Ab Initio
The following 28 posts formed part of a spin-off from Newfred in 2008.
27 — "Unaware of my crime/they stood me in the dock./I was sentenced to life.../without her./Strange trial./No judge./No jury./I wonder who my visitors will be." —Spike Milligan, "Welcome Home"
26 — "That there, that's not me/I go where I please/I walk through walls/I float down the Liffey/I'm not here/This isn't happening" —Radiohead, How to disappear completely
25 — "When stepped on, a worm doubles up. That is clever. In that way he lessens the probability of being stepped on again. In the language of morality: humility." —Nietzsche
24 — Only because you lock them out do they want to break in.
23 — "Who's in that body?/Who's in that jail?/Who's in there with you?" —The Kinks
22 — "I ain't got long to stay here." —Spiritual
21 — "A greedy father has thieves for children." —Serbian proverb
20 — "By searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backward; eventually he also believes backward." —Nietzsche
19 — "Build it up/Tear it down" —Fatboy Slim
18 — New territory: unmarked by foot or gaze;/a virgin place whose undiscovered gaps and lines/conspire to engulf and redefine/this sore and sullied crust that I call skin./And should I trace this trail that is not there?/Will crevices and cliffs be my companions?/Or will they lose me, in a storm/that marks me: naked; washed; unborn.
17 — "Existence is not in reality condemned to freedom, but is invested in freedom. Freedom is not bare. To do philosophy is to trace freedom back to what lies before it, to disclose the investiture that liberates freedom from the arbitrary." —Lévinas, 1961
16 — Coffee at midnight/Makes you feel alright
15 — Twisting string of motion coils/Circular in mortal toils/Springing up and down and round/Slave to landing on the ground
14 — "The knowledge and security of which we are speaking are therefore not in the world: rather, they are the possibility of our language and the nexus of our world. [...] At the heart of the desert, in the growing wasteland, this thought, which fundamentally no longer seeks to be a thought of Being and phenomenality, makes us dream of an inconceivable process of dismantling and dispossession." Derrida, 1967
13 — Cool grass touching bare legs in breeze sun goes down book is read her messages along a clifftop fall elate some dream some chance encounter warmth dew sand me your hand sea silence and cold. And finally an interruption
12 — "You ask me which of the philosophers' traits are most characteristic? For example, their lack of historical sense, their hatred of the very idea of becoming, their Egypticism. They think that they show their respect for a subject when they dehistoricize it sub specie aeternitas ó when they turn it into a mummy. Everything that philosophers handled over the past thousands of years turned into concept mummies; nothing real escaped their grasp alive. Whenever these venerable concept idolators revere something, they kill it and stuff it; they suck the life out of everything they worship. Death, change, old age, as well as procreation and growth, are to their minds objections ó even refutations. Whatever has being does not become; whatever becomes does not have being. Now they all believe, desperately even, in what has being. But since they never grasp it, they seek for reasons why it is kept from them. 'There must be mere appearance, there must be some deception which prevents us from perceiving that which has being: where is the deceiver?' 'We have found him,' they cry jubilantly; 'it is the senses! These senses, so immoral in other ways too, deceive us concerning the true world. Moral: let us free ourselves from the deception of the senses, from becoming, from history, from lies; history is nothing but faith in the senses, faith in lies. Moral: let us say No to all who have faith in the senses, to all the rest of mankind; they are all 'mob.' Let us be philosophers! Let us be mummies! Let us represent monotono-theism by adopting the manner of a gravedigger! And above all, away with the body, this wretched idée fixe of the senses, disfigured by all the fallacies of logic, refuted, even impossible, although it is impudent enough to behave as if it were real!'" —Nietzsche
11 — "I don't care if it hurts/I want to have control/I want a perfect body/I want a perfect soul" —Radiohead, Creep
10 — Can you see those tidy piles/And that narrowed life/With the indifference of/"maturity", "pragmatism"?
9 — Some say it's a question of reading between the lines.
8 — "I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity." —Nietzsche
7 — The situation gave him the urge to write in his diary, but he became convinced, as he always did, that he no longer possessed a pen that he liked.
6 — A tiny vast thing I envisaged:/An empire, locked up in a village.
5 — It was bitter, and not food, that made them all feel so queasy that afternoon.
4 — "You can force it but it will stay stung/You can crush it as dry as a bone/You can walk it home straight from school/You can kiss it, you can break all the rules/But still/Everything is broken/Everyone is broken." —Radiohead, Planet Telex
3 — "But liberalism is now a triumphant doctrine; it has created a world in its own image; it has to colonize its adversaries ("Romantics can be liberals," in Charles Larmore's phrase); and the fourth founding of the American Republic (Declaration—Constitution—Civil War—Rawls's political liberalism) needs an orderly system where lawyers can argue their cases; Rortyans can read their novels and enjoy the culture of irony; Rawlsian citizens can pay their taxes and show their "cooperation" and their "love of mankind"; and potential rebels can take the daily dosage of their medically prescribed and publicly endorsed medication. It is called Prozac, a metaphor for the end of history that political liberalism, so proudly, has inaugurated." —Roberto Alejandro, 1995
2 — Although it was certain that, in so doing, he would be haunted increasingly frequently by the many crucial decisions upon which he resolved to form no view, Thornton could still do nothing but decide not to decide (this time).
1 — How dilated her pupils were today.
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