Archive for March, 2007

• 03.28.07 Idle thoughts:

  Idle thoughts while at work. (This means: not enough material for a post in any of them alone. So I put them together on a tray and serve while other posts stew in the kitchen. How bloggy.)

  1. Have you ever actually heard anyone say that two plus two equals four in “the tone in which one says that two plus two equals four”? When I was taught it, it was an important fact to be studied and learned (so I heard it in tones of incantation, tones of authority, and tones of confusion).

  
  Tags: blog, reading, personality, work, boredom, thinking, research, music, throat-singing, overtones, mood, time, ambition, idle.
• 03.25.07 On board ship:

  One of the things I like best about Tristes Tropiques is the pleasure it takes in getting the sensuous detail right. There’s a kind of knowledge muscle it likes to flex as well…

  
  Tags: reading, travel, detail, art, irritation, language, rhythm, levi-strauss, Tristes Tropiques, smell.
• 03.24.07 The nature of the beast:

  Having read the first two chapters of Tristes Tropiques, I can only say that I like how Levi-Strauss fleshes out his narrative…

  
  Tags: reading, personality, change, travel, detail, dialogue, composition, thinking, translation, research, ghost, letters, language, context, value, mood, time, levi-strauss, Tristes Tropiques.
• 03.24.07 Tristes Tropiques:

  Blogs collect unfulfilled projects. (It’s a form of internet lint.) Why should this one be different? One more thing I plan to use this site for, another thing I get to avoid doing in avoiding coming here, I won’t notice it. So let’s announce it: We, Mfc and I, plan to read Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, a couple chapters a week, for the next however long, and blog an exchange about it.

  
  Tags: blog, reading, travel, writing, project, dialogue, boredom, philosophy, thinking, levi-strauss, Tristes Tropiques, ambition.