The Quotidian

I have turned away from the endless stream of news and return'd to work; today, comparing 1929 and 1975 translations of More's Utopia to the 1551 translation, the first in English. I'm looking for places where 'interest' was rendered in modern translation from the original Latin. Since 'interest' was only rarely used in English until the early seventeenth century, I can get glimpses into how English speakers once expressed ideas we might today convey with that ubiquitous word. It has meant spending a day with delyghtfull early modern English prose. Coming across passages like this one, though not about 'interest', gave me some pause:

For to what purpose serue leagues? saye they; as though nature had not set sufficient loue betwene man and man. And who so regardeth not nature, thynke yowe that he wyll passe for words?

I, for one, hope he would. Anyway, this also involved some time spent combing through the Latin from which passages later translated into 'interest' were culled. Modern English derivatives from the closest corresponding Latin words I found included:

concern
commodity
desire
improvement
lust
profit
weal

...all-in-all, a more engaging day than you might think.

But I'm also feeling some happiness today. I had a third date with P. last night, and it was marvelous. We had an early dinner at Delfina and then walked his new doggie-dog around the Mission and Noe Valley and then cuddled into the wee hours and I slept over again and we had coffee on Dolores Park and it has all been very pleasurable....
posted by Dean at 19:38

Take One

As we begin the work of seeking peace — yes, I desire peace, though I know not what it is — through political channels, I think we must take seriously the violence and exploitation of capitalism. I believe there is violence and exploitation in capitalism, and the third world bears much of it, and this violence and exploitation is represented in the objects of consumption that stuff our homes and garages. We must consider every purchase a vote for peace or war at least as powerful as lighting a candle at a rally or writing a letter to a politician. Peace is not only a national policy; it's also the aggregation of a million moments of consumption. This is not to say we deserve what happened or that the thousands who died deserved it. Rather, it is to say that if peace is our aim, we need to be committed to it, wholly, and this commitment must entail a thoroughgoing and heartfelt examination of our lives.

I do not think Americans want the inconvenience of that kind of peace. Do you? I'd like to think I do, but I'm not sure. So I wonder whether an orchestrated, programmatic diffusion of American culture is probably the best weapon we have, one which needs to be total if it is to be effective: send every Talibani child a television set, a DVD player, and a stack of J-Lo videos. Yes, I'm a little bitter that Enlightenment ideas, shaky a facade as they have always been, don't spread as rashly as Levi's and Pokemon, and I have plenty of worries about what life would be in a world where the consumer culture dominates the consciousness of everyone, including those of us who've bought so deeply into its values that we can be priviledged with the intellectual tools of "critique." But I think the failure of Enlightenment ideas to truly take root around the globe, and the relative success of Nike and McDonald's, is a lesson, a Learning from Las Vegas kind of lesson, which is to say a new political vernacular must be extracted therefrom and retooled as a site of criticism, and of freedom.
posted by Dean at 12:17

I was able to find a little solace today, at last. Any of you who caught some of the entries I'd written since Tuesday morning know the anger that was consuming my normally steady powers of reason. It was too much for my intellect to absorb — so I felt only rage.

In San Francisco this afternoon, I stopped for awhile at a shrine to the victims and their families that has gone up at the corner of 18th and Castro. I took some time to connect to the human dimension of what happened, and let my rage and despair flow into sadness, compassion, and pain. I am going to take a little time off from attempting to comprehend what happened or pretending to know what I think should happen next, be it aggression or not or what.

***
In the meantime, I think that Frank Rich and Anthony Lewis have had some smart and thoughtful things to say. Peace.
posted by Dean at 22:56

holy shit.
posted by Dean at 06:58

Life is Sweet

A fantastic weekend. Gorgeous weather. How can I ever leave Berkeley? Do I even know how much I love living here? An old friend flies into town. A first date that still has me giddy, with a man who exposed the stunning words of a poet new to me, and is taking me to hear Mahler's First and Fifth at the symphony on Thursday night.

Suddenly, so much is new. I'm seeing recently in ways I haven't seen for awhile.
posted by Dean at 17:31