DeepStrings

Jesus' classic strategy for equipping a team of twelve apostles who began a world-changing movement two millennia ago is still valid and effective:

• I invite you to be with me
• you observe what I do
• you do what I do and I observe you
• you invite others to be with you
• they observe what you do
• they do what you do and you observe them
• they invite others to be with them, who in turn observe what they do and so on

'Think of someone in their house, accessing their bank account via computer, doing the work that would previously have been allotted to a bank clerk: what kind of labour is this?' -- Francisco de Oliveira, [The duckbilled platypus], New Left Review II/24, 2003-11/12

'Ontologies of the present demand archaeologies of the future, not forecasts of the past.' -- Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present, London 2002, as quoted in Christopher Prendergast, [Codeword Modernity], New Left Review II/24, 2003-11/12

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. 

How think you that you obey Christ's commandments, when you spend your time collecting interest, piling up loans, buying slaves like livestock, and merging business with business? ... Upon this you heap injustice, taking possession of lands and houses, and multiplying poverty and hunger. -- John Chrysostom (347-407)

'I am a letter among the hieroglyphs,' he muttered on. 'I tried to voice my simple nature -- the only thing I have! -- as they mimed at me in disdain. They kicked me and forced me to lie down, like one recently executed, while they stood, to their uniform squareness, in long, unbroken lines. In thousands and tens of thousands, they overwhelmed me with their glorious lineage, imposing on me their own complicated baggage. They stripped me of my serifs, removed my circumflex, cut off my descender, making me standing out there in the cold, sometimes naked in ALL CAPS, bleeding, half-lying, half-squatting, on an uneven baseline. They hardly left any space between themselves -- sometimes even deprived me of my own! -- and forced me to be monospaced like them. Ugh, the worst thing was their sweat of pointed dots.

'They say, "You were born as one of us." They shouted at me, "Why did you leave?" "What is this idealistic crap of a phoneme you are looking for?"

'How I wish I have my own alphabet!'

-- KaihsuTai (Copyright © 2001; also see TypeSetting, ATypographicOutcry)

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. -- Oscar Wilde

Those familiar scenes have turned gray,
Unlike the only thing that doesn't betray
Against us: the Basin City of Taipei.

It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggression. -- Sigmund Freud

Thanksgiving... except who do I thank? For smiling eyes, softness and warmth; for finding someone there when you reach out; for being there to reach out to; for friends and community and help; for finding out how I've grown; for finding ways to grow; for strength, for time, for lovingkindness; for family wherever I find it. For love. -- Claudia Mastroianni

It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained. -- Salman Rushdie, in "Imaginary Homelands"

One thing that makes art different from life is that in art things have a shape; they have beginnings, middles, and endings. Whereas in life, things just drift along. In life, somebody has a cold, and you treat it as insignificant, and suddenly they die. Or they have a heart attack, and you are sodden with grief until they recover to live for thirty petulant years, demanding you wait on them. You think a love affair is ending, and you are gripped with Anna Karenina-ish drama, but two weeks later the guy is standing in your doorway, arms stretched up on the molding, jacket hanging open, a sheepish look on his face, saying, "Hey, take me back, will ya?" Or you think a love affair is high and thriving, and you don't notice that over the past months it has dwindled, dwindled, dwindled. In other words, in life one almost never has an emotion appropriate to an event. Either you don't know the event is occurring, or you don't know its significance. We celebrate births and weddings; we mourn deaths and divorces; yet what are we celebrating, what mourning? Rituals mark feelings, but feelings and events do not coincide. Feelings are large and spread over a lifetime. I will dance the polka with you and stamp my feet with vigor, celebrating every energy I have ever felt. But those energies were moments, not codifiable, not certifiable, not able to be fixed: you may be seduced into thinking my celebration is for you. Anyway, that is a thing art does for us: it allows us to fix our emotions on events at the moment they occur, it permits a union of heart and mind and tongue and tear. Whereas in life, from moment to moment, one can't tell an onion from a piece of dry toast. -- Marilyn French, in "The Women's Room"