A Mimicry of Puppets : Politicised Conversation with a Ghost
I am XenoBoy. I am the Political Savant.
In the digital sub-strata of allusion, the following conversations emerged from the shell of a ghost, Molly Meek, the twice dead. (www.livejournal.com/users/mollymeek/)
Molly : In your little parable, the little girl is "told" to put the coin in. The sweet supplier finds a shortfall in his coins. Is violence an option? Practitioners of political coercion are sensitive to the notion of punishment utility. The master can only use negative reinforcement to a limit. The cane is a physical object conveying nothing in its existence. It is the thought of the cane and its signification with Pain that governs the action of the little girl. So we regress back to "conventional tropes" of Singapore politics which you wanted to overturn : Fear.
XenoBoy : Damn. For a shell of a ghost, you remain too inquisitive. The assassin I sent has failed, shafted in the blain by an ethereal dagger. Why did the girl open the trapdoor? I wanted the answer : because she was a little lucky and a little brave. She broke out from the linear conditioning of coin --> open trapdoor --> sweets. Perhaps it is her innocence, before she makes the association between cane and pain. I am confused and riddled by myself.
Molly : Ahh calm down XenoBoy. Lets move on to Ethics. What you are always repeating. Cannot Ethics itself be subverted and rendered into a condition of coercion and hence, create an asymmetrical power relationship? The holy and righteous shroud of the Master-Slave dialectic? Hidden under the rubrics of a self-serving Ethics? and ....
XenoBoy : Shut up. Utter relativism and my head spins into infinite slippages and the shadow that ... that ... always looms larger than the mantle of post modernism and its linguistic whore-son post-structuralism. There is simple Ethics. What Mr Wang said : "Put your hands to your heart and say honestly that your linkage was not for altruism but tainted by vain-glory" Put your hand to your heart and feel its beat. A child when first exposed to a scene of slaughter from the picture-box averts her gaze, feels that sense of wrong-ness. There is a Confucian or Mencius allegory of this primordial morality coded into our RNA, DNA or whatever fossilized nano-neural transmitters ... echoed by Locke, evolving a European tradition of natural laws, biological laws, but horrifically subverted by the German Nationalist Historians. If Ethics is subverted what reason do we have to live? ... Oh God ... guess such reasoning fails when I am conversing with a Ghost.
Molly : Took you many twisting sentences to realise this trap huh? Ha! Yes .. moving on to the trapdoor. The trapdoor is both armor and a sword, thrusting into the brain of the child. Erecting this barrier. Limits her power. But ..
XenoBoy : Fuck.
Molly : But ... the trapdoor opens to a smaller box when the girl is her self trapped in the bigger box. The Prisoner in a chamber of mirrors as you once lyrically put it.
XenoBoy : Bear with me as I repeat a Zen koan from Yukio Mishima, "Nansen Kills the Cat". There was a cute kitten that became an object of contention between the Eastern and Western wings of the great temple. The chief priest, Nansen, catches hold of the kitten and asks the contenders, "Why should I not kill the kitten?" No one speaks. Nansen decapitates the kitten. When the chief disciple, Joshu returns from his errand and realises what has transpired. He removes his muddied shoes and places them on his head. Nansen laments that if Joshu had been present, the kitten's life would have been spared. Nansen's action is the Murdering Sword. Insensibility begets a practice where the violent cutting away removes all contradiction and discord between Self and Other. Joshu's action represents the Life-Giving Sword. He cuts himself with such a humiliating gesture that he demonstrates the way of Buddha. The little girl in the Prison Cell knows she is imprisoned. Her only possible action to break from this state of imprisonment condenses into that simple action of opening the trapdoor without putting the coin; be it fear, pain, embarassment, humiliation. She frees herself while imprisoned. Life-Giving Sword.
Molly : Put your hand to your heart and tell me you thought of this when you were penning the parable.
Silence.
Molly : I forgive you.
And with those words, the little child walks free from the ruins of the mirrors.
And with those words, the savant falls below the bimbo.
And with those words, audibly, the frozen part of his heart dissolves. (Murakami "Kafka by the Shore)
And with those words, the ass saw the angel (Nick Cave).
I am XenoBoy. I am the Political Savant.
In the digital sub-strata of allusion, the following conversations emerged from the shell of a ghost, Molly Meek, the twice dead. (www.livejournal.com/users/mollymeek/)
Molly : In your little parable, the little girl is "told" to put the coin in. The sweet supplier finds a shortfall in his coins. Is violence an option? Practitioners of political coercion are sensitive to the notion of punishment utility. The master can only use negative reinforcement to a limit. The cane is a physical object conveying nothing in its existence. It is the thought of the cane and its signification with Pain that governs the action of the little girl. So we regress back to "conventional tropes" of Singapore politics which you wanted to overturn : Fear.
XenoBoy : Damn. For a shell of a ghost, you remain too inquisitive. The assassin I sent has failed, shafted in the blain by an ethereal dagger. Why did the girl open the trapdoor? I wanted the answer : because she was a little lucky and a little brave. She broke out from the linear conditioning of coin --> open trapdoor --> sweets. Perhaps it is her innocence, before she makes the association between cane and pain. I am confused and riddled by myself.
Molly : Ahh calm down XenoBoy. Lets move on to Ethics. What you are always repeating. Cannot Ethics itself be subverted and rendered into a condition of coercion and hence, create an asymmetrical power relationship? The holy and righteous shroud of the Master-Slave dialectic? Hidden under the rubrics of a self-serving Ethics? and ....
XenoBoy : Shut up. Utter relativism and my head spins into infinite slippages and the shadow that ... that ... always looms larger than the mantle of post modernism and its linguistic whore-son post-structuralism. There is simple Ethics. What Mr Wang said : "Put your hands to your heart and say honestly that your linkage was not for altruism but tainted by vain-glory" Put your hand to your heart and feel its beat. A child when first exposed to a scene of slaughter from the picture-box averts her gaze, feels that sense of wrong-ness. There is a Confucian or Mencius allegory of this primordial morality coded into our RNA, DNA or whatever fossilized nano-neural transmitters ... echoed by Locke, evolving a European tradition of natural laws, biological laws, but horrifically subverted by the German Nationalist Historians. If Ethics is subverted what reason do we have to live? ... Oh God ... guess such reasoning fails when I am conversing with a Ghost.
Molly : Took you many twisting sentences to realise this trap huh? Ha! Yes .. moving on to the trapdoor. The trapdoor is both armor and a sword, thrusting into the brain of the child. Erecting this barrier. Limits her power. But ..
XenoBoy : Fuck.
Molly : But ... the trapdoor opens to a smaller box when the girl is her self trapped in the bigger box. The Prisoner in a chamber of mirrors as you once lyrically put it.
XenoBoy : Bear with me as I repeat a Zen koan from Yukio Mishima, "Nansen Kills the Cat". There was a cute kitten that became an object of contention between the Eastern and Western wings of the great temple. The chief priest, Nansen, catches hold of the kitten and asks the contenders, "Why should I not kill the kitten?" No one speaks. Nansen decapitates the kitten. When the chief disciple, Joshu returns from his errand and realises what has transpired. He removes his muddied shoes and places them on his head. Nansen laments that if Joshu had been present, the kitten's life would have been spared. Nansen's action is the Murdering Sword. Insensibility begets a practice where the violent cutting away removes all contradiction and discord between Self and Other. Joshu's action represents the Life-Giving Sword. He cuts himself with such a humiliating gesture that he demonstrates the way of Buddha. The little girl in the Prison Cell knows she is imprisoned. Her only possible action to break from this state of imprisonment condenses into that simple action of opening the trapdoor without putting the coin; be it fear, pain, embarassment, humiliation. She frees herself while imprisoned. Life-Giving Sword.
Molly : Put your hand to your heart and tell me you thought of this when you were penning the parable.
Silence.
Molly : I forgive you.
And with those words, the little child walks free from the ruins of the mirrors.
And with those words, the savant falls below the bimbo.
And with those words, audibly, the frozen part of his heart dissolves. (Murakami "Kafka by the Shore)
And with those words, the ass saw the angel (Nick Cave).
I am XenoBoy. I am the Political Savant.
posted by xenoboysg at 10:47 AM
9 Comments:
Do you have an email address?
wow, never thought i would see the day when you post an entry that is actually 'touching' somehow. feels like i cannot get the full meaning in this post but still, i dunno, anyway nice really nice.
Ghost
Hormat you. All this talk about super-blogs and such, but you and molly have juz proven what happens when two good bloggers make a concerted effort w/o sacrificing individual identity.
Xeno, are you thinking of contributing to Singabloodypore?
Hi clyde -- I did mail stevie about contributing. Not sure about how to do it as the mechanics of the SB set-up is still opaque to me. But can see that they have assembled a group of good bloggers :) I gave stevie some suggestions, can email u if i can find ur address.
dj pbk : I hormat you in return. Will call u when I am back.
parkaboy : I dropped a riddle in ur place with the cute doggie.
ghost : thanks and go thank molly too. :)
"The best writer I have discovered in Singapore so far." ... hmm was skeptical of the above comment since it comes from a most unreliable expat source but with this entry, you do prove to have some talent xenoboysg. nice
I forgive you
and with those words, the seditious bloggers realised their folly and their hate dissolved
and with those words, kalin did not make the 999 call
and with those words, the Malay community demonstrates the grace of Islam
T.T.
quite remarkable stuff.
Sure, you can email me at jcmw83@hotmail.com. You should definitely get on the team. Will email Steve on getting that invite out if he hasn't already...
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