It was an Ambassador, maybe a 1949 and it was bark blue, but the color has faded in my memory

 

Is it not always true that the brain does not do anything that it is not already predisposed to – or at least something analogous too it. And if this were not true our brains would be over our heads – to deep to plumb – only good for bobbing for apples in. It is not coincidental that the brain is the way it is for otherwise we would not know that we are the way we are. What we can do (or what we are capable of doing) is to occupy the ecological niches of our brains

Art is not alone in imparting charm and mystery to the most insignificant things; pain is endowed with this same power to bring them into intimate relations with ourselves – Marcel Proust – The Fugitive p81

The multitude has refused the organic unity of the body, and hence cannot be a political party

Counterinsurgency is a full time job – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p54

Its to bad that the appropriate theory itself is the only means by which supporting data can be collected – no other empirically based objection is possible.

It is astonishing what a want of imagination jealousy, which spends its time making petty suppositions that are false, shows when it comes to discovering what is true – Marcel Proust – The Fugitive p20

She drove on unabashed
      Nash which she
      Proceeded to crash
She was somewhat lucky
      In not having paid cash

The two poles of distinctively modern sentiment are nostalgia and utopia – Susan Sontag – Where the Stress Falls, 2001 p271

It is considered progress when an economic system deals with inequality by eliminated equality, across time and space rahter then by eliminating the inequities themselves

The intellectual ‘par excellence’ used to be the writer: as a universal consciousness, a free subject, he was counterpoised to those intellectuals who were merely ‘component instances’ in the service of the State or Capital – Michel Foucault – Power/Knowledge, 1979 p127

Poetry describes
It doesn’t attempt
     To explain
That’s in the gap
Between the writer
     And the reader
Meaning is in the
     Middle of the
         Void
Irritating, scratching
     Annoying
It’s the tiger in
     The night
With its eyes glowing
      Glaring, gnawing
      Clamoring clawing

Writing is… a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To invent. To leap. To fly. To fall – Susan Sontag – Where the Stress Falls, 2001 p264

I have a fascination for bourgeois ladies though I don’t actually want one – I’m just fascinated by them – them and their big SUVs and their big houses and the latest fashion and all of their cosmetics and all the care and fuss they go through to before they venture out. And then they open their mouths and begin to talk. God, I want to scream.

Perfection’s / no accomplishment. / But desire is, to feel the self melt / before shear grace. And sense dissolve in time and space - Michael McClure – Star poems, 1970 p36

It would seem to be the limited plasticity of the brains neural networks and to be molded by repetitive patterns that allows for semi-stable cultural process to come into being and persist.

Power is not built up out of ‘wills’ (individual or collective), nor is it derivable from interests. Power is constructed and functions on the basis of particular powers, myriad issues, myriad effects of power – Michel Foucault – Power/Knowledge, 1979 p188

There is noting wrong with reading literature so long as we understand that we are reading literature – and it is always literature that one reads when one reads – but there are also other attributes to a text other than its being a piece of literature which we need to be mindful of although all those attributes may not be present in any one text – among such attributes are: context, validity, viewpoint, beauty, and clarity.

Empires collapse. Gang leaders / Are strutting about like statesmen – Bertolt Brecht

Freud must have offered something useful to a class society – which may have been of having put the onus on the individual for social problems

Before this, when it was still attached to her, we supposed that our happiness was dependent upon her person; it depended merely upon the cessation of our anxiety – Marcel Proust – The Fugitive p28