Relief

But habit is a double-edged tool which also presents a temptation and an opportunity for a degradation of active willing.  Its spontaneity is also an inertia: the weak or tired will sees in its easy, readily available pattern not just a tool for effective action but also a relief from responsibility, a substitute for such action.  Thus the ultimate significance of habit--as well as preformed skills and emotion--depends on the effort which determines whether the will uses them or yields to them.

ROAD KILL

I saw a man drive over a turtle today.  I was driving to a breakfast fast-food joint down the street from Shop-At-Home Television and a large turtle, probably larger than a television set, though not a flat screen television set, was walking directly in front of me, crossing the street.  Turtles are very slow creatures.  I stopped my car, literally stopped my car, and inched around him, making sure not to even get near him, as I have no data on how turtles might move if scared.  Maybe they scamper when scared; I don’t know; in any case I inched slowly around him, turning my steering wheel with the utmost caution, and I passed the turtle and almost congratulated myself on passing this turtle, really I felt like patting myself on the back.  I dodged a turtle.  A vegetarian and a pro-turtle person, I told myself, I can now finally call myself, officially and with all-caps-locked, Pro-Turtle, Pro-Wildlife, Anti-Suburban, Anti-Highway, Anti-Harm, Anti-Death, Pro-Life-In-Some-Generic-Pantheistic-Way.  I loved the fucking turtle.  I even watched it as I accelerated away from it, happy with myself and seeing it in my rear-view mirror---…--- dot, dot, dot, when, it must be said, I have no words for what comes next, though here it is: a rusted white sedan turned around the bend in the road behind me, and, having plenty of time to stop, plowed directly over the turtle, the turtle going straight under the centerline of the vehicle and emerging behind the car.  Though not unscathed.  As I said, this turtle was larger than a television set.  I couldn’t actually see what happened to the turtle but I did see what happened next.  I hit a red light.  The white sedan hit a red light.  Right next to me.  I looked over.  There was a passenger, a woman, with her hands covering her face and she was either screaming or laughing--I couldn’t tell, and being rather stunned, I only vaguely remember a few details.  I believe I should list these details as an exact description of my state of mind is impossible as I was in some type of shock, some type of stunned silence, terror really, some type of mental incapacitation, maybe a protective fog, its purpose being to protect me from the reality of the situation, and this fog clouded my memory and my thoughts from myself.  And so a list is really all I can offer, despite every effort to the contrary.

1.  The white sedan had rust surrounding each door.
2.  The woman was crying, or laughing, moving back and forth in the passenger seat with her hands covering her face.
3.  The man--the driver--was obese.
4.  The man had a large arm rested outside the window, and in his hand was a burning cigarette.
5.  The man slowly took a drag off this cigarette, nonchalantly, as if nothing had happened.
6.  There was no noise.
7.  I have no feelings of my own.

The light turned green.  He went straight and I turned into the gas station.  I was disgusted with everything, really nauseated, and furious.  The stunned silence turned to rage against everything: obesity, cigarette smoking, driving, suburbs, myself, my job, highways, roads, cement--everything except turtles and their right to walk across a street without being hit.  I was eating breakfast.  Eating breakfast was the whole goal of my driving down this suburban street, and I did eat breakfast, but naturally I couldn’t get the turtle out of my head.  The worst part --and here we arrive at the crux, the real sizzler, is that I had to pass that very same turtle on the way back.  And that turtle was dead.  Mutilated.  It’s legs had been ripped off; some piece of one of them was lying a few feet away in a bloodied mess.  The top of the shell was gone.  Replacing it was a reddish pulpy matter.  And I could see this reddish pulpy matter sticking up out of the top of this dead turtle’s shell.  Whatever organs are at the top of a shell--muscle, I don’t know, I don’t pretend to know but I doubt there are essential organs up at the top of a shell, but whatever this tissue was, was  protruding, the top of the shell having been ripped off by the undercarriage of the white sedan.  As I said I had to drive passed this mutilated corpse on my way back from breakfast, and my disgust only deepened as I had suspected incorrectly at first that the turtle may have been small enough to emerge unscathed.  Obviously I was wrong.  This corpse remained there until later in the day, when someone removed all trace of it.  Nothing left.  The road was empty almost immediately, I assumed.  The road kill removal team, I thought, must be quite efficient.

Randomized Trip to Target

Using a random number generator, I generated 5 numbers: 11 29 34 10 18. I then went to these aisles and documented the products on display. I also meandered around a bit too. And bought some things.

Also, YouTube processing sucks.  They make things look terrible.  Going to stop using it.

Anyway.

Lines 3 "Angry Lines"

Rules:
1.  Use a random number generator from 1 to 10.
2.  Draw generated number of lines (in this case 5), each line shorter than the next.  (This group of progressively shorter lines will henceforth be called a "batch.")
3.  After drawing the generated number of lines, draw a new batch.
4.  Repeat until finished.

Artist: Carrie

Video of my postcards

Quick video of some (not all) of my postcards.  There's a bunch more..whole stacks.  But who wants to go looking for them.

Lines 2

 

Rules:

1.  Use a random number generator from 1 to 10.
2.  Draw generated number of lines (in this case 4), each line shorter than the next.  (This group of progressively shorter lines will henceforth be called a "batch.")
3.  After drawing the generated number of lines, draw a new batch.
4.  Repeat until finished.

Artist was Maggie.

Lines 1

Rules:
1.  Use a random number generator from 1 to 10.
2.  Draw generated number of lines (in this case 5), each line shorter than the next.  (This group of progressively shorter lines will henceforth be called a "batch.")
3.  After drawing the generated number of lines, draw a new batch.
4.  Repeat until finished.

What a breakup looks like

Proclamation

Proclamation:

A new realism.

We don’t want the real.

We don’t want sociology.

We don’t want psychology.

We want exaggeration.

We must understand what we mean by exaggeration.

To exaggerate both means to separate oneself from what actually happened and yet provide the truth of what actually happened as it happened. It is, in fact, a double separation.

First, we must put into words what we wish to tell. The simple act of saying separates us from the actual events; writing itself distances us from the object we must write about. It specifies, directs, points out, brings to bear, forces a description. Writing can classify facts; writing can sanctify. Writing can create worlds, or reflect worlds. Writing is a tool used for many purposes - but we must be clear here. We have a specific purpose.

As Sartre says in Nausea, the big danger in keeping a diary is that you exaggerate everything. We force truth because we’re looking for something. To the narrator of Nausea, this is abominable. Nothing can be exaggerated. The exact nature of his experiences must be spelled out, classified, so as to render them concrete, real. He is not looking for something - though perhaps he actually is, and therein lies the contradiction.

But we have no time for contradictions, we only have time for ourselves and the others around us. We must exaggerate because we must force truth. We, indeed, are looking for something. We must force truth because we wish to create it. We are not looking for reflection. Chronicles do not interest us.

We want creation.

To accept this we must accept that creation involves error, caprice, destruction of facts in order to recapture new facts. We must note what it means to recapture something. Not by a classificatory action of acts, experiences, lists, and so on, but rather by an integration into an act of exaggeration.  Exaggeration is our recapturing.

Writing is the first step, as we have said. One which distances us from the subject while also bringing us closer by allowing us to stand back and see the subject as it actually is. Then, we must exaggerate. We must destabilize the living habits we abide by.  What previously seemed normal we must make ab-normal.  What is ab-normal we must insist upon.  Only in this way can we authentically build our lives.  We declare that we must separate ourselves from statistics, from definitions, from facts and normality in general - not because we deny them but because we desire something else, something more.

What we desire is search. Questioning. Building. Path-making. Infinite exaggeration, and infinite imagination.

To quote once more, and finally:

Everything here is the path of a responding that examines as it listens. Any path always risks going astray, leading astray. To follow such paths takes practice in going. Practice needs craft. Stay on the path, in genuine need, and learn the craft of thinking, unswerving, yet erring. (Heidegger)

Randomized Lohan Report

"Bailiffs handcuffed Lohan immediately after the hearing that lasted less than ten minutes at the Beverly Hills courthouse."

"10 17 6 14 16 4 1 12 3 8 5 15 18 2 11 9 13 7" is random sequence used to translate this sentence.  Each word was assigned a number, randomly assigned into a new order according to the sequence, then rearranged into the following sentence.

"less hills the at Beverly immediately Bailiffs ten Lohan that after the courthouse. handcuffed than lasted minutes hearing"

Randomized Robert Frost

The long the chance chance head with its human head remotest head race head not chance race with I'm its I'm pace going much the is unnoticed of that much longer keeping.

A Different Version

This is not a parable.
And there was a second
When I thought a thought
Going somewhere quite new.
I must have been joking:
I knew it an impasse
Though the thought I followed
Was a thought so very new-
But my train was derailed
Its engine giving up
And crashing to a halt.

Breezes

A simple breeze is orange.
Not the way it feels.
Think.