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More on Diversity and Moral Character

Norman Brosterman in Inventing Kindergarten No two days in the kindergarten week were exactly the same. Gifts and occupations changed, music and games were varied, nature walks and gardening were included, and daily themes rotated — unity in diversity was … Continue reading

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Cleverness

Jane Jacobs’s characterization of the doubleness of cheats in Dark Age Ahead hints at a connection between lying and the unbridled wish for more of the same: Greed becomes culturally admired as competence, and false or unrealistic promises as cleverness. … Continue reading

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Vector Sector

There is something of boyhood memories of an advertising campaign that crossed cereals with gasoline (“Put a Tiger in Your Tank”) in this line full of internal rhyme: There’s a Vector in your Sector. A sector has a circumference and … Continue reading

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Slithering sentence

I like how this sentence whispers its theme in a grammatical pile up that forces attention to the parsing. I like how the emphasized words form a scheme of their own: can – should – is. We live in a … Continue reading

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Time Gate

Todd May in Gilles Deleuze: an introduction has a passage that recalls for me Benjamin’s invocation of the jetztzeit: If we think temporally with Bergson, the world is always more than it seems, always fraught with differences that can actualize … Continue reading

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Pleasant imperfections

I juxtapose two quotations. One seems to comment on the other. Roland Barthes in the preface to Sade / Fourier / Loyola reaffirms for us (in case we forgot) that “The text is an object of pleasure.” Chapter 4 “Perfection” … Continue reading

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Hermetic theft

Shoshana Fehlman in a book on Lacan writes Each time the analyst speaks, interprets in the analytic situation, he gives something asked of him. What he gives, however, is not a superior understanding, but a reply. […] the interpretative gift … Continue reading

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Capture

Through the cackle crackle of screen or page came the reversal that turned to pur from rup. A sequence reversal but not a mirror projection: the letterforms stay intact (different places, same orientations). And now, and here, a palindrome-like but … Continue reading

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Breath Control

[Reprise with variation] “Don’t talk with your mouth full.” The child mumble-hummed the cadences of speech with a mouthful of wet crunch. The precision was admired by the adult. A closed mouth. Using one’s head to resonnate round food lumps. … Continue reading

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Secularism

Thich Nhat Hahn, Calming The Fearful Mind: A Zen Response to Terrorism At that retreat, I offered a nonsectarian version of the Three Refuges, the traditional Buddhist affirmation. I offer this version to you here. I have great confidence in … Continue reading

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