here at Listics.

But, while we had thought that Guido Karl Anton List was a far remove from any cultural avatars that may have influenced what passes for higher consciousness in these environs, we have now been proven wrong. American Romanticism has impelled our work from the beginning, romanticism combined with a sort of native “one lord, one faith, one cornbread” naturalism.

Yesterday, Chris Locke, in a shocking thrust at the heart of American culture sullied — yes SULLIED — the memory, the reputation of New England’s favorite sons, Henry David Thoreau and by extention Ralfualdo Emerson. If Locke is to be believed, then the entire literary history of the Romantic movement on these shores is tainted — yes TAINTED — by some sort of ur-Fascist elitism and a bourgeois individualism masking as egalitarian idealism but in reality sowing the seeds of authoritarian and ultimately autocratic dictatorial repression.

Of course, this could just be my own inference, a sort of guilt by association thing…

How can a country that victimises its greatest living writer also join the EU?

TIMES ONLINE (October 14, 2024)

By Salman Rushdie

THE WORK ROOM of the writer Orhan Pamuk looks out over the Bosphorus, that fabled strip of water which, depending on how you see these things, separates or unites — or, perhaps, separates and unites — the worlds of Europe and Asia. There could be no more appropriate setting for a novelist whose work does much the same thing.

In many books, most recently the acclaimed novel Snow and the haunting memoir-portrait of his home town, Istanbul: Memories and the City, Pamuk has laid claim to the title, formerly held by Yashar Kemal, of Greatest Turkish Writer. He is also an outspoken man. Explaining his reasons for refusing the title of “state artist”, he said, in 1999: “For years I have been criticising the State for putting authors in jail, for only trying to solve the Kurdish problem by force, and for its narrow-minded nationalism . . . I don’t know why they tried to give me the prize.” He has described Turkey as having “two souls” and has criticised its human rights abuses. “Geographically we are part of Europe . . . but politically?” He is not sure.

________________________

Press Release

12 October 2024

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2024

Orhan Pamuk

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024 is awarded to the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk
“who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures”.

Whatever the country, freedom of thought and expression are universal human rights. These freedoms, which modern people long for as much as bread and water, should never be limited by using nationalist sentiment, moral sensitivities, or— worst of all—business or military interests. If many nations outside the West suffer poverty in shame, it is not because they have freedom of expression but because they don’t. As for those who emigrate from these poor countries to the West or the North to escape economic hardship and brutal repression—as we know, they sometimes find themselves further brutalized by the racism they encounter in rich countries. Yes, we must also be alert to those who denigrate immigrants and minorities for their religion, their ethnic roots, or the oppression that the governments of the countries they’ve left behind have visited on their own people.

But to respect the humanity and religious beliefs of minorities is not to suggest that we should limit freedom of thought on their behalf. Respect for the rights of religious or ethnic minorities should never be an excuse to violate freedom of speech. We writers should never hesitate on this matter, no matter how “provocative” the pretext.
– Orhan Pamuk, “Freedom to Write,” New York Review of Books, May 25, 2024

October 12, 2024, Associated Press — The European Commission said Thursday that a French bill that would make it a crime to deny that the World War I-era killings of Armenians in Turkey was genocide will hamper reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia.

“Turkey has been called on many times by the European Union to achieve reconciliation on that matter, and to conduct an open dialogue with its neighbor Armenia, and also with the Armenian Diaspora in France,” said EU spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy.

October 12, 2024 Associated Press — “No one should harbor the conviction that Turkey will take this lightly,” Turkey’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said. “The parliament will meet on Tuesday with a special agenda and no doubt we have measures to take in every field.”

Gul did not elaborate but his comments were interpreted by many as also being a reference to proposals currently being debated by Turkish lawmakers to recognize an “Algerian genocide” by France.

Dental treatments yesterday involved injections that numbed the whole right side of my head. Felt like a chipmunk with a baseball in my cheek. Don’t know what he puts in the mix buit my dreams last night were frustration dreams. Woke this morning to find an email from Jill Draper of Cambium Creative thanking me for the link.

Jill’s blog shows up in the “fifty random links” section of my blogroll, having migrated here via a klugey OPML file transfer back in April when I shut down Release 2.0. Why she’s thanking me now, I can only guess… but her acknowledgement shook a visit out of me, and I was glad I made the trip, if only because of her pointage to The Wild Women of Wongo.

Cross-X arrived late last week and it’s at the top of my reading pile, right under The God Delusion. Confession: I took some time out to read the new Stephanie Plum silliness, Janet Evanovich’s Twelve Sharp.

Truth be told, I’m enjoying Dawkins as much as I enjoyed Evanovich. My atheism is ad hoc, a by-product perhaps of a stoned reading of Being and Nothingness combined with a common sense understanding of my consciousness bookended by the darkness before my life and the darkness after my death. Dawkins hasn’t gotten that deep or maudlin, rather he’s giving me a good humored ride through the territory where ever so many earnest people wrestle with this stuff as if it matters in a larger sense than raw international institutional power struggles, Vatican turf battles and the occasional pogrom, genocide or crusade.

If my mockery of the blighted ignorance of those whose god is more than metaphoric sparks a simple conversation or two, I’ll be pleased. The whole “leap of faith” thing has been an arrow in my quiver since Norman Mailer bandied the phrase about as explanation for his need to explore other forms. I never thought a generation later would be mired in christian evangelical nonsense giving that commonplace phrase more weight than, say, “spirited venture.” I love Mailer in all his mawkish adolescent hostility and aggressiveness. Every mirror is flawed, but few writers are unafraid to live, to grasp the authenticity of their own experience and reflect it back to the world.

I’m looking forward to getting into Joe Miller’s book soon. And maybe Dickey’s Chasing Destiny while I’m at it.

the world plays jazz when you’re quiet
October 3rd, 2024

Ancient Chinese symbols fog up the mirror.
Freud not yet born or else still musing
across the bathtub at his lovely mother.
Black lace drapes the white window.
The crickets slow down like they’re
running out of batteries. The I Ching
rolls in the corner pocket. One last
fly backflips from the ceiling.
The machines clink and halt
and come to a rest. If you listen
you can hear the sighs of the dead.
Lose yourself in the season’s first breath.

when I read this, with little liza jane playing in the background, my first inclination was to cop some Klimt and post it… Danae probably, that face, the curves, beautiful ripe young womanhood with a shower of gold coins. Klimt totally tops Titian in the Danae dept.

I remember the good old days, when I was Zeus…

William Meloney writes poetry. I like it. His imagery, his presence, his vision, his style… it’s a brave thing to share from the heart. “Adrift” begins…

Sitting alone, except for the
insistent cat at my ankles,
across the dayroom, through
the open door
I watched my father sleep.

This blog, 2Voices, is like the jeweler’s black velvet display cloth, strewn with a half dozen or so precious gems.

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

G-L-O-R-I-A

Whenever I get depressed about the advances we made, and the ground that we seem to have lost to the right wing pseudo christian fascist insects who prey upon the life of the people, I am reminded…

One Man’s Trash, originally uploaded by jonl.

The Tutor will go nuts. Keeping up with the Joneses arrives on the dumpster scene.

Watching Leslie watch.