You've got the feeling, don't lose the spirit.

The work... suggests the impossibility of the idea that seeing itself is self-evident... or that the act of vision can happen unencumbered by a whole range of ideological, cultural, semiotic & otherwise overdetermined signifiers

Bookforum, Feb/Mar 2006

"Her grip tightened. She knew from my expression that I had come to the same understanding by a different route and was as thankful. She told me how this knowledge affects the way she takes care of his home, how she imagines his life. Spinoza spoke of 'conatus,' a tendency for self-preservation which is common to all things in nature. Perhaps it is not simply a desire to exist but to arrive at an understanding of our existence. Perhaps, he reasoned, that is as close as we can come to salvation."

(from an excerpt printed in NEST magazine entitled "Spinoza")

First a note: Our camera is dead. This, of course, means no more pics until we get a new one which hopefully will be within a week or so. Until then....carry on.

"Books are not made to believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind. The unicorn, as these books speak of him, embodies a moral truth, or allegorical, or analogical, but one that remains true, as the idea of chastity is a noble virtue remains true. But as for literal truth that sustains the other three truths, we have yet to see what original experience gave birth to the letter. The literal object must be discussed, even if its higher meaning remains good. In a book it is written that diamond can be cut only with a billy goat's blood. My great master, Roger Bacon said it was not true, simply because he had tried and failed. But if the relation between a diamond and goat's blood had had a nobler meaning, that would have remained intact."

Umberto Eco
"The Name of the Rose"