But I promise. I won’t talk anymore. Good, she said. And I kept my word. I didn’t. It was already nine o’clock. Sleeping in, it had been explained, was not just about being tired. It was the taking advantage of a proffered opportunity. I didn’t feel that way. It’s a waste, a waste of good daylight. The things one might have accomplished otherwise. And besides it made me tired and cranky. Some claimed that was the way I was already. I had always gotten up early, gotten up with the sun. There are those who are good talkers and there are those who are good listeners. There are night people and there are day people. While good talkers need good listeners, day-timers rarely come into contact with the night-timers. She said it was too early to focus on anything so complicated. She said, she didn’t want to talk. Just nod your head then, I said. No, she said, I want to go back to bed. But you are in bed, I said. Yes, is all that she muttered and rolled over. Then she said, you weren’t that good by the way. Well, I replied, it was late at night. She had talked a lot, I remembered. She had complimented me for being such a good listener. I quietly got dressed and gently nudged the door shut with a little click. The morning sun felt good.
I turned my head aside / to avoid her god damned tears, / getting in my beard. // dissoance – they ignore their own critique, they act against their own interest. I am busy tired mad lonely and old. / O this has been a long long night of wrest – John Berryman –Love & Fame, 1974 p61
All technological progress has entailed an energy intensification - how on earth then, can technology solve the problem of a need for more energy?
What have we become when we “understand” ourselves so well all our questions are rhetorical? What is a confession worth if what we want form it is not absolution but admiration for having confessed? – Zadie Smith – Changing My Mind, 2009 p271
The Queen and her family
Never experience spontaneity
Their every experience
Is a corporate theater
Management is the key
Like visitng colonial
Williamsburg
Disneyland is anarchy
In comparison to royality
The Queen and I have only
Getting old in common
And that we don't sleep
In
Social scientists have become the technicians of social control, providing the scientific legitimacy for social, education, military, and other areas of policy – Stanley Stanley Aronowitz – The Knowledge Factory, 2000 p5
Any item that is in a collection has been removed from its normal use – it no longer has any utility value. They does not mean that people won't pay lots of money for it, for just the opposite in the case.
THE WILL TO DIVEST: Action creates / a taste / for itself. / Meaning: once / you’ve swept / the shelves / of spoons and plates / you kept / for guests, / it gets harder not to also / simplify the larder, / not to dismiss / rooms, not to / divest yourself / of all the chairs / but one, not / to test what / singleness can bear, / once you begin – Kay Ryan – The Best of it, 2010 p164
Humans can hurl objects for long distances – this seems to be an attribute unique to them. Hurling things is the first step towords civilization.
Nothing gives me more pleasure than to discover some idea that knocks me on my rear-end – Stanley Aronowitz – The Knowledge Factory, 2000 p.ix
Only the elite are permitted to petition for systematic solutions – everyone else’s problems are unique to themselves and should be submitted to markets for resolution.
Freedom does not consist in ‘choice’ between two ‘givens’: it is the ‘negation’ of the given – A Kojeve
Sniffer dogs are more likely to signal false positives when their handlers believe drugs or explosives to be present
Students in the University of Excellence are not ‘like’ customers; they are customers – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996 p22
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