Thursday, February 23, 2006

On civilization...

I'm sitting here (literally - on the keyboard) waiting for Grandma Mrs. Peeps to arrive and am pondering the nature of civilization and modern society. And possibly hallucinating, given it is waaaaay past my bedtime... Here's Henry Miller's take on it from “An Open Letter to Surrealists Everywhere,” The Cosmological Eye (1939). Although a tad on the *colourful* side, I do like his inclusion of Siamese cats...

Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, pessaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

koko - why was Grandma Mrs. Peeps arriving so late? Was there snow in Winnie?

kokopuff said...

Not to worry, Grandma Mrs. Peeps chose to take a flight that was coming in late, that's all. But, um, I'll go out on a limb and say, Yes, there likely is snow in Winnie!