Some musings

What is the difference between "memoirs" and "autobiography"? Is it just linguistic or is there a different purpose and sentiment behind the action itself?

What is the difference between living life with the motto of "carpe diem" versus the idea of living one's life in the face of the "doctrine of the eternal return"? There are more than just linguistic differences between these two philosophies. They each imply a mode of history, that is for certain, yet the aims and ideas of each are so utterly unique. It would be fascinating and perhaps fun to tease out these differences.

I really like what I have been reading of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe.

Smart Words

"A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die! And to be able to live for ever you don't need to have extraordinary gifts or be able to do miracles. Who was Sancho Panza? Who was Prospero? But they will live for ever because - living seeds - they had the luck to find a fruitful soil, an imagination which knew how to grow them and feed them, so that they will live for ever." (from Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1921) Pirandello

Knowing it's a game from within.

"My ideas about fame and art are not brand new," she says. "We could watch Paris is Burning [Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary about New York drag artists], we could read The Warhol Diaries, we could go to a party in New York in 1973 and these same things would be being talked about. I guess you could say that I'm a bit of a Warholian copycat. Some people say everything [in music and fashion] has been done before, and to an extent they are right. I think the trick is to honour your vision and reference and put together things that have never been put together before. I like to be unpredictable, and I think it's very unpredictable to promote pop music as a highbrow medium."

"It's not parody, it's commentary," Gaga replies coolly. "To use the words 'have your cake and eat it' implies something devious. For me, I just think I'm very good at what I do."
----Lady Gaga


I will admit, I have an enormous crush on Lady Gaga. Why you may ask...why would be be so enamored with this pop dance princess who looks really superficial, is all tattooed up and has a mighty peppery past? I like her because she was accepted to Julliard at eleven years old. I like how she went to NYU's Tisch school of the arts at 17 and decided to drop out because she was not getting a real arts experience. That and she can sing...listen to the stripped down stuff and it is far more obvious what I mean.

Beyond this, she sees the game that it all is. She sees that it is about the persona, about the art as art and art within culture itself. She knows the rules of the game from within the game itself. That is very rare. Most people who become stars, no matter who they are fall into the idea that they can separate what they do from what they are. She on the other hand embraces it. Perhaps that is some Christian notion of honesty/ integrity (you talk to the talk so you have to walk the walk), but I hate to fall into that kind of analysis. It seems that she understands the heritage of her art, the whole visual package, the rhetoric that goes along with it.

That is really unexpected from a 23 year old pop princess, eh? I think we estimate people though.

Living life?

We all have some kind of romantic notion of what our future holds. At least at some point in our life we do. We all have the capacity to change the world. A few of us may seem to realise our own potential earlier and strive towards it, others may squander it on the seeming vices of life. Other might just decide to take a path, not less noble by any means, but a path which takes them on a course with the mundane. We all do it. Especially on a blog community where it seems we all have a soul that seeks to expand, even perhaps to escape the confines of this reality. Always with a foot in a door to a place we all hope to glimpse, yet never quite reach. The author, the artist, the romantic lover, the poet, the adventurer, the dare devil…all these archetypes which seem to be beckons for those souls who realise that an end, perhaps even THE END lurks behind each corner. We know it is there. We see it in the faces of friends and loves, we feel it in a handshake or an embrace, we hear it when the birds fly away for the winter. It is there. Perhaps it is something unique to those who pay attention and can become the writers and artists that they are cursed with this awareness, yet this awareness comes with a power. To live, to live fully and to be self full, beyond some kind of fast food religious experience, the possibility to enjoy life in its entirety. Each moment is captured by a memory that knows that it is failing, that it has only one chance itself to catch a fleeting moment, when even the mechanism of memory is itself an enterprise that knows its own end, forgetting. But it is through this experiencing that we can live to know it. Each moment is all the more powerful, enchanting. To live is a wonderful thing.

All too often my friends and roommates seek to find entertainment through drinking themselves into oblivion, to lose themselves to alcohol just to seek some weird reprieve from reality and just mindlessly chase loose women. I cannot say that I am innocent by any means, but still—it seems a waste to life, to oneself to just try to escape it all.

Life is just there. Always beckoning to dance, it sits and continually presents us with itself. We can try to avoid it, to seek routine, to seek distraction, to seek some voiding factor, yet it is always there even when we try to ignore it, it will find us.

I meant to write about having to fix my toilet after it flooded my bathroom. Not a pleasant sight to see an inch of water in one’s second story bathroom, but I handled it deftly. I am among the world’s most reluctant engineers, but I really can fix things when the need be. An attribute gained from my father no doubt. He never lets anything leave the house that he has not attempted to fix. From cars (which also broke down, but he and I repaired it) to toys (he once reconstructed and super-glued one of my sister’s porcelain dolls) to jewelry to electronics…no system is too complex to be challenged and repaired. I learned as well when I was a mechanic one summer, if you look at a machine or a system, no matter how complicated it may be, it was made by man and should be looked at like any other machine from a wristwatch to a three story manufacturing process. No reason to be intimidated.

I also found my super oversized glasses. I may try to wear them now, since being ironic is the cool think to do.

A Motorcycle ride

I took a hiatus from writing. It seems that when life appears to be good, I stop writing. A travesty I should say. During those times, I do let myself appear in more pictures, which is a bit odd. I hate to write but I allow myself to be photographed. Reverse when I feel the reverse. I love to take photographs though, unconditionally.

I was riding my motorcycle the other day, a long very much needed ride, when about 23 miles into my journey, I lost my odometer and my speedometer. When I ride I just follow the road, each time taking a new and unexplored path. Here I was now, in the middle of a road without any signs of life, scenery I had never experienced, headed away from my home without any guage of how fast I was going except the wind in my face and the rpms of the bike. I suddenly realised that this was perfectly analogous to life. We are always speeding away from some origin, never really knowing how far we have gone or how fast we are going. We just drive and drive without knowing exactly how much gasoline is left in the tank, all the while debating when it is time to turn back, to find a pit stop, to quit...but the open road and unseen sights beckon us to go further. Even then we wonder which side roads to take and which roads to continue down.

I road and explored for several more hours, each minute feeling a bit uneasy, yet the same time oddly free. I rarely saw any other human, and just hummed down the road as fast I could at time, and at other times a nice leisurely pace. I saw creeks and rivers, abandoned towns and forests. Each moment I seemed to be navigating through a new and unexplored world, each memory I had to hold as I knew the fuel in the tank was running lower and lower. I eventually turned back, just in time to get home before dark, with all but fumes remaining of my once full gas tank.

Just like life.

An Update

All is well. Such a pleasant thing to say, that it. I can't sleep though. I came home for mothers day to see the family and such. Always a pleasant experience, well most of the time.

Ever wonder about the nature of memories? Notice, when you tell a story over and over again that it becomes your own, to the point that you create memories that support it. Does it matter if it really happened when you repeat it to another? For you it happen, or maybe you know the truth is wrapped in the story you tell but you cannot separate it out. For Lacan and Caruth, memory is a source of an ethics of sorts. Now because of this, what is the responsibility of memories that are a bit twisted by the story that fits them.

I ran into an attorney who reads Baudrillard. It was a wonderful experience.

Meeting and Philosophy

I feel lonely. I do not know why. Today it just hit me, very strongly. I was putting some things away and reorganizing my bookshelf and then it hit me. Like a freight train or a ton of bricks. I realised that time does pass, that people move away and you might never see them again. People you love, even people you dislike. They role in and out of your life before you realise you love them and miss them. How strange that really is.

Went to one of my mentor's houses for dinner. It really was wonderful. He has a wall filled with books. a library, but those are the books he doesn't really like...the good ones are in his office. He and his wife absolutely love each other and love their kids. The kids are all highly intelligent and love chess. The food was good, the drink was exquisite. The port was delicious. However, the amazing thing happened later. Here we were speaking of dealing with the implications of a finite life, about good illusions and bad illusions, as had sat there with his two year old son in his lap. It was amazing to think about.

Freud and Books

Three words create the title. The first a name, a proper name. What then to evoke a proper name? In naming, in the proper name there is a death of sorts, but also a remembrance, an ethics of memory in the proper name that is only possible through death. Next word, a coordinating conjunction. Useful and necessary, but why here, why not any other conjunction. To decide it to limit, is to shut out possibilities, but then it is necessary, no? Finally books. That is to come.


That first paragraph was just my Derrida-esque evaluation of the artificiality of titles. Kidding, but seriously.

Went to my favourite bookstore yesterday. It is my favourite simply because it is within walking distance and the people are great. An old building with oddly tudor-style archetecture. Very out of place in my town. Rows and rowds of shelves housing books there is, everything jam packed on the shelves. I walk in, and the first thing I hear is Bob Dylan on an old radio. Sitting at the nesk, one of the owners of the door, the sign out front baring his name. He is a wiry oild man, late 50s or early 60s perhaps. The colour draining from the tips of his black hair, creating a crown-like effect on his head. He was speaking to a patron of the stoor. The man translated books from German, or so he says. Mr MClure bag nto indulge him, then started to talk about music. First Ray Charles, then to New Orleans style jazz...but then the conversation of which I was privy took a turn. Mr. McClure brought up the fact that we forget so easily our past, that the racial tensions of the 1960s is not dead, but rather forgotten under the auspice of every street named after Martin Luther King, every high school, every award. They don't remind us, they force us to forget the tension that is our past. The thought of John Kennedy, a war hero, battle harden, having to call the Gov'ner of Alabama to get him to allow a single black girl into a public school, his voice trembling in terror, that is what is forgotten. What is forgotton is the need that many black americans felt, to arm themselves against hatred and terror wrecked by felow citizens. How soon we forget.

I bought The Imposible by Georges Bataille. Brilliant book.

T.I. seems to be acting symptomatically on his new album. Why? How? What do you mean? Acting symptomatically because of the trauma of his early life. The song, "Dead and Gone" seems to demonstrate this point very well. On the track he seems to want to kill off his "old" self, to represent a break with the past and thus acreate a new idenitty for which the issues of the old self are not a problem. This is simply a method of cooping. He cannot come to terms with the past and thus create a new me which is exempt from the past. The abuses of the past didn't occur to this new me, that was the old me. This break with the self is a near schizophrenia of sorts. How can we come to terms with our idenity if we seek to create a new one each time something bad happens?

Witty Title

I should be reading. Always something left to read. The world around me is completely inauthentic. Not really, well just a little. More importantly, is that I am living an inauthentic life for some reason. I just can't get out of it.


I remeber one time, I went to the low country. Down to the poor parts near the coast, where they still speak a creole kind of gullah. It is a poetry of sorts, just to listen to them speak. Because they are an insular type, I hate the ubiqiutous they. The people who live in that region are wary of strangers, especially tourists. I don't blame them. Most people point and take photos like they are at some kind of living history or a zoo. I decided I wanted to get close to these people. I took my camera and printed up some made up creditials. I told them I was from National Geographic and I was a photojournalist. I was doing a story about coastal US cultures. That worked well. I told them I was there to find out about their culture and their history, how and why they do things. It was fun. They were accepting of me.

I think that is part of the problem. Some people think hoping right in the middle of another culture is some sort of novelty experience. To be the token, if you will. That isn't the way at all. There is no respect in that. There isn't an ethics. But to learn, to experience as one might, from and through the eyes of another, while maintaining that respect, never making a mockery of it. I don't think people realise that very often. When you jokingly become that strange token bystander you are making a mockery of people. You are invading their life, their culture, their dreams as though you are some god-like deity that can just drop in. Have a good time, laugh it off later.

I know exactly why this bothers me, but I shan't go into it futher.

To steal from Derrida

"If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy."-Richard Yates


Always begin with a quote, or maybe a poem, that way you can frame everything you plan to write in words that are not your own. But in the end, whose words are their own. I was wondering while driving, yes driving, I hate to have to do it, but we can't be picky, just falling into our own reality. ion has been written. We as humans experience a great deal of things. With the mass market and media we "see" more than before. Hence the culture of the 20th and 21st cave been shown everything, from the Holocaust up to the cure for diseases once thought unthinkable, wars, peace, scandals. That being said, it takes words to fit those actions. That is where the art is.

I hat Atlanta. I love it. We have a love hate relationship. The city is so aesthetically unappealing it is funny. Went to a Shakespeare dinner theatre. It was interesting to say the least. Polonius and I made eye-contact and I did one of my awkward facial expressions and made him react. It was fun. However, despite the silly cast and subpar performance.

The real show, the stagee, if you will lay in the street itself. In the city. Cities breathe, you know. Outside of the theatre, in a back alley there was 10-15 homeless people. Half of them drinking 40s (cheap malt liquor). Some of them working as window cleaners for an extorted buck. Half of them asking for change, inquiring about the show and asking for charity, a car ride. Then seeing the drug deals and the hand offs, that is the interesting thing. The theatre crowd mixing with the drug dealers. Now that is life if I have ever heard of it. There is a poetry in that. The poetry of the world, the streets, the word, a strange mix, I will admit, but it is real. Very real. More real than the people who never see it.

Just to say hello

So here goes one for fun. Always busy. Only time to write is now. I love to be spontaneous. Planned spontaneaity if that is possible and not too oxymoronic. Have a schedule enough to get everything done but still have the time and ability to go out and just something.

For instance, last Sunday night, I was painfully bored. I do not know why, perhaps way too much reading. I had the idea to go chase the sun, so I did. I hopped in my car, which I have not driven for some time now and just took off west. While going down the highway, the sun leading my way, I spotted a road. Freshly paved, the asphalt still dark, but eerily secluded. It called to me, it cried to me. I obliged it. I road for some time and when it opened up I was in the middle of a road that split a horse farm. Acres and acres of rolling hills dotted with horses and quaint fences. It was beautiful. Granted I could not share what I saw with anyone--windows down and music blaring, it was wonderful. Much the same, I went walkabout Saturday. No one was around so I just took off walking. I went to the book store and browsed then I kept going. Just taking everything in.

I enjoy that. A good deal actually. That and buying people silly gifts that are so practical that eventually they can't live with out them. But that is the ultimate gift isn't it. Tryannical almost. For some reason I always feel that I am just a dot on people's lives and that I will fade away from memory. I don't know why I think that, but I do regardless.

Crushed

Crushed by work. At least it snowed. It is incredibly comic for me to watch people where I live react to the slightest bit of snow. I am used to operating is less than ideal condition, but in the southern united states people seem to just go crazy when snow falls. People cancel everything at first sign of winter precipitation. People decide that ill equipped cars are good enough to drive in the ice, of course until they get stuck or slide down a hill.

Oh well, people will learn. Or they won't. Either way, it is entertaining once a year.

It Has Been Too Long

Greetings,

I have been crushed by work as of late, as you might has guessed by my (present/haunting) absence. I love it. School is wearing me down, but I have finally found something that I enjoy and am recognized for my skill. That area perhaps is critical theory and perhaps is philosophy. I am taking a seminar on Heidegger's Being and Time and virtually set up a tutorial with one professor. Another tutorial with another professor that centers more on Derrida and that strain of teaching, if we may call it that. All great thinkers. It has taken me years to get to this point, but when it comes you just have to take it by the horns.

That and life is going well as well. Outside of all the drama, I have found someone that will do crosswords with me, will cook with me, with do Ken-Kens with me (A fabulous new math/logic puzzle in the NY Times), will watch my silly movies and come with me when I go on whims. It is most pleasant. And rare. I wish I had more time for it all, but you make time. That is the thing I don't think people get though. You have to make time for people, for the important things in life. I can learn equations and formulas, I can memorise with the best of them, but it is those moments of "ah ha" when you figured out some thought problem, or perhaps even more germane but still puissant--noticing the wrinkles around a mouth that smiles too much and the light freckles on the top of the cheeks. Those gazes, what Derrida and Nancy would say was the stroking gaze, not the striking one. Those moments of infinite closeness and separation in just looking someon in the eyes. They mean something. I do not know what. I don't want to know what. That is the one precious thing that Heidegger never let on to his readers--authentic being in the world, the moment when we make ontological decisions instead of following das Man--but it is what those decisions are that he never mentions. If he were to say them then Herr Heidegger would become das Man, the antithesis of his wishes.

I love it.

I love have pages of readings, each title a seminal work...the Agamben, the Nancy, the Heidegger, the Derrida, the Deleuze, the Spivak, Foucault, Butler, Austen, Zizek, Robespierre, Rousseau, Kant, Hardt, Schmitt, Lacan, Blanchot, Benjamin, Weber...I love it.

I love the paradox of my being. Whitman said that he was full of multitudes, he was a large man. Ethics bowl presenter and a reader of Heidegger. I love those parallax.

To conclude. Everything is well.

A chance to breathe

As you can imagine, I have been most busy as of late. I rarely get back to my apartment before 9:45ish(2145ish). Such is for the persuit of higher knowledge, whatever that may be.

Despite all this learning, despite reading philosophy and literature, I still wonder sometimes, as I think everyone should, what it means. I study quantum physics, we talk about wave particle duality, how you can describe the world with harmonic oscillators, but then some equations can never be solved accurately, only a handful. Then you talk about a problem like determining the diffusion of helium out of a balloon. That problem has no analytic solution. We know everything, yet we know nothing.

I read Heidegger. He seeks to lay bare for all to see the structures that structure our own being. What does that mean? It implies that being is. It implies that these structures exist yes, but beyond that he is privileging the idea that humans can understand and see it. See here in an arbitrary sense.

Walking back I laughed. It is all tinged with a bit of bullshit. I could wake up as someone else's dream. I could die tomorrow and that be it. I lose consciousness forever. I could go to heaven. My dog doesn't care about it.

But even when I say I make it matter because I want it to, I embark down a philosophical track.

Updates

I just realised that the photo in the post below was to large and you couldn't see what I was talking about. But whatever, it doesn't really matter to much.

So life is laughing. Take that quote as you please. I just watched Amelie. It seems she has a cult following, but I have begun to see why. Imagine a world where everyone paid attention to the it, the world. For example, I went to a walmart (yuck) I hate them, but while in it I saw the most wonderous things. I saw the grandfather with his grandson walking to the pharmacy in their sunday best, obviously just coming from church. I saw an old couple holding hands while walking down the various aisles. I saw the young child's face cringe when her mother lit a cigarette.

Life is filled with wonders that just seize you. They grap your heart and your head and pull you in while pushing you out. If that makes any sense. For example, on la blogotheque takeaway shows for EagleSeagull when the blonde girl rolls her eyes up and looks to her left. Or perhaps in the recording of "I left my Heart in San Franscisco" when the music falls as Dean Martin sings "High on a hill, it calls to me." The moments that encapsulate and define a moment. A look, a glance, a touch. Even just the realisation of something. A soft crinkle around the eyes, little freckles you never noticed, a new pair of socks.

Just breathe it in.

Silly Brad

Notice the hand on the clutch as he is turning. Our boy Brad obviously doesn't know how to ride a bike. That is all, for now. Back to work.

Oboma/ 12 Course Dinner

This past week I served a twelve course meal. I prepared everything, all the while teaching my patron/ assistant how to cook. The courses ranged from beef sirloin to sea food to chicken cordon bleu to fried artichoke hearts, cheesecake and homemade tirimisu. It was a wonderful night filled with spirits and goof fun...until the police arrived.


It appears as though Obama reads books. At least from his speach. This is really exciting. I am optimistic, but I shall reserve opinion until the cogs of government start to turn in the right direction.

When the demons come out

I remember some guy said that he writes surely as everyone else, to keep the demons at bay. Interesting idea I will admit, but a bit sinister, a bit depressing, and a bit limiting to my tastes. Our reasons for writing are many, but personally I do flee to writing and nature for solace when I get sad or depressed. Writing and the stars at night especially.

I had plans to write about the nature of the decision. About how a decision is limiting, that we exist in the realm of infinite possibility, the realm of thought prior to a decision. Everything we can ever imagine can exist. However, it is in the act of making the decision, of limiting oneself and dedication to a choice that something can actually occur. The problem with the infinity of man is that in the infinity of his own possibility he is infinite. We all are infinite, so what then does that mean. If you always keep holding a mirror in front of a mirror you can see till infinity (if it can be reached, which it cannot, for our sake) . It is all about making the decision. Perhaps this is what Keats was talking about in "Ode to a Grecian Urn." The poet seems to be lost in his own ruminations about the urn and what it says. He looks at the figures running and "living" mutely on the surface of the urn, yet he can't figure out what it is saying. Then, the urn, it seems, begins to ask him to leave thought behind, to jump into writing. To "tease out of thought" and thus write the poem. The urn can't speak and tell its meaning, neither can the poet, but he can act. Then through this act he can seek that meaning and through telling the story he can tell a bit of his own. Then through the writing and reading of the poem more possibility can be explored.

The decision gives power. It is the condition for us to move forward.

Now where does this leave me. Oddly enough I am listening to Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek." Biography is always a bit easy. But often it isn't. I am a bit apt to get sad. It just happens. The problem with philosophy is that it burns you out. Every now and then you just have to ask the question, why does it even matter. I can talk about the notion of the object petit a and castration anxiety, I can talk about differance and the supplement and always already, the phenomenological of the wine glass, even about fate and free will, the categorical imperative, utilitarian calculus, the realm of ideas, the cave, the pharmakon, poesis vs mimesis, the discipline, the aesthetic, etc etc etc. But then you have to ask your self the question, WTF?

Me writing this post, drinking a glass of water--a rational agent has to assume that he has free will even though causality would seem to point that free will cannot exist. Does it matter. Not too much. Even political philosophy. Does man have innate rights or are they rights as citizen and thus he has no rights as man if he is not a citizen. Important yes, but when you get down to the brass tacks, you don't have to know. We never know. We know we don't know.

I never decide on anything. That is my problem. The problem with being good at nearly everything is that you never get burned. You never fail bad, fall on yourself. I was the guy who sat in the back, didn't study, managed to do well. I go through phases where I will hyper learn things just because. From quantum physics, to forgeign languages, to the piano, to the middle east, to history, from engineering to literature to philosophy...the problem here is that I never choose anything, maybe only the philosophy of life. I never wanted to make a decision. I still don't!

Odd. Probably not. I can never stand the thought of doing something that I detest. For me it is the easy way out. If you never decide on the big choices you can never be wrong. Gasp. Herein lies my fascination with the movie "Good Will Hunting." Smart guy, but he cuts everything off early for fear of failing and thus never did anything. He leaves behind love, jobs, his intellect. Now he turns it around and "goes to see about a girl" but the point is still the same. However as an aside, my favourite scene in that movie is when Will and his southie boys go into a Harvard bar and as the Ben Affleck character flirts with a Harvard girl the snooty Harvard grad student. He starts to drill Ben's character in an attempt to show how ignorant Ben's character is. Good Will pops up and starts ti peg the guy...1st year grad student reading a marxist historian, the flavour of the year, then he would move to Lemon then Wood, etc. The grad student retorts by starting to quote a critque (unattributed of course) about Lemon which Will finishes and then asks the grad student if that's how he gets girls, by memorizing obscure texts and then repeating them to girls. Then the whole 150 grand for an education he could have recieved i n $1.50 in late fees at the library is priceless (and true?).

I digress.

Time to make decisions? Yes. Always time. Time, time,time.

On a lighter note, when I was picking up my computer, I peeked over the desk to look at what the technicians were doing. It turns out they were watching YouTube tutorials about how to repair laptops. I mean, I guess that is good...staying up to date.

A slight haitus

Sorry for the lack of posts. It seems that my har drive decided to fail me at a crucial time, holiday. But rather than serving as another nuisance of which I hate to take care, it actually helped me regain some focus.

This previous break was the first time in a while I read for pure pleasure. An act which always seems to escape me anymore. However, over the course of the break, without the fear of impending deadlines (though some did exist as they often do) I partook in reading books that I really wanted. To begin as one always should, with the trivial.

Kitchen Confidential. A friend gave it to me, knowing that I love to cook and often do. It is a book by the chef Anthony Bourdain, made famous by his stint on the travel channel as the host of No Reservations. I read it and found it to be great. A great deal of useful tips and years of cooking experience mixed with underworld ties, copious amounts of drugs and alcohol and probably a lot of bullshit story telling. It was a great story and a quick read.

Freud and the Non-European. By Edward Said. Well this one wasn't totally pleasure, I always have a means, but critical theory is my life, so it was rather fun. Basic premise is that the Jewish identity is at its center a fractured core. This is no anti-Semitic, so please don't accuse me of such beliefs. I think it does say something interesting. Moses was an Egyptian, yes we all can agree, thus he is isolated both from Europe (pre and post european ideals [pre WWII aka Hitler]) Thus at the center of the Jewish identity is this double outsiderness. Fascinating outlook in the wake of the current events going on over there, no?

A Book of French short stories. Various authors, though it appears that the unnamed editor selectively choose from 19th century authors, which has something to say coming out of 1840s and the memories of Napoleon no doubt. My favourite, about a young journalist who interviews an author (posing as a fellow author/poet) who soon realises what the Age of Love is. The article soon becomes that interview in a final twist. Another, a story of a Corsican child who betrays a theif for a watch. The father then executes his child for his treachery to the theif. Very poignant to say the least. Does it say something about the culture and tha author? Perhaps. There is something to celebrate about loyalty though and this is to the extreme.Did learn what a maquis is.

Paul Celan. Brilliant poet. I would read him if I were you.

Borges. Where to begin. I love the man, so this break I took the time to read through his fiction again. The stories all centering around some twilight zone-esque twist. The richness of the narrative and the (sur)reality of the characters and setting is breathtaking. My favourite? I do not know. A cross/tie between Funes the Memorious (the man who can remember everything perfectly to the point that thought becomes a distraction from his seeing and knowing everything) and The Library of Bable. A labyrith of books, every book written including the books that explain life and tell the future and the librarians who read them. They always have a story to tell.

I also sprinkled in some Derrida, just for good measure.

Addendum
Breakfast at Tiffany's and other shorts by Capote. I liked the movie...I always felt people missed the message though. Everyone was drawn to Hepburn's good looks and fashion (which I understand) but I always thought there was some deeper meaning behind the story. A slightly more cynical and harsher look to reality and society. Well in the book there is. Novella I should say. Favourite line "It should take you eight seconds to get from here to the door. You have two."


I am sorry that this post isn't all that interesting, but I have to get back into the swing of things. It is always nice to remove oneself from technology every once and a while, just to remember what life is. Which is to say that life and technology and life are not tied, which they are, but to see what things are as distance increases, how the attractive forces diminish (porportional to 1/r^2...kidding, but seriously) .