I had a professor in college who claimed to know Samuel Beckett personally and told stories about him staring out of his classroom window, unsure of what to say to his charges. My professor said Beckett feared that he had nothing to teach, or that if he did, it would ultimately come to little more than language itself....

I sometimes wonder, in fact, if we might not both be better off, my students and I, if we spent a semester in silence thinking collectively on a subject and only rising to speak when the spirit moved us, Quaker style.

-in The Mediocre Professor

[via sweatervestboy]

How To Graduate From Christianity

From [Camus'] point of view it was a question of "To create or not to create," as he wrote in his notebook on 10 October 1937. "In the first case everything is justified. Everything, without exception. In the second case, one is faced with complete absurdity. It only remains to choose the most esthetic form of suicide: marriage plus a forty hours a week or a revolver."

-Emmett Parker

After coding these written responses, the authors found that after about two to three drinks containing 1.5-ounce shots of 86-proof alcohol, participants displayed an increase in “fantasy” thinking, particularly in relation to the “mysteries of life” image theme. In fact, they tended to see a mystery of life dimension even in those images that weren’t meant to induce such thoughts. “Apparently,” the researchers write, “[alcohol] acts to allow or encourage [people] to think in contrasting terms about large or existential life issues. One can think of these…. as indicating a yearning for reflecting on some of life’s basic issues (success-failure, life-death, pleasure-unpleasure, etc.) which is encouraged or released by alcohol in small quantities under social conditions.” For example, a wet participant wrote in response to the “ski jumper in midair” image: “Paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

-Intoxicating Studies: The Effects of Alcohol on Social Behavior

Happy 60th birthday, Scrabble.

Poems are bullshit unless they are
teeth or trees or lemons piled
on a step.

-Amiri Baraka, 'Black Art'

A Roadside Encounter

The pheonix tree suddenly tilts
The bicycle bell's ring hangs in air
Earth swiftly reverses its rotation
Back to that night ten years ago
The pheonix tree gently sways again
The ringing bell sprinkles floral fragrance along the trembling street
Darkness gathers, then seeps away
The dawning light of memory merges with the light in your eyes

Maybe this didn't happen
Just an illusion spawned by a familiar road
Even if this did happen
I'm used to not shedding any tears


-Shu Ting, translated by Eva Hung

Assembly Line

On the assembly line of Time
Nights huddle together
We come down from the factory assembly lines
And join the assembly line going home
Overhead
An assembly line of stars trails across the sky
By our side
A young tree looks dazed on its assembly line

The stars must be tired
Thousands of years have passed
Their journey never changes
The young trees are ill
Dust and monotony deprive them
Of grain and color
I can feel it all
Because we beat to the same rhythm

But strangely
The only thing I do not feel
Is my own existence
As though the woods and stars
Maybe out of habit
Maybe out of sorrow
No longer have the strength to care
About a destiny they cannot alter


-Shu Ting, translated by Eva Hung

Six Ways of Eating Watermelons

The Fifth Way: The Consanguinity of Watermelons

No one would mistake a watermelon for a meteorite.
Star and melon, they are totally unconnected;
But earth is undeniably a heavenly body,
Watermelons and stars
Are undeniably consanguineous.

Not only are watermelons and the earth related
Like parent and child,
They also possess brotherly, sisterly feelings,
Like the moon and the sun,
The sun and us,
Us and the moon.


The Fourth Way: The Origins of Watermelons

Evidently, we live on the face of the earth;
And they, evidently, live in their watermelon interior.
We rush to and fro, thick-skinned,
Trying to stay outside, digesting light
Into darkness with which to wrap ourselves,
Cold and craving warmth.

They meditate on Zen, motionless, concentrated.
Shaping inward darkness into
Substantial, calm passions;
Forever seeking self-fulfillment and growth.
Someday, inevitably, we'll be pushed to the earth's interior,
And eventually they'll burst through the watermelon face.


The Third Way: The Philosophy of Watermelons

The history of watermelon philosophy
Is shorter than the earth's, but longer than ours;
They practice the Three Don'ts:
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
They are Taoistically wu-wei,
And keep themselves to themselves.

They don't envy ova,
Nor do they despise chicken's eggs.
Watermelons are neither oviparous, nor viviparous,
And comprehend the principle
Of attaining life through death.
Consequently, watermelons are not threatened by invasion,
Nor do they fear
Death.


The Second Way: The Territory of Watermelons

If we crushed a watermelon,
It would be sheer
jealousy.
Crushing a melon is equivalent to crushing a rounded night,
knocking down all the
stars,
Crumbling a perfect
universe.

And the outcome would only make us more jealous,
Would only clarify the relationship
Between meteorites and watermelon seeds,
The friendship between watermelon seeds and the universe.
They would only penetrate once again, more deeply,
into our
territory.


The First Way:

EAT IT FIRST.


-Luo Qing, translated by Zhang Cuo

Beyond the Solace of a Devastated Landscape

You don't need a war.
You don't need to go anywhere.
It's a myth: if you hurl
yourself at chaos
chaos will catch you.

-Eliza Griswold

There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us, whether as explanations for a life that never quite finds its true force or direction, or as fuel for ambition, or as a kind of reflexive secular religion that, paradoxically, unites us with others in a shared sense of complete isolation: you feel at home in the world only by never feeling at home in the world.

-Christian Wiman 'My Bright Abyss'

The Purity Myth is a book that I've been thinking about for a long time; the sexual double standard has irked me since I was a teenager and the framing of sexually active women as "dirty" has fascinated me for just as long. But it was really the work I do on Feministing that led me to write this book. I started to notice a trend emerging in the stories we were covering - whether it was pop culture or policy, there seemed to be an obsessive focus on young women's sexuality. Not exactly news, I know. But this focus went beyond your run-of-the-mill objectification. Hundreds of moral panic articles about "girls gone wild" and spring break madness were popping up around the same time books about "modesty" and the dangers of "hooking up" were all the rage....

In terms of what I'd like to cover for TPMCafe, I figure it's best to start with the purity myth itself - the lie that virginity and sexuality have some bearing on who young women are and how good they are.

-Jessica Valenti
[via 3quarks]

Beautiful Libraries

Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!

The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!

It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.

The brotherhood of man on earth will be possible only on a base of kitsch.

-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

One always writes in order to confess, to ask forgiveness; no doubt one always teaches, also, in order to ask forgiveness.

-Jacques Derrida

[via some kid]