I Want To Be A Steinway

Addictive behavior makes time fly. Faster and faster it goes by. Change, change – keep changing all the time. It’s the inability to differentiate that makes the difference. Blast habits to smithereens. Divide time into smaller and smaller chunks. Smash all chronometers too.

I try to make a few changes. I try to change my coffee routine. But I like it here. And it’s so convient to come here. And I know people here – I don’t have to sit by myself. Well try staying out late. Don’t come home until the crows crow. Take a taxi home. Sleep until noon. But I’m a morning person. I get sleepy when the sun goes down. It’s so hard to sabotage a routine. It’s so hard to make a change. It’s easier to get someone do it for you instead. Get thrown out; told to never come back. You’re not welcome here any more. Don’t ever want to see your face again. Show up here again and I beat you to a pulp. Guess I’ll never go back there again.

One-track thinking takes its start [by] reducing everything to a univocity of concepts and specifications the precision of which not only corresponds to, but has the same essential origin as, the precision of technological process – Martin Heidegger – What is Called Thinking?, 1968  p25

Velocity and haste

            Do not exist

In  the place

            That the dead live

Remember

            Remember me

Or we shall cease

            To exist

The reminder of

            A shadow passed by

            In the gray mist

The moon went behind

            A cloud

And  the group on

            A bus stopped

            At this site

This place that no tourists

            Visit anymore

The tulips are too red in the first place they hurt me. / … Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds – Sylvia Plath – Collected Poems, 1981  p161

There are an estimated 240 billion e-mails sent out each day of which 90% are spam

A hundred unkind hearts have more power than one kind heart – Vasily Grossman – The Road, 2010  p237

The way

                        More traveled

            With gravel

Rather than through

                        The mud

            And over the fallen

                        Logs

A squirrel too fat

            Or too indolent

            To flee

The well were the school

            Mule, Kate was laden

            With a supply of fresh

                        Water

One trail up the gully

            To the edge of the bluff

It had just rained

            And clay clumped on

                        The shoes

            And made the going

                        Slippery

The other along the creek

            Flat and well trod

I took that one

What does it mean for a man with no humility to suffer his most humble day? – Amy Goodman – Truthdig, 7/20/11

Conservatives need fathers. They practice filiopiety. Liberals are patricidal. They are the self-made men.

“Me, I feel able to win all the way. All the way.” That is how we all feel, immortal, right up to the moment when we feel nothing any more. And life goes on after our little drop of water has flowed back into the ocean – Victor Serge – Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901-1941, 1963 p57

International companies have bought up 200 million hectares of land in emerging economics. The amount of land bought up is about equal to the size of the United Kingdom. Most of these purchases have been in the last three years. Only 27% of the land bought is intended for the production of food crops, mostly for export to developed economies; 40% of the land will be used to produce biofuels; another 27% will be used for mining, tourism, industry and forestry.

In the shrewdest of silences / go the cooks and the valets, and those who would cleanse with / their tongues / the millionaire’s wounds – Fedrico Garcia Lorca –Poet in New York, 1955 p23

Multitasking is possible, but at a cost. People can multitask but each task is performed by less brainpower and at a lower proficiency. Common sense does not monitor this. There is no meter to tell us when we are running low on brainpower.  “Brain Power running low – pay more attention to the road.” Just hearing someone else speaking a comprehendible tongue while a subject is driving lowers the amount of brain activity devoted to the driving task by 37%. The human is incapable of not processing the language of a speaker of his language. He is incapable of not devoting a portion of his brainpower to this task even if he is not consciously listening. Traditionally we have attributed driving inattention to answering the phone or trying to dial. Laws have been passed to encourage non-hand held devices. Most drivers are aware of the hazards of using a hand led phone – only 12% of drivers think that they can safely use and hand-held phone and drive, while 40% feel that they can talk on a hands-free phone and drive safely. But now we now that it is the device itself that is districting, or more exactly merely listening. Merely talking on a phone and driving increases the chance of an accident by four times. What about a conversation with another person in the car, isn’t that distracting? Yes, but they also act as an additional set of eyes and warn the driver of impending dangers – “hey, look out for that red car. It’s not stopping at the sign”. And if hearing (not even listening) distracts, what about talking. As to thinking, we already know that thinking and talking are rarely connected.

I want to be the Steinway, not the person playing the Steinway. I want to be the Steinway itself… He had the notion of being ‘between’ Bach and his Steinway as a mere musical middleman… My ideal would be, “I would be the Steinway, I wouldn’t be Glenn Gould,” he said, “I could by being the Steinway, make Glenn Gould totally  Superfluous     – Thomas Bernhard – The Loser, 1991  p82