Sometimes analogies break down.
Computable is to potable as hardwidth is to bandwidth.
Water may flow from the tap but without a host of cups or glasses there is more of a communion trail than joyous toasting. Further: to taste is not to cook.
And so for day 51
03.02.2007
The context is mayoral. The truth universal.
Honest Ed’s is a commercial icon in the city of Toronto. Along with flashing lights, blow ups of newspaper copy adorn its exterior walls. Some two and a half feet off the ground one can read a passage from a text ascribed to Ed Mirvish:
Economics makes the mare go. But history and esthetics make the world livable. (Toronto Star 21.03.1972)
Depending upon your height and velocity, you have to slow down and crouch to read or make time to visit the archives. And chuckle if you know the meanings of “nag”.
And so for day 50
02.02.2007
Gianni Vattimo gave a talk in Toronto recently (Jan 30). His theme was the myth of Unity.
He spoke at some length about Foucault’s phrase “ontologie de l’actualité” which he connected in some fashion to Heidegger. Englishing the phrase one gets the “ontology of current events”, an apt expression to describe the currents that flow from an event and offers in a sense an ontology inflected towards emanations.
Unity with a capital U points upwards like the logical symbol for union; stood on its head, it is the symbol for intersection. It becomes possible to think unity in terms of connectedness and not merely as dominion. There is a way via Peirce to recoup the Thomastic transcendentals (Unity, Beauty, Goodness) of Being for a practice mindful of place and situation and co-federation — at least from the perspective of Canada, a confederation that was once a dominion.
And so for day 49
01.02.2007
Stray slips transcribed:
The task of the asker is to observe and test.
Descriptions engage risks. For me they are contingent; they are hypotheses.
There is a scientific cast to these inscriptions on slips of paper that are used as book markers. There is also an admonishment to read carefully — with a bit of room to spare for carefree perusal.
And so for day 48
31.01.2007
On Gore Vidal’s BookForum (Dec 06 /Jan 07) interview
I was prompted to read the BookForum interview with Gore Vidal by someone’s reaction to the remarks about the death of an American readership under the rubric “in memoriam literati”. It seems to me in reading the interview the whole question and answer exchange was conducted under the sign of irony.
I wonder if reading the words aloud circumvents the workings of what Vidal references as a “culture deaf to irony”.
The one passage in the interview that is novel for me and the one I find most challenging is the alignment of classical education, multiculturalism and a nuanced world view (the latter being a precondition for the appreciation of irony). Note that the question references Vidal as a “writer” not as a “famous novelist” [Vidal prior to this point in the interviews has to say the least problematized the category of “famous novelist” if not made it disappear from the discursive instance of the interview].
BF: Is there one book that you believe best evokes who you are as a writer?
GV: The one that I wish everybody would read is Creation. I spent years on that book, and anyone who reads it from beginning to end will learn about the Buddha, about Confucius, about Zoroaster, about Mahavira and the Jains. It’s very popular in countries which offer, more or less, classical educations. In the US, practically nobody knows about it because it’s not about family life, it’s not about marriage and divorce. Those seem to be the only subjects that American writers touch.
Ouch! Is that a call to read differently what already exists and not just an observation on the topics chosen by American writers? Yup. Vidal leaves open the door for correction of his “seem to be” observation. And that passage about readers, likewise: “I don’t think the novel is dead. I think the readers are dead.” Readers are dead. But the reader lives.
The greatly celebrated American individualism is alive and well in the republic of letters. The reader, the individual in open generous response in front of the writer’s offerings, be they novel, story, essay or interview, is the incarnated in the memory of the great figure that concludes the interview: Montaigne.
“Names refuse to come when bidden.”
Not naming is the essence of irony.
Non?
And so for day 47
30.01.2007
The German for House of Commons could be back translated dually as the house under us and the house among us.
Interesting to note in passing that few people in the Euro tradition inhabit dwellings by occupying the roof top exposed to the open sky.
And so for day 46
29.01.2007
Marquee screen saver words scroll left to right for months on end:
Nuance shades into meaning
and to be replaced by the following crawling across screen at the same tempo:
Attention is a reservoir of force
Sometimes sequels take a long time to emerge.
And so for day 45
28.01.2007
Going through boxes of notes and came across a single page date 19/05/90 written in French about a Quebecoise author, Louky Bersianik giving a reading and ending the reading with a poem from an anthology about a killer’s rampage that resulted in the death of fourteen women at the Ecole Polytechnique.
The note dwelt on detail. She closed the book as she was reading the last verse and put it aside as if to say voilà it’s done. What struck me was that the poem suspended a final image for consideration: a brother and a sister going through the same door — an image altogether absent from her work until now.
The note asks: what does it mean? The image and the gesture.
And in the same colour of ink below the note is an excerpt from Montaigne’s Essays (Book I Chap. iii)
Nous ne sommes jamais chez nous; nous sommes toujours au-delà
Never home always beyond.
Today I respectfully fold the note along the major of its creases (it bears the marks of having been kept in a pocket). The verso is blank. And I set the paper aside; the weight of the paper still lingering like an after-touch in the empty hand…
And so for day 44
27.01.2007
wine – vinegar – tears – laughter – water
Wine leads to laughter which gives rise to tears interpreted as water.
Wine ruins laughter and without bypass runs to tears and hence water.
Water into wine goes by way of the vinegar dressing the salad that feeds the vineyard tenderer.
And so for day 43
26.01.2007
olden silence golden guilt
And so for day 42
25.01.2007
