"Sothic Escapade"

The populace, aroused by a growing awareness of deception, triumphantly refused the continuance of their usurper's reign. Many of his previous supporters had already changed sides, but bitter dissension still marked the unruly transfer of power. Bankrupt, disliked far & wide, & embroiled in fruitless conquest, the unfortunate empire soon required rescuing by its neighbors.

02 10 04

A poet is an atavism, no doubt. Or a prefiguration.

"I had driven up with some friends to an esthetic tea at Mr Emerson's. ...There were various men and women of note assembled, and I, who listened attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some time scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little withdrawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and his bright eyes clearly burning under his black brow. ...He rose and walked to the window, and stood quietly there for a long time, watching the dead white landscape. No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him, the conversation flowed steadily on as if everyone understood that his silence was to be respected. It was the same thing at table. ...But there was a light in his eye which assured me that nothing was lost. So supreme was his silence that it prsently engrossed me... There was very brilliant discourse, but this silence was much more poetic and fascinating... When he presently rose and went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his face, like day over the sky, said: 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night'. " --The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes

Closure takes the same part in a neurotic person's life, as exploration does in a healthy person's. Their expression is the language of risks, or the language of possibilities.

'The intoxication of the irrational and the vocation of rapture turn a lucid mind away from the absurd. To Chestov [Shestov] reason is useless but there is something beyond reason. To an absurd mind reason is useless and there is nothing beyond reason.' --Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1940) tr Justin O'Brien

"Artist" nowadays means someone who feels that being ignored is a kind of persecution. ...one American in a hundred calls themselves Professional Artist on the census (1980). I guess that makes the other 99%--amateurs.

Art is an impatient mysticism. And so it is always incomplete, and repeating.

I used to not mind the Square-Wheelers. They would sit there making growling noises as real cars sped by. I would wave. But now more & more of them are clogging the streets, claiming round-wheeled cars are the Devil's spawn; & i only marvel they can think they're rolling when they're obviously not.

02 16 04

   Karl Kraus, Selected Aphorisms (tr Harry Zohn 1976)

'Satires which the censor understands are rightly prohibited.'

'Hate must make a person productive; otherwise, one might as well love.'

'Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature.'

'The ugliness of our time has retroactive force.'

'The real end of the world is the destruction of the human spirit; the other kind depends on the insignificant attempt to see whether after such a destruction the world can go on.'