Woolf

 "Like a work of art," she repeated, looking from her canvas to the

drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And,

resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which

traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general

question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as

these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood

over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of

life? That was all--a simple question; one that tended to close in on

one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great

revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily

miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark;

here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley

and the breaking wave; Mrs. Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs. Ramsay

saying, "Life stand still here"; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment

something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to

make of the moment something permanent)--this was of the nature

of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal

passing and flowing (she looked at the clouds going and the leaves

shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay

said. "Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!" she repeated. She owed it all to her.

- To the Lighthouse 

Dangling Chad

 https://www.google.com/search?q=dangling+chad+election+2000+wiki

Henry Miller

All is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.

Immanence

 Immanence

Sight v. Sound

The geranium in the urn became startlingly visible and, displayed among

its leaves, he could see, without wishing it, that old, that obvious

distinction between the two classes of men; on the one hand the steady

goers of superhuman strength who, plodding and persevering, repeat the

whole alphabet in order, twenty-six letters in all, from start to finish;

on the other the gifted, the inspired who, miraculously, lump all the

letters together in one flash--the way of genius. 

- Virigina Woolf, To the Lighthouse 

By the Mark

 

Restaurants used to be one of the few places where you could have an experience that was completely human

 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/06/dining/pete-wells-how-restaurants-have-changed.html

Mushrooms

 

Mina Loy

The is Neither Life nor Death (1914-1915)

Only intensity,

And tame things

Have no immensity

- Mina Loy

Om - This sylable is the whole world.

Hook/egg

Swerve

"Why is it invariably I who swerves first? Why precisely me and not him?"

- Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

Brumaire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brumaire#:~:text=Brumaire%20(French%20pronunciation%3A%20%5Bb%CA%81ym%C9%9B%CA%81,(mois%20d'automne). 

Taiji

In Taiji (T'ai Chi) movement, follow the curve to be aware of the straight line. 

- Master Wu Yu-Hsaing

But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul.

- John Donne

The Friend

“This is not two friends who engage in thought”, Deleuze and Guattari write; “rather, it is thought itself which requires this division of thought between friends” (WIP: 69).

This operation takes place as if the personae were so many divers, descending from the plane of immanence into the sea below, where singularities lie scattered like so many stray pearls. Braving the depths, the personae collect these shimmering ordinates (chiffres) and then return to the surface, where these singularities will be thrown on a table of immanence like “a handful of dice from chance-chaos” (WIP: 75). With each throw, we induce the features that will be arrayed, collected and diagrammed in the concept. 

-  Gregg Flaxman

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 “Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent working over draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?

It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must b experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

#creativeevolution

Sata Sa Gnata

Sata Sa Gnata: Difference is better than resemblance.

The speech of silence is achieved when words, and their potential ability to hurt meaning, are done away with. Words entrap meaning, torture it, slice it into pieces the way a butcher cuts the meat of a slaughtered animal and serves it to us...In silence, meaning is no longer heard, but felt; and feeling is the best hearing, the best instrument for recording meaning. 

- Of Water and the Spirit, Malidoma Patrice Some

On Love

Genuine love neither presupposes a judgement nor is it a sentimentality. Its unique feature is that it is always love for a person; it is directed towards the person as reality. But what is reality? Certainly it is the other's physical charms, but also the other's mental-spiritual qualities, and over and above these there always remains that which is unfathomable. This is the true object of love. In proceeding towards its object love makes everything of value achieve the highest possible value ideally destined for it; and in this way it brings out the highlights of another's worth. Love elevates, it never degrades; at its highest pitch it is not love for something alien, but participation in it as something inalienable.

- Life of Naropa, Herbert Guenther

minor philosopher

King of Kong

About a month ago, I watched King of Kong with my then 11-yo son. I think we both really enjoyed it. Billy Mitchell, the villain, is the teeth in the ass of the bear, Steve Wiebe, who is even too shy to correct the referee Walter Day on the pronunciation of his own name. Somehow, in some weird way, Steve needed Billy to motivate him on to break the records. They were connected like an assemblage, the crystalline and the organic.

Follow the curve

Twenty-one years ago today, W.G. Sebald was driving to Norwich, the city explored in his internationally acclaimed novel The Rings of Saturn. He had just pulled on to the A-146 when his car “failed to follow the curve and drove straight into the opposite lane.” 

https://www.towntopics.com/wordpress/2022/12/14/thoughts-on-the-fine-art-of-vertigo-with-w-g-sebald-and-franz-kafka/

Unfold, enfold

 (encapsulate)

maths, theorems, precepts