From the Kingdom of Tired Limbs

Dialectic

2012-02-10T22:37:00.000-08:00

To him, the thoughts within his brain were not the more or less abstract pictures of actual things and processes, but, conversely, things and their evolution were only the realized pictures of the "Idea", existing somewhere from eternity before the world was. This way of thinking turned everything upside down, and completely reversed the actual connection of things in the world.

‎'For everyday purposes, we know and can say, e.g., whether an animal is alive or not. But, upon closer inquiry, we find that his is, in many cases, a very complex question, as the jurists know very well. They have cudgelled their brains in vain to discover a rational limit beyond which the killing of the child in its mother's womb is murder. It is just as impossible to determine absolutely the moment of death, for physiology proves that death is not an instantaneous, momentary phenomenon, but a very protracted process.'

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch02.htm

A Thousand Deaths Plus One

2012-02-08T06:45:00.000-08:00

the artist is a pathologist who must preserve the dried-up pieces in the formol-filled flasks of his memory; any other way would be to take on the role of redeemer. They can be stripping the skin off your own mother, your own daughter, but your duty is to register the fact. Perhaps (Castellón would probably say now) after having taken the photograph of the naked body, being neutral consists in seeing one's own self as an object, even at the moment when, before penetrating her, the syphilitic digs around inside a prostitute's vagina with fingers that are moving there to learn something about the sensations of the touching, but as if they were not his own, the artist who may infect another body with his own but does not infect the page or negative.

Instruction#7 - Names - Cassius Song

2012-02-01T10:31:00.001-08:00

1. Watch the drama series China 1921 (2011)
The alias Mao Renzi echoing from comrades, lovers and teachers, from Yang Kaihui, Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu...
2. Read some novels by Ricardo Piglia, remember the protagonist Emilio Renzi, remember Piglia is Ricardo Emilio Piglia Renzi
3. Read Bruno Bosteels 'Ricardo Piglia''s Homage to Roberto Arlt: In the Shadow of Mao'
4. Think about the question: What is your real name?
5. Answer: Which one are you refering to? I have many real names but one assumed name.

Instruction #8 - A Serious Man - Cassius Song

2012-02-01T10:30:00.001-08:00

1. A Serious Man could be either a man serious about the subject or a man serious about himself being serious about the subject - in short, takes himself too seriously.
2. The former's devotion and dedication would progress (and at times, charm and impress the others, if not resulting in a form of superior madness) while the latter has the tendency of overshadowing the seriousness of the subject with his/her serious posture, resulting in grand, noble proclamnation: sanctimonious with base introspective self-pitying, slavish ressentiment.
3. The latter cultivates egocentricity and self-righteousness while the former cultivates doubts, self-denial, sefl-criticism and humility.
4. Qn: Is Raskolnikov the former or the latter?

Instruction #2 - War and Peace - Cassius Song

2012-02-01T10:29:00.002-08:00

Try to finish War and Peace
during military service, prison, asylum or exile.
Go to a rich kid's or art collector's party.
For a lack of better things to say to the anyone there,
be stupid enough to speak to a Pan-Asian part-time model,
while her club DJ boyfriend is spinning: raising one hand and moving his hips.
ask if she has heard of War and Peace.
If she were to ask, what's that?
Tell her it is a video game you like to play.
Forgive her for not knowing who is Leo or Tolstoy
at least she now has a boy who was previously an older woman's toy.

List #6: Eyelessness - Cassius Song

2012-02-01T10:29:00.001-08:00

Read
Techniques of the Observer - Jonathan Crary
Read
Downcast Eyes - Martin Jay
Watch the opening of
An Andalusian Dog - Luis Brunel
Laugh when watching
Eyes wide shut - Stankey Kubrick
Read
Story of the Eye - Georges Bataille
Think about the stupid name City of Light
lastly,
Listen to
Eyeless - Slipknot

List #5: Children - Cassius Song

2012-02-01T10:28:00.004-08:00

Read
The Ogre - Michel Tournier
Then read about
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Watch
Dogville - Lars Von Trier
Walk past
a kindergarten or childcare centre
Listen again to
Heal the world - Michael Jackson
and puke if you want to

List #4: Eternal Recurrence - Cassius Song

2012-02-01T10:28:00.003-08:00

Watch
Last Year in Marienbad - Alain Resnais
Read
Pierre Menard - Jorge Luis Borges
Read
Organs without Bodies - Slavoj Zizek
to know the diffrence between return and repetition
Read
page 447 - 50 of The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano
Stop thinking about death or finitude

List #3: This is not a List - Cassius Song

2012-02-01T10:28:00.001-08:00

Look at
The Treason of Images - Rene Magritte
then read
This is Not A Pipe - Michel Foucalut
while listening to
Strange Fruit or David - The Wave Pictures
Stop complaining it is complex or hard to understand

st #2: Postal Service - Cassius Song

2012-02-01T10:27:00.002-08:00

Watch
Il Postino - Michael Radford
(try to fall asleep or to not cry)
then read
Post Office Charles Bukowski
then read
the story about the female letter carrier with a writer boyfriend in The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano
one week later
say, fuck it
and read burn all the letters you have received,
keep the bills and bank statements.

List #1: Young Boy and Cinema - Cassius Song

2012-02-01T10:27:00.001-08:00

Watch
Cinema Paradiso - Giuseppe Tornatore (with popcorn)
then
Peeping Tom - Michael Powell (without popcorn)
in succession
Duration: 256 min approx.
Think twice about saying you are a filmmaker.

grey - Ernst Auer

2012-02-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

No colours could fault grey and his typeface of despair

Street of Napoleonic Defeat - Ernst Auer

2012-02-01T09:20:00.002-08:00

A story teller,
from where else but Argentina
was ready to tell me a tale
about a man, a person
who walked past a synagogue
with the taste of blood and mud on his tongue,
after eating half a kilo of cockles.
***
I mean, who else would I want to listen to now?
But yet, I have to wait for a translation -
voices from reality do not include subtitles.
***
Thought of Hepatitis,
the Star of David,
behind the gate,
a gentile security stared back.
***
From this end,
the long street seems tapered.
But it would stretch, the width will expand
when he starts walking towards the Chinese temple,
after the Hindu temple, at the other end.
***
The smoke from the cigarette
dangling from the corner of his mouth
won't irritate his eyes.
The smoke from his cigarette will blend
with the smoke from the burning incense.
The words the Argentinian spoke are confused with
the prayers,
the mumbling or whispers
of prostitutes,
hostesses,
lounge singers,
office ladies,
worried housewives
and weak men like us.
***
As a foreigner here,
he shall not make a fuss about the heat
but sure he looks like a madman.
***
Now I prayed only for a bank robbery to end it all,
since there's no war,
but to buy a shotgun or pistol...
I wasn't sure if that's a question.
I walked into a convenience store,
one bullet is enough,
but only noticed condoms and lubricant gels next to the counter,
I noticed the flavours.
I walked out and turned right
towards Bencoolen St
and was reminded of colonization and barricades
all over again.

Thursday

2012-02-01T09:20:00.001-08:00

At Berlin, on a thursday
inside a train station now an art museum.
Beuys, Jospeh Beuys
room after room.
Boring videos, coyote, fats and near death,
dead wood, and mystical metal
chalkboard encased,
what's the point of discussion, explanation or debate
talk and talk
photographed the
Shaman, Shaman performs
performs the decomposition of Europe.

Eva as Stone

2012-01-30T09:39:00.000-08:00

'I can't recall the date Eva turned into stone. As a marble statue of associate tyranny frozen in a tireless and unchanging pose, or to read the epitah on her tomb, for her body underneath or our relation's demise. The body not the person who has left the world to reside inside my head. The bullet hole, the 'eighth orifice' meant for my head was staged. And the rumour that we fled to Argentina together, History wants to pardon us, for us to live until a ripe old age, for our German tragic drama to sound like an American fairy tale, of this Teutonic history to Walt Disney myth, like how I turned the world into a theatre of war. On the date of her departure, I, the living dead, could only be mute and inert, sadly for one who was once feared and respected for his voice and gesture.' - Ernst Auer
'Ich kann mich nicht erinnern, das Datum Eva in Stein verwandelt. Wie eine Marmorstatue der Tyrannei in ein unermüdlicher und unveränderlich darstellen, oder die epitah auf ihr Grab zu lesen, denn ihr Körper unter oder unsere Beziehung Ableben eingefroren. Der Körper nicht derjenige, der die Welt verlassen hat, um in meinem Kopf befinden. Das Einschussloch war der achte Öffnung "für meinen Kopf gemeint inszeniert. Und das Gerücht, dass wir nach Argentinien floh zusammen, will Geschichte uns entschuldigen, für uns bis ins hohe Alter zu leben, für unsere deutschen Trauerspiels wie ein amerikanischer Märchen Sound, dieser teutonischen Geschichte von Walt Disney Mythos, wie, wie ich drehte mich um die Welt in ein Theater. Am Tag ihrer Abreise, konnte ich die lebenden Toten, nur stumm und träge, traurig für jemanden, der einmal gefürchtet und respektiert für seine Stimme und Gestik.'- Ernst Auer

Petty issue about names - Chien Swee-Teng

2012-01-26T10:19:00.002-08:00

Art historian Michael Sullivan said in a conference in Singapore he still insists in using Peking (the old name) instead of Beijing because that how they termed it in English, like how London is Lun Dun in Mandarin. [some in the hall laughed, perhaps to show they know how to appreciate the wit and humour of a British academic.]
If the director Lee Ang is Ang Lee in the West because that is how names are ordered there, then this old historian of Chinese art should be Sullivan Michael or Chaelmic Vanlisul or Leahcim Navillus or Navillus Leahcim.

Didactic Chinese Poem - Chien Swee-Teng

2012-01-26T10:19:00.001-08:00

1.1
'I love the culture but the party deforms it.'
Kong Lan Jiao Wei
1.1.2
The Culture of Defeat it must be
The Tradition of Servility we are proud to keep
If I have to be colonised to 'retain' my culture
I would rather be a barbarian.
1.2
Cultured but '... it is so sick to see
a Chinese painting teacher spilling
black ink intentionally on the thighs of a young female student and offer to clean it'
Or 'calling her late at night, after ten, saying he needs help at the studio.'
Fatherly figure, brotherly gestures.
2.1
The border,
the places, provinces,
and lines that demarcate.
2.2
Not Chinese but Hong Kongers
Not Chinese but Peranakans
Not Chinese but Taiwanese.
The many Not Chinese but...
2.1.2
Yang says, Low Gek Nam said,
'Lines do not exist in reality,
it is the curve, the turn.'
So lines exist,
due to the limitation of our perception.
2.3
The question of nationality,
the question of race
are false questions.
This should not be a question
if one prefers not to change the surname into last name.
2.3.1
But the language,
to think
about it, as another question,
is not to understand
why it is hard
for this to be written or read in Chinese

'for a nobody starting with nothing and from nowhere in particular'

2012-01-24T01:18:00.001-08:00

Machiavelli was a later discovery, and in my view he went a lot further than
Marx on a number of issues, for example in trying to conceive the conditions and
kinds of political action in its pure form, that is to say at the conceptual level. What
struck me again was the radical manner in which he took into account the
aleatory nature of every conjuncture. In addition, he revealed that what was
needed, if Italian national unity was to be achieved, was for a nobody starting
with nothing and from nowhere in particular, but outside the framework of
an established State, to bring together the fragmented elements of a divided
country, without any preconceived notion of unity which might have been
formulated in terms of existing political concepts (all of which were bad).We
have not yet, I believe, explored all the implications of this piece of political
thinking, the first of its kind and sadly without sequel. - Louis Althusser

Academic philosophy cannot tolerate Lenin

2012-01-24T01:17:00.001-08:00

Academic philosophy cannot tolerate Lenin (or Marx for the matter) for
two reasons, which are really one and the same. On the one hand, it cannot
bear the idea that it might have something to learn from politics and from
a politician. And on the other hand, it cannot bear the idea that philosophy
might be the object of a theory, i.e. of an objective knowledge. - Louis Althusser

Clint Eastwood and Aleatory Materialism

2012-01-24T01:16:00.000-08:00

In a two-page note he wrote in 1986 titled ‘Portrait du philosophe matérialiste’,
Althusser refers to the unknown, perhaps even outlaw, hero of
American Westerns typical of the popular culture of his own era, someone who
jumps on to a moving train without knowing whence it comes or where it is
going, then gets off at a small station and heads for the saloon to quench his
thirst:

Saloon, beer, whiskey. ‘Where d’ya hail from, bud?’ ‘From a long way off.’
‘Where ya headed?’ ‘Dunno!’ ‘Might have some work for ya.’ ‘Okay’.

The hero in the Westerns is the figure of an aleatory materialist, who does not
know the beginning or goal of his long journey. He is, nevertheless, a positive hero,
not a villain, even if the hero is an outlaw. In the town he gains the trust
of the people, reluctantly fastens the sheriff’s badge on his chest, presents his
own unique interpretation of the law, curbs the villains and schemers who
have terrorised the town, returns order for the time being and then disappears
into the sunset of the desert without knowing how long his good fortune
will continue or whether he will soon be killed by a bullet or arrow in some
skirmish.

Nobody or nothing forces the hero to jump on to that particular train nor to
get off at that particular station, nor to take on the job of the sheriff. The hero is
not a cavalry officer who merely obeys the orders of his superiors, nor is he a
city dweller or someone representing the federal state, as perhaps the previous
sheriff was, but who was unable to fulfill his legal duties.
- Mikko Lahtinen, Politics and Philosophy 'Althusser’s Aleatory Machiavelli', p.178

The ‘Germany’ where Fascisms are born is not a territory or a population - Andre Glucksmann, The Master Thinkers, pp.37-47

2012-01-24T01:15:00.002-08:00

The ‘Germany’ where Fascisms are born is not a territory or a
population but a text and an attitude to texts which became
established long before Hitler.
[…]
Equivalence of a text with a territory—true, for the last five
hundred years, and with some exceptions. But it is in the
armed institution of the text that we have to see the active
side of this equivalence: the text lays down the law for the
territory.
[…]:
Texts do not simply serve the exercise of power, they are that
very exercise, they subject people. Even more than the chains
of slavery, they are part of that slavery. Policemen inside the
heads of those who subjected them, the great texts of power
in Europe are not in the service of the strategies of domination,
they are these strategies themselves.

The Language of the Third Reich: A Philologist's Notebook - Victor Klemperer

2012-01-24T01:15:00.001-08:00

o, the most powerful influence was exerted neither by individual speeches nor by articles or flyers, posters or flags; it was not achieved by things which one had to absorb by conscious thought or conscious emotions.
Instead Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people through single words, idioms and sentence structures which were imposed on them in a million repetitions and taken on board mechanically and unconsciously. . . language does not simply write and think for me, it also increasingly dictates my feelings and governs my entire spiritual being the more unquestioningly and unconsciously I abandon myself to it.
And what happens if the cultivated language is made up of poisonous elements or has been made the bearer of poisons? Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.
The Third Reich coined only a very small number of the words in its language, perhaps - indeed probably - none at all. . . But it changes the value of words and the frequency of their occurrence, it makes common property out of what was previously the preserve of an individual or a tiny group, it commandeers for the party that which was previously common property and in the process steeps words and groups of words and sentence structures with its poison
Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich: A Philologist's Notebook, trans. Martin Brady, London: Continuum, 2002, pp. 15–16

It was my first long-winded poem - Mario Santiago

2012-01-24T01:14:00.000-08:00

Oscar Olivia told me: You have fifteen days, can you do it? And he was dangling the 300 pesos in front of only me and I told him hell yes, and I wrote a poem about 60 pages long. It was my first long-winded poem. My first solo reading was in the Museo de San Carlos on May 3rd of 1974. I wasn't born yesterday. And in 1975 I founded the Mexican Infrarealist movement. Around then they started to get sick of me, because I was confronting Pacheco, Monsiváis, everyone I know of. No one wants to give me a job. For four years I have no income. Sergio Mondragón has refused to give me a job because I'm an Infrarealist. They say I sabotage readings. They say the Infrarealists beat people up. And those idiots allege that I don't know how to write. Motherfuckers. I am l’ecrivain. But that's not important. Better if I read you some things...

Analysis situs (a geometry of position, or what we now call topology) - Henri Poincare (1895)

2012-01-24T01:12:00.000-08:00

. . . geometry is the art of reasoning well from badly drawn figures;
however, these figures, if they are not to deceive us, must satisfy
certain conditions; the proportions may be grossly altered, but the
relative positions of the different parts must not be upset.

A Dialogue About a Dialogue - J. L. Borges

2012-01-24T01:11:00.000-08:00

A Dialogue About a Dialogue - J. L. Borges
A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn’t see each other’s faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez’ voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio’s pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it’s been misrepresented to them as being old. . . . I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all the racket.
Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.
A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don’t remember whether we committed suicide that night or not.

Sonnet of the Seven Chinese - Franco Fortini

2012-01-24T01:10:00.000-08:00

The Augsburg poet once said he had tacked
an image of the Man of Doubt
to the wall of his room. A Chinese print.
The image asked: how ought one to act?

I have a photo on my wall. Twenty years ago
seven Chinese workers looked into my lens.
They look wary or ironic or tense.
They know I do not write for them. I know

they didn’t live for me. Yet sometimes I feel
I’m being asked for more candid words,
more credible deeds, by their doubtfulness.

In turn I ask their help in making visible
the contradictions and identities among us.
If there’s a point, it’s this.

Notes Land of Dogs

2012-01-24T01:09:00.000-08:00

1. Most of the mainlanders do not use youtube
2. The border, if we are refering to the one btw HK and Mainland, is internal, which is to say there isn't a border. The 'border' was enforced by the British after Opium war. HK is not like Scotland, but closer to the status of Gilbraltar. Not wanting to be 'counted as one' is separatist: within an imperialist/nationalist/ethnical framework. Unlike Badiou's dialectics, this case of 'one divides into two' is not revolutionary but was enforced by the colonial-imperial power in the 19th century, the problem of seeing a divide is the 'residue' of colonialism, like the Peranakans.
3. Perhaps, what is 'revolutionary' for East Asians, not only Chineses, is not division but unity. Divide and Conquer was/is an imperilaist strategy used again and again against potential colonies. Perhaps we should not give Badiou who is still a philosopher and Ang Moh too much respect. It must be inverted like what Marx did to Hegel, and Mao to Marx.
Perhaps, what is 'revolutionary' for East Asians, not only the Chinese, is not division but unity. Divide and Conquer was/is an imperilaist strategy used again and again against potential colonies. Perhaps we should not give Badiou who is still a philosopher and Ang Moh too much respect. It must be inverted like what Marx did to Hegel, and Mao to Marx.
‎'Many Hong Kong people don’t think they are Chinese. They shout: ‘We are Hong Kong; you are China,’” Kong said, mocking the Hong Kong Cantonese accent. “These kinds of people got accustomed to being running dogs for British imperialists. Until now they are still dogs.” Such people, he added, “are not human. ... They are dogs of imperialism.”'
‎'Another protester, retired engineer Roger Chow, said Hong Kongers feel Chinese but don’t like the Communist Party, which he said had deformed Chinese culture and tradition. “I’m not against fellow Chinese from the mainland,” he said, “but the party is not China.”' - That was what a petit-bourgeois person in Singapore said to me too. Fuck Chinese culture of defeat and tradition of servility, also ang paos and CNY visits. If one needs to retain one's 'culture' by being colonialised I did rather be a barbarian.

Balding

2012-01-07T02:25:00.002-08:00

Rosewood pillow and a leg of the armchair fractured, the cold, hard broken Chinese furniture. I studied legs of women of young girls of men of tables of stools and stray cats, and thought of models and whores. In a public place, I see her balding like an old man, a few grey strands on top - the top of her head an open field. She sees better with her glasses on. She did not hide herself or her frame of a ten year old, I mean, the size of her bones not the skin or posture. Few strands like the Chinese painter from an art academy wandering along Middle road. She is under the noon sun, the noon next to a complex, I can still see the shadow of things and beings. She moves under the shelter that leads to the interchange, she is not another mad woman in the amusement park with ten dirty plastic bags tied around her and an unwashed head, she is not another homeless man, sleeping around, lying on the parapet, scratching his crotch. I want to believe she is chaste, I only see she is only balding. I thought about mothers and skeletons, young mothers to be, mothers have been.
I was on my way to get a book about Sun Yat-sen from a balding professor, but he was not in, I guess, he spent most part of last night with a Saint by the name of James. By the coffee place, I saw the Chinese painter bald and undead, I saw and read and learnt that most of his friends are now spectral. I relate this to the balding Javan Myna we saw when we were along the same street.
Few nights ago, you told me it was cold. And the wind and temperature here in December could create the illusion. The temperature made it proper to understand rationalism better. We know it is ridiculous to say it was cold last night. But it did help with your reading of German Idealism and metaphysics. I told another old man, not the balding one, but a real hairy one about one year for archiving, one year for reading, one year for writing, one year for publishing, one year for collecting royalties, I did not tell the old man, not the balding one, but a real hairy one, that it would one year of reading only what I have read before. One year of rereading. It is ridiculous to think about writing under this weather, you might have ink blots on the pages of your manuscript, but nothing like Victor Hugo’s, it is sweat not tears, it is not hardship but heat and humidity.
I was at a coffeeshop. I saw four crabs in a huge fish tank. They have ample space to move, although the claws were tied with dirty strings the colour of those crabs. They aren’t hairy crabs. They are from Sri Lanka. Yesterday was a public holiday, most of them must have been slain, quartered and soak in chilli or pepper last evening - overpopulation.

Departure

2012-01-07T02:25:00.001-08:00

A couple, one of them has to leave the country, for a period of time, for work or school, it could be three months, it could be six months, a year or two, or perhaps they did not know they will never meet again, or that things will never be the same when they see each other again, the clichéd scenario: of the guy already married, the girl is now pregnant, or the girl is engaged and the guy, has gotten someone else pregnant, and whatever. Yet, there are other things occupying the mind of the one who is going to leave than the imminent departure, perhaps it is to distract them from making epic statements or promises to each other, showing epic emotion, or any histrionic gesture, it could be mundane, because of the half-packed luggage, and it would very likely be banal, about the long hour flight with transit - to get mentally prepared for it, to be only half-asleep throughout the journey, if one could really fall asleep, next to another stranger, to sleep sitting, to see that service industry smile of the air stewardess, the badly choreographed safety evacuation demonstration or video, because in reality the flight is not twenty-second seconds, like in some bad film or drama where the scene and sound of a plane taking off cuts to the protagonist on the plane looks sadly out of the window, and then switches to the scene of another country, sometimes with caption at the bottom, stating the new location, because the flight is fucking twenty-eight hours excluding transit.
So the couple decides never to see each other off at the airport, he went to her place instead, an hour before she has to leave for the airport, when it was time he has to leave, she sees him off instead, at the corridor, they exchanged another few words, mostly broken sentences from him to trade for her smile, he kept reminding himself, nothing too sentimental shall be uttered, it is always harder to not say what you wanted say than to follow the impulse of saying out. She was leaning against the wall, he noticed a cockroach crawling, he pointed it to her, and she reacted like how people usually reacted to cockroaches, but without hysterical screams (he thought of the song lyrics, ‘watching roaches climb the wall, if you call your daddy he could stop it all.’ And her dad was actually inside the house, getting ready to go with her to the airport.) She told him, not her dad, kill it, kill it! He asked, with what? The sandal, the Birkenstock! One smack, the cockroach fell and wriggled on the floor, and she said, not dead yet, kill it! He ignored her second order to kill. He swept the cockroach towards the stairs and kicked it down the steps. He did not tell her that he was amused by how her decision, or intuition, perhaps out of fear, is similar to Adolf Hitler’s.

On Humour

2012-01-07T02:23:00.004-08:00

Chien Swee-Teng: Lao Tzu says, if one desires to have a sense of humour, one must laugh at things such as dead orphans.

On Class Attendance

2012-01-07T02:23:00.003-08:00

"I don't want to hear any more about class struggle. If not I'll send in my sociologists!"

On the Future of Hokkien for the Ancient Middle Kingdom

2012-01-07T02:23:00.001-08:00

Chien Swee-Teng: Lao Tzu says, from the South will arise the great Fujian empire for a thousand years

About a Clumsy Poet

2012-01-07T02:22:00.002-08:00

Chien Swee-Teng: almost tripped over the edge of a shadow at noon

On Child Care

2012-01-07T02:22:00.001-08:00

孔子说, 小孩不听话, 就应该把他踢下楼梯
Chien Swee-Teng: Confucius says, when children disobey one should kick them down the stairs.

The Dream of an Eastern Imperialist

2012-01-07T02:21:00.000-08:00

昨晚我梦见一个统一的东亚
(Chien Swee-Teng: no translation as requested by the author)

On Children and every Chinese New Year

2012-01-07T02:19:00.000-08:00

他妈的小孩,只会拿红包,快把他们踢下楼梯!
Chien Swee-Teng: Bloody Children, all they know about is collecting ang baos (red packets), kick them down the stairs!

Condemned Milk – Chien Swee-Teng

2012-01-07T02:18:00.000-08:00

Condemned Milk – Chien Swee-Teng
Having a bao for afternoon tea, I thought maybe I should tell some of my friends that bao is my favourite food. But today, I will have it with tea with milk instead. Usually I prefer tea with a bit of sugar. But Mr Lee says, that the doctors say, tea is diuretic, he drinks only warm water now. In the kitchen, as I was scooping the sticky condensed milk into the cup, I thought about honey, caramel and other malty, sweet sticky stuff, the single drip that always stain the outside of the cup, the best evident of a cup not washed properly. I thought about those who pour fresh milk into their tea, about the time when I asked for condensed milk in a café, here not somewhere in Europe or your favourite country, Australia, and the look on your face, as if you were disgusted or disgraced by my request. I thought about those kids who grew up drinking condensed milk, around the fifties or forties, I vaguely recall an episode in a drama series where a young mother procuring a few canned of condensed milk for her baby, during the pre or post war years, is the script of an adventure, of one woman condemned to an adventure she did not volunteer for. The bad guy with a gunnysack filled with cans and cans of condensed milk for her. He once betrayed some Reds hiding in the jungle. But he is not turning into Santa Claus for her, he wants to rape her, his fingers turned into claws though, scratching her skin, he rips off the top buttons of her shirt, fully exposing her neck, her fair collar bones, and part of her chest. Anyway, it was an episode so long ago, about a time even further back than the drama series. I thought about your favourite author, Haruki Murakami and his list of international cuisine, about the hamburger steak his protagonist was having, about how to cook pasta. I thought about mushrooms, our conversation about mushrooms. Off guard, I mentioned the Narcissus mushrooms, the canned mushrooms, and it was another chance for you to show me another contorted facial expression, to remind me how refined taste for good quality food defines you. Yes, I know it is from China, and who knows what kind of liquid the evenly brown synthetic mushrooms were drowned in. Then I remember you told me you know quite a bit about art, and your favourite is Warhol’s Campbell soup cans. Food related art, food related metaphors, analogies and anecdotes… But we are still friends because we can always talk about food, actually only about food. Like most people in this country, I am also guilty of always talking about food. It is nice to talk only or mostly about food, because to eat is not to think.

"You are what you eat" - Feuerbach

Clementine - Chien Swee-Teng

2012-01-01T22:31:00.001-08:00

Clementine - Chien Swee-Teng
the poet of chips and beer,
interrupts our strumming and singing
like a grandpa;
asking about the last train
but he is also the poet of flowers, although I forgot what he said
when he was walking past some red tropical flowers of december
is there a difference between chicks and ladies?
no, says the poet of half-moon, as he points to the sky
the poet of the river, look at the murky brown water
was it ever green?
[the same river we threw glasses, beer bottles and one chic plastic chair into]
asked the poet of
flower
women
moon
and river
and out of spite, he called his best friend Harry Potter
the poet of rock.

The Gang of Four - Chien Swee-Teng

2012-01-01T22:30:00.002-08:00

The Gang of Four - Chien Swee-Teng
1. The Han Tang Martial Art School is a school without a master, for every disciple is the master of the other disciple, self-education is the maxim.
2. It was late at night, Wang, who was half-drunk, wanted to leave, but the rest did not allow him to: just because he has to receive the fresh cockles he ordered, the fresh cockles he wanted to prepare the next day is not a valid excuse. It will be sent to his hut, in the west, in the morning. To the rest, this is a bloody cock reason, and unbecoming for a swordsman. Wang laughed, the rest could hear his lungs tremble, then Zhang arrived, stepping in from the main door, not jumping in from the window or landing and breaking a few tiles on the roof. He came with another jar of wine, just one jar, he told us, was what he could afford at the moment. Wang stood up when to the store and carried out another three jars, 'Fret not, we still have another eighteen! hahaha!'
Then the conversation drifted to another cock related subject. Jiang, sitting on the rocking chair, began ranting, about the rat, the rest applaused, it was a brilliant rant! The presence of the rat shall be the downfall of the sect. The rat who could find all available cracks and holes in the wall to sneak in. It seems to be the final straw for Jiang, who was very disturbed by cock face of the pest, his slimy gestures, although Wang and Zhang prefer to visualise it as bulldog. The pest by the surname of Dong. Wang reminded him of what he read about the return, at every Thermidorian phase of the revolution, how this pest could survive every persecution. Yao teased Jiang about how it took him so long to react, 'what a long final straw'. Jiang and Yao laughed like eunuchs from the Eastern Chamber.
3. The conversation drifted to women they have left and the women they should now select and neglect, the assasination plan with Lin, the next robbery, the second cultural revolution, another again, of how one divides into two. In short, it was a very male chauvinistic conversation.
4. That night Wang peed on to the flowers and rocks in the garden thrice, and pointed to a lantern hanging from the beam twice, relating it to something about stars and night sky. The rest kept quiet, all of them know he was being poetic again, although he hardly wrote anything down (perhaps, except for an unfinished short story based on Yao's encounter with a half-Russian woman, whom Yao offered about two thousand copper coins in exchange for nothing). After peeing on a rock, he asked Yao why the top of the rock is lighter, almost white? Yao replied, cheebye.
Apart from displaying his literary talent, Wang also like to exhibit his strength, practice his sword play and kicks. Wang drew his sword and cut the rock into two and laughed loudly, the rest heard his lungs trembling again. Both Zhang and Yao were reminded of an incident two months ago: Wang left a brothel terribly drunk, roaming the street alone, Zhang and Lin offered to send him off, but Wang screamed at them to fuck off, Wang fell asleep on the street, lost his sword and money, then walked past a Yamen, kicked smashed the wooden sign and stele outside. The morning after Wang was so worried he burnt the shoes and clothes he was wearing that night, and stayed in, worrying that the constables might be looking for him. This state of paranoia lasted for about two weeks, and Wang was noticeably slimmer, his belly were smaller, chin sharper. This state ended when a courtesan from one of the many brothels he frequent asked for him.
5. Zhang and Wang climbed up to the mezzanine to sleep, it's cooler there. Yao fell asleep briefly on the opium bed in the store, it seemed he wanted to get another jar. Then he gets up with a slight neck ache, walked past Jiang who was lying in the middle of the hall amongst the either empty or broken jars and joined the other two at the mezzanine. In the morning, Jiang woke up with a headache, he left just before sunrise, left without saying farewell to the rest, just like a swordsman, the true behavior of a swordsman, he left quietly without wanting to interrupt the three who were snoring. He jumped over the wall of the estate, and crossed the bridge above the river, towards the west woods where the next chapter about Jiang's face off with another Rat is set.

24 Hours News

2012-01-01T22:30:00.001-08:00

24 Hours News

'I was seventeen/and I had to confess/ that my dreams were often wet/ watch her reading the news/ sat in front of her/ she told me about the tragedies of the day.'

First it was Diana then it was Lara in Berlin, reporting from somewhere in Madrid.
Now it is Andrea at Caldecott!!
It is dangerous to watch the news these days
to hear horrible stories about the world spurting out from these beautiful faces
- this world is warped. Beautiful faces are hired to tell real-time horror
The Beautiful Face is always so concern, so serious, so neutral
she must be sitting on the fence when reading out the news, but we can't see the lower half.
and the slight smile, with the eyes, she must have been practicing in front of the mirror,
the slight tilt of her head, the her wavy hair. 'The world is a mess but her hair is perfect'.
Her eyes on the script and looked up at you and smile once they switched from the footage of disaster to her again in the studio. Her eyes, only faithful to the script and your presence in front of the screen. She tilt her head slightly again.

facing you, on screen, as if she is only talking to you, you are a 39 year old bachelor or divorcee, who has, decided to stay in tonight, than to try your luck in a bar or club. You thought you, as an intellectual, an academic, a successful entreprenuer, executive, a man of the world, should show some concern for what is happening to this world. and you turn on the TV to watch a local news channel that claims to be regional if not international. And you saw her. Perhaps wanking could be better than one night stand. wanking to occasional images of her facing you, wanking to her voice accompanying images of rescue efforts, politicians clapping when another politicans came on stage to give a speech, soldiers in middle east, terrorists with AK-47 potinting to where we used to suppose God stays, Northeast Asia, Japanese bowing and bowing, Thai smiling, Indians crying, North Koreans clapping, South Koreans in a tussle, Chinese not smiling again, deadpan, currency of Mao, the machince calculates the amount, US on Chinese currency again, air pollution, assembly line, cars, students and NS men and particpants of a charity run, Indonesians demonstrating burning the banners they made, Italian MPs, another corruption scandal, got in to the car cutting through the reporters, overpaid footballers doing warm up wearing the something smilar to what the Bangladeshee workers are wearing when cutting grass or during road works, and another golf champion, another black guy and a white ball like a speck on the screen roll into a hole. I think it only took you a while. The world could really do with less images of the world. Stop making a picture out of everything we see.

and if you are elevated from wanker stalker to lover
that there might be the incident of her at the dinner table, opposite you, and you thought all the things she said about herself, her family, friends, and perhaps, you, is about the world - but why can't she be objective.

and it if you are relegated from lover to stalkers on youtube,
you might imagine everything she reports about the world, like after the evening she stood up and left angrily for work, or not wanting to talk to you after the fight or tiff [could be easily resolved, she will always be the first to speak again with in the next few hours, if you turn on the TV to see her talking, you noticed her eyes are still a little red] is all about you and the relationship between the two of you - must she be so subjective.

Fanon and Friends - Chien S.T.

2011-12-23T22:31:00.001-08:00

The waiter made you wait with your hand raised - before you caught his attention. The maid thought the crows attack her twice, on separate days, because she’s a maid. The bus doesn't stop when you flag. You aren't as slow as an old man.
It is night time, the street lamps are on, the street isn't darker than your skin.

Clementine - Chien Swee-Teng

2011-12-23T22:21:00.002-08:00

the poet of chips and beer,
interrupts our strumming and singing
like a grandpa;
asking about the last train
but he is also the poet of flowers, although I forgot what he said
when he was walking past some red tropical flowers of december
is there a difference between chicks and ladies?
no, says the poet of half-moon, as he points to the sky
the poet of the river, look at the murky brown water
was it ever green?
the same river we threw glasses, beer bottles and one chic plastic chair into
asked the poet of
flower
women
moon
and river
and out of spite, he called his best friend Harry Potter
the poet of rock.

Fireman - Chien Swee-Teng

2011-12-23T22:21:00.001-08:00

1. It was not exactly an affair, 'I met her before him.' [Although we were young, she's my ex. She left me for a fireman]
2. 'But it's so unfair, now he gets to smell her hair'. [E, B, Am]
3. I can only see her when he is working: sleeping, slacking at the station waiting for the next disaster or putting out fire.
4. I am not a pyromaniac, but I started burning down buildings within our district, to keep him busy, so that I can see you, sending him 5 or 7 miles away from the Central Fire Station, 10 km from home, and return with a shade of charcoal, no, a layer of soot... but he is not the tired grey of the miners, he is the endless replay of the heroic firemen who died in 9/11, a simulated version though.
5. Each time we meet, one building, or one unit is on fire. Thus, the only surely fire proof day is the day he is on leave.
6. I started with the overpriced restaurant, the pawn shop where I pawned my mother's jewellery, the indie book store (where the owner pretends to be your friend), all the art galleries and museums, the spas, squatters, bars, clubs and pubs art students frequent, the playgrounds, golf course, casinos, amusement parks, public and private estates...
7. but I left the sleazy hotel alone, and the provision shop, the hardware store untouched.
8. And soon, was it a year or two, I ran out of things to burn, but the heat did not die down,
9. like her hair, like most stories it needed a twisted. No, I did not start burning random people on the street.
9.1 Burn my house, or on one occassion there was a fire somewhere although 'I' didn't start the fire, and when I got home it was my house, my apartment.
9.1.1 My flat to trap and kill Mr Fireman
9.2 Burn the fire station
9.3 Burn her apartment, Mr Fireman returns to see her with him (which is me)
9.3.1 Saving his wife and the man like a hero
9.3.2 watching the adulterous couple burn
9.3.3 both stood and watch the woman burn (to provoke the feminist readers)

Lungs - Chien Swee-Teng

2011-11-29T23:32:00.000-08:00

Zhou returned to the village last week. We were sitting outside a tavern that was closed too early - like all the taverns in the world, he said. Zhou was drinking a jar of wine, a fat clay jar. I was sipping a bowl of plum juice. He asked me a direct but difficult question. For me, it was more difficult to answer than why banditry is axiomatic. A scholar he encountered in the city said to him, sometimes we simply like our job, we enjoy our task. Zhou asked, so is alienation or exploitation still applicable in this case? Intuitively, I said it is merely ideological, false consciousness, I used examples such as those in the assembly line, the producers are seldom the owners, and deviated to the peasants and landlords, personal preference would not change anything, the feudal structure. But I know it was not clear. He did not ask any further. I am not sure if he was perplexed or thinking. He looked away and gazed at a young lady walking by. Although I have the image of him dozing off or distracted by a new pimple on his face during class reading, I know he would be able to understand if it was clearer. I was thinking about the rice fields of the other provinces, although I have never seen or stepped into a rice field before. I was thinking about the slogan Ne travzaillez jamais! Perhaps that was the only thing I could remember. Perhaps it was because of the nightly heavy drinking. Then we both heard the cymbal, it was the middle of third watch. Then I told him a prostitute who loves her job because she is a nympho would not change the fact that the body is used or abused. Instead of seeing it as countering the notion of exploitation, it should be read as an instance of double exploitation. First, the body is abused by the brothel, and then, the body is used by herself, for pleasure. I could elaborate further until I contradict myself, but I didn’t. I was a little disappointed that I only know how to use vulgar examples to elucidate a point. Then he turned back to look at me and grinned and then began to laugh, the laughter was at once idiotic, mischievous, and drunk, his trademark laughter, it was a deep laughter, I could hear his lungs. It reminded me of a teacher who is studying the movement of ants. Then we moved on to eradicate this binary between holy and profane, introduced Agamben into the discussion, about proper use, friendship, marriage as a contract to use each other’s organ, about the notion of profanation, and its relation to Catholicism, the Romans or Greeks.

Temple Fair - Chien Swee-Teng

2011-11-25T23:14:00.000-08:00

His surname is Song but he doesn't like to sing. How is he related to Song Jiang (宋江) and what was allegorised between Song Jiang and the Great Song (大宋). Estranged. A man and his state, the Great Song Empire (大宋帝国)! Song marginalised Song! The official is the bandit. He reads history to make up story. He ignores those who spoke to him about historical accuracy and dates. They are like those who enjoy being condemned to cataloguing books, paintings and artefacts. He was at the temple fair. He says, I met him at the crowded temple fair. Noon, he was there with her. She was bored, lacking happiness, at the mansion, staring at her reflection in the pond, longing for the return of the other man. He suggested to her the temple fair, the peddlers and acrobats. The biggest bully in town and his lackeys would harass her but he will be there to protect her. But he doesn't know martial arts. He would be beaten up. But a hero from another town might be passing by and could save her while Song savours the taste of the dust on the ground. He felt down, lacking prosperity, because in the morning someone at chasi (tea hall) judged his character from his calligraphy, from the black ink he spilled, but the picture of her in the garden framed by the pillars...I cut him off, not his head. I thought Song must either be very drunk or mad. This is Paris, fin de siècle, 19th century. What kind of Song dynasty nonsense is he trying to feed me? We are along the arcade, the long arcade, the long passageway. It stretches so long that Walter Benjamin couldn't finish writing about it. He was just too long winded, Song says. This is the age of iron and glass not wood and stone. The poet is Baudelaire, the chee hong kia, Rimbaud, the siow ging na! But our jiu is neither bee jiu (rice wine) nor ang jiu (red wine), Song says. We walked slowly along the shops, mostly shops selling jewellery and watches. I stopped and peered into a shop window. But only nude velvet jewellery busts and amputated plastic hands were on display. It was midnight. Where have they hidden the watches, necklaces and rings when the shop closed, at this time? I told Song we should give it a try one of these days. Break the glass and steal the busts, fuck the alarm. I noticed our reflection on the glass. The humidity here has flattened our hair... fucking tropical weather.

An Indian security guard, with a torch in hand, walk towards the two drunken men and chased them away from the shopping mall, "Excuse me, no loitering outside." The two men threw the half-empty beer cans it at him, and ran away.

Point Form

2011-11-17T10:10:00.000-08:00

1. On the bus, about twelve midnight, I past an empty carpark next to a hawker centre. (actually, it was only almost empty, a white truck was parked there)
2. Faint amber framed by the dark trees surrounding the rectangular lot, this scene was quiet and still. But I, as the only passenger on top of this slow moving double-decker, was the one who could not keep still - to make an image move without moving it.
3. I thought about what I always remember, each time I see a huge empty carpark at night, what he said about twenty years ago, when the band, all the way from Seattle, was here to promote the album but did not perform, 'give me an empty carpark and I will play you a gig.'
4. The white truck is the type with a heavy air-tight door at the back - good for transporting ice, chicken, laundry or artworks. Perhaps, the type of truck that killed a French literary theorist I half understood.
5. I thought about the awkwardness of being a loquacious stutterer, all the colour-blind painters which are celebrated as unique in art schools now. I thought about the trouble of a half-literate man who has decided to write down what he is too shy, or lacking in eloquence, to say.
6. Trouble, if only it is an exaggeration to call it misery. Two hours to type a paragraph is trouble not misery.
7. Or told to write instead of telling because his son told him he is too long-winded.
8. I find the convenience of silence suspicous than virtuous.

Kafka estaría orgulloso

2011-11-17T10:09:00.000-08:00

Casi pierdo la vida de un volantazo intentando entregar a tiempo un shampoo para piojos! Desde la Farmacia de Dios, Kafka estaría orgulloso

Theatre - Painting

2011-11-09T10:31:00.000-08:00

‘My teacher used to be a painter, he told me he hates theatre, perhaps because of how he was treated as a scenic painter when he was working for a theatre company. But he told me it was about the dialogue. Few years later, he wrote and directed a play. The actors were talking. It was shown in a local theatre and then Europe, Brussels. He is also making films now. Amongst the people I know, he is the one who has watched the most films. But I don’t have many friends. I read in the papers that it was shown in Venice. I am happy for him. But I heard the Italians are theatrical.’

Images - Chien Swee-Teng

2011-10-29T03:30:00.001-07:00

I heard more about the death of a dictator from a friend who has seen the video footage. Inside my head, I only have a vague image of the photograph on the front page. It reminded me of the head shots of two dead men years back. They were the sons of another dictator that was executed later by his people under the instigation of some other foreign power. The obscenity of these images is equivalent to the closed-up moments of triple X porn, and the truisms about happiness, life and death in the spiritually pornographic speech of a New Age monk or guru with an enlightened smile. It is horrible and, at the same time, ironic that these images denuding death could be published ‘uncensored’ on the morning papers, while we continue our endless debate about the moral and social aspects of categorising fictitious sex and violence in films and plays.

But I find it somewhat pointless, if not ridiculous, to think about this while sitting on an old wooden bench outside a neighbourhood clinic and smoking. An armchair critic sits on the armchair at least. The clinic is closed today - or perhaps at this time of the day. A middle-aged woman walked past me. Framed by her untidy shoulder length hair, the features of her face are slightly distorted, more akin to those photographs exposing cases of plastic surgery gone wrong than natural birth defects. I thought, but the face of the earth is more than just a case of plastic surgery gone wrong. Perhaps, what happened to her could also be the result of an accident. She noticed I was observing her. I looked away.

A rather old black cat came towards me and sat under a cracked, dirty blue plastic chair next to the bench. Despite the thinning and greying fur it should still be regarded as a black, I guess. The cat was spying on a bald-headed Javan Myna pecking at a piece chicken bone next to the green rubbish bin. I once said to the friend who told about the video footage that a bird pecking at chicken bone is a cannibalistic sight. The friend once, after seeing another bald-headed Javan Myna, lamented, ‘look at the kind of shit we are eating, even the birds are losing feathers.’ It does not matter if his statement is scientifically valid. When I threw the cigarette butt on the floor and stood up the black cat ran away, the Javan Myna, alarmed by this series of manoeuvres, took flight, leaving the chicken bone on the floor to resume the status as an unwanted litter. Out of curiosity, I looked at the board next to the closed metal shutters of the clinic for the consultation hours. Why do doctors need such a long lunch break? And next to it is a poster advertising the health check packages and the prices in larger fonts, larger than the yellowing white fonts stating the consultation hours at least.

Song for my Province – Chien Swee-Teng

2011-10-28T03:29:00.001-07:00

Song for my Province (28.10.2011) – Chien Swee-Teng

‘The Austrain misogynist, Otto Weininger, divided women into two categories: mothers and prostitutes. Similarly, men can be classed as fathers and profligates. The fathers again can be graded into two groups: the fathers of children and fathers of “men.” Since all the former can do is beget children, not bring them up, they still have something in common with profligates. The latter not only beget children but also try to educate them, in order that they may be genuine men in the future.’ - Lu Xun, ‘Random Thoughts (no. 25, 1918)’
If it is Roman numbers and Arabic letters, the price of four slabs of meat might be better. To braise (Lor), steam (Chway), because I am patient, grille (Peng), I leave no stone unturned, to pan-fry (Chien)? the oil, but I am profound, I like it deep-fried. We love to share our concern for the price of meat but not the meat. Vegetarians love to despise us and secretly hope we die from all kinds of cancer. But they are kinder, but they are kinder than us, they love animals.
We love the girls from our hometown, fair limbs, flesh-vegetables (bak chye) it doesn’t matter if they shave – their armpits, I mean. Or faint shadow of moustache on another adorable face. I am lying.
I met a German girl, and she told me about the hairy woes on her legs and arms. We discussed Buddhism (a popular topic amongst many Westerners now) and the hairlessness of monks and nuns, and some cunts in school.
I knock on the wall like a door, I forgot to tell you that I am strong, that I am so strong that the wall cracks instead of my bones. And hairlines are born to form a distorted map of the world. But I can’t see my province from it, knowing it is not about the cartographer who prefers pounding than drawing. I live on exaggeration.
I notice a trace of my blood on the wall, few drips, not a spot or a little red dot. ‘Blood on the sheets again’, white sheet but it could be the dark virgin I bought last night, or a menstruation blood of a careless loveless 45 year old. A 78 year old lady is watching the advertisement of Japanese sanitary pad on TV. But she doesn’t say much about the Japanese occupation in 1942. This song is not dedicated to women or to criticise mothers to be. I was born to be unfilial.
I am proud of my province with a name longer than the territory, the almost invisible territory on the world map. Not a problem of scale, 1:63,360, 1 inch = 1 mile. And 1:1000000 made it worse, 1 cm is 10km, pocket size map of Sydney is 1: 15000. Kannina, I failed mathematics in school.
I am proud of my province with a bastardised name, took a cat for a lion when we only have tigers, now dead tigers of Bukit Timah, now intimate friends of paper tigers. What prince, what Hindu, what traitor, what Sang Nila, what Utama, it only reminded me of the word Kannina. For a day, after school, my classmates substituted Kannina with Sang Nila and Sang Nila with Kannina in class. And Utama for conversation in Mandarin. What Srivijayan, what Indo, what Chinese envoy, what Chinese monk, I am not a prince with mythical power or intelligence. I only would throw myself into the sea, than the crown, because of my fear of drowning. What lanchiao lord of the sea! Whose grandfather!
In school, we were told that scientists of the West said tiger and lion are classified as Cats. On my way home I looked at the skinny stray cats around the void deck. One of them, I guessed female, was licking herself. I was reminded of some poses of showgirls in United States from a movie. Science lessons in school must be a protracted joke imported from Germany. I was told that huge rats used to bully their ancestors, some came from Persia and Siam, until the great William Farquhar came to save the day. Anyway, the cheaper beer here must be ordered by the names of cats, fierce cats, black cats, tigers and lions in different language or dialect. Tiger Beer, Leo, Singha…I did not do biology and hate to visit the zoo. The most dangerous species there is considered visitors.
The conversation ended but she forgot to hang up. She did not put the phone down properly. No click. It is landline. I hear the TV. Earlier she played me a song recorded on cassette tape through the phone. In return, to continue this potlatch of muffled sound, I played the acoustic guitar and sang out of tune for her. Scratching of strings is more prominent than the plucking. She is talking to her sister now. I hear screaming, chattering, screaming of joy, bliss and innocence compounded, and laughter and chattering of joy, bliss, unfounded excitement and potential hysteria compounded. I hear a man’s voice, the father, I guessed. Is that how she behaves at home? How she speaks to her family. I put the phone down. I hear it click.
First time out of the province, on our way to Malacca, driving along the high way listening to The Rolling Stones the palm tree plantations, is it mathematical or dynamical sublime? Sorry for the Kantish question. The Rolling Stones played at the badminton hall in 1965 which is to say the The Rolling Stones played in Geylang. The Rolling Stones Live in Geylang! The two friends who went with you are dead. One of them, David an ex-cop spent the rest of his life as a full-time gambler, a hustler in the billiard saloon at the basement of Golden Mile. Now you are studying Golden Mile as an architectural phenomenon. We met him when he was jaywalking, crossing Jalan Sultan. He died of heart attack few years later.
The promise to be a man of the world - let’s return to the price of meat and related matters. Not to waste your life in a basement. The advertisement in the newspaper today inspired this provincial song, I must cite my reference. Fresh Buys, Available at 85* stores! Argentina Packham Pears – $ 1.95 US California Red Globe Grapes – 38 cents 100g China Winter Dates 350g -$2.25 per punnet Italy Angeleno Plus 1 kg-$2.95 per punnet China Yuan Huang Pears - $ 1 for 2 Spain Melons - $4.95 each China Spinach 250g - $1.10 per pack Fresh Grey Prawns (Stateless) - $1.08 100g Japan Sea Bass - $1.44 100g Australian Chilled Twee Bah – 98 cents 100g.

Future Song Lyrics - Darren Hayman

2011-10-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

Future Song (Bracket parts unsure)

Verse I

This look nothing like it does in the brochure

The beds are double and (there) should be a four poster

We should be booked on the 19th floor

with a view of the lakes and the view of the mountains.

This girl looks nothing like the girl on the cover

She’s got acne and the braces,

she’s a (mother)

The photo shows a nymphette who could only be nineteen with big brown eyes.

Chorus

And the future is not what they said it would be

in the Sunday papers, the Seven-tiers (or 70th)

where’s my monorail, where’s my hover car, where’s my robot slave

My wife is into Elisabeth Sladen and she’s not Lesley Anne Down

But we live with disappointment in a small apartment

making do with what we found (Cheo Chai Hiang)

Verse II

They don’t make movie like they used to

They don’t make music like they used to

I don’t really feel the things I am supposed to

but my wife helps me work it thru’

Repeat Chorus

Instrumental

Repeat Chorus

For Eugene

2011-10-25T12:39:00.001-07:00

.It was published in 1991. Printed on the cover page is the title 'Things to Translate'. Written on the same page, beneath the title 'For Eugene, in Stoke-on-Trent, 25 VIII 2003 (with all my best wishes!) Piotr Sommer' and a drawing of a stickman holding a stalk of flower - not a faceless stickman but the kind with a smiley. Piotr Sommer is the author, a Polish poet. I found this thin paperback in a secondhand bookstore about five or six years ago. Often when I open this book, I would come across the same page and read this message before proceeding to the content. Although I am not the addressee, I have read this handwritten message lying on my bed, in the living room, in school, on the bus, in the toilet. I thought about how and why the book had ended up in the secondhand bookstore? I speculated about the relationship between Piotr and Eugene. Why flowers? Superficial, merely acquaintances, Eugene has no interest in this book, and it was dumped together with some bills, statements and invitation cards piled under the coffee table with the old newspapers and magazines, after a month or so. Maybe, they were once very close, intense but the friendship has soured very badly and Eugene just couldn't stand the sight of the book. Was it misplaced and sold as a part of a bulk by a rag and bone man? Perhaps this Eugene is already dead and his family cleared everyhing in his room, including his bookshelf with a modest but eclectic collection. I thought, this Eugene could be one of the few Eugenes I know. The Eugene from sixth form, the well-loved Eugene, the much-praised Eugene, some forgotten Eugenes. Related words and names came to mind, Eugène, the French Eugene, Eugenides, eugenics. Perhaps, this Eugene is an avid but selective reader who maintains the purity of his collection like a fascist. If that's the case, I would say to the imagined (but not imaginary) Eugene that it is not 'a matter of of taste'. But rather how some people without the faculty of taste are allowed to express their opinions, and are given the rights to act on their tastelessness.

.

Fanon and Friends

2011-10-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

The waiter made you wait with your hand raised
before you caught his attention

The maid thought the crows attack her twice, on separate days, because she’s a maid.

The bus didn’t stop when you flag. You weren’t as slow as an old man.
It was night time, the street lamps were on, the street wasn’t darker than your skin.

on ash

2011-10-05T03:43:00.001-07:00

Indeed, if one goes into this apparently uninteresting subject in any depth there is quite a lot to be said about it which is not at all uninteresting; if, for example, one blows on ash it displays not the least reluctance to fly off instantly in all directions. Ash is submissiveness, worthlessness, irrelevance itself, and best of all, it is itself pervaded by the belief that it is fit for nothing. Is it possible to be more helpless, more impotent, and more wretched than ash? Not very easily. Could anything be more compliant and more tolerant? Hardly. Ash has no notion of character and is further from any kind of wood than dejection is from exhilaration. where there is ash there is actually nothing at all. Tread on ash, and you will barely notice that your foot has stepped on something.

Chernobyl 1986 - Jorge Volpi, Season of Ash, p.10

2011-10-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

Chernobyl 1986 - Jorge Volpi, Season of Ash, p.10

Mikhail Mikhailovich Speranski, with intense grey eyes, had just joined the Armada. Held back in school because of mathematics and spelling, and prone to bullying his brothers, he celebrated his recruitment: He was seventeen years old, and the only things that mattered to him were money and women. When a sergeant suggested he join the special labour force that was working in the Ukraine and Byelorussia, and promised him extra rubbles every week, he abandoned the wide-cheeked girl whose bed he shared and went off in search of adventure.

Transported in obscure military trains, he reached his objective after three days: an improvised encampment on the Ukrainian plain. By then, hundreds of volunteers were dreaming of long hours of combat. A tall, thin sergeant explained the mission to his squad. At 5:00 A.M., an army truck drove him and four of his comrades to a spot seven kilometres from Pripiat. The moon was shining through the trees. Their orders were blunt: They were to kill every animal and clear the land – that’s right, the whole place – to free it from the plague. They were no longer soldiers but butchers. The local peasants called them liquidators.

Speranski almost wept when he shot his first deer, a doe only a few months old, but after a few weeks of constantly emptying his rifle, he barely took note of his victims. The corpses of sheep, cows, cats, goats, chickens, ducks and hounds carpeted the meadows before being doused with gasoline and burned like heretics. The liquidators had to eradicate everything the monster hadn’t devoured. Within a radius of ten kilometres, all cities and town were demolished, the trees cut down, the animal life decimated, the grass taken away. The only way to guarantee the survival of the human race was to make the plain into a desert. Mikhail Mikhailovich went about his task with the same blankness as the executioners who put his grandparents to death in the Kolyma camps. After contributing so faithfully to the massacre, Speranski found life less than attractive. Soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, he would be executed for armed robbery.

Notes. India Song. Duras

2011-10-04T02:04:00.001-07:00

- Singing of a mad beggar woman from Laos, from Savannakhet, dead children she drops along the way, walking to Calcutta.
- Not about mad woman but of Embassy love affairs, of a French woman with her lover or lovers, young attaché, Vice Consul…
- Shadow, elongated shadow of a man cast on the stone steps of the villa. Folds like a black accordion.
- Smoke, incense or mosquito coil burning or the guy smoking. It is a French film after all: ‘People of France, a good looking depressed guy smoking a cigarette is not a movie?’ - Peter, Family Guy.
- mentioned mist after the wind.
- Disembodied Voices. Didn’t see any Indian in the film, despite title. Except an Indian waiter dressed in white, even the turban. But he is not a white Indian. Didn’t see the crowd in the ballroom, at the reception, only noises, the mad woman, the gossipers, the seagulls… actually we see no one else except the French woman and her lovers. We only hear voices. No Indian songs although mentioned ‘India Song’
- Other Names of Places, Lahore, Bengal, Calcutta, the Ganges, delta and islands. Wife of Spanish Ambassador. Shalimar Gardens. Shanghai and Spain. 1937.
- Mentioned tennis court, deserted tennis court, nothing to do with Tennis Court Oath, but led to an Oath or death of another kind
- Humidity, she has Venetian blood. Loves dancing but ‘no one’s dancing in this heat. Immobility is the only remedy’, and something about slowing blood circulation. The piano, out of tune because of the humidity.
- Reflection. Played a lot with the mirror 1) came into the frame from the right, she was in her red gown, it was her reflection, followed by her person. 2) She bends over the piano, in her red gown, he walks towards her, entering the scene from the left, once again, it is man who follows his reflection. Reminded the piano is in front of the mirror. 3) Bullet hole in the mirror, from the dialogue.
- Leprosy, ‘leprosy of heart’, he shot the lepers. Couldn’t see because of the mist. Boredom, ‘boredom is personal’ Writing, ‘You write?’ ‘I used to, thought I could.’ ‘Love can be shouted’ – Vice Consul who wants to stay over for just one night. ‘Never loved…’ suspects ever really. He is a virgin. He claims. ‘The air smells of mud and leprosy’

Triangulation or, didn’t shower - Chien Swee-Teng

2011-09-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Triangulation or, didn’t shower
There are many triadic systems to preach on weekdays:
Three kingdoms, index, symbol, icon - imaginary, symbolic and real…
‘but only opium from the Golden Triangle is real to help me distinguish it from reality’, ‘and time and me to disappear like planes and ships into the overrated mystery of Bermudas triangle’
and Lacan like Immanuel Kant only reminds them of the word cunt, I guess. Thinking of smoking break again.
Kannina… your hair is oily, you are smelling your hand after scratching your crotch.
I know there is another triangle there. I know you are good at geometry and the letter ‘A’.

Lan Chiao Plural South - Chien Swee Teng

2011-09-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

moss shading the red brick wall of an old army camp green, not the ill-fitting uniforms… glad that you left.
Tropical diseases itch the East of my skin, stupid Bermudas, slippers and topless grins. You want to look tanned next to a golden hair, read nothing about sunshine and anus to explain the colour.
… opposite end of the digestive tract…
We shall not send ourselves there. We must re-educate the weather here - rehabilitate the climate… up North.

Family of Past Futures - Chien Swee-Teng

2011-09-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

Father of Philippine Printmaking

Mother of Mexican Poetry

Children of Heidegger

Son of the Minister

Mock Human Meat - Chien Swee-Teng

2011-09-19T11:04:00.001-07:00

Eat Dog Meat
Sing Bird Song

Ah... and horizontal lines and noise of metal shutter door

No Pork on Mondays

World is One Single Scream - Rodriogo Fresán

2011-08-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

Pan is one of those two people a week who - statistics say - throw themselves onto the rails with British punctuality just before the train's triumphal entrance.

A woman screams when she sees him jump. A woman screams when she sees a woman screaming. All at once - screams are more contagious than laughter, and there are so many screams in this story - it's the same scream that leaps from woman to woman, from mouth to mouth. The same scream makes the cars brake, and the brakes scream too at the unexpected and futile effort of having to stop all those wheels and all the steel riding on those wheels. Yes, without warning the whole world is one single scream.

interrupted

2011-08-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

I have embarked on the study of metaphysics several times, but happiness always interrupted - Macedonio Fernandez

The Bus and the Road - Lu Xun

2011-08-18T00:55:00.000-07:00

For more than a year now I have spoken very seldom to young people, because since the revolution there has been very little scope for talking. You are either provocative or reactionary, neither of which does anyone any good. After my return to Peking this time, however, some old friends asked me to come here and say a few words and, not being able to refuse them, here I am. But owing to one thing and another, I never decided what to say - not even what subject to speak on.

I meant to fix on a subject in the bus on the way here, but on the road is so bad that the bus kept bouncing a foot off the ground, making it impossible to concentrate. That is when it struck me that it is no use just adopting one thing from abroad. If you have buses, you need good roads too. Everything is bound to be influenced by its surroundings, and this applies to literature as well - to what in China is called the new literature, or revolutionary literature.

However patriotic we are, we probably have to admit that our civilization is rather backward. Everything new has come to us from abroad, and most of us are quite bewildered by new powers. Peking has not yet been reduced to this, but International Settlement in Shanghai, for example, you have foreigners in the centre, surrounded by a cordon of interpreters, detectives, police, 'boys' and so on, who understand their languages and know the rules of foreign concessions. Out this cordon are the common people...

Some Thoughts on our New Literature - Lu Xun

Never Any End to Paris - Enrique Vila-Matas, New Directions, 2011, p. 30

2011-08-13T01:38:00.000-07:00

I also saw Perec himself in real life. It was halfway through 1974, the year he published Species of Spaces. I'd seen lots of photographs of him, but that day, in the bookshop on Boulevard Saint-Germain, I saw him arrive for the launch of a book by Phillippe Sollers and do very strange things I won't go into now. What is certain is that for quite a while, so impressed to be seeing him in real life, I watched him intently, so intently that, at one moment, his face was a hair's breadth from mine. Perec noticed this anomaly - a stranger was a whisker away from his goatee - and reacted by commenting out loud, as if trying to let me know I should take my face elsewhere: "The world's a big place, young man."

*Se - Giorgio Agamben p.136, Potentialities

2011-07-20T01:41:00.000-07:00

'It is not because life and death are the most sacred things that sacrifice contains killing; on the contrary, life and death became the most sacred things because sacrifices contained killing. (In this sense, nothing explains the difference between anitquity and the modern world better than the fact that for the first, the destruction of human life was sacred, whereas for the second what is sacred is life itself).'

Assume vs Presume

2011-07-19T22:55:00.000-07:00

presume vs. assume. Although they're used interchangeably now, to presume originally meant to assert that something is true without complete evidence; to decide something without absolute certainty. (Since absolute certainty is impossible, you could say that we presume everything, including the physical condition of the world.) To assume, on the other hand, meant to acknowledge that not all evidence was in, but to act as though something were true.

*****************************************************

In many contexts when the meaning is 'to suppose', the two words are interchangeable: e.g. I assume/presume you are coming to the party. But, as the Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage (Ed. Robert Allen. Oxford University Press, 1999) points out, 'Fowler (1926) maintained that there is a stronger element of postulation or hypothesis in assume and of a belief held on the basis of external evidence in presume.' The Oxford English Dictionary definitions are very similar. Assume is 'to take for granted as the basis of argument or action'; presume is 'to take for granted, to presuppose, to count upon'. There is a faint suggestion of presumptuousness about presume.

The New Oxford Dictionary of English which is based on recent usage evidence, provides these definitions:

assume suppose to be the case, without proof.
presume suppose that something is the case on the basis of "probability"; take for granted that something exists or is the case.

http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexper...assume?view=uk

Assume has a variety of meanings. It basically means "to take up or on oneself," "to suppose or take for granted," "to pretend," or "to be taken up." The noun form is assumption.

Presume is related to and similar to assume, but it has the sense of doing it beforehand. It means "to dare or venture without prior knowledge," "to assume as believable without direct proof," "to take as a premise, subject to further proof," or "to behave arrogantly or overconfidently." The noun form is presumption.

A presumption is often taken up or assumed to be true until proven otherwise, as presumed innocent. Sometimes it has the sense of behaving in a superior manner, as in to presume upon someone. Presumption often has the sense of blind overconfidence, or going beyond the limits of proper manners. Presumptive means "based on reasonable grounds of evidence" as in presumptive heir. Presumptuous means "unusually confident or bold, often arrogant," or "foolhardy."

To assume suggest taking by one's own will or power for good or evil, right or wrong. If he assumes a position that is not rightfully his, he has arrogated or usurped it. A person can assume office either lawfully or unlawfully. When a debater assumes something, he or she may take it for granted without explaining it. If a person takes to himself character traits or a position he does not posses, he pretends to or affects the character he is assuming. A smooth talker often assumes something to be true that would be challenged if directly stated. When people claim something, they assert that they have a right to it. When they assume it, they take it.

The adjective assumed means "taken for granted" or "fictitious." When used as an adjective, assuming means "arrogant," its opposite, unassuming is more common. Something that is assumable is something that can be taken, as an assumable loan.

http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000304.htm

In other words, you should not assume things when thinking or planning. You should check details and ask questions.

You can, therefore, use the word assume when speaking or writing because you are, in fact, checking. The person you are writing or speaking to is supposed to set you straight if your assumption is wrong.

I assume he will be at the meeting. (You expect the reader/listener to inform you if your assumption is wrong.)

I presume he will be at the meeting.

If the person is important to your meeting, you should never “assume” he will be there. You should check by writing or speaking.

Rabelais and his World

2011-07-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

p. ix - no one voice/ quoted speech
p.16/ 421- formal and familiar addresses, polite as false to the familiar
p.405 - Father and Son as continuation than break
p.463 - use of numbers, symbolic
465 - language and philosophy/ideology, language and dialects, latin (classic. medieval), early French... dual language and transformation of vulgar Latin, Italianisation of French...

No Pork on Monday

2011-07-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

His favourite stall is closed today
Most of the pork-related soup and food
A friend of my did not know why
For Sunday, I was told, the abattoir is closed
And for those that are open for business the pork isn't fresh.

That is why he is having lunch with me on every Monday

The Order of Animals

2011-06-17T05:13:00.000-07:00

“This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that."

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Pantheon, 1970) xv.

(also in History of Sexuality and some interviews, on the emphasis on eating than sexual taboo)

Article: Woman in China roasts puppy alive
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/woman-roasted-puppy-alive-061603091.html

Hey,

read the sanctimonious comments. What about chickens, pigs, cows and fish? Your book should've been Dog Meat not Diced Meat to irritate more people. The order of animals: pandas, whales, sharks, dogs, cats, birds, chicken, cows... endangered species, pets, poultry, cattle. Barbaric because dogs did not move up to the category of Pets in some places. Houseflies, cockroaches and lizards remain within the category of Pests in most places. Thus, public displays of sympathy for the puppy betray the fascistic inclination of the masses.

Red Herring - not about why some animals shouldn't be harmed, but rather why it is justifiable to kill (or eat) certain species. Anyway, this is just a thought exercise. I know you aren't an animal lover too, and love to eat meat.

absent city - notes

2011-06-12T20:16:00.000-07:00

The Girl p.46-7 "Extravagant References"
The girl (Laura) was born healthy. It was only with time that they began to notice certain strange signs. Her system of hallucinations was the topic of a complicated report that appeared in a scientific journal, but her father had deciphered it long before that. Yves Fonagy called it "extravagant references." In these highly unusual cases the patient imagines that everything that occurs around him is a projection of his personality. The patient excludes real people from his experience, because he considers himself much more intelligent than anyone else. The world was an extension of herself; her body spread outward and reproduced itself. She was constantly preoccupied by mechanical objects, especially electric light bulbs. She saw them as words, every time one was turned on it was like someone had begun to speak. Thus she considered darkness as a form of silent thinking. One summer afternoon (when she was five years old) she looked at an electric fan spinning on a dresser. She thought it was a living being, a female living being. The girl of the air, her soul trapped in a cage. Laura said that she lived "there," and raised her hand to indicate the ceiling. There, she said, moving her head from left to right. Her mother turned off the fan. That is when she began having difficulties with language. She lost the capacity to use personal pronouns. With time she stopped using them altogether, then hid all the words she knew in her memory. She would only utter a little clucking sound as she opened and closed her eyes. The mother separated the boys from their sister because she was afraid that it was contagious. One of the small town beliefs. [...] They did not want her to be committed. So they took her twice a week to an institute in La Plata and followed the orders given by Doctor Arana, who treated her with electric shock therapy. He explained that the girl lived in an extreme emotional void. That is why Laura's language was slowly becoming more and more abstract and unpersonalized. At first she still used the correct names for food. She would say "butter," "sugar," "water," but later began to refer to different food items in groups that were disconnected from their nutritive nature. Sugar became "white sand," butter, "soft mud," water, "wet air."

p.74 Mirror
because politics is a mirror... faces and faces that appear and look at each other and get lost again and are substituted by new faces that appear and look at each other and get lost again.
It swallows up faces.
But the mirror is always there. The truth is television is a mirror. A mirror that holds onto the faces.

p.116 Atomic Bomb
The possibilities of converting what already exists into something else that are infinite. But I would not be able to make something out of nothing. In that respect, I am not like Richter. You cannot compare my discovery with Richter's invention, he built an atomic plant for Peron using only words, just with the reality of his German accent. He told him he was an atomic scientist and that he had the secret to make the bomb, and Peron believed him and fell like a fool, and had underground buildings and useless labs with pipes and turbines for him that were never used.

p.121
Macedonio and the fundamental chord (guitar) the entire universe is derived

p.122 M & E
"... Macedonio fell in love with Elena before he met her, as he used to say, because they had told him so much abut her that it was as if a spirit had come to visit him. Even many of the things he had done earlier in life were to impress her at a distance and to try to get her to fall in love with him, he would say. He always thought that his passion is what made her ill, he always thought it as his fault that she died. Macedonio saw her for the first time at a cousin's house the day she turned eighteen, and again by coincidence one afternoon on a street in Azul. This second meeting proved to be definitive. He had gotten off the train because he was doing an experiment having to do with the length of thoughts. He got off there without knowing where he was was because he had already traveled the number of leagues needed for his thoughts, and had decided to send a telegram from there saying he would be coming back late. When he left the post office he sat down at a bar to have a brandy, and then walked around the corner and ran into Elena, who was looking at window of a shoe store, as if she had been placed there just so Macedonio would find her. She started to laugh because she thought it was funny to see that man dressed in a white shirt and a dark suit at siesta time, as if he were sleepwalking in a lost town in the middle of the Pampas. He looked like a seminarist going out to ask for alms for the poor parish. And I was asking for alms, Macedonio would say, because she gave me the grace of her beauty and of her intelligence, bright as the morning sun. He invited her to have tea with him at the cafe in the train station, and from that afternoon on, they were together until the day she died."

p.129-30
I know the Police Museum, with the wax reproductions of the criminals. Punk Head, Madman Gaitan... wearing the clothes they had on when they were arrested or killed (the shirt with the bullet hole in back), and the cells where they were locked up... and the instruments used by the police for centuries to hold the murderers. He used to say to me that narrative is an art that belongs to the police, that they are always trying to get people to tell their secrets, to narc on other suspects, to tell on their friends, their brothers. That is why the police and the so-called justice system have done more for the progress of narrative, he used to say, than any writer in history.

p.131
Lugones Chief of Police

Trading Monologues - Mishima

2011-06-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

Two men may talk enthusiastically for an hour or so about shared experiences, and yet not have a true conversation. A lonely man who wants to indulge his nostalgic mood feels the need of someone with whom to share it. When he finds such a companion, he starts to pour out his monologue as though recounting a dream. And so the talk goes on between them, their monologues alternating, but after a time they suddenly become aware that they have nothing to say to each other. They are like two men standing at either side of a chasm, the bridge across which has been destroyed.

Then at last, since they cannot bear to remain silent, their conversation turns again to the past.

Runaway Horses, p.57 (Vintage, 2000 [1970])

The Pain of Dialogue - Blanchot

2011-06-11T05:11:00.000-07:00

It is a matter of dialogue. How rare dialogue is; we realize this by the surprise it makes us feel, bringing us into the presence of an unusual event, almost more painful than remarkable. In novels, the "dialogued" part is the expression of laziness and routine: the characters speak to put white spaces on a page and out of an imitation of life, where there is no narration, only conversation; from time to time one must give speech to people in books; the direct contact is an economy and a repose (for the author more than for the reader). Or, the "dialogue", under the influence of some American writers, can be wrought of an expressive incommunicativeness: more threadbare than in reality, a little below the meaningless speech that suffice for us in current life. When someone speaks , it is his refusal to speak that becomes obvious; his discourse is his silence: closed, violent, saying nothing but himself, his abrupt massiveness, his desire to emit words rather than to speak. Or simply, as happens in Hemingway, this exquisite way of expressing himself a little below zero is a ruse to make us believe in some high degree of life, emotion, or thought, an honest and classic ruse that often succeeds and to which Hemingway's melancholy talent given various resources.

The Book to Come, p. 151 (Stanford Uni. Press)

To read what was never written - Walter Benjamin

2011-06-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

Historical method is a philological method, a method that has as its foundation the book of life. 'To read what was never written,' is what Hofmannsthal calls it. The reader referred here is the true historian. (Theses on the Philosophy of History)

[It is in this moment that the past is saved, not in being returned to what it once existed but, instead, precisely in being transformed into something that never was: in being read, in the words of Hofmannsthal, as what was never written - Daniel Heller-Roazen]

only young poets and old whores can appreciate

2011-06-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

A poet can endure anything. Which amounts to saying that a human being can endure anything. Except that it's not true: there are obviously limits to what a human being can endure. Really endure. A poet, on the other hand, can endure anything. We grew up with this conviction. The opening assertion is true, but that way lie ruin, madness, and death.

[...] it has to be said that he wrote badly [...] He wanted to be a poet, and threw himself into this endeavour with all his energy and willpower. He was tenacious in a blind ,uncritical way, like the bad guys in westerns, falling like flies but persevering, determined to take the hero's bullets, and in the end there was something likable about this tenacity; it give him an aura, a kind of literary sanctity that only young poets and old whores can appreciate.

a past to come - Maurice Blanchot

2011-05-31T22:50:00.001-07:00

"All our writing - for everyone and if it were ever writing of everyone - would be this: the anxious search for what was never written in the present, but in a past to come."

2011-05-31T22:49:00.001-07:00

‎'drawing is a constant correcting of errors' - John Berger

The Speed of Light - Javier Cercas

2011-05-31T22:23:00.000-07:00

p.54 - Everybody looks at reality, but few people see t. The artist isn't the one who makes the invisible visible: that really is romanticism, although not the worst kind, the artist is the one who makes visible what's already visible and everybody looks at and nobody can or nobody knows how or nobody wants to see. Probably nobody wants to see it.

p.83-4 - I already know that perfect happiness does not exist, but here I have learned that perfect happiness doesn't exist either...'

p.98 - On Pascal, no one is entirely saddened by a friend's misfortune. [...] this is mean and false but true. The problem is with the word 'entirely. Since I've been here I've seen several friends die: their death have horrified me, infuriated me, made me cry, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't felt an obscene relief, for the simple reason that the dead man was not me.

p.214 - But what I most remember about that conversation is the end of it, perhaps because at that moment, for the first time, I had the deceptive intuition that the past is not a stable place but changeable, permanently altered by the future, and that therefore none of what had already happened was irreversible.

p.217 - Treno is now one of those interchangeable cafes that American snobs consider European (from Rome) and European snobs consider consider American (from New York)

p.222- on the wall of fifteen years ago photos of baseball stars had changed, not the picture of John Wayne

p.239 - talked through the night till 'finally dawn surprised them both.'

Last page 278 - 'And how does it end?' he asked. I looked around the almost empty bar and, feeling almost happy, answered: 'It ends like this.'

Soldiers of Salamis - Javier Cercas

2011-05-26T00:48:00.000-07:00

p.1 - lame joke about career

p.146 - 'To write novels you don't imagination,' Bolano said. 'Just a memory. Novels are written by combing recollections.'

p. 169 -

'It's different now,' I said. 'He's a successful writer.'

'Really? I'm glad: I always thought he was talented, as well as an out-and-out liar. But I suppose you have to be an out-and-out liar to be a good novelist, don't you?'

The Tenant The Motive - Javier Cercas

2011-05-26T00:27:00.000-07:00

p. 94 - About the opposite apartment that is like a reflection, every single item

p. 123 - Reread whole of chapter one or remember
'He knew that a writer recognizes himself as such by his reading. Every writer must be, first and foremost, a reader. He swiftly and efficiently covered the volumes published in the four languages he knew, making use of translations only for access to fundamentals of classical or marginal literatures. However, he distrusted the superstition that all translations were inferior to the original text, because the original was merely the score from which the interpreter executed the work. This - he later observed - did not impoverish the text, but endowed it with an almost infinite number of interpretations or forms, all potentially valid. He believed there was no literature, no matter how lateral or trifling, that did not contain all the elements of Literature, all its magic, all its abysses, all its games. He suspected that reading was an act of informative indolence: the truly literary thing was re-reading. Three or four books contained, as Flaubert believed, all the wisdom to which man had access, but the titles of these books also varied for each man.

Singapore Sling

2011-05-26T00:08:00.000-07:00

Singing staring at the dirty water of Singapore River and drinking a drink, named after an island that calls itself a country and a stone age weaponry, recommended by an SPG?

2011-05-20T01:19:00.000-07:00

"Cada uno tenía su pasado encerrado dentro de sí mismo, como las hojas de un libro aprendido por ellos de memoria; y sus amigos podían sólo leer el título"

"Each had his past shut in itself, like the leaves of a book they learned by heart, and his friends could only read the title"

10.2.1927

2011-05-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

In that old film
there was a new imperative for the actor:

to break his silence
as technology advances

reduced gestures
when we hear sound effects
with images uninterrupted by texts

not because
his words could readjust her smile

not because
future morning sun could colour the window amber

not because
we want to hear the voice of Hitler

no longer grey,
certain spots of the kitchen were warmed
without grease.

In diesem alten Film

Es wurde ein neues Gebot für den Schauspieler:

sein Schweigen brechen

Die Technologie macht Fortschritte

reduzierte Gesten

wenn wir hören, Sound-Effekte

mit Bildern ohne Unterbrechung durch Texte

nicht, weil

seine Worte könnten nachjustieren ihr Lächeln

nicht, weil

Zukunft Morgensonne konnte die Farbe der Fenster Bernstein

nicht, weil

wollen wir die Stimme des Hitler hören

nicht mehr grau,

bestimmten Stellen der Küche waren erwärmt

ohne Fett.

2011-05-19T11:15:00.000-07:00

trust a Tartar
on the twenty-second
we should be ashamed of all our spontaneous reactions

the Tartar is always
mistaken for my father
and a young friend

Asiatic Barbarian laughs
and so a mad professor recalls,

'This is not a song. It's more. More than just a branch of science we experiment with our lives.'

Song

2011-05-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

the novel within the duration of a song
the hurried prose about how

a country was turned into province.

a novel the length of a song
the experience only spoken with abbreviated slang
about how

a language is now a dialect

turned,
the plane is now a ship floating above the sea of clouds.
(I turned to page six and the writer is still stuck,
writing about how his eternal novel shall begin.)

a novel written according to the length of this song
this novel could be read within its duration
or listened
with repeated inattentiveness

Shotgun Blues

2011-05-17T10:33:00.000-07:00

In this club, I told Renzi, one can drink and drink without anyone getting upset. Look at the man over there, the fat one with the jacket on: he gets drunk every night, always by himself, and yet preserves a strange dignity. There's a story about him, I tell Renzi, a painful story. While cleaning a shotgun he killed has wife of just three months. I told him that it was doubtless an accident and not a crime, for nobody kills his wife of three months in that fashion, with a shotgun blast in the face, unless he's crazy. And besides, I tell him, the man has been literally broken since the accident. He does nothing but get drunk and says that firearms are the work of the devil. Two glasses of gin, that's right, I tell the waiter. Oh, and please bring a bit more ice. You, I say to Renzi, have no doubt read my compatriot Korzeniowski, the Polish writer who wrote in English. A renegade, to tell the truth, a romantic of the worst sort. He spent his life fascinated by that sort of character. The man has a secret. But which of us does not have a secret? Even the most insignificant person,I say to him, if he had some listeners, could fascinate them with the mystery of life. It's not even necessary to have killed a woman with a shotgun blast. That other fellow - see? - the one over there, next to that column. His name is Iriarte; he has a watch shop, is the classic type of insignificant person, and yet I am sure that when he has had enough to drink he also dreams of the great man he almost became. At some moment in his life he must have witnessed something that he needs to keep hidden. That happens to all of us. Each one of us, I tell him, has his own repertory of extraordinary moments and heroic illusions. Everyone, Renzi says to me; the difference lies in that only some are able to realize those illusions. Illusions? That depends on one's age. After one's thirtieth birthday, I tell him, we are nothing but a sad collection of illusions and of women we have killed with shotgun blasts. Besides, I tell Renzi, what a man thinks of himself is of absolutely no importance.

Ricardo Piglia, Artificial Respiration, trans. Daniel Balderston, Duke University Press: North Carolina, pp.108-9

2011-05-17T00:20:00.001-07:00

'those who hope to save themselves by opposing Marx’s real beard to Stalin’s false nose are wasting their time.' - Michel Foucault

Four Paragraphs in the Park

2011-05-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Not during the day when a tree in no other colours than green burns. On a humid night, the leaves – being two-faced – switched and betrayed its colour again like the chameleonic sky. Not bothered about the routine beauty of dusk, not fascinated with the palette of its clouds. Over-praised, over-painted, over-photographed.

It was hot not warm. You saw some middle-aged men praying publicly, half-naked, for the false respite of rain. You heard some young educated women making speeches, promising the party would change the weather. You thought they should shut up, pair up and find a hotel. The images of tropical beach resort posters from postcards and tour agencies crossed your mind.

While irritated by how eloquent and witty one could be, or fail to be, their use of certain words (such as ‘hope’, ‘belief’, ‘faith’, ‘care’, ‘future’, ‘change’ with words like ‘wish’, ‘unwind’, ‘relax’, ‘dream’, ‘holiday’, ‘plans’) either made you yawn or gave you goose bumps.

After the rain, the dark woods with dark leaves are wet – weighing a bit more. You kicked on the bits and stepped on the pieces, fallen from the trees, littering the concrete pavement. You thought about some snails you have killed. You picked and collected the twigs and sprigs as materials for a miniature park in a trite dystopia. You planted a branch as a bare tree, and related it to the tarnished name ‘Art’ and the ugly word ‘Design’.

Hai Zi 海子 (查海生) 【明天醒来我会在哪一只鞋子里】

2011-05-10T12:10:00.000-07:00

【明天醒来我会在哪一只鞋子里】

我想我已经够小心翼翼的
我的脚趾正好十个
我的手指正好十个
我生下来时哭几声我死去时别人又哭
我不声不响的
带来自己这个包袱
尽管我不喜爱自己
但我还是悄悄打开

我在黄昏时坐在地球上
我这样说并不表明晚上
我就不在地球上早上同样
地球在你屁股下
结结实实
老不死的地球你好

或者我干脆就是树枝
我以前睡在黑暗的壳里
我的脑袋就是我的边疆
就是一颗梨
在我成型之前
我是知冷知热的白花

或者我的脑袋是一只猫
安放在肩膀上
造我的女主人荷月远去
成群的阳光照着大猫小猫
我的呼吸
一直在证明
树叶飘飘

我不能放弃幸福
或相反
我以痛苦为生
埋葬半截
来到村口或山上
我盯住人们死看
呀, 生硬的黄土人丁兴旺

Gu Cheng

2011-05-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

一代人
黑夜给了我黑色的眼睛
我却用它寻找光明
A Generation
The dark nights gave me my dark eyes
I, however, use them to search for light

Maurice Blanchot on Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities' (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften)

2011-05-10T11:06:00.000-07:00

The man without particularities, who does not want to recognise himself in the person he is, for whom all the traits that particularise him make him nothing in particular, never close to what is closest to him, never foreign to what is exterior to him, chooses to be this way because of an ideal of freedom, but also because he lives in a world - the modern world, our world - in which particular deeds are always about to be lost in the impersonal conjuncture of relationship, of which they mark only the temporary intersection. In the world, the world of great cities and great collective masses, it is immaterial whether something has truly taken place and in what historical event we suppose ourselves to be actors and witnesses.

'Musil', The Book to Come, Maurice Blanchot, p.138

Election - Chien Swee-Teng

2011-05-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

'I will vote for them tomorrow. Actually everyone should. Hoping that things will progress from bad to worse... thus, forcing an eventual revolution than illusionary parliamentary reforms!'

'I shall vote for whichever party that promise to change the weather here!' (written on a hot and humid day)

'There is nothing political talking about politics when it is merely political gossiping.'

2011-05-01T07:58:00.001-07:00

Dreaming, dreaming the night, the street, the staircase and the shout of the statue as it turns the corner. Running toward the statue and finding only the shout, wanting to touch the shout and finding only the echo, wanting to grasp the echo and finding only the wall, and running toward the wall only to touch a mirror...

The Absent City

2011-04-02T02:35:00.000-07:00

'The State knows all the stories of all the citizens, and retranslates them into new stories that are then told by the president of the republic and his ministers. Torture is the culmination of that desire to know, the maximum degree of institutional intelligence. That is how the State thinks, and why the police mainly torture the poor, only the poor or the workers or the dispossessed . . . only in very exceptional cases have they tortured people belonging to other social classes, and these cases have become major scandals . . . and at the end they had to retreat before international pressure, which accepts as a given that the humble from the fields, the wretched and feverish from the ghettos and the poorest neighborhoods of the city will be massacred and tortured, but reacts when intellectuals and politicians and the children of well-to-do families are treated this way. Because, in general, the latter already collaborate of their own accord and serve as an example and adapt their lives to the criteria of reality established by the State, without there being any need to torture them. The others would do the same, but they cannot because they have been leveled and cornered, and even if they wanted to and took great pains to that end, they can no longer act like the model Japanese citizen who works fifteen hours per day and always greets the general manager of his company with the slighest of nods. They control everything, they have founded the mental State . . . which is a new stage in the history of institutions. The mental State, the imagined reality, we all think like they do and imagine what they want us to imagine.'

'Elena thought the man was a magnet that attracted and drew the iron shavings of the soul to itself. She was already thinking like a madwoman. She felt her skin release a metal dust. That is why her body was completely covered, including gloves and a long-sleeved blouse. The only part exposed was her face, the rusted skin of her external gears.'

Spring Snow - Yukio Mishima (Vintage 2000)

2011-04-02T00:10:00.000-07:00

p. 18 'They reached the island at a spot where a single maple stood among the pines, and climbed the stone steps to the grassy clearing at the top with three iron cranes. The boys sat down at the feet of the pair that were stretching their necks upward in an eternal, mute cry, then lay back on the grass to stare up at the late autumn sky. The rough grass pricked through the backs of their kimonos, making Kiyoaki rather uncomfortable. It gave Honda, however, the sensation of having endure an exquisitely refreshing pain that was fragmented and spread out under his back. Out of the corners of their eyes, they could see the two cranes, weathered by wind and rain and soiled by chalky-white bird droppings. The birds' supple, curved necks, stretched against the sky, moved slowly by the rhythm of the shifting clouds.'

p. 30 "You remember that the story is set in Tang China. A man named Yuan Hsaio was on his way to the famous Mount Kaoyu to study the teachings of Buddha. When night fell, he happened to be beside a cemetery, so he lay down to sleep among the burial mounds. Then in the middle of the night he awoke with a terrible thirst. Stretching out his hand, he scooped some water from a hole by his side. As he dozed off again, he thought to himself that never had water tasted so pure, so fresh and cold. But when morning came, he saw what he had drunk from in the dark. Incredible though it seemed, what had tasted so delicious was water that had collected in a human skull. He retched and was sick. Yet this experience taught something to Yuan Hsaio. He realised that as long as conscious desire is at work, it will permit distinctions to exist. But if one can suppress it, these distinctions dissolve and one can be as content with a skull as with anything else." [later the conversation continues to what if the lover is the whore.]

p.33 - [About the Marquis 'dispensing useless knowledge' about what wine to go with what food, the different characteristics of wines in the cellar, what wine should be served on what occasion, the type of guest etc.

On Satoko's beauty - p.67 'And her face seemed to glow and fall into soft shadow; alternating with the quick, vivacious movement of her eyes. Alertness of eye is usually considered a vulgar trait in women, but Satoko had a way of delivering her sidelong glances that was irresistibly charming. He smile followed close upon her words, as her glance did upon her smile - graceful sequence heightening the bewitching elegance of her expression.

Satoko as a Gift p.153 ' - "Oh, a bit of dust...," the Countess exclaimed, gazing at Satoko's cheeks. But just as she reached out with her handkerchief to wipe it off, Satoko drew quickly away and the speck of dust vanished. It was then that her mother realised that the dust on her daughter's cheek ahd been noo more than a sahadow cast by a spot on the window. Satoko gave a wan smile; she didn;t find her mother's mistake particularly amusing. She disliked being given a special inspection today,as if she were a bolt of silk intended as a gift.

p.163 - 'He mad e it patently clear that in a situation as this, the emptiest words were those that aroused the strongest emotions.'

p.268 - washing sin with another sin to cancel each other out.

p. 302 - Abbot and young widow scroll

p.338 - The baldness of the nun, and the wig as the last secret weapon against Stoko's decision.

p .384 - Buddhist causality and the sects p.

350 - beautiful and ugly sons of Marquis

24.3.2011

2011-03-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

Naked, or dressed in nudity
those extensions, beyond my fingers, toes and nails (orteil/articulas)

my sympathy would be an insult.

62: A Model Kit

2011-03-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

p.34

where people squeezed together sleep in rooms with tired furniture,

with dark curtains and a breathing in of dust and beer, [...]

I will lose you again on the street car or on the train,

I'll run in my shorts
among crowded people sleeping in the compartments
where a violet light
blinds
the dusty cloth, the curtains that hide my city.

p.57 (the silent attention of Madame Germaine with a duster on Wednesdays and Saturdays)

My profession condemned me to hotels, which wasn't too pleasant when I thought about my apartment in Paris, set up over fifteen years of preference, a bachelor's manias, tendencies of the left hand or the five senses, records and bottles in their proper, obedient places, the silent attention of Madame Germaine with a duster on Wednesdays and Saturdays, life without financial problems, the Luxembourg beneath the windows...

p.60 (sad smell of time)

A friend of bars and custom-houses, of refueling stops early in the morning and beds where memories wouldn't be mixed with the sad smell of time

p.114 (tunnel, spoons nail, posters)

There were few people on the Metro platform, people like gray blotches on the benches along the concave wall with tiles and advertising posters. Hélène walked to the end of the platform where the stairway permitted - but it was prohibited - entry into the tunnel; shrugging her shoulders, vaguely passing the back of her hands across her eyes, she went back to the illuminated part of the platform. That's how, almost without seeing them, you start to look at the enormous posters one after the other, the ones that violate distraction and seek their path in your memory - first a soup, then some eyeglasses, then a make of television, gigantic photographs where every tooth of the child who likes Knorr soups has the size of a matchbox and the fingernails on the man watching television like spoons (to drink the soup in the neighbouring poster, for example), but the only thing completely attracts me is the left eye of the girl who loves Babybel cheese, an eye like the entrance to a tunnel, a series of concentric galleries and, in the middle, the cone of the tunnel which disappears into the depth like that other tunnel where I would have to have entered by going down the forbidden stairs, and which starts to vibrate, to moan, to fill with lights and squeals until the doors of the train open and I get in and sit on the bench reserved for invalids or old people or pregnant women, across from the seats where undefinable pygmies with microscopic teeth and imperceptible nails travel along with the fixed and mistrustful expression of Parisians tied to salaries of hunger and bitterness that are mass produced like Knorr soups. For four or five stations there is a kind of absurd desire for madness, for a stubbornness in fixing the illusion, which might have been enough to suggest it, to take a mental step forward, to throw oneself into the tunnel on the poster so that it would become reality, the real stairway of life, and those people in the car reduced to a ridiculous size would become a mere mouthful for the girl who loves Babybel cheese, a slap of the hand for the giant watching television. Now, at the edge of the forbidden tunnel stairs, something like an abominable caress, a demand... Shrugging your shoulders, rejecting temptations one more time; you remain, Hélène, the bitter harvest of that afternoon remains; the day isn't over yet, you'll have to get off at Saint-Michel station, the people get their normal size back, the posters are exaggerated, a naked man is small, fragile, no one has nails like spoons, eyes like tunnels. No game will make you forget: your soul is a cold machine, a lucid register. You'll never forget anything in a whirlwind that sweeps away the large and the small to fling you into another present; even when you walk through the city you're yourself, inevitably. You'll soon methodically forget, with a before and an after; don't be in such a hurry, the day isn't over yet. Come on, here we are.

p.171 -2 (lost dog, streetcar, amusement park)

... in order to get to the Calle Veinticuatro de Noviembre I would have to take one of the countless street cars that paraded by like a ride in an amusement park, passing without stopping, their sides of peeling ocher, their trolleys full of sparks, an intermittent ringing of meaningless bells which could be heard at all moments and as if because of a whim, with people with hollow and tired faces in the windows, all of them looking down, a little as if they were looking for a lost dog among the bricks of the red pavement.

Interview: Balibar and Macherey - James H. Kavanagh and Thomas E. Lewis (Diacrtitics Vol 12, 1982, pp. 26-52)

2011-03-09T21:44:00.000-08:00

pp.50-1 (Literary production)

MACHEREY:It is not a science of literature all by itself. From the outset, we refused to respond to the question: "What is literature?"

BALIBAR: But in a certain sense, we could not avoid at some moment acting as if we were giving such a response.

MACHEREY: No. On this point, I think we remained consistent. And all those who were working against us in similar fields at the time, they all raised again the question 'What is literature?,"and proposed their answers. Look at Sollers.

KAVANACH: Do you prefer the question: How can we construct a science of the literary text?

MACHEREY: Yes, but that is not at all the same question. And it is not a science of the literary text as such, as an isolated and autonomous phenomenon.

LEWIS: How would you characterize the productive analysis of literary texts?

MACHEREY: But what does one do when one speaks of literaryt exts? Are texts literary in themselves, by their own intrinsic characteristics, which distinguish them from non-literary texts? I think one must say that a text is literary because it is recognized as such, at a certain moment, under certain conditions. It may not have been so recognized before, and it may not be after. I did a lot of work on Jules Verne, at a time when no one spoke of him; now he has become an author, and everyone does his or her book on Jules Verne. He has been returned to "French Literature"; he is explained in class. But when I worked on him, he was not even a minor author; this was not "Literature."

KAVANAGH: Are texts ideological in themselves? Are there certain intrinsic characteristics that define them as ideological? MACHEREY:Ideology is present in texts as a material from which they are constructed. In this sense, it is something internal.

BALIBAR: It's ideology that is not being defined clearly. You are playing with two meanings. There is a spontaneous, idealist aspect of the term ideology, which appears again for political reasons at this moment- a period of defense of the rights of man against "systems of ideology," meaning the world of ideas more or less directly and consciously tied to politics. This sense of the term implies at once, in a contradictory fashion, something profoundly illusory and weak, and something extremely dangerous and powerful, because it holds men and women in an oppressive society. The meaning of the term ideology that we have tried to use from Marx, in the way Althusser began to specify it, was, from the beginning, totally different from this.

Bricklayers (Dialectic of Consciousness/ Hegel in Mexico p. 59)

2011-03-06T09:23:00.000-08:00

"Nevertheless, what happened to them in the passage from one job to the other has an extraordinary meaning. The "world of men" placed them socially as "anthropological laborers," in a situation where they were "on the verge of realizing a true human form of labor, "on the verge of converting themselves into real human beings and not only because of the fact - which they will have commented upon with mocking joy - of having served for some days for this "crazy guy" who contracted them for a strange and incomprehensible activity, and paid them, to boot, with an unusual generosity. They were "on the verge," yes, but this "on the verge" stayed there, suspended, without resolving itself, like a fantasmatic emanation above the anthropological work that disappeared, in the same way that the vagrant flames of fuegos fatuos float over the graves of a cemetery. However, such being "on the verge" repeats itself and remains in the labor of bricklaying to which they returned, because in a certain sense and in a new but essential form, they continuet o be "anthropologists"on their job as house builders."

Robert Linhart 'L'Etabli (The Assembly Line)

2011-03-06T09:20:00.000-08:00

"Nothing is lost, nothing is forgotten in the indefinitely mixed memory of the working class. Other strikes, other committees, other acts will find inspiration in past strikes- as well as in ours, the trace of which I will later discover, mixed up with so many others. . . ,"

HEGEL IN MEXICO / BOSTEELS - Dialectic of Consciousness/ Revueltas

2011-03-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

'Our individual has written a letter, he has "worked" on it, but he ignores the fact that this whole vast set of activities (writing, sealing the letter, buying stamps and attaching them, introduc-ing the letter in the dropoff box) is inserted in a mass of human work that is common, general, total, constant, active, past, present, and historical in the most plastic sense of the word, this invisible matter in which the lines of communication are drawn and draw themselves, from the time when one of them discovered himself in "the others" and succeeded in inventing and emitting the first "signs of identity," a first scream, a first smoke signal, a first letter. The postal system reveals nothing to our individual, even though it allows him at least to be this hu-man being in whom he does not yet perceive himself, but in whom he no doubt will one day come to perceive himself no sooner than he assumes consciousness of it.'