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:: Do not add up
117.
A possible method:
a) React.
b) Formulate a concept to rationalize and contextualize that reaction.
118.
I'm trying to bend beautiful things in strange ways to show their internal
structure. Ohh, how a bouquet teaches us new things about each individual
flower which we would never have known if we had only seen them individually.
(Similar: how each sentence teaches us more about the individual words
within it.)
119.
On the New York Times masthead: "All the News That's Fit to Print"
Changes:
a) Is all the news print to fit [?]
b) Fit all the news that's to [be] print.
c) Fitting all the news to print.
120.
As a student or teacher maybe you should ask:
"Can the planned situation be the lesson?"or
"How much must the teacher give and how much must the student
take?" and
"What is the perfect ratio of giving and taking?"
121.
Choose the size, shape, and influence of standard signs.
How loud is a stop sign when you are alone, on an empty street?
Group gives authority.
122.
If I wrote it all out or told you all about it, it might disappear
through a long process of definition:
a) Definition (stasis).
b) Cliché.
c) Erasure of meaning.
or
If I wrote it all down or told you all about it, maybe the known
definitions might help me to articulate myself.
123.
To protest
Wear a paper clip.
(Its cause must be known.)
A paper clip is free.
A paper clip is not obvious.
(Its meaning must be known
to a select group of people.)
P.S. The Norwegians protested Hitler by wearing paper clips, at least
that's the story I heard.
124.
Some clothes fit us very tightly (closely?, perfectly?) and from their
fit we say things like, "Those are my clothes." Other clothes
have a less forgiving fit and many people may wear them. I think of
philosophy like this. But this is my problem: I would love it if a
tailor measured me and created a perfectly fitting suit for me, but I
can only imagine how angry I would be if someone measured me
intellectually and spiritually, gave me a manuscript and asserted,
"This is your philosophy."
125.
Art for art's sake can be a political act if that art is reproducible
and disposable.
126.
Information is data which alters the receiver's perception of that data.
But because the receiver's perception of that one piece of data has been
altered means that their perception of the entire world has also been
altered. Compare with Bateson's notion: "information is a difference
that makes a difference".
127.
Chiasma:
Above the big field
Is a vast blanket of stars;
Below the vast blanket of stars
Is a big field.
128.
Can you talk and dance at the same time?
or
Can a system of articulation and abstraction be merged with a system of
physical form and bodily aesthetics?
129.
As an anti-capitalist, anti-materialist I cannot stand producing
objects, but as an artist it is a necessity. Jackson says that this is the
paradox which I must portray in the living of my life.
130.
If it is true that I am a product of this system, then I must realize that
my perceptions and actions upon these perceptions have been directed and
limited by this system.
131.
If you say that I am unbearably poetic I will say, "I make problems
like a poet would; I make strange messes of things in that manner. And
then, I try to establish what the mess actually consists of, what its
essential crux is, how it can be seen as a nest with the regularity of
breath in a poetic line."
132.
We have abstracted nature and attempted to recreate her on the basis of
this abstracted model.
133.
The circles have been set in the pantry. I have never seen such as that
in the pantry that has been arranged with circles. (Do you see? I tried
to make a circle with the above words, but grammar makes it difficult.)
134.
"The self is an entirety, we choose pieces to play, we pull off
chunks of that living bread and wine; we choose pieces of the self to
believe are ours; we play those pieces in this strange game, around and
around the merry-go-round. The fiction is fun, but sometimes
you get dizzy and cannot see the rest of the park (all the parts of the
self that you have not chosen). It blurs together. You blur together,
you feel whole, you feel holy with that bread and wine, but it is just
a piece, a piece you have chosen. And that you who has chosen is also
just a part of what was chosen." Yossarian Estragon Severin
135.
I never understood this concept of living in the present. I mean, if
the past is in your present consciousness then is it part of the present
or part of the past?
136.
I don't know, perhaps I can say that we fall onto the shaky ground of
meaning and grammar in much the same way that apples fall to the ground;
given my context, societal background, and biological background I have
no choice but to fall into meaning and grammar in the way I do. The way
in which I fall has become a law as real as the laws of gravitation, but
it is difficult to look at it this way for the laws of meaning and grammar
are not physical in the way in which the laws of gravitation are.
137.
"Although my eyes are clear, the world does not just spring forth
and meet them. Something is hidden, something quite hidden in the world
makes me believe that my eyes are not, in fact, clear but actually quite
blurry. Something hidden between the world and my eyes and yet something
quite holy, something holy and something mysterious. I often sit in dark
rooms and curse the fact that my eyes are not (yet) (quite) clear. But
then I calm myself and say that if my eyes were, in fact, clear then
everything would be known, nothing would be mysterious, and yes indeed,
I do enjoy the mysterious nature of the world, that unclear vision,
which I often vehemently curse, is the ultimate provider of the
act of searching..." Yossarian Estragon Severin
138.
Yes because I am a child lulling the words back into their homes, well not
their homes but the homes which I have built for them, the homes which my
mother and my kindergarten teacher help me fetch the bricks for. Yes because
I can choose anything and pretend that it has meaning, and in terms of giving
meaning, pretending is the actuality. Yes because I can choose any fern frond
and put a description of it into a sentence or leave it quite alone and never
take notice of it. Yes because I train myself to take notice. Yes because I
cannot ask for my meaning while laying down, I must run to it, I must run
over to transform it. Yes because the fact that sound and meaning are two
sides of a piece of paper (de Saussure) and cannot be taken away from each
other leads me to believe that building blocks have music and aesthetic
value -- a hidden one, a deeply hidden thing is the beauty of the
functional object. Yes because I can say yes and know what it means while
never have been explicitly taught its definition. Yes because there is a
poem in the etymology of every word. Yes because I've built an entire
community of homes for my little words, some vacancies occur, some of
the words own two homes, some of the words move, and yet there is still
a community for my words to inhabit.
139.
"First and foremost;
A raven cackles in the cedar
And I make a beautiful symbol out of it,
A symbol that could have led in many directions --
A symbol that could have been in many sentences.
But today the meaning of that symbol is determined
By its use in the sentence of my day."
Yossarian Estragon Severin
From "Caught in the Ox-House"
140.
Well, everyman and the shape of his mirror is so necessary and so
incomplete. They are always incomplete because of the rather simple fact
that they must take on a shape. The mirror must have a form and so the
man must have a blindspot, it's just the way it is, no complaints, just
notation on the nature of the way I can see and the way I cannot see.
Notation on the way I cannot see, can you really take notation on a
negative? I guess it's really taking notation on an affirmative and then
saying that everything that is not in the affirmative area is the
description of the negative area. Well, everyman again, I guess you
really make your own mirrors or eye-glasses if you like; it is
possible to decide how they shall be shaped. So, in a way, it is good
to know that each has necessary limitations so that you can perfect the
art of mirror production or lens grinding (depending on the image you
like). So, it is rather important to see that each pair of glasses is
limited in one fashion or another. But this is where this argument from
analogy falters and cannot go any further, for unlike glasses (which
you could, if taken to task, own as many pairs as you like); you cannot
have more than one set of perspectives; you cannot have more than one
posture. Even if you say that you do, by saying, for instance, that you
have both scientific and religious postures, you then do not have both
of these postures separately, but a mixture of these postures that
still equal one perspective.
141.
What will I do but tell a story of everything that I have done? And some
of what I have done has been to write this story of everything I have done
and so the act of writing this story must go in this big story of everything
I have done. Coming from something that Bertrand Russell wrote: the set of
all sets does and does not include itself as a member. And I think that this
subtle rule leads to many of life's better paradoxes.
But back to the story of everything I have ever done. I think that the idea
of writing a story about your life presupposes that the act of writing is not
an act of life and this, in turn, and through generalization, leads to the
assumption that making art is not part of life. This makes a person think
that somehow making art is in a way inferior to living life and completely
separate from it. I have no conclusions about whether this is right on
wrong, but for me, some of my best experiences and some of my best memories
have been of the act of writing.
142.
"What will I do today?" Kind of a strange question, I think I
need the world's cooperation in anything I might like to do.
143.
Discovery is a place,
Process is a place in our lives
That we want to go to more and more;
Rather like an Eden
With walls not of stone
But of actions.
Do not add up ::
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