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Brain / sky / you

10/21/2020

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'The brain is wider than the sky / For, put them side by side / The one the other will include / With ease, and you beside.'

–Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems, p. 98

https://books.google.com/books/about/Selected_Poems_and_Letters_of_Emily_Dick.html?id=aLZOAAAAMAAJ
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writing life

10/15/2020

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'beyond one's own life, there are the lives of others, and beyond that: even life itself.  The project of memento vivere explores life on all these levels.  For example, what, after all, are the 'building blocks' of life?  What are the building blocks of living experience?  Any discussion of life may go in the direction of quantitative or qualitative accountings of life, lives, and a life.  One primary way to account for life is through writing.'

Memento Vivere project notes, p. 1
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Higher, truer

10/15/2020

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'the higher price one pays, the truer one is seen to be.  If one does embarrassing, absurd, or sacrificial things, one is perceived as 'really meaning it' and being authentically serious in one's commitment.'

XJ, ​p. 94
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'Water is always more'

10/15/2020

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'water is always more than itself'

A. Ballestero, 'The Anthropology of Water', p. 405

​https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011428
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New 'glocal' folk culture

10/8/2020

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'Memetica ecologica is a new "glocal" folk culture that operates anywhere there are people, whether they are business people, scientists, village market goers, artists, political party leaders, refugees, citizens, revolutionaries, or the proverbial ordinary.

But anywhere a "totality" exists, in reality or in one's mind, we humans have a way of thinking otherwise.  Is this because "the world" is always more than we think?  There a more things, Horatio....  Is this because our brains, powerful and complex as they are, remain relatively limited?  Or is this because when it comes to words and concepts, our minds always have the power to create slippage or differential change even if such slippages/differentials do not exist in reality?

These questions and others like them ultimately will be left for readers to answer for themselves, but there is no question that a new informational ecology of memetics is at the forefront of our minds, bodies, societies, and our very lives.'

Memetica Ecologica project notes, p. 2
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'secular icons'

10/8/2020

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'Susan Sontag...writes...of how "certain photographs...can be used like memento mori, as objects of contemplation to deepen one's sense of reality; as secular icons...."  

...primetime viewing on public television, the major television networks, or online providers provide a steady stream of death-related or mortality-awareness content, including access to massive volumes of visual material and footage through venues such as YouTube, Vimeo, and social media platforms....

[Beyond information and entertainment, these images] give occasion for reflection upon a viewer's status as a mortal (and either an immortal with an uncertain future or not an immortal at all).'

D.i.D., pp. 6-7, citing Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, p. 119

​http://www.susansontag.com/SusanSontag/books/regardingPain.shtml
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'MADDENING' / 'FRACTIONS'

10/8/2020

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'when are the maddening / steep if consoling fractions of history done'

-K. Koch, "Ellie Campaigns...", Collected Poems, p. 9

​https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/94568/the-collected-poems-of-kenneth-koch-by-kenneth-koch/
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'Breaking down' life

9/26/2020

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'There are so many ways to 'break down' life -- or a life -- in order to understand it and, maybe, to optimize it.

How do you break things down?  What are the main areas of your life?  If you had to name 3 or 4 or 5 main areas of your life, what would the labels be?

Say your life, metaphorically speaking, is a 'building' -- like a house, an office complex, or a workshop -- what would the main 'rooms' of your life be?

Or if you were to present a photo album / slide show of your life: where would the snapshots of your life go?  Under what sections or headings?  How would you label the major sections?

These major labels, sections, or areas of your life could be something to come back to as ways of organizing, in one's own way, one's life.'

Memento Vivere project notes, p. 1, adapted
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High-cost discourse

9/26/2020

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A high-cost discourse may correlate with a perceived high commitment (XJ, p. 94).

In other words, if the way someone talks costs them a lot, people may think (and/or feel) that person is truly committed.

That is, some people may think they are the 'real deal'.

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'Reporting the universe'

9/26/2020

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"'The writer...believes all that can thought can be written....  In their eyes a human being is the faculty of reporting, and the universe is the possibility of being reported.'"  -R.W. Emerson

In E.L. Doctorow, Reporting the Universe, p. 1, edited

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674016286
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    Ben Bennett-Carpenter teaches writing at Oakland University and works as a Life Coach / Couples Coach for Sollars & Associates.

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