Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Pius itym

The creative use of convention is also apparent in The Vocacyon of Johan Bale (1553). Bale's explosive text describes a year's hardships endured by a Protestant reformer under Mary: it lashes out at the "drunken bishop of Galwaye", and those Catholic "knightes of the dongehill" who enact "most filthie buggeries in the darke".
A. Smyth, "Flower arranging", TLS September 18 2009, p.24

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Prospectus

During this period, Mackey sought succour in spiritual practice. He engaged a friend, a follower of the Czech transpersonal psychologist Stanislav Grof, to guide him through a therapeutic session of holotropic breathing. "I had this very powerful session, very powerful. It lasted about two hours," Mackey said in an inspirational CD set he released last year called "Passion and Purpose: The Power of Conscious Capitalism." "I was having a dialogue with what I would define as my deeper self, or my higher self."
N. Baumgarten, "Food Fighter", The New Yorker, January 4, 2010, p.38

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Saturday, March 27, 2010

antipodean

Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.

K. Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Saturday, March 13, 2010

beginnings

first sentence found in old notebook: "That year I was hired as the night nurse at Bethlehem hospital and fell in love with the intern's legs." | F writes I wrote him that I won't stop laughing | Week 3 of Kafka seminar is complete. No pay, no staff number, no room keys. No human contact with HR possible ("your call is important to us"). This week's seminar: The Hunger Artist. Next week's seminar: A Report to an Academy. | eppur si muove | There are now more signposts on campus than courses on offer | all that is solid melts into PR | the neighbour listens to Morricone while building a carport | "Presque tout de suite après, au-dessus du vacarme de l'atelier, une sonnerie retentit deux fois." | "alles ständische und stehende verdampft" | H writes, "Giannoli was talking on Zerkalo's 'shot with the wind through the bushes', that Tarkovskiy used a helicopter with it."

Ins Gebirg

Et nous voyons que l'ame en ses passions se pipe plutout elle meme, se dressant un faux subject et fantastique, voire contre sa propre creance, que de n'agir contre quelque chose [...]

comme l'ame descharge ses passions sur des objects faux, quand les vrais luy defaillent [...]
Montagaine, Essais: Livre premier, chapitre IV

Monday, March 08, 2010

cicadas

March 2010,
Regen und Zikaden (7 min.)
(for headphones): link

Sunday, March 07, 2010

arkadas

'And you may possibly not believe me, but I find the prospect of searching Mr. Cream's room quite enjoyable.'
'Enjoyable?'
'Yes. In a curious way it restores my youth. It brings me back to my preparatory school days, when I would often steal down at night to the headmaster's study to eat his biscuits.'
I started. I looked at him with a kindling eye. Deep had called to deep, and the cockles of the heart were warmed.
'Biscuits?
'He kept them in a tin on his desk.'
'You really used to do that at your prep school?'
'Many years ago.'
So did I, I said, coming within an ace of saying, 'My brother!'
'Indeed? Fancy that! I had supposed the idea original with myself, but no doubt all over England today the rising generation is doing the same thing. So you too have lived in Arcady? What kind of biscuits were yours? Mine were mixed.'
PG Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing: The Jeeves Omnibus 4, p.242

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Et in Arcadia Ego

Reading your book over the last couple of days I have felt more sane than in the last six months of teaching in further education. The situation at my college is exactly as you describe it: lecturers are conscripted into performing endless bureaucratic procedures which have nothing to do with their ostensible function (to improve teaching and learning) and everything to do with the concealed function of improving the ‘representation’ of the college through the abstract mechanisms of paperwork and statistics. This has served to create a ‘virtual’ college, which is prioritised over the ‘real’ college in every conceivable way; or as you said in Capitalist Realism ‘all that is solid melts into PR’.
k-punk

Friday, March 05, 2010

la lune volée

Hans Mayer < > Uwe Johnson < > Hans Mayer