1 :: Do not add up
  
 
 
 
171.
 
Can we say "change" quietly? Or does a change in one aspect of yourself mean a change in all aspects such that it would be possible to not even notice that any change had occurred at all because your general outlook had been altered so much that even your criteria for change had changed?
 
 
172.
 
It is a great distress to realize ourselves; to know what we need to not betray in order to be authentic and also to know that that authentic portion of ourselves might distress or shock those who we love.
 
 
173.
    What makes the perfect leaf?
    My lover and I have long been contemplating.
    Perhaps it is something which cannot be said
    but only shown.
    But we must try to say it
    even if we are so locked in this ox-house
    that we cannot see our way out o --
    We must be like bulls in a china shop,
    breaking every piece of finery
    and seeing what we can make out of the shards
    to describe all of these things
    which feel utterly indescribable.
 
174.
 
All artists are essentially stylists portraying their central crisis or crux or duality in a number of forms. Perhaps, I disagree with the view that all problems of the soul have a specific form that they need. Perhaps, I'd like to say that they have numerous formulations and no exact form, or that no form gets any closer than any other form. They are all just approximations.
 
 
175.
 
Does it take strength to say that your two major qualities are that you are a poet and a lover? None at all, if that is how you live your life.
 
 
176.
 
There are things which we may be able to ask of our lovers; perhaps slightly crazy things which would prevent us from being completely insane to those same lovers.
 
 
177.
 
My project: to never divide life but to view it as a whole, to view everything as a portion of it, but unretrievable without that whole.
 
 
178.
    A whole new way of thinking: no product, yet more than a process.
 
179.
    My new idea:
    People are whole, but divisible into parts...
    I am writer, artist, student, lover, etc...
     
    To truly love someone is to know
    that each of these parts exists
    and to make a relationship with each.
 
180.
    I interpret the part of your actions which I can see,
    I never interpret fully
    for I cannot be you;
    but how well I interpret
    is a function of
    how much of your action I have seen
    and how much I know about you.
 
181.
 
Against rhyme I should speak;
I mean that I should note that there is expression which is not song, I should note that there is irregular breath.
 
 
182.
    The long stories;
    The punch line is clear,
    but how I get there is not;
    a constrained but infinite number of pathways.
 
183.
    Against words,
    I should say
    that there are things
    which cannot be expressed,
    but we should try.
 
184.
    I am truly sorry
    I am in this state
    of disbelief,
    of not believing.
    You are the connection
    to the flowers
    and their wilting.
 
185.
    Let us look inside and judge.
    But what is judgment without
    an outer standard?
 
186.
 
I have an arrow in my mind, pointing. Somehow it needs a gesture to complete it. Bracket the arrow in the mind with the gesture of pointing, as one singular thought. But upon thinking about it again, the best I can say is that in some cases (depending upon what I want out of it) I can bracket the image in the mind and the gesture, on other occasions I must say that they are separate, on still other occasions I must bracket these with my entire day to complete the thought.
 
 
187.
    I give you an order: "Write a poem."
     
    You come back two hours later with a poem.
    Do I know what you've done?
In some sense, I will have no idea what you've done, for I will not have been watching you. In some sense, there is a black box in which a rule is followed, especially if part of the instructions for following that rule are that it must be done alone. This idea of a black box is silly because it is, in principle, unavoidable.
 
 
188.
 
New methods for addition:
    10+63=73 or 1063 or 6310 or JK or KJ or U...
Do you see? The first way is regular addition. In the second way the second term is placed behind the first term. In the third way the first term is placed behind the second term. In the fourth way a letter is assigned to each number (a=1, b=2, c=3, etc., when it gets above 26 then the letters repeat in their regular order) and then the second term is placed behind the first term. In the fifth way letters are again assigned to numbers but the first term is placed behind the second term. And in the sixth way a letter is assigned to the regular sum of the two terms.
 
 
189.
    Against fashion; I should say that all fashion is fascism.
 
190.
 
These scrap heaps of words, poor things being manhandled however I please. The structure of these scrap heaps are fairly well agreed upon, but remember that in any sort of scrap heap, some things rot and others grow mold, and look! there is a small tree in all of this rubble. We must try to make room for that small tree, even though many will tell us that it is our job to keep the scrap heap clean and well-ordered.
 
 
191.
    Now, as if I am a container
    who often forgets his contents,
    though I always remember the form,
    the essential shape,
    of this container.
 
192.
 
Perhaps I'm flashing as if between frames of a movie, between being an object and an observer of that object. Perhaps the unity of these frames is an ineluctable relation; perhaps I am nothing, nothing but the exactness of that relation.
 
 
193.
 
In itself nothing has relation, in itself something has an ineffable conclusion which is not even spoken by itself. In itself something is hidden, hidden even from itself, therefore we do the work of physics by attempting to understand how its form interacts with other forms.
  
 
194.
 
Rousseau writes in his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, "The body of a savage man being the only instrument he understands, he uses it for various purposes, of which ours, for want of practice, are incapable: for our industry deprives us of that force and agility, which necessity obliges him to acquire." If we take Mark Johnson seriously in his claim that semantics are generated from human's inescapable embodiment, then what is said here makes us realize that we have lost many of our first metaphors. We have lost the roots of our words and our metaphors because we have become distanced, by industry and convenience, from our own bodies. This all means that in the long run we will become distanced from the meanings of our own words.
 
 
195.
 
Two different kinds of language: The first is one of expression (i.e., the expression of pain, of joy, of love). And as the first expressions were expressions of existence, the language of expression can be seen to be intimately related to existence. The second kind of language is descriptive (i.e., describing a painting, a chair, a day, etc.). Descriptions bring out some aspect of what is being described, they bring out the essence of the thing described for a particular purpose. Expression is expression of existence and description is description of essence, and as existence precedes essence, so too must expression precede description. A thing must exist before it may be described. In his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Rousseau wrote: "The first language of mankind, the most universal and vivid, in a word the only language man needed, before he had occasion to exert his eloquence to persuade assembled multitudes, was the simple cry of nature." He wrote this to proclaim the primacy of an expressive language over a descriptive language. Expression before description also means nature before culture. Nature is the non-evaluated expression and culture is the evaluation of that description.
 
 
196.
 
"The real world-unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And being unattained, also unknown." Nietzsche from Twilight of the Idols. The real-world attained, yet also for that, it must seem to remain unattained. Why so? We often comfort ourselves by postulating unattainable unknowns (transcendent entities, the self, etc.). When really, in this simple apparent world it was quite hard enough to catch the wonder of it all. Just as it is hard to catch all of the spiritual and mythical that occurs in a fast-paced novel or a TV show or a self.
 
 
197.
 
If I continue throughout my life to be an intelligent person I will be embarrassed of all I have written here. I will want to say that I never had any of these thoughts. Perhaps I will even say, "How absurd it is that anyone could have such stupid thoughts." This is part of what it means to be a self.
 
 
 

Do not add up :: +