|
|
blog roll
|
operation infinite forfeit...,
2011-03-28 21:15:32
| Main |
the easiest way to mug you is to be your bank...,
2011-04-16 16:08:35
WIN THE FUTURE:
It's like Samuel Beckett was contacted beyond the grave via quack to consult on the Obama campaign's contributions to mankind's constellation of meaningless political slogans. We have conferred across the pall of death and received this explanation for his choice of words:
By "the future" I mean that narrow region of space whose administrative limits we have never crossed and presumably never will, either because it is forbidden to us, or because it has already passed us by, or of course because of some extraordinary fortuitous conjunction of semantics. This region is situated ahead of us, in relation to our present, less bleak perhaps, and comprised of the indeterminate, dignified by some with messianic prophecy, by others regarded as no more than the next fraction of a second, and the surrounding seconds. These seconds, or fractions thereof, have, I hasten to say before they arrive, already passed, and so represented, within their fleeting passage, have been won on the one hand, and, having slipped by, lost on the other. In modern rhetoric this is what I think is called the unconditional abstract subjunctive, or indirect future ellipsis, I forget, but there exists to us no logical or meaningful context for such a phrase. And to express it we have another system, of singular beauty and simplicity, which consists in saying Future (since we are talking of the Future) when you mean Destiny and Fate when you mean Future plus its domains and Subsequent when you mean the domains exclusive of the Future itself. I myself for example lived, and come to think of it nevertheless still live, close at hand, hub of the world to come. And in the evening, when I went for a stroll, somewhat further at hand, in the prospect of fortune, to get a breath of fresh air, it was the fresh air of my prospects that I got, and no other.
Subsequent, in spite of its limited range, could boast of a certain diversity. Schemes so-called, a little design, a few odds, and, as you neared their outcomes, undulating and almost smiling providence, as if Subsequently was glad to go no further.
But the principal beauty of this phrase was a kind of strangled conquest which the slow grey tides emptied and filled, emptied and filled. And the people came flocking like fattened gulls, unromantic people, to admire this spectacle. Some said, There is nothing more beautiful than these three words. Others, Subsequently is the best time to see the receipts of Fate. How lovely then the leaden flourish, you would swear it was stagnant, if you did not know it was not.
Here only the inevitable grew in abundance, and a curious bitter imminence fatal to cows and horses, though tolerated apparently by the ass, the sheep and the elephant. What then is the condition of Destiny's victory? I'll tell you. No, I'll tell you nothing. Nothing.
:: posted by buermann @ 2011-04-13 17:35:37 CST |
link
|
|
|
|
