the hand sidles over the page as the pencil follows the hand’s arc…

The Statue of Las Vegas: “the surface that isn’t level with itself”

Wiki:

Ecolab, Inc., is a St. Paul, Minnesota based sanitation supply company founded in 1923. It was named “Economics Laboratory” before its name was changed to Ecolab in 1986.

Dysphemism, antonym to euphemism. Epicedium, funeral song, dirge.

6. [6.]
ἐς δὲ τὰ ἔσχατα νουσήματα αἱ ἔσχαται θεραπεῖαι ἐς ἀκριβείην, κράτισται.

Etymologies: Normal / ordinary / Standard. Mediocre indicates “halfway up a mountain” and, ornery is an american contraction arising out of ‘ordinary.’

“Oh! je portais ma pauvreté fièrement. Un homme qui pressent un bel avenir marche dans sa vie de misère comme un innocent conduit au supplice, il n’a point honte.” Balzac, The Shagreen Skin (120). (Translate).

………………………..[…] Then Pierre felt that deep in him lurked a divine
………..unidentifiableness,that owned no earthly kith or kin. Yet was
………..this feeling entirely lonesome and orphan-like. Fain, then,
………..for one moment, would he have recalled the thousand sweet
………..illusions of Life; though’ purchased at the price of Life’s Truth; so
………..that once more he might not feel himself driven out an infant
………..Ishmael into the desert, with no maternal Hagar to accompany
………..and comfort him.

Cette clémence dont on fait une vertu se pratique tantôt par vanité, quelquefois par paresse, souvent par crainte, et presque toujours par tous les trois ensemble.

This leniency, ascribed to virtue, is practiced at times through vanity, sometimes through sloth, often through fear, and nearly always through the three of them together.

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the interior of my hand on the front of the shirt and the exterior of my hand on the back of my shirt… STREAM WATER

t………..M mc………..
m………..t a….o…….
...v v iR
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.. hl……………,,,,,a i
..ta. gurnard A R I
..e. c ………….,,,,,.v a
.m h ……….,,,,,.i r
.o. i v airvair
..e a ……..,,,,,.v a v
.. hl……………,,,,,a i
..ta…………..,,,. A R I
..e. c hydropticv a
.m h ……….,,,,,.i r
..o. i ….v airvair.
w …………a R
n………..a..v
c….e a…t
…..e a .,,,,,.v a v
.. hl……………,,,,,a i
…ta.. swot…. A R I
..e. c ……….,,,,,.v a
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.o. i avair

“NAUSCOPIE” (the alleged capacity to detect the appearance of a sailing ship beyond the horizon by visual means only) and my own feeling that I can detect good and bad writing –discern the one from the other– by merely looking at it: that is, not by reading or comprehending it, but just looking at the words as one might look at a drawing to discern whether it is good or bad. Nauscopie of writing: by which art the space between the words indicate the quality of the writing.

As ridiculous as this sounds, and surely is, I remain half serious about it, having noticed about my bad writing a certain ‘look’ — though by ‘good and bad’ probably something like ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ is meant, or ‘beginning and advanced student’, rather than the more or less interesting works of a professional, for example. As if the spacing of words held a clue. (Could I tell from looking at a latin text, which I don’t understand, which was the work of Horace and which the work of a Roman teenager? Or does my special ability of logoscopie apply only to English?)

In sum, I don’t think I could distinguish between the major and minor works of Kant, or between the stronger and weaker arguments of a supreme court case just by looking, but perhaps between the work of a better and worse student? or the work of a student when he has tried more and tried less?

This might be an interesting experiement: present subjects with the closing arguments of legal cases (or even the majority and dissenting opinions of supreme court cases) and ask them “just by looking” to say which they think has the stronger argument, and which they thought won the argument, and which argument they thought most agreed with their own sense of justice. (1) do their glances have any predictive power? (2) supposing not, how do their glances inform their judgment? (3) supposing so, is their glancing more predictive than their reading? That is, does their glance tell them more than their reading does?

Earlier this week transpired my first editing of wikipedia. This was the phrase: “However, the Athenians recaptured Toroni under Nicias, just before the return of Brasidas, who was 2 miles away.” (My edit was to change Nicias to Cleon.)

Some things that surprised me: (i) it was very easy. I was looking for an address to inform someone about what I thought to be an error, and found it simpler to correct the error myself. (ii) Nicias had been hyperlinked in the text to Niciases wikipedia page, and when I changed it to Cleon, that link automatically changed to Cleon’s wikipedia page. (iii) didn’t need to log in or create an account. The whole process took 30 seconds, a minute.

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occupy wallstreet as “the real representation of the left” (an extreme or uncompromised form of it) (“democrats” perhaps being the compromised form of it or being thought of as its compromised form, maybe being its own thing apart from “the left”) (“real” meaning “bringing Christianity to Christendom”) (No: “real” being “what is called ‘collectivism'”) (No: “real” meaning The Philosopher King) the aim is only to communicate and never to do, communication is action in this world: there is only politics, never governance, and yet that governs

tea party as an unreal inauthentic version of the extreme right; (the authentic extreme right would be entirely apolitical: it would be Polyphemos, Buddha, Thoreau, indifferent to politics, pure individualism) (the uncompromised conservative is the serene Buddha???)

(Nazis as the “real”, meaning thoroughly militarized, version of the inauthentic extreme right.) (Inauthentic because concerned with other humans –with politics– when their true interest is individuals –speech, let alone violence, is too much interaction.)

The extremes as being devoted to peaceful activity or inactivity above all else –is one one of, or one in, many?– is the distinction.

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It occurred to the man that ‘Magma Square’ might be a good name for a bustling suburban town center, with shops, restaurants, bars, and a skating rink or park. Magma square: You could even have some real magma in the center of it as an attraction, an attraction, yes– but it might also have an industrial application… Magma Square 1,2

“Moving Day” — Vanessa Bell — atermoiements — tergiversation

Making notes a while ago about Proust and Schopenhauer’s idea of the Will-less Subject, I wondered aloud how Joyce’s idea of epiphany might be related — was it something similar to the Proust/ Schopenhauer idea or something opposite? I tentatively came down in favor of the latter, but lamented that I didn’t know where to find a good definition of epiphany.

I’ve now chanced upon a pretty good account of it at the opening of Anthony Burgesses Re Joyce, who reproduces (pp.37) a definition from Stephen Hero:

By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments

Burgess, on the same page, goes on to describe a passage from A Portrait, in which it’s made reasonably clear that the artist’s active role is essential to the occurrence of the epiphanic. The artist separates an object from all others, this passage says, and, through careful consideration of its parts, enables its quidditas or whatness, to shine through; thus, through the artist, does “the object achieve its epiphany.”

Below, I’m reproducing Schopenhauer’s passage about the Will-less subject, which I’m aligning with Proust’s approach to art, but feel that whether you consider this approach similar or dissimilar to Joyce’s, in the end the question must remain a bit murky and dependent on how you define certain terms. (For example, what does Schopenhauer mean by “calm contemplation” below? Is it a “careful consideration of its parts” like in The Portrait?) There is the additional complication that Joyce’s expressed understanding of epiphany seems to have evolved over time. In spite of this –and in spite of how much more passive the Proust/ Schopenhauer idea may seem on its face– I’ve reversed my former opinion, and feel intuitively these ideas of art (in which can perhaps be included Marcel Duchamp’s “inframince” as well) suggest aspects of a similar approach.

Here, again, is World as Representation, 1.2.4, trans. Payne, pp.178:

“Further, we do not let abstract thought, the concepts of reason take possession of our consciousness, but instead of all this, devote the whole power of our mind to perception, sink ourselves completely therein, and let our whole consciousness be filled by the calm contemplation of the natural object actually present, whether it be a landscape, a tree, a rock, a crag, a building, or anything else. We lose ourselves entirely in this object to use a pregnant expression; in other words, we forget our individuality, our will, and continue to exist only as pure subject, as clear mirror of the object, so that it is as though the object alone existed without anyone to perceive it, and thus we are no longer able to separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one, since the entire consciousness is filled and occupied by a single image of perception.”

ahold…Mainly used in phrases such as catch, lay, take or get ahold of, on or upon something. I’d had no idea this was a single word and thought it was a typo when I came across it in the nyt the other day:

“It seems like the counterintelligence investigation should have been opened up against the Hillary campaign once it got ahold of the dossier.”

There does not, however, appear to be an agrip as in the phrase “get agrip on yourself.”

Pherecydes was said to have been the first writer to communicate philosophical musings in prose….Pherecydes

Famously, Bichat defined life as “those set of functions which resist death”… Marie François Xavier Bichat

και οταν αγωσιν υμας παραδιδοντες, μη προμεριμνατε τι λαλησητε, αλλ’ ο εαν δοθη υμιν εν εκεινη τη ωρα τουτο λαλειτε · ου γαρ εστε υμεις οι λαλουντες αλλα το πνευμα το αγιον.

προμεριμνατε < προμνεριναω, worry ahead of time.

And when they lead you to be handed over, do not prepare what you will say, but speak that which is given to you in that hour; for it will not be you that speaks but the holy spirit.

Script to Beckett’s “Play” / / de La Comédie humaine . . De Profundis 0 0 rimbaud ‘ // ART BY AFRICAN AMERICANS AT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS IN BOSTON””The Man on the Dump ”’ Shooting of Laquan McDonald/ Voyage en Espagne… The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history

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VOX // Fun fact: On April 21, 2017, National Grid (the UK’s grid manager) reported that the country’s energy system had gone its first full day without any use of coal since the Industrial Revolution.