BERNEVAL

Brillat-Savarin is brilliant in this tortured yet elegant following of how constant complainers think.

I shall remark, in this connection, that those men who are never satisfied with anything are almost always ignorant people who criticize sharply in the hope that their daring will make them seem to know many things which in reality they have not had the capacity to learn.

Very satisfying sentence. The M.F.K. Fisher rendering twists appropriately. Note how the ear almost hears “opportunity to learn” and so is willing to be indulgent and forgiving but the ear clearly reads “capacity” and so the condemnation is all the greater.

And so for day 229
31.07.2007

Kathy Acker Empire of the Senseless, two passages juxtaposed. First about skin inscriptions:

Among the early Christians, tattoos, stigmata indicating exile, which at first had been forced on their flesh, finally actually served to enforce their group solidarity. The Christians began voluntarily to acquire these indications of tribal identity. Tattooing continued to have ambiguous social value; today a tattoo is considered both a defamatory brand and a symbol of tribe or of a dream.

Makes me wonder about the marks left by vaccination or the lesions of Kaposi’s sarcoma. Badges of progress. Signs.

Earlier in the novel:

I’ve always wanted to be a sailor.

The demand for an adequate mode of expression is senseless. Then why is there this searching for an adequate mode of expression? Was I searching for a social and political paradise? Since all acts, including expressive acts, are inter-dependent, paradise cannot be an absolute. Theory doesn’t work.

Theory might play. Like a drunken sailor.

And so for day 227
29.07.2007

A brief glimpse of another way of life from Bruce G. Trigger The Huron: Farmers of the North

Although fish and game were caught along the way, the Huron traveler carried a supply of cornmeal with him, as well as a clay pot that at various times was used to bail out the canoe, cook meals, and to urinate so as not to upset the canoe.

The meals were not cooked in the canoe. *smile*

And so for day 226
28.07.2007

Patricia Meyer Spacks in Boredom references

Adam Phillips, discussing boredom as a possible “developmental achievement” for children, observes that “it is one of the most oppressive demands of adults that the child should be interested. … Boredom is integral to the process of taking one’s time.” [ellipsis in Spacks]

The reference is to Adam Phillips On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life.

Into these considerations one might introduce a nuance and contrast being bored by with being bored with. Boredom in the company of others and boredom by oneself, in either case the cure may not be to recapture one’s time but to arrive at an understanding of time as not being a possession but a frame, that is to truly take one’s time is to go slow.

Boredom signals a shift in attention regardless of one’s relation, possessive or otherwise, to time. To sink into the boredom and appreciate its charms is indeed to go slow.

And so for day 225
27.07.2007

Juxtaposing the passage about language [langue] minus speech [parole] from Roland Barthes as translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith in Elements of Semiology

Moreover, this social product is autonomous, like a game with its own rules, for it can be handled only after a period of learning.

with a passage from Stephen Batchelor from Buddhism Without Beliefs

Who “I am” appears coherent only because of the monologue we keep repeating, editing, censoring, and embellishing in our heads.

and through mindful attentiveness and we observe that the sentence quoted above is preceded by this one

And instead of a coherent personality that stretches back in an unbroken line to a first memory and looks forward to an indefinite future, we discover a self ridden with gaps and ambiguities. Who “I am” appears […]

If there is a game in which one manages the pauses and the breaks, it is worth learning. Meditation as game. Gaming as language learning. Skipping along.

And so for day 222
24.07.2007