The Pea Soup of Metaphysical Expression

By the Numbers - 64%  of the 99% are under the age of 35. 27% of them are students. 53% claim to have previously participated in a political movement. 98% say that they would support civil disobedience but less 1/3^rd would support violence. 56% voted in 2008 and 74% of them voted for Obama but only 51% say that they now disapprove of him.

If you will believe only that which you know to be true you will trouble yourself very little with belief – William H Gass – A Temple of Texts, 2006  p30

This is a miserable gray day. It’s time to get out the long johns.

The life expectancy of a US farmworker is 49 years

All useful knowledge is perhaps subversive, innocently and ignorantly at first – Guy Davenport – The Hunter Graacchus, 1996 p27

A government worker cost half as much as it would cost to outsource that worker’s job. Take a general attorney for example who costs the government $175,000 a year in salary and benefits, but to contract those same services would cost $555,000 a year – an accountant $124,000 vs $283,000 – a food inspector $58,000 vs $75,000. The assumption has always been that contracting saves money buy no one ever bothered to do the math.

There is no great difference between the memory of a dream and the memory of a reality – Marcrl Proust – Remembrance of Things Past: Time Regained p240

Get right with God

Or get left

With the devil

            Go to hell

So black and white

            The penguins march

The big ones and the small ones

            Waddle across the ice

Learn to play the lyre

            Or get stuck with

            Listening to ukalaes

The two chief causes of error in one’s relation with another person are, having a kind heart, or else being in love with that other person –  Marcel Proust –Remembrance of Things Past: Tine Regained p116

A mere 147 companies control 40% of the monetary value of all transnational corporations

One does not make a mirror to resemble a person, one brings a person to the mirror – Jack Spicer – The Collected Books, 1996 p55

Pulled pork – Sandwich – Hash for breakfast – Fall – It’s getting colder – Comfort food – Stay in bed – The smell of mothballs – Rake the lawn – Carve up the pumpkin – Fingers get numb.

In their knowledge, lay their civilization. Others had lost much of their knowledge. The knowledge that we now have is not the knowledge that makes a civilization but the knowledge we need to make money

There is no religious denomination in which the rights of metaphysical expression has been responsible for as much sin as it has in mathematics – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Walter announced - I’ve invented a new comic strip that does not require any drawing. It’s called “Pea Soup”, he says. It occurs in a fog and stars Fred, Linda Rae and Little Willie. This is not going to be about anyone that we actually know is it, I ask. On no, Walter assures us that it will not be. If there is any resemblance it will be purely coincidental, he said. I’ve drawn my first strip, he says. Linda Rae (I mean Linda) asks him to describe it to us. Little Wille (I mean Waler) proceeds: “Little Willie says (but you don’t know it’s Little Willie who is doing the talking yet)”, and I wrote it all down just as he described it –

First panel -      1 - The weather report says this fog might lift

                         2 - In your dreams Little Willie

Second Panel    1 - Linda Rae?

                        3 - In your dreams Little Willie

Last Panel -      1 - Hi Fred

I’m going home and write the next strip, he says. But before he leaves, he says that we need someone to write these down so that it does not get forgotten (when Walter says he drew them, he had really meant only that he had seen them in his minds eye). We (Linda Rae and I) tell him that it was a classic and like a tune that gets stuck in tour head, it was unforgettable. Good says Walter and leaves, but not before he leaves his show and tell with Linda: a sprig of ordinary rosemary (it grows up, he says) and Tuscan Rosemary (it grows down, he adds). Now which one is this, he asks Linda as he holds one downwards? Tuscan, Linda responds. Lesson plan accomplished, Walter announced and then he really does leave. Alas, Linda says, the torment is over. Not quite, I say and read to her what I have written. You guys don’t faze me, she replies. I have customers who are experts at the fine art of torture. I take that as a challenge, I tell her. I’ll take my rosemary and leave, she replies. I am all-alone here now with only my field notes.

Our imaginations

            Are intertwined

Linked by geography

            And chronology

It's all in the newspaper and

It is on  the TV and the pieces

            That capture our lives

Have noting to do with us

Nothing uniquely me in any
             Of these
Except in the commotion
            of our  Imaginations

The private and invoicable act of reading [is] our culture’s way of developing the individual – Guy Davenport – The Hunter Graacchus, 1996 p30

Work is the tedious process of playing the rear end of a cow.

Our memory of dreams may become lasting, if they repeat themselves often enough – Marcel Proust – The Fugitive p125

In America reality is now a political choice – yes this is a democracy.

This may be the most valuable act we can perform: to make peace with the only reality fate has given us – Guy Davenport – The Hunter Graacchus, 1996 p179