What History is Made of

It rained all night, but it has stopped for now. There is still a lite mist in the air. The wind was still gusting as I got up. I took Traildog for his morning walk. I took the trash  to the dumpster. Sometimes I forget. I but the trash in back of the truck. I forget to stop at the dumpster. Bites of paper swirl. I can see them in my rear-view mirror. A grocery bag blows onto the highway. Paper of plastic? Plastic I say because I can later reuse it to clean up after the dog. Oopps, I forget to put the trash in the  dumpster again. I fear that I might get a ticket for littering, but I can't hurry. The faster I drive the more trash blows out the back.

TV-watching is different from genuine peeping-Tomism because the people we’re watching through TV’s framed glass screen are not really ingnorant of the fact that someone is watching them…. We are not voyeurs here at all, we’re just viewers – David Foster Wallace – A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, 1997 p23

I arrived at the coffee shop. I talked with my  buddy who wears sandals even in winter. Two ladies wanted to know if I was a writer. If you mean by that, have I published a book?, then no.

So he’s become a leader, over time, by being among the first to follow in time’s train – Robert Musil – The Man without Qualities,  1996 p740

Beat Poets, not  beat poets – a sign at Occupy  Berkeley read.  Tents were floating under helium  filled balloons tethered to kite strings – if you can’t occupy the earth, occupy the sky – truncheons in the belly, pepper spray in the eyes – Occupy!

Formidable bastions like those of scholastics had reacted to protect themselves may appear to fall suddenly… but many small enemies have been at work mining the walls for a longtime, not just one large army at the gates armed with shouts, showy uniforms and flags – William H Gass – A Temple of Texts, 2006 p81

Follow the fork

            In the road

To its ultimate

            End – Be bold

Be daring, have it

            All

[He] wants your vote but won’t whore himself to get it, and wants you to vote for him ‘because’ he won’t whore – David Foster Wallace – Consider the Lobster, 2004  p160

There were no nudist at Baker Beach today. Only two baskers were hanging out there. Michael says that at “Sit and Spin” they were now having an underwear day every Sunday morning. All went well the first time they tried it, he said. But there were several that did their laundry in the nude. He was disappointed, he reported, that they were not hunks. Isn’t that the way is always is, I replied. 

Fiction writers as a species tend to be oglers. They tend to lurk and to stare. They are born watchers. They are viewers. They are the ones on the subway about whose nonchalant stare there is something creepy, somehow almost predatory – David Foster Wallace – A supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, 1997  p21

The  difference between a day-dream and  a fantasy is that the realization of a day-dream is perfectly possible. I dreamed of nubile young oiled bodies in the sun. There was just a couple of old men fishing.

That unvisited limbo to which we relegate the deed we would rather not have done but have no notion of undoing – Edith Wharton – The Touchstone p31

The Victorians call it a “below-job”. We corrupted “below” into “blow” transforming come into go; suck into its opposit.

One felt that if she had been prettier she would have had emotions instead of ideas – Edith Wharton – The Touchstone p10

25% of Icelanders think that elves probably do exist

Once someone owns real estate in your gut, why you sold it to them is unimportant. The point is you sold it – Peter Feibleman

It was warm enough to have brought Traildog, but I didn’t. I have gotten lazy. I am getting used to sitting inside. But I feel guilty about it, poor Traildog all alone at home. He is probably peeing right this minute on the carpet in retaliation for my neglect. I could have brought him. I could have let him snift up and down Main Street. I could have let him get patted on his head by all the ladies. “Oh, he is just the cutest thing.”

How bewildered is any womb-born creature that has to fly – Rainer Maria Rilka – Ahead of All Parting: the Selected Poetry and Prose of, 1995p379

First President born after the Revolutionary War – Martin Van Buren
               (1782) – “I fell that I belong to a later age”

First President born after the Civil War – Warren G Harding (1865)

First President born after World War II – William Jefferson Clinton (1946)

It is hard to think away out of our heads a history which has long lain in a remote past but which once lay in the future – F W Maitland – Memoranda de Pariamento, 1893

History is marked by the passing of cohorts – the founding fathers, civil war vetrans. There comes a time when men only posses cultural memories of those momentous events.

All the world over, the picturesque yield to the pocketesque. The mortgagor cared not, but the mortgagee did – Herman Melville – I and my Chimney