Organizing Facts - Hoarding Cats

Here I am again. I am at the coffee shop again. It is morning again.“So Linda - do you have dreams with subplots.” “Ugh , no!” “It’s a lot like reading Shakespeare – very literary you know; you wake up confused and with a headache again. Do you dream in color or in black and white?” “Color", she replies. “Do animals talk, in your dreams like they do in mine?” That stops her short. “Occasionally”. “Any specific animals?” “What?” “Are there any specific animals or species of animals that talk and the others do not? Say like your little dog Bumpers?” “I can’t think of any that always do and others that never do." She is obviously getting perturbed by my apparently aimless rapid fire questions.  “I’m taking a survey,” I explain. That always puts people at ease. People like to have a structure. Yesterday Walter took a survey. He had asked, “paper or plastic?” I had immediately though of the grocery store. “Plastic”, I replied. Linda said, “paper”. Linda and I usually agree. I would have thought the opposite, Walter said.  I explained about the store metaphor. Walter said that he had been thinking of money when he asked. Bruce says to Linda, “I tried to pat your dog and it barked at me.” “It wasn’t my dog,” she replied. “Bumper might get up a whimper or a moan or two,” she said, “but a bark, never.” “So when did this happen?” “Just now, out side.” “Oh that’s not Bumper,” she said. “Then who’s dog was it?” he asked.

Most writers as well as readers of literary fiction see it as a refined form of entertainment or instruction – Pankaj Mishra – New York Times Book Review 1/2/11 p10

News loses its value in its telling, but it is its telling that is its only value. Consumption is the conversion of value into utility - the future made present. Having been told, news is no longer news. News is a promise for the sharing of a secret. Without titillation, news is not news; it is just the unknown - not even what we don't know for what we don't know, we know that we don't know.

Literary criticism… [is] devised to yield particular knowledge about a self-contained realm of elegant consumption – Pankaj Mishra – New York Times Book Review 1/2/11 p10

The Libyan no-fly zone cost the US $100 million to $300 million per week – that translates into $5 billion to $15 billion a year. The US purchases 200 Tomahawks each year at a cost of $2 million each. That comes to almost half a billion dollars a year. A seven month supply was fired off in one day into the North African desert and its not yet even the Fourth of July. The earth consumes munitions and grows bomblets. Hate is self-sustaining. Love needs nurturing.

According to the headlines, they [the cruise missiles] were fired by American and British warships. Indeed they were. The Americans fired 122. The British fired two. Stephen L Carter – The Daily Beast 3/22/11

It is not that we are surprised by the truth; it is that it gives us an increased confidence in what it is that we believe. Without any perception of the truth, we would be just zombies. Well in fact many of us are.

The authority a word may carry is [not] the result of its having been read, studied and finally judged convincing. The reverse is true: reading derives from a prior conviction – Vincent Descombes – Modern French Philosophy, 1980 p4

Ownership of stuff:

-       allows the owner to do or accomplish something (we need things to do things)

-       provides a sense of security (a nest)

-       an integral part of one’s sense of self

A tree lightly connected / to its blossoms. / For a tree it is a pleasant sensation / to be stripped / of what’s white and winsome – Kay Ryan – The Best of it, 2010  p51

“Who’s your favorite Founder?” Glen Beck asked of Sarah Palin. “Um,” she replied, “you know, all of them.”

Break the rhythm that excludes thinking – Zadie Smith – Changing My Mind, 2009 p266

The history that you can tell is an imaginary history. You can tell your story but not our story.

You get what you fooled: / all of Little Red Riding / from her shoes to her head – Kay Ryan – The Best of it, 2010 p71

For all time  and

In no time, no time

            At all

Did time

Got time

Spent time

Hard time

Served time

Time and again

Time before time

Time after time

The body of your youth stays with your youth – J Nozipo Mararire – Zenzela, 1996 p44

At least 100,000 birds a year die from chashing into windows in New York City. For every bird cut to pieces by a wind turbine, 1,000 are killed by domestic cats.

Crust was a kind of bridge but there was no river – Robert Kelly – Kali Yugen 1970

The most popular category of book likely to get stolen is a book on ethics

Philosophers have sought to interpret the world in various ways; the point is to change it – Karl Marx

91.9% of all Americans will never receive an inheritance (except perhaps for a few keepsakes). Only 0.6% of Americans would be subject to any estate taxes if they died.

The generations of men / sing & demand their sons. Work is to be done. / Girls to be stripped of clothes. Hell / of its inadvertencies. Words of their ease – Robert Kelly – Kali Yugen 1970

Collections of interconnected artifacts acquire properties not present in the objects themselves.  A network of technologies has needs. Words may be invented but it is their solution to a need that sustains them. Life is ripe with self-organizing processes. Life itself is a self-organizing process.

We are standing on the most frightening territory in all of history. Everything is explained to us and we understand nothing – Thomas Bernhard

Collecting is the field of study for economists; hoarding is a problem for a  psychologist. One is pathological and the other the norm. Collecting has a theme and a collector actively pursue a desired object. Nearly all children are collectors. Hoarding does not have a theme nor a desire for a specific object. There is pleasure in collecting. There is no pleasure in hoarding. For a hoarder, collecting is a spontaneous act. For a hoarder, organizing is a mental process rather than a physical process.