- september 23
-
◁ 15 janvier 1980
L'Autre manque. Ça me fait drôle à moi aussi. Je tiens le coup pourtant, ce qui vous épate, mais je ne le fais pas pour cela. Un jour d'ailleurs auquel j'aspire, le malentendu m'épatera tant de venir de vous que j'en serai pathique au point de n'y plus tenir. S'il arrive que je m'en aille, dites-vous que c'est afin — d'être Autre enfin. On peut se contenter d'être Autre comme tout le monde, après une vie passée à vouloir l'être malgré la Loi.
-
◀ Grimms' German Dictionary: "A" (first entry)
A, der edelste, ursprünglichste aller laute, aus brust und kehle voll erschallend, den das kind zuerst und am leichtesten hervor bringen lernt, den mit recht die alphabete der meisten sprachen an ihre spitze stellen. a hält die mitte zwischen i und u, in welche beide es geschwächt werden kann, welchen beiden vielfach es sich annähert. (I remember a joke, maybe Winnie the Pooh, reading a dictionary from A to Z.)
♥♥♥ | - september 22
-
◁ Stein's ROASTBEEF.
In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. All the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling. This makes sand.
Very well. Certainly the length is thinner and the rest, the round rest has a longer summer. To shine, why not shine, to shine, to station, to enlarge, to hurry the measure all this means nothing if there is singing, if there is singing then there is the resumption.
The change the dirt, not to change dirt means that there is no beefsteak and not to have that is no obstruction, it is so easy to exchange meaning, it is so easy to see the difference. The difference is that a plain resource is not entangled with thickness and it does not mean that thinkness shows such cutting, it does mean that a meadow is useful and a cow absurd. It does not mean that there are tears, it does not mean that exudation is cumbersome, it means no more than a memory, a choice and a reëstablishment, it means more than any escape from a surrounding extra. All the time that there is use there is use and any time there is a surface there is a surface, and everytime there is a suggestion there is a suggestion and every time there is silence there is silence and every time that is languid there is that there then and not oftener, not always, not particular, tender and changing and external and central and surrounded and singular and simple and the same and the surface and the circle and the shine and the succor and the white and the same and the better and the red and the same and the centre and the yellow and the tender and the better, and altogether.
♥ | - september 21
-
◀ Hegel's Solger reviews
crisis of German literature; Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit on this "Rathlosigkeit," "Verwirrung," -- Hegel's word is "Krise," not finding it in Goethe -- "ausgerengte Maximen, halb verstandenen Gesetzen, und zersplitterten Lehren"; solution in content: "Das innere Gehalt des bearbeiteteten Gegenstandes ist der Anfang und das Ende der Kunst." Meanwhile, Athenaeum's irony is the obverse solution, pure form, pure delight in the variety of forms, discovery of the world, of traditions, of concreteness and difference without a dialectical resumption into unity, so that its only unity lies in its subjective standpoint. Poesie der Poesie. AND the ambiguous predominance of the critic over the author. The work as content is brought into a formal realm (critique) that is completely external to it. Hegel's discussion of Solger's context is so close to Benjamin's work on the concept of criticism! Same reference to Goethe, as a kind of complement to the Athenaeum. ...
♥♥♥♥♥ | - september 18
-
◁ Etan Levine, "The Phenomenology of Torah Study"
The term ba'ôlam with its temporal designation of uninterrupted eternality conveys that life-long Torah study is the precondition for shalom. For in Rabbinic thought, a human being is a "chronoholistic system": thoughts, feelings, behavior, and general weal at one time do not determine a perpetual state of being. Intermittence, not constancy, is the way all emotions live: commitments, values, loves, and faith wax and wane. Since being human means always confronting logos, that is, the meaning of being, lifelong intellectual nutrition is to the soul as air is to the body: one can hold one's breath, but only briefly! The Rabbinic concept of the human spirit enduring as a chronoholistic entity beyond the time-span of the body logically extended the necessary endurance of Torah into the world-to-come: "When you walk it will lead you, when you lie down it will watch over you, and when you awaken it will talk to you." ))Footnote: )) M. Ab. 6:9. Cf. Sifre, Ha'azînû 31, Tanhuma, Wayyîggash 11. Again, "This is the way of Torah: a morsel of bread with salt you will eat, and water by measure you will drink. You will sleep on the ground and live a life of privation while you labor in the Torah. Yet, if you do this, "Happy shall you be, and it shall be well with you" (Ps. 128:2): "Happy shall you be" in this world, "and it shall be well with you" in the world-to-come" (M. Ab. 6:4).
♥♥♥ | -
◀ anyone who reads from Torah or studies the Mishna without a song -
Megillah 32a12. Rabbi Shefatya said that Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Concerning anyone who reads from the Torah without a melody or studies the Mishna without a song, the verse states: “I gave them rules (חֻקִּ֖ים) that were not good [and rules (וּמִ֨שְׁפָּטִ֔ים) by which they could not live]” (Ezekiel 20:25).
♥ | -
◁ Hong Kong Stories, David T.K. Wong
"Why would an important man like you want to have dinner with somebody like me?"
- september 14
-
◀ two talmudic sources on the gezera shava
a rabbinic mode of deriving law through verbal analogy palestinian talmud pesachim 6:1 niddah 22b The difference is that Rav Yehuda said that Shmuel says in the name of Rabbi Yishmael: any verbal analogy that is not free at all, one cannot derive halakhot from it. If the verbal analogy is free on one side, according to Rabbi Yishmael one can derive halakhot from it, and one cannot refute it. According to the Rabbis, one can derive halakhot from it, but one can also refute it. If free on both sides, everyone agrees that one can derive halakhot from it and one cannot refute it logically.
♥♥♥ | - september 11
-
◁ banana republics, anselm kizza-besigye
To put it differently, the anxiety around bananas under socialism marks not the fear of losing bananas, but rather of losing the right to enjoy the products of capitalist exploitation from the periphery. From this perspective, the banana is the perfect fetish object, the ideal substitute phallus, and not just because it looks like a dick. The banana offers the Western worker assurance of their right in the surplus value, or alienated labor, of the racialized worker on the banana plantation.
♥ | -
◀ niche of lights
Thus the Prophet said to Gabriel, "Does the sun move?" Gabriel replied, "No----Yes!" The Prophet then said, "How is that?" Gabriel replied, "From the time I said 'No' to the time I said 'Yes,' it moved a journey of five hundred years."
♥ |