Space is generated by need. Let’s say you’d like to take a walk. You simply project in front of you the necessary space which you walk across as and when [you need it]. The same with time. Just as a spider secretes the thread down which she climbs, so you secrete the time you need to do whatever you have to, and you proceed along this thread which is visible only behind you but usable only ahead of you.
From “Seven Exemplary Fictions”:
What is life, after all, but a caravan of lifelike forgeries?
From the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness:
I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.
I happened to pick up Kurt Vonnegut’s Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons today and read the following:
He is the first President to hate the American people and all they stand for. He believes so vibrantly in his own purity, although he has committed crimes which are hideous, that I am bound to conclude that someone told him when he was very young that all serious crime was sexual, that no one could be a criminal who did not commit adultery or masturbate.
He is a useful man in that he has shown us that our Constitution is a defective document, which makes a childlike assumption that we would never elect a President who dislikes us so. So we must amend the Constitution in order that we can more easily eject such a person from office and even put him in jail.
KV was, of course, referring to Richard Nixon. Our current situation is different in that some of President-Elect Von Clownstick’s known crimes are indeed sexual in nature, which does not appear to prevent him from believing in his own moral and intellectual superiority. (more…)
“Just keep playing, no matter how weird it gets.”
– Dylan to the Hawks before their first show together, 1965
Oliver Sacks, hellraiser
The Celebrity Rule of Threes was in full effect this week, with the demise of Darryl Dawkins followed hard upon by the loss of director Wes Craven and neurologist/author Oliver Sacks. And yes, that covers quite a spectrum; it’s hard to imagine two people more outwardly different than Chocolate Thunder and Dr. Sacks. Although…did you know that in his younger days, Oliver (says the AP)
indulged in staggering bouts of pharmacological experimentation, underwent a fierce regimen of bodybuilding at Muscle Beach (for a time he held a California record, after he performed a full squat with 600 pounds across his shoulders), and racked up more than 100,000 leather-clad miles on his motorcycle
So there could be some interesting conversations happening in the waiting room for the afterlife right now. And maybe some feats of strength, assuming you get the body you enjoyed the most in life. (And no, I don’t really believe any of that junk. But it’s fun to think about.)
I don’t know much about Wes Craven. I saw some of his movies; clearly he was a talented person who was dedicated to his craft. And I don’t have the mental bandwidth at the moment to compose a fitting tribute to Dr. Sacks, so I’ll just leave off with some words he wrote in his last days. It’s a pretty good epitaph:
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
