Οὐκ ἄρα παντὸς ἀνδρός, ὦ Ἑρμόγενες, ὄνομα θέσθαι [389a] [ἐστὶν] ἀλλά τινος ὀνοματουργοῦ· οὗτος δ᾽ ἐστίν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ὁ νομοθέτης, ὃς δὴ τῶν δημιουργῶν σπανιώτατος ἐν ἀνθρώποις γίγνεται.

Then it is not for every man, Hermogenes, [389a] to give names, but for him who may be called the name-worker; and he, it appears, is the lawgiver, who is of all the artisans among men the rarest.

(demiurge from demos and ergon, commoner and labor. nomothete is a legislator, a member of the assembly that legislates, and definitely not a commoner.)

Walz, Saint Thomas Aquinas, a biographical study > post ipsam missam nunquam scripsit neque dictavit aliquid, immo suspendit organa scriptionis

"Chaff: Thomas Aquinas's Repudiation of His Opera omnia" by Boyle and Boyle

"The metaphor of Aquinas hanging up his pens alluded to the exiled psalmist hanging up his lyre (Ps. 137:l-6),51 as if Aquinas were also estranged in a foreign land, his hand withered and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth (w. 5-6).

Same > "I cannot": Thomas Aquinas replied to an anxious inquiry about I why he had abruptly ceased writing and dictating his Summa JL theologiae. His companion and confessor, Reginald of Piperno, afraid that overzealous study had induced insanity, insisted that he continue. "I cannot," repeated Aquinas, "because everything that I have written seems to me chaffy." /// sicut palea: comme un ballot de paille; comme du fumier; like straw; Lacan gives "comme du fumier," which isn't literal

Wenn ich dabei mich und das Wort entstellte, tat ich nur, was ich tun mußte, um im Leben Fuß zu fassen. Beizeiten lernte ich es, in die Worte, die eigentlich Wolken waren, mich zu mummen.

Als die christlichen Kreuzfahrer im Orient auf jenen unbesiegbaren Assassinen-Orden stiessen, jenen Freigeister-Orden par excellence, dessen unterste Grade in einem Gehorsame lebten, wie einen gleichen kein Mönchsorden erreicht hat, da bekamen sie auf irgend welchem Wege auch einen Wink über jenes Symbol und Kerbholz-Wort, das nur den obersten Graden, als deren Secretum, vorbehalten war: „Nichts ist wahr, Alles ist erlaubt“… Wohlan, das war Freiheit des Geistes, damit war der Wahrheit selbst der Glaube gekündigt…

burden (plural burdens): 1. (music) A phrase or theme that recurs at the end of each verse in a folk song or ballad. 2. The drone of a bagpipe. 3. Theme, core idea, e.g. "the burden of the argument."

burden (n.2) "leading idea, main topic," 1640s, a figurative use (on the notion of "subject often repeated") of the earlier sense "refrain or chorus of a song," 1590s, originally "bass accompaniment to music" (late 14c.), from Old French bordon (Modern French bourdon) "bumble-bee, drone," or directly from Medieval Latin burdonom "drone, drone bass" (source also of Spanish bordon, Portuguese bordão, Italian bordone), of echoic origin.

" 'undiluted, pure and free and general determination and will, as shall best and most usefully seem agreeable to him, with council or without council ... paying no attention to any solemnity of law, custom, reformation, decree or statute ... undiluted and pure power and jurisdiction, decision, power, lordship, and free determination...' [...]

In the law of the city [Mantua] the head of the Bonacolsi family now [in 1299] possessed almost absolute power. [...] On his deathbed [in 1308] Guido explained to the anziani that he was worried by the thought that he had taken money from the commune and used it for the construction of his palace. In reply they declared that he was perfectly justified in what he had done and that in future he should use all his communal finances as he thought fit. Six days later their decision was put to the General Council which prudently concurred. Councillor after councillor rose to his feet to compose some rhetorical exercise on the theme: 'by the custom and vigour of the statutes of the commune of Mantua, he is and has been able to dispense and dispose and expend and donate the money and property of the commune of Mantua and to convert it to his own use'. [...]

[After he died the council confirmed that his successors, two brothers,] were to have authority 'to conserve, guard, rule, govern, dispose, spend, give, and also receive to themselves, have, and retain the property, money, revenues, and goods of the commune of Mantua, and the possessions and goods of exiles, and whatever pertains to the commune of Mantua; and to do, in whatever manner they shall please, and as shall best and most conveniently seem and appear convenient, each and every thing, at their pure, undiluted, and free will and decision.' Finally the vicars were freed from any obligation to render accounts, or to stand to sindication (i.e. enquiry into the performance of their office). "

This reductionist method has its uses in the fields of abstraction such as logic and mathematics, and in the fields of manmade artefacts such as mechanics But it fails singularly to lead to a perception of reality (truth) in the case of living organisms such as nature, including man, in which the whole is not merely the sum of the parts, if only because the parts are so cohesively interrelated that isolating any part distorts perception of the whole

It is then critical that we partake in acts of remembrance of those who came before us and were convinced of the enduring necessity and possibility of liberating Palestine. This is not an exercise in nostalgia or a romanticized vision of militancy. Nor is it a suggestion that the conditions of the Palestinian Revolution can be mapped onto our present. To remember, uplift, and learn from the political theory and strategy of the Palestinian Left is to struggle against Zionism’s ongoing, century-long counterinsurgency against Palestinian resistance.

During the Palestinian Revolution, the Zionist entity assassinated leaders of the Palestinian Left throughout Palestine, the Arab world, and Europe...There has never been closure to this repression. Our historical moment is constituted by an ideological struggle in which Zionism attempts to suppress and eradicate the memory of Palestinian and Arab revolutionaries it has transformed into martyrs.

From Chapter 18:

As Arthur ran, darting, dashing and panting down the side of the mountain, he suddenly felt the whole bulk of the mountain move very, very slightly beneath him. There was a rumble, a roar, and a slight blurred movement, and a lick of heat in the distance behind and above him. He ran in a frenzy of fear. The land began to slide, and he suddenly felt the force of the word "landslide" in a way that had never been apparent to him before. It had always just been a word to him, but now he was suddenly and horribly aware that sliding is a strange and sickening thing for land to do. It was doing it with him on it. He felt ill with fear and trembling. The ground slid, the mountains slurred, he slipped, he fell, he stood, he slipped again and again. The avalanche began.

Stones, then rocks, then boulders, pranced past him like clumsy puppies, only much bigger, much, much harder and heavier, and almost infinitely more likely to kill you if they fell on you. His eyes danced with them, his feet danced with the ancing ground. He ran as if running were a terrible sweating sickness, his heart pounded to the rhythm of the pounding geological frenzy around him.

The logic of the situation, i.e., that he was clearly bound to survive if the next foreshadowed incident in the saga of his inadvertent persecution of Agrajag was to happen, was utterly failing to impinge itself on his mind or exercise any restraining influence on him at this time. he ran with the fear of death in him, under him, over him and grabbing hold of his hair.

And suddenly he tripped again and was hurled forward by his considerable momentum. But just at the moment he was about to hit the ground astoundingly hard he saw lying directly in front of him a small navy tote bag that he knew for a fact he had lost in the baggage retrieval system at the Athens airport some ten years previously in his personal time scale, and in his astonishment he missed the ground completely and bobbed off into the air with his brain singing.

What he was doing was this: he was flying. He glanced around him in surprise, but there could be no doubt that that was what he was doing. No part of him was touching the ground, and no part of him was even approaching it. He was simply floating there with boulders hurtling through the air around him.

From Chapter 9:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying.

There is an art, it says, or, rather, a knack to flying.

The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.