This blog is about many things. The number of things it is about is not innumerable, but it now includes one more. One more hero to my pantheon. Maybe ARon Ralston and the other two are sort of greater in the physical acts they committed, but this guy is an important, crucial crucial prophet. A talisman of a man. I will cling to his ideas.
Slopped by
sarcasmus
at
10:24 PM
“…it’s hard to resist your own substance, you’d like to stop all this, give yourself time to think about it and listen without difficulty to your heartbeat, but it’s too late for that. This thing can never stop. This enormous steel box is on a collision course; we, inside it, are whirling madly with the machines and the Earth. All together, along with the thousands of little wheels and hammers that never strike at the same time, that make noises which shatter one another, some so violent that they release a kind of silence around them, which makes you feel a little better. You give into noise as you give in to war. As the machines you let yourself go with the two three ideas that are wobbling about at the top of your head. And that’s the end. From then on everything you look at, everything you touch is hard. And everything you still manage to remember more or less becomes as rigid as iron and loses its savor in your thoughts.” Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
“It’s not that I like the empire—I hate it—but there’s nothing I can do about it right now.” Luke Skywalker, Star Wars
2 comments:
hmmm...sounds a bit like my lifestyle at the moment. indeed, the man is wise. although i would have to become a better gardner.
--thod
i wonder if he wrote the wondrous essay in harpers on the same subject that i was too lazy to cut out.
the Voice review of this book points out with some justice that idleness is a ruling-class luxury, that someone always has to do your dishes.
of course, that presumes you need clean dishes. my unarticulated philosophy has always been that there's some primordial state of laziness in which we all do the proper amount of work to feed and clean up and shelter ourselves, and because everyone's doing that, they have time & energy to share resources & cover each others' asses in a crisis. hippy utopia i guess. i don't know now if i actually believe in that edenic state, for us the fallen at least, who are doomed to work at computers and wash dishes.
of course, there's also the concept of true work- the work that you love doing, and so it's no longer work. caveat: i've done just a little tiny bit of that, and though it's vastly more fulfilling... it's still work.
the beatles songs were not written in 5 minutes, that stuff shows sweatstains all over it. though, there are some damn good 5-minute songs out there. but i think the beatles didn't do much of that. they were workaholics.
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