= :: 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 :: 0