ABANDONMENT

Abandonment is a leaving-behind, a moving-away, and a personal choice when performed by an agent (contrast this with the concept of forgetting).  I abandon my car that keeps breaking down and walk to the nearest gas station for help.  It sucks to have absolutely no support system in place for doing something, and in fact precisely when we're trying to do something about our situation is when we're abandoned, as this doing something is a prerequisite for abandonment in the first place (I'm being purposefully vague, here, but think it through) .  We leave behind those who can't keep up just as they are finally asking for and counting on help.  Abandonment always occurs at this very second.  We empathize but leave them behind.  We look back but this is only a half-measure and never counts as an actual going-back.  The little bundle of metaphors of moving-away, leaving-behind, letting-alone, looking-back, not-looking-back, even running-away, dropping-a-load, giving up on something, are all very apt at letting us get into the meaning of abandonment.  There's also the notion of isolation, which we should mention: the abandoned is purposely isolated or left-behind.  I think this as I nap nervously.

End of Crohn's Log

I decided it wasn't important enough to post about anymore, or that I shouldn't be thinking about it as important enough to post about anymore. So I'm not going to post anymore about it. I'll just live it.

NORTH KOREAN CENTRIFUGES

According to sources familiar with the matter, “an unnamed American academic who has now been named publicly, because he spoke out–a Mr. Hecker—has visited a North Korean nuclear site and found 'a surprising number of modern uranium enrichment centrifuges. What I expected was not what I found; likewise what I found was not what I expected. I was pretty sure what to expect.'” When contacted by the BBC, Mr. Hecker could not be reached for comment. Messages were left at both his residence and his office, and likewise two letters were not responded to, despite their being sent Royal Mail “Signature Required” AirSure™ with 2.85GBP added for Assured Delivery Confirmation™.  According to sources familiar with the Royal Mail AirSure™ and Assured Delivery Confirmation Service ™, this is surprising, as the Royal Mail service handles these requests all the time and is actually quite proficient in the handling of all types of envelopes and boxes, large and small. According to sources familiar with the matter, any size box can really be sent anywhere in the world with a delivery confirmation. The BBC did indeed obtain such delivery confirmation, but at this time has still not received a response from Mr. Hecker as of the publishing date of this article. Most probably, according to sources familiar with the matter, he did not use Royal Mail AirSure ™ to write back to us, and as a result the BBC has still not received his response. “These centrifuges looked modern,” stated Mr. Hecker in his statement. “They were shiny. I believe they were trying to send a message. A message to me personally, of course, but also to the West in general. I believe that their message was that they have modern uranium enrichment equipment. When I asked if they were trying to send a message to the West that they had modern uranium enrichment equipment, they said the West can think whatever it wants about their modern uranium enrichment equipment. But I don't believe them. I think there was a message in there somewhere.” According to sources familiar with the matter, the most likely message was that they wanted food to feed their starving people and fuel to fuel their working power plants and machines, as their centrifuges, while surprisingly shiny, have still not added up to a full-fledged working nuclear powered electric plant. President Obama released a statement himself, stating in that statement that “he will not give oil to prevent a nuclear bomb from being made unless North Korea first commits to not building a nuclear bomb. Neither will I give food, such as wheat or rice.” According to sources familiar with the matter, this has been America's policy for the last twenty years. It is unclear whether North Korea knows about this policy or not, according to sources familiar with the matter. As of this date it is not possible to send a letter requesting further details to North Korea using Royal Mail “Signature Required” AirSure™ with 2.85GBP added for Assured Delivery Confirmation™, and so we could not obtain confirmation from the North Koreans about anything.

Random Photography

1.  Set digital camera settings to automatic--as automatic as possible.  Set timer to take picture automatically.
2.  Throw camera in air two seconds before timer goes off, letting camera take a picture of whatever it wants.
3.  Catch it before it breaks on the ground (barely a success).

EMBARRASSMENT

Discomfort is our friend, we were thinking. I was talking this over with my friend Gabe the other day. We need discomfort in order to be happy. In order to be happy we always need to feel pressure, otherwise we stagnate and die almost immediately. Without projects, without goals (broadly conceived), I stated, we die an almost instant death. And projects and goals (broadly conceived) make us squirm and actually hurt, they cause us suffering. But not all goals and projects (broadly conceived) count as real goals and projects, I hastened to add. Most just fill time, which is itself a worthy goal but not an honorable one, I added. Honor is important to how we spend our time, I told him while drinking coffee in my apartment. We have to have honor and believe in what we're doing, a certain pride that surrounds the edges of our actions and duties, a certain righteousness without which we're dead, really quite dead. We'd be nothing, I stated, in fact usually we're nothing and only sometimes we're something. All these concepts, I said, are interconnected. He agreed, but responded that our projects and goals vary so much in size and content that there's no way to have a standard set—I interrupted him here, perhaps a it's a defect of mine that I interrupt and finish sentences. Of course there's a standard set, I said, you have to do what's honorable and this is always changing, we're speaking pure generalities, I said, about individual goals and projects, but they always have to have a standard set. Of what, he asked. A standard set of what, he asked. I replied a standard set of methods, of ways of doing things, whether we're doing dishes and doing laundry or writing a novel, everything is the same; the how (I emphasized the word) is the most important part, there's always a way of doing everything, everything needs to be done in a certain way and only in a certain way, though technically there are an infinite number ways of doing everything. But really there's only one way. I said all this while drinking too much coffee and repeatedly getting up to change the record, which was an old, relatively bad Talking Heads album. This certain way is the only way to guarantee that something is done in a real way and not an unreal way, I said while mostly focusing my attention on the music. He responded that he didn't agree, that I was exaggerating and that he didn't understand a word I was saying. I responded that I was an automaton, a clockwork person, and any action I take has to be a certain way otherwise it's just automatic. He shook his head in disbelief, and then, of course, I started to question myself, I think, I started to think I had really said too much too quickly. I immediately felt embarrassed, which was a mixture of both feeling like I said too much to someone I didn't know and also like I said too much to someone I did know, both of which are embarrassing and aren't tolerable. To say too much to someone you know is too change everything, I thought to myself; to say too much to someone you don't know is to disregard the relationship, to forget it and destroy it quickly. It's a mixture of these two feelings that I experienced, which is basically what embarrassment is, a not-going-far-enough mixed together with a going-too-far at the same time. Embarrassment is a not-going-far-enough and a going-too-far at the same time. But then, I thought, maybe sharing too much is good. I asked Gabe if sharing too much is a good thing and he just gazed at me with his coffee steaming up in front of his face, both hands clutching the mug. Obviously I said nothing, and then I thought I'd really done it. Everything was shot. His eyes glazed over and I asked him about the Talking Heads album, I realized it was late and I had to work, and nothing more came of the conversation except more discomfort and trouble falling asleep.

Scenes from the Future: Komar and Melamid

Western Modernism and Russian Stalinism were projects that demanded a denial of the past, a constant movement towards an ideal future. But the past cannot be denied. Like the repressed it always returns…


It is against this somber background Komar and Melamid’s penchant for parody and irony should be seen. It is a device, a way of combating the sense of tragedy. They quote Kierkegaard: “In irony, the subject is negatively free, free from the shackles which in reality restrain him so firmly.” Irony provides a provisional release from tragedy. At the same time it eats away at rhetoric, hypocrisy, and idealization. It corrodes myths, old and new. In his brilliant and path-breaking essay from the late fifties, “On Socialist Realism,” Sinyavsky wrote that “irony is the laughter of the superfluous man who derides himself and everything sacred in the world. Irony is the faithful companion of unbelief and doubt: it vanishes as soon as there appears a faith that does not tolerate sacrilege”—whether, it might be added, that faith is in Stalinism, Old Russia, or free market Westernization. Irony may provide only a “negative freedom,” yet this peculiarly “accursed” Russian irony, this “disorder of the soul,”…is still the only passage out from an epoch of half-measures and half-truths, from a present mortgage to an imaginary future and a future dragged back by the weight of the past. There are no new miracles or new truths to be spun out of new dreams and new delusions. It is better to start the future over with the wormwood and the rust.

by Peter Wollen
 



Isn't it nice that irony finally gets the respect it deserves?  Am I being ironic?  What's cool is that even though this essay is talking about some Russian artists who came to America and how they functioned here, and it specifically mentions how they are dealing with Russia's past, it really works the same way with us here...I'll repeat what I already quoted to make the point:

Irony may provide only a “negative freedom,” yet this peculiarly “accursed” Russian irony, this “disorder of the soul,”…is still the only passage out from an epoch of half-measures and half-truths, from a present mortgage to an imaginary future and a future dragged back by the weight of the past. There are no new miracles or new truths to be spun out of new dreams and new delusions. It is better to start the future over with the wormwood and the rust.

What better description of our present could there be?  Seems particularly timely.

Crohn's Log 7 - Beer

Yeah, guilty. 3 beers.

Update, the next day: the parcel was a Tangerine Dream 2 LP concept album "Zeit." The second side skipped for fifteen minutes before I realized anything was wrong. That's how awesome this album is. (That's a joke, but it IS amazing in its own way.)

VANGELIS / AND THEN THE BALLET

VANGELIS

I'm here talking to Christian, a friend of a friend, and he's saying something about space. He's comparing special and general relativity. I listen silently with one hand clutching my beer. I'm drinking much faster than he is in a dirty shit-hole bar. My eyes wander to a cute girl. Anyway he's comparing the various thought experiments that Einstein did with those of a more pre-Einsteinian flavor, it wasn't Newton but someone else if I remember, but my brain is wrecked right now and the phrase, or rather just jumbled grouping of semi-technical and moderately redundant words, “relativistic Minkowski spacetime” should never, ever be remembered, I deliberately think to myself, and my god the words are bringing something back to me that I don't want to remember, won't. So I drink and speak, nodding my head. He's speaking and he wants to speak, and my actual friends are away smoking cigarettes, and I asked the questions. You can't ask questions and not get responses: it doesn't work that way. So I nod, my god. I hear something about a doctorate in physics and lots of other things and I don't care, really don't care in the slightest, so I'm pouncing at the opportunity to leave. But there's no exit. For all the pennies, dollars, bills, everything in the world—My God!—a Vangelis song comes on the jukebox and I almost jump up, just catching myself, and I'm saved! Vangelis. I have no idea what song this is but the syncopated 1970's junk is delightful, truly a blessing, something I've wanted forever. I listen to this at home, I think. The electronica is beautiful, I think, while Christian is talking now about the twin paradox, which I will have nothing to do with; all I really—and now I'm being directly honest as opposed to every other time when I say I'm being directly honest but I'm really dodging-- Already before meeting someone we're almost always lying to their faces, directly to their eyes and brains; likewise they're lying to us in exactly the same way. But right now I'm being direct and honest. All I want is... All I want is to be at home listening to Vangelis. This is as close as I can get to direct honesty. And my god, the beauty of it. The arpeggios are so absurd and over the top I can't even describe them, and the song titles are—I think the song on the jukebox is called “CONCEPT SPECIES MAN 4” or something similar. I really have no idea but Christian is gone, passed away, dead, deceased. No longer in passing and not mourned. He's still talking, of course, but Vangelis saved me.

AND THEN THE BALLET

In all actuality the whole game of smalltalk is fun. And I think I'm skilled at it. But this is dependent on so many things, most importantly the person I'm speaking at. I can usually find common ground quite easily and fake my way through a conversation. It happens all the time. At work, to bring in a directly applicable example, depending on our jobs, we all fake our way through multiple conversations everyday without the slightest trouble. Really we're all ballet dancers dancing in a minefield. We wonder what's ok to say; what's not ok to say we hold back, and when we need to ask for something from a superior we hold back again, hesitate, meditate, and half-think our way through the request. I say “half-think our way through the request” because nobody fully thinks through these things; this wondering of what's acceptable is always on the fringe of our awareness. Our comfort zones are somewhere else. But this isn't to say that the nuances of work conversations are dishonest or somehow degenerate just because they're only half thought. On the contrary, they might be our most honest and authentic conversations, I think. We're always slightly on our toes and by being on our toes we're forced to become honest with ourselves: we become aware of our motives and our desires for the conversation and this awareness forces upon us our real goals, desires, and acts. When I ask for a favor from a boss I have to phrase it in such a way that I can get the favor, but naturally we're all half-naturals at doing this and so, again naturally, we can't think completely consciously about how to say it. We half-know what to say. This half-knowing keeps us honest in our conversations by making us aware of our real intentions and our own real positions. But then I have a natural aversion to these nuances, I think; I have a habit of tripping up these ballets and actually speaking without even half-thinking. I think I do this deliberately. And so perhaps I'm either totally honest or totally dishonest in these situations, I'm not sure either label works. This is an open question, I think, whether I would call myself “honest” or “dishonest” during these conversations. Whereas I could consider myself honest because I don't half-think my way through these conversations and say only what I really mean, precisely that's what would make me dishonest because honesty in such a situation involves such a half-thinking-through, an actual person-to-person conversation within the game of work, and that's precisely what's lacking. And that's lacking because I don't half-think-through my conversations, I think again. So I can't be considered honest. I'm too naturally averse to these nuances. I refuse to play the game; something inside of me is laughing when it shouldn't be, I think as Vangelis ends. I've been thinking at this shit-hole bar about this, talking about this, and nobody understands what I'm saying and I'm not even drunk. Everybody understood everything until the switch from me being honest to being dishonest. I'm too honest and therefore I'm completely dishonest, I say as I pound my beer. To be honest at work involves at least an awareness of the ballet dance between coworkers—even a minimal, half-thinking awareness. In fact such a half-thinking might be preferable to a full-thinking, I think, because a full-thinking would be a pure awkwardness and a losing of all honesty (because a full-thinking would make us lose the ability to be honest or dishonest by making us question what our real intentions and acts actually are, therefore making them questionable and no longer justifiable). A full-thinking is like quitting the game when we need to keep playing—and then I think that I'm giving this whole line of thought quite the full-thinking it shouldn't be getting. But non-thinking, which is what I do by nature or through choice in these specific work situations, is likewise just as bad as full-thinking, because I might as well be an automaton who can't play the game. And that's my problem. The dance is important, I tell myself, sipping my beer.  I almost convince myself I need to change. The dance is real and makes both ourselves and the other real, I think, within the given situation. But somehow I don't want to dance. I'd rather play the wallflower. I think I'd rather sit this one out. I think this is a problem.

Crohn's Log 6 - Remicade

and by my goals (at the end), I mean,

1. stop drinking because it is bad for Remicade treatment (somewhat).
2. look for a part time job to save money (I didn't mean quit my job now - need full time job for benefits.  I like my job.)
3. keep making small good choices, like food-wise and such, that will benefit my recovery.

Also: Steve Zissou lookalike?

INSECURITY

Every loss of confidence is ultimately a step towards death. A step towards indecision. A step towards incapacitating, bedridden reflection. I think this as I stare at my newest painting, The Dot, which is a painting of a small black dot in the center of a rectangular piece of blue paper. I framed it and hung it on my wall and now I'm standing in front of it, staring at it, trying desperately to remember the instructions that go with the painting. There are instructions for looking at this painting but they are only written somewhere else, somewhere I can't find right now, so I'm half-making them up even though they were very specific, specifically designed to bring to light something cold and dark, something that we never think about. Something that is deep within us. A secret. It actually works. (I think.) But I can't find the damn instructions so I'm just staring at this damn dot. I've lost all confidence in this work and all my work as I stare at this dot, I think, I have no confidence in anything anymore. Not only have I lost all confidence but now I'm even telling myself that I've lost all confidence, and this can't be a good sign. It's one thing to just lose all your confidence; it's another to tell yourself that you're nothing, that you're finished, done, dead. In the first case at least you still have your pathetic self; in the second case you've lost even your pathetic self and created this commentator second-self, and this second self is standing there behind your first self laughing at the first's own inability and insecurity. But really you're performing both parts like a bad stage play. I think this while staring at the dot. I start to wonder what people think about while looking at paintings. Do they interpret them? Where are my instructions for this damn dot, I think to myself, these damn instructions need to be posted with the painting—I really don't understand why I didn't post them right up here next to the painting. I've lost my confidence, and while I was going to try to get some work done today now I realize that it's impossible, that I've lost all my confidence and that I'm slipping towards death, towards total incapacitation, which is really the same thing as death. The Dot, in fact, is precisely about this, I think, clicking my tongue and letting my eyes wander from the dot (but then quickly forcing them back to the dot in the center of the blue rectangle). The Dot was supposed to be about deciding to stare at the dot, telling yourself to stare at the dot, and thereby becoming aware that you are telling yourself to stare at the dot. I believe that this was what it was about. I've decided to stare at the dot. Now, who is staring at the dot? I am. There's the blue rectangle and there's the black dot in the middle. I'm staring at the dot. But now that I'm staring at the dot and now that I'm aware that I'm staring at the dot, who is giving the command to stare at the dot? I'm staring at the dot but somehow this second-self still seems to be there, commanding me to stare at the dot, but really I'm this second-self too, commanding myself to stare at the dot. The second self isn't laughing anymore. My eyes are darting and I'm being distracted but something is being dredged up from inside me. The dot is misshapen, I think, I didn't draw it very well with my sharpie, I think—but instantly I stop this line of thinking as I can't let myself be distracted by the aesthetic aspects of the work. The work is more important for it's phenomenological import. So I'm staring at this dot, and I've split myself into at least two people: he who commands and he who obeys. Yes! This is The Dot, I think. This is what I was supposed to realize, I think. My second-self is really myself, as is my first self, but this duality is deeply rooted and my two selves are inseparable. Any loss of confidence, I now think, would have to take into account this indivisible duality. Or at least think it through, and I will think it through, right now. Insecurity, indecision, and even bedridden reflection need to be reminded of my ability to act through my meditation on The Dot. Even if The Dot is not a major action (it is in fact a simple action), and even if it's an arbitrary action, we can see that The Dot can remind us of our ability to do in the face of insecurity, incapacitation, and bedridden reflection. I stare because I believe in my ability to do at all (because of my indivisible duality, which commands and obeys—but this command/obey relationship is really only metaphoric, we have to remind ourselves), I think, and my act proves my ability. The Dot is a savior. I must remind my loss of confidence that I can still act, that even though I feel my loss of confidence deeply, that I can still act, that even though I've basically become metaphorically bedridden (temporarily) due to my inflamed bowel, that I can still act. I think all this while staring at The Dot. I wonder where those instructions went. They must be somewhere. But then I wonder if I need them at all, or if I just needed to be reminded to listen to The Dot. What do people think when they look at paintings, I think again. Would anyone else have acted upon this painting in this way without a signpost pointing him or her in the right direction? Those instructions must be somewhere. I'll have to find them. I need to find them because I need to be reminded to actually listen, to be receptive. And I will find them. And I'll share them without anyone who needs to be reminded.

SEEKING

Seeking is harder than finding. I tell myself everyday that I need to clean parts of my apartment. Parts of my apartment are really quite clean all the time, but other parts are dirty and maybe even necessarily dirty. My bathroom is dirty but I always avoid cleaning it. My closet is full of stuff, “stuff” being the apt description of what's in my closet, really the only word that describes what's actually in there. A lot of clothes, games, sheets, books, Christmas lights, boxes of Christmas lights everywhere, Jesus Christ Christmas lights everywhere, practically filling up the place, if only I plugged in an outlet and turned them on they would glow brightly and burn through their boxes, I'm sure. And of course then start a blaze that would hollow out not only my apartment but the whole building, leaving nothing but scar tissue—really just a burned-out brick foundation in which people used to live, love, crafty, die, probably not give birth but maybe get pregnant. This scar tissue would remain for a winter or a year or however long it takes demolition crews to demolish a burned out brick building, possibly forever, but actually not long, as the land is worth quite a bit of money and I'm sure there are developers who would love to buy the property and put it back together. A profit motive. I imagine it would succeed, I think to myself as I search for my glasses, being completely unsuccessful in finding them. The capability is there: there's plenty of machinery and tools and manpower and money; like ants on an anthill they would swarm through the burned out building and, using shovels or perhaps diesel powered machines, plow away everything burned down by my mistake of turning on my Christmas lights in their boxes, I think, even as I look everywhere for my glasses. Where are they? My glasses not not anywhere on the floor, I think, I've looked everywhere, even under the bed. The proper method is to start from the ground up and then look everywhere, knowing that at some physical level one will always find one's desired object. So I've started at the ground and completed that portion of my search to no success, and then without even moving on to the second level, which is just above ground level—somewhere around a foot up, but possibly somewhat lower or higher (this method allows for deviance)--I've given up and now I just think about burned out scar tissue. Thankfully the blind don't need eyesight to think, I think as I sit down in my chair, half-tired and half-mad, impatient and inept in my search. I'm not blind but I can't see right, something's wrong: I'm either nearsighted or farsighted, I believe near-sighted, though at the moment in my impatience I'm only half-thinking this thought, so I can't really be sure whether I'm really nearsighted or farsighted because I can't form the thought, really I'm only thinking about the scar tissue that would result if I turned on my Christmas lights. Thinking about it so much, in fact, that I actually get up and stand in front of the boxes and pretend to turn the lights on, snapping my fingers and pretending to start the fire. I imagine leaving the building. I have no desire to burn my building down but I imagine the possibility of it happening. Fires are terrifying , or at least I imagine they are terrifying. I imagine this as I sit in my large red chair, one leg resting on an arm rest and both my arms grabbing this leg together, and then in one motion I actually pull myself up and over so that I am actually standing in front of the chair looking at it. And then I sit back down again, only this time in a normal position. Scar tissue amazes me for a second, and instantly I start to think again about the burned-out building—but these thoughts quickly turn to the scar tissue in my gut due to my inflamed bowel. Basically somebody turned the Christmas lights on inside me, I think, as if my colon were an apartment in a multi-apartment complex in which someone like myself lived and had no motivation to clean his little corner of the building. Or even to clean a little corner of a corner. So one day he turned on his Christmas lights and cooked the whole place, only this time there was no developer and no profit motive for rebuilding the property, even the healthcare system gave up rather quickly as he couldn't afford to pay and in fact even refused to pay. And so the scar tissue stood longer than expected, a year, a lifetime. A lifetime of scar tissue, I think, due to someone inside my gut turning on his Christmas lights hidden away within a cardboard box. But would this even start a fire, I question, and I'm tempted to turn everything on, light everything up, illuminate the darkness of these boxes and see if I even notice anything, let alone a fire that rips through the entirety of the building. But rather than do this I simply sit and think about various methods for finding my glasses, which are still missing. I simply sit. And think. And I don't know where they could be. I've gone over every inch of the floor, I think, and of course I've gone over every other obvious place. Seeking is harder than finding, I think. And not only for the pleasure of the find, because everyone loves to find something. Seeking is harder for more insidious reasons even if I can't explain it. Seeking is a crossing, but also a separation. Separation is hard if we have a desired object and we are separated from it, but seeking is a crossing towards this object, always hard in itself but harder still if this object is impossible to find and no method of search completes our crossing. In fact, because of the nature of my own search (I can't see without my glasses—quite the cliché), I can't even begin a cursory search of my apartment, even the clean parts. For all I know my glasses are lost in one of the parts of the apartment in which I cannot clean, cannot even imagine myself going into and cleaning. My god the thought is loathsome. And so again I sit in the red chair and think, arms grasping at my leg. And so method comes in here: we seek a method by which to understand how to even begin seeking, and my method is as good as any other method for seeking, I should think. Seeking is a trembling before the infinite, I think, but then I wonder what I mean by that and of course I'm overstepping my thoughts, so I get up from the red chair and go looking for my glasses. The scar tissue inside my body due to my inflamed bowel doesn't hurt, but it can hurt. Somebody turned the Christmas lights on and burnt the place down, I think, and now I have a dilapidated piece of real estate inside my bowel. One wonders about the future; one always anticipates the future. The possibility of developing this piece of land is grim. I think acceptance comes into play here but again, acceptance is impossible, it's infinite due to something more insidious than we've previously suspected. Seeking is harder than finding. Seeking is a trembling before the infinite and now I think I've made some sense of this senseless thought—I really quite like that red chair, I think. Everything is encrypted in images and metaphors and deciphering is only a waste of time. Encryption can protect us from people by helping us remain undecipherable. But really we're an open book (really we're documenting everything, it's plain to see). Really everything's there in front of us, presented to us, but most of the time we're too lazy to connect the pieces and really read what's written. Everyone who writes makes monstrous errors—and we must always remember when reading that, of course, and obviously, seeking is harder than finding.

How to Decorate an Apartment

You see, the point is to stare at the frame on the wall and wonder about what goes in it.  (Or why we frame pictures and things and put them on our walls to begin with.)  If you'd like, you can imagine something for my apartment, or what you'd like in your own apartment.  Sit and stare and imagine for a while and I promise this will do you well.

SICKNESS

A certain terror exists alongside sickness. I have never believed in the age of invincibility, the so-called “teenage years” when half-grown adults thought they could do anything. Dangerous or otherwise. And really, goals never existed either, or at least my goals were always vague, half developed hopes (really the word “desperations” would make more sense here). But regardless, always in the future: in fact we always live in the future, always to-do, never just doing, even as we are calmest we are really always anticipating everything, even sitting down staring at a tree is really already anticipating future glances at the very same tree. The very conditions of being calm, of absolute oblivion, are always anticipatory. Our life is conditioned purely on anticipation, on the very condition of having a future, all our acts precede from an anticipatory gesture, I think while my cat pisses on my furniture. I am currently taking thirty milligrams of steroids a day to help with my inflammatory bowel. And I am raging. Even being in my apartment destroys me. Knowing what time it is destroys me. I push my cat over with my index finger and he falls to his side but he's still pissing, just up in the air. He can't stop. I don't blame him but instantly my mood sours and I take a anti-anxiety pill. This won't help, I think as I wander around my apartment gathering things because I have to leave. At a certain point you have to leave where you are. This is not wisdom, just natural. I gather my laptop, various things: a pen, in case I feel like writing; more anxiety pills, because I know this night is shot, really, and shouldn't be excused, can't be excused, by anything. They're injecting me with experimental drugs, I think, and I know that it's possible I might get lymphoma and die, and yet a certain levity exists alongside sickness, as well as terror. That there is a future that I anticipate at all times really clinches this deal, really opens up the world for me (shake hands with the world—you're always meeting it for the first time). Anticipation allows the possibility of possibility, if that makes sense, I think while my cat has finally stopped pissing and my anti-anxiety drugs take effect. Anticipation allows terror to strike at the heart of the future, a real grim reaper; or it allows levity, a rather weak handshake, I think, a real wimper, a weak smile. What we need to focus on is that anticipation precedes along, reaching out a hand, and this hand must grasp hold of the other hand. A phenomenology of handshaking, really, is what we're after. We anticipate the gesture and grasp the hand, and through this grasping I make possible my relationship to the other. In business terms I close the deal or open the deal, whichever you prefer. But the very specific handshake that I come to experience is only possible because I am reaching out, which requires that I anticipate in advance the handshake itself as a possible handshake. And here we need to grasp a final point—that though we anticipate and use a handshake as a projected, possible gesture, we must always remember that the hand coming towards us is completely other. We must harmonize in some way with this other hand coming at us in front of a gray suit. Whether the handshake is a wimper or a winner, we don't have total control. Our gesture must always meet the world and so while anticipation can give us this gesture, and while in fact anticipation is required first and foremost, at some point we're left holding the hand of a pisser who just spent thirty minutes pretending to speak to us about credit history checks and the NHL Hockey League.

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, # 67

The satisfaction that no longer comes from using the commodities produced in abundance is now sought through recognition of their value as commodities. Consumers are filled with religious fervor for the sovereign freedom of commodities whose use has become an end in itself. Waves of enthusiasm for particular products are propagated by all the communications media. A film sparks a fashion craze; a magazine publicizes night spots which in turn spin off different lines of products. The proliferation of faddish gadgets reflects the fact that as the mass of commodities becomes increasingly absurd, absurdity itself becomes a commodity. Reified people proudly display the proofs of their intimacy with the commodity. Like the old religious fetishism, with its convulsionary raptures and miraculous cures, the fetishism of commodities generates its own moments of fervent exaltation. All this is useful for only one purpose: producing habitual submission.

Crohn's Log 5

Disappointment and Recovery

Radio waves are everywhere.  They surround us at light speed, swarming over the entire earth.  The United States broadcasts radio beams into countries it doesn’t like in order to sway the hearts and minds of the inhabitants.  A better life, freedom, awaits.  Light carries voices.  Light carries information.  Light is everywhere.

In the last century light has become a technical industry.  Governments regulate and control who uses radio for almost every purpose—whether the purpose is recreation, military-related, or simply music. Licensing fees determine who broadcasts what, and to whom, and the process  around even getting a license is a mess: one need only read case histories .  Political and marketing forces have been instrumental in this determination—and they always will be, for better or worse.

But the technicalization of radio is not an issue here: we are not advocating for an anarchistic free-for-all where radio waves compete by way of power of transmission, or anything else.  We are also not concerned with media policy.  It is a sad day when cynicism takes over and one ceases to care about making a difference in the world-at-large, when one reconciles the way the world works with the way the world is, or must be.  We've reached that point.  Media policy no longer concerns us.  When nothing is under our control, when the other speaks to us passively, as though in a lecture hall, and never hears our voice specifically, nor needs to, we become cynical.  This isn't about free speech.  We're not talking about spreading democracy or sticking up for the little guy.  Or sticking up for ourselves.  We are aware of our own self-loss in something larger.  We welcome advocates for anything: good for them.  We welcome people gesturing, going out, showing themselves and responding to the world.  Those who fight for us, against us, who stand out, are our heroes.  But we are not them, and never will be.  Our actions, by design, are not heroic.  Our own actions, due to reasons that exist at the core of this essay, are not entirely clear, but neither are they irrelevant.

In fact, they are essential.

We need to trace these reasons.  What we are looking for is first of all to bring to the forefront a basic situation through description, one which localizes our own actions (see below) while providing the basis for a more general understanding of our basic situation (see conclusion).  Our own description of cynicism above isn't technically complete because we haven't yet begun developing our own logic of action, which is different than complete cynicism.  We don't distrust everything or everyone, and we don't advocate it.  Rather, we find ourselves in a curious position: a position of powerlessness, the ability to act upon others (temporarily?) stripped from us.  We blame nobody: we don't  blame the government, others, or ourselves.  But to face this position is the first step towards something, whatever that something is.  This ambiguity is what we must trace, even if only brings us closer to the ambiguity without illuminating it.

* * *

I have an AM radio station, which I half-jokingly call RadioTim.  It plays in Loring Park, Minneapolis, and on a good sunny day can cover a few good blocks.  At night it becomes completely overpowered by other AM stations due to atmospheric conditions.  This isn't itself a problem, as probably only a few people have heard my station or would listen to it anyway, but this points out a more pressing issue.  Why broadcast  if nobody is listening?  --If, in fact, by design, it is basically impossible for me to have listeners, as that would require licensing which I am neither willing nor capable?

Recently I began a new project.  I bought, borrowed, and set up a bunch of different radios in my apartment and set them all to tune in to RadioTim.  Each radio, when I am broadcasting, has its own tone, texture, and tonality.  Some are rich in static; some are clear; some are overloaded, and emit an overdrive that is both appealing and appalling.  They are located all around my apartment, so my bass can come from one place, guitar from another, and drums from yet another—some radios do better with different sounds (just so happens).  So everything is surrounding me, and standing in the middle of my studio apartment with all the perfected volumes is almost overwhelming.  Noise is everywhere.  Invisible light is converted to audible sound.  Everywhere light is, sound is.

I transmit at 1690AM.  My own transmission is not explicitly intended politically or as a protest, but it is an action.  And a local action is it.  I am not responding to the other.  I am not speaking my mind to the masses.  I am not fighting truth or organizing a community.  This is explicitly local.

Sometimes life feels alien: to quote Paul Ricoeur (surprise!):

"Life with the other might as well be our common dream, our analogous self-loss in the anonymous 'they.'  Thus self-affirmation is a gesture of going out, of showing oneself, of bring oneself to the fore and confronting oneself.   'They' do not respond to the question, 'who thinks so, who is making this noise?' because 'they' is no-one.  Some one must stand out of the mass in which each—or all—hide.  In contrast with the 'one,' I take my act on myself, I assume it….

Now in waking up from anonymity I discover that I have no means of self-affirmation other than my acts themselves.  “I” am only an aspect of my acts, the subject pole of my acts.  I have no means of affirming myself on the fringes of my acts.  This is what the feeling responsibility reveals to me (Freedom and Nature 57).

If the other (in my case, my listeners) helps to define me (as a radiobroadcaster), then what would it mean to have no listeners at all? How is possible to reconcile our own local powerlessness with an awareness of responsibility and self-affirmation? Is the other needed for responsibility, for a recognition of self-affirmation in the first place? Can I play RadioTim only to myself, have nobody listen to it, and leave it at that?  Why does it feel like there's something more I need to do here?  Ricoeur seems to be placing self-affirmation within action itself and trying to explicitly unlink it from the other. But there's something more involved with my radio. This "more" is a very pressing "more."  A radio was meant to be broadcast.

The first part of this "more" might be a feeling of disappointment.  I am disappointed because I cannot change the world and broadcast farther: thus, in a sense, my act is a disappointed act.  In being anonymous, if gesturing-outwards is the main method of self-affirmation, then I have lost already.  In large part this constitutes the question itself: I can do whatever I like, but if the world does not respond, then my own self degrades and suffers.  We must then change tactics.  We must recover our disappointed act.  This is the course the project has taken, and must take.

Our recovery must take into account the actual description of the event itself: that of listening to RadioTim in my apartment (described above).  This in turn, occurs in the context of a radio-marketing complex in which light is transmitted everywhere and surrounds everything, including saturating my apartment and even my body with light I cannot see.  I am passive to this light.  Nothing can be done except not see, not listen, or not interfere.  But I've decided to interfere.  In a sense, we could call this a "standing-out," but it would misleading because I'm only "standing-out" to myself.  There is no response  (or is there? - here is our trace).  But this decision is essential.  I've chosen something—and here we reach a guidepost in our trace.

I've taken control of 1690AM for my apartment.  I've set up my transmitter and I can listen to whatever I want—speeches, music, my own music, my voice, my cat's voice, nothing, mechanical chirps.  A simple decision; a rather beautiful outcome, if you would ever care to join me in playing with my radio.  It's quite fun.

We now have action, RadioTim.  We are not Democracy Now!  We are not "The Current" or "MPR."

What our local action has brought to light is the fact that we're deluged with light, everywhere at all times, meant to be turned into sound and language by technology.  This light is active-passivity, moving through brick wall after brick wall in order to reach my radios—they are mostly evangelical at 1690AM, but they don't bother me because I enjoy their insanity, and usually a couple different broadcasts overlap at night.  An good selection, of course: we can listen to whatever we want.  Who cares.

With one switch they are gone, though, overpowered by RadioTim in a specific locality through one local action.  How can we think this action?  We need to keep on with the ambiguity of our trace.  Could we sum up our action as a mere rejection of the public and a forcible exclusion of that same public?  Yes, but that misses the point.  Our efforts never originally intended that action (we are disappointed this had to be the case).  Our recovery has shown that somehow action is key to our thinking.  Perhaps it would be better to say that we have now illuminated light by showing that we can act in a local sense—that in the moment of defeat (we are not MPR), we can still act.  In doing so, I have become a duality: he who decides and he who acts.

To quote Ricoeur once more:

"The duality arising in consciousness is a duality within the very heart of the first person: this is why the subject of the action intended in the project is the same subject who is implicit or explicit in the very act of deciding and intending the project: I who decide am the I who will do (Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, 47-48).

Thus, our small recovery is underway.  Locally, non-politically, therapeutically.  Direct local interference in the publicly/privately controlled spectrum of light on a local level has shown us something ambiguous and hard to pinpoint but nonetheless there.  I who decide am the I who will do.  This locality is something special; a place necessary for all response/responding, and a place necessary for responsibility.  A local action, originally intended at others, has shown that others were never actually required for the very presence of responsibility.  A duality in the very nature of acting (deciding) provides our own ability to act responsibly.    A recovery of a failed intention has provided much more--a trace towards a deep, local, personal responsibility, even if it only means listening and smiling at my own personal radio station.

Come over and listen sometime.

A Debt 2

Crohn's Log 4

Sorry about the wind - it was windy that day!

Request-Response

 

The above came from Ted, via Carrie, on the date referenced on the actual paper itself.

The above came with this submission: I have thought about this long and hard, and this is the picture I am sending you for your art project.  I am sending this because of the importance to me of the two people in the picture.  I know that sounds corny, but that is the way it is.   Received 10/11/10 from Judy.

Crohn's Log 3

Sorry that I'm complaining, I just didn't feel well today.

I did drop my stool sample off. I had to ask for directions. It's hard to ask "where do I drop my stool sample off" to the 16 year old kid at the information desk. Then some random lady by a random elevator asked me, "Are you the one with the specimen?" and directed me to a random room where you drop poop off. Fun.

Crohn's Log 2

You can find more information about Crohn's disease by clicking HERE.

The Dot

1. Decide for yourself to stare at the dot at the center of the work for as long as possible.

2. Stare at the dot, making sure to take note of the fact that you are staring at the dot while you are staring at the dot, and be sure to question why exactly you are staring at the dot—that is, that you decided to stare at the dot.

3. Afterward, think about who decided to stare at the dot (the person perpetually deciding to stare at the dot) and who is carrying out that activity (the actual eyes, body, staring at the dot). Is there a difference between deciding and the actual carrying out of an activity? How does the body enter into this? Is this a command/obey relationship? Question this.

4. Most importantly, if you are constantly deciding to stare at the dot while staring the dot (in effect, making lots of little decisions to stare at the dot adds up to a make-shift larger concept "staring at the dot,"--in effect, leaping from decision to decision) then who is obeying these little decisions to stare at the dot? It would not seem to be the body, but rather some kind of internal will obeying my commands. How does a decision really work? Question this.

...a decision can be considered a command which I give to myself to the extent to which my body appears to me not even as an anonymous mask of an alien force but as the autonomy of a person with its own intentions and its own initiative. Thus I converse with it, and it becomes a second person: "You shake, you old carcass, but if you knew...." Though we may discount the rhetorical aspect which slips into such expressions, we must also admit that self-consciousness carries with it permanently the possibility of such redoubling, of such a dialogue with itself. My relation to myself is like that of a younger and an older brother: I respond for my part like an other who listens, imitates, obeys. In presence of value I sense myself more the younger; in the face of an action in which my body is refractory, I feel more like the elder. This situation is...basic and permanent. To think is to speak to myself, to will is to command myself. In this sense we speak of self-control and use the imperative in second person singular or even plural to express a decision: "Let's go, old man, we've got to get on!"...

But in the end decision is not a true command, only a command by analogy. My body is not another person. The duality arising in consciousness is a duality within the very heart of the first person: this is why the subject of the action intended in the project is the same subject who is implicit or explicit in the very act of deciding and intending the project: I who decide am the I who will do. (Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, 47-48).

Crohn's One

Kabakov

Kabakov challenged the status of paint as “an exception realm of manual mastery” when he pierced a big nail through the surface of a painting call Who Hammered This Nail? (1970)…For the first time in alternative Soviet art these anti-aesthetical works by Kabakov challenged the notion that art has to reflect the sublime and that there is no place in it for the profane….Instead of promoting the idea of action as a sufficient creative gesture, he would ask Moscow artists, poets, and friends to come to a vast, empty country field to blow up balloons, appear and disappear in forest or lie down in a ditch.  These “voyagers into nothingness” or “empty actions” served as remedies from urban pressures and identified emptiness as the main characteristic of Soviet existence.

In a different essay:

How do the inhabitants of these places relate to this feeling of emptiness, to this restlessness?

Something like four forms of relations can be distinguished.  The first is to attempt, in general, not to notice emptiness with one's consciousness, to live "naturally" in it and to consider all events, causes, and connections of life in emptiness simply "as they are," natural and necessary.

The second is to consider this void-like state unworthy and unacceptable for a person, for human life.  In this case, all possible projects and reforms, from economic to legal, are necessary in order to change this place and the living conditions of the local people by a path of construction, displacements, labor, and new reforms.

The third relationship is mystico-religious, according to which this place of emptiness and insecurity is extremely useful for the human soul.  Precisely here, in this existence-less place -- the place of "evil, lies, and non-existence" -- it is easier to be save to experience "heaven heights," to search for and find high truth.

The fourth is simply to see this place as it is in face and describe it as a doctor might describe the history of an illness with which he is terminally afflicted.

Medical Hermeneutics - Soviet Conceptualism

One of this dialogues was translated and published in german, so you can read it, it was about freedom, it is called "contraceptive conversation about freedom". In this dialogue we were discussing one idea of performance. The Performance was: we make big balls of snow in wintertime, then we move with big balls, each man and woman has one ball, [sitting and] holding in a flat in a room, around big table, each has a ball in front of him or her, and then we must speak, only one rule: we do not speak like men, but we have to imagine us to be gods. And in process of speaking, each of participants must observe the process of melting of the snowball. (illustrates) Because: form of ball is absolute form, ideal, at first we identify with this ideal form, in the beginning we are gods, we created our own worlds, like each of us had created the universe. But, because we are sitting in a warm room, the balls will melt and we have to think about this. And speak [about melting]? No, the question is, how this process willl influence our speech. And of course, at the end, when balls are absolutely melted, when we have only dirt in our hands and this uncomfortable feeling in our trousers, we are men, not gods anymore, we have lost our divinity.

We didn`t realize this performance, because thinking about it we deeply meditated about this idea, so it was not neccessary to realize. But the idea of this not realized performance did absolutely influence our work. You can read it in the catalogue of Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, it is a book edited for our exhibition in 1990.

Pirate Radio

1.  Old military laptop running linux, to play music.
2.  An AM transmitter transmitting RadioTim at 1690AM.  Was originally used for real estate.

RadioTim!

Ordinary Dinner. Non-Random

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.

iggy pop

lion mitten lunches on gazelle mitten

"The 'Theory of Art' as Packaging Control and the History of Error in Developed Economies"

In this essay I will never complete I will write about things I will never think about, let alone write about.  Whatever may be said against or for this method, one thing is essential: whenever talented people approach  art with the sole idea of serving it sincerely to the utmost measure of their ability, the result is always gratifying.  We quote Victor Terras quoting the great Mayakovsky:

"'I've been run over by time!'"

We may also be tempted to quote Victor Terras quoting Ivanov:

"...wanted to pray, but could not...having checked if the noose would hold, flung himself into darkness...[the suicide's last thoughts belong] not to what makes this earth beautiful, but to a dirty Moscow Tavern, A Candle Stump, A Corridor, Two White Zeroes On A Door."

We were tempted solely by the gratification afforded us by these looming talents.  The second sentence of this non-essay is an unmarked quote.

page 66 old man and the sea

The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing.  Now he was proving it again.  Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.  Life on the edge can be rough around.

I wish he'd sleep and I could sleep and dream about the lions, he thought admirably.  Life is a texture.  Why are the lions the main thing that is left?  Why am I wondering this?  Who is wondering about myself wondering about lions if not myself?  Are there two people inside of me?  Don't think, old man, he said to himself.  There must be two people inside me.  Look: I just said something to myself.  It's a fact.  I proved it again.  Rest gently now against the wood and think of nothing.  He is working.  Work as little as you can.  Never work.  Never work.  Who is thinking "never work?"  Is it strange that I am telling myself to not think?  Who is inside me commanding and who is inside me obeying? And who the hell is this person thinking about commanding and obeying?  How many people are there inside me?  How is it that I do anything and what the hell am I anyway?  I think this fish must be damn smart.  Never work.  He is working.  I must not work.  Who is it who is telling me to not work?  I was right when I called myself a "strange old man" two paragraphs up.