Recovery continues from Covid. Paxlovid, the anti-viral med seems to be working. Thus far I am able to read and to write. I could be much worse off. I feel gratitude. This is a segment from this morning’s New York Times concerning the collapse and cardiac arrest of Buffalo Bill’s Damar Hamlin on Monday…
“Good luck” lasts only so long. The smile of fortune is just that, — a smile. Nothing in this world lasts indefinitely. I am contending with Covid. No need to describe the unpleasant fever and a cough. Many have been afflicted with the virus, and many have died. Illness is an opportunity to consider…
How can one avoid knowing once —then again, and endlessly— the lie of the objects for which we burn? Nevertheless, in this senseless darkness, more distant than every nonsense, than every collapse, passion still lacerates me to “communicate” to those I love the news of this nightfall, as if this “communication,” and none other,…
Sunday is the first day of 2023. As we mark time, the New Year has begun. We chose to spend New Year’s Eve dining at Foxfire in Geneva. We were seated at our table promptly in accord with our reservation and expectation. The table service was as efficient, our server communicated a warmth that was…
New Year’s eve! Here is a fragment of a poem, Nothing New by Richard Greene: The world doesn’t stop at midnight like a train changing engineers. There’s no bump in the road of time. The scene hasn’t changed. The characters remain the same. The play goes on as before. Dramatic climax is no more…
The Germans are undoubtedly giving up. The artillery in the night shakes the doors. At dusk, twenty some inexpressibly violent explosions (an important ammunition depot went up): I felt the shock of the air between my legs and shoulders. Seven kilometers away, the flames lit up the sky. I saw one of the explosions…
The newsis as manufactured a productas an electric toothbrush and issubject to the same market forces and prevailing power system.You do not make toothbrushes under capitalismto stop people buying more of them.in the same way, media product is presentedas desirable and necessary, more of it is nicer still. Television, is controlled, not by its…
If everone breath came to me of that heavenly needthat constrains even accidentsto dance star-dances; If I everlaughed the laughter of creative lightningwhich is followed obediently but grumblinglyby the long thunder of the deed; If I everplayed dice with gods at their table,the earth, till the earth quaked and burst and snortedup floods of…
Among the worst mistakes a prisoner could make was to watch (to notice) another prisoner’s mistreatment. There the SS seemed totally irrational, but only seemed so. For example, if a SS man was killing off a prisoner and other prisoners dared to look at what was going on in front of their eyes he…
…if there is no great machine in the name of which to speak, how is action set, how can action be required, and what is to be done? –excerpt On Nietzsche, by Georges Bataille, trans. by Stuart Kendall, p. 143 Monday is the “day after”. Christmas day was yesterday. I’m never able…
