OCTOBER 2009

1708. “Merleau-Ponty’s readers can know him; he has made an appointment with them in his work”

Sartre

Especially when your days are busy with more pressing, more pushing and shoving, everyday appointments, it’s a good idea to remember to prepare for far-off meetings with people you don’t even know if you’ll ever know.

No time like the future!

Note: “I stop somewhere waiting for you” (Whitman).

1724. Why Do We Fall in Words? In Order to Avoid Falling Ill.

Sometimes I get annoyed with myself when I consider how much time I spend engrossed in intense but ephemeral emotions—passing feelings of injury or anxiety, and then regret about the wasted spirit spent pondering those feelings. These notes furnish a happy and wholesome means of abbreviating the habit of making these grotesquely bad investments. The worst that can be said of them is that they are a harmless diversion from baser and more annoying obsessions. It is a practice of the self I am delighted to recommend to anyone.

Note: “In the last resort we must begin to love in order not to fall ill” (Freud).