I would not dare defeat you, confrere

The image is from Whet, who I thought had retired from this gig.

1) Notes on travels


Winnipeg is suprisingly cosmopolitan, and there are also quite a few drug addict types who are skinny and shirtless and in need of cigarettes.

The road to East End, Saskatchewan, home of Wallace Stegner, offers such a flat expansive tableaux that everything seems to collapse into one dimension: yellow flax fields, brown wheat, and the dull blue sky, as if a neophyte art student couldn't quite get a handle on his/her perspective.

I slept out in a field in a railyard for two nights of the trip b/c accommodations were spotty (no AC, roaches, bordello type upholstery) i would not be a hobo by choice. the wind, mosquitoes, and earthquake arrival of the train make sleeping unlikely, if not impossible. that said, i didn't pay $30 to the short-haired weasel-faced extortionist proprietor of the Commercial Motel across the street, and i sit here pride intact as a result.

2) Said (Sigh-eed), Edward

The relationship between bodily condition and aesthetic style seems at first to be a subject so irrelevant and perhaps even trivial by comparison with the momentousness of life, mortality, medical science, and health, as to be quickly dismissed. Nevertheless, my contention is as follows: all of us, by virtue of the simple fact of being conscious, are involved in constantly thinking about and making something of our lives, self-making being one of the bases of history, which according to Ibn Khaldun and Vico, the great founders of the science of history, is essentially the product of human labor

3) the etiquette of accepting compliments

I was always taught that the proper response to a compliment directed at oneself was to look at one's shoes, mumble something self-deprecating, and exit quickly. a women in the seminar i am in thought this response unsatisfactory, and followed me, repeating said compliment, which not only confused me, it began to terrify me: I cannot look you in the eye, woman, and accept what you're saying, even if I think it is true. I am limited in that way, and am sorry we cannot seem to reach a common understanding on this point.