the dead

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When someone you know well dies, it matters to you immensely.
You feel the loss. You appreciate the life lost. You “appreciate” the death as death. It may be life changing.

longing for peak dwelling

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I haven’t read Magic Mountain, but the figure of cultural heights where somehow the upshot of all humanity is brought to dwell in itself appeals to me deeply. On the peak, the view is of other peaks.

Is history our preferred gathering of peaks—conceptions of the past with respect to conceptions of who we were to become? Were they as different from our reconstructions of them as we are relative to their anticipations?

Human evolution is the story, some rhizome, some weaving we make by dwelling among the peaks?

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art as ethical transgression

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Transgression is integral to the history of art, as ethically-transgressive art (from the allure of dark spirits through contemporary performance art); but commonly as formally transgressive: Once upon a time, perspective in art was transgressive. Pointillism was transgressive.
The notion of avant garde was inherited from aspirations to be “revolutionary.” A history of art in the ‘60s and ‘70s, written in the ‘90s, was titled Shock of the New. That’s apart from overtly political art. Google ‘art and transgression,’ you get a list of directly-related results (with “transgressive art” at the top of the list).

contracts of body vs. freedom of mind?

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Problems associable with the difference between ethical interpersonal relations and aesthetic Self may originate in the natural difference between necessary bodily attachments and freedom of mind. I don’t know. I’m trying to work it out.

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“...but for the artist’s creative concept...”

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Part of my earlier-said, but vaguely referenced, writerly itinerary of vignetted vining is, I confess, to be “severely” affectionate dwelling in the tropography of conceptual art. So, it’s worth noting that the history of said “art” continues, as the market loves itself so much.

But the real matter here, according to the philosopher of art writing the NY Times article (linked above), is the evolutionary appeal of the idea
(as such, unto itself), as well as appeal of the idea of art.

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etymophilia

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I created that word just now.

Etymology is about tracing a history. An etymon is an original form within the story—an apparently original form, for who knows?
The historiography is all a matter of traces left in extant texts. How much of one’s life now gets into written word? How must it have been
when literacy was slight. Origins are some diffuse ether of lost time.

so many topics, so little time

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40+ topics? (rendered here) [Jan. 12, 2018: now so antedated, because:...]. What is a topic anyway?

One topic I wanted to play through is merely a little inhabitation of ‘graciousness,’ another, way down the road, a massive consideration of art after the overt “Conceptual Art” movement. (But isn’t all art involved with conceptuality? So, what’s especially “Conceptual”?)

And when does an identified movement end? Is it, like a concert or a great novel or a life, just a matter of closure of attention (but an afterlife continues inasmuch as we keep one alive to our own going on?).

“let me hear your long lifted note”

That’s the second line of Merwin’s “The Nomad Flute.”

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stepwise waymaking

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The sequentiality of this blog expresses and complements an ordered agenda of topics—42 presently—that changes through the days and weeks due to advents and distractions, due to the effects of what I’m reading (scarce free time for that), and due to surprising myself by what “he” writes (or disappointing himself).

the whole world happens all the time

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I’m no less a valley news junkie by trekking into hills of poetic thinking (no matter how long the coming trail). I do the New York Times every morning (much of it, not all). Reuters is nearby all day and evening.
PBS News Hour after work.

where I find you

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The Ecstatic Quotidian—isn’t that a lovely book title?—subtitled: “Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art and Literature,”
by a philosopher who’s evidently an accomplished poet, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei (don’t know of her). The book is premised, a reviewer notes, on the reality that “everydayness is transformed as soon as we try to reflect on it.”

a sense of ethical life

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bridging artful flourishing and humanistic care
9/3

I’m explicating a general account of ethical life relative to a long review, titled “Morality and Virtue” (Ethics, 2004), very well done, by David Copp (editor of The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, 2006) and David Sobel (editor of Reasons for Action, 2009). The review, pro and con, is about Michael Slote, Morals from Motives (2001); Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (2001); and Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (1999)—altogether a millennial moment for virtue-ethical theory.

one flowers and leaves: love as letting-be

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Caring is integral to ethical life and an essential aspect of love,
which of course includes attachment and desire—keeping near, holding dear. But I think the most important feature of love is letting be
(in an existential, humanistic sense), which includes, if called for, letting go.

finding true love where we can

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So, I prove to you, reader, how a voyeur belongs to your nature: wanting to vicariously participate in others’ intimacy—why?

To learn something for managing your own? That’s admirable. Learning never ends, and activism toward growth is good.

To compensate for what you lack? That’s okay! We all have our stories.

You would inebriate, assimilate, accomodate, appropriate—yet be unwittingly entertained.

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sailing, a way...

...of life, inhabiting a world.

Tacking excellently without becoming crusty in salted winds, I’ll own flourishing time in coming days, seafaring happily.

I've lost you, as I move on

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I’m sorry, but I can’t wait. Trust that I’ll keep sending updates along the way.

Remember that email I sent with the subject line "I went crazy..." that you trashed unread? It wasn’t about you. The subject line’s sentence was completed about a book I felt desperate to find among all the boxes of my stored books. It was about an obsession with literary calling I can’t satisfy.

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play everlasting

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I’m deeply affected by the Event of Ted Kennedy’s death—as a very public death, as a Kennedy death, and as American Event.

As American Event: Not merely an American event rightly spread all over the news cycle, it’s a story of the dependence of democracy on leadership that can be irreplaceable.

a fulfilling life is a good life

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In Natural Goodness, Philippa Foot is haunted by Wittgenstein:

“For one recalls [which she does several times in her short book] Wittgenstein's famous death-bed insistence that he had had a wonderful life....Interpreted in terms of happy states of mind it would, however, have been very puzzling indeed if a life as troubled as his had been described as a good life. What Wittgenstein said rang true because of
the things he had done, with rare passion and genius, and especially
on account of his philosophy. Did he not say elsewhere ‘The joy
of my thoughts is the joy of my own strange life’?”

(p. 85 of NG, quoting Norman Malcolm quoting LW)

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mien

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The simplicity of this white page appeals to me, against the shallow busyness of so much imagism—nothing against digital tatooing—brachylogically troping—proudly celebrating—one's consumption
by metro bricolage.

"Cute."

fruitful asymmetry, hybridization, kluge, montage, bricolage...

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Robert Rauschenberg, Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82
New York Times, 10:36 AM ET

Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century—and echoes here—died Monday night.

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giving myself a break

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Way back, I ended a post by saying, in part: "OK: If The Silence lasts more than a couple of months, I'm dead."

So, maybe that iteration (as this posting) is reassuring to someone—or else The Afterlife (Ha!) gives one material access to the Internet.

Actually, The Afterlife is one's trace of being remembered among survivors, which now may mean those anonymous readers of Web pages that never disappear from the Internet's kluge archive (thanks to Googlish designs), our current era's version of surviving The Library.