Agamemnon, 88-91 english [Chorus]:

πάντων δὲ θεῶν τῶν ἀστυνόμων,
ὑπάτων, χθονίων,
τῶν τ᾽ οὐρανίων τῶν τ᾽ ἀγοραίων,
βωμοὶ δώροισι φλέγονται.

le givre… À travers la tempête, et la neige, et le givre, (*)

“Al volver del campo, almorzaré como un espartano y me pondré a trabajar, si trabajo puede llamarse reproducir en algunas cuartillas de papel todos los disparates que me han amargado la vida. El trabajo sería olvidarlos completamente.” (Altamirano, “Antonio.”)

The Altar to pity is said, in a footnote of my copy of Pausanius, probably to be the basis for the Ara Pacis, I said.

We should have Altars to Pity here, in this country, my friend said, as well as to concepts like Air, Dirt, Forethought, Rumor. No more people. Enough of that. Enough of people who did this or that. Altars to Dirt, altars to life, altars to stars, to repeated spelling errors, microbes, climate. Markers of what we don’t see that yet exists. (Perhaps Zeus is quite like The Atom, The Microbe.) Perhaps poems are all we can hope for to honor these things.

(Altars also to various other legal or latin terms, he added. I think an altar to 401ks would be good, and on the side there would be, etched in the marble, an explanation of what it was exactly, do you know? and of other financial and governmental terms and of technical existences still more obscure.)

The Body Casts The Vote

As a voter intellectually I may be decided — but there is to consider — that my body, who must actually cast the physically cast the vote, may not be decided or may decide in favor of something erratic and of something quite opposed to what I have decided.

I can’t intellectually will my vote to be cast– transfer my thought into the ballot box — and the body has a will of its own. And the will of the body, my friend added further, or what I might call One of its great wills, is that of total arbitrariness (which should be one of our altars too: Arbitrariness) — that of having decided deliberately to do one thing instead of another, but, in the event, “Doing Whatever”– either doing the opposite of what one has decided or doing what one has decided for reasons that are un-involved with, and not relevant to, and perhaps the opposite of, one’s initial decision.

Altar to Doing Whatever

Maybe the Will to Doing Whatever is not the body’s will but again attributable to oneself: it is a hatred or distrust of what one thinks, a disbelief in one’s ability to think. The thing you think is good turns out to be bad, and vice versa, and this happens again and again, this has happened so often, sowing distrust in your reasoning capacities and sowing “the will to whatever.”

There should be a god named Whatever and another called Thinks. And we should have, somewhere, for these gods, altars, said my friend. (Or even if they are only words and not gods, we should have altars made for them, altars beyond the words.)

cumplir –-desborda — decenas de miles— estruendoso “El silencio estruendoso de decenas de miles de personas caminando muy lentamente bajo la lluvia.” (*)

Nos vertus ne sont, le plus souvent, que des vices déguisés.

Our virtues are often only our disguised vices. [*]

The head, head, head, head, head, head.

Germany, Piketty continued, has “no standing” to lecture other nations about debt repayment, having never paid back its own debts after both World Wars.

“However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them,” Piketty said. “The French state suffered for decades under this debt. The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.” [Piketty interview, from last year.]

Hills, Sheep, Horizons:

O great vault through which I enter the store
Through which customers, countless as air,
have passed like the notes of a flute,
and sat like the lacing of a corset,
Today I also offer my salute:”

I read this passage of the Federalist Papers over and over again without being able to make any sense of it, until I realized I had no idea –or rather, had an incorrect idea– of what ‘venial’ meant (Federalist 37):

It is but just to remark in favor of the latter descriptions, that as our situation is universally admitted to be peculiarly critical, and to require indispensably that something should be done for our relief, the predetermined patron of what has been actually done may have taken his bias from the weight of these considerations, as well as from considerations of a sinister nature. The predetermined adversary, on the other hand, can have been governed by no venial motive whatever. The intentions of the first may be upright, as they may on the contrary be culpable, The views of the last cannot be upright, and must be culpable.

It means excusable, forgivable, (I had confused it with venal.)

Crito, 49 δ]

σκόπει δὴ οὖν καὶ σὺ εὖ μάλα πότερον κοινωνεῖς καὶ συνδοκεῖ σοι καὶ ἀρχώμεθα ἐντεῦθεν βουλευόμενοι, ὡς οὐδέποτε ὀρθῶς ἔχοντος οὔτε τοῦ ἀδικεῖν οὔτε τοῦ ἀνταδικεῖν οὔτε κακῶς πάσχοντα ἀμύνεσθαι ἀντιδρῶντα κακῶς, ἢ ἀφίστασαι καὶ οὐ κοινωνεῖς τῆς ἀρχῆς;

*

(English, Harold North Fowler) Do you therefore consider very carefully whether you agree and share in this opinion, and let us take as the starting point of our discussion the assumption that it is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return. Or do you disagree and refuse your assent?

Form and perform. Perhaps they do.

Crito 51c– 52δ. [English]. Socrates, in the person of the laws of Athens, argues it is unjust to break them.

51c Σωκράτης: ‘σκόπει τοίνυν, ὦ Σώκρατες,’ φαῖεν ἂν ἴσως οἱ νόμοι, ‘εἰ ἡμεῖς ταῦτα ἀληθῆ λέγομεν, ὅτι οὐ δίκαια ἡμᾶς ἐπιχειρεῖς δρᾶν ἃ νῦν ἐπιχειρεῖς. ἡμεῖς γάρ σε γεννήσαντες, ἐκθρέψαντες, παιδεύσαντες, μεταδόντες ἁπάντων ὧν οἷοί τ᾽ ’‘

[51δ] ἦμεν καλῶν σοὶ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πᾶσιν πολίταις, ὅμως προαγορεύομεν τῷ ἐξουσίαν πεποιηκέναι Ἀθηναίων τῷ βουλομένῳ, ἐπειδὰν δοκιμασθῇ καὶ ἴδῃ τὰ ἐν τῇ πόλει πράγματα καὶ ἡμᾶς τοὺς νόμους, ᾧ ἂν μὴ ἀρέσκωμεν ἡμεῖς, ἐξεῖναι λαβόντα τὰ αὑτοῦ ἀπιέναι ὅποι ἂν βούληται. καὶ οὐδεὶς ἡμῶν τῶν νόμων ἐμποδών ἐστιν οὐδ᾽ ἀπαγορεύει, ἐάντε τις βούληται ὑμῶν εἰς ἀποικίαν ἰέναι, εἰ μὴ ἀρέσκοιμεν ἡμεῖς τε καὶ ἡ πόλις, ἐάντε μετοικεῖν ἄλλοσέ ποι ἐλθών, ἰέναι ἐκεῖσε ὅποι ’‘

[51ε] ἂν βούληται, ἔχοντα τὰ αὑτοῦ. ὃς δ᾽ ἂν ὑμῶν παραμείνῃ, ὁρῶν ὃν τρόπον ἡμεῖς τάς τε δίκας δικάζομεν καὶ τἆλλα τὴν πόλιν διοικοῦμεν, ἤδη φαμὲν τοῦτον ὡμολογηκέναι ἔργῳ ἡμῖν ἃ ἂν ἡμεῖς κελεύωμεν ποιήσειν ταῦτα, καὶ τὸν μὴ πειθόμενον τριχῇ φαμεν ἀδικεῖν, ὅτι τε γεννηταῖς οὖσιν ἡμῖν οὐ πείθεται, καὶ ὅτι τροφεῦσι, καὶ ὅτι ὁμολογήσας ἡμῖν πείσεσθαι οὔτε πείθεται οὔτε πείθει ἡμᾶς, εἰ μὴ καλῶς τι ποιοῦμεν, προτιθέντων ἡμῶν καὶ οὐκ ἀγρίως ἐπιταττόντων ποιεῖν ἃ ἂν κελεύωμεν, ἀλλὰ ἐφιέντων δυοῖν θάτερα, ἢ πείθειν ἡμᾶς ἢ ποιεῖν, τούτων οὐδέτερα ποιεῖ.

ταύταις δή φαμεν καὶ σέ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ταῖς αἰτίαις ἐνέξεσθαι, εἴπερ ποιήσεις ἃ ἐπινοεῖς, καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα Ἀθηναίων σέ, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα.’ εἰ οὖν ἐγὼ εἴποιμι: ‘διὰ τί δή;’ ἴσως ἄν μου δικαίως καθάπτοιντο λέγοντες ὅτι ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα Ἀθηναίων ἐγὼ αὐτοῖς ὡμολογηκὼς τυγχάνω ταύτην τὴν ὁμολογίαν. φαῖεν γὰρ ἂν ὅτι ’‘ὦ Σώκρατες, μεγάλα ἡμῖν τούτων τεκμήριά ἐστιν, ὅτι σοι καὶ ἡμεῖς ἠρέσκομεν καὶ ἡ πόλις: οὐ γὰρ ἄν ποτε τῶν ἄλλων Ἀθηναίων ἁπάντων διαφερόντως ἐν αὐτῇ ἐπεδήμεις εἰ μή σοι διαφερόντως ἤρεσκεν, καὶ οὔτ᾽ ἐπὶ θεωρίαν πώποτ᾽ ἐκ τῆς πόλεως ἐξῆλθες, ὅτι μὴ ἅπαξ εἰς Ἰσθμόν, οὔτε ἄλλοσε οὐδαμόσε, εἰ μή ποι στρατευσόμενος, οὔτε ἄλλην ἀποδημίαν ἐποιήσω πώποτε ὥσπερ οἱ ἄλλοι ἄνθρωποι, οὐδ᾽ ἐπιθυμία σε ἄλλης πόλεως οὐδὲ ἄλλων νόμων ἔλαβεν εἰδέναι, ἀλλὰ ἡμεῖς ’‘

[52ξ] σοι ἱκανοὶ ἦμεν καὶ ἡ ἡμετέρα πόλις: οὕτω σφόδρα ἡμᾶς ᾑροῦ καὶ ὡμολόγεις καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς πολιτεύσεσθαι, τά τε ἄλλα καὶ παῖδας ἐν αὐτῇ ἐποιήσω, ὡς ἀρεσκούσης σοι τῆς πόλεως. ἔτι τοίνυν ἐν αὐτῇ τῇ δίκῃ ἐξῆν σοι φυγῆς τιμήσασθαι εἰ ἐβούλου, καὶ ὅπερ νῦν ἀκούσης τῆς πόλεως ἐπιχειρεῖς, τότε ἑκούσης ποιῆσαι. σὺ δὲ τότε μὲν ἐκαλλωπίζου ὡς οὐκ ἀγανακτῶν εἰ δέοι τεθνάναι σε, ἀλλὰ ᾑροῦ, ὡς ἔφησθα, πρὸ τῆς φυγῆς θάνατον: νῦν δὲ οὔτ᾽ ἐκείνους τοὺς λόγους αἰσχύνῃ, οὔτε ἡμῶν τῶν νόμων ἐντρέπῃ, ἐπιχειρῶν διαφθεῖραι, πράττεις ’

‘ [52δ] τε ἅπερ ἂν δοῦλος ὁ φαυλότατος πράξειεν, ἀποδιδράσκειν ἐπιχειρῶν παρὰ τὰς συνθήκας τε καὶ τὰς ὁμολογίας καθ᾽ ἃς ἡμῖν συνέθου πολιτεύεσθαι. πρῶτον μὲν οὖν ἡμῖν τοῦτ᾽ αὐτὸ ἀπόκριναι, εἰ ἀληθῆ λέγομεν φάσκοντές σε ὡμολογηκέναι πολιτεύσεσθαι καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς ἔργῳ ἀλλ᾽ οὐ λόγῳ, ἢ οὐκ ἀληθῆ.’ τί φῶμεν πρὸς ταῦτα, ὦ Κρίτων; ἄλλο τι ἢ ὁμολογῶμεν;

ambassador bug I:

I launched the hand fully and forcefully from the area of my immediate body to that of the knob of the door with neither a flinch nor a blench.

…

I am now still attempting to slide my thumb down the ridges of pages (if I slide too far I get to the T’s; if I get to the T’s I might have to involve my second hand to get back to the S’s, if I have to involve my second hand in order to get to the S’s I might lose my place in the front part of the book where the phrase is that I’m now looking up) (the fingers of my second or left hand are in three places: on the outside of the cover; on the page where the exercise is with the phrase I’m now looking up; and on the left of the pages I’ve now opened the book to) but I’m not achieving anything, the page of the R’s has not yet budged.

This is not because the page has stuck but because I haven’t yet applied enough force or dug my thumb down the line of the ridge: intellectually I have yet to accept the risk of finding myself in the T’s, or worse than the T’s, even farther from the R’s. I’m staring intently at my thumb on the right side of the book and much feels like it’s happening although nothing is moving.

This isn’t exactly how this happened, but it doesn’t matter, because none of this matters, and eventually the page turns in a desirable manner.

Kanyakumari
Puranas Ganesha
Memphis Group squidge
cohete Toi invasion violac
Archibald Lampman…. cark
stupe…///.………………………g
Owens Valley ………………. e
…..///.Omertà ……………….o
oriel…///…all over painting
hatikvah…///.cantatrice .a
La ……………………………….. g
La ……………………………….. n
Llorona….syncope………. n
inedia………Porlock …….. e
DalekINTP Merrill Gilfillan
The See’rThe SeThe See’r
b……………\….n………pC B
r…………..\….e …….bse
ot…………\…...t…..eNol
her………\….….la…rie
‘s…..\….……...Gslm
P……………..eieie
o….………..usnt
em.……….. E i
\\\……… da
umtlo(x;

It was cold out, which became part of what I thought; but I wore shorts in spite of what I thought to be “cold” and “out”, which became a part of what I thought. Now I had Shorts, Cold, and Out, in what I thought.

My hat, and its type; my coat, and it’s thinness (but not in its type); my sockes, how many (somewhat of their thinness and thickness, not much of their type, mainly “how many”); (and the answer to how many was four — though “four”, while known, was never quite part of what I thought — “two” somewhat more than “four” was a part –I would think “Two” –that I had two socks on: “two on each” — I did not have Four socks on: did not have “four socks total”); and all pertaining to my clothing became “part of what I thought” as did part of what I thought (here something kaleidoscopic is envisioned). (I thought that I was wearing them or thought often they were there as well.)

*&*&*

(When I saw someone who wore their hat and their coat and their purse and wore a backpack, perhaps it was theirs, perhaps it was a backpack they borrowed; when I saw they wore what was theirs without seeming to think of it, without it seeming to matter to them, whether or not it was in my thought, or whether or not it was what I or another might have preferred to have had in their thought) —

And I thought that what I thought was contained by what I didn’t want to be described. (What was that? Did I know what I meant?) (I clearly didn’t know what I meant) On the one hand, was what I thought; on the other hand, was that I “did not want to be described”; “I was the describer; the descriptor (the describer) the Describe (as distinct from the Scribe),” I at one point put to myself. (Did I know what I meant?) (That consciousness was an act of description, was perhaps what I had meant, and so there was much I was aware of, which I was yet not conscious of, because it had yet to be described; these were like words one knew to write but had not yet physically written.)

Just as I couldn’t help but think, I told myself, I wanted not to be thought of. I sternly told myself: maybe if you didn’t think maybe you wouldn’t be thought of. (This was a version of ‘Judge not that be be not judged’ I said to myself). You would certainly not think you were thought of. I told myself: the fact that you think is proof that you want to be thought of. (“I think therefore I want to be thought of,” I later jotted down.)

One person I saw in front of me walking could not have cared less. That person had “snapped out of it” whereas I had not snapped out of it yet, I confessed: though I needn’t have confessed (as it was quite obviously a part of what I thought.)

I happened to have found myself walking behind a woman in the afternoon, and when I stepped on a fallen leaf loudly (this was the Fall) I wondered, would she hear it and would it cause her dismay to know a person was walking just behind her? A person whose “mighty step cavernously crushed so loudly these leaves?” as I later had it.

But she gave no such sign — she wore a scarlet coat. And when I passed I saw she was holding a baby to her chest: some sort of harness that held the baby there. That was where all her attention was. None of her attention was on the sound of a leaf that had been crushed by someone walking behind her in a quiet neighborhood. That had seemed to me quite strange: that she had failed to attend to the sound of my step. Even had I been someone completely different, stepping on a leaf, I do believe she would have taken no notice.

Customer:

Customer, seated, untwisted candy wrapper slowly, arthritic hands.

Customer suddenly received call to pick up wife: the blue line had broken down.

What was good about this yoga place, a customer said, was its completely unpretentious, totally laid back, atmosphere.

[According to Google] it takes 10,000 Google searches to equal the CO2 emissions of a five-mile trip in a typical car. While that sounds like a lot, the scale of the Internet is mind-bogglingly massive. A 2010 study calculated that the 62 trillion — that’s right, trillion — spam emails sent each year generate the CO2 emissions equivalent to 1.6 million cars driving around the globe. [mother nature network NOV 2012] [kilojoule]

The internet releases around 300 million tonnes of CO2 per year, equivalent to every person in the UK flying to America and back twice over.[Guardian, AUG 2010]

Which uses more electricity: the iPhone in your pocket, or the refrigerator humming in your kitchen? Hard as it might be to believe, the answer is probably the iPhone. [TIME, 2013]

………..I o mi io n y
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………..n……… s
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………..h.r
………..a
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.au………..ra
lia…..b……vel
swin…ang…ines
ging..siron.. sand
Maryof Egypthami
dabashitru
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