Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 22:50:26 -0500
From: mshulgasser-AT-zelacom.com (Mark Shulgasser)
Subject: Re: Anybody there??????


>I'm still here.  I've been reading Postmodern Fables, which begins:
>
>"...Today life is fast.  It vaporizes morals.  Futility suits the
>postmodern, for words as well as things.  But that doesn't keep us from
>asking questions:  how to live, and why?  The answers are deferred.  As
>they always are, of course.  But this time, there is a semblance of
>knowing:  that life is going every which way."
>
>"But do we know this?  We represent it to ourselves rather.  Every which
>way of life is flaunted, exhibited, enjoyed for the love of variety.  The
>moral of all morals would be that of 'aesthetic' pleasure."
>
>"Here then are fifteen notes on postmodern aestheticization.  And against
>it!  You're not done living because you chalk it up to artifice."
>
>_________
>
>What has struck me most about it so far is a line from a dialogue (between
>"he" and "she")  called "Interesting?"
>
>"SHE:  The only interesting thing is to try to speak in the language of
>another you don't understand."
>
>This "fable" points out that most conversation has the effect of confirming
>what we already know.  This kind of conversation helps us keep going, doing
>being.  But it is not "interesting," not what we want or need.  That which
>is interesting stops us.  It causes us to lose time.
>
>It points to a kind of call that is not understood, but is nonetheless
>recognizable as a call that somehow is received in an attitutde of hope of
>being able to understand and respond.
>
>If you understand this, is it still interesting?
>
>Mark

No, it is banal.

Mark