The Ghoul-Keeper's Fear of the Penalty, or, a Savage Attack on Something-or-Other In Order to Avoid Novel-Writing, and an Admission, Not Only that...

...I love the French - their Revolutionary Defence of the Status Quo and So On - but also that this Blog will One Day be Valuable.

The French goalkeeper, Roland Barthes, is accompanied, always I suppose, by a wraithlike (half-present on monochrome photos taken with Russian cameras such as the tiny Pomo, the truly panoramic Horizont or the trusty Zenit Sniper resting on its chest-pod) Zombi (French spelling) compagnon (ditto) leaning Harpo-like against a goal-post, who can spot a Fractal 50 metres away and thus slow down time for Barthes.


Not to be confused with the Situationists' derive (as usual no accents, Blogspot still can't seem to do it) nor with Baudelaire's flan, the path of the ideal ball towards what the kicker takes to be the goal but which is only a temporary shelter for the ghoul-keeper's Zombie - they fail to see the wider picture - Manchester United came closest in Busby's time - is like the eccentric trace of culture, not the straight line of method.

The artist, the writer, claims a right to infinite digression. This indirect expression is truth in a new old way. It encourages annotation, marginal notes, participation. Two heads are better than one everywhere except in the goal area. Who looks at the post-coital bulge in the back of the net? - it is the foreplay that counts and in-between, and out-between, digression and screaming.

An infinite path to a goal (a) is Fractal; (b) never gets there and (c) always does, by definition.

There are many ways, the ghoul whispers to Barthes in his curiously old-fashioned shorts, to avoid the penalty. Sleep, obfuscation, indifference and obliquity ('prendre la tangente').

I love the French, so revolutionarily intent on maintaining the status quo. The diagramme is the artwork, dribbling is important on the field of play, in this singularity, this frozen moment, feel free to make marginal notes or shout from the stand ('What the FUCK are you playing at Reff??') but no rocket falls today (one for the Pynchon fans there) we do not need to sing Abide With Me, this cup shall pass, it is not final.

Keep this, one day it will be worth a fortune, when the novel whose writing this is all intended to avoid, is published.

And, if you have been: thanks for looking.