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| QUOTATIONS 1521-1546 |
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| 1521. Because everybody prefers life, no matter how horrible it is, to death it is assumed that existence is always preferable to non-existence. Consequently, the religions (like Judaism and Christianity) which declare God to be the creator of Man, view God as the omni-benevolent because He gives a man a greatest gift - an existence. But once one has a life it is its quality that becomes the next most important thing to have. And the quality of life for most of the people most of the times is less than desirable. Hence the paradox - why the omni-benevolent and omnipotent God gives the first gift - life, but withhold the second - the quality of it? This produces the necessity in every religion which postulates such God to develop of theodicy - a justification of the existence, justice and goodness of God in light of the existence of Evil. As a matter of fact such religions are but the elaborate theodicies of which the greatest is the Hebrew Bible , the so-called Old Testament. 1522. Nobody can accuse me of being prejudiced. Though I am a Jew some of my best friends are anti-Semites. 1523. I would like to travel, to go and see new places... if only I could leave myself behind. 1524. If, as the graphologists claim, a character of man can be deduced from the purely physical elements of his handwriting, how much more revealing the style (i.e. the sentences' structure, the vocabulary, the emphasis, etc.) of his writings must be. For how one writes tells how one thinks, and how one thinks tells how one feels, and how one thinks and feel tells who one is. It is that simple. And yet this type of personality analyses even of the famous writers practically doesn't exist, for their biographers almost never use this obvious and readily available tool to discover the true nature of their subjects. 1525. Reading yet another expose of some current celebrity full of minute and supposedly revealing details of his/hers inner and outer life I began to think that if an equally able writer took me, totally obscure, "ordinary"person, as a subject and devoted as much time and energy to expose and analyze my internal and external existence, the story would have been as worth reading as one about some public figures, at least fro psychological point of view. For like them I have my moments of triumph and despair. Are my triumph less triumphal than theirs, or my despairs less desperate? Like them I love and hate. Is my love less passionate or my hate less intense than theirs? Like them I feel pain and pleasure. Is my pain less painful, or my pleasure less pleasurable than theirs? I don't think so But I might be wrong. Perhaps it is a Jew who is speaking in me, in his eternal quest for equality, in his defiant rejection of inferior status. Perhaps it is Shylock who is putting words in my mouth to paraphrase his own: "If you prick us do we not bleed?" Perhaps I am driven by the same impulse as all Jewish defenders of "the meek"- the enlightened self-interest. For since we, the Jews, are always last to benefit from justice, the sooner the world becomes just the sooner we shall be free from injustice. "The Kingdom of Heave is at hand." Oh, my brother Jesus, my brother Shylock, my brother Marx, the flesh of my flesh, the blood of my blood. 1526. The problem of being a writer is that whatever you say in a conversation, you know would have sounded much better if written down. Also when people talk the repetition of words, sentences and statements are not as noticeable as when the same conversation has to be written down. That's why the authenticity of natural conversations is lost on the page. It would be too cumbersome to read and enjoy and certain artificiality to alleviate this is necessary. 1527. As far as I'm concerned the statements of the obvious facts play too big a part and occupy too much space in human interactions. For example, on a warm sunny day a lot of people feel the uncontrollable urge to tell anyone in their proximity what a worm, sunny day it is. I guess they try to be social without anything to say. In this case, the obvious facts, the commonplaces, platitudes and cliches serve the purpose quite well. It is like musak in public places, familiar and unobtrusive, nonthreatening and soothing Or, perhaps they want to express what they feel, and the listeners provide them with excuse to say it aloud. In any event, whatever my personal aesthetic preferences are, it does no harm. On the contrary, it provides the linguistic lubricant to keep the engine of social cohesion humming. 1528. The so-called "stream of consciousness" , so much valued, so much praised in modern literature for its supposedly direct, unmediated representation of one's thoughts process, of one's spontaneous and pure movements of soul, how true, how authentic this reflection of the life of the inner world is it when written down, even by the most attentive, most sensitive of writers? For unless some recording device is attached to one's brain, totally unobtrusive and without the subject's awareness of it, the written "stream of consciousness' shall always remain but a more or less skillful construct, never a true picture. On a more personal note, I don't mind reading, or even listening to someone's "stream of consciousness" with all its endless digressions and seemingly chaotic wanderings of mind (I even find it exciting and. occasionally stimulating, triggering my own "stream") for as long as it flows from the consciousness which is intelligent and creative. But spare me the dull and the boring, the confused and downright silly. 1529.What is love? An instant of paradise paid for by eternity in hell. 1530. While reading, I usually get completely overwhelmed by the elaborate textual imagery. Bi it the highly nuanced description of nature or weather, or the detailed representation of interior or exterior of buildings, etc., I can never visualize what is on the page. Also, I seldom see the connections between the meticulous canvases and the plot or characters of protagonists. Myself, when looking at the sky, I see them simply as either blue, gray or cloudy. I admit the slight exaggeration to make my point, but no more than that. Moreover, being from the infancy prone to all kind of respiratory ailments, like cold, flu, sore throat, laryngitis, running or stuffy nose (alas, on this subject I apparently could be as elaborate as any writer) I seldom enjoy nature. I see it more often as a threat I must protect myself against. I guess, I'm just not attune to nature. When the Sun goes gown and it's getting dark it doesn't remind me about inevitability of death or the eventuality of the end of all things. It tells me to turn the TV on to watch evening news and check the TV Guide for what is interesting next. Besides, I don't need nature's metaphors to remind me about dying. Being sick 24 hours a day for the last 20 years would never let me forget about it 1531. How did it happen and who was responsible for James Joyce phenomenon in which peculiarities of one man thinking process and writing habits have been elevated to a status of a literary genre. 1532. Like the unhappy lovers in Plato's Symposium who are looking for their other half to be completed, so are the immigrants who are condemned for the rest of their lives to suffer from the absence of the part of their being -their native land. 1533. Diogenes, are you all right, day after day, in this Greek city you wander with a lamp so bright in such a broad day, blinding light? He answered: "I deserve your pity. I look for non-antiSemite". 1534. Do not tell "time to move on" to someone who doesn't know where else to go. Do not tell "time to do something different" to someone who doesn't know what else to do. The first time I was laid off, the departing counsel of my boss was: "Nick, I wish you all the luck in the world". And I thought to myself: "Oh yeah, how generous of you, sir, to offer me the whole world...with one tiny exception - your own company". 1535. While struggling (or would it rather be "straggling") through James Joyce's Ulysses I begin to wonder (or would it rather be "wander") whether the title is more fit to describe the reader of this novel rather than its main protagonist. 1536. As for a writer, better alone. Having nobody to speak to. Talk to a page. My pen is my tongue. And my lips. If companionship is a must, stupid woman is the best. The same effect, nobody to speak to. For the rest see the above. Intelligent friends, good listeners -verboten. Avoid as a plague. Tired and wasted by talk. No energy left, no urge either. Once satisfied, need time to replenish.. It will come , but must wait. When ready, to a page or a listener, whoever comes first. Just to experience relief. That's all. Just a relief. 1537. Of elevators and land claims I live in the downtown Toronto in a high-rise apartment building. It is 40 years old. At the beginning most of the tenants were singles. There were about 400 of them. The building is large, 32 stories. It has 4 elevators. So, the ratio of tenants to an elevator at that time was roughly 100 to 1. Now, 40 years later, most of the tenants are families. Each family on average has 5 members. The total number of tenants now is about 2000, i.e. the increase has been fivefold. But the number of the elevators remains the same. Once an apartment building is designed and built it is absolutely impossible technically to add even one more elevator. Consequently, the ratio of tenants to elevator has increased fivefold as well. It stand now at approximately 500 to 1. Which, understandably, makes the usage of the elevators much more difficult and time consuming than when there were only 400 person living in this building, and a ratio was 100 to 1. There are still some original tenants in the building, about 100 of them, and they suffer like everybody else from overcrowding in the elevators. Now, suppose these 100 old tenants say: "We were first in this building. There were 100 persons per elevator at that time. We think that it's only fair, since we're original tenants, that one elevator be reserved solely for the old tenants use to maintain the original ration of 100 persons per elevator. We were accustomed to this before all you new tenants moved in and it is out inherent right to have it now. And that's in a nutshell what Canadian native people demand. Let me explain what I mean by that. When the Europan settlers began coming to Canada 500 years ago the native population were mostly hunters and gatherers. To maintain such a way of life significantly larger territory per person is needed. Let's say, for the argument sake, 100 time larger that is necessary to support a person living in a highly industrialized society of today. Let's also assume that the original number of Canadian natives 500 years ago was about one million. Now population of Canada is 30 millions, thirty-fold increase. Clearly, the hunting and gathering life style is unsustainable for such number of people. However, what the aboriginal leaders, through their demands, are essentially saying is, "This is not our problem. We still want to maintain our traditional life. This is part of our culture, our heritage, our spirituality. To deny us this is amount to genocide. Hence the huge land claims by natives all over Canada. It reached a truly grotesque proportion in some places In Vancouver area, for example, the sum-total of all land claims by the local native bands, because of multiple overlapping, is twice as big as the geographical territory itself. Viewed objectively, such demands are not much different than what has been described hypothetically above: the demand by the old tenants in my building to have one elevator to be reserved solely for their use. The difference, of course, is that the owners of our building (and the rest of the tenants, in a rare display of solidarity with a landlord) would find such a demand outrageous, and no court in Toronto would be willing to consider such a preposterous case. On the contrary, Canadian natives' demands for more land than anyone else has in this country per capita, ostensibly to perpetuate their original life style as hunter and gatherers, is supported by the majority of the so-called "progressive" people. And the Canadian courts are not only willing to listen to such claims but recently issued several judgements in their favor, the judgement which are essentially based on the two, at best dubious premises : "seniority of tenure" and "date of arrival". Apparently, neither these judges nor the "fair minded" Canadians see any contradictions between forcing people like me, relative newcomers, to be packed in small places, with all the unpleasant consequences of such an arrangement, and providing each aboriginal with several square miles of land to enjoy the freedom of his ancestral pursuits, like fishing and hunting. The rest of us, of course, should be grateful for being allowed to live in the congested cities and overcrowded apartments, for having the privilege to get up at 5-6 o'clock in the morning, travel for an hour or more by various means of transportation to and fro places of work (if we're lucky to have one) and labor from 8 to 10 hours a day, at mostly tedious, unrewarding, exhausting jobs. And we shouldn't complain either. Because if we do, the native leaders will tell us, in no uncertain terms, to go back where we, or our parents, came from, like Europe, Asia, Africa, wherever. For we were never invited by the aboriginals to come here in the first place, and they will be very happy to see us gone. Clearly, in their minds, they see nothing morally, or legally, wrong in such an attitude. After all, weren't they first here. The same old "seniority of tenure" and "date of arrival" arguments. Now, to be fair to Canadian natives, these arguments seems to be a universal tool to support one's individual or collective claims to one thing or another at the expense of someone else. For example, upon detecting my foreign accent, people born in this country would ask me how long have I been here. And then, as if in passing, would mentioned that they are third, fourth...tens generation Canadians. The implicit message contained in this piece of unsolicited information is that they have more rights to whatever is in short supply than I do. The same arguments of "seniority of tenure" and "date of arrival" have always played an important part in territorial disputes. Take for example Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian Arabs say they and their ancestors live in Palestine for more than a thousand years and therefore this land is theirs. Israeli Jews say they and their ancestors live in the land of Israel, which is the same land, for 3000 years , and since 3000 is more than 1000, this land belongs to them. The only way out of this quagmire of conflicting chronologies is to accept that this elevator, this building, this country, this continent, this planet in its totality belong equally to and has to be shared by everyone and stop claiming special privileges. In the words of Chief Seattle : "The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth". 1538. Long after they stopped worshiping all other idols, the pedantic English grammarians and their overzealous disciples still desperately cling to the last two remaining, the sacred articles: the mighty universal "the" and the lonely, particular "a". And like all other religionists they divide people in two categories: first, the enlightened elect are those who know how to use them properly, and second, the benighted pagans who don't. 1539. Of course I believe in the affirmative actions. That's why I think that every professional basketball team in America should be required to enlist a certain number of short, fat, white guys to reflect their representation in the general population. 1540. The linguistic equilibristics, verbal pyrotechnics, dazzling and dizzying words and syllables juggling which are such integral and indispensable futures of the text of Ulysses could be partially explained by the fact (or make it a supposition, if you will) that as an Irishman Joyce apparently didn't feel constrained by the veneration for the purity of English language the majority of ethnically English writers naturally do. It is clear that for him the English language is the first and foremost a medium of expression he was most familiar with by the accident of birth in a particular place at a particular time. Other than that he feels free to have his way with it. There is almost an air of gleeful desecration, permeating the text. There is this malicious mocking and a literal vandalism which are clearly designed to assault the English reader from every page, as if with each sentence Joyce is trying to tell them, "This is your language, not mine, and I'm going to rape it in front of your own eyes. This is an Irish revenge on the English most sacred possession". The greatest irony, of course, is that this act of literary demolition was and is pronounced to be one of the masterpieces of English Literature and the perpetrator of this crime has been anointed "the great innovator and revolutionary". Of course, if revolution means total destruction of something previously consider sacred (as it often does), then Joyce clearly deserves the accolades. 1541. There is this problem with self-definition. One feels an obligation to live up to it, which is not always easy to do. 1542.As far as the long-term relationships are concerned "eating alike" seems to be more important than "thinking alike". It is especially true if "eating" is used in a wider metaphorical sense as a term encompassing other consumption habits as well. 1543. If we accept the widely used expression "meat market" as a fitting metaphor for the interaction between the sexes, and that at this "market" women are "sellers" and men are "buyers", than what we are witnessing with the increasing frequency is the fact that many a woman have to resort to "giving free samples" to attract the potential "customers". 1544. We all reject the world as it is. For none of us it's a truly welcoming place. Even for those who are supposedly born with a silver spoon in a mouth. It's what we make out of it that makes us different. 1545. Being a unique individual the like of whom never existed before and shall never appear again, I don't feel responsible for the history of the last 100 years, last 1000 years os last 10000 years. As a matter of fact, if anything, this history should be held responsible for what it has done to me. 1546. Now, if you don't have time for reading anymore, or get easily tired from turning pages and following line after line each containing too many letters, we have a book-pill for you. We have developed a process which breaks down the text of a book into its molecular components and then turned into a pill. Whether it is a serious novel, science fiction, romance, etc. the process is the same. They all could be turned into easily digestible pill. All you have to do is to swallow this pill. And it all goes immediately to your brain or other part of your body, producing quickly the desirable pleasure without any efforts on your part. And another good news. Those of you, who don't like swallowing pills, would be glad to know that we are working on book-injection. It will work the same way as book-pill, even faster. So, eventually, we shall be able to offer you not only the great choice of books for literary instantaneous consumption but also two modes of intake - pills or injection. The only caveat is: do not overdose on either. |
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