Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 17:45:28 -0700
From: Netscape User <netscape-user-AT-uw.madison>
Subject: the useless


"to call up the past in the form of an image, we must be able to
withdraw ourselves from the action of the moment,we must have the power
to value the useless,we must have the will to dream", (bergson in matter
and memory,p.82-83)....."ever on the point of escaping him,as though his
backward turning memory were thwarthed by the other,more natural, memory
of which the forward movement bears him on to action and to life". and
on pp. 222-3:"if matter does not remember the past, it is because it
repeats the past unceasingly,because,subject to necessity,it unfolds a
series of moments of which each is the equivalent of the preceding
moment and may be deduced from it: thus its past is truly given in its
present. but a being which evolves more or less freely creates something
new every moment:in vain, then,should we seek to read its past in its
present unless its past were deposited within it in the form of
memory.....thus.....it is necessary,and for similar reasons, that the
past should be ACTED by matter,IMAGINED by mind". and another body
floats down the seine....."the world, as it is profane,is god"
(agamben). and perhaps that's why klages as handwriting expert enjoyed a
brief flurry of popularity,on the trail of polymorphous flux.