.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

1 (0); 2 (1); 3 (0); 4 (0);
5(1); 6(1); 7(1); 8(2); 9(0); 10(0); 11 (2); 12(1); 13(0); 14 (2); 15 (0); 16 (0); 17 (0); 18 (0); 19 (0); 20 (0); 21(0); 22(0); 23 (0); 24 (0); 25 (0); 26(0); 27 (0); 28 (1); 29 (1); 30 (0); 31 (1); 32 (0); 33 (0); 34(0); 35 (0); 36 (0); 37 (1); 38 (2); 39 (0); 40 (0); 41 (0); 42 (0); 43 (0); 44 (0); 45 (0); 46 (0); 47 (0); 48 (0); 49 (0); 50(0); 51 (0); 52 (0); 53 (0); 54(1); 55 (1); 56 (1); 57 (0); 58 (0); 59 (0); 60 (0); 61 (0); 62 (0); 63 (0);

“It’s not very good.”

The reason this statement from the opening of Stevens’ dissent in the Heller decision struck me as interesting was for having echoed his earlier complaint in Citizen’s United (and Ginsburg’s in Shelby?) that the court was in breech of arbitrarily overturning a previous opinion of the court (of stare decisis )…. Stevens says this with some justice, I feel, and wonder if a loose respect for precedent will become a regular feature of the Roberts Court.

Some interesting Blood Meridian ideas in these lectures (1) (2). To build out the Moby Dick comparison a little more: the Glanton Gang like the Pequod; the taking of scalps like the taking of blubber; the almost total absence of women of in both; both having had a historical basis and relying on secondhand sources; (both maybe, who knows, a combination of history and personal history); the idiot and Pip; the westward motion; the philosophical sermonizing; the Delewares and the crew of Ahab’s whaleboat; (in general: the Glanton Gang and Pequod crew are both a rag tag, mixed-race, mixed-nationality group)…. On the other hand: what is the “white whale” of Blood Meridian? The monomania is equivalent but toward what, in Blood Meridian, is it directed? Blood itself?

I didn’t find convincing the lecturer’s arguments that the kid was not a moral figure or that the Judge, at the conclusion, is somehow celebrating his existence as an enduring literary character,– and her talk about the syntax of the bible I thought to be reaching — nevertheless

Hejinian’s My Life if carried to the extreme, would be an amalgam of lives, our lives (maybe a Democratic Response to Plutarch’s Lives) (‘I’ would be a node in the demotic net, ‘I’ would be simply one of the many many security cameras, however not necessarily meant for security, possibly meant for something antagonistic to security — meant for comedy, for example):

Each ‘Life’ written in the same manner, with the same style and ‘I’, or ‘voice’. but from a different security camera view point– it would probably wind up as, most of all, the editor’s life. (I guess: the ‘Life’ of a true democracy would be the combined but edited input of all these cameras).

I say this would be My Life carried to the extreme because Hejinian I think strives in her book for a sort of Democracy of the moments of her life (but this is more something the book has made me think rather than something I’m sure she herself thinks) and that such a democracy suggests a further mingling of her atoms of moments of life with others’ atoms of moments of life. That all atoms of Life would be comprised by Our Life. My life may look different from yours but not so the atoms of our lives, which are the essential building blocks of life.

Clarify: the more we say that one moment of our life is no different from another — for example, our birthday the same as someone else’s birthday, or the moment we take out the trash, from the moment we give birth to a child, (or establish a true relationship with a child)– the more we say that our life is another’s –: the more all moments are equally valuable, the more all people are equally ourselves.

Konso (Received a necklace from friend M. said to be from Konso. Konso people.)

It was as if, he thought, the print within quotes meant and sounded the same as the print outside of the quotes, the print in italics like the print without italics, the words inside like those outside his head.… Slotation: Back Into Balance

Oregon black exclusion laws: The law authorized a punishment for any black settler remaining in the territory to be whipped with “not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes” for every six months they remained.