Tuesday, November 11, 2014
The new Lieutenant Commander bowed and withdrew from the Great Commander-in-Chief’s presence. He returned to his column and looked up at the blue sky where the stars of the Great Major should be. “Oh, Great Major! May this world be the place where one doesn’t have to kill those one cannot hate. If this could […]
Monday, September 8, 2014
These are the seductive voices of the night; the Sirens, too, sang that way. It would be doing them an injustice to think that they wanted to seduce; they knew they had claws and sterile wombs, and they lamented this aloud. They could not help it if their laments sounded so beautiful. —Franz Kafka, The […]
Friday, September 5, 2014
The old lady, silly twit, listens with her mouth open and smiles dreamily, looking at me. She shouldn’t stare at me. I stick out my tongue. Maryvanna, shutting her eyes in shame, whispers hatefully, “Hideous creature!” That night she’ll read her uncle’s poetry to me again: Nanny, who screamed so loudly outside, Flashing past the […]
Somewhere DÅgen wrote about the number of moments in the snap of a finger. I don’t remember the exact figure, only that it was large and seemed quite arbitrary and absurd, but I imagine that when I am in the cockpit of my plane, aiming the nose at the hull of an American battleship, every […]
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
There are certain people in whom you can detect the seeds of madness—seeds that have remained dormant only because the people in question have lived relatively comfortable, middleclass lives. They function perfectly well in the world, but you can imagine, given a nasty parent, or a prolonged bout of unemployment, how their potential for craziness […]
Why does the world appear to us in this threefold manner? A simple example can make it clear. Suppose I walk through a field where wildflowers are blooming. The flowers reveal their colors to me through my eyes—that is the fact I accept as given. When I then take pleasure in the wonderful display of […]
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Jacqueline and Jemima are instructing Zeno, who has returned the purloined GRE documents and is thus restored to dull respectability, in Postmodernism. Postmodernism, they tell him, has turned its back on the world, is not about the world but about its own processes, is masturbatory, certainly chilly, excludes readers by design, speaks only to the […]
What is our insomnia but the mad obstinacy of our mind in manufacturing thoughts and trains of reasoning, syllogisms and definitions of its own, refusing to abdicate in favor of that divine stupidity of closed eyes, or the wise folly of dreams. […] But books lie, even those that are most sincere. The less adroit, […]
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Efter nÃ¥gons död After a death Det var en gÃ¥ng en chock som lämnade efter sig en lÃ¥ng, blek, skimrande kometsvans. Den hyser oss. Den gör TV-bilderna suddiga. Den avsätter sig som kalla droppar pÃ¥ luftledningarna. Man kan fortfarande hasa fram pÃ¥ skidor i vintersolen mellan dungar där fjolÃ¥rslöven hänger kvar. De liknar blad rivna […]
§(61) Americanism. Could Americanism be an intermediate phase of the current historical crisis? Could the conglomeration of plutocratic forces give rise to a new phase of European industrialism on the model of American industry? The attempt will probably be made (rationalization, Bedaux system, Taylorism, etc.). But can it succeed? Europe reacts, setting its cultural traditions […]