…so…it’s sunday…& ideally that would mean resting easy…but…you never know what unexpected chores or unlooked for responsibilities the day might charge you with when who we might be is taken to be in the eye of the beholder

The rebirth of local news depends on all of us [WaPo]

…& even if that might be easier said than done if your thoughts stray to far off places that feature heavily in some world-renowned best-sellers…& as was mentioned yesterday

Israel ‘at war’ after unprecedented assault by Hamas militants from Gaza [WaPo]

Mapping the deadly surprise attack by Hamas militants on Israel [WaPo]

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a timeline [WaPo]

…or are otherwise induced to consider the prospect of mortality

Compare your life expectancy with others around the world [WaPo]

…I’m leaning towards doing something else for a change that has to do more with a less literal conception of death…in that my first instinct was always to sympathize with the author in the sense that barthes murdering them that way seemed like overkill in a number of ways…for all its presumptive utility

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author

…but…he was a smart guy…& he made a good case…not one that left no room for argument or anything…to the best of my understanding the only arena of human endeavour in which that feat is even theoretically possible is mathematics…& outside of the ones that are gracious enough to come pre-formatted in terms of elegant simplicity…mostly that stuff tends to exceed my limitations…though I’ve had some fascinating times letting people who give lectures about that sort of thing for a living when they aren’t pursuing their own research try to explain them to me…using small words & drawing pictures as required…& on a few memorable occasions even resorting to a call & response technique with their own children as the chorus to demonstrate that I really ought to be able to follow along…which is kind of a cheap trick because they’re smart kids & have extremely clever parents so some stuff is routine to them in ways it wasn’t to me even after I’d studied math for longer than they’ve been alive so far

…but…that’s sort of tangential to the business about barthes & the part where…to the extent that I’m typing a thing that at some point is going to be in a place where people who aren’t me can read it…that’d put me in his cross hairs…from some perspectives…& for an unknowable value of “me”…more than likely while I’m off somewhere in the company of david hume…who had loftier goals than I presume to consider anything I do hereabouts to aspire to

My design in the present work is sufficiently explained in the Introduction. The reader must only observe, that all the subjects I have there planned out to myself, are not treated of in these two volumes. The subjects of the Understanding and Passions make a compleat chain of reasoning by themselves; and I was willing to take advantage of this natural division, in order to try the taste of the public. If I have the good fortune to meet with success, I shall proceed to the examination of Morals, Politics, and Criticism; which will compleat this Treatise of Human Nature. The approbation of the public I consider as the greatest reward of my labours; but am determined to regard its judgement, whatever it may be, as my best instruction.

…even he didn’t expect to knock out that sort of thing over breakfast while consuming coffee & toast with the hand he didn’t need to hold the pen…&…he & I would have most likely differed on a thing or two…such as how we derive abstract concepts in an a priori sense & various other nuances that could be filed away as belonging to the debate about theory of mind if you happen to enjoy that sort of thing…which for my sins, I suppose I do…however unequal the struggle might be…but I’m as certain as it seems possible to be that I’d have enjoyed an opportunity to pick the brain of someone who felt himself the equal of a self-imposed definition of this sort of order

what we call a mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity

…if I had my druthers…especially on a sunday…given the option I’d take old man hume…who was kind enough to admit that sometimes the thing you need to do is leave the desk to its own devices & high yourself off to the pub…in his case preferably one with a billiards table I 100% guarantee he didn’t approach the way he did the hypothetical one he wrote a fair bit about…since by his account of that one knowing how the laws of physics dictated what would happen based on how the cue ball was struck & the relative position of the other balls on the table was not to be considered a reliable or sufficient basis to assume they’d hold true the next time…or…who knows…maybe he did…& maybe that’s why he was so popular at his local on account of subsidizing the tabs of delighted regulars losing wagers at the table like the prince regent getting schooled at cards in blackadder…but I like to imagine he wasn’t that daft a sod

…either way…davey boy went & shuffled off this mortal coil nigh on two hundred years too soon to have mixed it up with ol’ roland…& he lined those sights of his up about a quarter century or so after a compatriot of his authored the myth of sisyphus

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus

…now…appositely enough it happens that one of the things camus mused about before barthes popped that fateful cap was suicide

…a little extreme…some might say melodramatic…even for a frenchman…but as even wikipedia will tell you…he was trying to lay out a line of reasoning that turned on the absurd…or at least that would be the way it sounds in english…l’absurde arguably possesses some nuances in his native tongue that are lost in translation…but in an effort to try to leave a legacy that might survive to speak from beyond the grave in which barthes would later lay his intentions…he went to some lengths to specify what he meant by that…& to stick with wikipedia for the time being…that went a little something like this:

The absurd lies in the juxtaposition between the fundamental human need to attribute meaning to life and the “unreasonable silence” of the universe in response.

…now…it’s been a while since last I reread the actual text but if memory serves the next part of the wiki entry kind of sacrifices a lot for the sake of brevity…& some of what winds up consigned to the cutting room floor is the notion that for a set of reasons he thinks he’s laid out by that point there’s an argument to be made that if there’s no point to anything then you might just as well end it all so before you can really do anything else like figure out how to make your way in the world at the start of a new day…you’re first compelled to satisfy the condition that the correct course of action isn’t to draw a swift line under the whole concept of existence…or through it depending on one’s choice of metaphor…though he comes down pretty strongly on the side of not

In the final chapter, Camus compares the absurdity of man’s life with the situation of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again just as it nears the top. The essay concludes, “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

…&…one way or another…I’m inclined to think he might have the right of it on that “must” part…but then…if I give as much credence to barthes as I’m likewise inclined to…then I’m in the middle of typing up a paradox & talking about greeting my executioners with a smile on my face like some sort of raving lunatic that an asylum somewhere is presumably missing

…I’m sitting here kicking off my day & trying to get my brain to spin up from a state of “need more sleep” to “you’ve had your chance & there’ll be plenty of time for that sort of thing later [I tend to have to lie to the thing to get it into gear] but there’s things need doing & we’re burning daylight so here’s some coffee & could you get to the part where you buck up your ideas, already?”

…& thrice weekly I’m doing it by committing metaphorical suicide right out the gate…surely that’s impaling myself on the horns of a dilemma I could more easily avoid entirely…so what the hell do I even think I’m doing & why on earth would I imagine that should have anything in common with what barthes would claim all & sundry could stand on the bloodied corpse of my slain intentions & dictate to my remains I’d actually wrought?

…most days…to be perfectly honest…I’d probably tell you I didn’t know before, during or after…but it’d be just as true that all other things being equal…I could do it all day

…I don’t mean that in the sense of a humble brag like that captain america meme…I mean literally in the sense that I do

…not the typing & cutting & pasting & posting parts…obviously…because…you know…life…which would be pretty dull if that was all there was to it

…but in the sense that a lot of why I abuse ellipses the way I do & mostly eschew formal punctuation is that I’m not trying to palm any of this off as some well-structured bit of considered text of the sort that could be submitted as an essay that answers a question…much less something worthy of what I’d think of as publication…at best it’s a first draft of a stream of consciousness that might if it’s lucky get a proof-read & maybe a copy-edit or two if they occur to me while fixing a stray typo I happen to notice later…& there are only so many hours in a day even with my lamentable record in the sleeping stakes…so it generally follows the path of least resistance, at that

…I’ve never been fool enough to believe that it would be worth my…even without the constraints of time & the foibles of technology…making an attempt to present “all the news that’s fit for print” single-handedly…or even the sort of mythical “perfectly curated feed” I know a few people IRL who have been questing after one way or another since before anyone called it a feed outside of the plot of some bits of speculative fiction…& though several people have from time to time said some things so favorable about what I wind up with that I wouldn’t want to accidentally imply that I don’t consider those some of the more prized compliments I’ve been given or that my appreciation of them isn’t entirely abundant…perhaps it would help to get back to the “could do this all day” part

…because I’ve been lucky that way…there have been significant stretches of time when I pretty much got to do that outside of my head the way I apparently have little choice but to do from inside…& I have to say it was a richer experience & as routines go one I’d go back to in a heartbeat if I woke up tomorrow possessed of obscene wealth…just as soon as I’d found some people to husband that shit in ways that didn’t leave me crippled by conscience & still gave me a shot at underwriting not only the almost entirely self-indulgent part where I’d get to pick up the tab to be able to avail myself of an endless supply of interesting folks with whom to discuss things they know far more than I about without any of them suffering an opportunity cost to do me the favor…but also to direct as much cash as I could without threatening to burn out my capacity to keep doing it on things they convinced me were worthwhile…you know…if wishing made it so & all that pipe-dreamy good stuff…but back in the real world…my days seldom work that way in person these days…if, happily for me, not never

…& when they do…they don’t follow quite the same pattern they once did in a few respects…because instead of an armload of papers that would be swapped back & forth & passed around as people read out this bit or that bit to compare how some particular thing was covered by different ones or just as prompted by the general flow of the conversation…everyone I know these days skims through a plethora of different sources often with precious few in common with one another…sometimes on multiple devices at once…which makes for a more disjointed conversation than those of yore…but not one that’s better or worse by any metric that seems relevant to the reasons it seems like a rewarding & convivial experience

…so…I guess you could make a pretty solid case that although I generally try to ensure that up here above the line the bits that are me talking & not someone else’s words who might have at least some relevant credentials are quite deliberately in the minority…& mostly pick the latter from a not-entirely-arbitrary but mostly-for-convenience’s-sake surrogate selection of “the papers” to pass around the virtual breakfast table as a starting point…because I’m not as good at it as the fleet street veteran I picked the habit up from…who picked up every national paper, tabloid or broadsheet, that the nearest newsagent had of a morning…which if she wasn’t on holiday was, from a UK point of view, to all intents & purposes all of them…sometimes along with le monde or the international herald tribune or some such bonus extra for the sake of a little variety…the motions I’m going through rely on a series of premises that begin with the notion that, were I to think of all the available stuff I could pick from the last day or so of “what did I read recently” as the pins in an old-school pachinko machine…albeit one replete with little wormholes that can make something of a mockery of the laws of gravity in this analogy…the DOTs I wind up with as a rule are basically a mixture of an arbitrary & self-directed (as in “not by me”) trajectory through a pronounced, truncated & otherwise abbreviated minority of the available bouncing off points…generally fashioned…if they can be said to be fashioned into much of anything…into the approximate path of a hypothetical conversation I’d be happy to have some or all of with absolutely anyone I have reason to believe reads these things

I don’t for a moment consider myself beholden to strictures of the sort that the things I cite might reasonably be expected to be since a good bit of the charm of our little virtual cul-de-sac is that it isn’t any of the venues where those would be appropriate on account of what they’re attempting to be…it is in fact as far from it as can reasonably be contrived as far as I can make out…as it is the better for it…& as a consequence for a few years now has been a spot to hang out in online that doesn’t suck…which is a minor miracle given the odds suggested by pretty much every other place I can think of including the ones that qualify as the exceptions that prove the rule

…so…if the opportunity arose…as a rule I think if I started at the top & nattered my way along via this & that & included all the parts I leave out because I’m hoping someone else will fill them in so I can find out if there’s something that occurred to them that didn’t to me…it would quite literally take us all day to get to the end

…but it’s just a specimen…it’s not prescriptive or proscriptive…that would render two thirds of the acronym oxymoronic for starters as well as being a perspective possessed of a degree of baseless arrogance I’d hope to never resemble much less actually embody…so if people want to have a different conversation…or bring something else to the table…there’s never been any kind of requirement…even implicitly & very explicitly not explicitly…to tie themselves in knots trying to retro-engineer their perception of something that’s been mistaken for my part of it in order to be able to discuss whatever their heart desires below the line…despite all the typing I can assure you that unlike this morning very nearly all that kind of thing remains silently on my side of the keyboard & therefore fails to appear on the screen to a degree that would make that necessary or advisable as a component of a good faith effort cognisant of the marked absence of anything to approach in that sort of misplaced spirit of competition…for the perfectly simple reason that…in addition to mistaking the entire enterprise for a zero-sum game that’s a self-defeating proposition for all players on an ontological basis by definition…it would take all day…& like anybody else…I haven’t got all day…half the time I may not have slept half the night but I haven’t even got as much as half the morning…making that sort of wild goose chase an ill-starred pursuit resulting in a bodge job that would stand up a lot more naturally on its own without the unnecessary disfigurement of self-sabotage…& pretty much a fruitless component of any exercise all around that’s a net benefit to less people than it takes to run rings around its own circular logic

…in fact…aside from all the ways that sort of self-defeating exercise hamstrings itself along with the flow of the sort of conversation it’d be nice to be having…it fucks up the conversation it could have been on its own merits like a doomed but self-fulfilling prophecy of the sort that used to be fashionable enough to bring the house down in the open air amphitheatres of ancient greece while the audience howled with laughter at the larger than life phalluses being swung about for their amusement (no, really…props that wouldn’t go amiss in a japanese fertility festival were…if you’ll pardon the pun…a firm fixture of some of the most popular productions back when western civilization was in its cradle)

…but much as little has changed since marcus aurelius reminded himself of how far his best intentions would most likely get him today as all days…according to barthes my intentions count for naught if some other reading can be wrest from what he’d doubtless consider my cold dead hand

…though of course…since truly there is nothing new under the sun…a man long dead by the time barthes was having his day as the talk of the town beat him to it…& with a phrasing that even manages to sound less dated than seems reasonable in these days of pens being outnumbered by keyboards to the point that it barely makes sense to talk about a person’s hand in the sense of the written word

The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
https://classics.mit.edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat.html

…so…before I put this post to bed & take to my metaphorical grave once more…I’d like it be understood that I genuinely believe I’ve never encountered someone I didn’t have something to learn from…& in my humble opinion neither has anyone else in the history of everybody everywhere henceforth & always…though the lessons aren’t necessarily ones we’d relish learning any more than the ones they claim to be teaching us…which can make it a slippery business when not approached in a spirit of good faith…as is an accident of hourly proof in this brave new world that has such wonders in it…& I’ve little appetite for lecture series given by self-styled professors only prepared to offer a passing grade to putative students willing to learn how to fail at the very things the course purports to teach them how to do…so…to any & all prepared to treat in good faith I bid thee welcome, by right & custom…but should you approach with murderous intent bearing the nurtured fruit of blake’s poison tree

…fair warning…turnabout’s fair play…& the final word in these parts belongs to neither me nor thee