anonyduke

xoruglm lists "rational absurdism" as an interest. It sounded... interesting. clicked it. only one other user listed it. googled it. the following is the entirety of what appeared to be fruitful results.

A Socratic Dialog between a Llama and a Camel
Camel: Life is a bit shit. Why not just kill ourselves now? [Spits.]

Llama: Well, it's better than nothing, which is our only other option. [Chews cud.]

Camel: But, I mean, why bother doing anything if it's not clear that there's any meaning in it? Or if you're not doing it very well?

Llama: You have something better to do?

Camel: But if there's no meaning, if there's no truth! It's difficult and painful . . . I cannot believe in the God and Satan that those people on Pax talk about . . . Having looked over the edge into nothingness, how can I continue to bop along my merry way? [Chews cud.] There's no absolute truth! There's no ineffable meaning!

Llama: [Spits.] So make some! You have a brain, and a mouth, and eyes to see, and feet to take you around, and hands to work with - or hooves anyway - and a nose to smell the delicate scent of the sea, and ears which can hear music, and a heart that can love and be loved . . . You have all this and you're busy asking silly questions? Honestly - you've got a jar full of quarters and you're worried that they're not shiny enough. Enjoy beauty - enjoy pain, even - not because there's any reason to do it but because you may as well. Appreciate your life - and that gives it all the meaning it could ever need.

luna_the_cat has some thoughts

"Sukey" thinks Spinozawrites Rational Absurdism.

Wikipedia says Spinoza created Spinozism which asserts that God is a substance of which matter and thought are attributes, intuition being the highest. That we are all part of an infinite and interdependant organism, and everything is a wave in an endless ocean.

I think Spinozism is a funny word and sounds like slang for semen. However, the dude is clearly onto something since all perceptive reality can be expressed in Waveform, and is clearly all one connected system. Pretty damned interesting for a guy in the mid-1600s to say.

Upon further reading, it appears that Sukey is referring to someone using Spinoza as a monniker. My entry has become itself, it's like a freaking ouroboros now.

Here is the Rational Absurdist Online Sourcebook. There isn't much there, but what is is interesting. A man named Jean-Jacques Pasti wrote A Decleration of Rational Absurdity and other things which are there. I'm going to copy it all here in case the site goes down.


Jean-Jacques Pasti was born in 1879 in Dingleberry, New York. The only son of French immigrant farmers, Pasti moved to Manhattan at 19 to find fame and fortune. He earned a living selling suitcases while trying to make a name for himself among the growing circles of New York's artists and intelligentsia. Pasti was largely a self-educated man, his parents unable to afford higher education. Without wealth and connections, Pasti was repeatedly turned down by publishing houses, universities and lecture tours. Embittered and angry, he wrote The Declaration during a lunch break at his workplace. He spent five months of savings to self-publish the pamphlet, and distributed it to newspapers, universities and other centers of art and learning. It gained a few followers, but was largely ignored. The few followers he did gain, however, worked with Pasti to lay the groundwork for Rational Absurdist nonscholarship. Together they published The Counterfeit Duck, a monthly Rational Absurdist newsletter. Pasti wrote feverishly for 20 years, creating many antitexts, nonpoems, artwarps and monographs until finally committing suicide in 1920.


Jean-Jacques Pasti: The Declaration of Rational Absurdity (1900)
July 21st, 1900

When in the course of its life the Human Animal finds itself bereft of the basic essentials of existence, and is forced to to cower in a rat-hole for fear of ridicule and the sharp blows of disgust and disapproval, when the fruits of its hands are destined for the tables and bellies of others, when the gems of its mind are devalued and mocked openly, when its countenance brings nothing but repulsion and fear, when the very existence of the Human Animal is cast into question, where can this Animal find solace?

In the arms of Religion, the Kind Priest who consoles with one hand and thieves with the other?

In the arms of Science, the Caring Doctor who invents new maladies for his scalpel to cure?

In the arms of Philosophy, the Learned Scholar who can find a hundred pretty words for murder?

In the arms of Eros, the Beautiful Lover made of smoke and ill-cast shadow?

The Human Animal will turn to these, and in all cases find nothing but emptiness, fraud and disappointment. It leaves each of these embraces lighter in purse, sicker, more confused and broken hearted. And it will be rebuked for finding their solace wanting, for calling them to task for their lies.

Where then can The Human Animal find itself an answer?

Perhaps in Art, but even that has become a tool of the Liars, a celebration of pretty illusions. A new kind of Art, perhaps? An Art that reflects back the absurdity of the world's institutions and thus cancels itself and them out once and for all.

Absurdity then, will be the warm bed in which this Human Animal finds shelter. Not the Absurdity of the world around it, but a carefully structured Absurdity. A RATIONAL ABSURDITY.

The Priests, Doctors, Scholars and Lovers have all given us Meaning that is an empty skein, a drained bladder. It beats us down, then calmly explains why the beating was necessary as we bleed in the dust. Their Meaning entices back on our feet with kindness and promises for the better to beat us down once again.

This circle can only be broken through nonsense, unmeaning and obfuscation. Through RATIONAL ABSURDITY. If Meaning is a circuit, then RATIONAL ABSURDITY is the short.

Henceforth, Human Animals everywhere, seek not solace nor meaning in the pretty structures of glass the world has built around you with Words and Numbers. It is beautiful, yes, but you cannot see that it has hemmed you in, bound every limb, kept you still like a calf awaiting the hammer? Cultivate the hammer of Absurdity to free yourself from this prison.

SMASH ALL MEANING! BASTARD POTATOES! TRELLISES OF THE AUGMENTED SPINE!

SMASH ALL MEANING!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While Pasti wrote many long treatises developing the ideas Rational Absurdism, the antitexts that still enjoy the most popularity today are his nonpoems and rants. Some attempt has been made in recent years to link Pasti to many different literary movements of his time, particularly Dadaism and Surrealism. It should be noted that Pasti predates the Dadaist movement by at least twenty years, and the Surrealist movement by even longer. If parallels must be drawn, Pasti's "Vision of Unmeaning" can be logically compared to the doctrines of the 19th century Nihilists. Their goals were political though, and Pasti's was literary and ultimately personal. We Have Many Cows and the other works sampled in this sourcebook are Pasti's attempts to "assassinate language" and its role in the control of human perception.

This work appeared in the first issue of The Counterfeit Duck, the weekly periodical Pasti published with fellow fledgling nonscholars Rasputin Pence, Thomas Shitlilly and Percy Shelves. The date of publication was listed January 23, 1903.


Jean-Jacques Pasti: We Have Many Cows (1903)

We Have Many Cows

And they are big.

Big what?

Big liars. With big intestines. Parade these intestines, fork them where they branch.

Which path to take?

Down the bramblestrewn dirt rut, through the woods of Lord Suicide. Every St. Doorknob's Eve he nails another finger to the wall. The clock tower rings to thank him. Lived alone all these years. The bats hang low in persimmon fog. To live alone many years more. The cast iron drapes down over the scream, it howls there in the long wooden box. The bell tower. From which his old loves used to throw lizards.

How did they throw them?

Giddily, with much repulsion. Lord Suicide and their Hands in Marriage. The fingers of which he nails to the wall. Each screams a name of the week as he nails it. There is no blood. Flung lizards rasp prettily on the topsoil. How far they fling them. Lord Suicide and his many loves. How they hate him so.

Where then the heart?

In the stars, above the bald steeples. In the woods, embedded in the sapless bark. In the cities, bubbling through sewer tubes. In the hills, trampled by clay shepherds' feet. The heart is there. Lord Suicide leans his head on windowpanes with relish, and the cold glass becomes a conversation, a story, a brief romance, a painful death, a sickbed confession. Broken wrists clutch the winding sheet, the bones grind obscenely. Contagion here, burn this corpse. The heart plops out of the sheet, streaming with the flags of the conquered. The tracks of tears, slowly.

And the cows?

We have many of them. And they are big.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This work appeared in the fifth issue of The Counterfeit Duck, dated February 20th, 1903.


Jean-Jacques Pasti: Duck and Rhino (1903)

They dream they are wolves and scratch shapes in their suits. Mother Magdalene cautions calm, but she's drowned out by the seaweed. She begs for applesauce but is lent out to the sailors committee. Gavel noise and old men buzz fill the railcars while the cigars roll and tumble and roll.

Not ever forever, never forever, ever never forever, never ever forever, never forever ever, no ever as this evered, forevered and never.

TIRED OLD LUNGS: CRUSH

TIRED OLD HANDS: BREAK

TIRED OLD HEART: WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?

Johnny Applesauce span prettily in the void and voided prettily in the spin. He spun, "I'll wrap your head in metal, I will. You think you're the first to traipse through this bitter quarry? Pah! That water there? Bend low enough to cup a drink from it and the sharks will up and remove your head. Like a guillotine with shimmering dress and hair all-a-silk Oh wait, did I speak of the foundries? Or the war? What war? ALONE, I TELL YOU, ALONE. Man is alone, a lump of clay impaled on a stick and the whole thing sends messages back and forth. They called me a vertebrate, and in my day I could have bewitched a tidal wave into buying coffee. Rest. Rest now. It's busy work. Spinspinspinspin."

The Reaper wipes his nose, finds none to wipe, clutches the scythe tighter, puckers his lips to whistle, finds none to pucker, grips the scythe tighter, closes his eyes to cry, finds none to close, clutches the scythe tighter, opens his heart to the world, finds none to open, clutches the scythe tighter, opens his mouth to scream, finds none to open, grips the scythe ever so tight, ever so never tight as now clutched, ever so forever clutched, so forever never as clutched now, tighter and tighter, the scythe,

THE SCYTHE.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This work was the title piece of Pasti's third volume of nonpoetry and rants, self published in 1908. The book had the largest print run of any of Pasti's self-published work, close to 300 copies. Today the only three known in existence are in the Evilboto Institute's archives.


Jean-Jacques Pasti: Evening of a Deflated Heart (1908)

Come in, come in. Sit down. Devolve. Obfuscate. Die.

WE ARE GATHERED HERE TONIGHT TO MOLT. LIKE ENFLAMED CATS. The monkey sees its tail and blushes.

We are each given a term and each pursue it to the best of our disabilities. They have called this, in present formulation, LIFE. And it follows:

YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND NOISE POURS OUT. THEY BEAT YOU FOR THIS. YOU BLEED. THEY BEAT YOU FOR THIS. MACHINES IN THE DARK DREAM YOU A NUMBER. THEY GIVE YOU PICTURES OF PRETTY THINGS. THEY GIVE YOU BOOKS CLOGGED WITH PRETTY WORDS. THESE PRETTY WORDS CONGEAL INTO PRETTY IDEAS. THEN THEY BEAT YOU UNTIL YOUR HEAD IS FILLED WITH PRETTY THINGS. THEN YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND PRETTY WORDS POUR OUT. THESE WORDS CONGEAL INTO PRETTY IDEAS. THEN THEY STOP BEATING YOU, AND REWARD YOU WITH THE PRETTY THINGS IN THE PICTURES. AND YOU BECOME A MACHINE IN THE DARK, DREAMING NUMBERS. THEY BEAT YOU WITH HAPPY UNTIL YOU THINK YOU ARE. THEY BEAT YOU WITH LOVE UNTIL YOU THINK YOU ARE. HAPPY? LOVED? ANSWER ME.

HAPPY? LOVED? ANSWER ME. MACHINE.

This long smear of paint stretching for years. People enter and exit from the doorways: they are busy. It moves forward, this smear, and obscures their faces. They write books about the smear. They huddle in bed with their lovers and whisper about the smear. They shudder. They try and warm themselves in each other. It almost works.

GENTLEMEN, GRAB SOME DIRT.

GENTLEMEN, LOWER THE CASKET.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This work was entered in a local art show put on by a Manhattan gallery in 1912. The text of the work was written in ink on the naked back of a Queens prostitute named Mary Caldaria. When Pasti unveiled the work, both he and Caldaria were thrown from the gallery and arrested for "indecent exposure". Pasti met Caldaria in a brothel sometime in 1908, and called her his "companion in grime" in private correspondence. While Caldaria continued to work as a prostitute, the two remained close in a highly complicated and troubled relationship. Caldaria participated in many of Pasti's "public assassinations of meaning" during the last decades of his life, and it was Caldaria who reported his suicide to the authorities in 1920. Conununununundrum is perhaps the closest thing to a romantic nonpoem that the bitter Pasti has ever written.


Jean-Jacques Pasti: Conununununundrum (1912)

Conununununundrum

By Medusa was Bacchus spelled and thus spelled:

Medusa, her hair fed on the blood of shipwrecked fingers. I will writhe her a letter. I will hiss her a kiss. My heart is grey as a barnacle slicked anchor for that row of teeth all filed in line, reserved for thee. Her bite as fever.

The Conundrum, given that X is the fixed quantity of embraces, Y the star-strewn afterbirth:

Bacchus loved Medusa. Medusa loved Orpheus.

Who loved Bacchus?

THE DEVIL SCRATCHES HIS BACK WITH JAWBONES. THE DEVIL BATHES IN TEARS.



Pasti also authored "Critique of Ephemeral Substance" (1915) and "Pasti's Black Book".

A Google search for "Jean-Jacques Pasti" turns up ONLY this website. I am left to wonder if this man and his work is extremely obscure, or if he's entirely fictional. It is worth noting that the website from which this all comes appears to have no mode of contacting whoever created or maintained the site. More when I find it.