The Day After - Joe's Big Boxing Day Party

Boxing Day – the alms box or the foxhounds – a full day of sports – rugby matches with local rivals. Joe has his big party of the year. It’s cold outside - 17°. Wear happy socks – something colorful without holes in the toes, meaning take your shoes off at the door. Last year it snowed and I didn’t make it. This year I have a four-wheel drive truck. Scotty wanted me to meet Joann and her brother (he was a screenwriter). Scotty keeps telling his bar buddies about Joe’s Boxing Day Party. Joe gets pissed. It’s a faux pas Joe tries to explain but Scotty is not to be deterred. Scotty proceeds to tell me about him and Norman Mailer – how short Norman's parents were and why Norman's ex-wife threw him out – Scotty had invited some bar-buddies up and they drank all her liquor. Scotty never learns. That was when he was twenty-four. If you have five minutes I will teach you all you need to know about mathematics, he tells Brian. After this I will shut up. Half an hour latter he is still blabbering about the Axiom of Choice. I had heard it all before. Several times.

No one is excluded from social production, even if they have never participated in material production. Social production is inclusive; material production is exclusive

If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work – John Ruskin – The Genius of John Ruskin, 1963 p190

First hard frost – thirty degrees – my hands tingled. That woman up the block doesn’t have that great a face but she is young and fit and trim. She wears snow-white sneakers. She takes the kid to school then comes back. They have three Fords (two trucks and an SUV) and they have a small boat . There is a statue of a saint (probably concrete) standing by the door and a big dog that is kept indoors. I passed here on the way out as she was coming back. I waved. She was intent upon getting back home. It was 7:24

You’re toucher: you constantly touch people or lean on them. Little moments of sensuality. One should have sensuality whole or not at all – Lillian Hellman – The Autumn Garden

Mot of our struggle to grasp the nature of Mathematics is philological – the terms of a geometric (sensual/counting) mathematics have been retained for a system that has none of these attributes – the main difficulty with mathematics is linguistic, not the mathematics itself

Books contain not persons, places and things but words - Warren Tallman – New American Story, 1965

It’s a long line. The windows are fogged. When it’s cold everyone wants something hot down their throats. A steaming hot cup of joe is mighty appealing

It is easier to relinquish a feeling than to give up a habit – Marcel Proust – The Captive

But such renunciations were not demanded of capital, just labor – the renunciation of social and political demands. Effective political and social action is only possible for groups who do not renounce their own objectives.

When two people part it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches. Since love does not express itself directly – Marcel Proust – The Captive

There are three types of men
     The good, the bad and the ugly
No, on second thought only two
     Man and his mate
Maybe its only one – man all alone
     And then there are women

The whole is, after all, defined by its boundaries – V N Volosinov –Marxism and the Philosophy of Language p96

I would expect a poet to take up painting more than I would expect a novelist to take it up painting

Art is simpler than people thing because there is so little to write about. All the moving things are eternal in man’s history – William Faulkner – The Faulkneer -Cowley File

He is beaming at me. Hi there! He says. I look confused. You don’t recognize me, he says. No, I reply, I don’t. Isn’t your name Alex? No, I reply. It is not. Oh, he says, I’m so sorry. But you look just like him. You even have the same beard. And he repeats how sorry that he is. No problem, I say. Think nothing of it. I try to reassure him, but he is embarrassed and proceeds to act as if I did not exist.

This texture of expectations, satisfactions, disappointments, surprises which the sequence of syllables bring about, is rhythm. And the sound of words comes to its full power only thought rhythm – I A Ricahrds, 1966