A few sprinkles – its 46º and cloudy. The first breeze rustles though the bare rees. His coffee is getting cold, He wanted to read some more about the demise of French Theory in its country of origin. He’s being conventional this morning by putting ketchup on his hash browns.
Order is what is discovered after the fact, not a little piss pot for use to urinate in to – and call ourselves satisfied – William Carlos Williams
She broke the rules
She opened a window
In the night
Filling the master
With terror
Having always before
Been timorous of
His wishes
She was no longer
Behaving
With circumspection
He thought
Would she be rude
Crimson with rage
“I don’t care, I must have air”
But he sighed with relief
The next morning when
She was still there
But yet her embarrasses
Were so slight
And he was so full of furry
Well people change and forget to tell each other. Too bad – causes so many mistakes – Lillian Hellman – Toys in the Attic
It is much lusher looking down upon it, from up here on the rim, than it actually is down there in the Gila River riparian zone – dusty and brushy with the trees insufficiently shading the ecosystem – we went down to the picnicking area (no camping allowed, no fires allowed) and over to the west side of the river where the boat launch is. The bridge had been built in 1918 by convict labor to provide a supply route to the mines. The dog got hot and stretched out in the dirt – refusing to go any further – then he rolled around and took a dirt bath. I loaded some brush in the back of the truck. A family was having a picnic. We tried not to disturb them. The purr of the engine – a haze of dust – the changing pitch as it climbs the distant slope
That the rest of the world was waste to him [Carlyle] unless he had admirers in it, is a sorry state of sentiment – John Ruskin – The Genius of John Ruskin, 1963 p514
We have this very humanitarian liberal minister. It’s a very large church. He states something is not PC. Everyone is aghast. The board meets to censure him or to forgive him. The new media has gathered to cover the meeting and sightseers are milling about. This is after all a man bites dog story. The only place that they (the board can meet in private) is in the elevator. They exonerate him (no surprise). The news is airing these events live. It is on ESPN and when it is over they will cut to the Sunday game which is due to start at noon, eastern time. We are all gathered around or TVs and just as he strides up to the pulpit to begin his sermon the cut to the football game. The sun goes down behind the canyon rim at 4:14. It is 66º. There are mosquitoes buzzing about. I put on long pnat and a long-sleeve sweater.
If Foucault poses philosophical challenges to history, it is not to question the reality of ‘the past’ but to interrogate the rationality of the ‘present’ - Colin Gordon “Afterword” – Power/Knowledge by Michael Foucault p242
Albertine’s bicyclette – bent over her handle-bars… Speeding through Balbec on her mythological wheels. And now she is dead. How could she have seemed dead to me when now, in order to think of her, I only had to dunk a Madeleine into some tea, Never had I caressed the waterproof Albertine hunched over her handle-bars… And now it was impossible, for she was dead.
The number of Iraqis living in slums has increased by 20% to 53% of the population since the American invasion
Propaganda is a soft weapon: hold it in your hands too long and it will move about like a shark and strike the other way – Jean Anouihl – The Lark
On average it cost US parents $286,000 to raise a child to the age of 18
Lights dawn gradually over the whole – Ludwig Wittgenstein – Philosophical Investigations
The ten richest people in India have a net worth equalivant to 12% of the country’s GDP
[The inability to] draw on three thousand years [of history] is living hand to mouth – Goethe
The average weight of a US farm-raised turkey has increased by 72% since 1960
To talk at a distance, when you have nothing to say, though you were ever so near; to go fast from this place to that, with nothing to do either at one or the other; these are powers certainly – John Ruskin – The Genius of John Ruskin, 1963 p369
50% of British businessmen and 10% of British businesswomen travel with their Teddy Bears
Imagine the complex trial of a schoolboy’s mind, if the law of nature about cakes were that if you ate none of your cake to-day, you would have ever so much bigger a cake tomorrow… Not a cake and a quarter, to-morrow, dunce, however abstinence your are – only the cake you have if the mice do not get at it in the night. Interest then is not, it appears, payment for labour, it is not reward for risk, it is not reward for abstinence. What is it? One of two things – taxation, or usury – John Ruskin – The Genius of John Ruskin, 1963 p385
15% of US female senior level executives admit to having had an affair with a male boss
1 comment:
My lover cheated - well, he silently boasted of cheating, I think is the term I used then. I was 23 and felt awful and worthless anyway, so I sold everything I owned and bought a one-way ticket to Europe.
I packed my teddy bear, which I'd helped to manufacture at the Make Your Own Bear factory, down off the 22 Fillmore line at 16th St, south of Market.
Even tho I was 23 and heartbroken, with all that entails, I felt pretty silly boarding a transatlantic flight with a stuffed animal. When I took my seat right up in the nose of the plane in an otherwise unoccupied bank of seats, crying, and wondering if this flight would go down as the one over Lockerbie recently had, and not really caring (but caring hugely!), the steward leaned over me and said, in his accented English, "Don't forget to buckle up your bear."
I buckled up my bear. His name was Sweeney Rufflefoot, after Sondheim and a sewing machine attachment. And we flew off to Frankfurt.
Post a Comment