The Cheshire Cat In The Moon

Unwanted: Dead or Alive

no future
no home
 — Peter Hammill 'This Side Of The Looking-Glass'

Old Zebra Proverb

No gnus is good gnus.

Clarification

Gnus don't kill people — guns do.

Beyond Dire Straights

The Fish Of The Imagination

As I see it, life is an effort to grip,
before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion,
the startling, the ghastly
or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination
before they whip away on the endless current
and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.
— Mervyn Peake

New Enfranchised Noises

We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.
— Mervyn Peake 'Titus Groan'

The Thrusting Of Senses

Each day I live in a glass room
unless I break it with the thrusting of my senses
and pass through the splintered walls to the great landscape.
 — Mervyn Peake

Our Armies

The Germanic Goddess 'Easter'

Old English Ēostre (also Ēastre) and Old High German Ôstarâ are the names of a putative Germanic goddess whose Anglo-Saxon month, Ēostur-monath (Old English "Ēostre month"), has given its name to the festival of Easter.

Having Outconsumed Schopenhauer and Hegel …

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Death

Passover

This is a crisis I knew had to come,
Destroying the balance I'd kept.
Doubting, unsettling and turning around,
Wondering what will come next.
Is this the role that you wanted to live?
I was foolish to ask for so much.
Without the protection and infancy's guard,
It all falls apart at first touch.

Watching the reel as it comes to a close,
Brutally taking its time,
People who change for no reason at all,
It's happening all of the time.
Can I go on with this train of events?
Disturbing and purging my mind,
Back out of my duties, when all's said and done,
I know that I'll lose every time.

Moving along in our God given ways,
Safety is sat by the fire,
Sanctuary from these feverish smiles,
Left with a mark on the door,
Is this the gift that I wanted to give?
Forgive and forget's what they teach,
Or pass through the deserts and wastelands once more,
And watch as they drop by the beach.

This is the crisis I knew had to come,
Destroying the balance I'd kept,
Turning around to the next set of lives,
Wondering what will come next.

 — Ian Curtis 'Passover'

See No Mediæval

Hear No Mediæval

A Matter Of Perception

George Berkeley is important in philosophy through his denial of the existence of matter…He maintained that material objects only exist through being perceived.

 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy'

Putting The Negation In Negotiation

[For Spinoza] finite things are defined by their boundaries, physical or logical, that is to say, by what they are not: ‘all determination is negation’.

 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy'

Know Your Own Mind

There is thus, in all philosophy derived from Descartes, a tendency to subjectivism, and to regarding matter as something only knowable, if at all, by inference from what is known of mind.
 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy'

Without

Hobbes, as might be expected, is an out-and-out nominalist. There is, he says, nothing universal but names, and without words we could not conceive any general ideas. Without language, there would be no truth or falsehood, for ‘true’ and ‘false’ are attributes of speech.
 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy'

Literally

Past-In-Present

the past lingers with me

 — Peter Hammill 'This Side Of The Looking-Glass'

Oxymoronic Anagram

I Only Sing The Tunes

I cannot give the reasons,
I only sing the tunes:
the sadness of the seasons
the madness of the moons.

I cannot be didactic
or lucid, but I can
be quite obscure and practic-
ally marzipan

In gorgery and gushness
and all that's squishified.
My voice has all the lushness
of what I can't abide

And yet it has a beauty
most proud and terrible
denied to those whose duty
is to be cerebral.

Among the antlered mountains
I make my viscous way
and watch the sepia fountains
throw up their lime-green spray.

 — Mervyn Peake 'I Cannot Give The Reasons'

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Solidarity

The New Standard Of Journalism

Immortality And Homelessness

You can't have a conclusion without premises.

Life Kills

the life is false, it's killing me…

 — Peter Hammill 'Modern'

Got To

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;

Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' 

Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; 

Man got to tell himself he understand.

 — Kurt Vonnegut 'Cat's Cradle'

The Trap Is Set — The Tree Can Now Only Wait