August 15, 2023: La Rochefoucauld On Hunting, and then Going Home

Author:

Purity is for collectors. The pure are for hunters and farmers.  X is for Y. And good breeding is for …, well, for “X is for Y” note collectors, who conceive new ideas for imaginary narratives where hunters and farmers will then have wished they had been better bred.

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Rhetoric of Fiction: Whenever I catch myself in a U-turn contradiction, I stop, rip my paper out of my notebook, put one thumb on premise A and the other on premise B, and press through, punching out the eyes. Crunching the limp flat carcass over the trash with my right hand, the obvious one, I juggle the eyes to the left index finger and thumb, taking secret delight in rubbing the little eyeballs into finger-greased dust, getting my ass back in that car and getting over there to see her, the one with the right words for me, and not these, that I’ve left behind, in this dustbin. I’ve a ring for her left finger that anticipates one for mine.

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He turned back to the scrupulous, “Remember the art of observation is subject to the same rules as personal hygiene: we do what’s necessary, but we don’t talk like we do.”  Finally, the other sorted out his conscience and balanced that obvious fact, not worth considering as a moral predicament, against the new proposed conspiracy to reveal human conduct as it is. Pivoting now on a more fundamental valuation, he went along with the easier pull against … his scruples.   In this enhanced morality, being scrupulous depends upon what one successfully avoids revealing, rather than splattering oneself with a full, public, deliberate exposure. But he couldn’t help but set the ink to paper anyway, a backwash of scruples. An aphorism.

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Successful thinking occurs when we are optimistic precisely because everything is dependent. It is the inverse of hope.

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Nature serves you or you serve others.

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The Love doctor who objectively experiments with causing others to love him, betraying each with each success, stands now against the fireplace, elbow on mantlepiece spreading his knowledge. He alone knows what it’s like to feel loved.

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There is the history of failed causes, which eats at you, this Cancer crawling backwards on the bottom of the sea. It provides the working models for the “future” that it cannot feel. It is a failed reward, and thus reversed, redeemed as history.

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Moral Trade routes: It was suddenly defined for me. A cultural border is that zone where mixing the moral goods from one side with those of the other side always comes with a lesson overlay. What I had coming to me, just came to me.