"We have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listelessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among the children of this world, in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding this interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion - that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments sake"

-Victor Hugo

"Humility is a good quality, but it can be overdone"

-Conrad Black, whose douchebaggery is a mere molecule in relation to his masterful writing style.

"If a bullet enters my brain, let it break open every closet door in the world".
- Harvey Milk

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Simone: Do you have any dreams?
Pee-wee: Yeah, I'm all alone. I'm rolling a big doughnut and this snake wearing a vest...

"With my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life"

-Malcolm X

"It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again"

-Allen Ginsberg

"Everything is so boring right now that you'd have to be brain dead to not want to do something interesting. I like that"

-James Murphy

"I can't even drive a car. I don't have a driver's license. I have a rented apartment in New York. That's it. When I travel, I have almost all of my possessions with me. That's how little I own."

- My top knotch honey Lady Gaga

"Bad manners make a journalist"
- Oscar Wilde

"I want to see the whole world and I want to write down everything"

-Harriet the spy

Blackalicious wants YOU to not litter.

"Because you live in this world, you live on in this planet, this planet is basically all of our homes we have to take care of it. If not, the extreme of it effects everybody on the planet. Just as a human race we would feel like idiots if we just whipped ourselves out, right ?"

- Cheif Xcel

"Cleverness, pure intellect, is just not intellegent enough. It's final destination is maddness"
- David Orr

"A woman without a body can't possible be a good fighter"
- Helene Cixous.

"Details, the goddamn details could alway break your heart"
- Julia Alvarez

Hungry.

So I moved and don't have internet yet. I've been using this as an excuse for pretty much everything I haven't been doing.

But theres a bakery from heaven about 10 meters from our apartment with free internet, mountains of custard tarts and adorable old men playing chess, so I guess I don't have too much to complain about for the time being.

I'm really happy to be back in school because it really inspires me to make something of my (filthy and pathetic) existence. I've been writing a bunch of stories, and been working on a sonnet since I've been back in school. (sonnets, by the way, are the bane of my existence, but I can't seem to stop trying)

Anyway, I havent finished anything.
Better than not starting altogether, I guess.

My classes really inspire me but at the same time discourage me because they show me how far I have to go, how much I still have to learn. How long will I be satisfied with my artistic persuits before I grow out of them again? Will I ever be able to write a book without tiring of it after the first few pages, chapter, draft? HOW WILL I EVER DOCUMENT MY LIFE IF I GROW SO RESTLESS IN THE PROCESS THAT BY THE TIME I AM 80 I HAVE NOTHING TO SHOW FOR MYSELF!

In ACS 500, that celestial academic god Andrew Hunter divulged one of his favourite philosophy quotes :
"The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room."
- Pascal (a French child prodigy, mathematician and philosopher, 1623 - 1662)

This really resonated with me. I often wonder if other people can't read a page without their mind wandering or jotting totally irrelevant notes on the page or pacing, drinking tea, checking e-mail, (going on facebook - I'm so ashamed). I am a focused person, but the concept of concentration kind of baffles me.

When I was a kid I believed that to be concentrated was to sink into a meditative, unearthly state that was entirely separate from a regular state of being. To be so completely unaware of your surroundings, fully absorbed in your thoughts to the point that hours should pass before you emerge to discover you have created an entire masterpeice, or something. Sometimes studying intimidates me. (I feel like I might slip into a parallel universe if the library is too quiet.)

(The last part is an exaggeration, but it's not such a far cry from the truth)

Anyway, while class sometimes makes me feel bad about my ability to 'concentrate' at the drop of a hat (ie - my ability to slip in and out of a parallel universe), working with the Continuist makes me feel super awesome. We started a blog this year,to make it a more ongoing, interactive project. This years theme is 'The Hunger' - to encourage contributors to think about the issues they feel passionately about (or what they are 'hungry for').

This excites me. There are so many things I'm hungry for this year. English, sonnets, custard tarts ...

Check it out here ! http://thecontinuist.wordpress.com/

" Literature and art have never been capable of explosions and revolutions and never will be. But they can harbour and cultivate the germs of subversion and offer people hope in thier resistance to all forms of oppression and in their persuit of more meaningful modes of life and communication."

Jack Zipes

“You have written a little, but in secret. And it wasn’t good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way; or because you wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come we go and make ourselves feel guilty – so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to bury it until next time. Write. Let no one hold you back.”

- Helene Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa

I like ACS 500.

'All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality.'

- George Orwell, Why I Write.

“our freedoms, our comforts, our prosperity are all products of fossil carbon, whose combustion creates the gas carbon dioxide, which is primarily responsible for global warming. Ours are the most fortunate generations that have ever lived. Ours might also be the most fortunate generations that ever will. We inhabit the brief historical interlude between ecological constraint and ecological catastrophe”

- George Monbiot, Heat - How to stop the Planet from Burning, 2006


(This book is presenting the meaning of my life to me.)

"I find myself despairing when I see four men in suits engaging in a debate where nothing important is said … if the voters get to hear a whole bunch of really exciting new ideas, they might like them … instead of trying to do a calculation of who they hate the least."

- Elizabeth May.