Definitely not a prose poem by Baudelaire [poem]
When I wanted to buy stuff, I used to think nothing of undertaking a journey to the shops. It's where they store the stuff.
When I'd had enough of the stuff, I'd think nothing of leaving it outside my door in the belief that someone would take it away. And usually they did.
Increasingly, of course, I cannot even be bothered to travel to the shops, so I tell my computer to summon things and they arrive: books, food, electrical goods.
And when I've had enough of them, I put them in bags and boxes outside my home and someone still takes them away.
Soon I shall be the character in Michael Frayn's 1968 classic "A Very Private Life".
* * *
How many rules am I willing to tolerate?
Does it matter how obvious to me they are?
* * *
I shall not be writing the book entitled "Deshopping Society". I shall not be writing it because it is so obviously a riff on the work of a genius ("Deschooling Society", Ivan Illich, 1973) and because Jorge Luis Borges, in "Pierre Maynard, author of the Quixote" (1939), has already established the folly of trying to write something that has already been written.
* * *
If thinking in systems: beware!
The leverage points are so rare
that the obvious ploys
may be just random noise
and your insight may just be thin air
When I'd had enough of the stuff, I'd think nothing of leaving it outside my door in the belief that someone would take it away. And usually they did.
Increasingly, of course, I cannot even be bothered to travel to the shops, so I tell my computer to summon things and they arrive: books, food, electrical goods.
And when I've had enough of them, I put them in bags and boxes outside my home and someone still takes them away.
Soon I shall be the character in Michael Frayn's 1968 classic "A Very Private Life".
* * *
How many rules am I willing to tolerate?
Does it matter how obvious to me they are?
* * *
I shall not be writing the book entitled "Deshopping Society". I shall not be writing it because it is so obviously a riff on the work of a genius ("Deschooling Society", Ivan Illich, 1973) and because Jorge Luis Borges, in "Pierre Maynard, author of the Quixote" (1939), has already established the folly of trying to write something that has already been written.
* * *
If thinking in systems: beware!
The leverage points are so rare
that the obvious ploys
may be just random noise
and your insight may just be thin air
[If there's a photo down here it was added
August 2017 as part of blog refresh. Photo is either mine or is linked to
where I found it. Make of either what you will.]
Comments