The greatest pleasure is to discover a system
in what appeared as only disconnected insights.

**

The solution to an idea is a feeling; the answer
to a feeling is a thought.

from *Theoretical Objects* (Green Integer, 1999)
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"The Box"
a poem by Michael Z. Gates
involving memory, time, adolescence and sci-fi

Twists and Turns {click here}
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"The freedom of conversation is being lost.
If it was earlier a matter of course for conversation
to take interest in one's partner, this is now replaced
by inquiry into the price of his shoes or his umbrella.
Irresistably intruding on any convivial exchange is
the theme of the conditions of life, of money. What this
theme involves is not so much the conccerns and
sorrows of individuals, in which they might be able
to help one another, as the overall picture. It is as if
one were trapped in a theatre and had to follow the
events on the stage whether one wanted to or not,
had to make them again and again, willingly or
unwillingly, the subject of one's thought and speech."

from *One-way Street*
*Imperial Panorama*
Walter Benjamin
translated by Edmund Jephcott and
Kingley Shorter
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The Unbearable Lilghtness of Blogging

The eclipse of the personal in everyday life continues
apace since Benjamin's time. The mere mention
of some intimate issue causes the friend to
pull out his watch and hurry on. Or to change the
topic to some broader "social" issue; the "election," or the movies.
With blogging, the personal has been given new life:
on a one way street into the personal lives of countless,
often anonymous others; many of whom find the time to respond.