Satyr play

"The interpreter presents the information, but is not the one making any arguments or acting upon the knowledge that is shared. Similarly, the information we perceive in our consciousness is not created by conscious processes, nor is it reacted to by conscious processes. Consciousness is the middle-man, and it doesn't do as much work as you think."

resymbolizing

•   "Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions."

“culture” was often opposed to “civilization.” Civilization, the thinking went, was a homogenizing system of efficient, rational rules, designed to encourage discipline and “progress.” Culture was the opposite: an unpredictable expression of human potential for its own sake. (It’s for this reason that a term like “the culture industry” has an oxymoronic ring.) Today, we don’t often use the word “civilization”— we prefer to talk, more democratically, in terms of culture—but we’re still conflicted. We can’t help but notice how “civilized” life seems both to facilitate culture and to deaden it. Museums make it easy to see art, but they also weigh it down.'

turnesól

'orice cui e un semn
ascuţit şi solemn
al strigării de lemn,
al chemării de lemn
la noi fapte de lemn, –
un fierbinte îndemn
adresat de un lemn
unor oameni de lemn
într-o lume de lemn
care are consemn'

dilatory raven

'Because the English language has Germanic roots but is heavily influenced by Latin and by French, even non-specialist users of the language—that vast majority of people who are not writers—have luxurious linguistic resources to draw upon. Essentially, English gives two ways of saying almost anything—it offers binary modes of expressing a virtual entirety. For centuries, Latin was the language of the learned, and a principal influence on the literate. In English-speaking cultures, and in both written and spoken English, shifting between a more formal Latinate lexicon and the more down-to-earth Old English words can be immensely effective, if in a way that is largely undetectable

‘canonicity’

'the pilgrim does all that might be expected of him in a single lifetime. He gets himself to the door where the Law might be encountered. He waits there dutifully until his death. Only when he is finally dying is the door at last closed, for this entrance had been constructed solely for him. He even sees the light of revelation on the far side of that door, glimmering away, but he can never pass over the threshold, so as to encounter it. Like Moses on Mount Pisgah, he can see the promised end, but there is no means to achieve it.'