josh blog

Ordinary language is all right.

One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.

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23 Jul '06 02:31:25 AM

'waiworinao' = 'why worry now'

22 Jul '06 12:54:36 PM

The mere prospect of some books lightens my mood; but then I set out to read.

18 Jul '06 10:21:30 AM

Lately when I am told about the plot of a book, or a movie, I find I care little about the particular details, so that if someone tries to give them to me I take it as a sign that the plot is not all that interesting. But if it can be described to me in what are practically generic terms - it's about a girl detective, it's about a private eye in Nazi Germany, it's a picaresque about an astronomer and a surveyor crossing colonial America - well then I'm interested.

14 Jul '06 10:21:09 AM

In order for me to write at any length (and for any length of time) here, I seem to need to start from a great wealth of significance, a felt connection to a body of important things, ideas, moments, experiences, which all provide the background against which I can focus on some small detail that moves me to write, typically when I am struck by a sense that only through centering around that detail do all the things in the background make their real importance known.

I am constantly aware of this, and constantly feel that the background is not there - and so I am continually at sea (where there is no background because it all looks the same).

12 Jul '06 10:33:12 AM

'And satisfaction is not had, and philosophy is not done, once and for all.'

11 Jul '06 08:42:30 PM

I woke up with a theme from the Orb stuck in my head, but it was stripped of all its menacing sexual overtones.

11 Jul '06 10:01:27 AM

I think I've found a use for Villalobos.

9 Jul '06 05:51:29 AM

'I believe what is most worth telling is always what cannot be told.'

4 Jul '06 08:52:24 AM

'Like money into the bag, should one be able to sweep truth into the head?'