Narcissus-X

Narcissus-X Avers

2012-01-01T16:14:00.000-06:00

Nittering nabobs of nadiric notions!

Clattering calliopes! cacophonous calling cards of conventional claptrap!

Ankle-deep in angst, Narcissus-X protests!

Have none understood? Have none comprehended? Have None But the Lonely Heart is available now! Just eight dollars and ninety nine cents, plus shipping and handling! Operators are standing by! Cary and Ethel and Pyotr piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Cary? Carrie? Carry! Carry Me back to Old Virginny is a Bland song. Literally.

Why would anyone want to pickle a pepper, of all things?

Pepper, pickle, Piper, Peter, Pyotr, protest!

Narcissus-X protests!

Cryogenic caverns of crystalline coruscance! Sailing a frozen sea, under an obsidian sky, Narcissus-X avers the ascendance of art!

Narcissus-X Ponders Perspectives

2011-06-21T11:10:00.001-05:00

Stultifying conventions of mere representationalism. Mathematical pale of pretentious absurdities - as if linear perspective represented reasonable realms of realistic rendering, rending perceptions, perspectives, reality itself in unreal symmetries of gridlocked shackles from even Art, Art, Narcissus-X may become entrapped.

Penultimate precipice of palpable puffery!! Etopic enactments, eccentric eventualities of erroneous acumen! Narcissus-X recoils from such platitudinous, pedestrian pablum of presumed popular preferences!

Perspectives

- or -

Frustrations of the Artist

One point!

Two point!

Three point!

More!

Four-point!

Five-point!

Seven-point!

Score!

But wait!

Narcissus-X is Artist!

But why?

Not as panderer to popular presentation of platitude parades. Not as slavish lackey to mere approximations of representational realism.

Not to be immured in a morass of mercantile mediocrities.

But is Narcissus-X naught but "not?"

Art for Art! Narcissus-X is Artist! Narcissus-X is for Art!

But is Art for Art and end? And is the end of Art for Art an end - and only an end? For What is Art, what is Artist, what is Narcissus-X if none but Narcissus-X knows Art?

Does not Narcissus-X display Art? Did not the Squirrel-King anoint Twitchimius as Guardian of the Golden Grove? And for what? To be ignored? To be beheld by the opposite wall? To be or not to be: That is the question.

But even as Hamlet did in vain assail the slings and arrows of Castle Cawdor, so does Narcissus-X display for the sake of walls.

Or was that Othello? It matters not, for Narcissus-X is Artist! Narcissus-X will prevail.

Narcissus-X will ponder perspectives.

Narcissus-X: TRAPPED!

2011-02-11T14:18:00.000-06:00

Narcissus-X ponders. And, pondering, envisions - - -

Narcissus-X Beholds Crystal Penguins

2010-08-12T19:20:00.003-05:00

Deconstructed dregs of drek and doom! Narcissus-X is artist! Narcissus-X is art! Narcissus-X cares not for frivolous foolery, feverishly ephemeral fantasies of sleek commercial intent!

For what is plot and character but the slavish cant of forlorn trivialities masquerading with pomp and circumstances beyond their control to ensnare the minds of readers in twisting labyrinthine coils of Ouroboros of New York including Bronx and Manhattan where Broadway lights the King and I to live and die on Broadway.

Away! Away! Away down east on Broadway!

But nay! But nay!

Not for naught does Narcissus-X declaim grim tidings under the obsidian sky. Look! The loon-red eyes of crystal penguins!

Narcissus-X Transcends Draconian Coils

2010-06-11T13:56:00.004-05:00

Narcissus-X rebounds from ragged rhyming rhapsodies of extinction.

For naught is Narcissus-X concerned with tales of woe imagined far away and long ago.

Draconian coils of disparaging doom pose stark contrast to reams of redolent rotifers. Dream on, dream dark dreams, drink deeply drams of dank philosophies while red-eyed loons tiptoe through the tulips. Do any see? Do any seek? Do any shatter the obsidian skies?

Obsidian skies loom over Narcissus-X. Are the lights stars? Or tiny cracks?

Down, down, down, delve deeper still and find the eggs of mistaken metaphors. Heed them not, for crystal penguins prowl.

Narcissus-X Broods on Freedoms of Tyranny

2010-06-05T19:33:00.003-05:00

Namesake of Bavarian brothers.

Cotton and coffee to a muddle of mortgage.

Hoarder of art, calamitous fall.

Narcissus-X broods. How is it that mere moneyed marketers may trade in art on so vast a scale? Yet these philistine pretenders amass such arrays of art. And cannot understand what they possess!

And now, how fallen is Lehman! And the art, set free! And yet, not free: for it is to be auctioned. Even as the prison doors swing open, behold! They lead to yet another prison, walled with currency and roofed with securities.

Shall art never be free?

But if art were free, what of the Artist?

Narcissus-X ponders the imponderable, seeks depths beyond the shallow semblance of shimmering complacency as penguins with loon-red eyes stare remorselessly across an infinite gulf. Crystal penguins, shining with obsidian light.

Narcissus-X Recoils in Revulsion

2010-05-05T10:35:00.003-05:00

Narcissus-X recoils in revulsion! That such a travesty be made of Art! Even of trivial Art! To offer enslaved Art for auction, shackled by chains of plutocratic avarice!

The insult!

The infamy!

The ignorance!

Paltry poltroons parading pompous pretensions of perception!

Moneyed meddlers: twisting Art with their travesties of cash and credit. Reducing to mere crass commercialism that which they neither understand nor can understand!

At least the buyer had the decency to bid anonymously. Perhaps the one who purchased - purchased!! - Nude, Green Leaves and Bust - REPRESENTATIONAL TRAVESTY!!!!!!!! - perhaps that person is an Artist. like Narcissus-X. Artist, perceptive, seeing - yet trammeled by treasure, bound by bounty, trapped in the iron grip of stocks and bonds. Living for Art! Striving for Art! Suffering for Art! But to what end?

To witness the sale of some conventional cubist claptrap at an auction! Auction!! As if mere money were value - and more money meant more value! Narcissus-X rejects such meaningless measures!

A work of that Spanish spackler. Artist, yes: but whose early promise was warped by the trammeling conventions of a stultifying society. But still not without some respect for Art: burning his works, rather than selling them to buy fuel. It is to such devotion to Art that Narcissus-X aspires. Ah! The exquisite anguish of burning Art, rather than sullying its purity with mere commerce.

Artist, beware! Despite pretensions of relevance, the Guernican greenie preferred practical profit to Art's abstract anguish! Profit!! Wealth!!! Villas in the south of France!!!!

Narcissus-X REJECTS!

Narcissus-X Contemplates the Nadiric Zenith

2010-04-13T20:58:00.003-05:00

Narcissus-X contemplates the nadiric zenith of recursive revulsion.

Again and again and again the philistine purveyors of prefabricated pseudo-art, like plebeian Potiphars, throw pretentious pomposities! Casting uncultured pearls before swine, these pretenders defame Art!

Art! True Art! Narcissus-X is True Artist! Wrenching wretched realities into the dark of night! Illuminating the unilluminable as flocks of red-eyed penguins streak overhead!

Narcissus-X Returns From the Digital Abyss

2010-04-11T19:01:00.000-05:00

Away, anachronistic antagonists and your archaic obsession with forms and figures!

For Narcissus-X heeds not mere philistine concerns of from whence lucre flows and where it goes. What use such trivialities to the Artist?

For Narcissus-X is Artist! Narcissus-X perceives! Ponders! Creates!

Let puerile pettifoggers of philistine intent deal with such gross matters. Let Narcissus-X perceive! Ponder! Create! For deep in the digital abyss has Narcissus-X delved: finding wonder and fanged ducks with raven wings flying across loon-lit lakes of livery stables.

Narcissus-X Regards a Digital Divide

2010-03-17T00:33:00.002-05:00

Narcissus-X is accustomed to darkness, to abyssal expanses of Stygian seas beneath an obsidian sky.

Why, then, should Narcissus-X hold back? What trepidation could Narcissus-X feel? Is not experience felt by the artist, Art? Are not sensations and visions grist for the mill of the artist's mind?

Narcissus-X has danced among the toadstools of forgotten kings, glided on dark crystals across a sunless sea, beheld the Grotto of Velvet Coal.

Pythons' nest linking metal prisms, phosphorescent plane, console awaiting commands, eldritch unliving servant, too long has Narcissus-X neglected this portal to the digital abyss.

Narcissus-X Seeks Solace in Silent Shade

2010-03-11T19:52:00.003-06:00

Narcissus-X seeks solace in silent shade. The Grotto of Velvet Coal beckons. Narcissus-X is Artist! With Narcissus-X is the heart of Art!

Harlequin harbinger of harsh humor! Motley fool! As if assemblages of antagonistic colors attain the name "art."

Brilliant dullard! Gullible grant grantors! Dazzled by shimmer and sheen and glittering words! Knowing nothing of Art or Artist or abyss of anthracitic, aphotic emptiness.

Why must Art be shunned? Why must Artist be betrayed?

Narcissus-X Perceives Red-Eyed Penguins

2010-03-08T23:11:00.000-06:00

Narcissus-X rings tones of dark clarity: crystal penguins swaying in a sightless wind.

Ring, penguins, ring! Or shatter, fill the air with mocking shards to mark your demise.

Or gather.

Loon-red eyes. Red-eyed penguins ring about the artist. Ringing penguins: silent yet surrounding. Silently surrounding, sibilant syllogisms, but it takes two to tango.

Rhumba, rhumba, samba, shimmy, gyre and gimble in the wabe.

Narcissus-X rings tones of dark clarity.

Narcissus-X Rides the Dark Rainbow

2010-03-04T23:32:00.003-06:00

Narcissus-X rides the dark rainbow past a putter's green to the club house of grim contemplation. Malachite green, course of spinach hue, adjusting the grip and bending the knees slightly, to drive and drive and drive and still seek the green: ever present and ever distant.

Ectoparasitic concepts abound, skimming above the lawns and around the trunks.

An elephant lifts its trunk, but it's any portmanteau in a storm.

Narcissus-X regards the night, rides the dark rainbow through the obsidian sky.

Narcissus-X Assails the Acheronian Citidel

2010-03-01T23:24:00.003-06:00

Narcissus-X assails the anthracitic tower: Acheronian citadel in a bituminous plane.

Plane geometry, Euclidean ideal. Lines and circles and arcs and tangents. Dark colors on darker ground.

What does Narcissus-X seek? What seeks Narcissus-X?

For within the tower is darkness, silence, the velvet quiet of ancient nights. Nights without moon, without stars, without gleaming eyes.

The tower taken, the gate sealed from within, the stair ascended, Narcissus-X gazes beyond the unseen horizon. And sees: darkness.

Or is it gleaming eyes?

Narcissus-X Muses on the Deeps of Narcissus-X

2010-02-25T19:39:00.002-06:00

Narcissus-X tastes the brittle bitterness of cold type face Georgia Garamond and Swiss Script.

Away, stultifying obsessions with regimented demands of consistency! Narcissus-X is artist! Narcissus-X creates! Narcissus-X shines with umbral radiance of abyssal stars!

Tiny stars, bright stars - or are they cracks in the obsidian sky?

But no! The small minds, the microcosmic mechanicians whose vision scarcely extends beyond their bespectacled noses, do not understand. Perhaps they cannot understand.

For who can fathom the deeps of Narcissus-X, who has plunged deep into the grotto of velvet coal and sailed Stygian seas beneath the obsidian sky?

Narcissus-X Ponders Obsidian Chasms

2010-02-22T19:27:00.002-06:00

Narcissus-X plummets through this endless pit of atrocities we call life, fleeing grim penguins. Terrible penguins with loon-red eyes.

Eyes, eyes! Piercing gaze, frozen glare, blinding glare of oncoming headlights!

Narcissus-X seeks the obsidian abyss. Dark, hidden, secret, known but to Narcissus-X.

Crystal penguins shatter against the walls. Ghastly shards scatter. No return. No escape. No light. No deposit, no return.

Do ghosts of crystal penguins haunt obsidian chasms?

Narcissus-X Rails Against Arrogant Arachnid Administrators

2010-02-18T18:54:00.003-06:00

Arrogant arachnid administrators, weaving webs of woe!

Narcissus-X is artist, talent, mind, vision! Not for Narcissus-X the stultifying confines of rigid regimens.

Small minds, little minds, brittle minds besotted with power, whose egos inflate: pulsating with self-importance. Above such is Narcissus-X!

Narcissus-X Ponders Crystal Penguins

2010-02-15T20:43:00.002-06:00

Narcissus-X gazes upon the glass. Hard, cold pane: skulking behind false frozen foliage of crystal traceries.

Whence come the flowers of ice, the ferny growths of intricate pattern?

Do they grow, as if by some dark design of frozen lifelessness in the secret hours of the night?

Or are they painted by crystal penguins?

Narcissus-X Contemplates the Toadstools of Forgotten Kings

2010-02-09T22:31:00.003-06:00

Charcoal arabesques on a basaltic plain.

Dark mimicry of foliage, mockery of light.

Bawdy baubles, extravagant festoons of lifeless lace.

Still.

Silent.

Dark.

Have the grim penguins returned?

Narcissus-X Ponders a Vengeful Chicken

2010-02-04T15:32:00.003-06:00

Narcissus-X ponders: do others dream of chickens? Whole fried chickens, struggling in the suffocating plastic embrace of their packages?

Then one breaks free.

Stalking down the table, headless, yet filled with malice, the apparition seizes fork and knife. And still it advances.

Do others dream of chickens?

Narcissus-X Beholds the Raven's Wing of Night

2010-02-02T20:43:00.003-06:00

Narcissus-X views lightless brilliance, unseen coruscation, freezing facade of silent mists.

In the window, ebon abyss and dark reflection of Narcissus-X.

Snow obscured form, banished color, and was itself banished from perception as sunlight fled. Now Narcissus-X beholds only the raven's wing of night, a hollow reflection of Narcissus-X, and the sable emptiness beyond.

Narcissus-X Contemplates the Viscous Chartreuse Torrent

2010-01-28T23:00:00.003-06:00

Endoplasmic travail: silent, unseen, relentless, mindless conquest met with mindless defense.

Antibodies to the left of them! Antibodies to the right of them! Into the channel of oblivion rode the six million.

Destroyed yet undeterred, more and more and more and more come: indiscernible spawn, viral horde, evanescent impression of ether in the night.

Viscous chartreuse torrent, artist's bane, worse than a night spent out in the rain.

Narcissus-X suffers for art, for Narcissus-X plays host to a horde of rhinoviruses

Narcissus-X Ponders Clammy Glass, Ethereal Tones

2010-01-26T22:43:00.002-06:00

Notes from the turning glass.

A touch releases ethereal tones.

Narcissus-X ponders.

Cold beauty.

Elegant sound.

From musical glasses to armonica to clear bowls in this dark night.

From clammy glass, ethereal tones.

Narcissus-X Strides Forth

2010-01-21T22:44:00.002-06:00

Narcissus-X strides forth.

Crystalline essence of congealed rain assails the senses of Narcissus-X.

Sunless sleekness, pale plains of perilous luster.

Narcissus-X descends to the nadir of being; becomes one with the elements, yet apart. Flowing fingers of brumal intensity penetrate the being of Narcissus-X.

Narcissus-X arises, releasing rain from rimy imprisonment.

But at what cost? The rain knows not, it cares not. And soon slinks back to the shimmering stronghold.

Narcissus-X Regards Phosphorescent Elephants

2010-01-18T21:11:00.003-06:00

Narcissus-X gazes. And regards with listless wonder.

In the darkness, in silence, phosphorescent elephants skate: pirouetting on delicate blades.

No sound.

No stars.

No night.

Only darkness and ice and luminescent elephants on the sharpest of skates.

Who sharpens the skates?

Narcissus-X Meditates on Epicurean Undulating Ungulates

2010-01-14T22:22:00.003-06:00

Narcissus-X meditates on epicurean undulating ungulates: sinuous cetaceans swimming through silver seas.

Sleek sirenians, dour dugongs, derisive porpoises cackling.

Ripples under a silent moon, waveless currents in a sunless sea.

Enceladus, frozen sphere or spawn of the burning plain. Perhaps both. Did Athena's spear reach the cordons of Saturn?

No matter. For Narcissus-X turns away from the sun, faces the dark.

The ebon wall of night. Are they stars? Or tiny cracks: vaster than worlds.

A Month Without Narcissus-X is Like a Year Without Darkness

2009-12-05T14:29:00.002-06:00

Shrill cadences of choral claptrap clatter jinglingly across Muzak carriers. What matters it to Narcissus-X, the drab distinctions of conventional culture bestowed on Rudolph? Of what account are Donder and Blitzen to Narcissus-X? And why slight Comet and Cupid?

For Rudolph is the Narcissus-X of the reindeer! Set apart, unique, indispensable, and yet fettered with the common yoke of servility to crass commercialistic consumerism!

The outrage!

The infamy!

The art! Oh, the art!

Narcissus-X Contemplates Chittering Hamsters

2009-11-02T18:43:00.003-06:00

Enfilading swarms of presumptuous gerbils.

Ermine-tipped hamsters scurry from canvas to canvas: sniffing; nibbling; chittering unconscious clichés.

Narcissus-X will not swallow the bromides; permits platitudes to pass, disdained.

And yet it is such as these that seek the work of Narcissus-X.

Narcissus-X Contemplates a Century Passed

2009-10-26T19:40:00.004-05:00

Decorative decoupage, Aubrey's sinuous lines. A century later, Gesamtkunstwerk's a gesundheit. Ardent efforts.

Mass production for masses. Massive mediocrity.

Abide intricate inadequacies of industrialized crafts Narcissus-X will not. For Narcissus-X is the fine, the pure, the clean, the dark: for in secret necrosis of millwork grows elusive, illusive, fungoid shapes of crystalline wonder.

Narcissus-X Contemplates Bleakly Banal Bandwagons

2009-10-02T03:33:00.003-05:00

Bleakly banal bandwagons beckon. How easily Narcissus-X could step, step, step, step up to the side: climb in and be carted away. Lovely lucre.

But no! Narcissus-X is artist. Not for Narcissus-X the tawdry trappings of crass commercialism. To be constrained? To be directed? To daub and draft and draw in dreary, dismal, debilitating drudgery? No!

Narcissus-X is artist. Narcissus-X creates. Narcissus-X perceives, ponders, weaves dark threads among the gray.

Narcissus-X, paid for putting paltry pablum before the masses? Ha! No such demeaning insult will Narcissus-X heap upon Narcissus-X. For Narcissus-X is artist. And art must be sustained.

Narcissus-X Has Seen Beyond the Caverns of Crystal Oblivion

2009-09-28T23:51:00.005-05:00

Gibbering gibbon, gibbous moon, Gibbons' tale of gathering doom.

Pallid perceptions, pellucid panes, views of conventional artists' names.

Rhymes to the right them, rhymes to the left of them, into the valley of fame rode the ten thousand.

Narcissus-X seeks not fame: Narcissus-X is artist, creator, perceiver. Narcissus-X understands - but Narcissus-X cannot expect understanding.

Narcissus-X must create: for Narcissus-X has seen beyond the caverns of crystal oblivion.

Enchiladas of Cretaceous Crustaceans

2009-09-21T23:58:00.002-05:00

Enchiladas of Cretaceous crustaceans frolicked in Patagonia mire. Chitinous tortillas, wrapping chthonian inamoratas in polymeric armor.

Enceladus, writhing and wounded and buried 'neath mountain, whose breath is the source its fiery fountains.

Chthonic halls, whose barred doors guard - what?

Narcissus-X Gazes Into the Eyes of Sargon

2009-09-18T01:06:00.004-05:00

Pure stereopticon dissolving one image into the next in planar display of temporal order. Time marches on, and on: one view succeeding another in cosmic cadence of pyramid and tomb, time on a loom, shining filaments of shadow and doom.

Impure stereopticon images of Assyrian tombs. Amenophis and his double stride through muraled lives, ka enduring after.

Narcissus-X ponders Tyre: island-city; purple cloth; Hiram's home; founded Carthage. Nineveh: Ancient crossroads; Sargon's library; Sargon's head. Bearded head, cast in bronze. Wounded eye. Does he smile?

Odin, they say, gave an eye for wisdom at Mímir's Well. Did Sargon do the same?

Does Sargon smile? Or is it pain?

Nineveh, Tyre, Harappa, Ye. Names remembered, places that were.

Manila, Seoul, Jakarta, Chicago. Names known, places that are. For now.

Narcissus-X gazes into the eyes of Sargon. They are not eyes. The head is bronze, the eyes are empty: dark portals to the void where Nineveh and Tyre drift, and forgotten kings sit on silent thrones.

Narcissus-X Rejects Artless Bastions of Banality

2009-08-22T06:39:00.003-05:00

Philistine fears! Toilers amid interminable clauses and minutia! What cares the artist from whence inspiration springs, save only that the artist may grasp the clay, mold it, transform it in the likeness of what the artist's inner eye beholds.

Did the sonnet-slinger of Avon care, what preceded the pecuniary plays? Did he writhe at the thought that he re-cast carts into juggernauts, rolling down the centuries? Narcissus-X thinks not.

Narcissus-X rejects the corporate colossus, with its fears and foibles and fantasies. No more will Narcissus-X offer such purveyors of prosaic pablum the geistkinder of Narcissus-X.

A tale of ancient yearnings, hapless hope, futile faith inspired by a doom-star! And these mental microbes, these artless bastions of banality, have not the vision, the inner sight, the aesthetic sense, to take what Narcissus-X offers! No, for it might upset the scriveners, the banausic barristers, the crass councilors of caution.

Narcissus-X turns away from such tawdry trivialities, to face the night. Alone.

Narcissus-X Ponders Plutonian Patterings

2009-08-21T10:55:00.005-05:00

Angora clouds weep, shedding darkly on crouching grass. From the roof, indistinct muttering. On the windows, tick-tick-tickticktick. A shade of memory from some Plutonian shore.

Narcissus-X hears pallid patterings, the mutter of - what? Is this how the Artist is heard? As some somber, tenebrous impression of voice, heard beyond a roof?

Narcissus-X in the Cubical Cubicle of the Commonplace

2009-08-19T00:35:00.009-05:00

Narcissus-X embarks on a clerihew quest, rhyming and chiming: a commonplace jest.

Ipswich, Suffolk, suffering folk.
Folk music sways like a pig in a poke.
Shiny green ice cream, prunes in a jar.
Cantaloupe postcards from Vina Del Mar.

Cubical cubicle, dutiful particle,
Patternless carpeting deadening sound.
Taupe as an accent on putty-plane surfaces.
How can the workaday toiler endure?

Who would seek Vina Del Mar in Oxnard? Yet Oxnard's imposture, deceivingly laid in curvilinear streaks, assuages the eye with tile roofs.

Strawberry fields lie on Oxnard Plain, Narcissus-X prefers pistachio.

Narcissus-X Ponders, Penguins Stalk

2009-08-14T08:30:00.002-05:00

Thoughts arise like drowned muskrats surfacing in a bog.

Empathetic Euhemerists skedaddle in chariots of fine wire, sounding horns of brass. Cornucopia of cupric kaleidoscopic cadences. Horns of brass, city of glass, its leader is fallen, forgotten: alas!

Penguins haunt forgotten lands. Grim penguins with loon-red eyes, harvesting toadstools of forgotten kings. Narcussus-X does not forget, Narcussus-X cannot forget. 'Forget! Forget! My kingdom to forget!' So might cry the prudent king. For uneasy lies the crown that holds the king.

In eerie silence penguins stalk toadstools. Flee, toadstools! Flee! But they flee not.

Narcissus-X Follows the Whispering Nostrils

2009-08-12T20:46:00.004-05:00

Nostrils of Narcussus-X whisper silent songs of dirigible dance.

Do none mourn the mockingbird? Shall no one mock the roc? Mockable roc: flightless in physics, yet mighty in myth. And myth takes are likely unless the manual is thoroughly read.

Manuel! Servant of Fawlty, native of Spain, student of English and eager to learn.

To learn, perchance to think: aye, that's the rub. For in that learning comes sleep deep as death. You'd think they'd have better air conditioning in those classrooms.

Classrooms. Narcissus-X has known classrooms. Desks in columns under rectilinear array of acoustic accouterments in planar alignment: softening sound, dulling thought. Drone of the pedant, patiently plodding through pastures of preferences. Ostentatious offerings of overtilled fields of study.

The whisper.

Narcissus-X hears the whisper.

Hears the silent whisper.

Nostrils of Narcussus-X whisper silent songs of dirigible dance. Thought's dirigible dance carries Narcissus-X to - What?

No matter.

For Narcissus-X follows the silently whispered song.

Narcissus-X Contemplates the Penguins of Rancor

2009-07-28T20:56:00.004-05:00

Iridescent onyx, pale depths of sombre pitch and sway of a deck in some ancient gale. A thousand coats of atramentum tectorium will not hide sable stains of charcoal thoughts.

Narcissus-X had that dream again: Grim penguins with loon-red eyes rise up and cry, "where are the fish? There ought to be fish! We must have our fish!"

Then the red soil of Biwabik and Buhl trembled as malignant moose meandered meaninglessly while manic mice munched moorings and mansions crumbled.

But terrible penguins abound in unrelenting malice, marching, marching, marching to the sea. Their eyes of flame! Loon-red eyes of flame! Loon-red eyes of flame, transfixing gaze of illimitable malevolence, rancor without end, vicious venom of vindictiveness piercing flesh and mind. Will none defend the borogoves? Must the vorpal sword be drawn? Begone! And leave my sight! Banquo's inheritance is secure, but at what cost?

Both heard alike, but the choice! The choice!

Narcissus-X Among Toadstools of Forgotten Kings

2009-07-06T21:42:00.003-05:00

Elephants of doom tiptoe menacingly around toadstools of forgotten kings.

Alas! the aardvark cries: but not for joy. Edentate cousin of elephant shrew and elephant, ask not for whom the hyrax shrieks: it shrieks for thee.

If a million mushrooms sprang from a million stumps in a million forests, would a woodchuck chuck wood?

Pale parabolas of muted joy sprout inverted ailerons while gyres of untamed dream sing nightsongs of flightless birds and you'd think they'd have at least covered his face but there is no accounting taste, for the proof is in the pudding and in veritas vino veni vidi vici which sounds funny if pronounced the way mighty Caesar would have spoken for but someone took it anyway there is none but the lonely heart of aortic attraction dispelling the shades of forgotten stones that roll and gather no moss.

Does Morris Quigly dance with Eleanor Rigby?

Narcissus-X Broods on Anguish and Art

2009-06-26T15:24:00.002-05:00

Brooding gnostic conundrums drumming dreary dirges of dysfunctionally dichotomic dialectic. The corpus callosum of Narcissus-X a battleground of reason and ardor, affections of wonder assaulted by lances of logic!

The Artist suffers for Art, but enough!

Narcissus-X has suffered for Art. Perhaps now Narcissus-X should make others suffer!

Narcissus-X Broods on Flawed Inspiration

2009-05-13T21:05:00.002-05:00

Thirteenth day. The fifth month, yet not the fifth day in that arbitrary cycle which begins with a day of the moon and ends with a day of the sun.

Thirteen. Thought unlucky. Thought is fleeting, art is not.

Ars longa, vita brevis; e pluribus unum: Caveat emptor; batteries not included.

Oh, for leaden skies and howling wind! A hearse, a hearse, my kingdom for a hearse! So might cry the poet, the artist, the misunderstood genius.

But no: Narcissus-X was surrounded by blue skies and chirping birds! On a 13th that isn't even a Friday!

Narcissus-X Ponders the Unticking Clock

2009-05-07T23:24:00.002-05:00

The ticking of a clock. Symbol of time, symbol of interval. Symbol of time past.

Narcissus-X watches the clock: silently it marks the passage of each second, each minute, each hour. One number supplants another, only to be supplanted by yet another: until the cycle is complete and begins yet again.

So sound, no movement: nothing but the ever-changing, every-unchanging cycle of phosphorescent symbols.

If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is present, does it make a sound?

If a clock runs, and Narcissus-X is present, yet it makes no sound: does time pass?

If Narcissus-X watches not the clock, will time cease to be?

Narcissus-X Wanders a Wasteland of Wonder

2009-05-01T23:28:00.004-05:00

Mendacious minions! Duplicitous deceivers! Manic marauders! Pandering poseurs parading dramatic reenactments while announcers smile and smile and yet be villains.

What good is a lifetime guarantee, to one abandoned by creativity's spark? Narcissus-X abandons late-night promises of untold wealth and perfect julienne fries, to be marooned in a morass of iterated competitions: encounters of commonplace persons, strangely animated by tantalizing promises of riches and renown.

Narcissus-X cares not what lies behind Door Number One, Door Number Two, or Door Number Three. Word association, blind guesswork. Not even set design of decades long gone offer Narcissus-X hope of release.

Perhaps the stylized combat of geococcyx and latrans will re-awaken creative fires within Narcissus-X.

Narcissus-X Contemplates Flight Through the Ebon Abyss

2009-04-26T02:04:00.003-05:00

Churning mass of umber-hued mire. Dark dither of dull dreams, drably parading past a review stand of petrified oligarchs.

Out! Narcissus-X rages: Out with you, sharp-edged nuggets of thought! Emerge from your prison! Narcissus-X, sinking as if alone in an oatmeal ocean.

Alone. The artist is a lonely one: pursuing what others cannot, or do not wish to, see; traveling paths made by - what?

Perhaps Narcissus-X the sleeping has already traversed these lands, leading the way for Narcissus-X the waking. If only Narcissus-X could meet Narcissus-X: could merge the waking and the sleeping mind.

Then - fly through the ebon abyss of night with all eyes open: those that see only light, and the eye of the mind which perceives what is seen, and can peer into the unseen: now and again catching an outline - a color - a movement. And return, as a ship in ancient times: returning from unknown lands with strange cargo.

Narcissus-X Ponders Porlockian Presences

2009-04-21T23:51:00.002-05:00

Soulless circuits screaming hoarse cries, frenetic cadence shredding serenity: slumber's visions cloven, wavering, rippling; and gone. Narcissus-X reaches for the spectral shapes: grasps and holds - nothing.

Precious phantasm. Dream or vision, impression of a truth or the truth itself: it is gone.

Metronome of madness, watcher of the hours, perfidious sentinel of sleep: the porlockian presence shall not despoil the domain of dreams again. Narcissus-X has paper, pen, and lamp at hand, should shrill alarms again disturb the portals of dream.

Narcissus-X Ponders Aspiration

2009-04-19T14:31:00.000-05:00

Noble schemes seldom forfeit,
Braver deeds often fail,
Than trying to carry water
In an old, rusty pail.

Narcissus-X Contemplates the Suchness of Forms

2009-04-17T16:24:00.003-05:00

Qantas and quatloos, quivers of quail:
Mountains of elephants packed like a snail.
Merfolk in desert, camel on ice:
Cats are like giants for krill in a pail.

Narcissus-X Broods on Day of the Taxes

2009-04-15T23:49:00.001-05:00

April 15: A sixth part of the quarter, beloved interval of the Philistine.

And Lear cried out, "I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; / I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, / You owe me no subscription."

At least something, somewhere, somehow, was not taxed: if only in the realms of dream summoned forth by the Bard of Avon.

But Narcissus-X taxed must be, and much taxed with regret that so much time is lost forever, collecting records, filling forms, filing financial facts. Time in which Narcissus-X could have traversed the charcoal-clouded vastness of Xanadu's dream.

But now the forms are gone, cast into the bureaucratic abyss from whence they came: and art may live again.

Narcissus-X Contemplates Night Winds

2009-04-13T23:48:00.004-05:00

Fears, avaunt! Not for naught does Narcissus-X breathe the clear, cold, air of night throughout the cobwebbed halls of fevered imaginings, driving out gibbering goblins of gloom and glowing-eyed ghosts of forgotten dreams.

Dust departed, Lemuria done, wind subsides, the halls are empty. No sound, no soft tread of shoeless foot on stone, no muffled creak of door or window.

No inspiration.

Narcissus-X traverses the halls. Steps echo in seeming answer.

Has more than fear fled? Narcissus-X will search the night.

Narcissus-X Broods on Kumquats, Voids, and Pistachios

2009-04-09T21:12:00.003-05:00

Elysian kumquats of dubious intent hover forlornly about the works of Narcissus-X. Sunlit skies and lusterless grass fail to excite aesthetic embarkations. Narcissus-X broods on blank expanse: vast desert devoid of detail, inspired or plebeian.

Narcissus-X has visions: visions of vast voids, vacuums vacantly abiding where inspirations once flew.

Is the muse on furlough? Absence may make the heart grow fonder: but drives the artist mad.

Can inspiration fly without wings of fancy?

Whither pistachio almond ice cream?

Narcissus-X and the Easter Platypus

2009-04-07T21:49:00.003-05:00

The Easter Bunny delivers eggs. The eggs come from somewhere. Perhaps the Easter Bunny lays eggs. Bunnys are rabbits. Rabbits are mammals. Mammals don't lay eggs. Except for the platypus: mud-dwelling monotreme.

Has Narcissus-X penetrated the veil, raised the curtain, revealed the truth?

Is the Easter Bunny a platypus? Or, mayhap, an echidna?

Narcissus-X: a Haiku

2009-04-05T23:24:00.003-05:00

Snow from spring blizzard
Untimely and unwelcome
Shoveled and melting

Narcissus-X Contemplates Distant Sakura

2009-04-03T11:31:00.006-05:00

Narcissus-X walks adumbral paths, abides at times in the grotto of velvet coal, often dwells in lands beneath the obsidian sky. Narcissus-X travels anagogic paths of shade and trenchant chasms of phenomena: searching for light.

Light: effulgence of torrid Xemx; scintillating ephemera; or unwavering gaze of Sol, beyond Earth's umbra.

Light: coruscating shaft of mind's comprehension; unwavering glare of hard, sharp fact; creative flare; imagination's guide.

Light of the mind guides, illumines: sunlight or darkness.

Light of the eyes: color, clouds of white and pink. Wonder of these days.

Mayor's gift to Gallic child's dream, roofless Mall, Philadelphia's loss and Maryland's cost: Beauty abounding, gentle symbol of valiant land, darkness leaves its mark but blooms return. Cuttings return to ancestral lands after three score and nine.

Three more, and a century has passed since Arakawa River's shade arrived on Potomac's shores.

Narcissus-X remains in land of ice and flood, but a portion of Narcissus-X travels to sakuran scenes.

Light of the eyes pleases, informs. Light of the mind endures.

Narcissus-X Contemplates Wonders Seen but Not Possessed

2009-04-01T23:55:00.000-05:00

Silence that does not quiet, quiet that soothes the ear but not the mind, darkness that wraps all in imponderable probabilities of descending thought.

Narcissus-X accepts the night, seeks solace on ebon paths whose shadows reveal, more than hide, the trees, the towers, the dim doorways of beckoning vision. For beyond those doorways lie vistas of wonder: dark and light, color and shade, swirling maelstrom and pointed angles of dimensional dendritic expression.

Could but Narcissus-X bring a branch, a pebble, a single scrap from those vistas glimpsed in dream into the world of sight.

Vista seen in dream
Iridescent black and gray
Wonders may not leave

Narcissus-X Ponders Chaos: Perceives Order

2009-03-31T22:43:00.004-05:00

Harmony in cacophony, order in splintered spectra. Wherever Narcissus-X turns, Narcissus-X finds order, method: "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't."

Madness: artist's partner; bane of the bourgeois; gateway to dark wonders and incandescent chromatisms.

Is madness chaos? Is chaos ordered?

Or is a seeming chaos - - - order, not yet understood?

A simple order is understood by many. The more complex the order, the fewer understand. Many see fractal patterns and say "chaos theory." Yet patterns may be complex, and yet be ordered: frond of fern, arm of galaxy.

Euclid was not the last philosopher.

Narcissus-X sees order, where others see chaos. Wonder, where others see bleak nothingness. Is Narcissus-X mad? Or does Narcissus-X perceive where others do not? Are these mutually exclusive postulates?

Narcissus-X cares not.

For Narcissus-X is artist, creative spirit, vagabond mind.

Narcissus-X Ponders Quietude

2009-03-29T23:53:00.000-05:00

As stillness is to sound, so darkness to light. Is Narcissus-X in abeyance, because no art is found?

Still life with apple
Stork and raven disputing
Over naught but paint

Paint and easel, brush and cloth, artist staring at blank canvas. Not even the muse's laughter is heard.

Narcissus-X Contemplates Pleonastic Redundancies of Approximation

2009-03-27T23:56:00.002-05:00

Wheeling round a concept's ember like moths in Plato's Cave, going to Saint Ives, and crossed the path of seven wives, kits, cats, sacks, wives: why should a boomerang return?

Again and again, resounding echoes repeat, repeat: hi! hi! As though to greet were to know. Listen to the echo. Hear the echo's voice. It is your own, returning from its travels. Again and again and again and again, til logic's luster fades and sense and sensibilities seen oddly familiar.

But what of Narcissus-X? Is Narcissus-X the moth or the ember?

Both?

Neither?

A weary, wearisome, wearied public hoards, and sleeps, and feeds, and knows not Narcissus-X. For Narcissus-X travels beyond the circles of commonalities, and yet circles the unknown ember of ideal form again and again.

Circles and circles, but never reaching the inner parts. An endless survey from every angle, never departing, never approaching: never reaching.

Narcissus-X Listens to Silence

2009-03-23T23:51:00.001-05:00

Foolish festoons of fables and fears: doomsayers crying, followers quivering. What need has Narcissus-X of perilous projections, forecasts of despair?

Narcissus-X has seen the night, plunged into ebon depths of Cimmerian shade, wandered under an obsidian sky, discovered the grotto of velvet coal.

Solitude.

Voices stilled by distance and time, light reduced to echoing memories of dim times past. Cimmerian warriors aided the second Sargon, yet scholars deny their fame. What matter that Ithaca may have changed its name, or that Schliemann dug through the Troy he sought?

Silence.

Not quiet. Quiet soothes, lulls, brings placid calm. Silence wakes the mind as ears strain for implicit sound. Listen to the mute stones. Empires rose and fell. The wise carved faces and forms for the next to see: for art lasts. Thoughts last. Visions last. Silent as the stones, yet shouting to those who will hear.

Narcissus-X Unmasks Winter's Sparkling Shroud

2009-03-21T23:32:00.001-05:00

Vernal equinox comes and goes, sun rises more northerly each day. Winter's pale disguise collapsing reveals dank truth and sodden leaves. No burbling rivulet may assuage the stark reality of last fall's leaves reduced to moulding slices of autumn dreams.

Narcissus-X is artist, and art must be true, be stark, be unrelenting drip-drip-drip of drenched dreams and dashed hopes. Not for Narcissus-X, the smiling multitude's adulation. Rather, Narcissus-X reveals the moldering leaves and sodden dust beneath winter's sparkling screen.

Whither Words of Narcissus-X?

2009-03-19T23:29:00.000-05:00

Metamorphosis of ephemeral hills sends liquescent streams burbling until, swashing, they rush into linear caverns of uncertain destiny.

Narcissus-X ponders: What fate awaits words. After mind forms and fingertips press in digital reality, where do they go?

Do words wait: patient, passive, til they are read?

Do they weep in dark servers?

Or are they mere crystallized essence of Narcissus-X, flashing into metaphysical impressions on distant screens?

Narcissus-X Comprehends Manifold Tetrads

2009-03-17T23:13:00.005-05:00

Focus of ophidian fears, Padraig's past in emerald lands evokes trifoliate visions.

Drenching mist, verdure merging into dim gray-blue haze. Did peacocks pine when sage declined? A myriad grow, til one is found: not three, but four the stem go round. Serendipity's symbol shines: tetrad, vierbein, manifold model and Pythagorean dream.

Narcissus-X dreams icy visions, sharp and fine: colors that cannot enter this narrow world. Small wonder that critics carp. Carpe diem swims with koi in strange waters.

Now see: Narcissus-X shares with the world.

Narcissus-X Reaffirms the Narcissus-X Address

2009-03-15T23:40:00.002-05:00

Alas! Poor Prufrock: Narcissus-X knew him well. Witty, urbane, measuring out his life with credit cards. Why do women come and go, talking of Michelangelo?

Perhaps Narcissus-X should eschew the capital, or spell each word as if it were the the poet's own. ornotusecommasorperiods

It little matters that brittle patter of critics' rambling should fail the test. For none may comprehend the works of Narcissus-X but Narcissus-X. Nor could that be expected. Art for art's sake, art for expression's sake, art the work of Narcissus-X, and beyond the ken of critic and carper.

For Narcissus-X resolves that art of Narcuccus-X, by Narcussus-X, for Narcussus-X, shall not perish!

Narcissus-X Ponders Myriad Psyches

2009-03-13T22:42:00.004-05:00

Narcissus-X ponders.

Quo vadis? E pluribus unum, ergo sum.

Narcissus fears not friggatriskaidekaphobia.

Narcissus-X Ponders Inchoate Myrmidons

2009-03-11T23:51:00.000-05:00

Were Naphthalene a city of crystals in the night, and sublimated urges robbed Achilles of his might, then Narcussus-X would ponder under darkly lowering skies as inchoate myrmidons run swiftly to intoxicating toys. And elusive mothballs carry Priam's people far away, for the poet profits little when the piper asks for pay.

Narcissus-X ponders dim visions, gliding on dark crystals across a sunless sea.

Narcissus-X Traverses Dolorous Vistas of Melancholy

2009-03-09T22:35:00.003-05:00

Trifle not with the muses, for they are solitary abstractions of illuminable depth. Narcissus-X mused not long ere, musing, plunged past cerulean syllogisms of light and air, through lowering reveries of woe, to darksome prospects and dolorous vistas of endless melancholy.

Is not suffering art? Art suffering not? If, artist, thou art suffering not, no artist thou!

Narcissus-X is artist, poet, dark brush. Dark brushes past like an exhalation from ancient caverns: caverns of ice.

Art calls! Narcissus must seek once more grottoes of velvet coal, caverns of crystal oblivion, shores of a sunless sea: there to board dark-masted bark of silent crew. For Narcissus-X must, once again, glide beneath obsidian skies and dream of night.

Narcissus-X Commutes to Mountains of Wonder

2009-03-07T19:24:00.004-06:00

Bucket of black snakes writhing in a mug, java jolt, insomnia in a cup.

Espresso expressions of crystalline dreams, dormant in a jar. Norwegian nerve juice of the masses, nap suppressant for Narcissus-X. Swedish gasoline driving imagination up mountains of wonder, with Conchita at the wheel.

Narcissus-X Rejects Avant Garde Conventionalities

2009-03-05T23:51:00.000-06:00

Amateurish accolades on artistic atrocities! Laurel crowns, Laurel and Hardy, duck soup of the masses hardly whets the aficionado's appetite. Grim guerdon of common esteem: Narcissus-X seeks this not.

Crowd-pleasing commonalities do not art make, nor pandering popular perceptions. Art flows from Narcissus-X, for from Narcissus-X rush the inner visions of Narcissus-X, artist. From ebon depths to obsidian skies, Narcissus-X is beyond philistine blandishments, beyond crass commercial considerations, beyond avant-garde conventionalities.

Narcissus-X finds no surprise in vulgarians' vague verbiage on viewing the art of Narcissus-X, for who can understand the recondite heart of Narcissus-X, but Narcissus-X?

And yet.

Narcissus-X ponders: Can Narcissus-X withhold art from those who know not art, and, artless, yearn for that which they cannot know? May Narcissus-X withhold? Withholding tax comes back again, but art is long and deep.

Narcissus-X must brood.

Narcissus-X Takes Pity on the Muses

2009-03-03T23:52:00.000-06:00

Eyes see, ears hear, ears of corn hear nothing by may taste sweet. Sweet music flees Philistine panderings. What matter, a lizard's opinion? Do odorous golfers truly fell crowds? Was the squirrel truly stunned?

Sinister Right Guard, stinging mist assaulting optic sense. Official deodorant of hoopsters, begone! Narcissus-X has no need of association with those who run, and sweat, and run again.

Jane Allen, Jane Eyre, Jane Austen, James Joyce in underwear. Ulysses was not written on a court. Prometheus bound, also available in paperback. Narcissus-X cares not, for Narcissus-X has the works of Shakespeare: Sonnets, Coriolanus, and lively Lear. Leer not, Lear. Lear Jets fly fleetly through the skies of United we stand, divided we fall fashions are but commercial exploitation of bourgeois yearnings.

Out, out, brief commercial! The artist must muse, else the muses shall suffer from the absence of Narcissus-X

Narcissus-X Reaches into Darkness

2009-03-01T23:48:00.003-06:00

Windows on the sky. Darkness within enables vision. Stars, wheeling past. Clear, sharp stars in winter darkness. Cold night, cold light. Chilling points of diamond in an obsidian sky. Or are they tiny pits, holes in that dark dome, cryptic hints of stellar fires beyond?

Narcissus-X reaches into the darkness: not with flesh and bone, but with mind and - - -

Narcoleptic visions of stars wheeling overhead.

Strange paradox, that darkness brings vision, night reveals lights.

Narcissus-X Muses on Winter

2009-02-27T23:42:00.002-06:00

Narcissus-X muses. Is winter woe or weal? Solitude. Silence. Sun retreats, night prevails. Heron-legged thoughts stalk nocturnal reveries.

Silibant softness
Damply stinging upturned face
Winter wind and snow

Sapphire beacon
Within swirling cloud of snow
Deadly steel within

Frozen swamp so still
Stony nectar glittering
Butterflies are gone

Leafless tree and snow
Clouds scudding past overhead
Do they fear the tree?

Narcissus-X Implores Green Turkeys

2009-02-25T23:54:00.003-06:00

Night comes. It comes again. Narcissus-X Fears not the night, nor naught that nebulous reveries may inspire. For Narcissus-X fathoms the darkness, embraces visions of of sightless color.

Green turkeys at night
Luminous fowl in darkness
Fly, emeralds, fly!

Narcissus-X Observes the Unseen, the Unheard

2009-02-23T21:50:00.005-06:00

Grim gibberings gnash in the gloom.

Night flows out of the east like an inky stain, blotting blue from above and shrouding snow in stygian shades of unseen eyes.

Tenebrous eyes. Eyes in the night. Eyes unseen, which yet see. And what the seers? What visions do they see? What words fall silently on unlighted snow? What phantasm of darkling dread lurks, beyond light, beyond sound?

Narcissus-X sailed through the grotto of velvet coal, roams at will throughout shining obsidian vastnesses, yet knows not what stands but a few yards beyond the wall.

Stands, abides, endures: or crouches.

Narcissus-X: Ode to a Vorpal Urn

2009-02-21T23:07:00.004-06:00

It little profits that an idle king
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,

O Attic shape! Fair attidude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?
I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,
Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun.

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

For Narcissus-X has written, and having written moves along.
It matters little, meter, but the sense is in the song.

Narcissus-X and the Doom Spittoon

2009-02-19T23:45:00.002-06:00

Attacks by the critic, slurs by the philistine fool, mutterings of maundering men: meaningless mumbles. Of such is Narcissus-X much accustomed. It is the lot of the artist, the fate of one who soars below the reach of ordinary sense.

Yet ever did Narcissus-X believe that the tools of Art, the tools of Narcissus-X were in accord with Narcissus-X. Ever, until today.

Narcissus-X sat, rapt in caliginous musings of abstruse surmise, sailing through labyrinthine latices of ebon scepters, little heeded the spittoon upon the case. Yet in that spittoon, small though it was, decorative though it might be, lay not one, but a dozen pens and pencils: poised for use; each ready to record, to write, perhaps to draw.

Little did Narcissus-X heed the infinitesimal motions by which the spittoon drew closer to freedom, closer to flight, closer and closer to a crashing destiny.

And then, even while unraveling the shadowed web of forgotten dreams, Narcissus-X heard sound. And such sound! Such crashing, clattering, ticking and banging sound! The spittoon, slave to gravity's call and its own destiny, flew Earthward, sincerely seeking this planet's core.

Such purpose! Such plunging! So short a flight, scattering so sharp an array of styli! Flying styli! Flying pens, like Pegasus unchained, sought freedom, and found Narcussus-X.

Musing is gone, contemplation collapsed. Naught by the night remains, and Narcissus-X, dreaming of shadows lost.

Narcissus-X and the Aqueous Throne

2009-02-17T23:37:00.003-06:00

Narissus-X cares not for seasons, for frost and thunder: all are one or none for art. For Narcissus-X is not a camera. Art is not mere repetition of what is around Narcissus-X. Art is what Narcissus-X brings out.

Seasons care not for Narcissus-X. Thaw and freeze and thaw again, only to harden once more to that lustrous sheen. That beautiful lustrous sheen. Oh, treacherous beauty!

A step, two, three.

Narcissus-X cherishes freedom, independence from the stultifying conventions of an oppressive society. But Narcissus-X likes it not when the right foot sails north, the left west.

Narcissus-X sits upon an aqueous throne.

Ice is water and water is ice.

In winter, both are cold.

Narcissus-X Contemplates

2009-02-15T23:49:00.005-06:00

Beans, Boston beans, Boston Brahmins: Boston baked beans made with beer and yellow onions.

Beans of song, beans of note, beanbag chairs are mellow boats. Narcissus-X goes sailing there: below the sky, above the stair. And stares through cold and glassy panes, past icy stars to ebon infinities.

Jack, shrewd Jack, wise beyond bourgeois dreams. Sold the cow for a handful of beans.

Beans in the moonlight, Beans in the night, Beans ascending to starry heights.

If Narcissus-X dreams, will the giant sleep?

Narcissus-X Muses on Cinematic Art

2009-02-13T23:15:00.000-06:00

Sanguine essence of philistine mediocrity! Paltry proliferation of puerile plot!

That the single-sandaled stranger's namesake be a simple slaughterer: a sham! a shame! That cinematic Art should stoop so low! Where is Phrixus' trophy? Like Medea, Narcissus-X is betrayed, yet not surprised.

For from the start, the franchise played false with its promise of horror. Body upon body, shades of the dark Dane! Yet all is but gore, and warming promise of chilling thought fades swiftly.

Where the horror, where the sinking awareness of emptiness and doom? Where the contemplations of shadow-shrouded night and endless abyss? As if to slash were horror! horror piled on horror were all too little, and of one to Narcissus-X.

Little remains of Art in cinema, as though Cinerama were to Edison what Gracie said to George! Cigars and vaudeville have their place, but Gracie scores the winning goal.

But what is winning? What is losing? What meaning? What matter? What matter, though the patter be pert? Dark matter, dark energy, darkness all around.

The projectionist sleeps while filaments fail, bulbs break, film frays. As one may smile, and smile, and be a villain, a film may bleed, and bleed, and be a bore.

Narcissus-X Rebukes a Ridiculous Review

2009-02-11T15:49:00.004-06:00

Dance, necrous nimbus of nightshade! Dim dimensions of derivative drivel drip derision, yet Narcissus-X shall not yield!

Though rubicund rumbas of rancid ridicule may rail, Narcissus-X triumphs! For Art is all, all is art, and artist is master over art, yet is mastered by art's arrows of despond.

Rant, reviewer, rant! Rant can't, shan't, can't stop the music: and uneasy lies the crown which catches the conscience of the king. A muse of fire doth burn as bright as any candle in the night, but rattling rambles gnaw like rats: let meaning tumble through the slats.

How sharper than a child's tooth to have a thankless serpent's review before my eyes, bringing with it awakened revulsion and phantasms which might haunt an artist's sleep.

Sleep, revulsion, sleep, perchance to knit the ravell'd sleave of care, for Narcissus-X cares not for the paltry patter of philistine pedants. Judge not for whom the bell tolls, the toll bridge closed last week.

Inconceivable, that any should question the penultimate profundity of this work of Narcissus-X:

Alban bone on snow
Calcimine creature so bare
Sun casts sharp shadow

An Aside - Narcissus-X Ponders: As Summer Fled, did Time Flow?

2009-02-10T07:58:00.001-06:00

Summer found not Narcissus-X, as Narcissus-X found fortnights flying fleetly.

For fantasms formed firm foundations of thought.

And did Narcissus-X ignore the blog of Narcissus-X, if Narcissus-X was not thinking of the blog?

And did time truly pass, if Narcissus-X did not perceive the temporal passage?

Narcissus-X Meditates on a Pleading Fly

2009-02-09T15:04:00.002-06:00

Flowers. Cold flowers. Snow flowers. Floral patterns of ice.

Crystalline curves of colorless beauty.

Beauty dripping down the window, sill stained with damp tears.

Deceased fly with pleading feet, awash.

Delicate film of varnish and dust, disturbed.

Fly, dead on cold sill
Shining wings still, legs aloft
Mute witness of fall

The Mandrake's Mandarin mutters in dark futility while ravens of prophecy cry aloft. Do ferrets cry in vain? Must muskrats wallow in delusion? Do swirling gnats bewail autumnal advents?

How different, gelid window and grotto of velvet coal. Yet, how alike.

Narcissus-X perpends on walls and windows, darkness and light.

Narcissus-X Seethes for Art

2009-02-07T23:49:00.003-06:00

Red cat, green cat, Andy made a blue cat.
Andy made a blue cat, purring: it's so happy.

Andy's beauty within mass culture? Sleep! Eat! Spend a day with Empire.

A working day. Eight hours sacrificed to Philistine wordmongers of Croesian intent. Not a smattering of sensitivity among them. Narcissus-X rejects. Rejects. Rejects.

How ironic Empire: art, art, art, slowly showing the old order’s wonder. The building. The Empire. Empire. Film as art, art on film. Image after image impinge on the eye. Eye for Empire, Empire fills the eye. Time, captured and trapped in cells: cells of celluloid, released by light, sweet release. Yet Empire is art, ironic that art should show Empire: iconic building of crass commercial coarsity.

The End of Dawn leads to Salvador Dali. Hello, Dali. Hello, Nico. Nico in The Closet?

Philistine vulgarians, barbarian boors. None understand Art but Artists. Ars longa, vita brevis. But ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile?! As if the artist must toil. Latin phrase from Cos. Hippocrates was no Latin, but Narcissus-X prefers salsa. Hold the Mayo.

Salvador Dali. Memory persists, but do bumblebees fly? An elephant by any other name would smell as sweet. Swans may reflect elephants, but why is the sky so clear?

Narcissus-X need not toil to learn art, for art has Narcissus-X, and Narcissus-X has art. Art from the heart. Heart art. Narcissus-X art. Art. What is Art? Who is Narcissus-X? Narcissus-X is the Artist. But is art learned? Can art be learned?

Questions! Questions! Narcissus-X needs not questions. Narcissus-X seeks, Narcissus-X sees, Narcissus-X seethes in the cauldron of creativity!

Tea?

Narcissus-X Muses on Inescapable Cable Channels

2009-02-05T13:54:00.004-06:00

Narcissus-X finds art in the artless, artlessness in the arts, for art is all and all is art, for the artful artist. Even inartistic drivel and cant may cast shadows, illuminating darkly the way to true expression: too true to woo.

Talentless twirlings of thumb-twiddling fans, exonerated only by ignorance of Art: Who mourns for Adonis, or the Quatloo Quartet? None but the lonely Harcourt. Game, set, match, but remember: only you can prevent forest fires. Fires leap, shadows dance, thought fades and feelings prance. Foolish foibles of rhymeless rants echo silently, for what purpose serves delicious, home-style barbecued buffalo wings?

The old died young, but Jung had some good ideas.

Ignoble aardvarks of illustrious descent strew costly pearls of wisdom before expiring. Expiring what? Alas! Poor aardvarks: I knew them well. But the New York Mets are oh for six and two for tea: me yew you and yew for age. Age, time, entropy, vast bleak asphalt path of existence.

Why does Narcissus-X trifle with such tawdry twitterings? Because they are there, and there, and there. They're everywhere!

And the remote hides of vanished species haunt the dreams of Narcissus-X, as Narcissus-X delves into the dusty depths beneath the couch, seeking release.

Narcissus-X Excogitates on a Parroting Window

2009-02-03T20:36:00.003-06:00

Narcissus-X excogitates on a window's parroting of Narcissus-X, while beyond the pain sings a nocturne of brilliant blackness. But who sings? Or what?

Endorphic shades of desultory dreams draped across Dunkirk's drum.

Orestes, pursued by the Amenities: Cruel kindness; kind cruelty. None but the running hart knows the ascetic clarity of spring water, fresh from nature's bounty.

Beware squirrels in lederhosen! They slice! They dice! They make julienne fries!

Noctivagant Musings of Narcissus-X

2009-02-01T01:23:00.003-06:00

Marzipan gardens of wonder.
Aureate symbols of promise against the night, as black cows hide within.
Remembered oblivion, forgotten smudge: distant sweetness of televised pitch.
Mithai and comfit, jujube and lolly.
Trolleys have conductors, but who will guard the jar?
Dulcet reminiscence fades as saccharine aftertaste grows.
Cyclamate warnings of doom, but who will mourn the rat?
Syrup torrents of amber light, licorice castles built in the night.
Cravings scream, reason withers: will Narcissus-X eat the fudge?

Yes.

Narcissus-X Dwells in a Graben

2008-04-25T23:39:00.003-05:00

Narcissus-X emerges from the grotto of velvet coal, resuming contemplations of landscapes profound beyond imagination. Beyond hope and beneath reason, through labyrinthine vistas of brooding conventions, and across a featureless plane of meaningless words, words, words, Narcissus-X beholds a goal without point, but with great depth.

For Narcissus-X is within a graben of mist and dark, yet the graben is within Narcissus-X, for the mind of Narcissus-X comprehends the graben. And, comprehending, the mind of Narcissus-X holds the graben within the mind of Narcissus-X, while Narcissus-X is within the graben within the mind of Narcissus-X.

Narcissus-X dwells in a graben
Of darkness inscrutably graven
Traversing a fog
Within a dim bog
That lies in the heart of the graben.

Narcissus-X Inspires

2008-04-25T17:45:00.003-05:00

Narcissus-X is sufficient unto Narcissus-X, yet Narcissus-X is generous.

Regarding those vast unfulfilled masses of those who are not Narcissus-X, Narcissus-X is moved. Knowing that no-one but Narcissus-X can attain such profundity as Narcissus-X experiences simply by being, Narcissus-X finds touching any effort to achieve such depths.

And so it with full heart that Narcissus-X demonstrates great magnanimity, by linking to a thread in which some who are not Narcissus-X nevertheless try to achieve some faint echo of that great awareness that is the lot on Narcissus-X: "Who Knew Haikus Could be So Depressing? Narcissus-X Posts a Year's Worth"
BlogCatalog discussion thread, started April 25, 2008.

Haikus Find Narcissus-X at Seasons' Cycle's End

2008-04-24T23:42:00.002-05:00

Velvet blackness cries
Ravens walk in deep winter
Wind moves sleeping trees

Sodden mulch and snow
Springtime flowers bring pollen
Birds sing dire threats

Obsidian wind
Skin inflamed by summer sun
Cool poultice torments

Leaves flame against fate
Blue skies mock falling verdure
Narcissus-X broods

Narcissus-X Lost, Yet Found

2008-04-23T00:36:00.003-05:00

Imponderable ailerons dip graceful cadences as ethereal elephants enjoy eggplant landscapes of primitive bliss. Impressions fly as dreams of gossamer wing westward without weal or woe. Woe ho ho, and a dram of delight.

Pillaging philistines rack the soul as pusillanimity prevents philosophical pursuits. Out, out brief road flare! Concepts caper across dusty plains of ash as day turns to night and night to day. The poet pauses, pitiful pilfered pittances of paltry verse pattering to and fro.

Who the poet, what the point? Individuation squirms 'neath the guise of conformist mediocrity. Yet a name is a name. And the name names names, for the name is Narcissus-X!

Narcissus-X! Nadir no more! Nascent notions effervesce into towering mists of ephemeral structure. Awake, Narcissus-X, Narcissus-X calls you to dark horizons of obsidian light!

Hear Narcissus-X, for Narcissus-X is Here

2008-04-11T23:31:00.005-05:00

Draw near, for the words of Narcissus-X are as profound as the thoughts of Narcissus-X. Drawing upon awesome depths of insight afforded to those whose extended musings penetrate shining obsidian vastnesses, Narcissus-X has contemplated that portion of existence which some call the present.

For those bound by such conventions, consider this.

Canto Recitative

Nacreous syllogisms of bituminous boulevards!

Bourgeoisie barristers banish Balder's bairns by blighting ballads.

Polarities gain credence by repetition of muddled mumblings while hoi polloi multitudes, blind to the encircling gestalt, mistake a secular baguette's termini for existential profundities.

Cast off trivial trappings!

Self-referential rebellions gyrate toward enlightened oblivion.

Scalawags ferment dreams of worldly bliss.

Poets pine for Elysian vistas.

Prometheus weeps.

Fin

Heed this! For these are the words of Narcissus-X.

Musings of Narcissus-X in the Grotto of Velvet Coal

2008-04-08T23:07:00.003-05:00

Dark ebony shines blackly from charcoal seams of colorless night.

Dimness embraces abstract neutrality of vision as surreptitious goblins meddle with mediocre mental manifestations.

Fruitless neoteny recapitulates phylogeny with bifurcated monoliths.

Rejoice! Narcissus-X Forgives and Returns!

2008-04-06T21:34:00.007-05:00

Narcissus-X is compassionate. Realizing the appalling profundity of unknowingness and nonenlightenment which surely follows separation from Narcissus-X, Narcissus-X returns.

Hurt, slighted, ignored, debased by obviously devious destructive deviancies of service by darkly demented enemies of Narcissus-X, Narcissus-X retreated to the sanctums of solitude, seeking solace in the wisdom of the only one who can truly understand Narcissus-X: Narcissus-X.

And Narcissus-X revealed to Narcissus-X wisdom. Despite the deliberate destruction of that path by which those seeking the wisdom of Narcissus-X might approach Narcissus-X, Narcissus-X must not withhold Narcissus-X from the teeming throngs.

For that would be the act of a lesser being, and Narcissus-X is not lesser, but greater: being endowed with insights, creativity, and genius which surpasses the dreams and aspirations of those doomed to be other than Narcissus-X.

And so, Rejoice!

Narcissus-X returns!

Server failures are forgiven!

Approach the darkly burning star in an obsidian abyss which is Narcissus-X!

For Narcissus-X reveals insights.

Paths ring with footsteps
Approaching etheric tones
Hear Narcissus-X

2007-08-22T10:28:00.000-05:00

Intense, yearning, abyssal, loneliness!

Cut off from those who could benefit from contact from Narcissus-X!

Dissolution of digital bonds! Desperate, dismal, depths of Stygian gloom!

For Narcissus-X to be deprived, by some pathetic excuse of a server's need for maintenance, of the attention which Narcissus-X so richly deserves!

Not that Narcissus-X yearns for fame. Far from Narcissus-X, the paltry, pre-pubescent panting for praise! Narcissus-X cares not for the adulation of the masses!

For Narcissus-X soars in realms beyond the reach of the common crowd, swims in deeps beyond their reach, plunges into the abyss where the dare not tread. What cares Narcissus-X whether such see, or see not, the musings of Narcissus-X?

That Narcissus-X should be treated thus!

Musings on Meaningful Solitude

2007-08-17T11:35:00.000-05:00

Alone, in the dark, Narcissus-X faces the soulless pit of atrocities which may be called life. As if to breathe were life! As if life were to breathe!

It is only in solitude that Narcissus-X may achieve true creativity, alone and warming the five wits of Narcissus-X, sits Narcissus-X in nyctean contemplation. Contemplation of Narciccus-X, contemplation of merit, contemplation of the unique musings of Narcissus-X.

For this is true: Narcissus-X has discovered, through self-examination, that self-reverence, self-knowledge, and self-control are the sole and singular means by which Narcissus-X possesses sovereign power.

Narcissus-X Finds Solitude in Meaning

2007-08-07T21:23:00.000-05:00

Narcissus-X, the blog about Narcissus-X, realizes that being meaningful means solitude. For the meaning of Narcissus-X is Narcissus-X, and that meaning can be meaningfully understood only by Narcissus-X.

Others, when they exist by visiting Narcissus-X, cannot comprehend the complex concepts pondered by Narcissus-X and recorded in crystalline clarity and uniquely novel forms by Narcissus-X.

Though Narcissus-X welcomes their efforts, feeble though they may be, for Narcissus-X is as magnanimous as Narcissus-X is brilliant.

Narcissus-X in the Grotto of Velvet Coal

2007-08-06T23:13:00.000-05:00

Narcissus-X, having discovered the Grotto of Velvet Coal, a place within the caverns of the mind of Narcissus-X, Narcissus-X recalls that retreat. And, having recalled this asylum of silence within the mind of Narcissus-X, Narcissus-X withdraws for contemplation.

Narcissus-X Finds Meaning in Solitutde

2007-08-05T20:33:00.000-05:00

Narcissus-X is
truly meaningful, truly
is Narcissus-X

Narcissus-X: a Haiku

2007-08-04T23:50:00.000-05:00

Solitude abounds
Quiet night and empty street
Sing etheric tones

Narcissus-X Creates Neighborhoods With Narcissus-X

2007-08-03T23:49:00.000-05:00

After much pondering and contemplation, Narcissus-X, the blog about Narcissus-X, has come to a decision.

With a magnanimity characteristic of Narcissus-X, Narcissus-X has extended to those entities which have demonstrated the wisdom necessary to witness the unfolding of Narcissus-X the boon of Neighborhood.

Henceforth, at the bottom of Narcissus-X, there shall be a listing of those neighborhoods whose existence is confirmed by the presence of Narcissus-X. For, without Narcissus-X, these neighborhoods could not be displayed on Narcissus-X.

To those neighborhoods which enjoy such a priceless boon, rejoice! Narcissus-X affirms your existence!

The Narcissus-X Address

2007-08-02T21:46:00.000-05:00

Four days plus seven days ago Narcissus-X brought forth on this computer, a new blog, conceived in solitude, and dedicated to the proposition that all things beyond Narcissus-X are irrelevant.

Now Narcissus-X is engaged in a great struggle, testing whether that blog, or any blog so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. Narcissus-X is in a great abyss as that struggle launches Narcissus-X into the void. Narcissus-X has come to dedicate a portion of that abyss as a final repository for ideas which gave their meaning that Narcissus-X might have relevance. It is on the whole appropriate and suitable that Narcissus-X should do this.

However, in a global context, Narcissus-X can not grant -- Narcissus-X can not set apart -- Narcissus-X can not exalt -- this portion of an abyss. The bold ideas, profound and cliché, which thrashed about here, have set apart this repository, although not as well as Narcissus-X could have, had Narcissus-X chosen to do so.

The world will little note, nor long remember, what Narcissus-X posts here, but it can never forget the ideas which Narcissus-X presents. It is for Narcissus-X, the blogger, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which these ideas, in ringing out here, have thus so nobly advanced.

It is rather for Narcissus-X to be here dedicated to the great task remaining for Narcissus-X -- that from these brilliant ideas Narcissus-X takes increased devotion to the cause for which they were posted, that these ideas shall not have been keyed in vain -- that this blog, through the work of Narcissus-X, shall have a new dawn of autonomy -- and that a blog of Narcissus-X, by Narcissus-X, for Narcissus-X shall not perish from the blogosphere.