3.31.2006

What Cranly knew

Why should the mother tongue not have a history, or, what comes to the same thing, produce its own history in a perfectly natural, autistic, and domestic way, without ever being affected by any outside?

Derrida, Of Grammatology 41

3.29.2006

Freedom of Speech

[They] use to speak one thinge and mean another. . . . They will say and unsay in one breath. . . . Before the late Act against Raunters, they spake boldly, now they dare not. . . . Since the pretence of the conversion of severall of them to the way of truth, they have a generall straine of Clothing their corrupt notions with sound words, especially such Scripture expressions as will beare a generall sence, as for Instance. They will tell you that Christ was Crucified at Jerusalem, . . . but in what sence? abominably corrupt, as a type and figure ot the true death of Christ in them (as they pretend). . . . It seems to me, from what I have knowne of them, they will put themselves on all expressions, wayes and windings, to keep themselves from being known, but to their owne: you shall not know where to find them, so as to fasten on them, but their own shall know their meaning, and so may you when you have once got their Key. . . . You shall find it, for a never failing observation, they will first insinuate an interest in your affections, and then corrupt your judgements. They will smile upon you, and cut your throate: use melting words, Honnysweet, smoothe as oyle, but full of poyson . . .

John Tickell, Minister of Abingdon, The Bottomles Pit Smoaking in Familisme . . . together with some breef notes on AB. COPPS Recantation Sermon (as 'twere). Qtd. in Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium 296-297

3.27.2006

the germ of a dream

Each sensation, being strictly speaking, the first, last and only one of its kind, is a birth and a death. The subject who experiences it begins and ends with it, and as he can neither precede nor survive himself, sensation necessarily appears to itself in a setting of generality, its origin is anterior to myself, it arises from sensibility which has preceded it and which will outlive it, just as my birth and death belong to a natality and a mortality which are anonymous. By means of sensation I am able to grasp, on the fringe of my own personal life and acts, a life of given consciousness from which these latter emerge, the life of my eyes, hands and ears, which are so many natural selves. Each time I experience a sensation, I feel that it concerns not my own being, the one for which I am responsible and for which I make decisions, but another self which has already sided with the world, which is already open to certain of its aspects and synchronized with them. Between my sensation and myself there stands always the thickness of some primal acquisition which prevents my experience from being clear of itself. I experience the sensation as a modality of a general existence, one already destined for a physical world and which runs through me without my being the cause of it.

Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception 216

3.19.2006

It'll be dark soon.

Gently this time, though still the touch shot through Jim's clothes, through his skin even. It was this way whenever their bodies met, if limping he brushed against him or laughing he squeezed his arm. The touch charged through like a sputtering tram-wire until it wasn't Doyler he felt but what Doyler touched, which was himself. This is my shoulder, this my leg. And he did not think he had felt himself before, other than in pain or in sin.

O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys 82

3.14.2006

From Martello Tower...

The breeze brushed the sweat on his forehead. It would be good to take off his cap, feel wind in his hair. There were other actions he could envisage performing: loosening his tie, slipping out of his boots and stockings, unbuttoning the knees of his breeches. He imagined padding out to the edge, toes bunched against the jag of rocks. The way the weed would slither beside you, sea-lace and thong-weed. The water grew chiller as it climbed. Or he might venture as far as the Forty Foot itself, strip off and plunge headlong to the deep. He had never swum in the Forty Foot, he had never swum in the sea, but he could conjure the charge of the waves all over. Like those two bathers strolling down, he too would have acted. Involvement, not witness, would mark the day.

Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys 35