Sunshine! Much needed rain is followed by a morning of sunlight. Often I take Nature for granted. Somehow it doesn’t come to mind that the most basic needs and pleasures of my life directly depends on the soil, upon moisture and light in proper measure. No application of technology can possibly counter the inexorable…
Everyone has ideas, even more than they need. What matters is the poetic singularity of analysis. Only this spirituality of language can justify writing. Not a critical objectivity of ideas. There will never be a solution to the contradiction of ideas, except inside language itself, in the energy and fortune (happiness) of language. Radical…
Several days ago I offered a short quote from Baudrillard in an email to several friends. The objection was made that I had not given a context to ease understanding of the admittedly obscure lines. Once again here is an excerpt from Baudrillard’s essay Radical Thought. Added context would not make his words more…
I read an email this morning from a friend expressing anguish at the juxtaposition between the stunning accomplishments of mankind culturally and scientifically with the despoliation of Nature and the consequent global warming and climate catastrophe. It is hard to conceive of anyone now living who is not aware of the event of climate…
The Tears of Eros will remain as a barb in my consciousness, or better, a striation layer of my unconscious. The truth, always there, undisclosed by daylight – is like the black-backing of a mirror. I continue on to a second book by Georges Bataille, The Theory of Religion. What do I expect to…
This morning I finished reading, The Tears of Eros by Georges Bataille. I am sure the book is not finished with me. Bataille offers not an argument, but an assertion demonstrated by photography of artworks from the Paleolithic to the modern era, to paintings by various artists in the late 20th century. The book,…
Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been. -José Ortega y Gasset The typical greeting for encounter of any sort is “How is your day?” The expected reply is a chipper “Just great!” To answer simply “good” is sometimes received…
René Descartes is often quoted to emphasize reason as the hallmark of Enlightenment based culture of the West. Cogito, Ergo Sum. A pithy saying indeed, “I think therefore I am,” with Latin lending the words a patina of sophistication. Descartes by profession a mathematician naturally would be inclined to believe the clarity of reason…
Polaroid’s SX-70. It won’t let you stop. Suddenly you see a picture everywhere you look… now you press the red electric button. Whirr…whoosh …and there it is. You watch and your picture comes to life, growing more vivid, more detailed, until minutes later you have a print as real as life. Soon you’re taking…
Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death… Sexual reproductive activity is common to sexual animals and humankind, but only humankind appear to have turned their sexual activity into erotic activity. Eroticism is assenting to life even in death. [A] gulf exists, for instance, between you, listening…
