Tramping is a straying from the obvious, even the crookedest road is sometimes too straight – Stephen Graham – The Gentle Art of Tramping (1926)
That I should die
Facing the firing squad
My hatred aglow
Firing my soul
So proud to have been
Of service
So happy not to have
Been marginalized
Raising my cup, I toast the bright moon, / and facing my shadow makes friends three, // though the moon has never understood wine, / and shadow only trails along behind me – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p43
The slave trade was outlawed by the United States and Britain at near its peak in 1807. Such a viable commercial process would have stood no chance of proscription in today’s alliance between big business and big government. Today we would propose a cap and trade system to control it. Moral choices are no longer practical (or efficient).
The free flow of capital and goods (instead of goods only) means that investment is governed by absolute profitability and not by comparative advantage. The absence of a free flow of labor means that opportunities for employment decline for workers in a country in which investments are not being made – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p214
Factoid: Europe is now a “continent of migrants” with more than 10% of it’s people living outside their countries of birth
Everything that differentiates domestic from international trade depends, for Ricardo, explicitly on the international immobility of capital (labor immobility between nations was taken for granted) – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good., 1989 p214
Western European words for ‘slave’ – esclavo, escarvo, Sklave, esclave, schiavo – stem from the Latin for Slav, sclavus
Freedom Day +1 – And shit, I have to go into the office this morning to work out my transition. I will have to turn in all my company property by the middle of the month. Then das est alles - kaput, all over, fini - an artificial life of work over, career in the trash - don’t let the door hit you in the rear on the way out - hit the road Jack, it’s the open trail for me, don’t get lost in the woods.
The more mummified an object is, the more intense its ability to yield experience, a sense of the authentic - Andreas Huyssen – Twilight Memories, 1995
I will send my “Its my turn now” e-mail and close this chapter, this volume. I’ve already started a new page and as you can see it is no longer a blank. A number of possibilities come into being New, exciting and adventurous opportunities await.
Longing for the authentic is a form of fetishism – Andreas Huyssen – Twilight Memories, 1995
I’m out of the office by Two PM with my farewell notification sent, a forwarding message recorded and my good byes said. Bea sat beside me on the bus. We introduced ourselves. “You’re in the coffee shop a lot aren’t you?” she says. I had always thought that she and her husband Larry, were real estate agents. She it turns out is and interior designer and he is an investment banker. “Sorry not to have said Hello to your before”, she says. “No problem”, I reply, “this is the first time that we have actually had a one on one conversation.”
Structural adjustment programs devoid of safety-nets for those who are vulnerable – are defective – Patha Dasgupta “Science as an Institution: Setting priorities in a new social economic context,” 1999
I love women of non-descript ethnicity, dark complexion and hair; Indian, African or Fijian. Indistinguishable until they speak and they have no exotic accent - just American – what a disappointment. This is more a wine bar than a pub. It’s a neighborhood bar. Most of the patrons are young ethnic professional - YEPPIES. I spot a woman in a tweed coat, frizzled hair, glasses and big silver earrings, a white female professional. But every one is a professional now that my career is passé. Is it only because I relished being an outsider so much that I had missed out on being a professional too - no mini-mes for me, thank you very much. People are meeting people. People exchange greetings. They do hug each other and even give each other full tongue kisses then they laugh. This is all so routine. I notice yes, but do I care. No, I’m not part of the norm here. I’m now just an observer. And I must run and take a piss after each beer? I am such a lousy lounge lizard
Ordinary injustices result when a community of legal professionals becomes so accustomed to a pattern of lapses that they can no longer see their role in them – Amy Bach – Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court
Money and poetry both act as catalysts, and they bring together objects and experience that wouldn’t have anything to do with one another otherwise – David Kirby – New York Times Book Review (Nov 8, 2009) p6
I’m sitting on a bench at 8th and Baloba waiting for the number 31 downtown. I’m on my way to pick up a box of personal items from my former office. There no fun in playing hooky when there is no hooky to be played. I tell myself – I will now know adventure. This is both exuberating and anxiety creating. It’s a series of one-day stands, will any of them lead to anything more substantial than sitting on this bench?..
Most of these places, however, were not marked as special on any map. But they became special by personal acquaintance… A word might be exchanged with a friend or partner, a photograph might be kept, a note made in journal, a line added to a letter. Many encounters would not even attain this degree of voice. They would stay unarticulated, part of private thought – Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places, 2009 p236
A little bit of old with a little bit of new. I’m back at the New Village Café on Polk for breakfast where they already know what it is that I want. I picked up the last of my stuff from the office. I encounter my nephew Scott at the Brewery. This is the second time this week that he had appeared out of nowhere. He was in the area dropping off resumes and notices their four o’clock happy hour. “Hello”, he says as she sits down. I say “Hello there” as if this was our normal routine.
It is not the country that progressively creates the town but the town that creates the country – Giles Deleuze
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