Thanksgiving Day – the beginning of a descent into the gloom. Solstice is the turn-around point, after which the days get longer and there returns the expectation of better times. Don’t panic – hibernate. That's why we stuff ourselves on this day – sufficient enough to become lethargic. Settle down in an easy chair and watch sports. Greg turned to me and said – we can’t even imagine what its like for our bodies to do that (he was referring to the big play of a foot-ball game on the TV). I agreed with him, I rarely do, he’s a foaming at the mouth free-marketeer. Yes, I said, that is what makes sports so beautiful. Ugh? So I explained that beauty was in part something that was incomprehensive. It was a necessary part but not sufficient factor for the quality we call beauty. Ugh? Well what Jeffery Dahmer did when he killed and ate those people was incomprehensible but it was certainly not beautiful. I’m his favorite “socialist” he says (it is not a complement). I think be means intellectual. To him Obama is a socialist. What makes him a socialist, I ask? He wants to take away from people who earned what they have and give it to those who didn’t earn it. Oh. So that is what socialism is? I was tempted to argue the point – about meritocracy and privilege and the nature of the labor/capitalist relationship – but decided to shut up and watch the game. What one believes is the truth (reality, univeral law, God given) and everything else is just ideology. I believe everything is an ideology and according to Greg that would mean that I didn't beleive in anything - so why does he think that I am a socialist then? It's a cynical attitude - calling your opposition socialist is rhetorical positioning. Time to head for my cave.
Far from being an invention of the politically correct, victemhood has been a talking point of the right ever since Burke decried the mob’s treatment of Marie Antoinette. The conservative, to be sure, speaks for a special type of victim: one who has lost something of value as opposed to the wretched of the earth whose chief complaint is that they never had anything to lose – Corey Robin – Conservatism and Counterrevolution from Burke to Palin
The temperature was down into the lower thirties this morning but it did not feel cold – I got up and walked the dog and later gave it a half a hot dog then I headed out to the coffee shop
Richard moved on this morning, the horses got fed; it did not freeze in the night. The wind has been intermittent. It was eleven before the clouds rolled off the top of Sierra Blanca. There is no dust blowing up from the valley. It is finely warming up. Richard said that in may have snowed up there and with the clouds moving off the peaks, yes I can confirm that it has – a dusting of the pines. It was only about ten miles as the crow flies to his place, he had said – just over Sierra Blanca but about fifty miles by the highway – back to Tullarosa and then up to Rudosa
Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman in it – John Ruskin – The Genius of John Ruskin, 1963 p278
Yes, I’ve been here before – on my transition from the Army to civilian life – the valley of fires – in my new 1972 Chevy truck (blue). First top along the way – Petrified Forest, Death Valley, Donner Pass, Klamath Falls, the Willamette Valley, Puget Sound. Finely winding up in Bellingham Washington where I deposited my DD-214 in a safe deposit box. I had to get a new one to apply for Veterans Medical Insurance – it was not sufficient that I received a VA disability
From all angles lines converging and crossing establish points… there is a multiplication, a quickening, a borrowing through, a blasting aside, a dynamization, a flight over – William Carlos Williams
And down at the far end of the campground, almost to where they had been bailing alfalfa yesterday is that green and purple VW hippie van that I had seen at Oliver Lee the week before. It probably belongs to that longhaired man in overhauls and slouch hat – he gets his exercise by hiking to the gate and back early every morning. Otherwise he stays inside his van. Inside his little vehicle just like that dude with the white cat also at Oliver Lee and later at Three Rivers. He stays his limit said the host and moves on. Doesn’t bother anyone.
The more interesting questions are epistemological – Lewis H Lapham – Harper’s – Nov 2010 p9
Night is better
Or should be
Which would be
Ideal
It requires less structure
The less the better
Something soft to lie on
Would be nice
But the older you get
The more you have to get
Up out of bed and go pee
Then your nights get structure
And your days lose their's
Day retains it meals times
But the food itself loses its appeal
When you can’t identify what it is
And you can no longer feed yourself
Open up, open wide
Now chew
You wanted to see yourself a way you never were. Maybe that’s a game you let people play when you love them – Lillian Hellman – Toys in the Attic, 1960
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